Before the buffet, brilliant with light and the gleaming of crystal, the golden-tinted champagne sparkling in the goblets, the ruddy tone of the punch, the many fruits, the bright-colored granite and the ices, Vaudrey stopped, releasing the arm of the young girl but remaining beside her and passing her the sherbet which a lackey handed him over the piled-up plates.
Groups were always encircling him; searching, half-anxious glances greeted his. An eager hunt after smiles and greetings accompanied the hunt for tutti frutti. But the minister confined his attentions to Marianne, chafing under the eagerness of his desires, though bearing them with good grace, as if he were really the lover of the pretty girl.
Marianne stood stirring the sherbet with the point of a silver-plated spoon, examining this statesman, as seductive as a fashionable man, with that womanly curiosity that divines a silent declaration. A gold weigher does not balance more keenly in his scales an unfamiliar coin than a woman estimates and gauges the value of a stranger.
Marianne readily understood that she had fascinated Vaudrey. This Vaudrey! Notwithstanding that he possessed a charming wife, he still permitted himself to recognize beauty in other women, and to tell them so, for he so informed Marianne! He declared it by his smile, his sparkling eyes, and the protecting bearing that he instinctively manifested in the presence of this creature who glanced at him with perfect composure.
In the confusion attending the attack on the buffet and in the presence of the crowd that formed a half-circle round the minister, it was not possible for him to commit himself too much; and the conversation, half-drowned by the noise of voices, was carried on by fits and starts; but in order to make themselves understood, Vaudrey and Marianne drew nearer each other and found themselves occasionally almost pressed against each other, so that the light breath of this woman and the scent of new-mown hay that she exhaled, wafted over Sulpice's face. He looked at her so admiringly that it was noticeable. She was laced in a light blue satin gown that showed her rosy arms to the elbows, and her shoulders gleamed with a rosy tint that suggested the rays of a winter sun lighting up the pure snow. A singular animation, half-feverish, beamed in her small, piercing, restless eyes, and her delicate ears with their well-marked rims were quite red. The light that fell from the wax candles imparted to her hair a Titian red tint as if she had bound her locks with henna during the night. She was visibly assured of her power and smiled with a strange and provoking air.
Vaudrey felt really much disturbed, he was attracted and half-angered by this pretty girl with dilating nostrils who calmly swallowed her glass of sherbet. He thought her at once exquisite and lovely, doubly charming with her Parisian grace and in her ball costume, her bare flesh as lustrous as mother-of-pearl under the brilliant light.
Her corsage was ornamented on the left side by an embroidered black butterfly, with outstretched wings of a brownish, brilliant tint, and Vaudrey, with a smile, asked her, without quite understanding what he said, if it were an emblematic crest.
She smiled.
"Precisely," she replied. "What I wear in my corsage I have in my mind. Black butterflies—or blue devils, as you choose."
"You are not exceptional," said Sulpice. "All women are such."
"All women in your opinion then, are a little—what is it called? a little out of the perpendicular—or to speak more to the point, a little queer, Monsieur le Ministre?"
The minister smiled in his turn, and looked at Marianne, whose eyes, seen between the blinking lids, gleamed as the electric eyes of a cat shine between its long lashes.
"No," he said, "no, but I blame them somewhat for loving the blue only in the butterflies of which you speak, the blue devils that penetrate their brain! They are born for blue, however, for that which the provincial poets style 'the azure', and they shun it as if blue were detestable. Blue! Nonsense! Good for men, those simpletons, who in the present age, are the only partisans of blue in passion and in life."
Whether he desired it or not, he had drawn still closer to this creature who studied him like a strategist while he fawned on her with his glances, losing himself in that "blue" of which he spoke with a certain elegance, in which he desired to express mockery, but which was nevertheless sincere. In the same jesting tone, pointing to the light blue of her gown, she said:
"You see, your Excellency, that all women do not dislike blue."
"If it is fashionable, parbleu! And if it becomes their beauty as well as this stuff of yours, they would adore it, most assuredly."
"They love it otherwise, too—In passion and in life. That depends on the women—and on men," she added, showing her white teeth while smiling graciously.
She dropped her spoon in the saucer and handed the sherbet to a servant. With an involuntary movement—or perhaps, after all, it was a shrewdly calculated one—she almost grazed Sulpice's cheek and lips when she extended her round and firm arm, and Sulpice, who was somewhat bewildered, was severely tempted, like some collegian, to kiss it in passage.
He closed his eyes and a moment after, on reopening them, the disturbing element having passed, he saw Marianne before him with her fan in her hand, and as if the image of which he spoke only now recurred to his memory, he said:
"Mademoiselle, it seems to me that in this very costume and as charming as you are at this moment, I have seen your portrait at the Salon; is it not so?"
"Yes," she said. "It is the very best painting that my uncle has produced."
"I thought it excellent before seeing you," said Sulpice, "but now—"
She did not feel satisfied with the smile that accompanied the compliment. She wished to hear the entire phrase.
"Now—?" said she, as a most seductive smile played on her lips.
"Now, I find it inferior to the original!"
"One always says so, your Excellency, except perhaps to the artist; but I was greatly afraid that you would not think me so, arrayed in this—this famous blue—this sky-blue that you love so much."
"And that I love a hundred times more from this evening forward," said he, in a changed and genuinely affected tone.
She did not reply, but looked at him full in the face as if to inform him that she understood him. He was quite pale.
"Would you not like to be one of the bright ornaments of my salon, as you are of that of Madame Marsy?" said he, in a whisper.
"With the greatest happiness, your Excellency."
What Sulpice said was not heard by the others; but Marianne felt that she was observed, envied already, and manifested her complete satisfaction with a toss of her head. In this atmosphere of flattery, oppressive as with the heavy odor of incense, she experienced a sensation of omnipotence, the intoxication of that power with which Vaudrey was invested, whose envied reflection was cast on her by that simple aside spoken in the midst of the crowd.
She was delighted and exceedingly proud. She almost forgot that her visit had been made on Rosas's account.
Vaudrey was about to add something, when Madame Marsy in passing to greet her guests, noticed Marianne and grasping her hand:
"I beg your pardon, your Excellency," she said, "but I must take her away from you. I have been asked for her."
"By whom?" said Vaudrey.
"Monsieur de Rosas!"
Vaudrey looked at Marianne. He observed distinctly a flash of joy illuminate her pale face and he felt a sudden and singular discontent, amounting almost to physical anguish. And why, great heavens?
Marianne smiled a salutation; he half-bowed and watched her as she went away, with a sort of angry regret, as if he had something further to say to this woman who was almost a stranger to him, and who, guided by Sabine, now disappeared amid the crowd of black coats and bright toilets. And then, almost immediately and suddenly, he was surrounded and besieged by his colleagues of the Chamber, men either indifferent or seeking favors, who only awaited the conclusion of the conversation with Mademoiselle Kayser, which they would certainly have precipitated, except for the fear of acting indiscreetly, in order to precipitate themselves on him. Amid all those unknown persons who approached him, Vaudrey sought a friend as he felt himself lost and taken by assault by this rabble.
The sight of the face of a friend, older than himself, a spare man with a white beard very carefully trimmed, caused him a feeling of pleasure, and he joyfully exclaimed:
"Eh! pardieu! why, here is Ramel!"
He immediately extended both hands in warm greeting to this man of sixty years, wearing a white cravat twisted round his neck, like a neckerchief in the old-fashioned style, and whose black waistcoat with its standing collar of ancient pattern was conspicuous amid the open waistcoats of the fashionably-dressed young men who had been very eagerly surrounding the minister for the last few moments.
"Good day, Ramel!—How delighted I am to see you!"—
"And I also," said Ramel in a friendly and affectionate tone, while his face, that seemed severe, but was only good-natured and masculine, suddenly beamed. "It is not a little on your account that I came here."
"Really?"
"Really. I was anxious to shake hands with you. It is so long since I saw you. How much has happened since then!"
"Ah! Ramel, who the devil would have said that I should be minister when I took you my first article for the Nation Française!" said Vaudrey. "Bah! who is not a minister?" said Ramel. "You are. Remember what Napoléon said to Bourrienne as he entered the Tuileries: 'Here we are, Bourrienne! now we must stay here!'"
"That is exactly what Granet said to me when he told me of the new combination."
"Granet expressed in that more of an after-thought than your old Ramel."
"My best friend," said Sulpice with emotion, grasping this man's hands in his.
"It is so much more meritorious on your part to tell me that," said Ramel, "seeing that now you do not lack friendships."
"You are still a pessimist, Ramel?"
"I—A wild optimist, seeing that I believe everything and everybody! But I must necessarily believe in the stupidity of my fellows, and upon this point I am hardly mistaken."
"But what brings you to Madame Marsy's, you who are a perfect savage?"
"Tamed!—Because, I repeat to you, I knew that you were coming and that Monsieur de Rosas was to speak on the subject of savages, and these please me. If I had been rich or if I only had enough to live on, I should have passed my life in travelling. And in the end, I shall have lived between Montmartre and Batignolles: a tortoise dreaming that he is a swallow—"
"Ramel, my dear fellow," said the minister, "would you wish me to give you a mission where you could go and study whatever seemed good to you?"
"With my rheumatism? Thanks, your Excellency!" said Ramel, smiling. "No, I am too old, and never having asked any one for anything, I am not going to begin at my age."
"You do not ask, it is offered you."
"Well, I have no desire for that. I am at the hour of the far niente that precedes the final slumber. It is a pleasant condition. One has seen so many things and persons that one has no further desires."
"The fact is," said the minister, "that if all the people you have obligated in your life had solicited an invitation from Madame Marsy, these salons would not be large enough to contain them."
"Bah! they have all forgotten as I have, myself," said Ramel, with a shake of his head and smiling pleasantly.
Vaudrey felt intense pleasure in meeting, in the midst of this crowd of indifferent or admiring persons, the man who had formerly seen him arrive in Paris, and with whom he had corresponded from the heart of his province, as with a kinsman. There was, in fact, between them, a relationship of mind and soul that united this veteran of the press with this young statesman.
The ideal sought was the same, but the temperaments were different. Ramel, although he had known them, had for a long time avoided those excitements of struggle and power that inflamed Vaudrey's blood.
"It was a glorious day when my pulse became regulated," he said. "Experience brought me the needed tonic."
Denis Ramel was a wise man. He took life as he found it, without enthusiasm as without bitterness. He was not wealthy. More than sixty years old, he found himself, after a life of hard, rough and continuous struggle, as badly off as when he started out on his career, full of burning hopes. He had passed his life honorably as a journalist—a journalist of the good old times, of the school of thought, not of news-tellers,—he had loyally and conscientiously exercised a profession in which he took pleasure; he had read much, written much, consumed much midnight oil, touched upon everything; put his fingers into every kind of pie without soiling them, and after having valiantly turned the heavy millstone of daily labor incessantly renewed for forty years, he had reached the end of his journey, the brink of the grave, almost penniless, after having skirted Fortune and seen Opportunity float toward him her perfumed and intoxicating locks more than a hundred times. Bent, weary, almost forgotten, and unknown and misunderstood by the new generation, that styled this enthusiasm, more eager, moreover, than that of juvenile faith, "old"—he saw the newcomers rise as he might have beheld the descent of La Courtille.
"It amuses me."
Ramel had, in the course of his career as a publicist, as a dealer in fame, assisted without taking part therein, in the formation of syndicates, allotments of shares and financial intrigues; and putting his shoulder to the wheel of enterprises that appeared to him to be solid, while seeking to strike out those which appeared to be doubtful, he had created millionaires without asking a cent from them, just as he had made ministers without accepting even a thread of ribbon at their hands.
This infatuating craft of a maker of men pleased him. All those pioneers in the great human comedy, he had seen on their entrance, hesitating and crying to him for assistance. This statesman, swelling out with his importance in the tribune, had received the benefit of his correction of his earlier harangues. He had encouraged, during his competition for the Prix de Rome, this member of the Institute who to-day represented national art at the Villa Médicis; he had seen this composer, now a millionaire, beg for a private rehearsal as he might ask alms, and slip into one's hands concert tickets for the Herz hall. He was the first to point out the verses of the poet who now wore l'habit vert. He had first heralded the fame of the actor now in vogue, of the tenor who to-day had his villas at Nice, yes, Ramel was the first to say: "He is one of the chosen few!"
Old, weary and knowing, very gentle and refined in his banter, and refusing to be blinded or irritated by the trickeries of destiny, Denis Ramel, when asked why, at his age and with his talents, he was neither a deputy, nor a millionaire, nor a member of the Institute, but only a Warwick living like a poor devil, smiled and said, with the tone of a man who has probed to the bottom the affairs of life:
"Bah! what is the use? All that is not so very desirable. Ministers, academicians, millionaires, prefects, men of power, I know all about them. I have made them all my life. The majority of those who strut about at this very time, well! well! it is I who made them!"
And, like a philosopher allowing the rabble to pass him, who might have been their chief, but preferred to be their judge, he locked himself in his apartments with his books, his pictures, his engravings, his little collection slowly gathered year by year, article by article, smoking his pipe tranquilly, and at times reviewing the pages of his life, just as he might have fingered the leaves of a portfolio of engravings, thinking when he chanced to meet some notable person of the day who shunned him or merely saluted him curtly and stiffly:
"You were not so proud when you came to ask me to certify your pay-slip for the cashier of the journal."
Ramel had always greatly esteemed Sulpice Vaudrey. This man seemed to him to be more refined and less forgetful than others. Vaudrey had never "posed." As a minister, he recalled with deep emotion the period of his struggles. Ramel, the former manager of the Nation Française, was one of the objects of his affection and admiration. He would have been delighted to snatch this man from his seclusion and place him in the first rank, to make this sexagenarian who had created and moulded so many others, noteworthy by a sudden stroke.
Amid the tumultuous throng, and feeling overjoyed to find once more one whom he could trust, to whom he could abandon himself entirely, he repeated to him in all sincerity:
"Come, Ramel! Would you consent to be my secretary general?"
"No! your Excellency," Ramel answered, as a kindly smile played beneath his white moustaches.
"To oblige me?—To help me?"
"No—Why, I am an egotist, my dear Vaudrey. Truly, that would make me too jealous. Take Navarrot," he added, as he pointed to a fashionable man, elegantly cravatted, carrying his head high, who had just greeted Vaudrey, using the same phrase eight times: "My dear minister—your Excellency—my minister—"
"Navarrot?"
"He appears to be very much attached to you!"
"You are very wicked, Ramel. He holds to the office and not to the man. He is not the friend of the minister, but of ministers. He is one of the ordinary touters of the ministry. He applauds everything that their Excellencies choose to say."
"Oh! I know those touters," said the old journalist. "When a minister is in power, they cheer him to the echo; when he is down, they belabor him."
Vaudrey looked at him and laughingly said: "Begone, journalist!"
"But at any rate,"—and here he extended his hand to Ramel,—"you will see me this evening?"
"Certainly."
"And you still live at—?"
"Rue Boursault, Boulevard des Batignolles."
"Till then, my dear Ramel! If occasion require, you will not refuse to give me your advice?"
"Nor my devotion. But without office, remember without office," said Ramel, still smiling.
Vaudrey took great delight in chatting with his old friend, but for a moment he had been seized with an eager desire to find amid the increasing crowd that thronged the salons, the pretty girl who had appeared to him like a statue of Desire, whetted desire, but even in her charms somewhat unwholesome, yet disturbing and appetizing.
He had come to Sabine Marsy's only by chance and as if to display in public the joy of his triumph, just as a newly decorated man willingly accepts invitations in order to show off his new ribbon, but he now felt happy for having done so. He had promised himself only to put himself in evidence and then disappear with Adrienne to the enjoyment of their usual chats, to taste that intimacy that was so dear to him, but which, since his establishment on Place Beauvau, had vanished.
He habitually disliked such receptions as that in which he now took part, those soirées as fatiguing as those crowds where one packs six hundred persons in salons capable of holding only sixty: commonplace receptions, where the master of the house is as happy when he refuses invitations as a theatre-manager when his play is the rage; where one is stifled, crushed, and where one can only reach the salon after a pugilistic encounter, and where the capture of a glass of syrup entails an assault, and the securing of an overcoat demands a battle. He held in horror those salons where there is no conversation, where no one is acquainted, where, because of the hubbub of the crowd or the stifling silence attending a concert, one cannot exchange either ideas or phrases, not even a furtive handshake, because of the packing and crushing of the guests. It was a miracle that he had just been able to exchange a few words with Mademoiselle Kayser and Ramel. The vulgarity of the place had at once impressed him,—the more so because he was the object of attraction for all those crowded faces.
All that gathering of insignificant, grave and pretentious young men, who, while they crowded, made their progress in the ranks of the sub-prefects, councillors of prefectures, picking up nominations under the feet of the influential guests as they would cigar stumps, disgusted him; men of twenty years, born, as it were, with white cravats, pretentious and pensive, creatures of office and not of work, haunting the Chambers and the antechambers, mere collectors of ideas, repeaters of serious commonplaces, salon democrats who would not offer their ungloved hand to a workman on the street; staff-majors ambitious of honors and not of devotion, whom he felt crowding around him, with smiles on their lips and applications in their pockets. How he preferred the quiet pleasure of reading at the fireside, a chat with a friend, or listening to one of Beethoven's sonatas, or a selection from Mendelssohn played by Adrienne, whose companionship made the unmarked flight of the hours pass more sweetly.
It was for that that he was created. At least he thought so and believed it. And now this salon that he had simply desired to traverse, at once seemed altogether delightful to him. And all this was due to his meeting a divine creature in the midst of this crowd. He was eager to find Marianne, to see her again. She aroused his curiosity as some enigma might.
What, then, was this woman, was she virtuous or of questionable status? Ah! she was a woman, or rather ten women in one, at the very least! A woman from head to foot! A woman to her finger tips, a refined, Parisian woman, perverse even in her virginity, and a virgin perhaps in her perversity. A problem in fair flesh.
As Vaudrey hurriedly left the buffet, every one made way for him, and he crossed the salons, eagerly looking out for Marianne. As he passed along, he saw Guy de Lissac sitting on a chair upholstered in garnet satin, his right hand resting on the gilded back and chatting with Adrienne who was fanning herself leisurely. On noticing Sulpice, the young woman smiled at him even at a distance, the happy smile of a loving woman, and she embraced him with a pure glance, asking a question without uttering a word, knowing well that he habitually left in great haste.
"Do you wish to return?" was the meaning of her questioning glance.
He passed before her, replying with a smile, but without appearing to have understood her, and disappeared in another salon, while Lissac said to Adrienne:
"What about the ministry, madame?"
"Oh! don't speak to me of it!—it frightens me. In those rooms, it seems to me that I am not at home. Do you know just what I feel? I fancy myself travelling, never, however, leaving the house. Ministers certainly should be bachelors. Men have all the honor, but their wives endure all the weariness."
"There must, however, be at the bottom of this weariness, some pleasure, since they so bitterly regret to take leave of it."
"Ah! Dieu!" said Adrienne. "Already I believe that I should regret nothing. No, I assure you, nothing whatever."
She, too, might have desired,—as Vaudrey did formerly—to leave the soirée, to be with her husband again, and she thought that Sulpice found it necessary to remain longer, since he had not definitely decided on going away.
The new salon that he entered, communicated with a smaller, circular one, hung with Japanese silk draperies, and lighted by a Venetian chandelier that cast a subdued light over the divans upon which some of the guests sat chatting. Sulpice immediately divined, as if by instinct, that Marianne was there. He went straight in that direction, and as he entered the doorway, through the opening framed by two pale blue portières, he saw in front of him, sitting side by side, the pretty girl and the Duc de Rosas to whom she had listened so attentively, almost devotedly, a little earlier; he recalled this now.
The light fell directly on Mademoiselle Kayser's shoulders and played over her fair hair. The duke was looking at her.
Vaudrey took but a single step forward.
He experienced an altogether curious and inexplicable sensation. This tête-à-tête displeased him.
At that moment, on half-turning round,—perhaps by chance—she perceived the minister and greeting him with a sweet smile, she rose and beckoned to him to approach her.
The sky-blue satin hangings, on which the light fell, seemed like a natural framework for the beautiful blonde creature.
"Your Excellency," she said, "permit me to introduce my friend, the Duc de Rosas, he is too accomplished not to appreciate eloquence and he entertains the greatest admiration for you."
Rosas had risen in his turn, and greeted the minister with a very peculiar half-inclination, not as a suitor in the presence of a powerful man, but as a nobleman greeting a man of talent.
Vaudrey sought to discover an agreeable word in the remarks of this man but he failed to do so. He had, nevertheless, just before applauded Rosas's remarks, either out of condescension or from politeness. But it seemed to him that here the duke was no longer the same man. He gave him the impression of an intruder who had thrust himself in the way that led to some possible opportunity. He nevertheless concealed all trace of the ill-humor that he himself could not define or explain, and ended by uttering a commonplace phrase in praise of the duke, but which really meant nothing.
As he was about to move away, Marianne detained him by a gesture:
"Well, your Excellency," she remarked, with a charming play of her lips as she smiled, "you see,"—and she pointed to the blue draperies of the little salon, as dainty as a boudoir—"you see that there are some women who like blue."
"Yes, Madame Marsy!—" Vaudrey answered, with an entirely misplaced irony that naturally occurred to him, as a reproach.
"So do I," said Marianne. "We have only chatted together five minutes, but I have found that time enough to discover that you and I have many tastes in common. I am greatly flattered thereby."
"And I am very happy," replied Vaudrey, who was disturbed by her direct glances that pierced him like a blade.
She had resumed her place on the divan, but Vaudrey had already forgiven her tête-à-tête with Rosas—and in truth, what had he to forgive?—This burning glance had effaced everything. He bore it away like a bright ray and still shuddered at the sensation he experienced.
He was in a hurry to leave. He now felt a sudden attack of nervousness. He was at the same moment charmed and bored. Again he resumed—amid the throng that made way for him, humbly performing its duty as a crowd—his rôle of minister, raising his head, and greeting with his official smile, but, at the bottom of his heart, really consumed by an entirely different thought. His brain was full of blue, of floating clouds, and he still heard Marianne's voice ringing in his ears with an insinuating tone, whispering: "We have many tastes in common," together with all kinds of mutual understandings which, as it were, burned like a fire in his heart.
He saw Adrienne still seated in the same place and smiling sweetly at him,—a smile of ardent devotion, but which seemed to him to be lukewarm. He leaned toward her, reached his hands out and said to De Lissac, hurriedly, as he grasped his hand: "We meet later, do we not, Guy?" Then he disappeared in the antechamber, while the servants hurried toward Madame Vaudrey, bearing her cloak, and as Vaudrey put on his overcoat, a voice called out:
"His Excellency's carriage."
"I am exhausted," said Adrienne, when she had taken her place in the carriage. "What about yourself?"
"I? not at all! I am not at all tired. It was very entertaining! One must show one's self now—"
"I know that very well," the young wife replied.
Like a child who is anxious to go to sleep, she gently rested her hood-covered head on Sulpice's shoulder. Her tiny hands sought her husband's hand, to press it beneath her cloak, as warm as a nest; and after she had closed her eyes, overcome as she was by weariness, her breathing seemed to become gradually almost as regular as in slumber, and Sulpice Vaudrey recalled once more, beneath the light of the chandeliers, that pretty blonde, with her half-bare arms and shoulders, and strange eyes, who moistened her dry lips and smiled as she swallowed her sherbet.
VI
In the pretty little Japanese salon, with its panels of sky-blue satin, framed with gilded bamboo, Marianne was seated on the divan, half-facing the duke as if to penetrate his inward thoughts, and she seemed to the Castilian as she did to Vaudrey, to be a most charming creature amid all those surroundings that might have been made expressly to match her fair beauty. Moreover, with Rosas, her freedom of manner was entirely different from that which she manifested to Sulpice, and she embraced the young man with a passionate, fervent glance.
José felt himself grow pale in the presence of this exquisite creature whose image, treasured in the depths of his heart, he had borne with him wherever his fancy had led him to travel. He gazed at her as a man looks at a woman whom he has long desired, but whom some urgent necessity has kept out of his way, and who by chance is suddenly brought near him, fate putting within our reach the dream—
She was prettier than ever, graceful and blooming, "more matured," like a fruit whose color is more tempting to the appetite. Sabine had just before very naturally brought these two together and instinctively, as if they had to exchange many confidences, they had immediately sought a retired spot away from that crowd and were seated there in that salon where Vaudrey, already half-jealous, guessed that Marianne would be.
Yes, indeed, she had many confidences to impart to that man who had suddenly entered the sphere of her life and had suddenly disappeared, remaining during several years as if dead to her. It seemed to her as they sat face to face that this flight of wasted time had made her still younger, and Rosas, notwithstanding his cold demeanor, allowed his former passion to be divined: the women one loves unmask one's secret before a man can himself explain what he feels.
She felt a profound, sincere joy. She recalled a similar conversation with José in his studio, that Oriental corner hidden in the Rue de Laval. The Japanese satin enhanced the illusion.
"Do you know that it seems to me," she said, "that I have been dreaming, and that I am not a whit older?"
"You are not altered, in fact," said Rosas. "I am mistaken—"
"Yes, I know. I have grown lovelier. That is a compliment that I am used to—Lissac has told me that already, only the other morning."
She bit her lips almost imperceptibly, as if to blame herself for her imprudence, but had she mentioned Guy's name designedly, she could not have been better satisfied with the result. Monsieur de Rosas, usually very pale, became pallid, and a slight curl of his lip, although immediately suppressed, gave an upward turn to his reddish moustache.
"Ah!" he said, "You still see Guy."
"I!—I had not spoken a single word to him until I asked him to have an invitation sent me for this soirée, and then it was merely because I knew you would be here."
"Ah!" said José again, without adding a word.
Marianne was satisfied. She knew now that the duke still loved her, since the mention of Lissac's name had made him tremble. Well! she had shrewdly understood her Rosas.
"And what have you been doing, my dear duke, for such an age?" she said.
She looked at him as she had looked at Vaudrey, with her sweet and shrewd smile, which moved him profoundly, and her glance penetrated to the inmost depths of his being.
"You know the old saying: 'I have lived.' It is great folly, perhaps, but it is the truth."
"And I wager," boldly said Marianne, "that you have never thought of me."
"Of you?"
"Of me. Of that mad Marianne, who is the maddest creature of all those you have met in your travels from the North Pole to Cambodia, but who has by no means a wicked heart, although a sufficiently unhappy one, and that has never ceased to beat a little too rapidly at certain reminiscences which you do not recall, perhaps—who knows?"
"I remember everything," replied the duke in a grave voice.
Marianne looked at him and commenced to laugh.
"Oh! how you say that, mon Dieu! Do you remember I used to call you Don Carlos? Well, you have just reminded me of Philip II. 'I remember everything!' B-r-r! what a funereal tone. Our reminiscences are not, however, very dramatic."
"That depends on the good or ill effects that they cause," said Rosas very seriously.
"Ah! God forgive me if I have ever willingly done you the least harm, my dear Rosas. Give me your hand. I have always loved you dearly, my friend."
She drew him gently toward her, half bending her face under the cold glance of the young man:
"Look at me closely and see if I lie."
The duke actually endeavored to read the gray-blue eyes of Marianne; but so strange a flash darted from them, that he recoiled, withdrawing his hands from the pressure of those fingers.
"Come, come!" she said, "I see that my cat-like eyes still make you afraid. Are they, then, very dreadful?"
She changed their expression to one of sweetness, humility, timidity and winsomeness.
"After all, that is something to be proud of, my dear duke. It is very flattering to make a man tremble who has killed tigers as our sportsmen kill partridges."
"You know very well why I am still sufficiently a child to tremble before you, Marianne," murmured José. "At my age, it is folly; but I am as superstitious as gamblers—or sailors, those other gamblers, who stake their lives, and I have never met you without feeling that I was about to suffer."
"To suffer from what?"
"To suffer through you," said the duke. "Do you know that if I had never met you, it is probable that I should never have seen all those countries of which I spoke just now, and that I should have been married long ago, at Madrid or at Toledo?"
"And I prevented you?—"
Rosas interrupted Marianne, saying abruptly, and smiling almost sadly:
"Ah! my dear one, if you only knew—you have prevented many things."
"If I have prevented you from being unhappy, I am delighted. Besides, it is evident that you have never had a very determined inclination for marriage, seeing that you have preferred to trot around the world."
"Like Don Quixote, eh? Do you know, moreover, since we are talking of all these things, that you have saved me from dying in the corner like an abandoned dog?"
"I?" said Marianne.
"You or your songs, as you please. Yes, in Egypt I suffered from fever something like typhus. They left me for dead, as after a battle, in the most wretched and frightful of native villages. No doctors, who might, perhaps, have cured me, not a bed, not even a mattress. My servants, believing me past hope, abandoned me—or rather, for I prefer your Parisian word—cast me adrift—there is no other expression. There I was, stretched out on a heap of damp straw—in short, on a dunghill—"
"You, Rosas?"
"In all conscience, I correctly portrayed Job there; lean, with a three months' old beard, and with the death-rattle in my throat; in the open air—don't alarm yourself, the nights were warm. In the evening the fellah-women gathered round me, while I watched the sun that tinted their cheeks with bronze—there were some pretty ones among them, I have painted them in water-colors from memory—they poured out their insults upon me in guttural tones, which I unfortunately understood, as I am an Orientalist,"—he smiled—"and in addition to those insults they threw mud at me, a fetid mass of filth. The women were charming, although they took part in it. These people did not like the roumi, the shivering Christian. Besides, women do not like men who have fallen. They do not like feeble creatures.—"
"Bah!—and where were the hospitals, the Sisters of Charity?"
"Are you quite sure that the Sisters of Charity are women, my dear Marianne?—In a word, I swear that I asked only one thing, as I lay on that devilish, poisonous dunghill, and that was, to end the matter in the quickest possible way, that I might be no longer thought of, when—don't know why, or, rather, I know very well—in my fever, a certain voice reached me—whence?—from far away it commenced humming,—I should proclaim it yours among a thousand—a ridiculously absurd refrain that we heard together one evening at the Variétés, at an anniversary celebration. And this Boulevard chant recurred to me there in the heart of that desert, and transported me at a single bound to Paris, and I saw you again and these fair locks that I now look at, I saw them, too, casting upon your forehead the light shadow that they do now. I heard your laugh. I actually felt that I had you beside me in one of the stage-boxes at the theatre, listening to the now forgotten singer humming the refrain that had so highly amused you, Guy and myself—"
It seemed to Marianne that the duke hesitated for a moment before pronouncing Guy's name. It was an almost imperceptible hesitation, rather felt than seen.
Rosas quickly recovered:
"On my word, you will see directly that the Boulevard lounger was hidden under your gloomy Castilian,—that refrain took such a hold on my poor wandering brain, such an entire possession, that I clung to it when the fever was at its height—I hummed it again and again, and on my honor, it banished the fever, perhaps by some homeopathic process, for at any other time, this deuced refrain would have aroused a fever in me."
"Why?—Because it was I who formerly hummed it?"
"Yes," said Rosas in a lowered tone. "Well! yes, just for that reason!—"
He drew closer to her on the divan, and she said to him, laughingly:
"How fortunate it is that Faure is singing yonder! He attracts everybody and so leaves us quite alone in this salon. It is very pleasant. Would you like to go and applaud Faure? It is some years since I heard him."
"You are very malicious, Marianne," said the duke. "Let me steal this happy, fleeting hour. I am very happy."
"You are happy?"
"Profoundly happy, and simply because I am near you, listening to you and looking at you—"
"My poor Job," she said, still laughing, "would you like me to sing you the refrain that we heard at the Variétés?"
De Rosas did not reply, but simply looked at her.
He felt as if he were surrounded with all the perfume of youth. On a console beside Marianne, stood a vase of inlaid enamel containing sprigs of white lilacs which as she leaned forward, surrounded her fair head as with an aureole of spring. Her locks were encircled with milk-white flowers and bright green leaves, transparent and clear, like the limpid green of water; and at times these sprigs were gently shaken, dropping a white bud on Marianne's hair, that looked like a drop of milk amid a heap of ruddy gold.
Ah! how at this moment, all the poetry, all the past with its unacknowledged love swelled Rosas's heart and rushed to his lips. In this brilliantly-lighted salon, under the blaze of the lights, amid the shimmering reflections of the satin draperies, he forgot everything in his rapture at the presence of this woman, lovely to adoration, whose glance penetrated his very veins and filled him with restless thoughts.
The distant music, gentle, penetrating and languishing, some soothing air from Gounod, reached them like a gentle breeze wafted into the room.
José believed himself to be in a dream.
"Ah! if you only knew, madame," he said, becoming more passionate with each word that he spoke, as if he had been gulping down some liqueur, "if you only knew how you have travelled with me everywhere, in thought, there, carried with me like a scapular—"
"My portrait?" said Marianne. "I remember it. I was very slender then, prettier, a young girl, in fact."
"No! no! not your portrait. I tore that up in a fit of frenzy."
"Tore it up?"
"Yes, as I thought that those eyes, those lips and that brow belonged to another."
Marianne's cheeks became pallid.
"But I have taken with me something better than that portrait: I preserved you, you were always present, and pretty, so pretty—as you are now, Marianne—Look at yourself! No one could be lovelier!"
"And why," she said slowly, speaking in a deep, endearing tone, "why did you not speak to me thus, of old?"
"Ah! of old!" said the duke angrily.
She allowed her head to fall on the back of the divan; looking at this man as she well knew how, and insensibly creeping closer to him, she breathed in his ears these burning words:
"Formerly, one who was your friend was beside me, is that not so?"
"Do not speak to me of him," José said abruptly.
"On the contrary, I am determined to tell you that even if I had loved him, I should not have hesitated for a moment to leave him and follow you. But I did not love him."
"Marianne!"
"You won't believe me? I never loved him. I have never been his mistress."
"I do not ask your secret. I do not speak of him," said the duke, who had now become deadly pale.
"And I am determined to speak to you of him. Never, you understand, never was Guy de Lissac my lover. No, in spite of appearances; he has never even kissed my lips. I thought I loved him, but before yielding, I had time to discover that I did not love him! And I waited, I swear to you, expecting that you would say to me: 'I love you!'"
"I?"
"You," said Marianne, in a feeble tone. "You never guessed then?"
And she crept with an exquisitely undulating movement still closer to Rosas, who, as if drawn by some magnetic fluid, surrendered his face to this woman with the wandering eyes, half-open lips, from which a gentle sigh escaped and died away in the duke's hair.
He said nothing, but hastily seizing Marianne's hand, he drew her face close to his lips, her pink nostrils dilated as if the better to breathe the incense of love; and wild, distracted, intoxicated, he pressed his feverish, burning lips upon that fresh mouth that he felt exhaled the perfume of a flower that opens to the morning dew.
"I love you now, I loved you then!—" Marianne said to him, after that kiss that paled his cheeks.
Rosas had risen: a thunder of applause greeted the termination of a song in the other salon and the throng was pouring into the smaller salon. Marianne saw Uncle Kayser, who was arguing with Ramel, whose kindly, lean face wore an expression of weariness. She also rose, grasped the duke's hands with a nervous pressure and said as she still gazed at him:
"There is my uncle. We shall see each other again, shall we not?"
She crushed Rosas with her electric glance.
Preceding the duke, she went straight to Kayser and took his arm, leaning on it as if to show that she was not alone, that she had a natural protector, and was not, as Rosas might have supposed, a girl without any position.
Kayser was almost astonished at the eagerness of his niece.
"Let us go!" she said to him.
"What! leave? Why, there is to be a supper."
"Well! we will sup at the studio," she replied nervously. "We will discuss the morality of art."
She had now attained her end. She realized that anything she might add would cool the impression already made on the duke. She wished to leave him under the intoxication of that kiss.
"Let us go!" said Kayser, drawing himself up in an ill-humored way. "Since you wish it—what a funny idea!—Ramel," he said, extending his hand to the old journalist, "if your feelings prompt you, I should like to show you some canvases."
"I go out so rarely," said Ramel.
"Huron!" said the painter.
"Puritan!" said Marianne, also offering her hand to Denis Ramel.
Rosas looked after her and saw her disappear amongst the guests in the other salon, under the bright flood of light shed by the chandeliers; and when she was gone, it seemed to him that the little Japanese salon was positively empty and that night had fallen on it. Profound ennui at once overcame him, while Marianne, in a happy frame of mind, on returning to Kayser's studio, reviewed the incidents of that evening, recalling Vaudrey's restless smile, and seeming again to hear Rosas's confidences, while she thought: "He spoke to me of the past almost in the same terms as Lissac. Is human nature at the bottom merely commonplace, that two men of entirely different characters make almost identical confessions?" While she was recalling that passionate moment, the duke was experiencing a feeling of disappointment because of their interrupted conversation, and he reproached himself for not having followed Marianne, for having allowed her to escape without telling her—
But what had he to tell her?
He had said everything. He had entirely surrendered, had opened his soul, as transparent as crystal. And this notwithstanding that he had vowed in past days that he would keep his secret locked within him. He had smothered his love under his frigid Castilian demeanor. And now, suddenly, like a child, on the first chance meeting with that woman, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a confession that he had been rigidly withholding!
Ah! it was because he loved her, and had always loved her. There was only one woman in the whole world for him,—this one. He did not lie. Marianne's smile haunted him, wherever he was. In her glance was a poison that he had drunk, which set his blood on fire. He was hers. Except for the image of Lissac, he would most certainly have returned long since to Paris to seek Mademoiselle Kayser.
But Lissac was there. He recalled how much Guy had loved her. He had more than once made the third in their company. He had often accompanied Lissac to Marianne's door. How then had she dared to say just now that she had never been his mistress?
But how was he to believe her?
And why, after all, should she have lied? What interest had she?—
In proportion as Rosas considered the matter, he grew more angry with himself, and in the very midst of the crowd, he was seized with a violent attack of frenzy, such as at times suddenly determined him to seek absolute solitude. He was eager to escape.
In order to avoid Madame Marsy, who was perhaps seeking him, he slipped through the groups of people and reached the door without being seen, leaving without formal salutation, as the English do.
He was in the hall, putting on his overcoat, while a servant turned up its otter-fur collar, when he heard Guy say:
"You are going, my dear duke? Shall we bear each other company?"
The idea was not distasteful to Rosas. Involuntarily, perhaps, he thought that a conversation with Lissac was, in some way, a chat with Marianne. These two beings were coupled in his recollections and preoccupations; besides, he really liked Guy. The Parisian was the complement of the Castilian. They had so many reminiscences in common: fêtes, suppers, sorrows, Parisian sadnesses, girls who sobbed to the measure of a waltz. Then they had not seen each other for so long.
Rosas experienced a certain degree of pleasure in finding himself once more on the boulevard with Guy. It made him feel young again. Every whiff of smoke that ascended from his cigar in the fresh air, seemed to breathe so many exhalations of youth. They had formerly ground out so many paradoxes as they strolled thus arm in arm, taking their recreation through Paris.
In a very little time, and after the exchange of a few words, they had bridged the long gap of years, of travel and separation. They expressed so much in so few words. Rosas, as if invincibly attracted by the name of Marianne, was the first to pronounce it, while Guy listened with an impassive air to the duke's interrogations.
In this way they went toward the boulevard, along which the rows of gas-jets flamed like some grand illumination.
"Paris!" said Rosas, "has a singular effect on one. It resumes its dominion over one at once on seeing it again, and it seems as if one had never left it. I have hardly unpacked my trunks, and here I am again transformed into a Parisian."
"Paris is like absinthe!" said Guy. "As soon as one uncorks the bottle, one commences to drink it again."
"Absinthe! there you are indeed, you Frenchmen, who everlastingly calumniate your country. What an idea, comparing Paris with absinthe!"
"A Parisian's idea, parbleu! You have not been here two days and you are already intoxicated with Parisine, you said so yourself. The hasheesh of the boulevard."
"Perhaps it is not Parisine only that has, in fact, affected my brain," said Rosas.
"No doubt, it is also the Parisienne. Madame Marsy is very pretty."
"Charming," said Rosas coldly.
"Less charming than Mademoiselle Kayser!"
Guy sent a whiff of smoke from his cigar floating on the night breeze, while awaiting the duke's reply; but José pursued his way beside his friend, without uttering a word, as if he were suddenly absorbed, and Lissac, who had allowed the conversation to lapse, sought to reopen it: "Then," he said suddenly,—dropping the name of Mademoiselle Kayser:—"You will be in Paris for some time, Rosas?"
"I do not in the least know."
"You will not, I hope, set out again for the East?"
"Oh! you know what a strange fellow I am. It won't do to challenge me to!"
"I don't challenge you at all, I only ask you not to leave the fortifications hereafter. We shall gain everything. You are not a Spaniard, you are a born Parisian, as I have already told you a hundred times. If I were in your place, I would set myself up here and stick to Paris. Since it is the best place in the world, why look for another?"
"My dear Guy," interrupted the duke, who had not listened, "will you promise to answer me, with all frankness, a delicate, an absurd question, if you will, one of those questions that is not generally put, but which I am going to ask you, nevertheless, without preface, point-blank?"
"To it and to any others that you put me, my dear duke, I will answer as an honest man and a friend should."
"Have you been much in love with Mademoiselle Kayser?"
"Very much."
"And has she loved you—a little?"
"Not at all."
"That is not what she has just told me."
"Ah!" said Lissac, as he threw away his cigar. "You spoke of me, then?"
"She told me that she believed she loved you sincerely."
"That is just what I had the pleasure of telling you."
"Marianne?" repeated Lissac, who perfectly understood the question from De Rosas's hesitation.
"My dear friend, when a man feels sufficiently anxious, or sufficiently weak, or sufficiently smitten, whichever you please, to stake his life on the throw of the dice, he is permitted to put one of those misplaced questions to which I have just referred. Well! you can tell me what, perhaps, none other than I would dare to ask you: Have you been Marianne's lover?"
Before replying, Guy took the arm of the duke in a friendly way, and, leaning upon it, felt that it trembled nervously. Then, touching his hand by chance, he observed that Rosas was in a burning fever.
"My dear fellow, it is the everlasting question of honor between men and of duty to a woman that you put before me. Had I been Marianne's lover, I should be bound to tell you that Marianne had never been my mistress. These falsehoods are necessary. No; I have not been Marianne's lover, but I advise you, if you do not wish to be perfectly miserable, not to seek to become so. You are one of those men who throw their hearts open as wide as a gateway. She is a calculating creature, who pursues, madly enough I admit, without consistency or constancy in her ideas, any plan that she may have in view. She might be flattered to have you as a suitor, as I was, or as a lover, as I have been assured others were. I do not affirm this, remember; but she will never be moved by your affection. She is a pure Parisian, and is incapable of loving you as you deserve, but you could not deceive her, as they say she has been."
"Deceived?" asked Rosas, in a tone of pity that struck Lissac.
"Deceived! yes! deceit is the complementary school of love."
"Then—if I loved Marianne?" asked Rosas.
"I would advise you to tell it to her at first, and prove it afterward, and finally to catalogue it in that album whose ashes are sprinkled at the bottom of the marriage gifts."
"You speak of Mademoiselle Kayser as you would speak of a courtesan," said the duke, in a choking voice.
"Ah! I give you my word," said Lissac, "that I should speak very differently of Mademoiselle Alice Aubry, or of Mademoiselle Cora Touchard. I would say to you quite frankly: They are pretty creatures; there is no danger."
"And Marianne, on the contrary, is dangerous."
"Oh! perfectly, for you."
"And why is she not dangerous for you?"
"Why, simply, my dear duke, because I am satisfied to love her as you have hitherto done and because I had, as I told you, the good fortune not to be her lover."
"But you brought her to Madame Marsy's this evening?"
"Oh! her uncle accompanied us, but I was there."
"You offer your arm then to a woman whom, as you have just told me, you consider dangerous?"
"Not for Sabine!—and then, that is a drop of the absinthe, a little of the hasheesh of which I spoke to you. One sees only concessions in Paris, and even when one is dead, one needs a further concession, but in perpetuity. One only becomes one's self"—and Guy's jesting tone became serious,—"when a worthy fellow like you puts one a question that seems terribly like asking advice. Then one answers him, as I have just answered you, and cries out to him: 'Beware!'"
"I thank you," said Rosas, suddenly stopping short on the pavement. "You treat me like a true friend."
"And if I seem to you to be too severe," added Lissac, smiling, "charge that to the account of bitterness. A man that has loved a woman is never altogether just toward her. If he has ceased to love her, he slights her, if he still loves her, he slanders her. I have perhaps, traduced Marianne, but I have not slighted you, that is certain. Now, take advantage of this gossip. But when?"
"I don't know," replied the duke. "I will write you. I shall perhaps leave Paris!"
"What is that?"
"Just what I say."
"The deuce!" said Lissac. "Do you know that if you were to fly from the danger in question, I should be very uneasy? It would be very serious."
"That would not be a flight. At the most, a caprice," the duke replied.
They separated, less pleased with each other than they were at the commencement of their interview. Lissac felt that in some fashion or other, he had wounded Rosas even in adopting the flippant tone of the lounger, without any malice, and the Spaniard with his somewhat morose nature, retired within himself, almost gloomy, and reproached Guy for the first time for smiling or jesting on so serious a matter.
Discontented with himself, he entered his house. His servant was waiting for him. He brought him a blue envelope on a card-tray.
"A telegram for monsieur le duc."
Rosas tore it open in a mechanical way. It was from one of his London friends, Lord Lindsay, who having learned of Rosas's return, sent him a pressing invitation. If he did not hasten to Paris to welcome him, it was simply because grave political affairs demanded his presence in London.
The duke, while taking off his gloves, looked at the crumpled despatch lying under the lamp. He was, like most travellers, superstitious. Perhaps this despatch had arrived in the nick of time to prevent him from committing some act of folly.
But what folly?
He still felt Marianne's kiss on his lips, burning like ice. To-morrow,—in a few hours,—his first thought, his only thought would be to find that woman again, to experience that voluptuous impression, that dream that had penetrated his heart. A danger, Lissac had said. The feline eyes of Marianne had a dangerous ardor; but it was their charm, their strength and their adorable seductiveness, that filtered like a flame through her long, fair lashes.
He closed his eyes to picture Mademoiselle Kayser, to inhale the atmosphere, to enjoy something of the perfume surrounding her.
A danger!
Guy was perhaps right. The best love is that which is never gathered, which remains immature, like a blossom in spring that never becomes a fruit. Lord Lindsay's despatch arrived seasonably. It was a chance or a warning.
In any case, what would Rosas risk by passing a few days in London, and losing the burning of that kiss? The sea-breezes would perhaps efface it.
"I am certainly feverish," the duke thought. "It was assuredly necessary to speak to Lissac. It was also necessary to speak to her," he added, in a dissatisfied, anxious, almost angry tone.
A danger!
Lissac had acted imprudently in uttering that word, which addressed to such a man as Rosas, had something alluring about it. What irritated the duke was Guy's reply, asserting that he had not been Marianne's lover, but that Marianne had had other lovers. Others? What did Lissac know of this? A species of jealous frenzy was blended with the feverish desire that Marianne's kiss had injected into Rosas's veins. He would have liked to know the truth, to see Marianne again, to urge Guy to further confidences. And, then, he felt that he would rather not have come, not have seen her again, not have gone to Sabine's.
"Well, so be it! Lord Lindsay is right, I will go."
The following morning, Guy de Lissac found in his mail a brief note, sealed with the arms of the duke, with the motto: Hasta la muerte.
José wrote to him as he was leaving Paris: