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Updated: June 28, 2025
Hemerlingue, who on Saturdays came out of his office from time to time to make his bow to the ladies, was drinking a glass of Madeira near the little table while talking to Maurice Trott, once the dresser of Said-Pasha, when his wife approached him, gently and quietly. He knew what anger this impenetrable calm must cover, and asked her, in a low tone, timidly: "No one?" "No one.
"Really, do you believe that is so?" "Do I believe it? I am in possession of very precise details on the point which I have from Baron Hemerlingue, the banker, who effected the last Tunisian loan. He knows some stories about the Nabob, he does. Just imagine." And the infamous gossip commenced. For fifteen years Jansoulet had exploited the former Bey in a scandalous fashion.
"I was wandering about the quays of Marseilles with a comrade as poverty-stricken as myself, who is become rich, he also, in the service of the Bey, and, after having been my chum, my partner, is now my most cruel enemy. I may mention his name, pardi! It is sufficiently well known Hemerlingue. Yes, gentlemen, the head of the great banking house.
Hemerlingue had married her on her exit from that second seraglio, but was unable to induce society to receive her in Tunis, where no woman, be she Moor, Turk, or European, will ever consent to treat a former slave as an equal, by virtue of a prejudice not unlike that which separates the Creole from the most perfectly disguised quadroon.
Hemerlingue had married her when she passed from this new seraglio, but she could not be received at Tunis, where no woman Moor, Turk or European would consent to treat a former slave as an equal, on account of a prejudice like that which separates the creoles from the best disguised quadroons.
It was time to leave. Mme. Hemerlingue went to the door with some of the ladies, presented her forehead to the old princess, bent under the benediction of the Armenian bishop, nodded with a smile to the young men with the canes, found for each the fitting adieu with perfect ease; and the wretched man could not prevent himself from comparing this Eastern slave, so Parisian, so distinguished in the best society of the world, with the other, the European brutalized by the East, stupefied with Turkish tobacco, and swollen with idleness.
Suddenly the excellent man fancied that the honorarium would be larger than usual that year on account of the increased work necessitated by the Tunisian loan. That loan was a very handsome thing for his employers, too handsome indeed, for M. Joyeuse had taken the liberty to say at the office that on that occasion "Hemerlingue and Son had shaved the Turk a little too close."
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.
When I think of the point from which we started, of all the trades through which we have made our way. Hemerlingue, once keeper of a regimental canteen. I, who have carried sacks of wheat in the docks of Marseilles for my living. And the strokes of luck by which our fortunes have been built up as all fortunes, moreover, in these times are built up. Go to the Bourse between three and five.
A little man in a white cravat brought the great volume and placed it on the table. It was M. Joyeuse, formerly cashier for Hemerlingue and Son. But I had no time to present my respects to him. "Who did that?" the magistrate asked me, opening the book at a place where a leaf had been torn out. "Come, do not lie about it."
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