22
THE NABOB.
immediately after a face of twenty, surrounded
with thick fine brown hair, made its appearance.
De Géry, stupefied, looked inquiringly at Mon-
sieur Joyeuse.
" Bonne-maman?"
" Yes, we gave her that name when she was
quite small. She had such a queer, old-fash-
ioned face, in her frilled cap, and with her eld-
est-child authority—we thought she resembled
her grandmamma, and so the name stuck to
her."
By the tone of the good man, as he thus
spoke, you at once felt that the name of "gran-
ny," given to such a blooming girl, was a thing
perfectly natural. Every one in the family
thought as he did on that point —the other
girls, who had run to their father, and grouped
themselves very much as they were in the out-
side frame; the old servant who put on the
table of the drawing room, whither they had
just passed, a magnificent tea-service, a waif of
former splendor—everybody called the young
girl " Bonne-maman. " And she did not mind
it. The influence of that blessed name gave to
their affection a deference which flattered her,
as it gave to her ideal authority a tone of gentle
protection.
Whether it was owing to that ancestral title
which De Géry had learnt to love from his earli-
est childhood, or to some other feeling, I do not
presume to decide, but certain it is that he
found an inexpressible charm in that young
girl. What he experienced did not at all resem-
ble the sudden heart-shock which another wom-
an had occasioned him—a feeling of confusion,
mixed with a desire to fly away, to escape a sort
of bewitchery ; the persistent melancholy which,
on the morrow, follows a day of revelry;
a dull sensation of extinguished tapers, van-
ished sovsgs, perfumes dispersed through the
night. No; before that young girl, standing
there, looking on the table to see if nothing was
forgotten, lowering her affectionate eyes on
her young children, he was seized with the
temptation to know more of her, to become an
old friend of hers, to whisper to her heart things
which he only confessed to himself; and when
she offered him his cup, without any coquetry
or drawing-room graces, he wished he could
have said to her, as the others did, "Thank
you, Bonne-maman," and poured all his heart in
those words.
Suddenly a strong joyful knock at the door
startled everybody.
"Here is Monsieur André! Elise, a cup,
quick! . . . Yai'a, the cakes!" In the mean-
time, Mademoiselle Henriette, Joyeuse's third
daughter, who had inherited from her mother—
nee Saint-Amand, remember—something worldly
in her disposition, seeing the affluence on that
night in the drawing-room, rushed quickly to
light the two piano tapers.
" My fifth act is finished," cried the new-
comer from the door—then he stopped suddenly :
"I beg pardon," said he; and his face assumed
a somewhat abashed expression, on seeing the
stranger. Monsieur Joyeuse introduced them
to each other "Monsieur Paul de Gery—Mon-
sieur Andre Maranne !" with a certain pomposity
of manner. He remembered his wife's recep-
tions ; and the vases on the chimney-piece, the
two big lamps, the what-not, the armchairs in a
circle, ~seemed to share the good man's illusion,
for they looked more brilliant and youthful
among this unusual gathering.
" Then your play is finished?"
"Finished! Monsieur Joyeuse, and. I shall
read it to you one of these evenings."
" Do, Monsieur Andre, do," said the chorUs
of young girls.
The neighbor was working for the theatre,
and nobody here doubted his success. But, on
the other hand, photography did not hold out
promises of great profits. Customers were rare,
passers-by showed no inclination to patronize
To keep his hand in, and preserve his
him.
new apparatus free from rust, Monsieur Andre
took every Sunday all this family of friends,
who submitted with unequalled patience to his
experiments; for the prosperity of this suburban
and trading studio was for all of them a matter
of amour propre; it even awoke in the young
girls that touching sympathy which binds hum-
ble destinies together, like sparrows on the edge
of a roof Andre Maranne, with the inex-
haustible resource of his wide forehead full of
Illusions, explained without bitterness the in-
difference of the public. Sometimes the sea
8on was unfavorable or people complained of
the bad state of trade; and he always ended
¦With this consoling burden: "Wait till I have
had my "Révolte "plaj^ed." "Révolte" was the
title of his drama.
"It is strange, though," said the fourth
Demoiselle Joyeuse—aged twelve years, hair a
la chinoise—"it is strange that there should be
so little business done with such a fine balcony."
"And the neighborhood is crowded with
passers-by," added Elise, with confidence.
Bonne-maman calls her attention to the fact
that the Boulevard des Italiens in still more so.
" Ah! if he were on the Boulevard des Itali-
ens," says Monsieur Joyeuse, dreamily; and off
he goes on his hobby; when all at once he comes
to a full stop, awakened by a sad motion of his
own, and these words, which he pronounces with
lamentable intonation: "Closed by reason of
bankruptcy. " In one minute the terrible dream-
er had seen his friend sitting in splendid apart-
ments on the boulevard—he makes enormous
sums, increases his expenses to such a degree
that his stupendous debts swallow up in a very
few months both photographer and photogra-
phy. They laugh a good deal when he gives
this explanation; but they agree that, though
less brilliant than the Boulevard des Italiens,
the Rue Ferdinand is perhaps a safer quarter.
Besides that, is it not situated near the Bois de
Boulogne?—and if fashionable society once be-
gins to pass this way . . . This fashionable so-
ciety, of which her mother was so fond, is
Henriette's hobby, and she is astonished that
their neighbor should laugh at the idea of re-
ceiving fine people in his little fifth-floor apart-
ment, as narrow as a bell-glass. And yet, the
other week, there came a tine carriage with a
liveried coachman. This afternoon, also, he
has had a very " swell" visit.
" Oh, quite a grand lady," says Bonne-maman.
" We were at the window, and saw her alight
from her carriage and look at the frame. We
guessed it was for you."
" It was for me," says Andre, a little      ,
rassed.
"One moment we feared lest she should pass
on like so many others, because of your five
stories. But we were there, staring at her, and
drawing her in, without her suspecting it, with
the magnet of our four pairs of eyes wide open.
We kept drawing her gently, by the feathers
of her bonnet and the lace of her pelisse.
'Come in, madame, come in,' we said; so that
at last she did come in. Yes, there is a strong
magnet, I am sure, in willing eyes."
Magnet the dear creature certainly had, not
only in her eyes of an undecided color, veiled
or laughing like the sky of her own Paris, but
also in her voice, in the folds of her dress, and
even in the long ringlet prettily turned on her
supple finger, which fell attractively on a neck
as straight and finely cut as that of a statuette.
Monsieur Joyeuse was always very long in
everything he did, because of his sudden jour-
neys to the clouds; and so, whilst the gentle-
men talked and sipped their tea, the young girls
took up their work, and the table became cov-
ered with little wicker baskets, embroidery,
skeins of pretty Berlin wool, which, by their
brilliant colors, seemed to give new life to the
faded pattern of the table-cover; and the group
of the other evening gathered again in the cir-
cle of light projected by the lamp shade, to the
great rejoicing of Paul de Gery. It was the
first evening of the kind he was passing in
Pans. It reminded him of many others far
away in the past already, embellished by the
same innocent laugh, the same little noise of
scissors dropped upon the table and needle
pricking the linen, the same crumpling of the
turned leaf, the dear faces gone forever, gath-
ered then around the family lamp, alas! so
roughly extinguished!
Now that he had obtained admission into
this charming family, he was always there, took
his lessons among the young girls, and mustered
the necessary boldness to chat with them when
the father shut his ledger. Everything here
was a relief to that whirling life into which he
was thrown by the luxurious worldliness of the
Nabob. He refreshed himself in that atmos-
phere of honor and simplicity, and tried to for-
get the wounds inflicted by a hand indifferent
rather than cruel.
" Some women have hated me ; other women have
loved me;
But she, who has most wounded me, has neither
hated nor loved me."
Such a woman as Henri Heine speaks of in
those lines, it had been Paul's fate to meet.
Felicia received him with hearty welcome
whenever he visited her. To none did she turn
a kindlier face.    She kept in store for him a
particular smile, in wliich beamed the pleasure
of an artist's eye resting on a loved type, and
the interest of a blase mind awakened by some-
thing new, however simple that new thing
might seem. She liked his reserve, startling
in a "meridional," the correctness of his judg-
ment, unbiassed by any artistic or worldly-wise
formula, and enlivened with a dash of
originality. It was something different from
the praise expressed by the zig-zag motion of a
brother artist's thumb, different from the
friendly compliments on her manner of hitting
off a fellow, from those babyish expressions of
admiration, those " cha . . aming, vewy nice,"
with which young swells gratified her, as they
sucked the knobs of their sticks. He, at least,
said nothing like that. She used to call him
" Minerva," because of his apparent quietness
and his regular profile. As far off as she saw
him, she would say:
' ' Here is Minerva ! Good-morning, fair god-
dess. Lay down your helmet, and let us have
a chat."
But that familiar, almost sisterly, tone, con-
vinced the young man of the uselessness of his
love. He felt he never could penetrate deeper
into that womanly intimacy devoid of affection,
and that he lost every day a little of the charm
of novelty, in the eyes of that woman, ennuyé
almost from her birth, who seemed to have
lived her life already, and found in everything
she heard or saw the insipidity of well-known
sensations. Felicia was tired out with the things
of life. Her art alone procured her some dis-
traction, raised her, and carried her into fairy-
land, from which she fell again all bruised, as-
tonished that her waking should feel so much
like a fall. She used to compare herself to
those transparent medusas, so fresh and lively
in the waving water, which break on the shore
into little gelatinous puddles. . During those
artistic reveries, when the mind is absent and
the hand resting heavily on the chisel, Felicia,
losing all control over her mind, would become
fierce, morose, teasing, and harassing—the re-
venge of human weaknesses against great brains
when they are overwrought. After she had
brought tears into the eyes of all those who
loved her, rummaged painful recollections or
enervating anxieties, reached the bare and un-
even ground of fatigue, as she must always
put some fun into the saddest realities, she would
shake off whatever ennui remained in her, by
uttering the cry of a tired wild beast, something
between a yawn and a roar, which she called
the cry of the "jackal in the desert," and which
made the good Crenmitz turn pale in the midst
of her lazy repose.
Poor Felicia! Her life was truly a fright-
ful desert, when art did not enliven it with its
mirage; a sad flat desert where everything
became lost and leveled in the same boundless
monotony : the naive love of a youth of twenty,
the passing attention of an amorous duke—and
all covered with the barren sand blown by a
burning fate. Paul felt this barrenness, and
wished to escape it; but something held him
back like a weight whicli unwinds a chain;
and in spite of the calumnies he had heard,
and the oddness of the strange creature, he
found great delight in staying with her, at the
risk of carrying away, from this long loving
contemplation, nothing but the despair of the
believer who has only images to worship.
The refuge was over there, in that distant
neighborhood where the wind blew so hard,
without preventing the flame from rising white
and straight; itwas the family circle presided
over by Bonne-maman. Oh! she was not
wearied, she never uttered the cry of the
"jackal in the desert;" her life was too well
filled. She had plenty to do: her father to
encourage, to cheer up; the children to teach;
all the material comforts of a home left without
a mother to attend to—anxieties which woke
up with the dawn, and which the eveninglulled
to sleep, unless it brought them back in adream;
an unwearied devotion, displaying itself with-
out apparent effort—a very convenient thing
for poor human egotism, because it expects no
gratitude, and is hardly felt, so light is its hand.
She was not the courageous girl who works to
support her parents, runs the whole day from
house to house to give lessons, and forgets in
the stir of a hard profession all the miseries of
her home. No, she had understood her task
differently; a sedentary bee, she limited her
attention to the hive, and never was her buzz-
ing heard outside, in the open air, and.amid
the flowers. She had a thousand things to do;
in turn a tailor, a milliner, a mender of clothes.