III
Marianne was contented. Not that her ambition was completely satisfied, but after all, Sulpice in place of Rosas was worth having. Though a minister was only a passing celebrity, he was a personage. From the depths of the bog in which she lately rolled, she would never have dared to hope for so speedy a revenge.
Speedy, assuredly, but perhaps not sufficient. Her eager hunger increased with her success. Since Vaudrey was hers, she sought some means of bringing about some adventure that would give her fortune. What could be asked or exacted from Sulpice? She recalled the traditions of fantastic bargains, of extensive furnishings. She would find them. She had but to desire, since he had abandoned himself, bound hand and foot, like a child.
She knew him now, all his candor, all his weakness, for, in the presence of this blasé woman, weary of love, Vaudrey permitted himself to confide his thoughts with unreserved freedom, opening his heart and disclosing himself with a clean breast in this duel with a woman:—a duel of self-interest which he mistook for passion.
She had studied him at first and speedily ranked him, calling him:
She felt that in this house in Rue Prony, where she was really not in her own home but was installed as in a conquered territory, Sulpice was dazzled. Like a provincial, as Granet described him so often, he entered there into a new world.
Uncle Kayser frequently called to see his niece. Severe in taste, he cast long, disdainful looks at the tapestries and the artistic trifles that adorned the house. In his opinion, it was rubbish and the luxury of a decaying age. He never changed his tune, always riding the hobby-horse of an æsthetic moralist.
"It lacks severity, all this furnishing of yours," was his constantly repeated criticism to Marianne, as he sat smoking his pipe on a divan, as was his custom in his own, wretched studio.
Then, in an abrupt way, with his eye wandering over the ceiling as if he were following the flight of a chimera, he would say:
"Why! your minister must do a great deal, if all this comes from the ministry!"
Marianne interrupted him. It was no business of his to mix himself up with matters that did not concern him. Above all, he must hold his tongue. Did he forget that Vaudrey was married? The least indiscretion—
"Oh! don't alarm yourself," the painter broke in, "I am as dumb as a carp, the more so since your escapade is not very praiseworthy!—For you have, in fact, deserted the domestic hearth—yes, you have deserted the hearth.—It is pretty here, a little like a courtesan's, perhaps, but pretty, all the same.—But you must acknowledge that it is a case of interloping. It is not the genuine home with its dignity, its virtuous severity, its—What time does your minister come? I would like to speak to him—"
"To preach morality to him?" asked Marianne, glancing at her uncle with an ironical expression.
"Not at all. I am considered to be ignorant—No, I have a plan to decorate in a uniform way, all the mayors' offices in Paris and I want to propose it to him—The Modern Marriage, an allegorical treatment!—Law Imposing Duty on Love. Something noble, full of expression, moralizing. Art that will set people thinking, for the contemplation of lofty works can alone improve the morals and the masses—You understand?"
"Perfectly. You want a commission!"
"Ah! that's a contemptible word, hold! A commission! Is a true artist commissioned? He obeys his inspiration, he follows his ideal—A commission! a commission! Ugh!—On my word, you would break the wings of faith! Little one, have you any of that double zero Kummel left, that you had the other day?"
Marianne sought to spare Sulpice the importunities of her uncle. She wished to keep the minister's entire influence for herself.
She had nothing to fear, moreover. Sulpice was hers as fully as she believed. Like so many others who have lived without living, Sulpice did not know woman, and Marianne was ten times a woman, woman-child, woman-lover, woman-courtesan, woman-girl, and every day and every night she appeared to her lover renewed and surprising, freshly created for passion and pleasure. Everything about her, even the frame that surrounded her beauty, the dwelling, perfumed with passionate love, distractedly captivated Sulpice. Behind the dense curtains in the dressing-room upholstered like a boudoir, with its carpet intended only for naked feet, as the reclining chair with its extra covering of Oriental silk was adapted to moments of languishing repose, Sulpice saw and contemplated the vast wardrobe with its three mirrors reflecting the huge marble washstand with its silver spigots, its silver bowl, wherein the scented water gleamed opal-like with its perfumes, the gas illuminating the brushes decorated with monograms, standing out against the white marble, the manicure sets of fine steel, the dark-veined tortoise-shell combs, the coquettish superfluity of scissors and files scattered about amongst knickknacks, inlaid enamels, and Japanese ivory ornaments, and there, stretched out and watching Marianne, who came and went before him with a smile on her face, her hair unfastened, sometimes with bare shoulders, Sulpice saw, through a half-open door in the middle of a bathroom floored with blue Delft tiles, the bath that steamed with a perfumed vapor, odorous of thyme, and the water which was about to envelop in its warm embrace that rosy form that displayed beneath the lights and under the full blaze of the gas, the nudity of her flesh beneath a transparent Surah chemise, silky upon the living silk.
Milk-white reflections seemed to play on her shoulders and Sulpice never forgot those ardent visions that followed him, clung to him, thrust themselves before his gaze and into his recollections, never leaving him, either at the Chamber, the Council Board or even when he was with Adrienne.—The young woman, seeing his absorption, hesitated to disturb his thoughts, political as they were, no doubt, while he mused upon his hours of voluptuous enjoyment, forever recalling the youthful roundness of her shoulders, and the inflections of her body, the ivory-like curve of her neck, whose white nape rested upon him, and her curls escaped from the superb arrangement of her hair, held in its place at the top by a comb thrust into this fair mass like a claw plunged into flesh.
Vaudrey must have had an active and prompt intelligence at times to forget suddenly these passionate images, when he unexpectedly found himself compelled to ascend the tribune during a discussion or to express his opinion clearly at the Ministerial Council. He increased his power, finding, perhaps, a new excitement, a new spur in the love that renewed his youth. He had never been seen more active and more stirring in the Chamber, though he was somewhat nervous. He determined to put himself in evidence at the Ministry and to prove to the phrase-monger Warcolier that he knew how to act. The President of the Council, Monsieur Collard—of Nantes—said several times to Sulpice:
"Too much zeal, my dear minister. A politician ought to be cooler."
"I shall be cooler with age!" Sulpice replied with a laugh.
From time to time he went to seek advice from Ramel, as he had promised. The little shopkeepers and laundresses of Rue Boursault hardly suspected when they saw a coupé stop at the door of the old journalist, that a minister alighted from it.
Sulpice felt amid the bustle of his life, amid the spurring and over-excited events of his existence, the need of talking with his old friend. Besides, Rue Boursault was on the way to Rue Prony. As Marianne was frequently not at home, Sulpice would spend the time before her return in chatting with Ramel.
"Well! Ramel, are you satisfied with me?"
"How could I be otherwise? You are an honest man and faithful and devoted to your ideas. I am not afraid of you, but I am of those by whom you are surrounded."
"Warcolier?"
"Warcolier and many others, of those important fellows who ask me—when they deign to speak to me—with an insignificant air of superiority and almost of pity, the idiots: 'Well! you are no longer doing anything! When will you do something?' As if I had not done too much already, seeing that I have made them!"
Denis Ramel smiled superciliously and the minister looked with a sort of respect at this vanguard warrior, this laborer of the early morn who had never received his recompense or even claimed it.
"I should like you to resume your journal in order to announce all these truths," Vaudrey said to him.
"Do you think so? Why, a journal that would proclaim the truth to everybody would not last six months, since no one would buy it."
As Sulpice was about to go, there was a ring at Ramel's door.
"Ah! who can it be? A visit. I beg you will excuse me, my dear Vaudrey."
Denis went to open the door.
It was a man of about fifty, dressed in the garb of a poor workman, wearing a threadbare greatcoat and trousers that were well polished at the knees, who as he entered held his round, felt hat in his hand. He was thin, pale and tired-looking, with a dark, dull complexion and a voice weak rather than hoarse. He bowed timidly, repeating twice: "I earnestly ask your pardon;" and then he remained standing on the threshold, without advancing or retiring, in an embarrassed attitude, while a timid smile played beneath his black beard, already sprinkled with gray.
"Pardon—I disturb you—I will return—"
"Come in, Garnier," said Ramel.
The man entered, saluting Vaudrey, who was not known to him, and at a gesture from Denis, he took a seat on the edge of a chair, scarcely sitting down and constantly twirling his round-shaped hat between his lean fingers. From time to time, he raised his left hand to his mouth to check the sound of a dry cough which rose in his muscular throat, that might be supposed to be a prey to laryngitis.
"You ask for the truth—Listen a moment, a single moment," Ramel whispered in the ear of the minister.
Without mentioning Sulpice's name, he began to question Garnier, who grew bolder and talked and gossiped, his cheek-bones now and then heightened in color by small, pink spots.
"Well! Garnier, about the work?—Oh! you may speak before monsieur, it interests him."
The man shrugged his shoulders with a sad, somewhat bitter smile, but resigned at least. He very quietly, but without any complaint, acknowledged all that he was enduring. Work was in a bad way. It appeared that it was just the same everywhere in Europe, in fact, but indeed that doesn't provide work at the shop. The master, a kind man, in faith, had grown old, and was anxious to sell his business of an art metal worker. He had not found a purchaser, then he had simply closed his shop, being too ill to continue hard work, and the four or five workmen whom he employed found themselves thrown into the street. There it is! Happily for Garnier, he had neither wife nor child, nothing but his own carcass. One can always get one's self out of a difficulty, but the others who had households and brats! Rousselet had five. Matters were not going to be very cheerful at home. He must rely on charity or credit, he did not know what, but something to stave off that distress, real and sad distress, since it was not merited.
"Do you interest yourself in politics?" asked Vaudrey curiously, surmising that this man was possessed of strong and quick intelligence, although he looked so worn and crushed and his cough frequently interrupted his remarks.
Garnier looked at Ramel before replying, then answered in a quiet tone:
"Oh! not now! That is all over. I vote like everybody else, but I let the rest alone. I have had my reckoning."
He had said all this in a low tone without any bitterness and as if burdened with painful memories.
"It is, however, strange, all the same," added the workman, "to observe that the more things change, the more alike they are. Instead of occupying themselves over there with interpellations and seeking to overthrow or to strengthen administrations, would it not be better if they thought a little of those who are dying of hunger? for there are some, it is necessary to admit that such are not wanting! What is it to me whether Pichereau or Vaudrey be minister, when I do not know at the moment where I shall sleep when I have spent my savings, and whether the baker will give me credit now that I am without a shop?"
At the mention of Vaudrey's name, Ramel wished to make a sign to this man, but Sulpice had just seized the hand of his old friend and pressed it as if to entreat him not to interrupt the conversation. The voice that he heard, interrupted by a cough, was the voice of a workman and he did not hear such every day.
"Note well that I am not a blusterer or a disturber, isn't that so, Monsieur Ramel? I have always been content with my lot, myself—One receives and executes orders and one is satisfied. Everything goes on all right—My politics at present is my work; when I shall have broken my back to bring journalists into power—I beg your pardon, Monsieur Ramel, you know very well that it is not of you that I speak thus—I shall be no fatter for it, I presume. I only want just to keep life and soul together, if it can be done. I suppose you could not find me a place, Monsieur Ramel? I would do anything, heavy work if need be, or bookkeeping, if it is desired. I would like bookkeeping better, although it is not my line, because the forge fire, the coal and heat, as you see, affect me there now—he touched his neck—it strangles me and hastens the end too quickly. It is true for that I am in the world."
Vaudrey felt himself stirred even to his bones by the mournful, musical voice of the consumptive, by this true misery, this poverty expressed without phrases and this claim of labor. All the questions yonder, as Garnier said, in the committees and sub-committees, in the tribune and in the lobbies, discussions, disputes, personal questions cloaked under the guise of the general welfare, suddenly appeared to him as petty and vain, narrow and egotistical beside the formidable question of bread which was propounded to him so quietly by this man of the people, who was not a rebel of the violent days, but the unfortunate brother, the eternal Lazarus crying, without threat, but simply, sadly: "And I?"
He would have liked, without making himself known, to give something to this sufferer, to promise him a position. He did not dare to offer it or to mention his name. The man would have refused charity and the minister, in all the personnel of bustling employés, often useless, that fill the ministry, had not a single place to give to this workman whose chest was on fire and whose throat was choking.
"I will return and we will talk about him," he said to Ramel, as he arose, indicating Garnier by a nod. "Do not tell him who I am. On my word, I should be ashamed—Poor devil!"
"Multiply him by three or four hundred thousand, and be a statesman," said Ramel.
Vaudrey bowed to the workman, who rose quickly and returned his salute with timid eagerness, and the minister went rapidly down the stairs of the little house and jumped into his carriage, making haste to get away.
He bore with him a feeling akin to remorse, and in all sincerity, for he still heard ringing in his ears, the poor consumptive's voice saying:
"What is it to me, who am suffering, whether Vaudrey or Pichereau be minister?"
On reaching Place Beauvau, he found a despatch requesting his immediate presence at the Élysée. At the Palace he received information that surprised him like a thunderbolt. Monsieur Collard—of Nantes—had just been struck down by apoplexy in the corridors of the ministry. The President of the Council was dead and the Chief of the State had turned to Vaudrey to fill the high position which, but two hours before, had been held by Monsieur Collard.
President of the Council! He, Vaudrey! Head of the Ministry! The first in his country after the supreme head? The joyful surprise that such a proposition caused him, so occupied his mind that he was unable to feel very much moved by the loss of Monsieur Collard—of Nantes—. Sulpice, moreover, had never profoundly cared for this austere advocate, although he had been much associated with him. His liking for this man who brought to the Council old-time opinions and preconceived ideas was a merely political affection. The President's offer proved to him that his own popularity, as well as his influence over parliament, had only increased since his recent entry on public life. He was then about to be in a position to assert his individuality still better. What a glorious time for Grenoble and what wry faces Granet would make!
Sulpice hastened to announce this news to Adrienne, although it would not become official until after Collard's funeral obsequies. He returned almost triumphantly to the Hôtel Beauvau. Only one thought, a sombre image, clouded his joy: it was not the memory of Collard, but the sad image of the man whom he had met at Ramel's, and who, when the Officiel should speak, should make the announcement, would shrug his shoulders and say ironically:
"Well! and what then?"
He had scarcely whispered these words to Adrienne: "President of the Council! I am President of the Council!" when, without being astonished at the faint, almost indifferent smile that escaped the young wife, he suddenly thought that he was under obligation to make a personal visit to the Ministry of Justice where Collard was lying dead.
He ordered himself to be driven quickly to Place Vendôme.
At every moment, carriages brought to the ministry men of grave mien, decorated with the red ribbon, who entered wearing expressions suitable to the occasion and inscribed their names in silence on the register, passing the pen from one to another just as the aspergillus is passed along in church. Everybody stood aside on noticing Vaudrey. It seemed to him that they instinctively divined that Collard being out of the way it was he who must be the man of the hour, the necessary man, the President of the Council marked out in advance, the chief of the coming ministry.
"Poor Collard!" thought Sulpice, as he inscribed his name on the register. "One will never be able to say: the Collard Administration. But it would be glorious if one day history said: the Vaudrey Administration."
He re-entered the Hôtel Beauvau, inflated with the idea. In the antechamber, there were more office-seekers than were usually in attendance. One of them, on seeing Vaudrey, rose and ran to him and said quickly to Sulpice, who did not stop:
"Ah! Monsieur le Ministre—What a misfortune—Monsieur Collard—If there were no eminent men like Your Excellency to replace him!—"
Vaudrey bowed without replying.
"What is the name of that gentleman?" said he as soon as he entered his cabinet, to the usher who followed him. "I always find him, but I cannot recognize him."
"He! Monsieur le Ministre? Why, that is, Monsieur Eugène!"
"Ah! very good! That is right! The eternal Monsieur Eugène!"
Just then Warcolier opened the door, looking more morose than sad, and holding a letter that he crushed in his hand, while at the same time he greeted Vaudrey with a number of long phrases concerning the dreadful, unexpected, sudden, unlooked-for, crushing death—he did not select his epithets, but allowed them to flow as from an overrunning cask—the dramatic decease of Collard—of Nantes—. From time to time, Warcolier, while speaking, cast an involuntary, angry glance at the paper that he twisted in his fingers, so much so that Vaudrey, feeling puzzled, at last asked him what the letter was.
"Don't speak to me about it—" said the fat man. "An imbecile!"
"What imbecile?"
"An imbecile whom I received with some little courtesy the other morning—I who, nevertheless, go to so much trouble to make myself agreeable."
"And that is no sinecure!—Well, the imbecile in question?"
"Left furious, no doubt, because of the reception accorded him—and to me, me, the Under-Secretary of State, this is the letter that he writes, that he dares to write! Here, Monsieur le Ministre, listen! Was ever such stupidity seen? 'Monsieur le Secrétaire d'Etat, you have under your orders a very badly trained Undersecretary of State, who will make you many enemies, I warn you. As you are his direct superior, I permit myself to notify you of his conduct,' etc., etc. You laugh?" said Warcolier, seeing that a smile was spreading over Vaudrey's blond-bearded face.
"Yes, it is so odd!—Your correspondent is evidently ignorant that there are only Under-Secretaries of State in the administration!—unless this innocent is but simply an insolent fellow."
"If I thought that!" said Warcolier, enraged. "No, but it is true," he said with astonishing candor, a complete overflowing of his satisfied egotism, "there are a lot of people who ask for everything and are good for nothing!—Malcontents!—I should like to know why they are malcontents!—What are they dreaming about, then? What do they want? I am asking myself ever since I came into office: What is it they want? Doesn't the present government carry out the will of the majority?—It is just like those journalists with their nagging articles!—They squall and mock! What they print is disgusting! Granted that we have demanded liberty, but that does not mean license!"
While Warcolier, entirely concerned about himself, with erect head and oratorical gesture, spoke as if in the presence of two thousand hearers, Sulpice Vaudrey again recalled, still sad and sick, the dark and sunken cheeks and the colorless ears, the poor projecting ears of the consumptive Garnier with whom he had come in contact at Ramel's.
He was anxious to be with Adrienne again, and above all, with Marianne. What would his mistress say to him when she knew of his reaching the presidency of the Council?
Adrienne had certainly received the news with little pleasure.
"If you are happy!"—was all she said, with a sigh.
It was the very expression she had used at the moment when, on the formation of the "Collard Cabinet," he had gone to her and cried out: "I am a minister!"
Adrienne was impassive.
In truth, Sulpice was beginning to think that she was too indifferent to the serious affairs of life. The delightful joys of intimacy, now, moreover, discounted, ought not to make a woman forget the public successes of her husband. Instinctively comparing this gentle, slender blonde, resigned and pensive, with Marianne, with her tawny locks and passionate nature, whom he adored more intensely each day, Vaudrey thought that a man in his position, with his ambition and merit, would have been more powerfully aided, aye, even doubled in power and success by a creature as strongly intelligent, as energetic and as fertile in resource as Mademoiselle Kayser.
He still had before him a peculiar smile of indefinable superiority expressed by his mistress when Adrienne and Marianne chanced to meet one evening at the theatre, which made him feel that his mistress was watching and analyzing his wife. The next day, Marianne with exquisite grace, but keen as a poisoned dart, said to him:
"Do you know, my dear, Madame Vaudrey is charming?"
He felt himself blush at these words hurled at him point-blank, then his cheeks grew cold. Never, till that moment, had Mademoiselle Kayser mentioned Adrienne's name.
"You like blondes, I see!" said Marianne. "I am almost inclined to be jealous!"
"Will you do me a great favor?" then interrupted Sulpice. "Never let us speak of her. Let us speak of ourselves."
"Yes," continued the perfidious Marianne in a patronizing tone, as if she had not heard him, "she is certainly charming! A trifle—just a trifle—bourgeoise—But charming! Decidedly charming!"
Knowing Vaudrey well, she understood what a keen weapon she was plunging straight into him. A little bourgeoise! This conclusion rendered by the Parisienne with a smile now haunted Sulpice, who was annoyed at himself and he sought to discover in his wife, the dear creature whom he had so tenderly loved, whom he still loved, some self-satisfying excuse for his passion and adultery.
"Bah!" he thought. "Is it adultery? There is no adultery save for the wife. The husband's faithlessness is called a caprice, an adventure, a craving or madness of the senses. Only the wife is adulterous."
In all candor, what sin had he committed? Was Adrienne less loved? He would have sacrificed his life for her. He overwhelmed her with presents, created surprises for her that she received without emotion, and simply said in a doleful tone:
"How good you are, my dear!"
He was ruining neither her nor his children! Ah! if he but had children! Why had not Adrienne had children? A woman should be a mother. It is maternity that in the marriage estate justifies a man in abandoning his freedom and a woman her shame.
A mother! And was Marianne a mother?
No, but Marianne was Marianne. Marianne was not created for the domestic fireside and the cradle. Her statuesque and seductively lovely limbs only craved for the writhings of pleasure, not the pangs of maternity. Adrienne, on the contrary, was the wife, and the childless wife soon took another name: the friend. No, he robbed her of nothing, Adrienne lost none of his affection, none of his fortune. The money squandered at Rue Prony, Vaudrey had acquired; it was the savings of the honest people of Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, the parents, the old folks, that he threw—as in smelting—into the crucible of the girl's mansion.
Adrienne expressed no desire that was not fulfilled, and Sulpice who was, moreover, confident and lulled by her quietude, felt no remorse. He did not enquire if his passion for Marianne would endure. He flung himself upon this love as upon some prey; nor was desire the only influence that now attached him to this woman, he was drawn to her also by the admiration that he felt for her boldness of thought, her singular opinions, her careless expressions, her devilish spirit; her appetizing and voluptuous attractions surprised and ensnared him—
What a counselor and ally such a woman would be!
Well and good! When Vaudrey informed her that he was about to become first minister, to preside over the Council, to show his power—this was his eternal watchword—Marianne immediately comprehended the new situation and what increase of influence in the country such a fortunate event would give him.
He observed with pleasure that something like a joyful beam gleamed in Mademoiselle Kayser's gray eyes.
She also doubtless thought that it was desirable to take advantage of the occasion, to seize and cling to the opportunity.
"Then it is official?" she asked.
"Not yet. But it is certain."
What could Marianne hope for? Again, she had no well-defined object; but she watched her opportunity, and since Vaudrey's power was enlarged, well, she was to profit by it. Claire Dujarrier, who had already served her so well, could be useful to her again and advise her advantageously. That will be seen.
"Are you desirous of attending Collard's funeral?" Vaudrey asked Marianne.
She laughed as she asked:
"Why! what do you think that would be to me?"
"It will be very fine. All the authorities, the magistrates, the Institute, the garrison of Paris will be present."
"Then you think it is amusing to see soldiers file past? I am not at all curious! You will describe it all to me and that will be quite sufficient for me."
Vaudrey walked at the head of the cortége that accompanied through Place Vendôme and Rue de la Paix, black with the crowd, the funeral procession of Collard—of Nantes—to the Madeleine. Troops of the line in parade uniforms lined the route. From time to time was heard the muffled roll of drums shrouded in crêpe. The funeral car was immense and was crowded with wreaths. As with bowed head he accompanied the funeral procession of his colleague, almost his friend,—but, bah! friendship of committees and sub-committees!—Sulpice was sufficiently an artist to be somewhat impressed with the contrast afforded by the display of official pomp crowning the rather obscure life of the Nantes advocate. He had ever obtrusively before him, as if haunted by the spectre of the Poor Man before Don Juan, the lean face of Garnier and the white moustache of Ramel. Which of the two had better served his cause, Ramel vanquished or Collard—of Nantes—dying in the full blaze of success?
He pondered over this during the whole of the ceremony. He thought of it while the notes of the organ swelled forth, while the blue flames of the burning incense danced, and while the butts of the soldiers' muskets sounded from time to time on the flagstones, as the men stood around the bier and followed the orders of the officer who commanded them.
On leaving the ceremony, Granet approached Sulpice while gently stroking his waxed moustache, and said in an ironical tone:
"Do you know that it is suggested that a statue be raised in Collard's honor?"
"Really?"
"Yes, because he is considered to have shown a great example."
"What?"
"He is one of those rare cases of ministers dying in office. Imitate him, my dear minister,—to the latest possible moment."
Sulpice made an effort to smile at Granet's pleasantry. This cunning fellow decidedly displeased him; but there was nothing to take offence at, it was mere diplomatic pleasantry expressed politely.
Before returning to the ministry, Vaudrey had himself driven to Rue Prony. Jean, the domestic, told him that Madame had gone out; she had been under the necessity of going to her uncle's. After all, Sulpice thought this was a very simple matter; but he was determined to see Marianne, so he ordered his carriage to be driven to the artist's studio. Uncle Kayser opened the door, bewildered at receiving a call from the minister and, at the same time, showing that he was somewhat uneasy, coughing very violently, as if choked with emotion, or perhaps as a signal to some one.
"Is Mademoiselle Kayser here?" asked Sulpice.
"Yes—Ah! how odd it is—Chance wills that just now one of our friends—a connoisseur of pictures—"
Vaudrey had already thrust open the door of the studio and he perceived, sitting near Marianne and holding his hat in his hand, a young man with pale complexion and reddish beard, whom Mademoiselle Kayser, rising quickly and without any appearance of surprise, eagerly presented to him:
"Monsieur José de Rosas!"
In the simple manner in which she had pronounced this name, she had infused so triumphant an expression, such manifest ostentation, that Vaudrey felt himself suddenly wounded, struck to the heart.
He recalled everything that Marianne had said to him about this man.
He greeted Rosas with somewhat frigid politeness and from the tone in which Marianne began to speak to him, he at once realized that she had some interest in allowing the Spaniard to surmise nothing. She unduly emphasized the title by which she addressed him, repeating a little too frequently: "Monsieur le Ministre."—Whenever Vaudrey sought to catch her glance she looked away in a strange fashion and managed to avoid carrying on any formal conversation with Sulpice. On the contrary, she addressed Rosas affably, asking what he had done in London, what he had become and what he brought back new.
"Nothing," José answered with a peculiar expression that displeased Vaudrey. "Nothing but the conviction that one lives only in Paris surrounded by persons whom one vainly seeks to avoid and toward whom one always returns—in spite of one's self, at times."
Vaudrey observed the almost proud, triumphant expression that flashed in Marianne's eyes. He vaguely realized an indirect confession expressed in that trite remark made by Rosas. The Spaniard's voice trembled slightly as he spoke.
Marianne smiled as she listened.
"You have taken a new journey, monsieur?" asked Sulpice, uncertain what bearing to assume.
"Oh! just a temporary absence! A trip to London—"
"Have you returned long?"
"Only this morning."
His first call was at Simon Kayser's house, where perhaps, he expected to see Marianne. And the proof—
Vaudrey instinctively thought that it was a very hasty matter to call so soon on Uncle Kayser. This man's first visit was not to the painter's studio, but in reality to the woman who—Sulpice still heard Marianne declare that—who would not become his mistress. There was something strange in that. Eh! parbleu! it was perhaps Monsieur de Rosas who had sent for Marianne.
She endeavored to make it clear that only chance was responsible for bringing them together here, but Sulpice doubted, he was uneasy and angry.
He felt almost determined to declare, if it were only by a word, the prize of possession, the conquest of this woman, whom he felt that Rosas was about to contend with him for.
She surmised everything and interrupted Sulpice even before he could have spoken and, with a sort of false respect, displayed before Rosas the friendship which Monsieur le Ministre desired to show her and of which she was proud.
"By the way, my dear minister, as to your appointment as President of the Council?"
Vaudrey knit his brows.
"That is so! I ask your pardon. I am betraying a state secret. Monsieur de Rosas will not abuse it. Isn't that so, Monsieur le Duc?"
Rosas bowed; Vaudrey was growing impatient.
"Madame Vaudrey will, of course, be delighted at this appointment, Monsieur le Ministre?" continued Marianne.
She smiled at Sulpice who was greatly astonished to hear Adrienne's name mentioned there; then, turning to Rosas, she charmingly depicted a quasi-idyllic sketch of the affection of Monsieur le Ministre for Madame Vaudrey. A model household. There was nothing surprising in that, moreover. "Monsieur le Ministre" was so amiable—yes, truly amiable, without any flattery,—and Madame Vaudrey so charming!
Sulpice, who was very nervous and had become slightly pale, endeavored to discover the meaning of this riddle. He asked himself what Marianne was thinking about, what she meant to say or dissimulate.
Monsieur de Rosas sat motionless on his chair, very cool, looking calmly on without speaking a word.
He seemed to await an opportunity to leave the studio, and since Vaudrey had arrived he had only spoken a few brief phrases in strict propriety.
Marianne, all smiles and happy, with beaming eyes, interrogated Vaudrey and sought to provide a subject of conversation for the unexpected interview of these two men. Was there a great crowd at Collard's funeral? Who had sung at the ceremony? Vaudrey answered these questions rapidly, like a man absorbed in other thoughts.
After a moment's interval, Monsieur de Rosas arose and bowed to Marianne with gentlemanly formality.
"Are you going, my dear duke?"
"Yes, I have seen you again. You are getting along well. I am satisfied."
"You will come again, at any rate? My uncle has some new compositions to show you."
"Oh! great ideas," began Kayser. "Things that will make famous frescoes!—For a palace—or the Pantheon!—either one!"
He had looked alternately at the duke and Vaudrey.
Rosas bowed to the minister and withdrew without replying, followed by Kayser and Marianne who, on reaching the threshold of the salon, seized his hand and pressed it nervously within her own soft one and said quickly:
"You will return, oh! I beg you! Ah! it is too bad to have run away! You will come back!"
She was at once entreating and commanding him. Rosas did not reply, but she felt in the trembling of his hand, as he pressed her own, in his brilliant glance, that she would see him again. And since he had returned to Paris alone, weary of being absent from her, perhaps, seeing that he had hastened back after having desired to free himself from her, did it not seem this time that he was wholly captivated?
All this was expressed by a pressure of the fingers, a glance, a sigh.
Rosas went rapidly away, like one distracted. Marianne, who motioned to Uncle Kayser to disappear, reappeared in the studio, entirely self-possessed.
Vaudrey had risen from the divan on which he had been sitting and he was standing, waiting.
"I believed that I understood that you had dismissed Monsieur de Rosas?"
"I might have told you that I did so, since it is true."
"You smiled at him, nevertheless, just now."
"Yes."
"A man who begged you to be his mistress!"
"And whom I rejected, yes!"
She looked at Sulpice with her winsome, sidelong glance, curling her lovely pink lips that he had kissed so many times.
"Then you love that man?"
"I! not at all, only it is flattering to me to have him return like that, just like some penitent little boy."
"I do not understand—"
"Parbleu! you are not a woman, that is all that that proves!—It is irritating to our self-love to see people too promptly accept the dismissal one gives them. What! Don't they suffer? Don't they say anything? Don't they complain? Monsieur de Rosas comes back to me, that proves that he was hurt, and I triumph. Now, do you understand?"
"And—that joy that I observed is—?"
"It is because Monsieur de Rosas is in Paris."
"And you don't love him? You don't love him?" asked Vaudrey, clasping Marianne's hands in his.
She laughed and said:
"I do not love him in the least."
"And you love me?"
"Yes, you, I love you!"
"Marianne, you know that it would be very wicked and wrong to lie! It is not necessary to love me at all if you must cease to love me!"
"In other words, one should never lend money unless one is obliged to lend one's whole fortune."
He felt extremely dissatisfied with Marianne's ironical remark. She looked at him with an odd expression which was all the more disquieting and intoxicating.
"Let us speak no more about that, shall we?" she said. "I repeat to you that I am satisfied at having seen Monsieur de Rosas again, because it affords my self-love its revenge. Now, whether he comes back or not, it matters little to me. He has made the amende honorable. That is the principal thing, and you, my dear, must not be jealous; I find Othello's rôle tiresome; oh! yes, tiresome!—The more so, because you have no right to treat me as a Desdemona. The Code does not permit it."
"You want to remind me again, then, that I am married? A moment ago, you stabbed me by pin-thrusts."
"In speaking of your household? Say then with knife-thrusts."
"Why did you mention my wife before Monsieur de Rosas?"
"Why," said Marianne, "you do not understand anything. It was for your sake, for you alone, in order to explain the presence in Marianne's house, of a minister who is considered to lead a puritan life. Nothing could be more simple!—Would you have me tell him that you neglect your wife and that you are my lover? Perhaps you would have liked that better!"
"Yes, perhaps," said Vaudrey passionately.
"Vain fellow!" the pretty girl said as she placed upon his mouth her little hand which he kept upon his lips. "Then you would like me to parade our secrets everywhere and to publicly announce our happiness?"
"I should like," he said, as he removed his lips from the soft palm of her hand, "that all the world should know that you are mine, mine only—only mine, are you not?—That man?"
His eyes entreated her and lost their fire.
Marianne shrugged her shoulders.
"Let Monsieur de Rosas alone in tranquillity and let us return to my house, our house," she said, with a tender expression in her eyes.
"You do not love him?"
"No."
"And you love me?"
"I have told you so."
"You love me? You love me?"
"I love you!—Ah!" she said, "how unhappy you would be, nevertheless, if I told you aloud some day in one of the lobbies of the Assembly what you ask me to repeat here in a whisper."
"I should prefer that to losing you and to knowing that you did not love me."
"He is telling the truth, however, the great fool!" cried Marianne, laughing.
"The real, sincere, profound truth!"
He drew her to him, seated on the vulgar divan where Simon Kayser was wont to display his paradoxes, and encircling her waist with both arms he felt her yielding form beneath her satin gown, and wished her to bend her fair face to his lips that were craving a kiss.
Marianne took his face between her soft hands, and looking at him with an odd smile, tender and ironical at once, at this big simpleton who was completely dominated by her mocking tenderness, she said:
"You are just the same Sulpice!"—as she spoke, she bent over him engagingly, and laughed merrily while he kissed her.
IV
José de Rosas thought himself much more the master of himself than he actually was.
This energetic man, firm as a very fine steel blade, had hoped to find that in living at a distance from Marianne, he might forget her or at least strengthen himself against her influence. He found on his return that he was, however, more seduced by her than before, his heart was wholly filled and gnawed by the distracting image of the pretty girl. He had borne away with him to London, as everywhere in fact, the puzzling smile, the sparkling glance of this woman's gray eyes that ceaselessly appeared to him at his bedside, and beside him, like some phantom.
The phantom of a living creature whose kiss still burned his lips like a live coal. A phantom that he could clasp in his arms, carry away and possess. All the virgin sentiments of this man whose life had been the half-savage one of a trapper, a savant or a wanderer, turned toward Marianne as to an incarnated hope, a living, palpitating chimera.
José felt certain that if he returned to Paris it was all over with him, and that he was giving his life to that woman. But he returned. His fight against himself over, the first visit he made, once again, was to the den where he knew well that he could discover Marianne's whereabouts. He went to her as he might walk to a gulf. Under his cold demeanor of a Castilian of former days, he was intensely passionate and would neither reflect nor resist. He had experienced that delightful sensation of impulse when, upon the rapids at the other end of the globe, the river carried into a whirlpool his almost engulfed boat. He would doubtless have been stupefied had he found Marianne installed in a fashionable little mansion. She promised herself to explain that to him when she next saw him while informing him, there and then, that she had taken up her abode there. A mere whim: Mademoiselle Vanda having gone away, the idea had attracted her of sleeping within a courtesan's curtains. "I will tell him that this transient luxury recalls my former follies when I made him believe that I was spending an inheritance from my grandmother."
She had, indeed, already lied to him, for the money she had formerly squandered had been provided by De Lissac, but even then it was necessary—for the duke was in expectancy—to conceal its source from Rosas, hence the story of the inheritance that never existed. But she at once thoroughly realized that the surroundings which were favorable to the progress of the duke's love were not the bedroom and the dressing-room of Mademoiselle Vanda. What difference would Rosas have found between her and the fashionable courtesans whom he had loved, or rather, enriched, in passing? He would not believe this new lie this time.
All that luxury might seduce Sulpice Vaudrey; it would have disgusted José. What satisfied the appetite of the little, successful bourgeois would nauseate the gentleman.
As soon as Rosas returned to her, happy and stupefied at the same time, extravagantly happy in his joy, her plan of campaign was at once arranged. She did not wish to receive him in the vulgar hôtel, where the clubmen had wiped their feet upon the carpets. She entreated him, since he wished to see her again, to see her at her "own house," yes, really, at her own house, in that little, unknown room, in Rue Cuvier, far from the noise of Paris and near the Botanical Garden, a kind of hidden cell into which no one entered.
"No one but me," she said.
The order had been given to Uncle Kayser in advance: in case Rosas should reappear, Simon was to at once inform his niece and prevent the duke from discovering Marianne's new address. And this had been done.
The duke was then going to see Mademoiselle Kayser only at Rue Cuvier, after having rediscovered her at Uncle Simon's.
He felt in advance a kind of gratitude to this woman who thus abandoned the secret of her soul to him; giving him to understand that it was there that she passed her days, buried in her recollections, dreaming of her departed years, of that which had been, of that which might be, a living death.
Marianne had shrewdly divined the case. For this great soul, mystery added a new sentiment to the feelings that Rosas experienced. The first time that he found himself in that little abode where Simon Kayser's niece awaited him, he was deeply moved, as if he had penetrated into the pure chamber of a young girl. There, yonder, in that distant quarter, he found a peaceful retreat for one wounded by life, thirsting for solitude and passing there secret hours in the midst of loved books; in fact, the discreet dwelling of a poor teacher who had collected some choice bibelots that she had found by chance. Rosas there felt himself surrounded by perfect virtue, amid the salvage of a happier past. Marianne thus became what he imagined her to be, superior to her lot, living an intellectual life, consoling herself for the mortification of existence and the hideous experiences of life by poet's dreams, in building for herself in Paris itself a sort of Thebais, where she was finally free and mistress of herself and where, when she was sad, she was not compelled to wear a mask or a false smile, and was free from all pretended gaiety. And she was so often sad!
She had occasionally mentioned to Rosas the assumed name under which she lived at that place.
"Mademoiselle Robert!"
He had manifested surprise thereat.
"Yes, I do not wish them to know anything of me, not even my name. You should understand the necessity that certain minds have for repose and forgetfulness. Did not one of your sovereigns take his repose lying in his coffin? Well! I envy him and when I have pushed the bolt of my little room in Rue Cuvier, I tremble with delight, just as if I felt my heart beating in a coffin. Do not tell any one. They would desire to know and see. People are so curious and so stupid!"
Marianne now seemed to be still more strange and seductive to Rosas. All this romantic conduct, commonplace as it was, with which she surrounded herself, exalted her in the estimation of the duke. She became in that little chamber where she was simply Mademoiselle Robert, a hundred times more charming and attractive to him than any problem: a veritable Parisian sphinx.
She was not his mistress. He loved her too deeply, with a holy, respectful passion, to take her hastily, as by chance, and Marianne was too skilful to risk any imprudent act, well-knowing that if she yielded too quickly, it would not be a woman who would fall into the duke's arms, but an idol that descended from its pedestal.
In the silence of the old house in the deserted quarter, they held conversations in the course of which Rosas freely abandoned himself, and through which she gained every day a more intimate knowledge of the character of that man who was so different from those who hitherto had sought her for pleasure.
Thus, the very respect that he instinctively felt for her, impelled her to love him.
She had not been accustomed to such treatment. Every masculine look that since her puberty she had felt riveted upon her, clearly expressed even before the lips spoke: "You are beautiful. You please me. Will you?" Rosas, at least, said: "I love you," before: "I desire you."
Tainted in the body which she had given, offered, abandoned, sold, she felt that she was respected by him even in that body, and although she considered him silly, she thought him superior to all others, or at least different, and that was a sufficient motive for loving him.
One day she said to him in a peculiar tone and with her distracting smile:
"Do you know, my dear José, there is one thing I should not have believed? You are bashful!"
He turned slightly pale.
"Sincere love is always bashful and clumsy. By that it may be known."
"Perhaps!" said Marianne.
Their conversations, however, only concerned love, so that Rosas might speak of his passion or of his reminiscences.
She once asked him if he would despise a woman if she became his mistress.
"No!" he said, with a smile, "it is only a Frenchman who would despise the woman who surrendered herself. Other nations treat love more seriously. They do not consider the gift of one's self in the light of a fall."
Marianne looked at him full in the face with a strange expression.
"What, then, if I love you well enough to become your mistress?"
"I should still esteem you enough to become your husband!"
She felt her color change.
Was it a sport on the part of Monsieur de Rosas? Why had he spoken to her thus? Had he reflected upon what he had just said?
José added in a very gentle tone:
"Will you permit me to ask you a question, Marianne?"
"You may ask me anything. I will frankly answer all your questions."
"What was Monsieur Sulpice Vaudrey doing at your uncle's the other day? Was he there to see you?"
Marianne smiled.
"Why, the minister simply came to talk of business matters. I hardly see him except for Uncle Kayser, who is soliciting an official commission,—you heard him—"
"Does Monsieur Vaudrey pay his addresses to you?"
"Necessarily. Oh! but only out of pure French gallantry. Mere politeness. He loves his wife and he knows very well that I don't love any one."
"No one?" asked Rosas.
"I do not love any one yet," repeated Marianne, opening her gray eyes with a wide stare under the Spaniard's anxious glance.
From that day, her mind was possessed of a new idea that imperiously directed it. When Rosas had returned to her, she had only regarded him as a possible lover, rich and agreeable. The mistress of a minister, she would become the mistress of a duke. A millionaire duke. The change would be profitable, assuming that she could not retain both. Her calculations were speedily made. She would only make Rosas pay more dearly for the resistance he had offered before surrendering himself.
But now, abruptly and without her having thought of it, he had, with the incautiousness of a soldier who discloses his attack and lays himself open to a bully who tries to provoke him, the duke showed her the extent of his violent passion by a single phrase that feverishly agitated her.
His mistress! Why his mistress, since he had shown her that perhaps?—
"Idiot that I am!" thought Marianne. "Suppose I play my cards for marriage?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"It will cost no more!"
Married! Duchess! and Duchesse de Rosas! At first she laughed. Duchess! I am asking a little from you! The mistress of Pierre Méran, the artist's drudge, the wretch who abducted her and debauched her, adding his depravity to hers, and who died of consumption while quite young, after having plunged this girl into vice, this Marianne Kayser, born and moulded for vice: she a duchess!
"It would be too funny, my dear!" she thought.
Never had Vaudrey, whom she saw that evening at Rue Prony, seemed so provincial, or, as she said, so Sulpice. Besides, he was gloomy and unable to express himself clearly at first, but finally he brought himself to acknowledge that he was embarrassed about providing for the bill of exchange—she understood—
"No, I do not know!"
"The bill of exchange in favor of Monsieur Gochard!"
"Ah! that is so. Well! if you cannot pay it, my dear, I will advise—I will seek—"
There was nothing to seek. Vaudrey would evidently get himself out of the affair—but the document matured at an unfortunate time. He did not dare to mortgage La Saulière, his farm at Saint-Laurent-du-Pont. He had reflected that Adrienne might learn all about it. And then—
Marianne broke in upon his confidences.
"Don't speak to me about these money matters, my friend, you know that sort of thing disgusts me!—"
"I understand you and ask your pardon."
They were to see each other again the next day, as parliament was to take a rest.
"What joy! Not to be away from you for the whole of the day!" remarked Vaudrey.
"Well then, till to-morrow!"
She felt intense pleasure in being alone again, wrapped in her sheets, with the light of the lamp that ordinarily shone upon her hours of love with Sulpice, still burning, and to be free to dream of her Spanish grandee who had said, plainly, with the trembling of passion on his lips: "I should esteem you enough to become your husband!"
She passed the night in reverie.
Vaudrey, in spite of the joy of the morrow,—a long tête-à-tête with his mistress,—thought with increasing vexation of the approaching maturity of his bill of exchange; within two months he would have to pay the hundred thousand francs which he had undertaken to pay Marianne's creditor.
"It is astonishing how quickly time passes!"
At breakfast the following day, Adrienne saw that her husband was more than usually preoccupied.
"Are political affairs going badly?"
"No—on the contrary—"
"Then why are you melancholy?"
"I am a little fatigued."
"Then," said Madame Vaudrey, "you will scold me."
"Why?"
"I have led Madame Gerson to hope—You know whom I mean, Madame Marsy's friend,—I have almost promised her that you would accept an invitation to dine at her house."
For a moment Vaudrey was put out.
Another evening taken! Hours of delight stolen from Marianne!
"I have done wrong?" asked Adrienne, as she rested her pretty but somewhat sad face on her husband's bosom. "I did it because it is so great a pleasure to me to spend an entire evening with you, even at another's house. Remember you have so many official dinners, banquets and invitations that you attend alone. When the minister's wife is invited with him, it is a fête-day for the poor, little forsaken thing. I do not have much of you, it is true, but I see you, I hear you talking and I am happy. Do not chide me for having said that we would go to Madame Gerson's. The more so, because she is a charming woman. Ah! when she speaks of you! 'So great a minister!' Don't you know what she calls you?—'A Colbert!'"
Vaudrey could not restrain a smile.
"Come, after that, one cannot refuse her invitation. It is the Monseigneur of the beggar," said he, kissing Adrienne's brow. "And when do we dine at Madame Gerson's?"
"On Monday next; I shall have at least one delightful evening to see you," said the young wife sweetly.
The minister entered his cabinet. Almost immediately after, a messenger handed him a card: Molina, Banker.
"How strange it is!" thought Sulpice. "I had him in mind."
In the course of his troublesome reflections concerning the Gochard paper, Vaudrey persistently thought of that fat, powerful man who laughed and harangued in a loud voice in the greenroom of the ballet, as he patted with his fat fingers the delicate chin of Marie Launay.
Why! if he were willing, this Molina—Molina the Tumbler!—for him it is a mere bagatelle, a hundred thousand francs!
Salomon Molina entered the minister's cabinet just as he made his way into the foyer of the Opéra, with swelling chest, tilted chin and stomach thrust forward.
"Monsieur le Ministre," he said in a clear voice, as he spread himself out in the armchair that Vaudrey pointed out to him, "I notify you that you have my maiden visit!—I am still in a state of innocency! On my honor, this is the first time I have set my foot within a minister's office!"
He manifested his independence—born of his colossal influence—by his satisfied and successful air. The former Marseillaise clothes-dealer, in his youth pouncing upon the sailors of the port and Maltese and Levantine seamen, to palm off on them a second-hand coat or trousers, as the wardrobe dealers of the Temple hook the passer-by, Salomon Molina, who had paraded his rags and his hopes on the Canebière, dreaming at the back of his dark shop of the triumphs, the pleasures, the revels and the indigestions that money affords, had, moreover, always preserved the bitterness of those wretched days and his red, Jewish lip expressed the gall of his painful experiences.
His first word as he entered Vaudrey's cabinet, asserting the virginity of his efforts at solicitation, betrayed his bitterness.
Now, triumphant, powerful, delighted, feasted and fat, his massive form, his gross flesh and his money were in evidence all over Paris. His huge paunch, shaking with laughter, filled the stage-boxes at the theatres. He expanded his broad shoulders as he reclined in the calèche that deposited him on race-days at the entrance of the weighing-enclosure. He held by the neck, as it were, everything of the Parisian quarry that yelps and bounds about money, issues of stock, and the food of public fortune: bankers, stock-brokers, and jobbers, financial, political and exchange editors, wretches running after a hundred sous, statesmen in a fair way to fortune; and he distributed to this little crowd, just as he would throw food into a kennel, the discounts and clippings of his ventures, taking malicious pleasure, the insolent delight of a fortunate upstart, in feigning at the moment when loans were issued, sickness that had no existence, in order to have the right of keeping his chamber, of hearing persons of exalted names ringing at his door and dancing attendance upon him,—powerful, influential and illustrious persons,—him, the second-hand dealer and chafferer from Marseilles.
It was then that he tasted the joy of supreme power, that delight which titillated even his marrow, and after having rested all day, the prey of a convenient neuralgia, he experienced the unlimited pleasure of force overcoming mind, the blow of a fist crushing a weakling, as with a white cravat he appeared in some salon, in the greenroom of the ballet, or in the dressing-room of a première, saying with the mocking smile of triumph and the assurance attending a gorged appetite:
"I was sick to-day, I suffered from neuralgia! The Minister of Finance called on me!—Baron Nathan came to get information from me!"
Among all the pleasures experienced by this man, he valued feminine virtue occasionally purchased with gold as little in comparison with the virgin souls, honor and virtue that he often succeeded in humiliating, in bending before him like a reed, and snuffing out with his irony, whenever necessity placed at his mercy any of those puritanical beings who had passed sometimes with haughty brow before the millions of this man of money. It was then that the clothes-dealer took his revenge in all its hideousness. There was no pity to be expected from this fat, smiling and easy-going man. His fat fingers strangled more certainly than the lean hands of a usurer. Molina never pardoned.
Ah! if this fellow went to see the minister, most assuredly he wanted a favor from him.
But what?
It was extraordinary, but before Vaudrey, Molina who could hold his own among rascals, found himself ill at ease. There was in the frank look of this ninny, as Molina the Tumbler had one evening called him while talking politics, such direct honesty that the banker, accustomed as he was to dealings with sharks and intriguers, did not quite know how to open the question, nevertheless a very important matter was in hand.
"A rich plum," thought Molina.
A matter of railways, a concession to be gained. A matter of private interest, disguised under the swelling terms of the public welfare, the national needs. Millions were to be gained. Molina was charged with the duty of sounding the President of the Council and the Minister of Public Works. Two honest men. The dodge, as the Tumbler said, was to make them swallow the affair under the guise of patriotism. A strategical railroad. The means of rapid locomotion in case of mobilization. With such high-sounding words, strategy, frontier, safety, they could carry a good many points.
Unfortunately, Vaudrey was rather skittish on these particular questions, besides he was informed on the matter. He felt his flesh creep while Molina was speaking. Just before, on seeing the banker's card, the idea of the money of which the fat man was one of the incarnations, had suddenly dawned upon him as a hope. Who knows? By Molina's aid, he might, perhaps, free himself from anxiety about the Gochard bill of exchange!—But from the minister's first words, although the banker could not get to the point, intimidated as he was by Sulpice's honest look, it was clear that Vaudrey surmised some repugnant suggestions in the hesitating words of this man.
What! Molina hesitating? He did not go straight to the point, squarely, according to his custom, Molina the illustrious Tumbler? Eh! no! the intentionally cold bearing of the minister decidedly discomposed him. Vaudrey's glance never wandered from his for a moment. When the promoter pronounced the word Bourse, a disdainful curl played upon Sulpice's lips, but not a word escaped him. Molina heard his own voice break the silence of the ministerial cabinet and he felt himself entangled. He came to propose a combination, a bonus, and he did not suspect that Vaudrey would refuse to have a hand in it. And here, this devilish minister appeared not to understand, did not understand, perhaps, or else he understood too well. Molina was not accustomed to such hard-of-hearing people. With his fat hand, he had dropped into the hands of senators and ministers of the former régime, a sum for which the only receipt given was a smile. He was accustomed to the style of conversation carried on by hints and ended between intelligent people by a shake of the hand, that in which some bits of paper rested: bank-notes or paid-up shares. And this Vaudrey knew nothing! So he felt himself obliged to explain himself clearly, to stoop to dotting every i, at the risk of being shown out of doors.
Molina was too shrewd to run this risk. He would return at another time, seeing that the minister turned a deaf ear, but pécaïre! he sweat huge drops in seeking roundabout phrases, this man who never minced his words and habitually called things by their proper names. Was the like ever seen! A pettifogger from Grenoble to floor Salomon Molina!
"It made me warm," said the money-maker, on leaving the cabinet, "but, deuce take it! I'll have my revenge. One is not a minister always. You shall pay me dearly, my little fellow, for that uncomfortable little time."
Vaudrey had thoroughly understood the matter, but he did not intend to allow it to be seen that he did. That was a simpler way. He had not had to dismiss the buyer of consciences; he had enjoyed his embarrassment and that was sufficient.
"What, however, if I had spoken to him of money before he had shown his hand! If I had accepted from him—!" he said to himself.
He shuddered at the thought as he had previously done while Molina was talking to him. A single imprudence, a single confidence might easily have placed him under the hand of this fat man. He must, however, find some solution. The days were rolling away and the bills signed for Marianne would in a very short time reach maturity.
"When I think that this Molina could in one day enable me to gain three times this sum."
Salomon had just told him: "To forestall the news on the Bourse is sometimes worth gold ingots!" A forestaller! As well say the revelation of a State secret, base speculation, almost treachery! And yet on hearing these words that covered up an insult, he had not even rung for the messenger to show Molina out, but had striven to comprehend nothing!
As the result of this conversation, he felt uncomfortable. The man had left an odor of pollution, as it were, behind him.
Vaudrey must needs be soon reassured respecting the Gochard paper. In visiting Marianne, he observed that his mistress was a shrewd woman. She informed him immediately that Claire Dujarrier whom she had seen, would secure a renewal from Gochard, who was unknown to Vaudrey, from three months to three months until the expiration of six months in consideration of an additional twenty thousand francs for each period of ninety days.
"I did not understand that at first," Marianne began by remarking.
"Oh!" said Sulpice, "I understand perfectly, it is absolute usury. But time is ready money, and in six months it will be easier for me to pay one hundred and forty thousand francs than a hundred thousand to-day. I have plans."
"What?"
"Very difficult to explain, but quite clear in my mind! The important part is not to have the date of maturity on the first of June, but on the first of December."
"Then nothing is more simple. Madame Dujarrier will arrange it."
"Is Madame Dujarrier a providence then?"
"Almost," said Marianne coldly.
Sulpice was intoxicated with joy, realizing that he had before him all the necessary time in which to free himself from his embarrassment, when Marianne should have returned him his first acceptance for one hundred thousand francs against a new one for one hundred and forty thousand. He breathed again. From the twenty-sixth of April to the first of December, he had nearly seven months in which to free himself. He repeated the calculation that he had formerly made when he said: "I have ample time!"
He reëntered the Hôtel Beauvau in a cheerful mood, Adrienne was delighted. She feared to see him return nervous and dejected.
"Then you will be brilliant presently at Madame Gerson's."
"Stop! that's so. It is this evening in fact!—"
He had forgotten it.