That plebeian name, proudly announced by the liveried footman in a resounding voice, rang through Jenkins's salons like the clash of cymbals, like one of the gongs that announce fantastic apparitions in a fairy play. The candles paled, flames flashed from every eye, at the dazzling prospect of Oriental treasures, of showers of pearls and sequins let fall by the magic syllables of that name, but yesterday unknown. Yes, it was he, the Nabob, the richest of the rich, the great Parisian curiosity, flavored with that spice of adventure that is so alluring to surfeited multitudes. All heads were turned, all conversation was interrupted; there was a grand rush for the door, a pushing and jostling like that of the crowds on the quay at a seaport, to watch the arrival of a felucca with a cargo of gold. Even the hospitable Jenkins, who was standing in the first salon to receive his guests, despite his usual self-possession abruptly left the group of men with whom he was talking and bore away to meet the galleons. "A thousand times, a thousand times too kind. Madame Jenkins will be very happy, very proud. Come and let me take you to her." And in his haste, in his vainglorious delight, he dragged Jansoulet away so quickly that the latter had no time to present his companion, Paul de Gery, whom he was introducing into society. The young man was well pleased to be overlooked. He glided into the mass of black coats which was forced farther and farther back by every new arrival, and was swallowed up in it, a prey to the foolish terror that every young provincial feels on his first appearance in a Parisian salon, especially when he is shrewd and intelligent and does not wear the imperturbable self-assurance of the bumpkin like a coat of mail beneath his linen buckler. You, Parisians of Paris, who, ever since you were sixteen have exhibited your youth at the receptions of all classes of society, in your first black coat with your crush-hat on your hip,--you, I say, have no conception of that anguish, compounded of vanity, timidity and recollections of romantic books, which screws our teeth together, embarrasses our movements, makes us for a whole evening a statue between two doors, a fixture in a window-recess, a poor, pitiful, wandering creature, incapable of making his existence manifest otherwise than by changing his position from time to time, preferring to die of thirst rather than go near the sideboard, and going away without having said a word, unless we may have stammered one of those incoherent absurdities which we remember for months, and which makes us, when we think of it at night, utter an _ah!_ of frantic shame and bury our face in the pillow.