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The woman ascended, erect and proud, enveloped in a black Spanish mantilla; the man supported himself by the baluster, slower in his movements and tired, the collar of his light overcoat turned up above a rather bent back, which was shaken by a convulsive sob. "Let us be off, Nabob. Nothing more to be done here," said the old beau, taking Jansoulet by the arm and drawing him outside.
Was it the disappointment of seeing the doctor's wife instead of Madame Jansoulet, or was the discredit which the Duc de Mora's death had brought upon the fashionable doctor destined to overflow upon her who bore his name? There was something of both those causes, and perhaps of another as well, in the cold welcome which the baroness accorded Madame Jenkins.
Jansoulet, being publicly insulted, retorted with a public manifesto, offering all his property for sale, his palace on the Bardo presented to him by the former bey, his villas at La Marse, all of white marble, surrounded by magnificent gardens, his counting rooms, the most commodious and most sumptuously furnished in the city, and instructing the intelligent Bompain to bring his wife and children to Paris in order to put the seal of finality to his departure.
"Mora is an epicurean, brought up in the ideas of how do you say you know what is it you call it? Eighteenth century. Very bad for the masses, if a man in his position ps ps ps Ah, he is the master who sets us all an example ps ps irreproachable manners!" "Then, it is all over?" said Jansoulet, overwhelmed. "There is no longer any hope?" Monpavon signed to him to listen.
"First of all, my friend," said Jansoulet, softly shutting the door for their interview, "answer me frankly. Is it really for the motives given in your letter that you have resolved to leave me? Is there not, beneath it all, one of those scandals that I know are being circulated in Paris against me?
Jansoulet, tall, strong, with an air of the people about him, a sunburned skin, his broad back arched as though made round for ever by the low bowings of Oriental courtiery, his big, short hands splitting his light gloves, his excessive gestures, his southern exuberance chopping up his words like a puncher.
He had to give up all his other clients, and became, at the salary of a senator, the masseur of this stout lady, her page, her reader, her body-guard. Jansoulet, delighted to see his wife contented, was unconscious of the ridicule attached to this intimacy.
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.
O Tche!" inhaling with delight the odour of government, of administration, pervading the air, watching admiringly the ministers as they passed, following in their trail with keen nose, as though from their respected pockets, from their swollen portfolios, there might fall some appointment; but especially surrounding "Moussiou" Jansoulet with so many exacting petitions, reclamations, demonstrations, that, in order to free himself from the gesticulating uproar which made everybody turn round, and turned him as it were into the delegate of a tribe of Tuaregs in the midst of civilized folk, he was obliged to implore with a look the help of some attendant on duty familiar with such acts of rescue, who would come to him with an air of urgency to say "that he was wanted immediately in Bureau No. 8."
His Excellency had died during the evening; in the morning ten thousand letters were already printed, and everybody in the house who knew how to hold a pen was busy with the addresses. Without passing through those extemporized offices, Jansoulet made his way to the reception-room, usually so thronged, to-day all the chairs empty.
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