His Excellency the Minister Part 34

He turned respectfully toward Adrienne and added, with the correct bearing of a gentleman:

"Madame, all this is only to make him comprehend that nothing in the world, not even a rag of morocco,--is his portfolio a morocco one?--is worth the happiness of having such a wife as you. And the miserable fellow doesn't suspect it. You see, I speak of you as the Opposition journals do."

Sulpice tried to smile but he divined under Guy's jesting, a serious and truthful purpose. Perhaps Adrienne had just been allowing herself to complain of the sadness and dreariness of her life. He was hurt by it.

After all, he did all that he could to gratify his wife. But a man like him was not, in fact, born to remain forever tied down. The wife of a minister must bear her part of the burden, since there must be a burden.

As if Adrienne had divined Sulpice's very thoughts, she quickly added, interrupting the jester who had somewhat confused the minister:

"Don't pay any attention to Monsieur de Lissac. I am very happy just as I am."

Vaudrey had taken her hand to clasp it between his fingers with a slightly nervous grasp. The trustful, good-natured, pure smile that Adrienne gave him, recalled the anxious, distracted expression on Marianne's lip.

"Dear wife!"

He sought to find a word, a cry, some consolation, a sort of caress, proceeding from one heart and penetrating the other. He could find none.

"Come!" said Guy. "I am going to leave you, and if you will allow me, madame, I will occasionally come here and tell you all the outside t.i.ttle-tattle."

"You will always be welcome, Monsieur de Lissac," Adrienne said, as she extended her hand to him.

Guy bowed to Madame Vaudrey in a most profoundly respectful way.

Sulpice accompanied him through the salons as far as the hall.

"Do you want me to tell you?" said Lissac. "Your wife is very weary, take care! This big mansion is not very cheerful. One must inevitably catch colds in it, and then a woman to be all alone here! A form of imprisonment! Do not neglect to wheedle the majority, my dear minister, but don't forget your wife. Come! I will not act traitorously toward you, but I warn you that if I often find your wife melancholy, as she is to-day, I will tell her that I adore her. Yes! yes! your wife is charming. I would give all the orders in the world for a lock of her hair. Adieu, Monsieur le Ministre."

"Great idiot," said Vaudrey, giving him a little friendly, gentle tap on the neck.

"Be it so, but if you do not love her well enough, I shall fall in love with her, and I forewarn you that it is much better that I should than any other. Au revoir."

"Au revoir!" Sulpice repeated.

He tried now to force a smile and went down to his cabinet, where he found heaped-up reports awaiting his attention and he turned the pages over nervously and read them in a very bad humor.

_She was quite pale as she looked over Sulpice's shoulder and saw him rapidly write several lines on the paper, then she spelled:

"Adolphe Gochard--Go-go-ch-a-r-d."_

[Ill.u.s.tration: SULPICE BECOMES SURETY FOR MARIANNE]

II

Madame Vaudrey drew no real pleasure from the commonplace receptions at the ministry, or at her Wednesday _at homes_, except when by chance, Denis Ramel permitted himself to abandon the Batignolles to call at Place Beauvau, or when Guy enlivened this dull spot by recounting the happenings of the outside world.

Adrienne felt herself terribly isolated; she knew hardly any one in Paris. Since Vaudrey had installed himself in Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin, she had not had time to form acquaintances among the wives of the deputies to the a.s.sembly, the majority of whom lived in the provinces or dwelt at Versailles for economical reasons.

Evidently the residence at the ministry had only brought her ready-made relations, depressingly inevitable visitors who resembled office-seekers or clients. These official receptions filled her with sadness. The conversation always took the same hackneyed tone, disgusting in its flattery or disquieting by reason of its allusions. People discussed coming interpellations of ministers; government majorities, projected legislation; the same phrases, as dreary as showers, fell with all the regularity of drops of rain. Even young girls, brought up in this centre of infuriated politicians, spoke of the breaking up of the majority, reports or ballots, in the same manner as shopkeepers talk of their trade.

Poor Adrienne exerted herself to acquire an interest in these matters.

Since her husband's very existence was involved therein, hers should also be. She had, however, formerly dreamed of an entirely different youth and on bright, suns.h.i.+ny days she reflected that yonder on the banks of the Isere, it was delightful in her sweet, little, provincial house.

Besides, she carefully concealed her melancholy. She knew that she was already reproached for being somewhat sad. A minister's wife should know how to smile. This was what Madame Marsy never failed to repeat to her as often as possible when she visited her at Place Beauvau. This woman who hardly concerned herself at all about her son, allowing him to grow up badly enough and committing all her maternal duties to the grandmother, was perpetually cheerful, notwithstanding that her life had been chequered by chance and her widowhood of sufficiently dramatic character, as was said. She endeavored to play the part of an adviser, an intimate friend to Adrienne. She frequently said to Madame Gerson, who rarely left her, that Madame Vaudrey would be altogether charming if she had _chic_.

"Unfortunately, she is provincial; not in her element. She still smacks of Dauphiny. And then--what is the funniest thing: she knows nothing of politics."

"She does not even concern herself about it," said the pretty Madame Gerson, laughing heartily.

According to these ladies she did not take the trouble to fulfil the role of a minister's wife faultlessly. Ah! if only Sabine or Blanche Gerson occupied the position filled by this _pet.i.te bourgeoise_ of Gren.o.ble! Well! Paris would have seen what an Athenian Republic was.

Sabine Marsy was decidedly clever. She politely advised Adrienne, without appearing to do so, as to many matters, in such a way as to convey reproof under the guise of kindness. Madame Vaudrey would have done well, as Madame Gerson also observed, to have studied the _Code du Ceremonial_ on reaching Place Beauvau.

Like Madame Marsy, Madame Gerson had gradually gained Adrienne's friends.h.i.+p. From an ostentatious desire to be able to tell of what happened at the ministry; to be on the first list of guests, when the minister received or gave a ball, Sabine Marsy, who had suffered from the mania of aspiring to become an artist, patronized the _intransigeant_ painters and exhibited at the salon, now set her mind on playing the role of a political figure in Paris. Madame Gerson, _Blanche_, as Sabine called her, had a similar ambition, but simply from a desire to be in fas.h.i.+on.

She wished to bring herself into notice. Everything attracted her, tempted her. She belonged, body and soul, to that machine with its manifold gearing, brilliant, noisy, active, puffing like a locomotive, that is called _chic_. _Chic_, that indefinite, indefinable word, changeable and subtle like a capillary hygrometer, is a Parisian tyranny that grinds out more fas.h.i.+onable lives than the King of Dahomey offers as victims on his great feast days. For Blanche, everything in this most stimulated, over-excited, feverishly deranged life, was reduced to these two inevitable conclusions: what was _chic_ and what was not _chic_. Not only was this the inevitable guide in reference to style, clothing, hat, gloves, costume, material, jewelry, the dress that she should wear, but also the book that should be read, the play that should be heard, the operatic score that should be strummed on the piano, the bonbon that should be presented, the opinion that one should hold, the picture one should comment upon, all was hopelessly a question of _chic_.

Madame Gerson would have preferred to be compromised in the matter of her honor rather than to be ridiculed as to her opinions or to express an idea that was not chic. The necessary result was that all this woman's conversation--and she often came to see Madame Vaudrey,--was on well-known topics; so that Adrienne knew in advance what Blanche's opinion was upon such and such a matter, and that ideas could only pa.s.s muster with Madame Gerson when they bore the stamp of chic, just as a coin, to escape suspicion of being counterfeit, must bear the stamp of the mint.

Blanche would have been heartbroken if she had not been seen in the President's salon on the occasion of a great reception at the elysee; at the ministry, on the evening of a comedy; if she had not been in the front rank of the ladies' gallery on the day of interpellation at the a.s.sembly; if she had not been greeted from the top of the grand stand by some minister, on Grand Prix day; if she had not been the first at the varnis.h.i.+ng; the first at the general rehearsals, a little _chic_,--the first everywhere. Slender, delicate, but hardy as a Parisian, she dragged her exhausted husband, with her hand of fine steel, through receptions, b.a.l.l.s, soirees, salons, talking loudly, judging everything, chattering, cackling and haranguing, delighted to mount, with head erect, the grand staircase of a minister and feel the joy of plunging her little feet into the official moquettes as if her heels had been made for state carpets; swelling with pride when she heard the usher, amid the hubbub of the reception, call loudly the name which meant the fas.h.i.+onable couple, a couple found at every fete:

"Monsieur and Madame Gerson!"

While the husband, fatigued, weary, left his office heavy-headed, after having eaten a hasty meal, put on his dress coat and white tie in haste, got into his carriage in haste, hurriedly accompanied his wife, left her in order to take a doze on an armchair during the height of the ball, woke in haste, returned home in haste, slept hurriedly, rose the same, dragging this indefatigable creature about with him like a convict's chain, she smiled at others, enticed others, waltzed with others, adorned herself for others, keeping for him only her weariness, her yawns, her pallor and her sick-headaches.

For these two galley-slaves of _chic_, the winter pa.s.sed in this manner, as fatiguing as months of penal servitude, and they went none too soon, when the summer arrived, to breathe the sea air or enjoy the suns.h.i.+ne of the country, in order to restore their frames, wan, worn-out, seedy and "gruelled," as Sabine Marsy said, when she recalled her connection with the artists.

"Ah! how much better I like my home!" thought Madame Vaudrey.

Sabine and Madame Gerson, with the wives of the ministers, those of the chiefs of departments, and the regular visitors, were the most a.s.siduous in their attentions to Adrienne, whom they considered decidedly provincial. She, stupefied, was alarmed by these Parisian bustlers, that resembled machines in running order, jabbering away as music-boxes play.

"Do they tire you?" said Guy de Lissac to her bluntly one evening, succ.u.mbing to a feeling of pity for this pensive young woman,--who was a hundred times prettier than Madame Gerson, whose beauty was so highly extolled in the journals,--this minister's wife, who voluntarily kept herself in the background with a timidity that betrayed no awkwardness, but was in every way attractive, especially to a man about town like Guy.

"They do not tire me, they upset me," Adrienne replied.

"Ah! they are in full _go_, as it is called. An express train. But they amuse themselves so much that they have not even time to smile. When the locomotive spins along too rapidly, try to distinguish the scenery!"

Adrienne instinctively felt that under his irony this sceptic disguised a sort of sincerity. Lissac's wit pleased her. He surprised her somewhat at times, but the probably a.s.sumed raillery of the young man compensated for the insipid nonsense of the conversation to which she listened daily.

At first from mere curiosity and after from a sentiment of respectful devotion, Guy was impelled to study that delicate and sensitive nature, entirely swayed by love of Sulpice, that suffered at times a vague pressure as of some indefinable anguish at the throat, as if a vacuum--a choking vacuum--had been created about her by some air-pump.

This huge mansion seemed to her to be entirely innocent of all memories, and though peopled with phantoms, was as commonplace and vulgar as an apartment house. There were no a.s.sociations save dust and cracks. These salons, built for the Marechal de Beauvau, these walls that had listened to the sobs of Madame d'Houdetot at the death-bed of Saint-Lambert, appeared to Adrienne to exude ennui, strangling and inevitable ennui, solemn, official, absolute ennui, nothing but ennui in the very decorum of the place, and isolation in the midst of power.

She cursed her loneliness, she felt lost amid the salons of this furnished ministerial mansion, whose cold, gloomy apartments, with the chairs symmetrically arranged along the walls, she wandered through, but evidently without expecting any one: state chairs lacking occupants,--ordinary chairs, domestic chairs seem to have tongues--that never exchanged conversation. Vast, deserted rooms where the green curtains behind the gla.s.s doors of the bookcases were eternally drawn, bookcases without books, forever open, mournful as empty sepulchres.