Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: _The Duc, the Duchesse, and the Doctor._ ] THE NABOB BY ALPHONSE DAUDET TRANSLATED BY GEORGE BURNHAM IVES WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BRANDER MATTHEWS IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II. BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1902 _Copyright, 1898,_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved._ University Press: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. CONTENTS. PAGE XIII. A DAY OF SPLEEN 1 XIV. THE EXHIBITION 20 XV. MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--IN THE RECEPTION-ROOM 42 XVI. A PUBLIC MAN 57 XVII. THE APPARITION 86 XVIII. THE JENKINS PEARLS 107 XIX. THE OBSEQUIES 135 XX. BARONESS HEMERLINGUE 163 XXI. THE SITTING 194 XXII. PARISIAN DRAMAS 230 XXIII. MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--LAST SHEETS 255 XXIV. AT BORDIGHERA 267 XXV. THE FIRST NIGHT OF "REVOLTE" 287 ILLUSTRATIONS The Duc, the Duchesse, and the Doctor _Frontispiece_ "'Don't be afraid. I have no evil designs on you'" _Page_ 153 The First Night of "Revolte" " 287 From drawings by Lucius Rossi. THE NABOB. XIII. A DAY OF SPLEEN. Five o'clock in the afternoon. Rain ever since the morning, a gray sky, so low that one can touch it with one's umbrella, dirty weather, puddles, mud, nothing but mud, in thick pools, in gleaming streaks along the edge of the sidewalks, driven back in vain by automatic sweepers, sweepers with handkerchiefs tied over their heads, and carted away on enormous tumbrils which carry it slowly and in triumph through the streets toward Montreuil; removed and ever reappearing, oozing between the pavements, splashing carriage panels, horses' breasts, the clothing of the passers-by, soiling windows, thresholds, shop-fronts, until one would think that all Paris was about to plunge in and disappear beneath that depressing expanse of miry earth in which all things are jumbled together and lose their identity. And it is a pitiable thing to see how that filth invades the spotless precincts of new houses, the copings of the quays, the colonnades of stone balconies. There is some one, however, whom this spectacle rejoices, a poor, ill, disheartened creature, who, stretched out at full length on the embroidered silk covering of a divan, her head resting on her clenched fists, gazes gleefully out through the streaming window-panes and gloats over all these ugly details: