The Nabob

by Alphonse Daudet

For ten minutes the charming grandmother is besieged with questions and entreaties. Every one needs her help in some way; it is she who had the keys of everything, she who gives out the pretty, white, fine goffered linen, the embroidered handkerchiefs, the best gloves, all the dainty things which, taken out from drawers and wardrobes, spread over the bed, fill a house with a bright Sunday gaiety.

The workers, the people with tasks to fulfil, alone know that delight which returns each week consecrated by the customs of a nation. For these prisoners of the week, the almanac with its closed prison-like gratings opens at regular intervals into luminous spaces, with breaths of refreshing air. It is Sunday, the day that seems so long to fashionable folk, to the Parisians of the boulevard whose habits it disturbs, so gloomy to people far from their homes and relatives, that constitutes for a multitude of human beings the only recompense, the one aim of the desperate efforts of six days of toil. Neither rain nor hail, nothing makes any difference, nothing will prevent them from going out, from closing behind them the door of the deserted workshop, of the stuffy little lodging. But when the springtime is come, when the May sunshine glitters on it as this morning, and it can deck itself out in gay colours, then indeed Sunday is the holiday of holidays.

If one would know it well, it must be seen especially in the working quarters of the town, in those gloomy streets which it lights up and enlarges by closing the shops, keeping in their sheds the heavy drays and trucks, leaving the space free for wandering bands of children washed and in their Sunday clothes, and for games of battledore and shuttlecock played amid the great circlings of the swallows beneath some porch of old Paris. It must be seen in the densely populated, feverishly toiling suburbs, where, as soon as morning is come, you may feel it hovering, resposeful and sweet, in the silence of the factories, passing with the ringing of church-bells and that sharp whistle of the railways, and filling the horizon, all around the outskirts of the city, with an immense song, as it were, of departure and of deliverance. Then one understands it and loves it.

O Sunday of Paris, Sunday of the toilers and the humble, often have I cursed thee without reason, I have poured whole streams of abusive ink over thy noisy and extravagant joys, over the dust of railway stations filled by thy uproar and the maddening omnibuses that thou takest by assault, over thy tavern songs bawled everywhere from carts adorned with green and pink dresses, on thy barrel-organs grinding out their tunes beneath the balconies of deserted court-yards; but to-day, abjuring my errors, I exalt thee, and I bless thee for all the joy and relief thou givest to courageous and honest labour, for the laughter of the children who greet thee with acclamation, the pride of mothers happy to dress their little ones in their best clothes in thy honour, for the dignity thou dost preserve in the homes of the poorest, the glorious raiment set aside for thee at the bottom of the old shaky chest of drawers; I bless thee especially by reason of all the happiness thou hast brought that morning to the great new house in the old faubourg.

Toilettes having been completed, the dejeuner finished, taken on the thumb, as they say—and you can imagine what quantity these young ladies’ thumbs would carry—they came to put on their hats before the mirror in the drawing-room. Bonne Maman threw around her supervising glance, inserted a pin here, retied a ribbon there, straightened her father’s cravat; but while all this little world was stamping with impatience, beckoned out of doors by the beauty of the day, there came a ring at the bell, echoing through the apartment and disturbing their gay proceedings.

“Suppose we don’t open the door?” propose the children.

And what a relief, with a cry of delight, they see their friend Paul come in!

“Quick! quick! Come and let us tell you the good news.”

He knew well, before any of them, that the play had been accepted. He had had a good deal of trouble to get it read by Cardailhac, who, the moment he saw its “short lines,” as he called verse, wished to send the manuscript to the Levantine and her masseur, as he was wont to do in the case of all beginners in the writing of drama. But Paul was careful not to refer to his own intervention. As for the other event, the one of which nothing was said, on account of the children, he guessed it easily by the trembling greeting of Maranne, whose fair mane was standing straight up over his forehead by reason of the poet’s two hands having been pushed through it so many times, a thing he always did in his moments of joy, by the slightly embarrassed demeanour of Elise, by the triumphant airs of M. Joyeuse, who was standing very erect in his new summer clothes, with all the happiness of his children written on his face.

Bonne Maman alone preserved her usual peaceful air; but one noticed, in the eager alacrity with which she forestalled her sister’s wants, a certain attention still more tender than before, an anxiety to make her look pretty. And it was delicious to watch the girl of twenty as she busied herself about the adornment of others, without envy, without regret, with something of the gentle renunciation of a mother welcoming the young love of her daughter in memory of a happiness gone by. Paul saw this; he was the only one who did see it; but while admiring Aline, he asked himself sadly if in that maternal heart there would ever be place for other affections, for preoccupations outside the tranquil and bright circle wherein Bonne Maman presided so prettily over the evening work.