once a Marseilles hairdresser and the strong man at a fair, a masseur,
pedicure, manicure, and something of a dentist, sat with elbows on the
table with the coolness of a charlatan whom one receives in the morning
and knows the little infirmities, the intimate distresses of the abode
in which he chances to find himself. M. Bompain completed this array
of subordinates, all alike in one respect at any rate, Bompain, the
secretary, the steward, the confidential agent, through whose hands the
entire business of the house passed; and it sufficed to observe that
solemnly stupid attitude, that indefinite manner, the Turkish fez placed
awkwardly on a head suggestive of a village school-master, in order to
understand to what manner of people interests like those of the Nabob
had been abandoned.

Finally, to fill the gaps among these figures I have sketched, the
Turkish crowd--Tunisians, Moors, Egyptians, Levantines; and, mingled
with this exotic element, a whole variegated Parisian Bohemia of ruined
nobleman, doubtful traders, penniless journalists, inventors of strange
products, people arrived from the south without a farthing, all the lost
ships needing revictualling, or flocks of birds wandering aimlessly in
the night, which were drawn by this great fortune as by the light of a
beacon. The Nabob admitted this miscellaneous collection of individuals
to his table out of kindness, out of generosity, out of weakness, by
reason of his easy-going manners, joined to an absolute ignorance and
a survival of that loneliness of the exile, of that need for expansion
which, down yonder in Tunis, in his splendid palace of the Bardo, had
caused him to welcome everybody who hailed from France, from the small
tradesman exporting Parisian wares to the famous pianist on tour and the
consul-general himself.

As one listened to those various accents, those foreign intonations,