His Excellency the Minister Part 53

It was not the first time that he had been a witness to such a transformation of the feminine countenance before and after the return of letters. Guy for some time had ceased to be astonished at anything in connection with women.

"Now, my dear," said Marianne, "I hope that you will do me the kindness of allowing me to go on in my own way in life, and that I shall not have the annoyance of finding you again in the way of my purpose."

"I confess," Lissac replied, "that I should be the worst of ingrates if I did not forget many things in consideration of what I owe you, both in the present and in the past. Your burned letters still shed their fragrance!"

Marianne touched the half-consumed logs with the tip of her foot and the debris of the paper fluttered around her shoe like little black b.u.t.terflies.

"I wish I could have destroyed the past as I have made those letters flame! It weighs on me, it chokes me! You do not imagine, perhaps," she said, "that I have forgiven you for your flight and all that followed it?--If, for a moment, I almost stumbled in the mire, the fault was yours, for I loved you and you abandoned me, as a man forsakes a strumpet.--So, you see, my dear, a woman never forgets it, and I would have cried out long before, if I had felt myself free, free as I am now that those letters are burned, the poor letters of a stupid mistress, confiding in her lover who is overcome with weariness, and who is only thinking of deserting her, while she is still intoxicated in yielding to him--and because I adored you--yes, truly--because I was your mistress, do you arrogate to yourself the right of preventing me from marrying as I wish, and of drawing myself out of the bog into which, perhaps, by your selfishness, I have fallen? Ah, my dear fellow, really I am somewhat surprised at you, I swear!--I said nothing because of those sc.r.a.ps of paper, that you would have been cowardly enough, I a.s.sert, to show Rosas and every line of which told how foolish I had been to love you."

"Monsieur de Rosas would never have seen them!" said Lissac severely.

She did not seem to hear him.

"But now, what? Thank G.o.d," she continued, "there is nothing, and you have delivered those letters to me that you ought never to have returned. And I have paid you for them, paid for them with new caresses and a last prost.i.tution! Well! that ends it, doesn't it? There is nothing more between us, nothing, nothing, nothing!--And these two beings, who exchanged here their loveless kisses, the kisses of a debauchee and a courtesan, will never recognize each other again, I hope--you hear, never recognize each other again--when they meet in life. Moreover, I will take care to avoid meetings!"

Guy said nothing.

He twirled his moustache slightly and continued to look at Marianne sideways without replying.

This indifference, though doubtless a.s.sumed, nevertheless annoyed the young woman.

"Go, find Monsieur de Rosas now!" she said. "Tell him that you have been my lover, he will not believe you."

"I am satisfied of that," Lissac replied very calmly.

She realized a threat in his very calmness. But what had she to fear now?

She fastened her ironical glance on Lissac, the better to defy him, and to enjoy his defeat.

With extended hands, he noiselessly tapped his fingers together, the gesture of a person who waits, sure of himself and displaying a mocking silence.

"Then adieu!" she said abruptly. "I hope that we shall never see each other again!"

"How can you help it?" said Lissac, smiling. "In Paris!"

He sat down on a chair, while Marianne stood, putting on her gloves.

"On my word, my dear Marianne, for a clever woman you are outrageously sanguine."

"I?"

"And credulous! You credit me with the simplicity of the Age of Gold, then?--Is it possible?--Do you think a corrupted Parisian like myself would allow himself to be trifled with like a schoolboy by a woman as extremely seductive as I confess you are? But, my dear friend, the first rule in such matters is only to completely disarm one's self when it is duly proved that peace has been definitely signed and that a return to offensive tactics is not to be feared. You have shown your little pink claws too nimbly, Marianne. Too quickly and too soon. In one of those drawers, there are still one or two letters left, I was about to say, that belong to the series of letters that are slumbering: exquisite, perfumed, eloquent, written in that pretty, fine and firm writing that you have just thrown into the fire, and those letters I would only have given you on your continuing to act fairly. They were my reserve. It is an elementary rule never to use all one's powder at a single shot, and one never burns _en bloc_ such delicate autographs. They are too valuable! Tell me, will you disdain to recognize me when you meet me, Miss Marianne?"

She remained motionless, pale and as if frozen.

"Then you have kept?--" she said.

"A postscriptum, if you like, yes."

"Are you lying now, or did you lie in giving me the packet that has been burned?"

"I did not tell you that the packet was complete, and what I now tell you is the simple truth! I regret it, but you have compelled me to keep my batteries, in too quickly unmasking your own."

Marianne pulled off her gloves in anger.

"If you do not give me everything here that belongs to me, you are a coward; you hear, a coward, Monsieur de Lissac!"

"Oh! your insults are of as little importance as your kisses! but they are less agreeable!"

She clearly saw that she had thrown off the mask too soon, and that Lissac would not now allow himself to be snared by her caresses or disarmed by her threats. The game was lost.

Lost, or merely compromised?

She looked about her with an expression of powerless rage, like a very graceful wild beast enclosed in a cage. Her letters, her last letters must be here, in one of those pieces of furniture whose drawers she might open with her nails. She threw her gloves on the floor and mechanically tore into shreds--as she always did when in a rage--between her nervous fingers, her fine cambric handkerchief reduced to rags.

"Be very careful what you are doing, Guy," she said at last, casting a malicious look at him, "I have purchased these letters from you, for I hate you, I repeat it, and these letters you owe to me as you would owe money promised to a wench. If you do not give them to me, I will have them, notwithstanding."

"Really?"

"I promise you I will."

"And suppose I have burned them?"

"You lie, you have them here, you have kept them. You have behaved toward me like a thief."

"Nonsense, Marianne," said Lissac coldly, "on my faith, I see I have done well to preserve some weapon against you. You are certainly very dangerous!"

"More than you imagine," she replied.

He moved slightly backward, seeing that she wished to pa.s.s him to reach the door.

"You will not give me back my letters?" she asked in a harsh and menacing tone as she stood on the threshold of the room.

Guy stooped without heeding her and picked up the gloves that were lying on the carpet and handed them to the young woman:

"This is your property, I think?"

This was said with insolently refined politeness.

Marianne took the gloves, and as a last insult, like a blow on the cheek, she threw them at Guy's face, who turned aside and the gloves fell on the bed where just before these two hatreds had come together in kisses of pa.s.sion.

"Miserable coward!" said Marianne, surveying Lissac from head to foot with an expression of scorn, while he stood still, his monocle dangling at the end of a fine cord on his breast, near the b.u.t.tonhole of his jacket that bore the red rosette; his face was pale but wore a sly expression.

That silk rosette looked there like a vermilion note stamped on a dark ground, and it seemed to pierce like a luminous drill into Marianne's eyes; and with her head erect, pallid face and trembling lip she pa.s.sed before the domestic who hastened to open the door and went downstairs, repeating to herself with all the distracted fury of a fixed idea:

"To be avenged! To be avenged! Oh! to be avenged!"

She jumped into a cab.