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Updated: May 29, 2025
His report gave the thing a comic air the first blow of the pickaxe given by the candidate in the enormous mountain covered by ancient forests, the speech of the Prefect, the benediction of the flags with the cries of "Long live Bernard Jansoulet!" and the two hundred workmen beginning the task at once, working day and night for a week; then, when the election was over, leaving the fragments of rock heaped round the abandoned excavation for a laughing-stock another asylum for the terrible banditti.
Thus it happened that M. de Monpavon had quite close to him and it was a sight to watch how the disdainful curve of his nose was accentuated at each glance in that direction the singer Garrigou, a fellow-countryman of Jansoulet, a distinguished ventriloquist who sang Figaro in the dialect of the south, and had no equal in his imitations of animals.
Jansoulet stopped, his rage suddenly calmed; then, with a gesture of disgust, he flung himself out, slamming the doors, more eager to fly the misfortune and the horror whose presence he divined in his own home, than to seek elsewhere the help he had been promised.
He was not the man to be taken in by paid puffs. "This Monsieur Jansoulet must be very wealthy," he said coldly. "He is a partner in Cardailhac's theatre. Monpavon persuades him to pay his debts, Bois-l'Héry stocks his stable for him and old Schwalbach furnishes a picture gallery. All that costs money." Jenkins began to laugh.
Who passes judgment on you, and who condemns you? Sometimes, before going out to dinner, Jansoulet, on going up to his wife's room, would find her smoking in her easy-chair, with her head thrown back and piles of manuscript by her side, and Cabassu, armed with a blue pencil, reading in his hoarse voice and with his Bourg-Saint-Andéol intonation some dramatic lucubration which he cut and slashed remorselessly at the slightest word of criticism from the lady.
"You are an infamous liar!" said M. Noel, beside himself with rage "a thief and a liar like your master. Jansoulet has never been in Paris before now." Francis was seated a little outside our circle engaged in sipping something sweet, because champagne has a bad effect on his nerves and because, too, it is not a sufficiently distinguished beverage for him.
It came out of the funnel at full speed, but slowed down as it approached. The functionaries grouped themselves, straightened their backs, hitched their swords and eased their collars, while Jansoulet went down the track to meet the train, an obsequious smile on his lips, his back curved ready for the "Salam Alek." The train proceeded very slowly.
On the boulevard the next day they said five millions, and everybody cried out on the scandal, especially the Messenger, three-quarters filled by an article against certain adventurers tolerated in the clubs, and who cause the ruin of the most honourable families. Alas! what Jansoulet had won hardly represented enough to meet the first Schwalbach bills.
Ever since he had entered the cemetery, he had had but one absorbing thought, the fear of coming face to face with Jansoulet, whose violent temper he knew well, and who might forget the majesty of the spot and repeat the scandalous scene of Rue Royale in Père-Lachaise.
He passed it to Jansoulet; but Jenkins cried out: "No, no, read it aloud."
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