His Excellency the Minister Part 32

"Thanks!--But in life there are troubles so commonplace that one could only acknowledge them to the most intimate friends."

"You have no more devoted friend than I am," replied Vaudrey, in a tone that conveyed unmistakable conviction.

She knew it positively. She could read that heart like an open page.

"When one meets friends like you, one is the more solicitous to keep them and to avoid saddening them with stupid affairs."

"But why?" asked Vaudrey, drawing close to Marianne. "What troubles you?

I beseech you to tell me!"

He gazed earnestly at her eyes, seeking in the depths of their blue pupils a secret or a confession that evaded him, and with an instinctive movement he seized Marianne's hands which she abandoned to him; they were quite cold. As he bent toward her to plead with her to speak, he felt her gentle breath, inhaled the perfume of her delicate, fair skin, and saw the exquisite curves of her body outlined beneath the black folds of her satin peignoir. Marianne's knee gently pressed his own while her heavy eyelids fell like veils over the young woman's eyes, in which Vaudrey thought he observed tears.

"Marianne, I entreat you, if you have any sorrow whatever, that I can a.s.suage, I pray you, tell me of it!"

"Eh! if it were a sorrow!--" she said, quickly withdrawing her left hand from Sulpice's warm grasp. "But it is worse: it is a financial worry, yes, financial," she said brusquely, on observing that Vaudrey's face depicted astonishment.

She seized the handful of papers that she had thrown into the work-basket, and said in a tone that was expressive of mingled wrath and disgust:

"There now, you see that? They are bills for this house: the accounts of clamorous creditors, upholsterers, locksmiths, builders and I don't know what besides!"

"What! your house?"

"You thought that I had paid for it? It is a rented one and nothing in it is paid for. I owe for all, and to a hungry pack."

She began to laugh.

"Do you imagine then that old Kayser's niece could lead this life in which you see her? Without a sou, should I possess all that you see here?--No!--I have perpetrated the folly of ordering all these things for which I am now indebted and which must be paid for at once, and now I am about to be sued. There! you were determined to urge me to confess all that--Such are my worries and they are not yours, so I ask your pardon, my dear Vaudrey: so let us talk of something else. Well! how did the Fraynais interpellation turn out?--What has taken place in the Chamber?"

"Let us speak only of you, Marianne," said the minister, who looked at the young woman with a sort of frank compa.s.sion as a friendly physician looks at a sick person.

She nervously snapped her fingers and with her feet crossed, beat the little feverish march that she had previously done.

He drew still closer to her, trying to calm her and to obtain some explanation, some information from her; and Marianne, as if she had already yielded in at once confiding her secret unreflectingly, refused at present to accord him the full measure of her confidence. She repeated that nothing that could be a source of annoyance or sordid, ought to sadden her friends. Besides, one ought to draw the line at one's life-secret. She was ent.i.tled, in fact, to maintain silence. That Vaudrey should question her so, caused her horrible suffering.

"And you, Marianne," he said, "you torture me much more by not replying to me, to whom the least detail of your life is interesting. To me who see you preoccupied and distressed, when I wish, I swear to you, to banish all your sadness."

She turned toward him with an abrupt movement and with her gray, gold-speckled eyes flas.h.i.+ng, she seemed to yield to a violent, sudden and almost involuntary decision and said to Sulpice:

"Then you wish to know even the wretchedness of my life? So be it! But I warn you that it is not very cheerful. For," said she, after a moment's silence,--Sulpice shuddered under her glance,--"it is better to be frank, and if you love me as you say you do, you should know me thoroughly; you can then decide what course to take. For myself, I am accustomed to deception."

Ah! although this woman were ready to tell him everything, Vaudrey felt sure that her confidence could only intensify the love that he felt. She had risen, her arms were crossed over her black gown whose red velvet tr.i.m.m.i.n.g suggested open wounds, her ardent eyes were in strong contrast with her pale face, her lips of unusually heightened color expressed a strange sensuality that invited a kiss, while her nostrils dilated under the impulse of bitter anger--standing thus, she began to narrate her life to Vaudrey who was seated in front of her, looking up to her--as if at her knees. Her story was a sad one of a wicked childhood, ignorant youth, wasted early years, melancholy, sins, outbursts of faith, falls, returns of love, pride, virtue, rest.i.tution through repentance, scourged hopes, dead confidences, the entire heartrending existence of a woman who had left more of her heart than of the flesh of her body clinging to the nails of her calvaries:--all, though ordinary and commonplace, was so cruel in its truth that it appealed at once to Sulpice's heart, a heart bursting with pity, to that credulous man who was attracted by all that seemed to him so exquisitely painful and new about this woman.

"Perhaps I am worrying you?" she asked abruptly.

"You!" said he.

He looked at her with a tear in his eye.

Marianne's eyes gleamed with a sudden light.

"Well!" she said, "such is my life! I have loved, I have been betrayed.

I have had faith in some one and I awakened one fine morning with this prospect before me: to sink in the deep mud or to do like so many others,--to take a lover and save myself through luxury, since I could not recover myself through pa.s.sion. Bah! the world shows more leniency toward those who succeed than toward those who repent. All that is necessary is to succeed, and on my word--you know Monsieur de Rosas well?"

"No," stammered Vaudrey, before whose mind the duke's blond face appeared.

"You heard him the other evening!"

"I mean that I have never spoken to him. Well! what of Monsieur de Rosas?"

"Monsieur de Rosas loved me. Oh!" she said, interrupting a gesture made by Vaudrey, "wait. He said that he loved me. He is rich. Why should I not have been Rosas's mistress? Deal for deal, that was a good bargain, at least! I accept Rosas! It was to receive him that I was foolish enough to make my purchases without reckoning, without knowing. What's that for a Rosas?" she said, as she crushed the bundle of bills between her fingers.

"And--Monsieur de Rosas?" asked Vaudrey, who was quite pale.

"He?"

Marianne laughed.

"Well, he has gone--I have told you as much. He has, moreover, perhaps, done wisely. I regretted him momentarily--but, bah! I should have sent him away--yes, very quickly, just so! without even allowing him to touch the tips of my fingers."

"Rosas?" repeated the minister, looking keenly into Marianne's eyes.

"Rosas!" she again said, lowering her voice. "And do you know why I would have done that?"

"No--" answered Sulpice trembling.

"Simply because I no longer loved him, and that I loved another."

She had spoken these last words slowly and in such pa.s.sionate, vibrating tones that Sulpice felt himself shudder with delight.

"Ah," he said, as he went toward her, "is that the reason? Truly, Marianne, is that the reason?"

She had not confessed whom she loved, she had spoken only by her looks.

But Sulpice felt that he belonged to her, he was burning with pa.s.sion, transported, insane from this avowal; his hands sought hers and drew her to him. He clasped her to his bosom, intoxicated by the pressure of this body against his own, and added in a very low tone while his fingers alternately wandered over her satiny neck and her silky hair:

"How can I help loving you, Marianne? Is it true, really true? You love me?--Ah! what the great n.o.bleman has not done, do you think I cannot do?

You are in your own home, you understand, Marianne.--Then, as he touched the young woman's exquisite ears with his lips, he added:

"Our home--will you have it so?--Our home!--"

He felt, as she remained in his embrace with her body leaning against his, that she quivered throughout her frame; his lips wandered from her ear to her cheek and then to her lips, there they rested long in a ravis.h.i.+ng kiss that filled him with the languis.h.i.+ng sensation of swooning, he holding her so tightly that, with a smile, she disengaged herself, pink with her blushes, and bright-eyed, said, with an expression of peculiar delight:

"It is sealed now!"

Sulpice, even in his youthful days, had never felt so intoxicating a sensation as that which he enjoyed to-day. It was a complete abandonment of himself, a forgetfulness of everything in the presence of his absolute intoxication. All the realities of life that were ready to take possession of him on leaving this place melted before this dream: the possession of that woman. He forgot the a.s.sembly, the foyer, that human crowd that he ruled from the height of the tribune, and Adrienne, who was seated yonder at the window, awaiting him. He forgot everything.

Like those who possess the singular faculty of easily receiving and losing impressions, he fancied that his horizon was limited to these walls with their silken hangings, these carpets, this feminine salon, opening on a boudoir, a retreat whence escaped the odors of flowers and perfume bottles.

Then, too, a special feeling of pride entered his heart. He felt his joy increased tenfold at the thought that he, the petty bourgeois from Gren.o.ble, had s.n.a.t.c.hed this woman from a duke and, like a great n.o.bleman, had paid the debts that she had contracted. He raised his head proudly from an instinctive impulse of vanity. Rosas! He, the son of honest Dauphiny folks, would crush him with his liberality.

"What shall I do to silence those creditors?" he said to Marianne,--whose hands he held and whose face grazed his in a way that almost made him frantic.