The Nabob. Alphonse Daudet
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to living like a fish in the water, in the midst of these infamies, this swindling! One might well ask what I am doing here, why I remain, how I am come to this.
How I am come to it? Oh, mon Dieu! very simply. Four years ago, my wife being dead, my children married, I had just retired from my post as hall-porter at the college, when an advertisement in the newspaper chanced to meet my eye: “Wanted, an office-porter, middle-aged, at the Territorial Bank, 56, Boulevard Malesherbes. Good references.” Let me confess it at the outset. The modern Babylon had always attracted me. Then, too, I felt myself still a young man. I saw before me ten good years during which I might earn a little money, a great deal, perhaps, by means of investing my savings in the banking-house which I should enter. So I wrote, inclosing my photograph, the one taken at Crespon’s, in the Market Place, which represents me with chin closely shaven, a keen eye beneath my thick white eyebrows, my steel chain about my neck, my ribbon as an academy official, “the air of a conscript father upon his curule-chair,” as M. Chalmette, our dean used to say. (He insisted also that I much resembled the late King Louis XVIII; less strongly, however.) I supplied, further, the best of references; the most flattering recommendations from the gentlemen of the college. By return of post, the governor replied that my appearance pleased him—I believe it, parbleu! an antechamber in the charge of a person with a striking face like mine is a bait for the shareholder—and that I might come when I liked. I ought, you may say to me, myself also to have made my inquiries. Eh! no doubt. But I had to give so much information about myself that it never occurred to me to ask for any about them. Besides, how could a man be suspicious, seeing this admirable installation, these lofty ceilings, these great safes, as big as cupboards, and these mirrors, in which you can see yourself from head to knee? And then those sonorous prospectuses, those millions that I seemed to hear flying through the air, those colossal enterprises with their fabulous profits. I was dazzled, fascinated. It must be mentioned, too, that at the time the house did not bear quite the aspect which it has to-day. Certainly, business was already going badly—our business always has gone badly—the paper appeared only at irregular intervals. But a little combinazione of the governor’s enabled him to save appearances.
He had conceived the idea, just imagine, of opening a patriotic subscription for the purpose of erecting a statue to General Paolo Paoli, or some such name; in any case, to a great countryman of his own. Money flowed accordingly into the Territorial. Unfortunately, that state of things did not last. By the end of a couple of months the statue was eaten up before it had been made, and the series of protests and writs recommenced. Nowadays I am accustomed to them. But in the days when I had just come from the country, the Auvergnats at the door, caused me a painful impression. In the house, nobody paid attention to such things any longer. It was known that at the last moment there would always arrive a Monpavon, a Bois l’Hery, to pacify the bailiffs; for all those gentlemen, being deeply implicated in the concern, have an interest in avoiding a bankruptcy. That is the very circumstance which saves him, our wily governor. The others run after their money—we know the meaning which that expression has in gaming—and they would not like all the stock on their hands to become worthless save to sell for waste paper.
Small and great, that is the case of all of us who are connected with the firm. From the landlord, to whom two years’ rent is owing and who, for fear of losing it all, allows us to stay for nothing, to us poor employees, even to me, who am involved to the extent of my seven thousand francs of savings and my four years of arrears, we are running after our money. That is the reason why I remain obstinately here.
Doubtless, in spite of my advanced age, thanks to my good appearance, to my education, to the care which I have always taken of my clothes, I might have obtained some post under other management. There is one person of excellent repute known to me, M. Joyeuse, a bookkeeper in the firm of Hemerlingue & Son, the great bankers of the Rue Saint-Honore, who, every time he meets me, never fails to remark:
“Passajon, my friend, don’t stop in that den of brigands. You are wrong to persist in remaining. You will never get a halfpenny out of them. So come to Hemerlingue’s. I undertake to find some little corner for you there. You will earn less, but you will be paid much more.”
I feel that he is quite right, that worthy fellow. But the thing is stronger than I. I cannot make up my mind to leave. And yet it is by no means gay, the life I lead here in these great, cold rooms, where no one ever comes, where each man stows himself away in a corner without speaking. What will you have? Each knows the other too well. Everything has been said already.
Again, until last year, we used to have sittings of the board of inspection, meetings of shareholders, stormy and noisy assemblies, veritable battles of savages, from which the cries could be heard to the Madeleine. Several times a week also there would call subscribers indignant at no longer ever receiving any news of their money. It was on such occasions that our governor shone. I have seen these people, monsieur, go into his office furious as wolves thirsting for blood, and, after a quarter of an hour, come out milder than sheep, satisfied, reassured, and their pockets relieved of a few bank-notes. For, there lay the acme of his cleverness; in the extraction of money from the unlucky people who came to demand it. Nowadays the shareholders of the Territorial Bank no longer give any sign of existence. I think they are all dead or else resigned to the situation. The board never meets. The sittings only take place on paper; it is I who am charged with the preparation of a so-called report—always the same—which I copy out afresh each quarter. We should never see a living soul, if, at long intervals, there did not rise from the depths of Corsica some subscribers to the statue of Paoli, curious to know how the monument is progressing; or, it may be, some worthy reader of Financial Truth, which died over two years ago, who calls to renew his subscription with a timid air, and begs a little more regularity, if possible, in the forwarding of the paper. There is a faith that nothing shakes. So, when one of these innocents falls among our hungry band, it is something terrible. He is surrounded, hemmed in, an attempt is made to secure his name for one of our lists, and, in case of resistance, if he wishes to subscribe neither to the Paoli monument nor to Corsican railways, these gentlemen deal him what they call—my pen blushes to write it—what they call, I say, “the drayman thrust.”
Here is what it is: We always keep at the office a parcel prepared in advance, a well-corded case which arrives nominally from the railway station while the visitor is present. “There are twenty francs carriage to pay,” says the one among us who brings the thing in. (Twenty francs, sometimes thirty, according to the appearance of the patient.) Every one then begins to ransack his pockets: “Twenty francs carriage! but I haven’t got it.” “Nor I either. What a nuisance!” Some one runs to the cash-till. Closed. The cashier is summoned. He is out. And the gruff voice of the drayman, growing impatient in the antechamber: “Come, come, make haste.” (It is generally I who play the drayman, because of the strength of my vocal organs.) What is to be done now? Return the parcel? That will vex the governor. “Gentlemen, I beg, will you permit me,” ventures the innocent victim, opening his purse. “Ah, monsieur, indeed—” He hands over his twenty francs, he is ushered to the door, and, as soon as his heel is turned, we all divide the fruit of the crime, laughing like highway robbers.
Fie! M. Passajon. At your age, such a trade! Eh! mon Dieu! I well know it. I know that I should do myself more honour in quitting this evil place. But what! You would have me then renounce the hope of getting back anything of all I have put in here. No, it is not possible. There is urgent need on the contrary that I should remain, that I should be on the watch, always at hand, ready to profit by any windfall, if one should come. Oh, for example, I swear it upon my ribbon, upon my thirty years of academical service, if ever an affair like this of the Nabob allow me to recover my disbursements, I shall not wait another single minute. I shall quickly be off to look after my pretty vineyard down yonder, near Monbars, cured forever of my thoughts of speculation. But, alas! that is a very chimerical hope. Exhausted, used up, known as we are upon the Paris market, with our stocks which are no longer quoted on the Bourse, our bonds which are near being waste paper, so many lies, so many debts, and the hole that grows ever deeper and deeper. (We owe at this moment three million five hundred thousand francs. It is not, however, those three millions that worry us. On the contrary, it is they that keep us going; but we have with the concierge a little bill of a hundred and twenty-five francs for postage-stamps,