I rose at his passage—­moved to some emotion, but with dignity, you may trust Passajon for that—­he looked at me with a smile and said in an undertone to the young man who accompanied him:  “What a fine head, like a—­” Then there came a word which I did not catch very well, a word ending in art, something like leopard.  No, however, it cannot have been that. Jean-Bart, perhaps, although even then I hardly see the connection.  However that be, in any case he did say, “What a fine head,” and this condescension made me proud.  Moreover, all the directors show me a marked degree of kindness and politeness.  It seems that there was a discussion with regard to me at the meeting of the board, to determine whether I should be kept or dismissed like our cashier, that ill-tempered fellow who was always talking of getting everybody sent to the galleys, and whom they have now invited to go elsewhere to manufacture his cheap shirt-fronts.  Well done!  That will teach him to be rude to people.  So far as I am concerned, Monsieur the Governor kindly consented to overlook my somewhat hasty words, in consideration of my record of service at the Territorial and elsewhere; and at the conclusion of the board meeting, he said to me with his musical accent:  “Passajon, you remain with us.”  It may be imagined how happy I was and how profuse in the expression of my gratitude.  But just think!  I should have left with my few pence without hope of ever saving any more; obliged to go and cultivate my vineyard in that little country district of Montbars, a very narrow field for a man who has lived in the midst of all the financial aristocracy of Paris, and among those great banking operations by which fortunes are made at a stroke.  Instead of that, here I am established afresh in a magnificent situation, my wardrobe renewed, and my savings, which I spent a whole day in fingering over, intrusted to the kind care of the governor, who has undertaken to invest them for me advantageously.  I think that is a manoeuvre which he is the very man to execute successfully.  And no need for the least anxiety.  Every fear vanishes before the word which is in vogue just now at all the councils of administration, in all shareholders’ meetings, on the Bourse, the boulevards, and everywhere:  “The Nabob is in the affair.”  That is to say, gold is being poured out abundantly, the worst combinazioni are excellent.

He is so rich, that man!

Rich to a degree one cannot imagine.  Has he not just lent fifteen million francs as a simple loan passing from hand to hand, to the Bey of Tunis?  I repeat, fifteen millions.  It was a trick he played on the Hemerlingues, who wished to embroil him with that monarch and cut the grass under his feet in those fine regions of the Orient where it grows golden, high, and thick.  It was an old Turk whom I know, Colonel Brahim, one of our directors at the Territorial, who arranged the affair.  Naturally, the Bey, who happened to be, it appears, short of