The Nabob eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 527 pages of information about The Nabob.

The Nabob eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 527 pages of information about The Nabob.

Thereupon the little old gentleman, very red in the face and wearing a white tie, stepped quickly in front of the Nabob, and ceremoniously raised his hat to him with great respect.  With what gratitude, what a smile of eager good-will was that solitary greeting returned, that greeting from a man whom Jansoulet did not know, whom he had never seen, and who had yet exerted a weighty influence upon his destiny; for, but for the pere Joyeuse, the chairman of the board of the Territorial would probably have shared the fate of the Marquis de Bois l’Hery.  Thus it is that in the tangle of modern society, that great web of interests, ambitions, services accepted and rendered, all the various worlds are connected, united beneath the surface, from the highest existences to the most humble; this it is that explains the variegation, the complexity of this study of manners, the collection of the scattered threads of which the writer who is careful of truth is bound to make the background of his story.

In ten minutes the Nabob had been subjected to every manifestation of the terrible ostracism of that Paris world to which he had neither relationship nor serious ties, and whose contempt isolated him more surely than a visiting monarch is isolated by respect—­the averted look, the apparently aimless step aside, the hat suddenly put on and pulled down over the eyes.  Overcome by embarrassment and shame, he stumbled.  Some one said quite loudly, “He is drunk,” and all that the poor man could manage to do was to return and shut himself up in the salon at the back of his box.  Ordinarily, this little retreat was crowded during the intervals between the acts by stock-brokers and journalists.  They laughed and smoked and made a great noise; the manager would come to greet his sleeping partner.  But on this evening there was nobody.  And the absence of Cardailhac, with his keen nose for success, signified fully to Jansoulet the measure of his disgrace.

“What have I done?  Why will Paris have no more of me?”

Thus he questioned himself amid a solitude that was accentuated by the noises around, the abrupt turning of keys in the doors of the boxes, the thousand exclamations of an amused crowd.  Then suddenly, the freshness of his luxurious surroundings, the Moorish lantern casting strange shadows on the brilliant silks of the divan and walls, reminded him of the date of his arrival.  Six months!  Only six months since he came to Paris!  Completely done for and ruined in six months!  He sank into a kind of torpor, from which he was roused by the sound of applause and enthusiastic bravos.  It was decidedly a great success—­this play Revolt.  There were some passages of strength and satire, and the violent tirades, a trifle over-emphatic but written with youth and sincerity, excited the audience after the idyllic calm of the opening.  Jansoulet in his turn wished to hear and see.  This theatre belonged to him after all.  His place in that stage-box had cost him over a million francs; the very least he could do was to occupy it.

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Project Gutenberg
The Nabob from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.