Part 28

“Here, Lakdar, hang that up--and that,” he added by way of a joke, giving him a kick in a certain region of the back.

There was much laughter at this sally, and we began to chat together in very friendly fashion. An excellent fellow, this M. Noel, with his accent of the Midi, his pronounced style of dress, the smoothness and the simplicity of his manners. He reminded me of the Nabob, without his distinction, however. I noticed, moreover, that evening, that these resemblances are frequently to be observed in valets de chambre who, living in the intimacy of their masters, by whom they are always a little dazzled, end by acquiring their manners and habits. Thus, M. Francis has a certain way of straightening his body when displaying his linen-front, a mania for raising his arms in order to pull his cuffs down--it is Monpavon to a T. Now one, for instance, who bears no resemblance to his master is Joey, the coachman of Dr. Jenkins. I call him Joey, but at the party every one called him Jenkins; for, in that world, the stable folk among themselves give to each other the names of their masters, call each other Bois l’Hery, Monpavon, and Jenkins, without ceremony. Is it in order to degrade their superiors, to raise the status of menials? Every country has its customs; it is only a fool who will be surprised by them. To return to Joey Jenkins, how can the doctor, affable as he is, so polished in every particular, keep in his service that brute, bloated with porter and gin, who will remain silent for hours at a time, then, at the first mounting of liquor to his head, begins to howl and to wish to fight everybody, as witness the scandalous scene which had just occurred when we entered?

The marquis’s little groom, Tom Bois l’Hery, as they call him here, had desired to have a jest with this uncouth creature of an Irishman, who had replied to a bit of Parisian urchin’s banter with a terrible Belfast blow of his fist right in the lad’s face.

“A sausage with paws, I! A sausage with paws, I!” repeated the coachman, choking with rage, while his innocent victim was being carried into the adjoining room, where the ladies and girls found occupation in bathing his nose. The disturbance was quickly appeased, thanks to our arrival, thanks also to the wise words of M. Barreau, a middle-aged man, sedate and majestic, with a manner resembling my own. He is the Nabob’s cook, a former chef of the Cafe Anglais, whom Cardailhac, the manager of the Nouveautes, has procured for his friend. To see him in a dress-coat, with white tie, his handsome face full and clean-shaven, you would have taken him for one of the great functionaries of the Empire. It is true that a cook in an establishment where the table is set every morning for thirty persons, in addition to madame’s special meal, and all eating only the very finest and most delicate of food, is not the same as the ordinary preparer of a ragout. He is paid the salary of a colonel, lodged, boarded, and then the perquisites! One has hardly a notion of the extent of the perquisites in a berth like this. Every one consequently addressed him respectfully, with the deference due to a man of his importance. “M. Barreau” here, “My dear M. Barreau” there. For it is a great mistake to imagine that servants among themselves are all cronies and comrades. Nowhere do you find a hierarchy more prevalent than among them. Thus at M. Noel’s party I distinctly noticed that the coachmen did not fraternize with their grooms, nor the valets with the footmen and the lackeys, any more than the steward or the butler would mix with the lower servants; and when M. Barreau emitted any little pleasantry it was amusing to see how exceedingly those under his orders seemed to enjoy it. I am not opposed to this kind of thing. Quite on the contrary. As our oldest member used to say, “A society without a hierarchy is like a house without a staircase.” The observation, however, seems to me one worth setting down in these memoirs.

The party, I need scarcely say, did not shine with its full splendour until after the return of its most beauteous ornaments, the ladies and girls who had gone to nurse the little Tom, ladies’-maids with shining and pomaded hair, chiefs of domestic departments in bonnets adorned with ribbons, negresses, housekeepers, a brilliant assembly in which I was immediately given great prestige, thanks to my dignified bearing and to the surname of “Uncle” which the younger among these delightful persons saw fit to bestow upon me.

I fancy there was in the room a good deal of second-hand frippery in the way of silk and lace, rather faded velvet, even, eight-button gloves that had been cleaned several times, and perfumes abstracted from madame’s dressing-table, but the faces were happy, thoughts given wholly to gaiety, and I was able to make a little corner for myself, which was very lively, always within the bounds of propriety--that goes without saying--and of a character suitable for an individual in my position. This was, moreover, the general tone of the party. Until towards the end of the entertainment I heard none of those unseemly jests, none of those scandalous stories which give so much amusement to the gentlemen of our Board; and I take pleasure in remarking that Bois l’Hery the coachman--to cite only one example--is much more observant of the proprieties than Bois l’Hery the master.

M. Noel alone was conspicuous by his familiar tone and by the liveliness of his repartees. In him you have a man who does not hesitate to call things by their names. Thus he remarked aloud to M. Francis, from one end of the room to the other: “I say, Francis, that old swindler of yours has made a nice thing out of us again this week.” And as the other drew himself up with a dignified air, M. Noel began to laugh.

“No offence, old chap. The coffer is solid. You will never get to the bottom of it.”

And it was on this that he told us of the loan of fifteen millions, to which I alluded above.

I was surprised, however, to see no sign of preparation for the supper which was mentioned on the cards of invitation, and I expressed my anxiety on the point to one of my charming nieces, who replied:

“They are waiting for M. Louis.”

“M. Louis?”

“What! you do not know M. Louis, the valet de chambre of the Duc de Mora?”

I then learned who this influential personage was, whose protection is sought by prefects, senators, even ministers, and who must make them pay stiffly for it, since with his salary of twelve hundred francs from the duke he has saved enough to produce him an income of twenty-five thousand, sends his daughters to the convent school of the Sacre Coeur, his son to the College Bourdaloue, and owns a chalet in Switzerland where all his family goes to stay during the holidays.

At this juncture the personage in question arrived; but nothing in his appearance would have suggested the unique position in Paris which is his. Nothing of majesty in his deportment, a waistcoat buttoned up to the collar, a mean-looking and insolent manner, and a way of speaking without moving the lips which is very impolite to those who are listening to you.

He greeted the assembly with a slight nod of the head, extended a finger to M. Noel, and we were sitting there looking at each other, frozen by his grand manners, when a door opened at the farther end of the room and we beheld the supper laid out with all kinds of cold meats, pyramids of fruit, and bottles of all shapes beneath the light falling from two candelabra.

“Come, gentlemen, give the ladies your hands.” In a minute we were at table, the ladies seated next the eldest or the most important among us all, the rest on their feet, serving, chattering, drinking from everybody’s glass, picking a morsel from any plate. I had M. Francis for my neighbour and I had to listen to his grudges against M. Louis, of whose place he was envious, so brilliant was it in comparison with that which he occupied under the noble but worn-out old gambler who was his master.

“He is a parvenu,” he muttered to me in a low voice. “He owes his fortune to his wife, to Mme. Paul.”

It appears that this Mme. Paul is a housekeeper, who has been in the duke’s establishment for twenty years, and who excels beyond all others in the preparation for him of a certain ointment for an affection to which he is subject. She is indispensable to Mora. Recognising this, M. Louis made love to the old lady, married her though much younger than she, and in order not to lose his sick-nurse and her ointments, his excellency engaged the husband as valet de chambre. At bottom, in spite of what I said to M. Francis, for my own part I thought the proceeding quite praiseworthy and conformable to the loftiest morality, since the mayor and the priest had a finger in it. Moreover, that excellent meal, composed of delicate and very expensive foods with which I was unacquainted even by name, had strongly disposed my mind to indulgence and good-humour. But every one was not similarly inclined, for from the other side of the table I could hear the bass voice of M. Barreau, complaining:

“Why can he not mind his own business? Do I go pushing my nose into his department? To begin with, the thing concerns Bompain, not him. And then, after all, what is it that I am charged with? The butcher sends me five baskets of meat every morning. I use only two of them and sell the three others back to him. Where is the chef who does not do the same? As if, instead of coming to play the spy in my basement, he would not do better to look after the great leakage up there. When I think that in three months that gang on the first floor has smoked twenty-eight thousand francs’ worth of cigars. Twenty-eight thousand francs! Ask Noel if I am not speaking the truth. And on the second floor, in the apartments of madame, that is where you should look to see a fine confusion of linen, of dresses thrown aside after being worn once, jewels by the handful, pearls that you crush on the floor as you walk. Oh, but wait a little. I shall get my own back from that same little gentleman.”

I understood that the allusion was to M. de Gery, that young secretary of the Nabob who often comes to the Territorial, where he is always occupied rummaging into the books. Very polite, certainly, but a very haughty young man, who does not know how to push himself forward. From all round the table there came nothing but a concert of maledictions on him. M. Louis himself addressed some remarks to the company upon the subject with his grand air:

“In our establishment, my dear M. Barreau, the cook quite recently had an affair, similar to yours, with the chief of his excellency’s Cabinet, who had permitted himself to make some comments upon the expenditure. The cook went up to the duke’s apartments upon the instant in his professional costume, and with his hand on the strings of his apron, said, ‘Let your excellency choose between monsieur and myself.’ The duke did not hesitate. One can find as many Cabinet leaders as one desires, while the good cooks, you can count them. There are in Paris four altogether. I include you, my dear Barreau. We dismissed the chief of our Cabinet, giving him a prefecture of the first class by way of consolation; but we kept the chef of our kitchen.”

“Ah, you see,” said M. Barreau, who rejoiced to hear this story, “you see what it is to serve in the house of a grand seigneur. But parvenus are parvenus--what will you have?”

“And that is all Jansoulet is,” added M. Francis, tugging at his cuffs. “A man who used to be a street porter at Marseilles.”

M. Noel took offence at this.

“Hey, down there, old Francis, you are very glad all the same to have him to pay your card-debts, the street porter of La Cannebriere. You may well be embarrassed by parvenus like us who lend millions to kings, and whom grand seigneurs like Mora do not blush to admit to their tables.”

“Oh, in the country,” chuckled M. Francis, with a sneer that showed his old tooth.

The other rose, quite red in the face. He was about to give way to his anger when M. Louis made a gesture with his hand to signify that he had something to say, and M. Noel sat down immediately, putting his hand to his ear like all the rest of us in order to lose nothing that fell from those august lips.