ersecution against me, has done just as much.
But what is the use of talking? I am in the lion's jaws. While waiting
for me to go to defend myself at his tribunals--and how I know it,
justice of the Orient!--the Bey has begun by putting an embargo on all
my goods, ships, and palaces, and what they contain. The affair was
conducted quite regularly by a decree of the Supreme Court. Young
Hemerlingue had a hand in that, you can see. If I am made a deputy, it
is only a joke. The court takes back its decree and they give me back
my treasure with every sort of excuse. If I am not elected I lose
everything, sixty, eighty millions, even the possibility of making
another fortune. It is ruin, disgrace, dishonour. Are you going to
abandon me in such a crisis? Think--I have only you in the whole world.
My wife--you have seen her, you know what help, what support she is
to her husband. My children--I might as well not have any. I never see
them; they would scarcely know me in the street. My horrible wealth
has killed all affection around me and has enveloped me with shameless
self-seeking. I have only my mother to love me, and she is far away, and
you who came to me from my mother. No, you will not leave me alone amid
all the scandals that are creeping around me. It is awful--if you only
knew! At the club, at the play, wherever I go I seem to see the little
viper's head of the Baroness Hemerlingue, I hear the echo of her hiss,
I feel the venom of her bite. Everywhere mocking looks, conversation
stopped when I appear, lying smiles, or kindness mixed with a little
pity. And then the deserters, and the people who keep out of the way as
at the approach of a misfortune. Look at Felicia Ruys: just as she had
finished my bust she pretends that some accident, I know not what, has
happened to it, in order to avoid having to send it to the _Salon_. I
said nothing, I affected to believe her. But I understood that there
again was some new evil report. And it is such a disappointment to me.
In a crisis as grave as this everything has its importance. My bust in
the exhibition, signed by that famous name, would have helped me greatly
in Paris. But no, everything falls away, every one fails me. You see now
that I cannot do without you. You must not desert me."

A DAY OF SPLEEN

Five o'clock in the afternoon. Rain since morning and a gray sky low
enough to be reached with an umbrella; the close weather which sticks.
Mess, mud, nothing but mud