His Excellency the Minister Part 19

He was in the hall, putting on his overcoat, while a servant turned up its otter-fur collar, when he heard Guy say:

"You are going, my dear duke? Shall we bear each other company?"

The idea was not distasteful to Rosas. Involuntarily, perhaps, he thought that a conversation with Lissac was, in some way, a _chat_ with Marianne. These two beings were coupled in his recollections and preoccupations; besides, he really liked Guy. The Parisian was the complement of the Castilian. They had so many reminiscences in common: fetes, suppers, sorrows, Parisian sadnesses, girls who sobbed to the measure of a waltz. Then they had not seen each other for so long.

Rosas experienced a certain degree of pleasure in finding himself once more on the boulevard with Guy. It made him feel young again. Every whiff of smoke that ascended from his cigar in the fresh air, seemed to breathe so many exhalations of youth. They had formerly ground out so many paradoxes as they strolled thus arm in arm, taking their recreation through Paris.

In a very little time, and after the exchange of a few words, they had bridged the long gap of years, of travel and separation. They expressed so much in so few words. Rosas, as if invincibly attracted by the name of Marianne, was the first to p.r.o.nounce it, while Guy listened with an impa.s.sive air to the duke's interrogations.

In this way they went toward the boulevard, along which the rows of gas-jets flamed like some grand illumination.

"Paris!" said Rosas, "has a singular effect on one. It resumes its dominion over one at once on seeing it again, and it seems as if one had never left it. I have hardly unpacked my trunks, and here I am again transformed into a Parisian."

"Paris is like absinthe!" said Guy. "As soon as one uncorks the bottle, one commences to drink it again."

"Absinthe! there you are indeed, you Frenchmen, who everlastingly calumniate your country. What an idea, comparing Paris with absinthe!"

"A Parisian's idea, _parbleu!_ You have not been here two days and you are already intoxicated with _Parisine_, you said so yourself. The hasheesh of the boulevard."

"Perhaps it is not _Parisine_ only that has, in fact, affected my brain," said Rosas.

"No doubt, it is also the _Parisienne_. Madame Marsy is very pretty."

"Charming," said Rosas coldly.

"Less charming than Mademoiselle Kayser!"

Guy sent a whiff of smoke from his cigar floating on the night breeze, while awaiting the duke's reply; but Jose pursued his way beside his friend, without uttering a word, as if he were suddenly absorbed, and Lissac, who had allowed the conversation to lapse, sought to reopen it: "Then," he said suddenly,--dropping the name of Mademoiselle Kayser:--"You will be in Paris for some time, Rosas?"

"I do not in the least know."

"You will not, I hope, set out again for the East?"

"Oh! you know what a strange fellow I am. It won't do to challenge me to!"

Lissac laughed.

"I don't challenge you at all, I only ask you not to leave the fortifications hereafter. We shall gain everything. You are not a Spaniard, you are a born Parisian, as I have already told you a hundred times. If I were in your place, I would set myself up here and stick to Paris. Since it is the best place in the world, why look for another?"

"My dear Guy," interrupted the duke, who had not listened, "will you promise to answer me, with all frankness, a delicate, an absurd question, if you will, one of those questions that is not generally put, but which I am going to ask you, nevertheless, without preface, point-blank?"

"To it and to any others that you put me, my dear duke, I will answer as an honest man and a friend should."

"Have you been much in love with Mademoiselle Kayser?"

"Very much."

"And has she loved you--a little?"

"Not at all."

"That is not what she has just told me."

"Ah!" said Lissac, as he threw away his cigar. "You spoke of me, then?"

"She told me that she believed she loved you sincerely."

"That is just what I had the pleasure of telling you."

"And--Marianne?--"

"Marianne?" repeated Lissac, who perfectly understood the question from De Rosas's hesitation.

"My dear friend, when a man feels sufficiently anxious, or sufficiently weak, or sufficiently smitten, whichever you please, to stake his life on the throw of the dice, he is permitted to put one of those misplaced questions to which I have just referred. Well! you can tell me what, perhaps, none other than I would dare to ask you: Have you been Marianne's lover?"

Before replying, Guy took the arm of the duke in a friendly way, and, leaning upon it, felt that it trembled nervously. Then, touching his hand by chance, he observed that Rosas was in a burning fever.

"My dear fellow, it is the everlasting question of honor between men and of duty to a woman that you put before me. Had I been Marianne's lover, I should be bound to tell you that Marianne had never been my mistress.

These falsehoods are necessary. No; I have not been Marianne's lover, but I advise you, if you do not wish to be perfectly miserable, not to seek to become so. You are one of those men who throw their hearts open as wide as a gateway. She is a calculating creature, who pursues, madly enough I admit, without consistency or constancy in her ideas, any plan that she may have in view. She might be flattered to have you as a suitor, as I was, or as a lover, as I have been a.s.sured others were. I do not affirm this, remember; but she will never be moved by your affection. She is a pure Parisian, and is incapable of loving you as you deserve, but you could not deceive her, as they say she has been."

"Deceived?" asked Rosas, in a tone of pity that struck Lissac.

"Deceived! yes! deceit is the complementary school of love."

"Then--if I loved Marianne?" asked Rosas.

"I would advise you to tell it to her at first, and prove it afterward, and finally to catalogue it in that alb.u.m whose ashes are sprinkled at the bottom of the marriage gifts."

"You speak of Mademoiselle Kayser as you would speak of a courtesan,"

said the duke, in a choking voice.

"Ah! I give you my word," said Lissac, "that I should speak very differently of Mademoiselle Alice Aubry, or of Mademoiselle Cora Touchard. I would say to you quite frankly: They are pretty creatures; there is no danger."

"And Marianne, on the contrary, is dangerous."

"Oh! perfectly, for you."

"And why is she not dangerous for you?"

"Why, simply, my dear duke, because I am satisfied to love her as you have hitherto done and because I had, as I told you, the good fortune not to be her lover."

"But you brought her to Madame Marsy's this evening?"

"Oh! her uncle accompanied us, but I was there."

"You offer your arm then to a woman whom, as you have just told me, you consider dangerous?"

"Not for Sabine!--and then, that is a drop of the absinthe, a little of the hasheesh of which I spoke to you. One sees only concessions in Paris, and even when one is dead, one needs a further concession, but in perpetuity. One only becomes one's self"--and Guy's jesting tone became serious,--"when a worthy fellow like you puts one a question that seems terribly like asking advice. Then one answers him, as I have just answered you, and cries out to him: 'Beware!'"