“Ah, I am ruined! I am ruined!”
In the immense entrance-hall no one noticed his distress. The crowd of senators, of deputies, of councillors of state, all the high officials of the administration, came and went around him without seeing him, holding mysterious consultations with uneasy importance near the two fireplaces of white marble which faced one another. So many ambitions disappointed, deceived, hurled down, met in this visit in extremis, that personal anxieties dominated every other preoccupation.
The faces, strangely enough, expressed neither pity nor grief, rather a sort of anger. All these people seemed to have a grudge against the duke for dying, as though he had deserted them. One heard remarks of this kind: “It is not surprising, with such a life as he has lived!” And looking out of the high windows, these gentlemen pointed out to each other, amid the going and coming of the equipages in the court-yard, the drawing up of some little brougham from within which a well-gloved hand, with its lace sleeve brushing the sash of the door, would hold out a card with a corner turned back to the footman.
From time to time one of the habitues of the palace, one of those whom the dying man had summoned to his bedside, appeared in the medley, gave an order, then went away, leaving the scared expression of his face reflected on twenty others. Jenkins showed himself thus for a moment, with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his cuffs crumpled, in all the disorder of the battle in which he was engaged upstairs against a terrible opponent. He was instantly surrounded, besieged with questions.
Certainly the monkeys flattening their short noses against the bars of their cage, excited by the unaccustomed tumult, and very attentive to all that passed about them as though they were occupied in making a methodical study of human hypocrisy, had a magnificent model in the Irish physician. His grief was superb, a splendid grief, masculine and strong, which compressed his lips and made him pant.
“The agony has begun,” he said mournfully. “It is only a matter of hours.”
And as Jansoulet came towards him, he said to him emphatically:
“Ah, my friend, what a man! What courage! He has forgotten nobody. Only just now he was speaking to me of you.”
“Really?”
“‘The poor Nabob,’ said he, ‘how does the affair of his election stand?’”