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Updated: June 26, 2025
That evening the Nabob opened a shabby little portfolio, badly worn at the corners, in which for ten years past he had manoeuvred his millions, minuting his profits and his expenses in hieroglyphics comprehensible to himself alone. He calculated for a moment, then turned to de Géry. "Do you know what I am doing, my dear Paul?" he asked. "No, monsieur."
Bois l'Hery's horses were unsound, Schwalbach's gallery was a swindle, Moessard's articles a recognised blackmail. De Gery had made a long detailed memorandum of these scandalous abuses, with proofs in support of it. But he specially recommended to Jansoulet's attention the accounts of the Territorial Bank as the real danger of the situation.
From the corner in which he had ensconced himself, de Gery was watching the scene with interest, knowing what importance his friend attached to this introduction, when the same chance which all through the evening had so cruelly been giving the lie to the native simplicity of his inexperience, caused him to distinguish a short dialogue near him, amid that buzz of many conversations through which each hears just the word that interests him.
And as de Géry, suddenly relieved of all his anxieties as a new-comer, a petitioner, a neophyte, did not stir for fear of waking from a dream, the Nabob added in a softer tone: "Now come and sit here by me, and let us talk a little about mamma."
De Gery pointed out very clearly all the infamies and all the double dealing which surrounded him. With no beating about the bush he called the rogues by their names. There was not one of the usual guests whom he did not suspect, not one who came with any other object than to steal and to lie. From the top to the bottom of the house all was pillage and waste.
In the evening the Nabob had opened a shabby little letter-case, worn at the corners, in which for ten years he had been accustomed to work out the calculations of his millions, writing down in hieroglyphics understood only by himself his receipts and expenditures. He buried himself in his accounts for a moment, then turning to de Gery: "Do you know what I am doing, my dear Paul?" he asked.
Already, remembering the promise which he had given to de Gery, for the household troop that wriggled ignobly at his heels, he made exhibition of certain disdainful coldnesses, a deliberate pose of authoritative contradiction.
This was a new Paris for Paul de Gery, a courageous, home-like Paris, very different from that which he already knew, a Paris of which the writers of stories in the newspapers and the reporters never speak, and which recalled to him his own country home, with an additional charm, that charm which the struggle and tumult around lend to the tranquil, secured refuge. "And your son, Jenkins.
Each day Paul de Gery came to appreciate Mlle. Aline better he was the only person in the house who so called her and, strange circumstance, it was Felicia who completed the cementing of their intimacy. What relations could there exist between the artist's daughter, moving in the highest spheres, and this little middle-class girl buried in the depths of a suburb?
And three swift, burning words revealed to the horrified Paul de Géry the shocking scene of that assault disguised by loving guardianship, against which the girl's spirit and mind and dreams had had to struggle so long, and which had left her the incurable depression of premature sorrow, a loathing for life almost before it had begun, and that curl at the corner of the lip like the visible wreck of a smile.
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