The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2)

CHAPTER XXIV.. At Bordighera.

AT BORDIGHERA.

As M. Joyeuse had informed the examining magistrate, Paul de Gery was on his way home from Tunis after an absence of three weeks. Three interminable weeks, passed in struggling amid a network of intrigues, of plots cunningly devised by the powerful enmity of the Hemerlingues, wandering from office to office, from department to department, through that vast residence on the Bardo, where all the different departments of the State are collected in the same frowning enclosure, bristling with culverins, under the immediate supervision of the master, like his stables and his harem. Immediately on his arrival Paul had learned that the Chamber of Justice was beginning to hear the Jansoulet case in secret,--a mockery of a trial, lost beforehand; and the Nabob's closed counting-rooms on the Marine Quay, the seals placed upon his cash boxes, his vessels lying at anchor in the harbor of Goletta, the guard of chaouchs around his palaces, already denoted a species of civil death, an intestacy as to which there would soon be nothing left to do but divide the spoils.

Not a champion, not a friend in that greedy pack; even the Frankish colony seemed not displeased at the downfall of a courtier who had so long obstructed all the roads to favor by occupying them himself. It was absolutely hopeless to think of rescuing that victim from the bey's clutches in the absence of a signal triumph in the Chamber of Deputies. All that de Gery could hope to do was to save a few spars from the wreck, and even that required haste, for he expected from day to day to be advised of his friend's complete discomfiture.

He took the field, therefore, and went about his operations with an activity which nothing could abate, neither Oriental cajolery, that refined honey-sweet courtesy beneath which lurk savage ferocity and dissolute morals, nor the hypocritically indifferent smiles, nor the demure airs, the folded arms which invoke divine fatalism when human falsehood fails of its object. The sang-froid of that cool-headed little Southerner, in whom all the exuberant qualities of his countrymen were condensed, stood him in at least as good stead as his perfect familiarity with the French law, of which the Code of Tunis is simply a disfigured copy.

By adroit manoeuvring and circumspection, and in spite of the intrigues of Hemerlingue fils, who had great influence at the Bardo, he succeeded in exempting from confiscation the money loaned by the Nabob a few months before, and in extorting ten millions out of fifteen from the rapacious Mohammed. On the morning of the very day when that sum was to be paid over to him he received a despatch from Paris announcing that the election was annulled. He hurried at once to the palace, desirous to reach there in advance of the news; and on his return, with his ten millions in drafts on Marseille safely bestowed in his pocket-book, he passed Hemerlingue's carriage on the road, its three mules tearing along at full speed. The gaunt, owl-like face was radiant. As de Gery realized that if he remained only a few hours longer at Tunis his drafts would be in great danger of being confiscated, he engaged his passage on an Italian packet that was to sail for Genoa the next day and passed the night on board, and his mind was not at rest until he saw the white terraces of Tunis at the upper end of its bay, and the cliffs of Cape Carthage fading from sight behind him. When they entered the harbor of Genoa, the packet, as it ran alongside the wharf, passed close to a large yacht flying the Tunisian flag among a number of small flags with which she was decorated. De Gery was greatly excited, thinking for a moment that he was pursued and that on going ashore he might have a scuffle with the Italian police like a common pickpocket. But no, the yacht was lying quietly at anchor, her crew were scrubbing the deck and repainting the red mermaid that formed her figurehead as if some personage of importance were expected on board. Paul had no curiosity to ascertain who that personage might be; he simply rode across the marble city and returned by the railway which runs from Genoa to Marseille, following the coast; a marvellous road, where you pass from the inky darkness of tunnels into the dazzling splendor of the blue sea, but so narrow that accidents are very frequent.

At Savona the train stopped and the passengers were told that they could go no farther, as one of the small bridges across the streams that rush down from the mountain into the sea had broken down during the night. They must wait for the engineer and workmen who had been summoned by telegraph, stay there half a day perhaps. It was early morning. The Italian town was just awaking in one of those hazy dawns which promise extreme heat during the day. While the passengers scattered, seeking refuge in hotels or restaurants, or wandering about the town, de Gery, distressed by the delay, tried to find some way of avoiding the loss of ten hours or more. He thought of poor Jansoulet, whose honor and whose life might perhaps be saved by the money he was bringing, of his dear Aline, the thought of whom had not left him once during his journey, any more than the portrait she had given him. Suddenly it occurred to him to hire one of the calesinos, four-horse vehicles which make the journey from Genoa to Nice along the Italian Corniche, a fascinating drive often taken by foreigners, lovers, and gamblers who have been lucky at Monaco. The driver agreed to be at Nice early; but even though he should reach there no sooner than by waiting for the train, the impatient traveller felt an immense longing to be relieved of the necessity of pacing the streets, to know that the space between him and his desire decreased with every revolution of the wheels.

Ah! on a lovely June morning, at our friend Paul's age and with one's heart overflowing with love as his was, to fly along the white Corniche road behind four horses, is to feel an intoxication of travel that words cannot describe. On the left, at a depth of a hundred feet, lies the sea flecked with foam, from the little round bays along the shore to the hazy horizon where the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky melt together; red or white sails, like birds with a single wing spread to the breeze, the slender silhouettes of steamers with a little smoke trailing behind like a farewell, and along the beaches, of which you catch glimpses as the road winds, fishermen no larger than sea-mews in their boats, lying at anchor, which look like nests. Then the road descends, follows a rapid downward slope along the base of cliffs and headlands almost perpendicular. The cool breeze from the water reaches you there, blends with the thousand little bells on the harnesses, while at the right, on the mountain-side, the pines and green oaks rise tier above tier, with gnarled roots protruding from the sterile soil, and cultivated olive-trees in terraces, as far as a broad ravine, white and rocky, bordered with green plants which tell of the passage of the waters, the dry bed of a torrent up which toil laden mules, sure of their footing among the loose shingle, where a washerwoman stoops beside a microscopic pool, a few drops remaining from the great winter freshets. From time to time you rumble through the one street of a village, or rather of a small town of historic antiquity, grown rusty with too much sunshine, the houses crowded closely together and connected by dark archways, a network of covered lanes which climb the sheer cliff with snatches of light from above, openings like the mouths of mines affording glimpses of broods of children with curly hair like a halo about their heads, baskets of luscious fruit, a woman descending the rough pavements with a pitcher on her head or a distaff in her hand. Then, at a corner of the street, the blue twinkling of the waves, immensity once more.

But as the day wore on, the sun, mounting higher in the heavens, scattered its beams over the sea just emerging from its mists, heavy with sleep, dazed, motionless, with a quartz-like transparence, and myriads of rays fell upon the water as if arrow-points had pricked it, making a dazzling reflection, doubled in intensity by the whiteness of the cliffs and the soil, by a veritable African sirocco which raised the dust in a spiral column as the carriage passed. They reached the hottest, the most sheltered portions of the Corniche,--a genuinely tropical temperature, where dates, cactus, the aloe, with its tall, candelabra-like branches, grow in the fields. When he saw those slender trunks, that fantastic vegetation shooting up in the white, hot air, when he felt the blinding dust crunching under the wheels like snow, de Gery, his eyes partly closed, half-dreaming in that leaden noonday heat, fancied that he was making once more the tiresome journey from Tunis to the Bardo, which he had made so often in a strange medley of Levantine chariots, brilliant liveries, meahris with long neck and hanging lip, gayly-caparisoned mules, young asses, Arabs in rags, half-naked negroes, great functionaries in full dress, with their escorts of honor. Should he find yonder, where the road skirts gardens of palm-trees, the curious, colossal architecture of the bey's palace, its close-meshed window gratings, its marble doors, its moucharabies cut out of wood and painted in vivid colors? It was not the Bardo, but the pretty village of Bordighera, divided like all those on the coast into two parts, the Marine lying along the shore, and the upper town, connected by a forest of statuesque palms with slender stalks and drooping tops,--veritable rockets of verdure, showing stripes of blue through their innumerable regular clefts.

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