ore ill-famed still. And the whispering ended in a smothered laugh, the
coarse laugh of men chatting among themselves.

The first impulse of the young man from the country, as he heard these
infamous calumnies, was to turn round and exclaim:

"You lie!"

A few hours earlier he would have done it without hesitating; but, since
he had been there, he had learned distrust, scepticism. He contained
himself, therefore, and listened to the end, motionless in the same
place, having deep down within himself an unavowed desire to become
further acquainted with the man whose service he had entered. As for
the Nabob, the completely unconscious subject of this hideous recital,
tranquilly installed in a small room to which its blue hangings and two
shaded lamps gave a reposeful air, he was playing his game of _ecarte_
with the Duc de Mora.

O magic of Fortune's argosy! The son of the dealer in old iron seated
alone at a card-table opposite the first personage of the Empire!
Jansoulet could scarcely believe the Venetian mirror in which were
reflected his own bright countenance and the august head with its
parting down the middle. Accordingly, in order to show his appreciation
of this great honour, he sought to lose decently as many thousand-franc
notes as possible, feeling himself even so the winner of the game, and
quite proud to see his money pass into those aristocratic hands, whose
least gesture he studied as they dealt, cut, or held the cards.

A circle had formed around them, always keeping a distance, however,
the ten paces exacted for the salutation of a prince; it was the public
there to witness this triumph in which the Nabob was bearing his part
as in a dream, intoxicated by those fairy harmonies rather faint in the
distance, whose songs that reached him in snatches as over the resonant
obstacle of a pool, the perfume of flowers that seem to become full
blown in so singular fashion towards the end of Parisian balls, when
the late hour that confuses all notions of time and the weariness of
the sleepless nights communicate to brains soothed in a more nervous
atmosphere, as it were, a dizzy sense of enjoyment. The robust nature of
Jansoulet, civilized savage that he was, was more sensitive than another
to these unknown subtleties, and he had need of all his strength to
refrain from manifesting by some glad hurrah, by some untimely effusion
of gestures and speech, the impulse of physical gaiety which pervaded
his whole bei