His Excellency the Minister Part 62

"Adrienne!" murmured Sulpice.

She closed her eyes, for this suppliant voice doubtless caused her a new grief, but neither gesture nor word escaped her. She was like a walking automaton. Even her eyes expressed neither reproach nor anger, they seemed dim.

There was something of death in her aspect.

After a few moments, she said: "I hope that my resolve will not work any prejudice to your political position. In that direction I will still do my duty to the full extent of my strength. But people will not trouble themselves to inquire whether I am at Gren.o.ble or Paris. They trouble themselves very little about me."

By a gesture, he sought to retain her. She had already entered her room, and Vaudrey felt that between this woman and him there stood something like a wall. He had now only to love Marianne.

To love Marianne, ah! yes, the unhappy man, he still loved her. When he thought of Marianne, it was more in wrath, when he thought of Adrienne, it was more in pity; but, certainly, his wife's determination to leave Paris caused him less emotion than the thought that his mistress was to wed Rosas.

That very evening he went to Marianne's.

They told him that Madame was at the theatre. Where? With whom? Neither Jean nor Justine knew.

Vaudrey despised himself for jealously questioning the servants who, when together, would burst with laughter in speaking of him.

"Oh! miserable fool!" he said to himself. "There was only one woman who loved you:--Adrienne!"

Nevertheless, he recalled Marianne in the hours of past love, and the recollection of her kisses and sobs still made his flesh creep. The tawny tints that played in her hair as it strayed unfastened over the pillow, the endearing caresses of her bare arms, he wished to see and feel again. He calculated in his ferocious egotism that Adrienne's wrath would afford him more complete liberty for a time, and that he would have Marianne more to himself, if she were willing.

He had written to Mademoiselle Kayser, but his letter had remained unanswered. He thought that he would go to Mademoiselle Vanda's house the next day, after the Chamber was up. Very late, he added, since the sitting would be prolonged. Long and decisive, as the fate of his ministry was at stake.

Granet's interpellation did not make him unusually uneasy. He had acquainted himself in the morning with a resume of the journals. Public opinion seemed favorable to the Vaudrey ministry, _except in the case of some insufferable radical organs, and with which he need not in anyway concern himself_, read the report. Vaudrey did not remember that it was in almost these very terms that the daily resume of the press expressed itself on the eve of Pichereau's fall, to the Minister of the Interior, in speaking of Pichereau's cabinet.

"I shall have a majority of sixty votes," he said to himself.

"Everything will be carried--save honor!"

He thought of Adrienne as he thus wished.

The session of the Chamber was to furnish him the most cruel deception.

Granet had most skilfully prepared his plan of attack. Vaudrey's ministry was threatened on all sides by lines of approach laid out without Sulpice's knowledge. Granet had promised, here and there, new situations, or had undertaken to confirm the old. He came to the a.s.sault of the ministry with a compact battalion of clients entirely devoted to his fortunes, which were their own. They did not reproach Vaudrey too strongly with anything, unless it was that these impatient ones considered that he had given away all that he had to give, prefectures, sub-prefectures, councillors' appointments, crosses of the Legion of Honor, and especially for having lasted too long. Vaudrey would fall less because he had forfeited esteem than because others were impatient to succeed him. Granet was tired of being only the _minister of to-morrow_, he wished to have his day. He had just affirmed his policy, he a.s.serted that the whole country, weary of Vaudrey's compromises, demanded a more h.o.m.ogeneous ministry. h.o.m.ogeneity! Nothing could be said against such a word. Granet favored the policy of h.o.m.ogeneity. This vocable comprehended his entire programme. The Vaudrey Cabinet lacked h.o.m.ogeneity! The President of the Republic decidedly ought to form a h.o.m.ogeneous cabinet.

"Granet is then h.o.m.ogeneous?" said Sulpice, with a forced laugh, as he sat on the ministerial bench while Lucien Granet was speaking from the tribune, his right hand thrust into his frock-coat.

The _bon mot_ uttered by the President of the Council, although spoken loudly enough, did not enliven any one, neither his colleagues who felt themselves threatened nor his usual _claqueurs_ who felt themselves vanquished. Navarrot, the ministerial claqueur, was already applauding Granet most enthusiastically. _Monsieur le Ministre_ felt himself about to become an ex-minister. He vaguely felt as if he were in the vacuum of an air-pump.

The order of the day of distrust, smoothed over by Granet with the formulas of perfidious politeness--castor-oil in orange-juice, as Sulpice himself called it, trying to pluck up courage and wit in the face of misfortune,--that order of the day that the Vaudrey Cabinet would not accept, was adopted by a considerable majority: one hundred and twenty-two votes.

For Sulpice, it was a crus.h.i.+ng defeat.

"One hundred and twenty-two deputies," he said, still speaking in a loud voice in the corridors, "to whom I have refused the appointment of some mayor or the removal of some rural guard!"

Warcolier, ever dignified, remarked in his usual style, that this manner of defending himself probably lacked some of that n.o.bility which becomes a defeat bravely endured.

Vaudrey had only one course open, to send in his resignation. He was beaten, thoroughly beaten. He returned to the Hotel Beauvau and after preparing his letter he took it himself to the President at the elysee.

The President accepted it without betraying any feeling, as an employe at the registry office receives any deed of declaration. Two or three commonplace expressions of regret, a diplomatic shake of the hand, expressive of official sympathy, that was all. Vaudrey returned to the ministry and ordered his servants to prepare everything for leaving the ministerial mansion.

"When is that to be, Monsieur le Ministre?"

"To-morrow," answered Vaudrey, to whom the t.i.tle seemed ironical and grated on his nerves.

He caused himself to be announced to Adrienne.

Adrienne, weary looking, was seated before a small desk writing, and beneath her fair hair, her face still looked as white as that of a corpse.

"There is some news," Vaudrey said to her abruptly. "I am no longer minister!"

"Ah!" she said.

Not a tremor, not a word of consolation. Three days previously, she would have leaped to his neck and said: "How happy we shall be! I have you back; I have found you again! What joy!"

Again, she would have tried to console him had he been suffering.

Now, she remained pa.s.sive, frozen, indifferent to that news.

"We shall leave the Hotel Beauvau!" said Sulpice.

"I am already preparing to leave," she replied. "My trunks are packed."

"Will you do me the kindness of leaving here with me and of going back to Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin with me?--After that, you can set out at once for Gren.o.ble. But let us have no sign of scandal. The world must be considered."

She had listened to him coldly, unmoved by his trembling voice.

"That is proper," she said ironically. "The world must be thought of. I will wait then before leaving."

He was stupefied to find so much coldness and so unswerving a determination in this woman, as gentle as a child--my _wife-child_, he so frequently said to her of old. In her presence he felt ill at ease, discontented, hesitating whether he should throw himself at her feet and wring pardon from her, or fly from her and be with Marianne, perhaps forever. But no, it was Adrienne, his poor, his dear Adrienne that he would keep and love! Ah! if she pardoned him! If he had dared to kneel at her feet, to plead and to weep! But this living corpse froze him, he was afraid of her, of that gentle and devoted creature.

He went downstairs again, saying to himself that he would take a hurried dinner and then go to Rue p.r.o.ny.

He was, however, obliged to occupy himself in despatching the last current business. He must hand over his official duties to his successor. There was a mocking expression in these words: _his successor!_

"After all, he will have one also!"

He still had unexpected heartbreakings to experience. People to whom he had promised appointments and decorations came, almost breathless, suddenly stirred by the news, to entreat him to sign the nominations and to prepare the decrees while he was _still_ minister. The ravens were about the corpse. _Monsieur Eugene_, still bowing low, although not quite so low as heretofore, endeavored to dismember Vaudrey the Minister. He wanted a little piece, only one piece! A sub-prefecture of the third cla.s.s!

He had already been informed at the elysee that Granet was to be his successor. _Parbleu!_ he expected it! But the realization of his fears annoyed him. And who would Granet keep for his Secretary of State?

Warcolier, yes Warcolier, with the promise of giving him the first vacant portfolio.

"How correct was Ramel's judgment?" thought Sulpice.

Vaudrey, with a sort of rage urging him, immediately set himself about a task as mournful as a funeral: packing up. It now seemed to him that he had just suffered a total overthrow. Books and papers were being packed in baskets. Before he was certain of his fall, he thought it was delightful to escape from so much daily bother, but now he felt as if he were being discrowned and ruined. Ruin! It truly threatened him indeed and held him by the throat. He had realized on many pieces of property within the past year for Marianne!

Adrienne, on the contrary, left this great cold hotel of Place Beauvau, as if she were leaving a prison, with a comforting sense of deliverance.

A bad dream was ended. She could lay down her official mask, weep at ease, complain at will, fly to that Dauphiny where her youth was left.

She would leave to-morrow. Doctor Reboux awaited her in ignorance.