The ugliness of the Nabob had at least energy in its favour, the vulgar side of him as an adventurer, and that expression of benevolence, so well rendered by the artist, who had taken care to underlay her plaster with a layer of ochre, which gave it almost the weather-beaten and sunburned tone of the model.  The Arabs, when they saw it, uttered a stifled exclamation, “Bou-Said!” (the father of good fortune).  This was the surname of the Nabob in Tunis, the label, as it were, of his luck.  The Bey, for his part, thinking that some one had wished to play a trick on him in thus leading him to inspect the bust of the hated trader, regarded his guide with mistrust.

“Jansoulet?” said he in his guttural voice.

“Yes, Highness:  Bernard Jansoulet, the new deputy for Corsica.”

This time the Bey turned to Hemerlingue, with a frown on his brow.

“Deputy?”

“Yes, monseigneur, since this morning; but nothing is yet settled.”

And the banker, raising his voice, added with a stutter: 

“No French Chamber will ever admit that adventurer.”

No matter.  The stroke had fallen on the blind faith of the Bey in his baron financier.  The latter had so confidently affirmed to him that the other would never be elected and that their action with regard to him need not be fettered or in any way hampered by the least fear.  And now, instead of a man ruined and overthrown, there rose before him a representative of the nation, a deputy whose portrait in stone the Parisians were coming to admire; for in the eyes of the Oriental, an idea of distinction being mingled in spite of everything with this public exhibition, that bust had the prestige of a statue dominating a square.  Still more yellow than usual, Hemerlingue internally accused himself of clumsiness and imprudence.  But how could he ever have dreamed of such a thing?  He had been assured that the bust was not finished.  And in fact it had been there only since morning, and seemed quite at home, quivering with satisfied pride, defying its enemies with the good-tempered smile of its curling lip.  A veritable silent revenge for the disaster of Saint-Romans.

For some minutes the Bey, cold and impassible as the sculptured image, gazed at it without saying anything, his forehead divided by a straight crease wherein his courtiers alone could read his anger; then, after two quick words in Arabic, to order the carriages and to reassemble his scattered suite, he directed his steps gravely towards the door of exit, without consenting to give even a glance to anything else.  Who shall say what passes in these august brains surfeited with power?  Even our sovereigns of the West have incomprehensible fantasies; but they are nothing compared with Oriental caprices.  Monsieur the Inspector of Fine Arts, who had made sure of taking his Highness all round the exhibition and of thus winning the pretty red-and-green ribbon of the Nicham-Iftikahr, never knew the secret of this sudden flight.