“Ah, yes, the symbol,” she said, lifting her face towards his with a smile of discouragement; and leaning against the pedestal of the large, voluptuous statue near which they happened to be standing, with the closed eyes of a woman who gives or abandons herself, she murmured low, very low:
“Rabelais lied, as all men lie. The truth is that the fox is utterly wearied, that he is at the end of his breath and his courage, ready to fall into the ditch, and that if the greyhound makes another effort——”
Mora started, became a shade paler, all the blood he had in his body rushing back to his heart. Two sombre flames met with their eyes, two rapid words were exchanged by lips that hardly moved; then the duke bowed profoundly, and walked away with a step gay and light, as though the gods were bearing him.
At that moment there was in the palace only one man as happy as he, and that was the Nabob. Escorted by his friends, he occupied, quite filled up, the principal bay with his own party alone, speaking loudly, gesticulating, proud to such a degree that he looked almost handsome, as though by dint of naive and long contemplation of his bust he had been touched by something of the splendid idealization with which the artist had haloed the vulgarity of his type. The head, raised to the three-quarters position, standing freely out from the wide, loose collar, drew contradictory remarks on the resemblance from the passers-by; and the name of Jansoulet, so many times repeated by the electoral ballot-boxes, was repeated over again now by the prettiest mouths, by the most authoritative voices, in Paris. Any other than the Nabob would have been embarrassed to hear uttered, as he passed, these expressions of curiosity which were not always friendly. But the platform, the springing-board, well suited that nature which became bolder under the fire of glances, like those women who are beautiful or witty only in society, and whom the least admiration transfigures and completes.
When he felt this delirious joy growing calmer, when he thought to have drunk the whole of its proud intoxication, he had only to say to himself, “Deputy! I am a Deputy!” And the triumphal cup foamed once more to the brim. It meant the embargo raised from all his possessions, the awakening from a nightmare that had lasted two months, the puff of cool wind sweeping away all his anxieties, all his inquietudes, even to the affront of Saint-Romans, very heavy though that was in his memory.
Deputy!
He laughed to himself as he thought of the baron’s face when he learned the news, of the stupefaction of the Bey when he had been led up to his bust; and suddenly, upon the reflection that he was no longer merely an adventurer stuffed with gold, exciting the stupid admiration of the crowd, as might an enormous rough nugget in the window of a money-changer, but that people saw in him, as he passed, one of the men elected by the will of the nation, his simple and mobile face grew thoughtful with a deliberate gravity, there suggested themselves to him projects of a career, of reform, and the wish to profit by the lessons that had been latterly taught by destiny. Already, remembering the promise which he had given to de Gery, for the household troop that wriggled ignobly at his heels, he made exhibition of certain disdainful coldnesses, a deliberate pose of authoritative contradiction. He called the Marquis de Bois l’Hery “my good fellow,” imposed silence very sharply on the governor, whose enthusiasm was becoming scandalous, and made a solemn vow to himself to get rid as soon as possible of all that mendicant and promising Bohemian set, when he should have occasion to begin the process.
Penetrating the crowd which surrounded him, Moessard—the handsome Moessard, in a sky-blue cravat, pale and bloated like a white embodiment of disease, and pinched at the waist in a fine frock-coat—seeing that the Nabob, after having gone twenty times round the hall of sculpture, was making for the door, dashed forward, and passing his arm through his, said:
“You are taking me with you, you know.”
Especially of late, since the time of the election, he had assumed, in the establishment of the Place Vendome, an authority almost equal to that of Monpavon, but more impudent; for, in point of impudence, the Queen’s lover was without his equal on the pavement that stretches from the Rue Drouot to the Madeleine. This time he had gone too far. The muscular arm which he pressed was shaken violently, and the Nabob answered very dryly: