His Excellency the Minister Part 59

Now it seemed to her that they were whispering about her; that they were sneering behind their fans, and that all these women knew her secret and her history.

Why should they not know them? All Paris must have read that mocking, offensive and singular article: _The Mistress of an Archon_! All these people had, perhaps, learned it by heart. There were people here who frequented the salons and who probably kept the article in their pockets.

Yes, that would be to commit a folly, to brave everything and to destroy all!

Sulpice, then, did not know her; he believed her to be insignificant because she was gentle, resigned to everything because she was devoted to his love and his glory?--Ah! devoted even to the point of killing herself, devoted to the extent of dying, or living poor, working with her own hands, if only he loved her, if only he never lied to her!

"And here was his mistress!"

His mistress! His mistress!

She repeated this name with increasing rage, reiterating it, inwardly digesting it, as if it were something terribly bitter. His mistress, that lovely, insolent creature! Yes, very lovely, but manifestly terrible and capable of driving a feeble being like Vaudrey to commit every folly, nay, worse, infamy.

"And it is such women that are loved! Ah! Idiots! idiots that we are!"

The first part of the concert was terminating. Happily, too, for Adrienne was choking. The minister must, as a matter of politeness, express his thanks to the cantatrices from the Opera, and to the actresses from the Comedie Francaise, the artistes whose names appeared on the programme. Vaudrey was obliged to pa.s.s the rows of chairs in order to reach the little salon behind the stage, which served as a foyer. Adrienne saw him coming to her side, and looking very pale, though he made an effort to smile. He was uncomfortable and anxious. In pa.s.sing before Marianne, he tried to look aside, but Mademoiselle Kayser stopped him in spite of himself, by slightly extending her foot and smiling at him, when he turned toward her, with a prolonged, interested and strange expression.

Adrienne felt that she was about to faint. She took a few tottering steps out of the salon, then she stopped as if her head were swimming.

Some one was on hand to support her. She felt that a hand was holding her arm, she heard some one whisper in her ear:

"It is too much, is it not?"

She recognized Lissac's voice.

Guy looked at her for a moment, quite prepared for this great increase of suffering.

"Take me away," she murmured. "I can bear no more!--I can bear no more!"

She was longing to escape from all that noise, that atmosphere that lacked air, and from Marianne's look and smile that pierced her. She went, as if by chance, instinctively guiding Lissac, led by him to a little, salon far from the reception rooms, and which was reserved for her and protected by a door guarded by an usher. It might have been thought that she expected this solitude would be necessary to her as an escape from the fright of that reception, to which her overstrained and sick nerves made her a prey.

In pa.s.sing, Lissac had whispered to Ramel, who was at his elbow:

"Tell Sulpice that Madame Vaudrey is ill!"

"Ill?"

"You see that she is!"

When Adrienne was within the little salon hung with garnet silk draperies, in which the candelabras and sconces were lighted, she sank into an armchair, entirely exhausted and overwhelmed by the fearful resistance she had made to her feelings. She remained there motionless, her eye fixed, her face pale, and both hands resting on the arms of her chair, abstractedly looking at the pattern of the carpet.

Guy stood near, biting his lips as he thought of the madman Vaudrey and that wretched Marianne.

"She at least obeys her instincts! But he!"

"Ah! it is too much; yes, it is too much!" repeated Adrienne, as if Lissac were again repeating that phrase.

It seemed to her that she had been thrust into some cowardly situation; that she had been subjected to a shower of filth! It was hideous, repugnant. She now saw, in the depths of her life, events that she had never before seen; her vision had suddenly become clear. Dark details she could now explain. Vaudrey's falsehoods were suddenly manifested.

"He lied! Ah! how he had lied!"

She recalled his anxiety to hide the journals from her, his oft-repeated suggestions, his precautions, the increasing number of his night-sessions that made him pale. Pale from debauchery! And she pitied him! She begged him not to kill himself for the politics that was eating his life. Again she saw on the lips of her _Wednesday's_ guests the furtive smiles that were hidden behind m.u.f.fs when she spoke of those nocturnal sessions of the Chamber, which were only nights pa.s.sed in Marianne's bed! How those Parisians must have laughed at her and ridiculed the credulity of the woman who believes herself loved, but who is deceived and mocked at! Madame Gerson, Sabine! How overjoyed they must have been when, in their salons, they referred to the little, stupid Provincial who was ignorant of these tricks!

She felt ridiculed and tortured, more tortured than baffled, for her vanity was nothing in comparison with her love, her poor, artless and trusting love!

"Sulpice, I should never have believed--Never!--"

Why had they left Gren.o.ble, their little house on the banks of the Isere? They loved each other there, it was Paris that had s.n.a.t.c.hed him away! Paris! She hated it now. She hated that reputation that had carried Vaudrey into office, the politics that had robbed her of a kind and loving husband,--for he had loved her, she was sure of that,--and which had made him the lover of a courtesan, the liar and coward that he was!

"Do you see?" she said to Lissac suddenly. "I detest these walls!"

She pointed to the gilded ceilings with an angry gesture.

"Since I entered here, my life has come to a close!--It is that, that which has taken him from me!--Ah! this society, this politics, these meannesses, this life exposed to every one and everything, to temptation and to fall, I am entirely sick of, I am disgusted with. Let me be s.n.a.t.c.hed from it, let me be taken away! Everywhere here, one might say, there is an atmosphere of lying!"

"Do you hear? She laughs, she is happy! She! And I, ah! I!"

She had risen to her feet, suddenly recovering all her energy, as if stirred by the air of a Hungarian dance, whose strains dimly reached them from the distant, warm salons, where Marianne was disporting her beauty--

"Ah! I hate this hotel, the noise and the women!" said Adrienne. "This horde ranged about the buffet, this salon turned into a restaurant, the false salutations, the commonplace protestations,--this society, all this society, I detest it!--I will have no more of it!--It seems to me that it all is mocking me, and that its smiles are only for that courtesan!--But if I had driven her out?--Who brought her?"

"Her uncle and Monsieur de Rosas!"

"Monsieur de Rosas?"

"Who marries her!"

Adrienne nervously uttered a loud, harsh laugh, as painful as if it were caused by a spasm.

"Who marries her! Then these creatures are married?--Ah! they are married--They are honored, too, are they not? And because they are more easy of approach, they are thought more beautiful and more agreeable than those who are merely honest wives? Ah! it is too silly!--Rosas! I took him for a man of sense!--If I were to tell him myself that she is my husband's mistress, what would the duke answer?"

"He would not believe you, and you would not do that, madame!" said Lissac.

"Why?"

"Because it would be an act of cowardice, and because you are the best, the n.o.blest of women!"

Instinctively he drew near her, lowering his voice, embracing with his glance that fine, charming beauty, that grief heightened by a burning brilliancy.

She raised her fine, clear eyes to Lissac, whose look troubled her, and said:

"And how have these served me?--Kindness, trickery!--Trickery, chast.i.ty!--Ask all these men! All of them will go to Mademoiselle Kayser and not to me!"

"To you, madame," murmured Guy, "all that there is of devotion and earnestness, yes, all of the tenderest and the truest will go to you as respectful homage."

"Respect?--Yes, respect to us!--And with it goes the home! But to her!

Ah! to her, love! And what if I wish to be loved myself?"

"Loved by him!" said Lissac in a low tone, as if he did not know what he said; and his hands instinctively sought Adrienne's. They trembled.