city hid in its recesses so many unknown heroisms
and noble illusions. This last impression, already
experienced within the sheltered circle of the Joyeuse’s
great lamp, he received perhaps still more vividly
in this atmosphere, less warm, less peaceful, wherein
art also entered to add its despairing or glorious
uncertainty; and it was with a moved heart that he
listened to Andre Maranne as he spoke to him of Elise,
of the examinations which it was taking her so long
to pass, of the difficulties of photography, of all
that unforeseen element in his life which would end
certainly “when he could have secured the production
of Revolt,” a charming smile accompanying
on the poet’s lips this so often expressed hope,
which he was wont himself to hasten to make fun of,
as though to deprive others of the right to do so.
Truly Fortune in Paris has bewildering turns of the
wheel!
To have seen the Territorial Bank as I have seen it,
the rooms without fires, never swept, the desert with
its dust, protested bills piled high as that
on the desks, every week a notice of sale posted at
the door, my stew spreading throughout the whole place
the odour of a poor man’s kitchen; and then
to witness now the reconstitution of our company in
its newly furnished halls, in which I have orders to
light fires big enough for a Government department,
amid a busy crowd, blowings of whistles, electric
bells, gold pieces piled up till they fall over; it
savours of miracle. I need to look at myself in
the glass before I can believe it, to see in the mirror
my iron-gray coat, trimmed with silver, my white tie,
my usher’s chain like the one I used to wear
at the Faculty on the days when there were sittings.
And to think that to work this transformation, to
bring back to our brows gaiety, the mother of concord,
to restore to our scrip its value ten times over, to
our dear governor the esteem and confidence of which
he had been so unjustly deprived, one man has sufficed,
the being of supernatural wealth whom the hundred
voices of renown designate by the name of the Nabob.
Oh, the first time that he came to the office, with
his fine presence, his face a little worn perhaps,
but so distinguished, his manners of one accustomed
to frequent courts, upon terms of the utmost familiarity
with all the princes of the Orient—in a
word, that indescribable quality of assurance and
greatness which is bestowed by immense wealth—I
felt my heart bursting beneath the double row of buttons
on my waistcoat. People may mouth in vain their
great words of equality and fraternity; there are
men who stand so surely above the rest that one would
like to bow one’s self down flat in their presence,
to find new phrases of admiration in order to compel
them to take a practical interest in one. Let
us hasten to add that I had need of nothing of the
kind to attract the attention of the Nabob. As
