His Excellency the Minister Part 36

"Don't talk to me about it," replied Sulpice. "In order to reach the vacation sooner, the deputies talk twice as long."

Adrienne never opened the _Officiel_, which Vaudrey received in his private office, pretending that the sight of a newspaper too vividly recalled the fatiguing political life that absorbed him. One day, however, he allowed the journals to be brought into the salon and to lie about in Madame's room. He informed Adrienne that he was going to pa.s.s the day in Picardy, at Guise or at Vervins, where an important deputy had invited him to visit his factory. He would leave in the morning and could not return until the following day toward noon.

"What a long time!" said Adrienne.

"It is still longer for me than for you, since you remain here, in our home."

"Oh! our home! we have only one home: in Chaussee-d'Antin, or the house at Gren.o.ble, you know."

"Dear wife!" cried Vaudrey, as he embraced her tenderly,--sincerely, perhaps.

And he left. He set out for Guise, returned in the evening and ordered the Director of the Press to send to all the journals by the Havas agency, a message which ran: _The Minister of the Interior pa.s.sed the entire day yesterday at Guise, at Monsieur Delair's, the deputy from L'Aisne. He dined and slept at the house of his host. Monsieur Vaudrey is to return to Paris this morning, at eleven o'clock._

Then he showed the news to Adrienne, and laughed as he said:

"It is surprising! one cannot take a single step without it appears in print and the entire population is informed at once!"

"Tell me everything," Adrienne replied, as she embraced him with her glance. "Are you tired? You look pale. How did you spend the day? You made a speech? Were you applauded?"

It was mainly by kisses that Vaudrey answered. What could he say to Adrienne? She knew perfectly well how similar all these gatherings were, with their official routine. Monsieur Delair had been very agreeable, but the minister had necessarily had to endure much talk, much importunity.

"The day seemed very long to me!"

"And to me also," she said.

Sulpice indeed returned from Guise, but the last train on the previous night had taken him to Rue p.r.o.ny, at Marianne's. He had then found out the secret of remaining at her side undisturbed for a long time, and the telegraph, managed by the Director of the Press, enabled him to prove an alibi to Adrienne from time to time. He had taken to Marianne a huge bouquet of fresh flowers gathered in the park at Guise for Madame Vaudrey by Monsieur Delair's two daughters. That appeared to him to be quite natural.

Marianne, who was waiting for him, put the flowers in the j.a.panese vases and said to him as she threw her bare arms around him:

"Very good! You thought of me!----"

The next morning Vaudrey left, more than ever enchained by the delight of her embraces. He sometimes returned on foot, to breathe the vivifying freshness of the roseate dawn, or taking a cab, he stretched himself out wearily therein, as he drove to the ministry, musing over the hours so recently pa.s.sed and striving to arrest them in their flight, to enjoy again their seductive joy and to squeeze as from a delicious fruit, all their intoxicating poetry, delight and fascination.

He closed his eyes. He saw Marianne again with her eyes veiled as he kissed her, he drank in the odor of her hair that fell like a sort of fair cover over the lace pillow. It seemed that he was permeated with her perfume. He breathed the air with wide-open nostrils to inhale it again, to recover its scent and preserve it. His whole frame trembled with emotion at the recollection of that lovely form that he had left whiter than the sheet of the bed, in the dim light that filtered through the opal-shaded lamp.

Then he thought that he must forget, and invent some tale for Adrienne.

Again he opened his eyes and trembled in spite of himself, as he saw, on both sides of the cab, workmen slowly trudging along the sidewalks with their hands in their pockets, their noses red, a wretched worn-out silk scarf about their necks and swinging on their arms the supply of food for the day, or again with their fingers numb with the cold, holding some journal in their hands in which they read as they marched along, the speech of "Monsieur le Ministre de l'Interieur," that magnificent speech not made during the night session as Sulpice had told Adrienne, but the day before yesterday, in broad day, when the majority, faithfully grouped about him, had applauded this phrase: _I, whose hours are consecrated to the amelioration of the lot of the poor and who can say with the poet,--I shall be pardoned for this feeling of vanity:_

"What I steal from my nights, I add to my days!"

Sulpice heard again the applause that he received. He saw those devoted hands reached out to him as he descended from the tribune; he again experienced a feeling of pride, and yet he felt dissatisfied with himself now that he saw the other hands, the servile hands of the applauders, hidden by the red, cold hands of a mason who held this speech between his h.o.r.n.y fingers.

Sulpice returned to the ministry, shaking himself as if to induce forgetfulness, busy, weary, and still,--eternally,--as if immovably fixed in an antechamber of Place Beauvau, he found the inevitable place-hunters, the hornets of ministries.

Vaudrey caused these urgent people, as well as some others, to be received by Warcolier, who asked nothing better than to make tools, to sow the seed of his clientage. Guy de Lissac and Ramel had simultaneously called Vaudrey's attention to the eagerness which Warcolier manifested in toying with popularity.

"He is not wholly devoted to you, is this gentleman who prefers every government!" said Guy.

"He will undermine you quietly!" added Ramel.

"I am satisfied of that. But I am not disturbed: I have the majority.

Oh! faithful and compact."

"Woman often changes," muttered Ramel.

Guy was troubled about Vaudrey for another reason. He vaguely suspected that Sulpice was neglecting Adrienne. Political business, doubtless.

Vaudrey unquestionably loved his wife, who adored him and was herself adorable. But he manifestly neglected her.

Lissac found them one day smilingly discussing a question that was greatly occupying the journalists: divorce. Apropos of a trifle, of a suit for separation that Adrienne had just read in the _Gazette Tribunaux_. It referred to an adulterous husband, a pottery dealer in Rue Paradis, Monsieur Vauthier, the lover of a singer at a rather notorious _cafe-concert_, named Lea Thibault. The wife had demanded a separation. Adrienne had just read the pleadings.

"Poor woman!" she said. "She must have suffered, indeed."

Sulpice did not reply.

"Do you know that if that were my case, I could never forgive you?"

"You are mad! What are you thinking of?"

"Oh! it is true, the idea that you could touch another woman, that you could kiss her as you kiss me, that would make me more than angry, horrified and disgusted. I tell you, I would never forgive you."

"Who puts all this stuff in your head? Come, I will do as I used to do,"

said Vaudrey. "Not another paper shall enter your house! What an idea, to read the _Gazette des Tribunaux_!"

"It is because this name: _Vauthier_, somewhat resembles your own that I was induced to read it. And then this very mournful t.i.tle: _Separation de corps_. I would prefer divorce myself. A complete divorce that severs the past like a knife-cut."

"But what an idea!" repeated Sulpice, who was somewhat uneasy.

Vaudrey was delighted to hear Guy announced in the midst of this discussion. They would then change the topic. But Adrienne, who was much affected by her reading, returned to the same subject in an obstinate sort of way and Lissac commenced to laugh.

"What a joke! To speak of divorce between you two! Never fear, madame, your husband will never present to the Chamber a law in favor of divorce."

"Who knows?" Sulpice answered. "I am in favor of divorce myself, yes, absolutely."

"And I cannot understand, for my part, how a woman can belong to two living men," said Adrienne.

"You reason for yourself. But the unhappy women who suffer--and the unhappy men--The existing law, in fact, seeing that it admits separation, permits divorce, but more cruel, heartrending, and unjust.

Divorce without freedom. Divorce that continues the chain."

"Sulpice is right, madame, and sooner or later, we shall certainly arrive at that frightful divorce."

"After all, what does it matter to me?" Adrienne replied.

She threw the accursed _Gazette des Tribunaux_ into the waste basket with its _Suit of Vauthier vs. Vauthier_. "We are not interested, neither my husband nor I; he loves me and I love him. I am as sure of him as he is sure of me. He may demand all the laws that are possible: it would not be for selfish interest, for he would not profit by them."

"Never!" said Sulpice with a laugh, delighted to be released from the magnetic influence of Adrienne's strange excitement.

There was, however, a somewhat false ring in this laugh. Face to face with the avowed trustfulness of his wife, Sulpice experienced a slight p.r.i.c.king of conscience. He thought of Marianne. His pa.s.sion increased tenfold, but this very increase of affection made him afraid. He hastened to find himself again at Rue p.r.o.ny. The Hotel Beauvau depressed him. It became more than ever a prison. How gladly he escaped from it!

Yes, it was a prison for him as it was for Adrienne; a prison that he fled from to seek Marianne's boudoir, to enjoy her kisses and mirth, while, at the same moment, his wife, the dear abandoned, disdained creature, sad without being cognizant of the cause of her melancholy, terrified by the emptiness of that grand ministerial mansion, that "sounded hollow," as she said, quietly and stealthily took the official carriage that Vaudrey sent back to her from the Chamber, and had herself driven--where?--only she knew!