His Excellency the Minister Part 40

His first call was at Simon Kayser's house, where perhaps, he expected to see Marianne. And the proof--

Vaudrey instinctively thought that it was a very hasty matter to call so soon on Uncle Kayser. This man's first visit was not to the painter's studio, but in reality to the woman who--Sulpice still heard Marianne declare that--who would not become his mistress. There was something strange in that. Eh! _parbleu!_ it was perhaps Monsieur de Rosas who had sent for Marianne.

She endeavored to make it clear that only chance was responsible for bringing them together here, but Sulpice doubted, he was uneasy and angry.

He felt almost determined to declare, if it were only by a word, the prize of possession, the conquest of this woman, whom he felt that Rosas was about to contend with him for.

She surmised everything and interrupted Sulpice even before he could have spoken and, with a sort of false respect, displayed before Rosas the friends.h.i.+p which Monsieur le Ministre desired to show her and of which she was proud.

"By the way, my dear minister, as to your appointment as President of the Council?"

Vaudrey knit his brows.

"That is so! I ask your pardon. I am betraying a state secret. Monsieur de Rosas will not abuse it. Isn't that so, Monsieur le Duc?"

Rosas bowed; Vaudrey was growing impatient.

"Madame Vaudrey will, of course, be delighted at this appointment, Monsieur le Ministre?" continued Marianne.

She smiled at Sulpice who was greatly astonished to hear Adrienne's name mentioned there; then, turning to Rosas, she charmingly depicted a quasi-idyllic sketch of the affection of Monsieur le Ministre for Madame Vaudrey. A model household. There was nothing surprising in that, moreover. "Monsieur le Ministre" was so amiable--yes, truly amiable, without any flattery,--and Madame Vaudrey so charming!

Sulpice, who was very nervous and had become slightly pale, endeavored to discover the meaning of this riddle. He asked himself what Marianne was thinking about, what she meant to say or dissimulate.

Monsieur de Rosas sat motionless on his chair, very cool, looking calmly on without speaking a word.

He seemed to await an opportunity to leave the studio, and since Vaudrey had arrived he had only spoken a few brief phrases in strict propriety.

Marianne, all smiles and happy, with beaming eyes, interrogated Vaudrey and sought to provide a subject of conversation for the unexpected interview of these two men. Was there a great crowd at Collard's funeral? Who had sung at the ceremony? Vaudrey answered these questions rapidly, like a man absorbed in other thoughts.

After a moment's interval, Monsieur de Rosas arose and bowed to Marianne with gentlemanly formality.

"Are you going, my dear duke?"

"Yes, I have seen you again. You are getting along well. I am satisfied."

"You will come again, at any rate? My uncle has some new compositions to show you."

"Oh! great ideas," began Kayser. "Things that will make famous frescoes!--For a palace--or the Pantheon!--either one!"

He had looked alternately at the duke and Vaudrey.

Rosas bowed to the minister and withdrew without replying, followed by Kayser and Marianne who, on reaching the threshold of the salon, seized his hand and pressed it nervously within her own soft one and said quickly:

"You will return, oh! I beg you! Ah! it is too bad to have run away! You will come back!"

She was at once entreating and commanding him. Rosas did not reply, but she felt in the trembling of his hand, as he pressed her own, in his brilliant glance, that she would see him again. And since he had returned to Paris alone, weary of being absent from her, perhaps, seeing that he had hastened back after having desired to free himself from her, did it not seem this time that he was wholly captivated?

All this was expressed by a pressure of the fingers, a glance, a sigh.

Rosas went rapidly away, like one distracted. Marianne, who motioned to Uncle Kayser to disappear, reappeared in the studio, entirely self-possessed.

Vaudrey had risen from the divan on which he had been sitting and he was standing, waiting.

"I believed that I understood that you had dismissed Monsieur de Rosas?"

"I might have told you that I did so, since it is true."

"You smiled at him, nevertheless, just now."

"Yes."

"A man who begged you to be his mistress!"

"And whom I rejected, yes!"

She looked at Sulpice with her winsome, sidelong glance, curling her lovely pink lips that he had kissed so many times.

"Then you love that man?"

"I! not at all, only it is flattering to me to have him return like that, just like some penitent little boy."

"I do not understand--"

"_Parbleu!_ you are not a woman, that is all that that proves!--It is irritating to our self-love to see people too promptly accept the dismissal one gives them. What! Don't they suffer? Don't they say anything? Don't they complain? Monsieur de Rosas comes back to me, that proves that he was hurt, and I triumph. Now, do you understand?"

"And--that joy that I observed is--?"

"It is because Monsieur de Rosas is in Paris."

"And you don't love him? You don't love him?" asked Vaudrey, clasping Marianne's hands in his.

She laughed and said:

"I do not love him in the least."

"And you love me?"

"Yes, you, I love you!"

"Marianne, you know that it would be very wicked and wrong to lie! It is not necessary to love me at all if you must cease to love me!"

"In other words, one should never lend money unless one is obliged to lend one's whole fortune."

He felt extremely dissatisfied with Marianne's ironical remark. She looked at him with an odd expression which was all the more disquieting and intoxicating.

"Let us speak no more about that, shall we?" she said. "I repeat to you that I am satisfied at having seen Monsieur de Rosas again, because it affords my self-love its revenge. Now, whether he comes back or not, it matters little to me. He has made the _amende honorable_. That is the princ.i.p.al thing, and you, my dear, must not be jealous; I find Oth.e.l.lo's role tiresome; oh! yes, tiresome!--The more so, because you have no right to treat me as a Desdemona. The Code does not permit it."

"You want to remind me again, then, that I am married? A moment ago, you stabbed me by pin-thrusts."