His Excellency the Minister

"Ah! bless me! I did not think I should have the honor of meeting you here," she said.

"The honor?" said Vaudrey. "I, I should say the joy."

She looked straight into his eyes, frankly.

"I do not know what joy is, to-day," she said. "I come from the Continental Hotel, where I hoped to see—"

"What is that?"

"Nothing—"

"If it were nothing, you would not have frowned so."

"Oh! well! a friend—a friend whom I have again found—and who has disappeared. Just so,—abruptly—No matter, perhaps, after all! What happens, must happen. In short—and to continue my riddle, behold me feeding these ducks. God knows why! I detest the creatures. The state feeds them badly, Monsieur le Ministre, I tell you: they are famished. Well? well?" she said to a species of Indian duck, bolder than the others, who snapped at the hem of her skirt to attract attention and to demand fresh mouthfuls.

She commenced to laugh nervously, and said:

She threw him a morsel that he swallowed with a greedy gulp.

"Do you know, Monsieur le Ministre, that the story of these ducks is that of the human species? There are some that have got nothing of all the bread that I have thrown them, and there are others who have gorged enough to kill them with indigestion. How would you classify that? Poor political economy."

"Oh, oh!" said Vaudrey. "You are wandering into the realms of lofty philosophy!—"

"Apropos of that, yes," said Marianne, as she pointed to the line of birds that hurried on all sides, left the water, waddled about, uttering their noisy cries. "You know that when one is sad, one philosophizes anent everything."

"And you are sad?" asked Sulpice, in a voice that certainly quivered slightly.

She threw away, without breaking it, the piece of bread that was left, brushed her gloved fingers, and, turning toward the minister, said with a smile that would make the flesh creep:

"Very sad. Oh! what would you have? The black butterflies, you know, the blue devils."

Ah! how happy he felt at having desired to breathe the air of the Bois! It now seemed to him that he had only come there for her sake. Once more it appeared to him that some magnetic thought led to this deserted spot these two beings, who but yesterday had only exchanged commonplace remarks and who, in this sunbathed solitude, under these trees, in the fresh breeze of the departing winter, met again, impelled toward each other, drawn on by the same sympathy.

"Do you know what I was thinking of?" she said, smiling graciously. "Yes, of what I was thinking as I cast the brown bread to those ducks? An idyll, is it not? Well! I was thinking that if one dared—a quick plunge into such a sheet of water—very pure—quite tempting—Eh! well! it would end all."

Vaudrey did not reply. He looked at her stupidly, his glance betraying the utmost anxiety.

"Oh! fear nothing," she said. "A whim! and besides, I can swim better than the swans, there is no danger."

He had seized her hands instinctively and he experienced a singular delight in feeling the flesh of Marianne's wrists under his fingers.

"You are feverish," he said.

"I should be, at any rate."

"The departure of—of that friend—has, then, caused you much suffering?"

"Suffering? No. Vexation, yes—You have built many castles of cards in your life—Come! how stupid I am!" she said bitterly. "You still build many of them. Well! there it is, you see!"

She had withdrawn her hands from Sulpice, and walked away slowly from the border of the lake, going toward the end of the path where her coachman awaited her, his eyes closed and his mouth open.

"Where are you going on leaving the Bois?" asked Vaudrey.

"I? I don't know."

He had made a movement.

"Oh! once more I tell you, don't be afraid," she said. "I want to live. Fear nothing, I will go home, parbleu."

"Home?"

"Or to my uncle's."

"But, really, Monsieur le Ministre," she said, "you are taking upon yourself the affairs of Monsieur Jouvenet, your Prefect of Police. I know him well, and certainly he asks fewer questions than Your Excellency."

"That, perhaps," said Vaudrey, with a smile, "is because he has less anxiety about you than I have."

"Ah! bah!" said Marianne.

Vaudrey paled slightly, divining under this question a seductive prospect.

Marianne's gray eyes were never turned from him.

They walked along slowly, followed by the coupé whose lengthened shadow was projected in front of them along the yellow pathway, moving beside the lake where the swans floated with their pure white wings extended and striking the water with their feet, raising all around them a white foam, like snow falling in flakes. The blue heavens were reflected in the water. The grass, of a burnt-green, almost gray color, looked like worn velvet here and there, showing the weft and spotted with earth.

Side by side they walked, Vaudrey earnestly watching Marianne, while she gazed about her and pointed out to him the gray, winter-worn rocks, the smooth ivy, and on the horizon some hinds browsing, in the far distance, as in a desert, the bare grass as yellow as ripe wheat, around a pond, in a gloomy landscape, russet horizons against a pale sky, presenting a forlorn, mysterious and fleeting aspect.

"One would think one's self at the end of the world," said Sulpice, with lowered voice and troubled heart.

"To Croix-Catelan!" she said. "That end of the world is decidedly Parisian!"

"Nevertheless, see how isolated we are to-day."

It seemed as if she had divined his thought, for she took a path that skirted a road and there, in the narrowest strip of soft, fresh soil, on which the tiny heels of her boots made imprints like kisses upon a cheek, she walked in front of him, the shadows of the small branches dappling her black dress, while Vaudrey, deeply moved, still looked at her, framed as she was by trees with moss-covered trunks and surrounded with brambles, a medley of twisted branches.

And Sulpice felt, at each step that he took, a more profound emotion. Along this russet-tinted wood, stood out here and there the bright trunks of birch-trees, and far above it, the pale blue sky; the abyss of heaven, strewn with milky clouds and throughout the course of this pathway arose like a Cybelean incense, a healthful and fresh odor that filled the lungs and infused a desire to live.

To live! and, thought Sulpice, but a moment ago this lovely, slender girl spoke of dying. He approached her gently, walking by her side, at first not speaking, then little by little returning to that thought and almost whispering in her ear—that rosy ear that stood out against the paleness of her cheek:

He did not feel astonished at having dared to call her by name. It seemed as if he had known her for years. He forgot everything, as if the world was nothing but a dream and that this dream presented this woman's face.

"Yes," she replied. "Upon my honor, I was weary of life, but I see that most frequently at the very moment when one despairs—"

She stopped suddenly.

"Well?" he asked, as he waited for her to continue.

"Nothing. No, nothing!"

She commenced to laugh, calling his attention to the end of the path, to a broader alley which brought them back to the edge of the lake, whose blue line they saw in the distance.

"Blue on blue," she said, pointing to the sky and the water. "You reproach me for not liking blue, Monsieur le Ministre, see! I am taking an azure bath. This horizon is superb, is it not?"

Vaudrey debated with himself if she were jesting. Why should she give him that title which here and at such a moment, had such an out-of-place ring?

She glanced at him sidelong with a little droll expression, her pretty mouth yielding to a smile that enticed a kiss.

"That already pleases me," said Sulpice.

"It is true. This short promenade is nothing, but it suffices to make one forget many things."

"Does it not?" exclaimed Vaudrey.

The shadow of his coupé was still projected between them along the ochre-colored road.

"Do you come to the Bois often?" asked the minister.

"No. Why?"

"Because I shall frequently return here," he said in a trembling voice.

"Really!—Then, oh! why then, it would be love-making?" said Marianne, who pierced him with her warm, tender glances.

He wished to seize this woman's hand and print a kiss thereon, or to press his lips upon her bare neck upon which the golden honey-colored ringlets danced in the bright sunlight.

"On these clear, fine days," she said in an odd tone, emphasizing every word, "it is very likely that I shall return frequently to visit this pathway. Eh! what is that?" she said, turning around.

She was dragging a dry bramble that had fastened its thorns to the folds of her satin skirt and she stopped to shake it off.

"Stop," said Sulpice.

He desired to tread on the russet-colored bramble.

Then he stooped, gently removed the thorn, and Marianne, her bosom turned toward him and half-stooping, looked at that man—a minister—almost kneeling before her in this wood.

He cast the bramble away from him.

"There," he said.

"Thanks."

As he rose, he felt Marianne's fresh breath on his forehead. It fell on his face, as sweet as new-mown hay. He became very pale and looked at her with so penetrating an expression that she blushed slightly—from pleasure, perhaps,—and until they reached the carriage where her coachman was still sleeping, they said nothing further, fearing that they had both said too much.

At the moment when she entered her carriage, Sulpice, suddenly, with an effort at boldness, said to her, as he leaned over the door:

"I must see you again, Marianne."

"What is the use?" she said, keeping her eyes fixed on his.

"Where shall I see you?" he asked, without replying to her question.

"I do not know—at my house—"

"At your house?"

"Wait," she added abruptly, "I will write to you."

"You promise me?"

"Yes!—Ah! you are very good!" he cried, without knowing what he was saying, while Marianne's coachman whipped his horses and the carriage disappeared in the direction of Paris.

It seemed to Vaudrey, who remained standing, that little gloved fingers appeared behind the window and that he caught glimpses of a face hidden under a black, dotted veil.

The carriage disappeared in the distance.

"To the ministry!" said the minister, as he got into his carriage.

He stretched himself out as if intoxicated. He looked at all the carriages along the drive of the Bois de Boulogne, the high life was already moving toward the Lake. In calèches, old ladies in mourning appeared with pale nuns, and old men with red decorations stretched out under lap-robes. Pretty girls with pale countenances pierced with bright eyes, like fragments of coal in flour, showed themselves at the doors of the coupés, close to the muzzles of pink-nosed, well-combed, white-haired little dogs. Vaudrey strove to find Marianne amid that throng, to see her again. She was far away.

Against the ministerial edifice were two gas fixtures bearing two huge capital letters: R.F., ready to be illuminated on important reception nights.

Two lackeys hastily opening the door, rushed up to the halted carriage and stood at its door.

"Adieu! Marianne," thought Sulpice, as he placed his foot in the antechamber of this vast mansion as cold as a tomb.

She was still mechanically throwing crumbs of bread around her, which were eagerly snatched at by the many-colored ducks ...

The duke did not prove very difficult to ensnare. He had yielded like a child in Sabine's boudoir. Marianne left that soirée with unbounded delight. She had recovered all her hopes and regained her luck. The next day she would again see Rosas. She passed the night in dreams. Light and gold reigned upon her life. She was radiant on awaking.

Her uncle, on seeing her, found her looking younger and superb.

"You are as beautiful as a Correggio, who though a voluptuous painter, must have been talented. You ought to pose to me for a Saint Cecilia. It would be magnificent, with a nimbus—"

"Oh! let your saint come later," said Marianne, "I haven't time."

Simon Kayser did not ask the young woman, moreover, why "she had not time." Marianne was perfectly free. Each managed his affairs in his own way. Such, in fact, was one of the favorite axioms of this painter, a man of principle.

But she suddenly turned pale upon hearing that Monsieur de Rosas had left.

"What! gone?"

Gone thus, suddenly, unceremoniously, without notice, without a word? It was not possible.

They were obliged to confirm this news to her several times at the hotel office. Monsieur le duc had that very morning ordered a coupé to take him to catch a train for Calais. It was true that he had left some baggage behind, but at the same time he notified them that they would perhaps have to forward it to him in England later.

Marianne listened in stupid astonishment. She became livid under her little veil.

"Monsieur de Rosas did not receive a telegram?"

"Yes, madame."

"Ah!"

Something serious had, perhaps, suddenly intervened in the duke's life. Nevertheless, this abrupt departure without notification, following the exciting soirée of the previous day, greatly astonished this woman who but now believed herself securely possessed of José.

"Nonsense!" she thought. "He was afraid of me—Yes, that's it!—Of course, he was afraid of me. He loves me much, too much, and distrusts himself. He has gone away."

"Assuredly, that is part of my fate. That stupid Guy leaves for Italy. Rosas leaves for England. Steam was invented to admit of escape from dangerous women. I did not follow Lissac. What if I followed the duke?"

She shrugged her shoulders, and gnawed her cambric handkerchief under her veil, her head resting on the back of the coach, while the driver waited, standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, ignorant of the direction in which the young woman wished to go.

Marianne felt herself beaten. She was like a gambler who loses a decisive game. Evidently, Rosas only showed more clearly by the action he had taken, how much he was smitten; she measured his love by her own dismay; but what was the good of that love, if the duke escaped in a cowardly fashion?—But where could she find him? Where follow him? Where write to him?—A man who runs about as he does! A madman! Perhaps on arriving at Dover he had already re-embarked for Japan or Australia.

"Ah! the unexpected happens, it seems," thought Marianne, laughing maliciously, as she considered the ludicrousness of her failure.

"Madame, we are going—?" indifferently asked the coachman, who was tired of waiting.

"Where you please—to the Bois!"

"Very good, madame."

"It was a quarter of twelve when I took Madame—"

"Good! good!—to the Bois!"

The movement of the carriage, the sight of the passers-by, the sunlight playing on the fountains and the paving-stones of the Place de la Concorde fully occupied Marianne's mind, although irritating her at the same time. All the cheerfulness attending the awakening spring, delightful as it is in Paris, seemed irony to her. She felt again, but with increased bitterness, all the sentiments she experienced a few mornings previously when she called on Guy and told him of her burdensome weariness and distaste of life. Of what use was she now? She had just built so many fond dreams on hope! And all her edifices had crumbled.

"All has to be recommenced. To lead the stupid life of a needy, lost, harassed woman; no, that is too ridiculous, too sad! What then—" she said to herself, as with fixed eyes she gazed into the infinite and discovered no solution.

She was savagely annoyed at Rosas. She would have liked to tear him in pieces like the handkerchief that she shredded. Ah! if he should ever return to her after this flight!

But perhaps it was not a flight—who knows? The duke would write, would perhaps reappear.

To renounce everything was enough to banish all patience. Yesterday, on leaving Rosas, she believed herself to be withdrawn forever from the wretched Bohemian life she had so painfully endured. To-day, she felt herself sunk deeper in its mire. Too much mire and misery at last! However, if she only had courage!

It was while looking at the great blue lake, the snowy swans, the gleaming barks, that she dreamed, as she had just told Vaudrey, of making an end of all. Madness, worse than that, stupidity! One does not kill one's self at her age; one does not make of beauty a valueless draft. In order to occupy herself, she had bought some brown bread, which she mechanically threw to the ducks, in order to draw her out of herself. It was then that Sulpice saw her.

"Assuredly," she thought, as she left the minister, "those who despair are idiots!"

In fact, it seemed that chance, as her fingers had cast mouthfuls of bread to the hungry bills, had thrown Vaudrey to her in place of Rosas.

"As a last resource, one might find worse," thought Marianne, as she entered her home.

She had not, moreover, hesitated long. She was not in the mood for prolonged anger. She was at an age when prompt decisions must be made on every occasion that life, with its harsh spurs, proposed a problem or furnished an opportunity. On the way between the Lake and Rue de Navarin, Marianne had formed her plan. Since she had to reply to Vaudrey, she would write him. She felt an ardent desire to avenge herself for Rosas's treatment, as if he ought to suffer therefor, as if he were about to know that Sulpice loved her.

Had she found the duke awaiting her, as she entered the house, she would have been quite capable of lashing his face with a whip, while making the lying confession:

"Ah! you here? It is too late! I love Monsieur Vaudrey."

It smacked of dirty poverty, bourgeois ugliness. She would never dare to ask Vaudrey to sit upon that divan, which was littered with old, torn books and tobacco grains, and which, when one sat upon it, discharged a cloud of dust whose atoms danced in the sunlight.

"What are you looking at?" asked Kayser, as he followed his niece's glances about the room. "You seem to be making an inspection."

"Precisely. And I am thinking that your studio would not fetch a very high figure at Drouot's auction mart."

"Lofty and moral creations don't sell in times like these," gravely replied the old dauber. "For myself, I am not a painter of obscene subjects and lewd photography."

Marianne shrugged her shoulders and went out, coughing involuntarily. Old Kayser passed his time steeped in the odors of nicotine.

"I am lost, if Vaudrey comes here," she said to herself.

"Illusion is everything! He must be deceived! They are all stupid!" she mused.

But how was she to deceive this man as to her condition, how cloak her want, how cause herself to pass for what she was not? With Rosas it would have been a simple matter. Poor, she presented herself to him in her poverty. He loved her so. She could the better mislead him. But with Vaudrey, on the contrary, she must dazzle.

"Two innocents," Marianne said to herself, "the one thirsts for virtue, the other for vice."

To whom, then, should she apply? She again found herself in the frightful extremity of those who, in that almost limitless Paris, involved in the terrible intricacies of that madly-directed machine, seek money, a loan, some help, an outstretched hand, but who find nothing, not an effort to help them in all its crowd. She was overcome with rage and hatred. Nothing! she had nothing! She would have sold herself to any person whatsoever, to have speedily obtained a few of the luxuries she required. Yes; sold herself now, to sell herself more dearly to-morrow.

Sold! Suddenly from the depths of her memory she recalled a form, confused at first, but quickly remembered vividly, of an old woman against whom she had formerly jostled, in the chance life she had led, and who, once beautiful, and still clever and rich, it was said, had been seized with a friendly desire to protect Marianne. It was a long time since the young woman had thought of Claire Dujarrier. She met her occasionally, her white locks hidden under a copious layer of golden powder, looking as yellow as sawdust. The old woman had said to her:

Marianne had thanked her at the time, and had forgotten all about it till now, when in the anguish of her pursuit she recalled the name and features of Claire Dujarrier as from the memories of yesterday. Claire Dujarrier, a former danseuse, whose black eyes, diamonds, wild extravagance, and love adventures were notorious formerly, had for the last two or three years buried herself in a little house, fearing that she would be assassinated; she kept her diamonds in iron-lined safes built in the wall, and had a young lover, a clerk in a novelty store, who was stronger than a market-house porter, and who from time to time assumed a high tone and before whom she stood in awe.

"Claire Dujarrier! The very thing!—Why not?" thought Marianne.

She had been introduced to the ex-danseuse by Guy de Lissac. He was considered as one of Claire's old lovers. They quarrelled when the old dame had heard one of Guy's bons mots that had become familiar at the Club:

"When I see her, I always feel a slight emotion: she recalls my youth to me!—But alas! not hers!"

Claire was well-off and perhaps miserly. Marianne instinctively felt, however, that she would get help at her hands.

Money!

With brazen front, Kayser's niece struck her bosom, looking at the same time at the reflection of her fine bust and pale face in the mirror.

The next day she went straight to the former danseuse's.

Claire Dujarrier lived in that long Rue La Fontaine at Auteuil which partook of the characteristics of a suburban main street and a provincial faubourg, with its summer villas, its little cottages enclosed within gloomy little gardens, railed-off flower-beds, boarding-schools for young people, and elbowing each other as in some village passage, the butcher's store, the pharmacy, the wine-dealer's shop, the baker's establishment,—a kind of little summer resort with a forlorn look in February, the kiosks and cottages half decayed, the gardens full of faded, dreary-looking leaves. Marianne looked about, seeking the little Claire house. She had visited it formerly. A policeman wandered along sadly,—as if to remind one of the town,—and on one side, a gardener passed scuffling his wooden shoes, as if to recall the village.

Marianne rang several times when she arrived at the garden railing of the little house. The bells sounded as if they were coated with rust. An ancient maid-servant, astonished and morose, came to open the door.

She conducted the young woman into the salon where Claire Dujarrier sat alone, eating cakes, with her terrier on her lap.

The dog almost leaped at Marianne's throat while Claire, rising, threw herself on her neck.

"Ah! dear little one!—How pleased I am! What chance brings you?"

Marianne looked at the Dujarrier. She might still be called almost lovely, although she was a little painted and her eyes were swollen, and her cheeks withered; but she knew so perfectly well all the secrets for rejuvenating, the eyebrow preparation, the labial wash, that she was a walking pharmaceutical painting done on finely sculptured features. The statue, although burdened with fat, was still superb.

She listened to Marianne, smiled, frowned and, love-broker and advisory courtesan that she was, ended by saying to the "little one" that she had a devilish good chance and that she had arrived like March in Lent.

"It is true, it has purposely happened. Vanda, you know her well?"

"What! Vanda, whom that big viper Guy called the Walking Rain?"

"I do not remember—"

"Well! Vanda has gone to Russia, she left a month ago. She will be there all the winter and summer, and part of next winter. Her general requires her. He is appointed to keep an eye on the Nihilists. So she wishes to rent her house in Rue Prony. That is very natural. A charming house. Very chic. In admirable taste. You have the chance. And not dear."

"Too dear for me, who have nothing!"

"Little silly! You have yourself," said Claire Dujarrier. "Then you have me, I have always liked you. I will lend you the ready cash to set yourself up, you can give me bills of exchange, little documents that your minister—pest! you are going on well, you are, ministers!—that His Excellency will endorse. Vanda will not expect anything after the first quarter. Provided that her house is well-rented to someone who does not spoil it, she will be satisfied. If she should claim all, why, at a pinch I can make up the amount. But, my dear,"—and the old woman lowered her voice,—"on no account say anything to Adolphe."

"Adolphe?"

"Yes, my husband. You do not know him?"

"A handsome fellow, isn't he? Quite young!—and he loves me—I adore him, too!"

The tumid eyes of Claire Dujarrier resembled lighted coals. She pressed kiss after kiss of her painted lips on the photograph and reverently laid it on the table.

Marianne almost pitied this half-senile love, the courtesan's terrifying, last love.

She was, however, too content either to trouble herself, or even to reflect upon it. She was wild with joy. It seemed to her that a sudden rift had opened before her and a gloriously sunny future pictured itself to her mind. What an inspiration it was to think of Claire Dujarrier!

She would sign everything she wished, acknowledge the sums lent, with any interest that might be demanded. Much she cared about that, indeed!—She was sure now to free herself and to succeed.

She got the old servant to show Marianne out promptly, as if she felt fearful lest her husband should see the pretty creature. Claire Dujarrier was certainly jealous.

"It is not I that would rob her of her porter!" Marianne thought, as she walked away from Rue La Fontaine.

Evening was now darkening the gray streets. A faint bluish mist was rising over the river and spreading like breath over the quays. Marianne saw Paris in the distance, and her visit seemed like a dream to her; she closed her eyes, and a voice within her whispered confusedly the names of Rosas, Vaudrey, Vanda, Rue Prony; she pictured herself stretched at length on a reclining chair in the luxurious house of a courtesan, and she saw at her feet that man—a minister—who supplicatingly besought her favor, while in the distance a man who resembled Rosas was travelling, moving away, disappearing—

"Nonsense!" the superstitious creature said to herself, "it was one or the other! The duke or the minister! I have not made the choice."

Then looking at the confused image of herself thrown on the window of the cab, she threw a kiss at her own pale reflection, happy with the unbounded joy of a child, and cried aloud while laughing heartily:

The little Hôtel de Vanda,—one of our charming fugitives, as those of the chroniclers who still remember Vanda, say of her in their articles sometimes—is an elegant establishment, severe in external appearance, but of entirely modern interior arrangements, with a wealth of choice knickknacks, and is regarded as one of the most attractive houses in Rue Prony. Since the flight of the pretty courtesan, it bears the sad notice: Residence to let. Its fast closed shutters give it the gloomy appearance of a deserted boudoir. Complete silence succeeds feverish bustle! Vanda was a boisterous, madcap spendthrift. Through the old windows with their old-fashioned panes there often used to escape snatches of song, airs of waltzes, fragments of quadrilles. Vanda's horses pawed the ground spiritedly as they started at the fashionable hour for the Bois, through the great gateway leading to the stables. And now, for months, a corner of Rue Prony had been silent and drowsy, and weighted with the melancholy that surrounds forsaken objects.

"After all," Dujarrier said to herself, "it is the favorable moment for success. One does not become a general except through seniority."

Marianne also experienced the same feelings as the Dujarrier. She realized that she had reached the turning-point of her life, it was like a game of baccarat that she was playing with fate. She might come out of it rich and preserved from the possibility of dying in a hospital or a hovel after having dragged her tattered skirts through the streets, or overwhelmed with debts, ruined forever, strangled by liabilities. This commercial term made her smile ironically when she thought of it. Against her she had her past, her adventurous life, almost the life of a courtesan, carried away by the current of her amorous whims; it now needed only the burden of liabilities for her to become not only completely disclassed, but ruined by Parisian life. She had given the Dujarrier receipts for all that that quasi-silent-partner had advanced her, the old lady excusing herself for the precaution she took by saying precisely:

The Dujarrier considered herself witty.

Marianne had signed, moreover, all that the other had asked. She still needed, indeed, to make further outlay. And what mattered it if she plunged deeper while she was taking a dive, as she expressed it in her language, which was a mixture of street slang and the elegant phraseology of the salon.

"Bah! I know how to swim."

She suddenly straightened herself under this anxiety, reassured, moreover, and spurred on as she was by the Dujarrier herself, who said as she shrugged her shoulders:

"When a woman like you has a man like Vaudrey,—a minister,—she has her nest lined."

Sulpice was not the man long to resist so refined a Parisienne as Marianne. In him, the repressed ardors, the poetic ideas of a man of twenty, had become the appetites of a man of forty. This provincial, hungry for Parisianism,—very young in feelings and soul,—felt, as soon as he found himself in Marianne's company, mad with desire for a new life. The dazzling honors attending his entry into the ministry found their culmination in the burning glance of Marianne, as their eyes met.

Moreover, she said to herself that it was necessary in Sulpice's case to have the appearance of playing frankly, of loving truly, as in the case of Rosas. But, this time, she would not let Vaudrey escape her by flight, as the duke did. She would yield at the desired moment, certain that Sulpice would not leave her the next day.

"Rosas would be here," she said to herself self-confidently, "if he had been my lover."

After a moment of regretful preoccupation, she shrugged her shoulders and said quickly:

"Bah! what is written is written, as he said. If I haven't him, I have the other."

Adrienne, at such times, with a sweet smile which made Sulpice shudder with remorse, would beseech him to work less, to take some recreation, and not allow himself to be so absorbed in politics.

"You are extremely pale, I assure you. You look worn out. You work too hard."

"It is due to administrative changes. There are so many documents to examine."

"I know that very well, but isn't Monsieur Warcolier there? In what way does he help you?"

"In no way," replied the minister sharply, speaking with truth.

What matter! He found the time to fly incognito to the Maison de Vanda, leaving his coupé at the ministry. Marianne was always there for him when he arrived. The male domestic or the femme de chambre received him with all the deference that "domestics" show when they suspect that the visitor brings any kind of subsidy to the house. To Vaudrey, there was a sort of mystery in Mademoiselle Kayser's life. Ramel, who knew her uncle Kayser, had told him of the poverty of the painter. How then, seeing that her uncle was so shabby, could the niece be so sumptuously established?

Kayser, whom he had once met at Marianne's, had answered such a question by remarking that his niece was a sly puss who understood life thoroughly and would be sure to make headway. But that was all.

"I have suspected for a long time that that little head was not capable of much," the painter had added. "I considered her a light-headed creature, nothing more. Fool that I was! she is a shrewd woman, a clever woman, a true woman. I only find fault with her for one thing."

"What?" asked Vaudrey.

And Kayser went on painting allegories, to digest his dinner, the pâté de foie gras washed down with kummel, of which he had just partaken at his niece's.

He would not long persist in enquiring how Marianne Kayser had procured all those baubles that so highly incensed the puritan instincts of her honest uncle. He found himself urged forward with profound delight in this adventure whose mysterious features pleased him. Bah! the very fact that he found so much inexplicable in the life of this woman enticed him all the more. It seemed to him that not only had he entered upon a romantic course, but that he was himself the hero of the romance. Never, in the days when he rolled about, an unknown student, on the Parisian wave, and had lifted his thoughts toward some pale patrician girl, toward some pretty creature he had caught a glimpse of, leaning back in a dark-blue coupé, or framed in by the red velvet hangings of a proscenium box, had he more perfectly incarnated the ideal of his desire than in so charming a creature. Dreams of power, visions of love of his twentieth year, had now become tangible to him and at forty he stretched out his feverish hand toward them all.

"Could Ramel have been right?" he said to himself, "and I, only a provincial, athirst for Parisine? But what matter? Let Mademoiselle Kayser be what she will and I what I may be, it seems to me that I have never loved any one as I love this woman."

"What wrong have I done?"

One afternoon,—there was no session of the Chamber that day,—Marianne was seated in her little salon. She was warming the tips of her slippers, that furtively peeped from beneath the lace of her skirt as a little bird might protrude its beak from a nest, her right leg crossed over the other, and she appeared to be musing, her chin resting on her delicate hand.

She was weary. Justine, her recently engaged femme de chambre, who, like the silverware, was provided by the Dujarrier, came to announce with the discreet, bantering little smile of servants, that Monsieur Dachet, the upholsterer, had called twice.

"The upholsterer!"

Marianne frowned slightly.

"What did he say?"

"You call that nothing?" said Marianne, with a short laugh.

When Justine had left the room, she went straight to a small, black, Italian cabinet inlaid with ivory, of which one drawer was locked. In opening it, the sound of gold coins rattling on the wood caused her to smile; then, with the tips of her white fingers, she spread out the louis at the bottom of the drawer, which she abruptly closed, making a wry face, and folding her arms, she returned to her seat in front of the fire, beating her right foot nervously upon the wrought-iron fender.

"The Dujarrier's money will not go much further," she thought. "It is finished."

She knew that Vaudrey was to come, and suddenly leaving the fire, she arrayed herself for him in a black satin peignoir lined with red surah, with lapels of velvet thrown widely apart and allowing the whiteness of her neck and chest to be seen under folds of old lace. Her fair hair fell upon her velvet collar, and surmounting this strange costume, her pale face against the background of the red-draped salon assumed the disturbing charm of an apparition.

On seeing her, Sulpice could not refrain from stopping short and looking at her in admiration. Seated there, in the centre of her salon, she was awaiting him and arranging bundles of papers in a basket with gilded feet and lined with pink satin. She extended her hand to him. It was a pale hand, as inanimate as the hand of a dead person, and she languidly asked him why he remained there stupefied without approaching her.

"I am looking," said the minister.

"You are always the most gallant of men," said Marianne, and she added:

"You are not already tired then of looking at me? Usually, caprices do not last so long."

"The affection that I have for you is not a caprice."

"What is it, then? I am curious—"

"Oh! nonsense! nonsense!" said Marianne. "I know that you speak wonderfully well, I have heard you in the tribune. A declaration of love costs you no more than a ministerial declaration. But to-day, my dear minister, I am not disposed to listen to it even from you."

In these last words, there was a certain tenderness that in a measure modified the expression of weariness or sulkiness which Marianne suggested. Sulpice inferred therefrom an implied acceptance of his proffered love.

"Yes," said she abruptly; "I am very sad, frightfully sad."

"Without a cause?" asked Vaudrey.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh! I am not of those who allow their nerves to control them. When I am out of sorts, there is invariably a cause. Let that be understood once for all."

"And the cause?—I should be delighted to learn it, Marianne, for I swear to you that I would always bear a half of your troubles and pains."

"Thanks!—But in life there are troubles so commonplace that one could only acknowledge them to the most intimate friends."

She knew it positively. She could read that heart like an open page.

"When one meets friends like you, one is the more solicitous to keep them and to avoid saddening them with stupid affairs."

"But why?" asked Vaudrey, drawing close to Marianne. "What troubles you? I beseech you to tell me!"

He gazed earnestly at her eyes, seeking in the depths of their blue pupils a secret or a confession that evaded him, and with an instinctive movement he seized Marianne's hands which she abandoned to him; they were quite cold. As he bent toward her to plead with her to speak, he felt her gentle breath, inhaled the perfume of her delicate, fair skin, and saw the exquisite curves of her body outlined beneath the black folds of her satin peignoir. Marianne's knee gently pressed his own while her heavy eyelids fell like veils over the young woman's eyes, in which Vaudrey thought he observed tears.

"Marianne, I entreat you, if you have any sorrow whatever, that I can assuage, I pray you, tell me of it!"

"Eh! if it were a sorrow!—" she said, quickly withdrawing her left hand from Sulpice's warm grasp. "But it is worse: it is a financial worry, yes, financial," she said brusquely, on observing that Vaudrey's face depicted astonishment.

"There now, you see that? They are bills for this house: the accounts of clamorous creditors, upholsterers, locksmiths, builders and I don't know what besides!"

"What! your house?"

"You thought that I had paid for it? It is a rented one and nothing in it is paid for. I owe for all, and to a hungry pack."

She began to laugh.

"Do you imagine then that old Kayser's niece could lead this life in which you see her? Without a sou, should I possess all that you see here?—No!—I have perpetrated the folly of ordering all these things for which I am now indebted and which must be paid for at once, and now I am about to be sued. There! you were determined to urge me to confess all that—Such are my worries and they are not yours, so I ask your pardon, my dear Vaudrey: so let us talk of something else. Well! how did the Fraynais interpellation turn out?—What has taken place in the Chamber?"

"Let us speak only of you, Marianne," said the minister, who looked at the young woman with a sort of frank compassion as a friendly physician looks at a sick person.

He drew still closer to her, trying to calm her and to obtain some explanation, some information from her; and Marianne, as if she had already yielded in at once confiding her secret unreflectingly, refused at present to accord him the full measure of her confidence. She repeated that nothing that could be a source of annoyance or sordid, ought to sadden her friends. Besides, one ought to draw the line at one's life-secret. She was entitled, in fact, to maintain silence. That Vaudrey should question her so, caused her horrible suffering.

"And you, Marianne," he said, "you torture me much more by not replying to me, to whom the least detail of your life is interesting. To me who see you preoccupied and distressed, when I wish, I swear to you, to banish all your sadness."

She turned toward him with an abrupt movement and with her gray, gold-speckled eyes flashing, she seemed to yield to a violent, sudden and almost involuntary decision and said to Sulpice:

"Then you wish to know even the wretchedness of my life? So be it! But I warn you that it is not very cheerful. For," said she, after a moment's silence,—Sulpice shuddered under her glance,—"it is better to be frank, and if you love me as you say you do, you should know me thoroughly; you can then decide what course to take. For myself, I am accustomed to deception."

"Perhaps I am worrying you?" she asked abruptly.

"You!" said he.

He looked at her with a tear in his eye.

Marianne's eyes gleamed with a sudden light.

"No," stammered Vaudrey, before whose mind the duke's blond face appeared.

"You heard him the other evening!"

"I mean that I have never spoken to him. Well! what of Monsieur de Rosas?"

"Monsieur de Rosas loved me. Oh!" she said, interrupting a gesture made by Vaudrey, "wait. He said that he loved me. He is rich. Why should I not have been Rosas's mistress? Deal for deal, that was a good bargain, at least! I accept Rosas! It was to receive him that I was foolish enough to make my purchases without reckoning, without knowing. What's that for a Rosas?" she said, as she crushed the bundle of bills between her fingers.

"And—Monsieur de Rosas?" asked Vaudrey, who was quite pale.

"He?"

Marianne laughed.

"Rosas?" repeated the minister, looking keenly into Marianne's eyes.

"Rosas!" she again said, lowering her voice. "And do you know why I would have done that?"

"No—" answered Sulpice trembling.

"Simply because I no longer loved him, and that I loved another."

She had spoken these last words slowly and in such passionate, vibrating tones that Sulpice felt himself shudder with delight.

"Ah," he said, as he went toward her, "is that the reason? Truly, Marianne, is that the reason?"

She had not confessed whom she loved, she had spoken only by her looks. But Sulpice felt that he belonged to her, he was burning with passion, transported, insane from this avowal; his hands sought hers and drew her to him. He clasped her to his bosom, intoxicated by the pressure of this body against his own, and added in a very low tone while his fingers alternately wandered over her satiny neck and her silky hair:

"Our home—will you have it so?—Our home!—"

He felt, as she remained in his embrace with her body leaning against his, that she quivered throughout her frame; his lips wandered from her ear to her cheek and then to her lips, there they rested long in a ravishing kiss that filled him with the languishing sensation of swooning, he holding her so tightly that, with a smile, she disengaged herself, pink with her blushes, and bright-eyed, said, with an expression of peculiar delight:

"It is sealed now!"

Sulpice, even in his youthful days, had never felt so intoxicating a sensation as that which he enjoyed to-day. It was a complete abandonment of himself, a forgetfulness of everything in the presence of his absolute intoxication. All the realities of life that were ready to take possession of him on leaving this place melted before this dream: the possession of that woman. He forgot the assembly, the foyer, that human crowd that he ruled from the height of the tribune, and Adrienne, who was seated yonder at the window, awaiting him. He forgot everything. Like those who possess the singular faculty of easily receiving and losing impressions, he fancied that his horizon was limited to these walls with their silken hangings, these carpets, this feminine salon, opening on a boudoir, a retreat whence escaped the odors of flowers and perfume bottles.

"What shall I do to silence those creditors?" he said to Marianne,—whose hands he held and whose face grazed his in a way that almost made him frantic.

"Nothing," she replied. "What you have promised me is enough. Now I feel that I am saved. Our house, you said so, we are in our own house here. If the creditors will not believe me when I tell them to have patience—"

"They will believe you," said Vaudrey. "Come, we will find the means—On my signature, any one will lend me money."

"And where does this Monsieur Gochard live?" Vaudrey promptly asked.

"Oh! it would not be necessary for you to go to see him," replied Marianne. "On receipt of a bill of exchange from me, Madame Dujarrier would undertake to let me have a hundred thousand francs from hand to hand."

"A hundred thousand francs!—In three months," said Vaudrey to himself, "in a vast placer like Paris, one can find many veins of gold."

He had, besides, his personal property and land in Dauphiny. If need be, without Adrienne's even knowing it, he could mortgage his farms at Saint-Laurent-du-Pont!

"Monsieur de Rosas would not have hesitated. But in his case there would have been no merit," said Mademoiselle Kayser.

"Have you a pen, Marianne?"

The minister had not noticed the sheet of white paper that was lying on the blotting pad of Russia leather, among the satin finished envelopes and the ivory paper-cutters.

"What are you going to do, my friend?"

She pretended to put away the green, sharkskin penholder lying near the inkstand, but drew it imperceptibly nearer to Sulpice, who with a quick movement had already seated himself in front of the secrétaire.

"A minister's signature is sufficient, I suppose?" he said with a smile.

He commenced to write.

"What did you say?—Gochard?—"

She was quite pale as she looked over Sulpice's shoulder and saw him rapidly write several lines on the paper, then she spelled:

"Adolphe Gochard—Go-go-c-h-ar-d."

"There it is!" he said, as he handed her the sheet of paper.

"I wish to know what is thereon, or I would never consent."

She took the paper between her fingers as if to tear it to pieces. Sulpice prevented her.