His Excellency the Minister Part 46

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 Opera with the editor-in-chief of a very Parisian journal, had suppressed a rumor which stated that a minister hailing from Gren.o.ble set propriety at defiance in his visits to Rue p.r.o.ny. It would have been as well to print Vaudrey's name.

Hitherto he had been able to enjoy his pa.s.sion 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 embarra.s.sed 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 repet.i.tion 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 tete-a-tete, their evenings pa.s.sed 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-fas.h.i.+oned."

"I am no longer surprised," added the young wife, "at being so little fas.h.i.+onable. Morally speaking, those hot-houses of plat.i.tudes 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-a-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 a.s.sured 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 n.o.bleman'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 Jose 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 pa.s.sion to Mademoiselle Vanda's hotel, where his mistress's kiss, a little languid, awaited him.

Months pa.s.sed 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-General, and she felt a childish delight on finding herself once more in the old house at Gren.o.ble, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 fetes, 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 bra.s.s instruments split his ears, under pink-striped tents, draped with tricolor flags, before interminable files of gymnastic societies, glee clubs, corporate bodies, a.s.sociations, 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 munic.i.p.al 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 hara.s.s, enervation, la.s.situde, 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 Isere. This eternal murmuring of the general: _I love bronze! I love bronze!_ had awakened him, and he gayly asked himself what devilish sort of appet.i.te 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:

Monsieur Valbonnans' praise let's chant, yes, chant!

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 Isere; 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, rea.s.serting, 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 gla.s.s as if he would s.h.i.+ver it, and while the _parfait_ overflowed on to the plates, he cried in a hoa.r.s.e 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 gla.s.s 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 Gren.o.ble, 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 appet.i.tes 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 Jose 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 a.s.sociated himself with the real Marianne, he created a fict.i.tious 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-elysees, 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 Jose's brain. The more so as he did not attempt to a.n.a.lyze his feelings. He pa.s.sed, 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-elysees, 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 sc.r.a.pes 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 Varietes that he hummed yonder, on his dunghill, forsaken--

"Voyez-vous, la-bas, Cette maison blanche--"