The Nabob, Volume 2

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The Nabob, Vol. 1 (of 2), by Alphonse Daudet

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Title: The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Author: Alphonse Daudet
Commentator: Brander Matthews
Translator: George Burnham Ives
Release Date: May 5, 2007 [EBook #21329]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: The Duc, the Duchesse, and the Doctor. ]
THE NABOB
BY
ALPHONSE DAUDET
TRANSLATED BY
GEORGE BURNHAM IVES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
BRANDER MATTHEWS
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1902
Copyright, 1898,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
All rights reserved.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
XIII. A DAY OF SPLEEN 1
XIV. THE EXHIBITION 20
XV. MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--IN THE RECEPTION-ROOM 42
XVI. A PUBLIC MAN 57
XVII. THE APPARITION 86
XVIII. THE JENKINS PEARLS 107
XIX. THE OBSEQUIES 135
XX. BARONESS HEMERLINGUE 163
XXI. THE SITTING 194
XXII. PARISIAN DRAMAS 230
XXIII. MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--LAST SHEETS 255
XXIV. AT BORDIGHERA 267
XXV. THE FIRST NIGHT OF "RéVOLTE" 287

ILLUSTRATIONS
The Duc, the Duchesse, and the Doctor Frontispiece
"'Don't be afraid. I have no evil designs on you'" Page 153
The First Night of "Révolte" " 287
From drawings by Lucius Rossi.

THE NABOB.
XIII.
A DAY OF SPLEEN.
Five o'clock in the afternoon. Rain ever since the morning, a gray sky, so low that one can touch it with one's umbrella, dirty weather, puddles, mud, nothing but mud, in thick pools, in gleaming streaks along the edge of the sidewalks, driven back in vain by automatic sweepers, sweepers with handkerchiefs tied over their heads, and carted away on enormous tumbrils which carry it slowly and in triumph through the streets toward Montreuil; removed and ever reappearing, oozing between the pavements, splashing carriage panels, horses' breasts, the clothing of the passers-by, soiling windows, thresholds, shop-fronts, until one would think that all Paris was about to plunge in and disappear beneath that depressing expanse of miry earth in which all things are jumbled together and lose their identity. And it is a pitiable thing to see how that filth invades the spotless precincts of new houses, the copings of the quays, the colonnades of stone balconies. There is some one, however, whom this spectacle rejoices, a poor, ill, disheartened creature, who, stretched out at full length on the embroidered silk covering of a divan, her head resting on her clenched fists, gazes gleefully out through the streaming window-panes and gloats over all these ugly details:
"You see, my Fairy, this is just the kind of weather I wanted to-day. See them splash along. Aren't they hideous, aren't they filthy? What mud! It's everywhere, in the streets, on the quays, even in the Seine, even in the sky. Ah! mud is a fine thing when you're downhearted. I would like to dabble in it, to mould a statue with it, a statue one hundred feet high, and call it, 'My Ennui.'"
"But why do you suffer from ennui, my darling?" mildly inquires the ex-ballet-dancer, good-natured and rosy, from her armchair, in which she sits very erect for fear of damage to her hair, which is even more carefully arranged than usual. "Haven't you all that any one can need to be happy?"
And she proceeds, in her placid voice, to enumerate for the hundredth time her reasons for happiness, her renown, her genius, her beauty, all men at her feet, the handsomest, the most powerful; oh! yes, the most powerful, for that very day--But an ominous screech, a heart-rending wail from the jackal, maddened by the monotony of her desert, suddenly makes the studio windows rattle and sends the terrified old chrysalis back into her cocoon.
The completion of her group and its departure for the Salon has left Felicia for a week past in this state of prostration, of disgust, of heart-rending, distressing irritation. It requires all of the old fairy's unwearying patience, the magic of the memories she evokes every moment in the day, to make life endurable to her beside that restlessness, that wicked wrath which she can hear grumbling beneath the girl's silences, and which suddenly bursts forth in a bitter word, in a pah! of disgust àpropos of everything. Her group is hideous. No one will speak of it. All the critics are donkeys. The public? an immense go?tre with three stories of chin. And yet, a few Sundays ago, when the Duc de Mora came with the superintendent of Fine Arts to see her work at the studio, she was so happy, so proud of the praise bestowed on her, so thoroughly delighted with her work, which she admired at a distance as if it were