His Excellency the Minister Part 12

"To Madame Marsy's. I will have an invitation sent you."

"And I will call for you and take you. Yes, I, here, like a jolly companion. Or I'll go with my uncle. You will present me to Rosas. We shall see if he recognizes me."

She burst out laughing. "You will also introduce me--since that is your occupation--" and here her smile disclosed her pretty, almost mischievous-looking teeth--"to Monsieur Vaudrey, your comrade. A minister! Such people are always useful for something. _Addio, caro!_"

Guy de Lissac had hardly taken two steps toward Marianne before she had vanished behind the heavy folds of the j.a.panese portiere that fell in its place behind her. He opened the door. Mademoiselle Kayser was already in the hall, with her hand on the handle of the door.

"At nine o'clock I shall be with you," she said to Lissac as she disappeared.

She waved a salutation, the valet de chambre hastened to open the door, and her outline, that for a moment stood out in the light of the staircase, vanished. Guy was almost angry, and returned to his room.

Now that she had left, he opened his window quickly. It seemed to him that a little blue smoke escaped from the room, the cloud emitted by Marianne's cigarette. And with this bluish vapor also disappeared the odor of new-mown hay, bearing with it the pa.s.sing intoxication that for a moment threatened to ensnare this disabused man.

The cold outside air, the bright suns.h.i.+ne, entered in quivering rays.

Without, the snow-covered roofs stood out clearly against a soft blue sky, limpid and springlike. Light wreaths of smoke floated upward in the bracing atmosphere.

Guy freely inhaled this buoyant atmosphere that chased away the blended odor of tobacco and that exhaled from the woman. It seemed to him that a sort of band had been torn from his brow which, but a moment ago, felt compressed. The fresh breeze bore away all trace of Marianne's kisses.

"Must I always be a child?" he thought. "It is not on my account that she came here, but on Rosas's. Our friends' friends are our lovers.

Egad! on my word, I was almost taken in again, nevertheless! Compelled, in order to cut adrift again, to make another journey to Italy,--at my age."

Then, feeling chilly, he closed the window, laughing as he did so.

V

On the pavement of the Boulevard Malesherbes, two policemen, wrapped in their hooded coats, restrained the crowd that gathered in front of the huge double-door of the house occupied by Madame Marsy. A double row of curious idlers stood motionless, braving benumbed fingers while watching the carriages that rolled under the archway, which, after quickly depositing at the foot of the brilliantly lighted perron women enveloped in burnooses and men in white gloves, their faces half-hidden by fur collars, turned and crossed the row of approaching coupes.

For an hour past there had been a double file of carriages, and a continuous stream of guests arriving on foot, who threw their cigars at the foot of the perron, chatting as they ascended the steps, which were protected by a covering of gla.s.s. The curious pointed out the faces of well-known persons. It was said in the neighborhood that the greater part of the ministers had accepted invitations.

Madame Marsy's salons were brilliant under the blazing lights. Guests jostled each other in the lobbies. Overcoats and mantles were thrown in heaps or strung up in haste, the gloved hands reaching out as in the lobby of a theatre to receive the piece of numbered pasteboard.

"You have No. 113," said Monsieur de Lissac to Marianne, who had just entered, wearing a pale blue cloak, and leaning on his arm.

She smiled as she slipped the tiny card into her pocket.

"Oh! I am not superst.i.tious!"

She beamed with satisfaction.

People in the hall stood aside in order to allow this pretty creature to pa.s.s by; her fair hair fell over her plump, though slender, white shoulders, and the folds of her satin skirt, falling over her magnificent hips, rustled as she walked.

Lissac, with his eyegla.s.s fixed, and ceremoniously carrying his flattened opera-hat, advanced toward the salon, amid the greedy curiosity of the guests who contemplated the exquisite grace of the lovely girl as if they were inhaling its charm.

Madame Marsy stood at the entrance of the salon, looking attractive in a toilet of black silk which heightened her fair beauty, and, with extended hands, smilingly greeted all her guests, while the charming Madame Gerson, refined and tactful, aided her in receiving.

Sabine appeared perfectly charmed on perceiving Marianne. She had felt the influence formerly of this ready, keen and daring intelligence. She troubled herself but little about Marianne's past. Kayser's niece was received everywhere, and had not Kayser decided to accompany her? He followed in the rear of the young girl. People had not observed him. He chatted with a man about sixty years old, with a white beard and very gentle eyes who listened to him good-naturedly while thinking perhaps of something else.

"Ah! my old Ramel, how glad I am to see you!" he said with theatrical effusion.

"It is a fact that we rarely see each other. What has become of you, Kayser?"

"I? I work. I protest, you know, I have never compromised--Never--The dignity of art--"

Their voices were drowned by the hubbub of the first salon, already filled with guests; Sabine meanwhile took Marianne, whom Lissac surrendered, and led her toward a larger salon with red decorations, wherein the chairs were drawn up in lines before an empty s.p.a.ce, forming, thanks to the voluminous folds of the curtains, a sort of stage on which, doubtless, some looked-for actor was about to appear.

Nearly all these chairs were already occupied. The lovely faces of the women were illuminated by the dazzling light. Everybody turned toward Marianne as she entered the room, under the guidance of Sabine, who led her quickly toward one of the unoccupied seats, close to the improvised stage on which, evidently, Monsieur de Rosas was going to speak.

Madame Gerson had taken her seat near Marianne, who searched her black, bright eyes with a penetrating glance in order to interrogate the thoughts of this friend of the family. Madame Gerson was delighted.

Sabine, dear Sabine, had achieved a success, yes, a success! Monsieur Vaudrey was there! And Madame Vaudrey, too! And Monsieur Collard--of Nantes--the President of the Council! And Monsieur Pichereau, who, after all, had been a minister!

"That makes almost three ministers, one of whom is President of the Council! Sabine is overcome with joy, yes, absolutely crazy! Think of it: Madame Hertzfield, Sabine's rival, never had more than two ministers at a time in her salon."

She added, prattling in soft, linnet-like tones, that Madame Hertzfield's salon was losing its prestige. Only sub-prefects were created there. But Sabine's salon was the antechamber to the prefectures!

"And if you knew how charming Monsieur Vaudrey is--a delightful conversationalist--he has dined excellently--he was twice served with an entree!"

Marianne listened, but her mind was wandering far away. She was debating with herself as to when Monsieur de Rosas would appear on that narrow strip of waxed floor before her.

Guy had correctly surmised: it was Rosas and Rosas only whom this woman was seeking in Sabine's salon. She wished to see him again, to talk to him, to tempt destiny. A fancy.--A final caprice. Why not?

Marianne thought that she played a leading part there. She remembered this Jose very well, having met him more than once in former days with Guy. A Parisian Castilian, more Parisian than Spanish, he spoke with exquisite finish the cla.s.sic tongue, and with the free-and-easy manner of a frequenter of the boulevards, chatted in the slang of the pavement or of the greenroom; he was an eminent virtuoso and collector, an author when the desire seized him, but only in his own interest, liberal in his opinions, lavish in his disposition, attractive in his manners; an eager traveller, he had, at thirty years of age, seen all that was to be seen, he had visited India and j.a.pan, drunk camel's milk under the tents of the Kirgheez, and eaten dates with the Kabyles, and narrated with a sort of appetizing irony, love adventures which might have seemed romantic brag, if it were not that he lessened their improbability by his raillery. He was a kind of belated Byron, who might have been cured of his romantic tastes by the wounds and contact of reality.

She especially recalled a visit in Guy's company to Jose at an apartment that the duke had furnished in Rue de Laval. He occupied a painter's large studio, draping it with Oriental tapestry, crowding it with knickknacks and panoplies of weapons: an extravagant luxury,--something like the embarra.s.sment of riches in a plundered caravansary. It was there that Jose had regaled Marianne and Guy with coffee served in Turkish fas.h.i.+on, and while they chatted, they had smoked that pale Oriental tobacco, that the Spaniard, quoting some Persian poets, gallantly compared to the perfumed locks of Mademoiselle Kayser.

During her years of hards.h.i.+p, she had many a time recalled that auburn-haired, handsome fellow, with his blue eye, pensive and searching, and lower lip curled disdainfully over his tawny beard trimmed in Charles V. style, as he reclined there, stretched on Hindoo rugs, chanting some monotonous song as slow as the movement of a caravan.

"Isn't my friend Rosas a delightful fellow?" Guy had asked her.

"Delightful!"

"And clever! and learned! and entertaining! and, what is not amiss, a multi-millionaire!"

Marianne thought of the absolute power, satisfied desires, whims and possible dreams that were linked with that man. He was a ma.s.s of perambulating gold. How many times she had dreamed, in the mists of her recollection, of that somewhat haughty smile that curled his delicate mustache, and those keen-edged teeth gleaming though his reddish beard, as if greedy to bury themselves deep in fles.h.!.+

But where was the duke now? Among the Kabyles or the Mormons? At Tahiti, Greenland, or gone to the devil? The papers had once announced that he was organizing an expedition to the North Pole. Perhaps he was lost among the icebergs in the Arctic Seas! She smiled at that, sighing involuntarily with sincere emotion, but prompted by selfish regret.

It had seemed to her that Jose had more than once permitted himself to express his affection for her. Politely, correctly, of course, as a gallant man addresses a friend's mistress, but manifesting in his reserve a host of understood sentiments and tender restraint that suggested hidden or implied declarations. Marianne had pretended not to understand him. At that time, she loved Guy or thought that she loved him, which amounts to the same thing. She contented herself with smiling at the flirtation of Monsieur de Rosas.

"I have perhaps been very stupid," she said to herself. "Pshaw! he might have been as silly as I, if occasion demanded. The obligations of friends.h.i.+p! The phantom of Guy!"

She suddenly stopped and this name escaped her lips: _Jose_--_Joseph!_

Nevertheless, this was one of the vexations of this girl: she was angry because she had acted rightly. Others suffer remorse for their ill deeds, but she suffered for her virtue. She often thought of the Duc de Rosas, as her mother Eve must have thought of Paradise lost. She would have stirred, astonished, conquered, crushed Paris, if she had been the mistress of Rosas.

"What then! Whose fault was it? How foolish of one not to dare everything!"