of the abode in which he chances to find himself.  M. Bompain completed this array of subordinates, all alike in one respect at any rate, Bompain, the secretary, the steward, the confidential agent, through whose hands the entire business of the house passed; and it sufficed to observe that solemnly stupid attitude, that indefinite manner, the Turkish fez placed awkwardly on a head suggestive of a village school-master, in order to understand to what manner of people interests like those of the Nabob had been abandoned.

Finally, to fill the gaps among these figures I have sketched, the Turkish crowd—­Tunisians, Moors, Egyptians, Levantines; and, mingled with this exotic element, a whole variegated Parisian Bohemia of ruined nobleman, doubtful traders, penniless journalists, inventors of strange products, people arrived from the south without a farthing, all the lost ships needing revictualling, or flocks of birds wandering aimlessly in the night, which were drawn by this great fortune as by the light of a beacon.  The Nabob admitted this miscellaneous collection of individuals to his table out of kindness, out of generosity, out of weakness, by reason of his easy-going manners, joined to an absolute ignorance and a survival of that loneliness of the exile, of that need for expansion which, down yonder in Tunis, in his splendid palace of the Bardo, had caused him to welcome everybody who hailed from France, from the small tradesman exporting Parisian wares to the famous pianist on tour and the consul-general himself.

As one listened to those various accents, those foreign intonations, gruff or faltering, as one gazed upon those widely different physiognomies, some violent, barbarous, vulgar, others hyper-civilized, worn, suggestive only of the Boulevard and as it were flaccid, one noted that the same diversity was evident also among the servants who, some apparently lads just out of an office, insolent in manner, with heads of hair like a dentist’s or a bath-attendant’s, busied themselves among Ethiopians standing motionless and shining like candelabra of black marble, and it was impossible to say exactly where one was; in any case, you would never have imagined yourself to be in the Place Vendome, right in the beating heart and very centre of the life of our modern Paris.  Upon the table there was a like importation of exotic dishes, saffron or anchovy sauces, spices mixed up with Turkish delicacies, chickens with fried almonds, and all this taken together with the banality of the interior, the gilding of the panels, the shrill ringing of the new bells, gave the impression of a table d’hote in some big hotel in Smyrna or Calcutta, or of a luxurious dining-saloon on board a transatlantic liner, the “Pereire” or the “Sinai.”

It might seem that this diversity among the guests—­I was about to say among the passengers—­ought to have caused the meal to be animated and noisy.  Far otherwise.  They all ate nervously, watching each other out of eye-corners, and even those most accustomed to society, those who appeared the most at their ease, had in their glance the wandering look and the distraction of a fixed idea, a feverish anxiety which caused them to speak without relevance and to listen without understanding a word of what was being said to them.