“Ah, yes, he was clever. But you are the
most clever of all,” he answered with his terrible
Gascon intonation.
Hemerlingue made no protest.
“It is to my wife that I owe it. So I strongly
recommend you to make your peace with her, because
unless you do——”
“Oh, don’t be afraid. We shall come
on Saturday. But you will take me to see Le Merquier.”
And while the two silhouettes, the one tall and square,
the other massive and short, were passing out of sight
among the twinings of the great labyrinth, while the
voice of Jansoulet guiding his friend, “This
way, old fellow—lean hard on my arm,”
died away by insensible degrees, a stray beam of the
setting sun fell upon and illuminated behind them
in the little plateau, an expressive and colossal bust,
with great brow beneath long swept-back hair, and
powerful and ironic lip—the bust of Balzac
watching them.
Just at the end of the long vault, under which were
the offices of Hemerlingue and Sons, the black tunnel
which Joyeuse had for ten years adorned and illuminated
with his dreams, a monumental staircase with a wrought-iron
balustrade, a staircase of mediaeval time, led towards
the left to the reception rooms of the baroness, which
looked out on the court-yard just above the cashier’s
office, so that in summer, when the windows were open,
the ring of the gold, the crash of the piles of money
scattered on the counters, softened a little by the
rich and lofty hangings at the windows, made a mercantile
accompaniment to the buzzing conversation of fashionable
Catholicism.
The entrance struck at once the note of this house,
as of her who did the honours of it. A mixture
of a vague scent of the sacristy, with the excitement
of the Bourse, and the most refined fashion, these
heterogeneous elements, met and crossed each other’s
path there, but remained as much apart as the noble
faubourg, under whose patronage the striking conversion
of the Moslem had taken place, was from the financial
quarters where Hemerlingue had his life and his friends.
The Levantine colony—pretty numerous in
Paris—was composed in great measure of
German Jews, bankers or brokers who had made colossal
fortunes in the East, and still did business here,
not to lose the habit. The colony showed itself
regularly on the baroness’s visiting day.
Tunisians on a visit to Paris never failed to call
on the wife of the great banker; and old Colonel Brahim,
charge d’affaires of the Bey, with his
flabby mouth and bloodshot eyes, had his nap every
Saturday in the corner of the same divan.
