n all
my property, ships, palaces and their contents. The affair has been
carried on quite regularly, in pursuance of a decree of the Supreme
Council. I can feel the claw of Hemerlingue Junior under it all. If I
am chosen deputy, it is all a jest. The Council revokes its decree and
my treasures are returned with all sorts of excuses. If I am not
elected, I lose everything, sixty, eighty millions, even the possible
opportunity of making another fortune; it means ruin, disgrace, the
bottomless pit. And now, my son, do you propose to abandon me at such a
crisis? Remember that I have nobody in the world but you. My wife? you
have seen her, you know how much support, how much good advice she
gives her husband. My children? It's as if I had none. I never see
them, they would hardly know me in the street. My ghastly magnificence
has made an empty void around me, so far as affections are concerned,
has replaced them by shameless selfish interests. I have no one to love
but my mother, who is far away, and you, who come to me from my mother.
No, you shall not leave me alone among all the slanders that are
crawling around me. It is horrible--if you only knew! At the club, at
the theatre, wherever I go, I see Baroness Hemerlingue's little snake's
head, I hear the echo of her hissing, I feel the venom of her hatred.
Everywhere I am conscious of mocking glances, conversations broken off
when I appear, smiles that lie, or kindness in which there is a
mingling of pity. And then the defections, the people who move away as
if a catastrophe were coming. For instance, here is Felicia Ruys, with
my bust just finished, alleging some accident or other as an excuse for
not sending it to the Salon. I said nothing, I pretended to believe it.
But I understood that there was some infamy on foot in that quarter,
too,--and it's a great disappointment to me. In emergencies as grave as
that I am passing through, everything has its importance. My bust at
the Exhibition, signed by that famous name, would have been of great
benefit to me in Paris. But no, everything is breaking, everything is
failing me. Surely you see that you must not fail me."

END OF VOL. I.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2), by Alphonse Daudet

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