aul
de Gery to the Bey, but so vague, so chimerical, so remote!

"Ah, I am ruined! I am ruined!"

In the immense entrance-hall no one noticed his distress. The crowd of
senators, of deputies, of councillors of state, all the high officials
of the administration, came and went around him without seeing him,
holding mysterious consultations with uneasy importance near the two
fireplaces of white marble which faced one another. So many ambitions
disappointed, deceived, hurled down, met in this visit _in extremis_,
that personal anxieties dominated every other preoccupation.

The faces, strangely enough, expressed neither pity nor grief, rather a
sort of anger. All these people seemed to have a grudge against the duke
for dying, as though he had deserted them. One heard remarks of this
kind: "It is not surprising, with such a life as he has lived!" And
looking out of the high windows, these gentlemen pointed out to each
other, amid the going and coming of the equipages in the court-yard, the
drawing up of some little brougham from within which a well-gloved hand,
with its lace sleeve brushing the sash of the door, would hold out a
card with a corner turned back to the footman.

From time to time one of the _habitues_ of the palace, one of those whom
the dying man had summoned to his bedside, appeared in the medley, gave
an order, then went away, leaving the scared expression of his face
reflected on twenty others. Jenkins showed himself thus for a moment,
with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his cuffs crumpled, in
all the disorder of the battle in which he was engaged upstairs
against a terrible opponent. He was instantly surrounded, besieged with
questions.

Certainly the monkeys flattening their short noses against the bars of
their cage, excited by the unaccustomed tumult, and very attentive to
all that passed about them as though they were occupied in making a
methodical study of human hypocrisy, had a magnificent model in the
Irish physician. His grief was superb, a splendid grief, masculine and
strong, which compressed his lips and made him pant.

"The agony has begun," he said mournfully. "It is only a matter of
hours."

And as Jansoulet came towards him, he said to him emphatically:

"Ah, my friend, what a man! What courage! He has forgotten nobody. Only
just now he was speaking to me of you."

"Really?"

"'The poor Nabob,' said he, 'how does the affair of his election
stand?'"

And that