gayety that is the
mother of concord, to restore to our paper its value ten times over and
to our dear Governor the esteem and confidence of which he was so
unjustly deprived, it only needed one man, that supernatural Croesus
whom the hundred voices of fame designate by the name of the Nabob.

Oh! the first time that he came into the offices, with his fine
presence, his face, a little wrinkled perhaps but so distinguished, the
manners of an habitue of courts, on familiar terms with all the princes
of the Orient, in a word with the indescribable touch of
self-confidence and grandeur that great fortune gives, I felt my heart
swell in my waistcoat with its double row of buttons. They may say all
they choose about their equality and fraternity, there are some men who
are so much above others, that you feel like falling on your face
before them and inventing new formulae of adoration to compel them to
pay some attention to you. Let me hasten to add that I had no need of
anything of the sort to attract the attention of the Nabob. When I rose
as he passed--deeply moved but dignified: you can always trust
Passajon--he looked at me with a smile and said in an undertone to the
young man who accompanied him: "What a fine head, like--" then a word
that I did not hear, a word ending in _ard_, like leopard. But no,
it could not be that, for I am not conscious of having a head like a
leopard. Perhaps he said like Jean-Bart, although I do not see the
connection. However, he said: "What a fine head, like--" and his
condescension made me proud. By the way, all the gentlemen are very
kind, very polite to me. It seems that there has been a discussion in
regard to me, whether they should keep me or send me away like our
cashier, that crabbed creature who was always talking about sending
everybody to the galleys, and whom they requested to go and make his
economical shirt-fronts somewhere else. Well done! That will teach him
to use vulgar language to people.

When it came to me, the Governor was kind enough to forget my rather
hasty words in consideration of my certificates of service at the
_Territoriale_ and elsewhere; and after the council meeting he said to
me with his musical accent: "Passajon, you are to stay on with us." You
can imagine whether I was happy, whether I lost myself in expressions
of gratitude. Just consider! I should have gone away with my few sous,
with no hope of ever earning any more, obliged to go and cultivate my