His Excellency the Minister Part 13

Now see how suddenly and unexpectedly, just as an adversary might offer an opportunity for revenge, chance, at the turning-point of her life, had brought back to Paris this Jose whom she had never forgotten, and who perhaps remembered her, and by whom she would be recognized most a.s.suredly, in any case. It was an unhoped, unlooked-for opportunity that restored Marianne's faith in herself, superst.i.tious as she was, like all successful gamblers.

She had fallen, but how she could raise herself by the arms of the duke!

One must be determined.

Guy and Sabine were met on the way, like two helpers. She profited by this circ.u.mstance, using the one to reach the other and to gain Rosas from the latter. She bore a grudge, nevertheless, against Guy de Lissac, the insolent and silly fellow who had formerly left her. Bah! before taking vengeance on him, it was most important to make use of him, and, after all, revenge is so wearisome and useless.

Now Kayser's niece, Guy's mistress, a woman who had given herself or who had been taken, who had sold herself or who had been purchased, a young girl who remained so in features, gracefulness and the virgin charms that clothed her courtesan's body--her smile a virgin's, her glance full of frolic--Marianne was now within a few feet of him whom she expected, wis.h.i.+ng for him as a seducer desires a woman.

"If he has loved me one moment, one single moment, Rosas will love me,"

she thought.

The salon was stiflingly hot, but Marianne was determined to keep herself in the first row, to be directly under the eye of the duke.

She felt the waves of over-heated air rise to her temples, and at times she feared that she would faint, half-stifled as she was and unaccustomed now to attend soirees. She remained, however, looking anxiously toward the door, watching for the appearance of the traveller and wondering when the pale face of the Spaniard would show itself.

At a short distance from her there was a young woman of twenty-three or twenty-four, courted like a queen and somewhat confused by the many questions addressed to her; robed in a white gown, she was extremely pretty, fair, and wore natural roses in her ash-colored hair, her eyes had a wondering expression, her cheeks were flushed, and in her amiable, gracious manner, she disclosed a touch of provincialism, modesty and hesitation--Marianne heard Madame Gerson say to her neighbors:

"It is the minister's wife."

"Madame Vaudrey?"

"Yes! Very charming, isn't she?"

"Ravis.h.i.+ngly pretty! Fresh-looking!"

Then in lowered tone:

"Too fres.h.!.+"

"Rather provincial!"

And one voice replied, in an ironical, apologetic tone:

"Bless me, my dear, nothing das.h.i.+ng! Hair and complexion peculiarly her own! So much the better."

Notwithstanding the low tone of this conversation, Marianne heard it all. One by one, every one looked at this young woman who borrowed her golden tints from the rising sun. She bore the popular name of the new minister. She entered into prominence with him, accepting gracefully and unaffectedly the weight of his fame. Her timid, almost restless, uncertain smile, seemed to crave from the other women pardon for her own success, and there, surrounded by a group of men seated near the window, were two persons for whom chairs had just been placed, one of whom was a young, happy man, who exhaled an atmosphere of joy, and looked from time to time toward Adrienne and Marianne as if to see if the young wife were annoyed.

"Where is Monsieur Vaudrey then?" Marianne asked Madame Gerson.

"Why, he is just opposite to you! There on your right, beside Monsieur Collard, and he is devouring you with his glances."

"Ah, bah!" said Marianne with an indifferent smile.

And she looked in her turn.

She had, in fact, already noticed this very elegant man who had been watching her for some time.

But how could she know that he was Monsieur Vaudrey? He was delightful, moreover, sprightly in manner and of keen intelligence. A few moments before, she had heard him, as she pa.s.sed by him under Sabine's guidance, utter some flattering remarks which had charmed her and made her smile.

Ah! that was Vaudrey?

She had often heard him spoken of. She had read of his speeches. She had even frequently seen his photograph in the stationers' windows.

The determined air of this young man, whom she knew to be eloquent, had pleased her. She ought then to have recognized him. He was exactly as his photographs represented him.

Of all the glances bestowed on the minister, Marianne's especially attracted Sulpice. A moment previously he had felt a singular charm at the appearance of this woman, threading her way directly between the rows of men by whom she was so crowded as to be in danger of having her garments pulled from her body. In his love of definitions and a.n.a.lyses, Vaudrey had never pictured the Parisian woman otherwise, with her piquant and instantaneous seductiveness, as penetrating as a subtle essence.

Marianne, smiling restlessly, looked at him and allowed him to look at her.

Her cheeks, which were extremely pale, suddenly became flushed as if their color were heightened by some feverish attack, when, amid the stir caused by the curiosity of the guests, and a greeting manifested by the shuffling of feet and the murmuring of voices, Monsieur de Rosas appeared; his air was somewhat embarra.s.sed, he offered his arm to Madame Marsy, who conducted him to the narrow stage as if to present him.

"At last! ah! it is he!"

"It is really the Duc de Rosas, is it not?"

"Yes, yes, it is he!"

"He is charming!"

The name of Rosas, although only repeated in an undertone by the lips of these women, rung in Marianne's ears, sounding like a quickstep played on a clarion. It seemed to her that a decisive moment in her life was announced fantastically in those utterances. Even now, while burning with the very fever of her eagerness, she felt the gambler's superst.i.tion. As soon as she saw Jose, she said to herself at once that if he saw her and recognized her first glance, then he had not forgotten her and she could hope for everything. Everything! "Men happily forget less quickly than women," she thought. "Through egotism, or from regret, some abandon themselves to their reminiscences with complacency, like this Guy, and recognize on our countenances the lines of their own youth. Others, perhaps, mourn over the lost opportunity, and the duke is sentimental enough to be of that cla.s.s."

She thought that Rosas must look at her, yes, at any cost; and with body inclined, her chin resting on her gloved right hand, while the other handled her fan with the skill peculiar to the Spanish women, she darted at the duke a rapid glance, a glance burning with desire and in which she expressed her whole will. The human eye has within it all the power of attraction possessed by a magnetic needle. As if he had experienced the actual effect of that glance fixed on his countenance, the duke raised his head after a polite but somewhat curtly elegant bow, to look at the audience of lovely women whom Sabine had gathered to greet him, and, as if only Marianne had been present, he at once saw the motionless young woman silently contemplating him.

Rosas, as he appeared within the frame formed by the red curtains, his thin, regular and ruddy face looking pale against the white of his cravat and the bosom of his s.h.i.+rt, looked like a portrait of a Castilian of the time of Philip II., clothed in modern costume, his fas.h.i.+onable black clothes relieved only by a touch of vermilion, a red rosette. But however fas.h.i.+onable the cut of his clothes might be, on this man with the vague blue eyes, and looking contemplative and sad with his upturned moustache, the black coat a.s.sumed the appearance of a _doublet_ of old, on which the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor looked like a diminutive cross of Calatrava upon a velvet cloak.

In fixing, to some extent, his wandering glance on the fervent look of Marianne, this melancholy Spanish face was instinctively lighted up with a fleeting smile that immediately pa.s.sed and was followed by a slight, respectful bow, quite sufficient, however, to surround the young woman with an atmosphere that seemed to glow.

"He has recognized me! at once! come!--I am not forgotten."

As in the glorious moment of victory, her bloodless face was overspread with a dazzling expression of joy. Boldly raising her head and inviting his glances as she had braved them, she listened, with glowing eyes, drinking each word that flowed from his lips, her nostrils distended as if to scent the approach of an Oriental perfume, to the recital of the narrative commenced by the duke in a measured, cajoling tone, which grew animated and louder.

Everybody listened to Rosas. Only the slight fluttering of fans was heard like a beating of wings. Without changing the tone of his discourse, and recounting his travels to his audience as if he were addressing only Marianne, he told in a voice more Italian than Spanish, in musical, non-guttural cadences, of his experiences on the borders of the Nile, of the weariness of the caravans, of the nights pa.s.sed under star-strewn skies, of the songs of the camel-driver, slowly intoned like prayers, of the gloom of solitary wastes and of the poetic a.s.sociations of the ruins slumbering amid the red sands of the desert. At times he recited a translation of an Arabian song or remarked in pa.s.sing, on some mournful ballad, refined as a Sennett, deep as the infinite, in which the eternal words of love, tender and affecting in all languages, a.s.sumed an intensely poetic character under the influence of their Semitic nature; songs in which pa.s.sers-by, strangers, lovers dead for centuries, who had strewed, as it were, their joys and their sobs over the sands of the desert, told the color of the hair and of the eyes of their dear ones, pleaded with their betrothed dead for the alms of love, and promised to spectres of women rose-colored garments and flowers that time would never wither.

These songs of Arabs dying for Nazarenes, of sons of Mohammed sacrificing themselves for the daughters of a.s.sa were so translated by this Castilian that the exquisite charm of the original, filtered through his rendering, lost none,--even in French,--of the special characteristics of his own nation, a half-daughter of the Orient. And inevitably, with its melancholy repet.i.tion, the poetry he spoke of dwelt on wounded, suffering love, on the anguish of timid hearts, and the sobs of unknown despairing Arabs, buried for ages under the sands of the desert.

The duke seemed to take pleasure in dwelling on these poetic quotations rather than on the reminiscences of his travels. His individuality, his own impressions vanished before this pa.s.sionate legacy bequeathed by one human race to another. Marianne trembled, believing that she could see even in Rosas's thoughts a desire to speak especially for her and to her. Was it not thus that he spoke in his own house in the presence of Lissac, squatting on his divan like an Arab story-teller?

She felt her youth renewed by the memory of all those past years. She thought herself back once more in the studio on Rue de Laval. Sabine Marsy's salon disappeared, Rosas was whispering in her ear, looking at her, and allowing the love that he felt to be perceived, in spite of Guy.

Guy! who was Guy? Marianne troubled herself about no one but De Rosas.

Only the duke existed now. Had Guy been blended with her life but for a single moment? She embraced Rosas with her burning glance.

She no longer saw Sulpice, but he never looked away from Mademoiselle Kayser. He thought her a most charming woman. A magnetic fluid, as it were, flowed from her to this man, and he, with wandering mind, did not hear one word of Monsieur de Rosas's narrative, but concentrated his thoughts upon that pretty, enticing woman, whom he could not refrain from comparing with his wife, sitting so near her at this moment.

Adrienne was very pretty, her beauty was more regular than the other's.

Her smooth, blond hair was in contrast with the tumbled, auburn locks of Marianne, and yet, extraordinary as it was--Adrienne had never seemed to be so cold as on that evening, as she sat there motionless, watching, while a timid habitual smile played over her lips.

Sulpice suffered somewhat in consequence of this awkwardness on Adrienne's part, contrasted as it was with the clever freedom of manner, graceful att.i.tude, and flowing outlines of that disturbing neighbor, with her dull white countenance, half-closed mouth, strange curl of her lips, which seemed turned up as if in challenge. She was decidedly a Parisian, with all her intoxicating charms, that alluring, if vicious attraction that flows from the eyes of even modest girls. Some words spoken by Monsieur de Rosas reaching Vaudrey's ears--a description of the somewhat fantastical preparation of poison by the Indians, explained by the duke by way of parenthesis--suggested to Sulpice that the most subtle, the gentlest and most certainly deadly poison was, after all, the filtering of a woman's glance through the very flesh of a man, and he thirsted for that longed-for poison, intoxicating and delicious--