Under the sky of Paris and its cold light the disillusion began.  Determined to settle down, to receive, to give entertainments, the Nabob had brought his wife over with the idea of setting her at the head of the establishment; but when he saw the arrival of that display of gaudy draperies of Palais-Royal jewelry, and all the strange paraphernalia in her suite, he had the vague impression of a Queen Pomare in exile.  The fact was that now he had seen real women of the world, and he made comparisons.  After having planned a great ball to celebrate her arrival, he prudently changed his mind.  Besides, Mme. Jansoulet desired to see nobody.  Here her natural indolence was increased by the home-sickness which she suffered, from the first hour of her coming, by the chilliness of a yellow fog and the dripping rain.  She passed several days without getting up, weeping aloud like a child, saying that it was in order to cause her death that she had been brought to Paris, and not permitting her women to do even the least thing for her.  She lay there bellowing among the laces of her pillow, with her hair bristling in disorder about her diadem, the windows of the room closed, the curtains drawn close, the lamps lighted night and day, crying out that she wanted to go away-y, to go away-y; and it was pitiful to see, in that funeral gloom, the half-unpacked trunks scattered over the carpets, the frightened maids, the negresses crouched around their mistress in her nervous attack, they also groaning, with haggard eyes like those dogs of artic travellers that go mad without the sun.

The Irish doctor, called in to deal with all this trouble, had no success with his fatherly manners, the pretty phrases that issued from his compressed lips.  The Levantine would have nothing to do at any price with the arsenic pearls as a tonic.  The Nabob was in consternation.  What was to be done?  Send her back to Tunis with the children?  It was scarcely possible.  He was decidedly in disgrace in that quarter.  The Hemerlingues were triumphant.  A last affront had filled up the measure.  At Jansoulet’s departure, the Bey had commissioned him to have gold-pieces struck at the Paris Mint of a new design to the value of several millions; then the order, suddenly withdrawn, had been given to Hemerlingue.  Publicly outraged, Jansoulet had replied by a public demonstration, offering for sale all his possessions, his palace at the Bardo given to him by the former Bey, his villas of La Marsu all of white marble, surrounded by splendid gardens, his counting-houses which were the largest and the most sumptuous in the city, and, charging, finally, the intelligent Bompain to bring over to him his wife and children in order to make a clear affirmation of a definitive departure.  After such an uproar, it was no easy thing for him to return there; this was what he endeavoured to make evident to Mlle. Afchin, who only replied to him by deep groans.  He tried to console her, to amuse her, but what distraction