Part 10

“I ought to have recognised you, M. de Gery. You resemble your father. Sit down, I beg of you.”

Then he finished running through the letter. His mother asked him nothing precise, but, in the name of the services which the de Gery family had rendered them in former years, she recommended M. Paul to him. An orphan, burdened with the care of his two young brothers, he had been called to the bar in the south, and was now coming to Paris to seek his fortune. She implored Jansoulet to aid him, “for he needed it badly, poor fellow,” and she signed herself, “Thy mother who pines for thee, Francoise.”

This letter from his mother, whom he had not seen for six years, those expressions of the south country of which he could hear the intonations that he knew so well, that coarse handwriting which sketched for him an adored face, all wrinkled, scored, and cracked, but smiling beneath its peasant’s head-dress, had affected the Nabob. During the six weeks that he had been in France, lost in the whirl of Paris, the business of getting settled in his new habitation, he had not yet given a thought to his dear old lady at home; and now he saw all of her again in these lines. He remained a moment looking at the letter, which trembled in his heavy fingers.

Then, this emotion having passed:

“M. de Gery,” said he, “I am glad of the opportunity which is about to permit me to repay to you a little of the kindness which your family has shown to mine. From to-day, if you consent, I take you into my house. You are educated, you seem intelligent, you can be of great service to me. I have a thousand plans, a thousand affairs in hand. I am being drawn into a crowd of large industrial enterprises. I want some one who will aid me; represent me at need. I have indeed a secretary, a steward, that excellent Bompain, but the unfortunate fellow knows nothing of Paris; he has been, as it were, bewildered ever since his arrival. You will tell me that you also come straight from the country, but that does not matter. Well brought up as you are, a southerner, alert and adaptable, you will quickly pick up the routine of the Boulevard. For the rest, I myself undertake your education from that point of view. In a few weeks you will find yourself, I answer for it, as much at home in Paris as I am.”

Poor man! It was touching to hear him speak of his Parisian habits, and of his experience; he whose destiny it was to be always a beginner.

“Now, that is understood, is it not? I engage you as secretary. You will have a fixed salary which we will settle directly, and I shall provide you with the opportunity to make your fortune rapidly.”

And while de Gery, raised suddenly above all the anxieties of a newcomer, of one who solicits a favour, of a neophyte, did not move for fear of awaking from a dream:

“Now,” said the Nabob to him in a gentle voice, “sit down there, next me, and let us talk a little about mamma.”

MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER A MERE GLANCE AT THE TERRITORIAL BANK

I had just finished my frugal morning repast and, as my habit was, placed the remains of my modest provisions in the board-room safe with a secret lock, which has served me as a store-cupboard during four years, almost, that I have been at the Territorial. Suddenly the governor walks into the offices, with his face all red and eyes inflamed, as though after a night’s feasting, draws in his breath noisily, and in rude terms says to me, with his Italian accent:

“But this place stinks, Moussiou Passajon.”

The place did not stink, if you like the word. Only--shall I say it?--I had ordered a few onions to garnish a knuckle of veal which Mme. Seraphine had sent down to me, she being the cook on the second floor, whose accounts I write out for her every evening. I tried to explain the matter to the governor, but he had flown into a temper, saying that to his mind there was no sense in poisoning the atmosphere of an office in that way, and that it was not worth while to maintain premises at a rent of twelve thousand francs, with eight windows fronting full on the Boulevard Malesherbes, in order to roast onions in them. I don’t know what he did not say to me in his passion. For my own part, naturally I got angry at hearing myself addressed in that insolent manner. It is surely the least a man can do to be polite with people in his service whom he does not pay. What the deuce! So I answered him that it was annoying, in truth, but that if the Territorial Bank paid me what it owed me, namely, four years’ arrears of salary, plus seven thousand francs personal advances made by me to the governor for expenses of cabs, newspapers, cigars, and American grogs on board days, I would go and eat decently at the nearest cookshop, and should not be reduced to cooking, in the room where our board was accustomed to sit, a wretched stew, for which I had to thank the public compassion of female cooks. Take that!

In speaking thus I had yielded to an impulse of indignation very excusable in the eyes of any person whatever acquainted with my position here. Even so, I had said nothing improper and had confined myself within the limits of language conformable to my age and education. (I must have mentioned somewhere in the course of these memoirs that of the sixty-five years I have lived I passed more than thirty as beadle to the Faculty of Letters in Dijon. Hence my taste for reports and memoirs, and those ideas of academical style of which traces will be found in many passages of this lucubration.) I had, then, expressed myself in the governor’s presence with the most complete reserve, without employing any one of those terms of abuse to which he is treated by everybody here, from our two censors--M. de Monpavon, who, every time he comes, calls him laughingly “Fleur-de-Mazas,” and M. de Bois l’Hery, of the Trumpet Club, coarse as a groom, who, for adieu, always greets him with, “To your bedstead, bug!”--to our cashier, whom I have heard repeat a hundred times, tapping on his big book, “That he has in there enough to send him to the galleys when he pleases.” Ah, well! All the same, my simple observation produced an extraordinary effect upon him. The circles round his eyes became quite yellow, and, trembling with rage, one of those evil rages of his country, he uttered these words: “Passajon, you are a blackguard. One word more, and I discharge you!” Stupor nailed me to the floor when I heard them. Discharge me--me! and my four years’ arrears, and my seven thousand francs of money lent!

As though he could read my thought before it was put into words, the governor replied that all accounts were going to be settled, mine included. “And as to that,” he added, “summon these gentlemen to my private room. I have important news to announce to them.”

Upon that, he went into his office, banging the doors.

That devil of a man! In vain you may know him to the core--know him a liar, a comedian--he manages always to get the better of you with his stories. My account, mine!--mine! I was so affected by the thought that my legs seemed to give way beneath me as I went to inform the staff.

According to the regulations, there are twelve of us employed at the Territorial Bank, including the governor and the handsome Moessard, manager of Financial Truth; but more than half of that number were wanting. To begin with, since Truth ceased to be issued--it is two years since its last appearance--M. Moessard has not once set foot in the place. It seems he moves amid honours and riches, has a queen for his mistress--a real queen--who gives him all the money he desires. Oh, what a Babylon, this Paris! The others come from time to time to learn whether by chance anything new has happened at the bank; and, as nothing ever has, we remain weeks without seeing them. Four or five faithful ones, all poor old men like myself, persist in putting in an appearance regularly every morning at the same hour, from habit, from want of occupation, not knowing what else to do. Every one, however, busies himself about things quite foreign to the work of the office. A man must live, you know. And then, too, one cannot pass the day dragging one’s self from easy chair to easy chair, from window to window, to look out of doors (eight windows fronting on the Boulevard). So one tries to do some work as best one can. I myself, as I have said, keep the accounts of Mme. Seraphine, and of another cook in the building. Also, I write my memoirs, which, again, takes a good deal of my time. Our receipt clerk--one who has not very hard work with us--makes line for a firm that deals in fishing requisites. Of our two copying-clerks, one, who writes a good hand, copies plays for a dramatic agency; the other invents little halfpenny toys which the hawkers sell at street corners about the time of the New Year, and manages by this means to keep himself from dying of hunger during all the rest of the year. Our cashier is the only one who does no outside work. He would believe his honour lost if he did. He is a very proud man, who never utters a complaint, and whose one dread is to have the appearance of being in want of linen. Locked in his office, he is occupied from morning till evening in the manufacture of shirt-fronts, collars, and cuffs of paper. In this, he has attained very great skill, and his ever-dazzling linen would deceive, if it were not that at the least movement, when he walks, when he sits down, the stuff crackles upon him as though he had a cardboard box under his waistcoat. Unfortunately all this paper does not feed him; and he is so thin, has such a mien, that you ask yourself on what he lives. Between ourselves, I suspect him of paying a visit sometimes to my store-cupboard. He can do so with ease; for, as cashier, he has the “word” which opens the safe with the secret lock, and I fancy that when my back is turned he forages a little among my provisions.

These are certainly very extraordinary, very incredible internal arrangements for a banking house. It is, however, the mere truth that I am telling, and Paris is full of financial institutions after the pattern of ours. Oh, if ever I publish my memoirs! But to take up the interrupted thread of my story.

When he saw us all collected in his private room, the manager said to us with solemnity:

“Gentlemen and dear comrades, the time of trials is ended. The Territorial Bank inaugurates a new phase.”

Upon this he commenced to speak to us of a superb combinazione--it is his favourite word and he pronounces it in such an insinuating manner--a combinazione into which there was entering this famous Nabob, of whom all the newspapers are talking. The Territorial Bank was therefore about to find itself in a position which would enable it to acquit itself of its obligations to its faithful servants, recognise acts of devotion, rid itself of useless parasites. This for me, I imagine. And in conclusion: “Prepare your statements. All accounts will be settled not later than to-morrow.” Unhappily he has so often soothed us with lying words, that the effect of his speech was lost. Formerly these fine promises were always swallowed. At the announcement of a new combinazione, there used to be dancing, weeping for joy in the offices, and men would embrace each other like shipwrecked sailors discovering a sail.

Each one would prepare his account for the morrow, as he had said. But on the morrow, no manager. The day following, still nobody. He had left town on a little journey.

At length, one day when all would be there, exasperated, putting out our tongues, maddened by the water which he had brought to our mouths, the governor would arrive, let himself drop into an easy chair, his head in his hands, and before one could speak to him: “Kill me,” he would say, “kill me. I am a wretched impostor. The combinazione has failed. It has failed, Pechero! the combinazione.” And he would cry, sob, throw himself on his knees, pluck out his hair by handfuls, roll on the carpet. He would call us by our Christian names, implore us to put an end to his existence, speak of his wife and children whose ruin he had consummated. And none of us would have the courage to protest in face of a despair so formidable. What do I say? One always ended by sympathizing with him. No, since theatres have existed, never has there been a comedian of his ability. But to-day, that is all over, confidence is gone. When he had left, every one shrugged his shoulders. I must admit, however, that for a moment I had been shaken. That assurance about the settling of my account, and then the name of the Nabob, that man so rich----

“You actually believe it, you?” the cashier said to me. “You will be always innocent, then, my poor Passajon. Don’t disturb yourself. It will be the same with the Nabob as it was with Moessard’s Queen.” And he returned to the manufacture of his shirt-fronts.

What he had just said referred to the time when Moessard was making love to his Queen, and had promised the governor that in case of success he would induce her Majesty to put capital into our undertaking. At the office, we were all aware of this new adventure, and very anxious, as you may imagine, that it should succeed quickly, since our money depended upon it. For two months this story held all of us breathless. We felt some disquiet, we kept a watch on Moessard’s face, considered that the lady was inclined to insist upon a great deal of ceremony; and our old cashier, with his dignified and serious air, when he was questioned on the matter, would answer gravely, behind his wire screen: “Nothing fresh,” or “The thing is in a good way.” Whereupon everybody was contented. One would say to another, “It is making progress,” as though merely an ordinary enterprise was in question. No, in good truth, there is only one Paris, where one can see such things. Positively it makes your head turn sometimes. In a word, Moessard, one fine morning, ceased coming to the office. He had succeeded, it appears, but the Territorial Bank had not seemed to him a sufficiently advantageous investment for the money of his mistress. Now, I ask you, was that honest?

For that matter, the notion of honesty is lost so easily as hardly to be believed. When I reflect that I, Passajon, with my white hair, my venerable appearance, my so blameless past--thirty years of academical services--am grown accustomed 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.