Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 28, 2025
He was interrupted by the concert of maledictions, of imprecations which the name of Hemerlingue always called forth from all those young people, who hated the corpulent banker for the injury he had done their father and for the injury he wished to do the worthy Nabob, who was adored in that household for Paul de Géry's sake. "Hemerlingue, the heartless creature! Villain! Wicked man!"
Hemerlingue enjoyed the sight of his friend reduced to such humility, and gave him advice on his affairs, with which he seemed to be fully acquainted. According to him the Nabob could still get out of his difficulties very well. Everything depended on the validation, on the turning up of a card. The question was to make sure that it should be a good one. But Jansoulet had no more confidence.
At the farther end of the long archway beneath which were the offices of Hemerlingue and Son, a dark tunnel which Père Joyeuse had for ten years bedecked and illumined with his dreams, a monumental staircase with wrought-iron rail, a staircase of old Paris, ascended to the left, leading to the baroness's salons, whose windows looked on the courtyard just above the counting-room, so that, during the warm season, when everything was open, the chink of the gold pieces, the noise made by piles of crowns toppling over on the counters, slightly deadened by the rich hangings at the long windows, formed a sort of commercial accompaniment to the subdued conversations carried on by worldly Catholicism.
This southerner was trembling, defeated and softened by the emotional display of the funeral ceremony. Hemerlingue, as he stood facing him, was hardly more courageous. The gloomy music, the open grave, the speeches, the cannonade of that lofty philosophy of inevitable death, all these things had worked on the feelings of this fat baron.
He attempted to approach Hemerlingue, but the good man seemed absorbed in his conversation with Maurice Trott. Then he went to sit down near Mme. Jenkins, whose isolation seemed like his own. But, even while talking to the poor woman, as languid as he was preoccupied, he was watching the baroness doing the honours of this drawing-room, so comfortable when compared with his own gilded halls.
Madame Hemerlingue had long since abandoned all Mohammedan practices, when Maître Le Merquier, the intimate friend of the family and her cicerone in Paris, pointed out that a formal conversion of the baroness would open to her the doors of that portion of Parisian society which seems to have become more and more difficult of access, in proportion as the society all around it has become more democratic.
"Yes, it's a pleasant thing," said Hemerlingue; "but I can't walk long, my legs are heavy." "True, your poor legs. See, there's a bench yonder. Let's go and sit down. Lean on me, old fellow." And the Nabob, with brotherly solicitude, led him to one of the benches placed at intervals against the tombs, for the convenience of those inconsolable mourners who make the cemetery their usual resort.
Hemerlingue, who came from his office from time to time on Saturdays to pay his respects to the ladies, was drinking a glass of madeira at the small table on which the refreshments were served, talking with Maurice Trott, formerly Said-Pacha's bath-master, when his wife, always mild and tranquil externally, approached him.
He waited therefore before speaking, at first until the month of November should be ended, deluding himself with the vague hope that Hemerlingue might change his mind, as though he did not know that will as of some mollusk flabby and tenacious upon its ingot of gold.
From Rue Saint-Ferdinand to Messieurs Hemerlingue and Son's, his employers, M. Joyeuse had a walk of three-quarters of an hour.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking