“Come, come! I have never felt so well. Your pills have a most marvellous effect upon me. I am conscious of a vivacity, a freshness, when I remember how run down I was six months ago.”
Jenkins, without saying anything, had laid his great head against the fur-coat of the minister of state, at the place where, in common men, the heart beats. He listened a moment while his excellency continued to speak in the indolent, bored tone which was one of the characteristics of his distinction.
“And who was your companion, doctor, last night? That huge, bronzed Tartar who was laughing so loudly in the front of your box.”
“It was the Nabob, Monsieur le Duc. The famous Jansoulet, about whom people are talking so much just now.”
“I ought to have guessed it. The whole house was watching him. The actresses played for him alone. You know him? What sort of man is he?”
“I know him. That is to say, I attend him professionally.—Thank you, my dear duke, I have finished. All is right in that region.—When he arrived in Paris a month ago, he had found the change of climate somewhat trying. He sent for me, and since then has received me upon the most friendly footing. What I know of him is that he possesses a colossal fortune, made in Tunis, in the service of the Bey, that he has a loyal heart, a generous soul, in which the ideas of humanity—”
“In Tunis?” interrupted the duke, who was by nature very little sentimental and humanitarian. “In that case, why this name of Nabob?”
“Bah! the Parisians do not look at things so closely. For them, every rich foreigner is a nabob, no matter whence he comes. Furthermore, this nabob has all the physical qualities for the part—a copper-coloured skin, eyes like burning coals, and, what is more, gigantic wealth, of which he makes, I do not fear to say it, the most noble and the most intelligent use. It is to him that I owe”—here the doctor assumed a modest air—“that I owe it that I have at last been able to found the Bethlehem Society for the suckling of infants, which a morning paper, that I was looking over just now—the Messenger, I think—calls ‘the great philanthropic idea of the century.’”
The duke threw a listless glance over the sheet which Jenkins held out to him. He was not the man to be caught by the turn of an advertisement.
“He must be very rich, this M. Jansoulet,” said he, coldly. “He finances Cardailhac’s theatre; Monpavon gets him to pay his debts; Bois l’Hery starts a stable for him; old Schwalbach a picture gallery. It means money, all that.”