Marianne, too, was not free. She was going, she said, to Auteuil for that bill of exchange. Vaudrey did not therefore, regret the soirée. His going to Madame Gerson's was now a matter of indifference to him.
"As for me, I am so happy, oh! so happy!" said Adrienne, clapping her little hands like a child.
In undressing, Vaudrey fortunately found this document which he had folded in four and left in his waistcoat pocket:
"On the first of June next, I will pay to the order of Monsieur Adolphe Gochard of No. 9, Rue Albouy, the sum of One Hundred Thousand Francs, value received in cash.
"SULPICE VAUDREY,
"Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, 37."
He turned pale on reading it. If Adrienne had seen it!—
He burned the paper at a candle.
"I am imprudent," he said to himself. "Poor Adrienne! I should not like to cause her any distress."
She was overjoyed as she made the journey in the ministerial carriage from Place Beauvau to the Gersons' mansion. At last she had a rapid, stolen moment in which she could recover the old-time joy of happy solitude, full of the exquisite agitation of former days.
"Do you recall the time when you took me away like this, on the evening of our marriage?" she whispered to him, as the carriage was driven off at a gallop.
He took her hands and pressed them.
"You still love me, don't you, Sulpice?—You believe too, that I love you more than all the world?"
"Yes, I believe it!"
"You would kill me if I deceived you?—I, ah, if you deceived me, I do not know what I should do.—Although I think that you are here, that I hold you, that I love you, you may still belong to another woman—"
"Again! you have already said that. Are you mad?" said Sulpice. "See! we have reached our destination."
Madame Gerson had brilliantly illuminated her house in Rue de Boulogne with lights, filled it with flowers, and spread carpets everywhere to receive the President of the Council. The house was too small to accommodate the guests, who were about to be stifled therein. She packed them into her dining-room. For the soirée which was to follow, she had sounded the roll-call of her friends. She was bent on founding a new salon, on showing Madame Marsy that she was not alone to be the rival of Madame Evan.
Madame Gerson was not on friendly terms with Sabine Marsy. People were ignorant as to the cause. Adrienne, who was not familiar with the history of such little broils, was very much surprised to learn of this fact.
"She claims that we take away all her personnel," said Madame Gerson. "It is not my fault if people enjoy themselves at our house. I hope that you will find pleasure here, Monsieur le Président."
Vaudrey bowed. "Madame Gerson could not doubt it."
The guests sat down to dinner. Madame Gerson beamed with joy beside the minister. Guy de Lissac, Warcolier, some senators and some deputies were of the dinner party. Monsieur and Madame Gerson never spoke of them by their names but: Monsieur le Sénateur, Monsieur le Député! They lubricated their throats with these titles, just as bourgeois who come in contact with highnesses swell out in addressing a prince as Monseigneur, absolutely as if they were addressing themselves.
Sulpice felt in the midst of this circle in which everything was sacrificed to chic, as he invariably did, the painful sensation of a man who is continually on show. He never dined out without running against the same menu, the same fanfare, and the same conversation.
Monsieur Gerson endeavored to draw the President of the Council into political conversation. He wished to know Vaudrey's opinion as to the one-man ballet. Sulpice smiled.
"Thanks!" he said. "We have just been dealing with that. I prefer truffles, they are more savory."
Through the flowers, Adrienne could see her husband who was seated opposite to her beside Madame Gerson. She conversed but little with Guy de Lissac, who was sitting on her right, although the formalities of the occasion would have suggested that Monsieur le Senator Crépeau and Monsieur de Prangins, the deputy, should have been so placed. Madame Gerson, however, had remarked with a smile, that Madame Vaudrey would not feel annoyed at having Monsieur de Lissac for her neighbor. "I have often met Monsieur de Lissac at the ministry; he is received noticeably well there."
Not knowing any one among the guests, Adrienne was, in fact, charmed to have Guy next to her. He was decidedly pleasing to her with his sallies, his skepticism which, as she thought, covered more belief than he wished to disclose. For a long time, he had felt himself entirely captivated by her cheerful modesty and the grace of her exquisite purity. She was so vastly different from all the other women whom he had known. How the devil could Vaudrey bring himself to neglect so perfect a creature, who was more attractive in her fascinating virtue than all the damsels to be met with in society, among the demi-monde, or those of a still lower grade? For Vaudrey remained indifferent to Adrienne; and this was a further and manifest blow. A specialist in matters of observation like Guy was not to be deceived therein. Madame Vaudrey had not yet complained, but she was already suffering. Was it merely politics, or was it some woman who was taking her husband from Adrienne? Guy did not know, but he would know. The pretty Madame Vaudrey interested him.
"If that idiot Sulpice were not my friend, I would make love to her. Besides," he said to himself, as he looked at Adrienne's lovely, limpid eyes, "I should fail; there are some lakes whose tranquillity cannot be disturbed."
Adrienne, pleased to have him beside her, enquired of him the names of the guests. On the left of Madame Gerson sat a little, broad-backed man, with black hair pasted over his temples, long leg-of-mutton whiskers decorating his bright-colored cheeks, and a keen eye: he was Monsieur Jouvenet, formerly an advocate; to-day Prefect of Police.
Senator Crépeau sat further away. He was a fat manufacturer, who talked about alimentary products and politics. In the Analytical Table of the Accounts of the Sittings of the Senate, his name shone brilliantly, with the following as his record: "CRÉPEAU, of L'Ain, Life Senator—Apologizes for his absence—8 January—. Apologizes for his absence—20 February—. Member of a commission—Journal Officiel, p. 1441. Apologizes for not being able to take part in the labors of the commission—4 March—. Apologizes for his absence—20 March—. Asks for leave of absence—5 April—." Such were his services during the ordinary work of that year. Monsieur Crépeau—of L'Ain—had earned the right to take a rest.
"He eats very heartily," said Lissac. "His appetite is better than his eloquence."
Next to Crépeau was another legislator, Henri de Prangins, a publicist, an old, wrinkled, stooping, dissatisfied grumbler.
"Ah! that is Monsieur de Prangins," said Adrienne, "I have heard much about him."
"He is a typical character," Lissac said, with a smile. "You know Granet, the gentleman who will become a minister; well, Prangins is the gentleman who would be a minister, but who never will be! Moreover, he is five hundred times more remarkable than a hundred others who have been in office ten times, for what reason cannot be said."
For nearly half a century Prangins, the old political wheel-horse, had plotted and jockeyed in politics, set up and overthrown ministries, piled up review articles on newspaper articles, contradiction on contradiction, page on page, spoiled cartloads of paper in his vocation of daily or fortnightly howler, and withal he was applauded, rich and popular, famous and surrounded by flatterers, knife-and-fork companions, without friends but not wanting clients, as he had made and spoiled reputations, ministers, governments, and although he well knew the vanity and nothingness of power, he aspired to secure that vain booty, oft alleging, with bitter enviousness of authority and impatient of tyranny, that to enjoy popularity uninterruptedly was not worth a quarter of an hour of power, approaching with greedy eagerness the desired lot, yet seeing it inevitably, eternally, relentlessly escape and recede from him, plucked from his grasp as it were, like a shred of flesh from the jaw of a Molossian. And now, in his unquenchable lust of power, amid the monuments of combination and deception he had created, this man was weary, disgusted and irritated,—believing himself vanquished and smothering the anger of defeat in the luxurious isolation of his wealth. He was neither officially influential nor liked. Feared he was, probably, and envied because of his good fortune, recognized, too, as a force, but only as acting in the whirlwind of his ideas and struggling in the emptiness of his dreams. After having immolated everything, youth, family, friendship, love, to this chimera: power, he found himself old, worn-out, broken by his combats, face to face with the folly of his hopes and the worthlessness of his will. Never had his nervous hand been able to grasp in its transition, the fragment of morocco of a portfolio and now that his parchment-like fingers were old and feeble, they would never cling to that shred of power! And now this Prangins avenged himself for the contempt or the injustice of his colleagues and the folly of circumstances, by criticism, defiance, mockery, denial and by loudly expressing his opinion:
"The defect of every government is that it will try to play new airs on an old violin! Your violin is cracked, Monsieur Vaudrey! I do not reproach you for that, you did not make it!"
Vaudrey laughed at the sally, but Warcolier felt that he was choking. How could the minister allow his policy to be thus attacked at table? Ah! how Warcolier would have clinched the argument of this Prangins.
Madame Gerson was delighted. The dinner was served sumptuously and went off without a hitch. The maître d'hôtel directed the service admirably. The soirée that was to follow it would be magnificent. The journals would most certainly report it. Gerson had invited one reporter in spite of his dislike of journalists. Ah! those gossipers and foolish fellows, they never forgot to describe the toilettes worn by "the pretty Madame Gerson" at first nights, at the Élysée or at Charity Bazaars. Occasionally, her husband pretended to be angered by the successes of his wife:
"Those journalists! Just imagine, those journalists! They speak about my wife just as they would about an actress! 'The lovely Madame Gerson wore a gown of crêpe de Chine!' The lovely Madame Gerson! What has my wife's beauty or her toilette to do with them?"
In truth, however, he felt flattered. He was only sincerely annoyed when people respected the devilish wall of private life, the cement of which he would have stripped off himself, in order to show his wife's beauty. To be quoted in the paper, why! that is chic.
Adrienne felt a little stunned by the noise of the conversation which increased in proportion as the dinner advanced. She was also very much astonished and not a little grieved when Madame Gerson abruptly spoke in a loud voice before all the guests concerning Madame Marsy, at whose house it was, in fact, that she made the acquaintance of Vaudrey. Madame Gerson showed her pretty teeth in a very charming manner as she tore her old friend Sabine to pieces, as it were. In a tenderly indulgent tone which was the more terrible, she repeated the tales that were formerly current: the affecting death of Philippe Marsy, the painter of Charity, and a particular escapade in which Sabine was involved with Émile Cordier, one of the leaders of the intransigeante school of painters.
"What! you did not know that?" said the pretty Madame Gerson in astonishment.
Adrienne knew nothing. She was delighted moreover to know nothing. She heard this former friend relate how Sabine had, at one time, exhibited at the Salon. Oh! mere students' daubs, horrid things! Still-life subjects that might have passed for buried ones, and yet, perhaps, Cordier retouched them.
"I thought that Madame Gerson was on the best of terms with Madame Marsy," whispered Adrienne to Lissac, who replied:
"They have been on better! They perhaps will be so again. That is of very little importance. Women revile each other and associate at the same time."
Adrienne decided that she would not listen. She knew Sabine Marsy only slightly; she was not interested as a friend; but this little execution, gracefully carried out here by a woman who recently did the honors at the Salon of Boulevard Malesherbes seemed to her as cowardly as treachery. This, then, was society! And how right was her choice in preferring solitude!
Then, in order that she might not hear the slander that was greeted with applause by those very persons who but yesterday besieged Madame Marsy's buffet, and who would run to-morrow to pay court to that woman, she conversed with Lissac. She frankly told him what she suffered at Place Beauvau. She spoke of Sulpice, as Sulpice was loved by her beyond all else in the world.
"Fancy! I do not see him, hardly ever! The other week he passed two days at Laon, where an exposition was held at which he was present."
"An exposition at Laon?" asked Lissac, astonished. "What exposition?"
"I do not know. I know nothing myself. Perhaps it is wrong of me not to keep myself informed of passing events, but all that wearies me. I detest politics and journals—I am told quite enough about them. Politics! that which takes my husband from me! My uncle, Doctor Reboux, often said to me: 'Never marry a doctor; he is only half a husband.' Vaudrey is like a doctor. Always absent, with his everlasting night-sessions."
"Night-sessions?" asked Lissac.
"Yes, at the Chamber—continually—"
Guy determined to betray nothing of his astonishment; but he knew now as surely as if he had learned everything, why Sulpice neglected Adrienne. The fool! some girl from the Opéra! some office-seeker who was skilfully entangling His Excellency! That appertained to his functions then? He was exasperated at Vaudrey and alternately looked at him and at Adrienne. So perfect a woman! Ravishing. What an exquisite profile, so delicate and with such a straight nose and a delightful mouth! Was Vaudrey mad then?
The guests rose from the table, and, as usual, the men went into the smoking-room, leaving the salon half-empty. Madame Gerson profited thereby to continue distilling her little slanders about Sabine, which she did while laughing heartily. In the smoking-room the men chatted away beneath the cloud that rose from their londrès. The clarion tones of Warcolier rung out above all the other voices.
Guy, seated in a corner on a divan, was still thinking of Adrienne, of those night-sessions, of those expositions, of those agricultural competitions invented by Sulpice, and caught but snatches of the conversation, jests, and nonsensical stories which were made at the cost of the colleagues of the Chamber and political friends:
"You know how Badiche learned at the last election that he was not elected?"
"No, how?"
"He returned to his house, anxious as to the result of the ballot. And he heard, what do you think? His children, a little boy and a little girl, who on receipt of the telegram that papa was waiting for and that mamma in her feverish expectation had opened, had already composed a song to the air of The Young Man Poisoned:
Ballottage positif!
Badiche est ballo—
Bâté,
Est ballotté!
Oui, Badiche est ballotté;
C'est papa qu'est ballotté!
Happy precocity! genuine frightful gamins!"
"Du Gavarni!"
"Apropos, on what majority do you count, Monsieur le Président?"
"One hundred and thirty-nine."
"That is a large one."
"I! my dear fellow,"—it was old Prangins speaking to Senator Crépeau,—"I do not count myself as likely to be included in the next ministry, no! I do not delude myself, but I shall be in the second—or rather in the third—no, in the fourth—yes, in the fourth ministry—Assuredly!"
An asthmatic cough, the cough of an old man, interrupted his remarks.
Guy heard Warcolier, as he held a small glass of kirsch in his hand, say with a laugh:
"I have a way of holding my electors in leash. Not only when I visit them do I address them as my friend, my brave, which flatters them, but from time to time, I write them autograph letters. They look upon that like ready money. Some of them, the good fellows, are flattered: 'He has written to me, he is not proud!' Others, the suspicious fellows, are reassured: 'Now—I have his signature, I have him!' And there you are!"
They laughed heartily.
"How they laugh afterward," thought Lissac, "at the electors whose shoes they would blacken beforehand."
"The course that I have followed is very simple," said another. "I desired to become sub-prefect so as to become a prefect and a prefect to become a deputy, and a deputy so as to reach a receiver-generalship. The salaries assured, why, there's the crowning of a career."
"Why, that fellow plays the whole gamut," again thought Guy, "but he is frank!"
"I read very little," now replied Crépeau to Warcolier—"I do not much care for pure literature—we politicians, we need substantial reading that will teach us to think."
"I believe you!—" murmured this Parisian Guy, still smoking and listening. "Go to school, my good man!"
The conversation thus intermingled and confused, horrified and irritated this blasé by its gravity and selfishness. He summed up an entire character in a single phrase and shook his head as he very shrewdly remarked: "Suppose Universal Suffrage were listening?"
Lissac did not take any part in these conversations. It was his delight to observe. He drew amusement from all these wearisome commonplaces, according to his custom as a curious spectator.
He was about, however, to rise and approach Vaudrey, who was instinctively coming toward him, when the Prefect of Police, Monsieur Jouvenet, without noticing it, placed himself between the minister and his friend.
Jouvenet spoke in a low tone to Vaudrey, smiling at the same time very peculiarly and passing his fingers through his whiskers. Whatever discretion the prefect employed, Guy was near enough to him to hear the name of Marianne Kayser, which surprised him.
Marianne! what question of Marianne could there be between these two men?
Lissac observed that Vaudrey suddenly became very pale.
He drew still nearer, pretending to finish a cup of coffee while standing. Then he heard these words very distinctly:
"A reporter saw you leave her house the other evening!"
Guy moved away very quickly. He felt a sort of sudden bewilderment, as if the few words spoken by the Prefect of Police were the natural result of his conversation with Adrienne, an immediate response thereto.
"It would be astonishing if Marianne—" thought Lissac.
Besides, he would know soon. He would merely question Vaudrey.
As soon as Jouvenet, always polite, grave and impassive, had left "Monsieur le Ministre" in a state of visible nervousness, almost of anxiety, he entered upon his plan.
"You know Mademoiselle Kayser intimately then?" he asked Vaudrey, who, taken aback, looked at him for a moment without replying and endeavored to grasp Lissac's purpose.
"Am I imprudent?" further asked Guy.
"No, but who has told you—?"
"Nothing, your Prefect of Police only spoke a little too loud. He seemed to me to understand."
Vaudrey's hand rapidly seized Lissac's wrist.
"Hush! be silent!"
"Very well! Good!" said Lissac to himself. "Poor little Adrienne."
"I will tell you all about that later. Oh! nothing is more simple! It isn't what you think!"
"I am sure of that!" answered Lissac, with a smile.
In a mechanical way, and as if to evade his friend, Sulpice left the smoking-room for the salon, tritely observing:
"We must rejoin the ladies—the cigar kills conversation—"
He felt uncomfortable. It was the first time that Jouvenet had informed him that there are agents for learning the movements of ministers. The Prefect of Police, in a chance conversation at the Opéra with the editor-in-chief of a very Parisian journal, had suppressed a rumor which stated that a minister hailing from Grenoble set propriety at defiance in his visits to Rue Prony. It would have been as well to print Vaudrey's name.
Hitherto he had been able to enjoy his passion for Marianne without scandal and secretly. His mysterious intrigue was now known to the police, to everybody, to a reporter who had stumbled against him on leaving a supper-party at the house of a courtesan in the neighborhood.
The minister was bitterly annoyed. The very flattering applause that the women bestowed upon him when he returned to the salon could not dissipate his ill-humor. He tried to chat and respond to the affected remarks of Madame Gerson and to the smiles of the women; but he was embarrassed and nervous. Adrienne thought he looked ill.
Everything was spoken of in the light but pretentious, easy tone of the conversation of those second-rate salons where neither ideas nor men are made, where, on the contrary, they are accepted, ready-made and en bloc. On every question, the picture in vogue, the favorite book, the man of the hour, they expressed themselves by the same stereotyped, expected word, borrowed from the ceaseless repetition of current polemics. Nothing was new. The conversation was as well worn as an old farthing. Adrienne was pained to see a man of Vaudrey's intelligence compelled to listen to these truisms and wondered if he would presently reproach her for having brought him into the suffocating void of this Parisian establishment where all was superficial, glittering and chic.
She was in a hurry to get away. She saw that Sulpice was growing weary, and took advantage of the first opportunity to whisper to him:
"Would you like to go?"
"Yes, let us go!" he said.
He sought Lissac and repeated to him that he would have something to say to him, and Guy bowed to the Minister and Madame Vaudrey, who left too early to please the Gersons.
Adrienne, out of heart and discouraged by commonplace gossip and slander, was eager to be again with her husband, to tell him that nothing could compensate her for the deep joy of the tête-à-tête, their evenings passed together as of old—he remembered them well,—when he read to her from the works of much-loved poets.
"Poetry!" said Vaudrey. "Will you be quiet! The Gersons would find me as antiquated as Ramel. It is old-fashioned."
"I am no longer surprised," added the young wife, "at being so little fashionable. Morally speaking, those hot-houses of platitudes stifle one. Never fear, Sulpice, I shall not be the one to ever again drag you into salons. Are you tired? Are you weary?"
"No, I was thinking of something else," replied Vaudrey, who really was thinking of Marianne.
Madame Vaudrey had not left Madame Gerson's salon before that pretty little Parisian whispered imprudently enough in the ear of a female friend:
"Our ministers' wives are always from Carpentras, Pont-à-Mousson, or Moulins; don't you think so?"
"And what would you have!" said Lissac, who on this evening heard everything that he ought not to hear, "it is as good as being from the Moulin-Rouge!"
Madame Gerson smiled, thought the expression charming, very apt, very happy, but again reflected that Lissac was exceedingly considerate toward Adrienne and that Madame Vaudrey was a little too indulgent toward Monsieur de Lissac.
V
Since the moment when it had entered her mind that she might find something more than a lover in Monsieur de Rosas, Marianne had been sorely puzzled. She was playing a strong hand. Between the minister and the duke she must make a choice.
She did not care seriously for Vaudrey. In fact she found that he was ridiculously unreserved. "He is a simple fellow!" she said to Claire Dujarrier. But she had sufficient amour-propre to retain him, and she felt assured that Sulpice was weak enough to obey her in everything: such an individual was not to be disdained. As to Rosas, she felt a sentiment which certainly was not love, but rather a feeling of astonishment, a peculiar affection. Rosas held her in respect, and she was flattered by his timid bearing, as he had in his veins the blood of heroes. He spoke almost entirely of his love, which, however, he never proposed to her to test, and this platonic course, which in Vaudrey's case she would have considered simple, appeared to her to be "good form" in the great nobleman's case. The duke raised her in her own eyes.
He had never repeated that word, doubtless spoken by him at random: marriage, and Marianne was too discreet and shrewd to appear to have specially noticed it. She did not even allude to it. She waited patiently. With the lapse of time, she thought, Rosas would be the more surely in her grasp. Meantime it was necessary to live and as she was bent on maintaining her household, she kept Vaudrey, whom she might need at any moment.
Her part was to carry on these two intrigues simultaneously, leading Rosas to believe that the minister was her friend only, nothing more, the patron of Uncle Kayser, and making Vaudrey think that since she had dismissed the duke he had become resigned and would "suppress his sighs." She could have sworn, in all sincerity, that José was not her lover.
To mislead Vaudrey was not a very difficult task. Sulpice was literally blinded by this love.—For a moment, he had been aroused by Jouvenet's intimation that his secret was known to others. For a while he seemed to have kept himself away from Marianne; but after taking new precautions, he returned trembling with ardent passion to Mademoiselle Vanda's hôtel, where his mistress's kiss, a little languid, awaited him.
Months passed thus, the entire summer, the vacation of the Chamber, the dull season in Paris. Adrienne set out for Dauphiny, where Vaudrey was to preside over the Conseil-Général, and she felt a childish delight on finding herself once more in the old house at Grenoble, where she had formerly been so happy! Yet even beneath this roof, within these walls, the mute witnesses of his virtuous love, especially when alone, Vaudrey thought of Marianne, he had but one idea, that of seeing her again, of clasping her in his arms, and he wrote her passionate letters each day, which she hardly glanced over and with a shrug of her shoulders burned as of no importance.
In the depths of his province he grew weary of the continual bustle of fêtes, receptions held in his honor, addresses delivered by him, ceremonies over which he had to preside, deputations received, statues inaugurated. Statues! always statues! In the lesser towns, at Allevard or Marestel, he was dragged from the mairie to the Grande Place, between rows of firemen, in noisy processions, whose accompanying brass instruments split his ears, under pink-striped tents, draped with tricolor flags, before interminable files of gymnastic societies, glee clubs, corporate bodies, associations, Friends of Peace, or Friends of War societies! Then wandering harangues; commonplace remarks, spun out; addresses, sprinkled with Latin by professors of rhetoric; declarations of political faith by eloquent municipal councillors, all delighted to grab at a minister when the opportunity offered. How many such harangues Vaudrey heard! More than in the Chamber. More thickly they came, more compressed, more severe than in the Chamber. What advice, political considerations and remonstrances winding up with demands for offices! What cantatas that begged for subsidies! Everywhere demands: demands for subsidies, demands for grants, demands for help, demands for decorations! Nothing but harass, enervation, lassitude, deafening clamor. They wished to kill him with their shouts: Vive Vaudrey!
The Prefect and the Commandant General of the division were constantly on guard about Vaudrey, who was dragged about in torture between these two coat-embroidered officers. From the lips of the prefect, Vaudrey heard the same commonplace utterances: progress, the future, the fusion of parties and interests, the greatness of the department, the cotton trade and the tanneries, the glory of the minister who—of the minister whom—of the glorious child of the country—of the eagle of Dauphiny. Vive Vaudrey! Vive Vaudrey! The general, at least, varied his effects. He grumbled and wrung his hands, and on the day of the inauguration of the statue of a certain Monsieur Valbonnans, a former deputy and celebrated glove manufacturer,—also the glory of the country,—Vaudrey heard the soldier murmur from morning till night, with a movement of his jaw that made his imperial jerk: "I love bronze! I love bronze!" with a persistency that stupefied the minister.
This was, perhaps, the only recollection of a cheerful nature that Vaudrey retained of his trips in Isère. This eternal murmuring of the general: I love bronze! I love bronze! had awakened him, and he gayly asked himself what devilish sort of appetite that soldier had who continually repeated his phrase in a ravenous tone. Seated beside him on the platform, while the glee-club sung an elegy in honor of the late Monsieur Valbonnans, which was composed for the occasion by an amateur of the town:
His gloves the best, as all must grant,
The best extant!
while the flourish of trumpets took up the refrain and the firemen unveiled, amid loud acclamations, the statue of Monsieur Valbonnans, which bore these words on the pedestal: To the Inventor, the Patriot, the Merchant; while, too, the prefect still poured in Vaudrey's left ear his inexhaustible observations: the glove trade, the glory of Isère; the progress, the interest, the greatness of the department, the minister who—the minister whom—(Vive Vaudrey!) Sulpice still heard, even amid the acclamations, the mechanical rumbling of the general's voice, repeating, reasserting, rehearsing: "I love bronze! I love bronze!"
On the evening of the banquet, the minister at length obtained an explanation of this extraordinary affection. The general rose, grasping his glass as if he would shiver it, and while the parfait overflowed on to the plates, he cried in a hoarse voice, as if he were at the head of his division:
"I love bronze—I love bronze—because it serves for the erection of statues and the casting of cannon. I love bronze because its voice wins battles, the artillery being to-day the superior branch, although the cavalry is the most chivalrous! I love bronze because it is the image of the heart of the soldier, and I should like to see in our country an army of men of bronze who—whom—"
He became confused and muddled, and rolled his white eyes about in his purpled face and to close his observations brandished his glass as if it had been his sword, and amid a frenzy of applause from the guests, he valiantly howled: "I love bronze! I love bronze!"
Vaudrey could scarcely prevent himself from laughing hysterically, in spite of his ministerial dignity, and when he returned to Grenoble, his carriage full of the flowers that they had showered on him, he could only answer to Adrienne, who asked him if he had spoken well, if it had been a fine affair, by throwing his bouquets on the floor and saying:
"I have laughed heartily, but I am crushed, stupefied! What a headache!"
And Sulpice wrote all that to Marianne, and innocent that he was, told her: "Ah! all those applauding voices are not worth a single word from you! When shall I see you, Marianne, dear heart?"
"At the latest possible date!" the dear heart said.
She regarded the close of summer and the beginning of autumn with extreme vexation, for it would bring with it the parliamentary session and Vaudrey, and inflict on her the presence of her lover.
Sulpice provided her liberally with all that her luxurious appetites demanded, and it was for good reasons that she decided not to break with him, although for a long time she had sacrificed this man in her inclinations. "Ah! when I shall be able to bounce him!" she said, expressing herself like a courtesan. She could not, she would not accept anything from Rosas. On that side, the game was too fine to be compromised. She could with impunity accept the position of mistress of Vaudrey, but with José she must appear to preserve, as it were, an aureole of modesty, of virginal charms, that she did not possess.
In fact, the Spaniard's mind became singularly crystallized, and she turned this result to good account: in proportion as he associated himself with the real Marianne, he created a fictitious Marianne, ideal, kind, spirituelle, perhaps ignorant, but subtile and corrupted in mind, who amused and disconcerted him at one and the same time. He had left the Continental Hotel, and rented a house on Avenue Montaigne, Champs-Élysées, where he sometimes entertained Marianne as he might have done a princess. At such times she gossiped while smoking Turkish tobacco. Her Parisian grace, her champagne-like effervescent manner, seduced and charmed this serious, pale traveller, whose very smile was tinged with melancholy.
He completely adored this woman and no longer made an effort to resist. He entirely forgot that it was through Guy that he had known her. It seemed to him that he had himself discovered her, and besides, she had never loved Guy. No, certainly not. She was frank enough to acknowledge everything. Then she denied that Lissac ever—Then what! If it should be true? But no! no! Marianne denied it. He blindly believed in Marianne.
All the conflicting, frantic arguments that men make when they are about to commit some foolish action were at war in José's brain. The more so as he did not attempt to analyze his feelings. He passed, near this pretty woman whose finger-tips he hardly dared kiss, the most delicious summer of his life. Once, however, on going out with Marianne in the Champs-Élysées, he had met the old Dujarrier with the swollen eyelids and the yellow hair that he had known formerly. One of his friends, the Marquis Vergano, had committed suicide at twenty for this woman who was old enough to be his mother. The Dujarrier had stopped and greeted Marianne, but as she remarked herself, a thousand bows and scrapes were thrown away, for Rosas had hardly noticed her with a glacial look.
"Why do you return that woman's salutation?" he at once asked Marianne.
"I need her. She has done me services."
"That is surprising! I thought her incapable of doing anything but harm."
He did not dream of Mademoiselle Kayser's coming in contact with courtesans. In the tiny, virtuous room in Rue Cuvier, Rosas thought that Marianne was in her true surroundings. She would frequently sit at the piano—one of the few pieces of furniture contained in this apartment,—and play for Rosas Oriental melodies that would transport him far away in thought, to the open desert, by the slow lulling of David's Caravane, then abruptly change to that familiar air, that rondeau of the Variétés that he hummed yonder, on his dunghill, forsaken—
Cette maison blanche—"
"I love that music-hall air!" she said.
He now no longer meditated resuming travel, or quitting Paris. Mademoiselle Kayser's hold on him grew more certain every day. The suspicion of odd mystery that enveloped this girl intensified his passion.
He sometimes asked her what her uncle was doing.
"He? Why, he has obtained, thanks to Monsieur Vaudrey, the decoration of a hydropathic establishment, Les Thermes des Batignolles. He has commenced the cartoon for a fresco: Massage Moralizing the People. We shall see that in his studio."
"Do you know," Marianne continued, "what I would like to see?"
"What, then?"
"Spain, your own country. Where were you born, Rosas?"
"At Toledo. I own the family château there."
"With portraits and armor?"
"Yes, with portraits and armor."
"Well, I would like to go to Toledo, to see that château. It must be magnificent."
"It is gloomy, simply gloomy. A fortress on a rock. Gray stone, a red rock, scorched by the sun. Huge halls half Moorish in style. Walls as thick as those of a prison. Steel knights, standing with lance in hand as in Eviradnus! Old portraits of stern ancestors cramped in their doublets, or Duchesses de Rosas, with pale faces, sad countenances, buried in their collars whose guipures have been limned by Velasquez or Claude Coëllo. Immense cold rooms where the visitors' footfalls echo as over empty tombs. A splendor that savors of the vault. You would die of ennui at the end of two hours and of cold at the end of eight days."
"Die of cold in Spain?"
"There is a cold of the soul," the duke replied with a significant smile. "That I have travelled so much, is probably due to my desire to escape from that place! But you at Toledo, at Fuentecarral,—that is the name of my castle,—a Parisian like you! It would be cruel. As well shut up a humming-bird in a bear-pit. No! thank God, I have other nooks in Spain that will shelter us, my dear sparrow of the boulevards! Under the Andalusian jasmines, beneath the oleanders of Cordova or Seville, under the fountains whose basins are decorated with azulejos, and in which sultanas bathe, my jasmins could never sufficiently exhale their perfume, my fountains could never murmur harmoniously enough to furnish you a joyous welcome—when you go—if you go—But Toledo! My terrible castle Fuentecarral! It is in vain that I am impenitently romantic, I would not take you there for anything in the world. It would be as if ice fell on your shoulders. Fuentecarral? Ugh!—that smacks of death."
While he spoke, Marianne looked at him with kindling eyes and in thought roamed through those sweet-scented gardens, and she craved to see herself in that tomblike fortress Fuentecarral, passing in front of the pale female ancestors of Rosas, aghast at the froufrou of the Parisian woman.
José thought Marianne's burning glance was an expression of her love. Ah! how completely the last six months in Paris had riveted him to this woman, who was the mistress of another! One day,—Vaudrey had just left Marianne at the rond-point of the Champs-Élysées,—the duke seeing her enter his house, said abruptly to her:
"I was about to write you, Marianne."
"Why, my dear duke?"
"To ask an appointment."
"You are always welcome, my friend, at our little retreat."
He made her sit down, seized both her hands, and looked at her earnestly as he said:
"Swear to me that you have never been Lissac's mistress!"
She did not even quiver, but was as calm as if she had long awaited this question.
She boldly met José's glance and said:
"Does one ask such a question of the woman one loves?"
"Suppose that I ask this question of the Duchesse de Rosas!" said the Spaniard, with quivering lip.
She became as pale as he.
"I do not understand—" she said.
The duke remained silent for a moment; then his entire soul passed into his voice:
"I have no family, Marianne. I am entirely my own master, and I love you. If you swear to me that you have not been Guy's mistress—"
"Nobody has the right to say that he has even touched my lips," replied Marianne firmly. "Only one man, he who took me, an innocent girl, and left me heart-broken, disgusted, believing I should never again love, before I met you. He is dead."
"I know," said Rosas, "you confided that to me formerly.—A widow save in name, I offer you, yes, I! my name, my love, my whole life—will you take them?"
"Eh! you know perfectly well that I love you!" she exclaimed, as she frantically gave him the burning and penetrating kiss that had never left his lips since the soirée at Sabine's.
"Then, no one—no one?" José repeated.
"No one!"
"On honor?"
"On honor!"
"Oh! how I love you!" he said, distractedly, all his passion shattering his coldness of manner, as the sun melts the snow. "If you but knew how jealous and crazed I am about you!—I desire you, I adore you, and I condemn myself to remain glacial before you, beneath your glance that fires my blood—I love you, and the recollection of Guy hindered me from telling you that all that is mine belongs to you—I am a ferocious creature, you know, capable of mad outbursts, senseless anger, and unreasoning flight—Yes, I have wished to escape from you again. Well! no, I remain with you; I love you, I love you!—You shall be my wife, do you hear? My wife!—Ah! what a moment of bliss! I have loved you for years! Have you not seen it, Marianne?"
"I have seen it and I loved you! I also have kept silence! I saw plainly that you believed that I had given myself to another—No, no, I am yours, nothing but yours! All my love, all myself, take it; I have kept it for you; for I hate the past, more than that, I do not know that it exists—It is despised, obliterated, it is nothing! But you, ah! you, you are my life!"
She left José's, her youth renewed, haughty, intoxicated with delight. She walked along alone, in the paths of the Champs-Élysées, the rusty leaves falling in showers at the breath of the already cold wind, her heels ringing on the damp asphalt. She marched straight ahead, her thoughts afire from her intoxicating emotions. It seemed that Paris belonged to her.
That evening, she was to go to the theatre. It was arranged that Vaudrey should wait for her at the entrance with a hired carriage and take her to Rue Prony. She wrote to him that she could not leave the house. A slight headache. Uncle Kayser undertook to have the letter taken by a commissionaire.
"Unless you would rather have me go to the ministry!"
"Are you mad?" Marianne said.
"That is true, it would be immoral."
She wished to have the evening to herself, quite alone, so that she could let her dreams take flight.
Dreams? Nonsense! On the contrary, it was a dazzling reality: a fortune, a title, a positive escape from want and the mire. What a revenge!
"It is enough to drive one mad!"
Sudden fears seized her; the terror of the too successful gambler. What if everything crumbled like a house of cards! She wished that she were several weeks older.
"Time passes so quickly, and yet one has a desire to spur it on."
Now in the solitude of her house she felt weary. She could neither read nor think, and became feverish. She regretted that she had written to Vaudrey. She wished to go to the theatre. A new operetta would be a diversion, and why should she not go? She had the ticket for her box. She could at once inform Vaudrey that her headache had vanished.
"And then he bores me!—Especially now."
Matters, however, must not be abruptly changed. Suppose Rosas should take a sudden fancy to fly off again! Besides, she had mutual interests with the minister, there was an account to be settled.
"The Gochard paper?—Bah! he will pay it. More-ever, I am not involved in that."
Suddenly she thought that she would act foolishly if she did not go where she pleased. Sulpice might think what he pleased. She got her maid to dress her hair.
"Madame is going to the theatre?"
"Yes, Justine. To the Renaissance!"
She was greatly amused at the theatre, and was radiant with pleasure. She was the object of many glances, and felt delighted at being alone. One of the characters in the operetta was a duchess whose adventures afforded the audience much diversion. She abandoned herself to her dreams, her thoughts wandering far from the theatre, the footlights and the actors, to the distant orange groves yonder.
During an entr'acte some one knocked at the door of her box. She turned around in surprise. It was Jouvenet, the Prefect of Police, who came to greet her in a very gallant fashion. The prefect—he had gained at the palais in former days, the title of L'Avocat Pathelin,—with insinuating and wheedling manners, hastened to pay his meed of respect to Marianne when he met her. There was no necessity to stand on ceremony with him. He knew all her secrets. Such a man, more-ever, must be treated prudently, as he can make himself useful. Never had Jouvenet spoken to her of Vaudrey, he was too politic in matters of state. But as a man who knows that everything in this world is transient, he skilfully maintained his place in the ranks, considering that a Prefect of Police might not be at all unlikely to succeed a President of the Council.
Marianne permitted him to talk, accepted all his gallantries as she might have done bonbons, and with a woman's wit kept him at a distance without wounding his vanity.
Jouvenet with the simple purpose of showing her that he was well-informed, asked her, stroking his whiskers as he did so, if she often saw the Duc de Rosas. What a charming man the duke was! And while the young woman watched him as if to guess his thoughts, he smiled at her.
The prefect, not wishing to appear too persistent, changed the conversation with the remark:
"Ah! there is one of our old friends ogling you!"
"An old friend?"
It was in fact Guy de Lissac who was standing at the balcony training his glass upon the box.
Marianne had only very occasionally met Lissac, but for some time she had suspected him of being secretly hostile to her. Guy bore her a grudge for having taken Sulpice away from Adrienne. He pitied Madame Vaudrey and perhaps his deep compassion was blended with another sentiment in which tenderness had taken the place of a more modified interest. He was irritated against the blind husband because he could not see the perfect charms of that delicate soul, so timid and at the same time so devoted. Although he had not felt justified in showing his annoyance to Vaudrey, he had manifested his dislike to Marianne under cover of his jesting manner, and she had been exceedingly piqued thereby. Wherefore did this man who could not understand her, interfere, and why did he add to the injuries of old the mockery of to-day?
"After all, perhaps it is through jealousy," she thought. "The dolt!"
Guy did not cease to look at her through his glass.
"Does that displease you?" Jouvenet asked.
"Not at all. What is that to me?"
"This Lissac was much in love with you!"
"Ah! Monsieur le Préfet!" Marianne observed sharply. "I know that your office inclines you to be somewhat inquisitive, but it would be polite of you to allow my past to sleep in your dockets. They are famous shrouds!"
Jouvenet bit his lips and in turn brought his glass to bear on Lissac.
"See," he said, "he makes a great deal of the cross of the Christ of Portugal! It is in very bad taste! I thought he was a shrewder man!"
"The order of Christ is then in bad odor?"
"On the contrary; but as it is like the Legion of Honor in color, he is prohibited from wearing it in his buttonhole without displaying the small gold cross—And I see only the red there—"
"I beg your pardon, Monsieur le Préfet, there is one."
"Oh! my glass is a wretched one!—But even so, I do not believe Monsieur de Lissac is authorized by the Grand Chancellor to wear his decoration. That is easily ascertained!—I will nevertheless not fail to insert in the Officiel to-morrow a note relative to the illegality of wearing certain foreign decorations—"
"Is this note directed against Lissac?"
"Not at all. But he reminds me of a step that I have wished to take for a long time: the enforcement of the law."
The entr'acte was over. Jouvenet withdrew, repeating all kinds of remarks with double meanings that veiled declarations of love; that if the occasion arose, he would place himself entirely at her service, and that some day she might be very glad to meet him—
"I thank you, Monsieur le Préfet, and I will avail myself of your kindness," replied Marianne, out of courtesy.
Something suggested to her that Guy would pay his respects to her during the next entr'acte, were it only to jest about Jouvenet's visit, seeing that he was regarded as a compromising acquaintance, and she was not wrong.
Behind his monocle, his keen, mocking glance seemed like a taunting smile.
"Well," he said, in a somewhat abrupt tone, as he sat near Marianne, "I congratulate you, my dear friend."
"Why?" she answered with surprise.
"On the great news, parbleu! Your marriage."
She turned slightly pale.
"How do you know?—"
"I have seen the duke. He called on me."
"On you? What for?"
"Can't you make a little guess—a very little guess—"
"To ask you if I had been your mistress? Lissac, you are very silly."
"Yes, my dear Marianne, prepare yourself somewhat for the position of a duchess. A gentleman, to whom you have sworn that I have never been your lover, could not doubt your word!—José asked me nothing. He simply stated his determination to see what I would say, or gather from my looks what I thought of it."
"And you said?"
"What I had to say to him: I congratulated him!"
Marianne raised her gray eyes to Lissac's face.
"Congratulate?" she said slowly.
"The woman he marries is pretty enough, I think?"
"Ah! my dear, a truce to insolent trifles!—what is it that has possessed you for some time past?"
"Nothing, but something has possessed you—or some one."
"Rosas?"
"No, Vaudrey!"
"I will restore him to you. Oh! oh! you are surprisingly interested in Vaudrey. Vaudrey or his wife?" she remarked.
She smiled with her wicked expression.
"Duchess," said Lissac, "accustom yourself to respect virtuous women!"
"Is it to talk of such pleasant trifles that you have gained access to my box?"
"No, it is to ask you for some special information."
"What?"
"Is it true, is it really true that you are about to wed Rosas?" he asked in an almost cordial tone.
"Why not?" she replied, as she raised her head.
"Because—I am going to be frank—I have always regarded you as an absolutely straightforward woman, a woman of honor—You once claimed so to be. Mad, fantastic, you often are; charming, always; but dishonest, never. To take Rosas's love, even his fortune, would be natural enough, but to take his name would be a very questionable act and a skilful one, but lacking in frankness."
"That is to say that I may devour him like a courtesan, but not marry him as a—"
"As a young girl, no, you cannot do that. And you put me—I am bound to tell you so and I take advantage of the intermission to do so—in a delicate position. If I declared the truth to Rosas, I act toward you as a rascal. If I keep silent to my friend, my true friend, I act almost like a knave."
"Did Rosas ask you to speak to me?"
"No, but there is a voice within me that pricks me to speech and tells me that if I allow you to marry the duke, I am committing myself to a questionable affair—Do you know what he asked me?—To be his witness."
If Marianne had been in a laughing mood, she would have laughed heartily.
"It is absurd," she said. "You did not consent?"
"Yes, indeed, I have consented. Because I really hoped that you would relieve me from such an undesirable duty, a little too questionable."
"You would like?—What would you like?"
"I wish—no, I would have you not marry Monsieur de Rosas."
Marianne shrugged her shoulders.
She clearly felt the threat conveyed in Lissac's words, but she desired to show from the first that she disdained them. What right, after all, had this casual acquaintance to mix himself up in her life affairs? Because, one day, she had been charitable enough to give him her youth and her body! The duty of friendship! The rights of friendship! To protect Vaudrey! To defend Rosas! Words, tiresome words!
"And what if I wish to marry him, myself?—Would you prevent it?"
"Yes, if I could!" he said firmly. "It is time that to the freemasonry of women we should oppose the freemasonry of men."
"You are cruelly cowardly enough when you are alone, what would you be then when you are together?" said Marianne, with a malignant expression. "In fact," said she, after a moment's pause, "what would you have? What? Decide!—Will you send my letters to the duke?"
"That is one way," said Lissac, calmly. "It is a woman's way, that!"
"You have my letters still?"
"Preciously preserved."
He had not contemplated such a threat, but she quickly scented a danger therein.
"Suppose I should ask the return of those letters, perhaps you would restore them to me?"
"Probably," he said.
"Suppose I asked you to bring them to me, you know, in that little out of the way room of which I spoke to you one day?"
She had leaned gently toward Lissac and her elbows grazed the knees of her former lover.
"I would wear, that day, one of those otter-trimmed toques that you have not forgotten."
She saw that he trembled, as if he were moved by some unsatisfied desire for her. She felt reassured.
"Nonsense!" she said with a smiling face. "You are not so bad as you pretend to be."
The manager tapped the customary three blows behind the curtain, and the orchestra began the prelude to the third act.
"Adieu for a brief period, my enemy!" said Marianne, extending her hand.
He hesitated to take that hand. At length, taking it in his own, he said:
"Leave me Rosas!"
"Fie! jealous one! Don't I leave Vaudrey to you?"
She laughed, while Lissac went away dissatisfied.
"I will have my letters, at all risks," thought Marianne when he had disappeared. "It is more prudent."
That night she slept badly, and the following morning rose in a very ill-humor. Her face expressed fatigue, her eyes were encircled with dark rings and burned feverishly, but withal, her beauty was heightened. All the morning she debated as to the course she should take, and finally decided to write to Guy, when Sulpice Vaudrey arrived, and beaming with delight, informed Marianne that he had the entire day to spend with her.
"I learned through Jouvenet this morning that you were able to go to the theatre. Naughty one, to steal an evening from me. But I have all to-day, at least."
And he sat down in the salon like a man spreading himself out in his own house. Marianne was meditating some scheme to get rid of him when the chamber-maid entered, presenting a note on a tray.
"What is that?"
"A messenger, madame, has brought this letter."
Marianne read the paper hurriedly.
Vaudrey observed that she blushed slightly.
"Is the messenger still there, Justine?"
"No, madame, he is gone. He said that there was no reply."
Marianne quickly tore in small pieces the note she had just read.
"Some annoyance?" asked Vaudrey.
"Yes, exactly."
"May I know?"
"No, it does not interest you. A family affair."
"Ah! your uncle?" asked Vaudrey, smiling.
"My uncle, yes!"
"He has asked that he be permitted to exhibit at the Trocadero the cartoons that he has finished: The Artist's Mission, Hydropathy the Civilizer, I don't know what in fact, a series of symbolical compositions—"
"With the mirliton device underneath?—Yes, I know," said Marianne.
She snapped her fingers in her impatience.
The letter that she had torn up had been written by Rosas, and received by Uncle Kayser at his studio, whence he had forwarded it to his niece. The duke informed Marianne that he would wait for her at five o'clock at Avenue Montaigne. He had something to say to her. He had passed the entire night reflecting and dreaming. She remembered her own wild dreams. Had Rosas then caught her thought floating like an atom on the night wind?
At five o'clock! She would be punctual. But how escape Vaudrey? She could not now feign sickness since she had received him! Moreover, he would instal himself near her and bombard her with his attentions. Was there any possible pretext, any way of getting out now? Her lover had the devoted, radiant look of a loved man who relied on enjoying a long interview with his mistress. He looked at her with a tender glance.
"The fool—The sticker!" thought Marianne. "He will not leave!"
The best course was to go out. She would lose him on the way.
"What time have you, my dear minister?"
"One o'clock!"
"Then I have time!" she said.
Vaudrey seemed surprised. Marianne unceremoniously informed him, in fact, that she had some calls to make, to secure some purchases.
"How disagreeable!"
"Yes, for me!"
"I beg your pardon," said Sulpice, correcting himself.
She sent for a coupé and damp and keen as the weather was, she substituted for the glorious day of snug, intimate joy that Vaudrey had promised himself, a succession of weary hours passed in the draught caused by badly-fitting windows, while making a series of trips hither and thither, Marianne meantime cudgelling her brains to find a way to leave her lover on the way, or at least to notify Rosas.
But above all to notify Lissac! It was Lissac whom she was determined to see. Yes, absolutely, and at once. The more she considered the matter, the more dangerous it appeared to her.
Sulpice had not given her a moment of freedom at her house, in which to write a few lines. He might have questioned her and that would be imprudent.
"I wish, however, to tell Guy to expect me!—Where? Rue Cuvier? He would not go there!—No, at his house!"
On the way she found the means.
Vaudrey evidently was at liberty for the day and, master of his time, he would not leave her. This he repeated at every turn of the wheel. She ordered the driver to take her to The Louvre.
"I have purchases to make!"
Sulpice could not accompany her, so he waited for her at the entrance on Place du Palais-Royal, nestled in a corner of the carriage, the blinds of which were lowered in order that he might not be seen. He felt very cold.
Marianne slowly crossed between the stalls on the ground floor, hardly looking at the counters bearing the Japanese goods, the gloves and the artificial flowers. She ascended a winding iron stairway draped with tapestries, her tiny feet sinking into the moquette that covered the steps, and entered a noiseless salon where men and women were silently sitting before three tables, writing or reading, just as in the drawing-room of a hotel. At a large round table, old ladies and young girls sat looking at the pictures in Illustration, the caricatures in the Journal Amusant, and the sketches in La Vie Parisienne. Others, at the second table, were reading the daily papers, some of which were rolled about their holders like a flag around its staff, or the Revue des Deux Mondes. Further on, at a red-covered table furnished with leather-bound blotters and round, glass inkstands in which the ink danced with a purple reflection, people were writing, seated on chairs covered in worn, garnet-colored velvet, with mahogany frames. This gloomy apartment was brightened by broad-leaved green plants, and was lighted from the roof by means of a flat skylight.
Marianne walked direct to the table on which the paper was symmetrically arranged in a stationery rack, and quickly seating herself, she laid her muff down, half-raised her little veil, and beat a tattoo with her tiny hand on the little black leather blotter before her, then taking off her gloves, she took at random some sheets of paper and some envelopes bearing the address of the establishment on the corners. As she looked around for a pen, Marianne could not refrain from smiling, she thought of that poor Sulpice down there, waiting in the carriage and probably shivering in the draughts issuing from the disjointed doors. And he a minister!
"Such is adultery in Paris!" she said to herself, happy to make him suffer.
She did not hurry. She was amused by her surroundings. A uniformed man promenaded the salon, watching the stationery in the cases and replacing it as it was used. If required, he sold stamps to any one present. A letter-box was attached near the tall chimney, bearing the hours of collection.
Beside Marianne, elbow to elbow, and before her, were principally women, some writing with feverish haste, others hesitatingly, and amongst them were two girls opposite her, who as they finished their letters chuckled in a low tone and passed them one to the other, say-to each other, as they chewed their plaid penholders:
"It is somewhat cold, eh! He will say: Eh, well, it is true then!"
The two pretty, cheerful girls before her were doubtless breaking in this way some liaison, amusing themselves by sending an unexpected blow to some poor fellow, and enjoying themselves by spoiling paper; the one writing, the other reading over her companion's shoulder and giving vent to merry laughter under her Hungarian toque, a huge Quaker-collar almost covering her shoulders and her little jacket with its large steel buttons.
This feminine head-gear made Marianne think of Guy. Her eyes, catlike in expression, gleamed maliciously.
She took some paper and essayed to frame some tempting, tender phrases, something nebulous and exciting, but she could not.
"What I would like to write him is that he is a wretch and that I hate him!" she thought.
Then she stopped and looked about her, altogether forgetting Vaudrey.
The contrast between that silent reading-room and the many-colored crowd in that Oriental bazaar, whose murmurs reached her ears like the roaring of a distant sea, and of which she could see only the corner clearly defined by the framework of the doors, amused Marianne, who with a smile on her lips, enjoyed the mischievous delight of fooling a President of the Council.
"At least that avenges me for the cowardice that the other forced me to commit!"
Then mechanically regarding the crowd that flowed through these docks, that contained everything that could please or disgust a whole world at once, the crowd, the clerks, the carpets, the linen, the crowding, the heaping,—all seemed strange and comic to her, novel and not Parisian, but American and up-to-date.
"Oh! decidedly up-to-date!—And so convenient!" she said, as she heard the young girls laugh when they finished their love-letters.
Then she began to write, having surely found the expressions she sought. She sent Rosas a letter of apology: she would be at his house to-morrow at the same hour. To-day, her uncle took up her day, compelling her to go to see his paintings, to visit the Louvre, to buy draperies for an Oriental scene that he intended to paint. If Rosas did not receive the letter in time, it mattered little! To Lissac,—and this was the main consideration,—she intimated that she would call on him the next morning at ten o'clock.
"Rendezvous box!" she said, as she slipped her two letters into the letter-box. "This extreme comfort is very ironical."
She smiled as she thought how long it would take to count the number of the little hands, some trembling, some bold, that had slipped into the rectilinear mouth of the letter-box some little missive that was either the foretaste or the postscript of adultery.
Then she went downstairs and rejoined Vaudrey, who was impatiently tapping the floor of the carriage with his foot.
"I was a long time there, I ask your pardon," said Marianne.
"At any rate, I hope you have bought something that suited you?" asked Vaudrey, who seemed to have caught a cold.
"Nothing at all. There is nothing in that store!"
Vaudrey was alarmed. Were they to visit one after the other all the fancy goods stores?
Marianne took pity on him.
"Let us return, shall we?" she asked.
She called to the coachman: "Rue Prony!" while Sulpice, whom she unwillingly took with her, though he wearily yawned, seized her hand and said as he sneezed:
"Ah! how kind you are!"
The next day, Marianne rang the bell of Lissac's house in Rue d'Aumale, a little before the appointed hour.
"Punctual as a creditor!" she thought.
She reached Guy's, ready for anything. She was very pale and charming in her light costume, and she entered as one would go into a fray with head high. She would not leave the place until she had recovered her letters.
It was only for those scraps of paper that she again, as it were, bound and tied herself to her past; she wished to cut herself away from it and to tear them to pieces with her teeth. But what if Guy should refuse to give them up to her? That could not be possible, although he was sincerely attached to Rosas. Still, between gratitude to a woman and duty to a friend, a man might hesitate, when he is a corrupted Parisian like Lissac.
"His affection for José will not carry him to the length of forgetting all that I have given him of myself!" Marianne thought.
Then shrugging her shoulders:
"After all, these men have such a freemasonry between them, as he said!—And they speak of our fraternity, we women!—It is nothing compared with theirs!"