The windows had just been thrown open upon the curved balcony over the boulevard, now at the height of its noisy and brilliant stir. The theatre was surrounded by, as it were, a plinth of gas-jets, a zone of fire which brought the gloomiest recesses into light, pricked out with revolving lanterns, like stars journeying through a dark sky. The play was over. People were coming out. The black and dense crowd on the steps was dispersing over the white pavements, on its way to spread through the town the news of a great success and the name of an unknown author who to-morrow would be triumphant and famous. A splendid evening, so that the windows of the restaurants were lighted up in gaiety and files of carriages passed through the streets at a late hour. This tumult of festivity which the poor Nabob had loved so keenly, which seemed to go so well with the dizzy whirl of his existence, roused him to life for a moment. His lips moved, and into his dilated eyes, turned towards de Gery, there came before he died a pained expression, beseeching and protesting, as though to call upon him as witness of one of the greatest and most cruel acts of injustice that Paris has ever committed. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet