specimens of their
race, beautifully chiselled features and pure profiles, complexions of a
warm pallor of which the snowy whiteness of the haik absorbed even the
reflection. Magnificently draped, they contrasted strangely with the
busts which were ranged on both sides of the aisle they had taken, and
which, perched on their high pedestals, exiled from their familiar
surroundings, from the environment in which they would doubtless have
recalled some engrossing toil, some deep affection, a busy and
courageous life, seemed very forlorn in the empty air about them and
presented the distressing aspect of people who had gone astray and were
very much ashamed to find themselves there. Aside from two or three
female figures, well-rounded shoulders enveloped in petrified lace, hair
reproduced in marble with the soft touch that gives the impression of a
powdered head-dress, and a few profiles of children with simple lines,
in which the polish of the stone seems like the moisture of life, there
were nothing but wrinkles, furrows, contortions and grimaces, our excess
of toil and activity, our nervous paroxysms and our fevers contrasted
with that art of repose and noble serenity.

The Nabob's ugliness, at all events, had in its favor its energy, the
peculiar characteristics of the adventurer and the _proletaire_, and
that kindly expression so well rendered by the artist, who had taken
pains to mix a supply of ochre with her plaster, thereby giving it
almost the swarthy, sun-burned tone of the model. The Arabs, on seeing
it, uttered a stifled exclamation: "Bon-Said!" (the father of
good-luck). It was the Nabob's sobriquet at Tunis, the label of his
fortune, so to speak. The bey, for his part, thinking that someone
intended to make sport of him by bringing him thus face to face with the
detested _mercanti_, glanced suspiciously at the inspector.

"Jansoulet?" he said in his guttural voice.

"Yes, your Highness, Bernard Jansoulet, the new Deputy for Corsica."

At that the bey turned to Hemerlingue, with a frown on his face.

"Deputy?"

"Yes, Monseigneur, the news came this morning; but nothing is settled
yet."

And the banker, ill at ease and lowering his voice, added: "No French
Chamber would ever admit that adventurer."

No matter! the blow had been dealt at the bey's blind confidence in his
baron-financier. Hemerlingue had declared so positively that the other
would never be chosen, that they could act freely and without