His Excellency the Minister Part 42

"Sincere love is always bashful and clumsy. By that it may be known."

"Perhaps!" said Marianne.

Their conversations, however, only concerned love, so that Rosas might speak of his pa.s.sion or of his reminiscences.

She once asked him if he would despise a woman if she became his mistress.

"No!" he said, with a smile, "it is only a Frenchman who would despise the woman who surrendered herself. Other nations treat love more seriously. They do not consider the gift of one's self in the light of a fall."

Marianne looked at him full in the face with a strange expression.

"What, then, if I love you well enough to become your mistress?"

"I should still esteem you enough to become your husband!"

She felt her color change.

Was it a sport on the part of Monsieur de Rosas? Why had he spoken to her thus? Had he reflected upon what he had just said?

Jose added in a very gentle tone:

"Will you permit me to ask you a question, Marianne?"

"You may ask me anything. I will frankly answer all your questions."

"What was Monsieur Sulpice Vaudrey doing at your uncle's the other day?

Was he there to see you?"

Marianne smiled.

"Why, the minister simply came to talk of business matters. I hardly see him except for Uncle Kayser, who is soliciting an official commission,--you heard him--"

"Does Monsieur Vaudrey pay his addresses to you?"

"Necessarily. Oh! but only out of pure French gallantry. Mere politeness. He loves his wife and he knows very well that I don't love any one."

"No one?" asked Rosas.

"I do not love any one yet," repeated Marianne, opening her gray eyes with a wide stare under the Spaniard's anxious glance.

From that day, her mind was possessed of a new idea that imperiously directed it. When Rosas had returned to her, she had only regarded him as a possible lover, rich and agreeable. The mistress of a minister, she would become the mistress of a duke. A millionaire duke. The change would be profitable, a.s.suming that she could not retain both. Her calculations were speedily made. She would only make Rosas pay more dearly for the resistance he had offered before surrendering himself.

But now, abruptly and without her having thought of it, he had, with the incautiousness of a soldier who discloses his attack and lays himself open to a bully who tries to provoke him, the duke showed her the extent of his violent pa.s.sion by a single phrase that feverishly agitated her.

His mistress! Why his mistress, since he had shown her that perhaps?--

"Idiot that I am!" thought Marianne. "Suppose I play my cards for marriage?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It will cost no more!"

Married! d.u.c.h.ess! and d.u.c.h.esse de Rosas! At first she laughed. d.u.c.h.ess!

I am asking a little from you! The mistress of Pierre Meran, the artist's drudge, the wretch who abducted her and debauched her, adding his depravity to hers, and who died of consumption while quite young, after having plunged this girl into vice, this Marianne Kayser, born and moulded for vice: she a d.u.c.h.ess!

"It would be too funny, my dear!" she thought.

Never had Vaudrey, whom she saw that evening at Rue p.r.o.ny, seemed so provincial, or, as she said, so _Sulpice_. Besides, he was gloomy and unable to express himself clearly at first, but finally he brought himself to acknowledge that he was embarra.s.sed about providing for the bill of exchange--she understood--

"No, I do not know!"

"The bill of exchange in favor of Monsieur Gochard!"

"Ah! that is so. Well! if you cannot pay it, my dear, I will advise--I will seek--"

There was nothing to seek. Vaudrey would evidently get himself out of the affair--but the doc.u.ment matured at an unfortunate time. He did not dare to mortgage La Sauliere, his farm at Saint-Laurent-du-Pont. He had reflected that Adrienne might learn all about it. And then--

Marianne broke in upon his confidences.

"Don't speak to me about these money matters, my friend, you know that sort of thing disgusts me!--"

"I understand you and ask your pardon."

They were to see each other again the next day, as parliament was to take a rest.

"What joy! Not to be away from you for the whole of the day!" remarked Vaudrey.

"Well then, till to-morrow!"

She felt intense pleasure in being alone again, wrapped in her sheets, with the light of the lamp that ordinarily shone upon her hours of love with Sulpice, still burning, and to be free to dream of her Spanish grandee who had said, plainly, with the trembling of pa.s.sion on his lips: "I should esteem you enough to become your husband!"

She pa.s.sed the night in reverie.

Vaudrey, in spite of the joy of the morrow,--a long tete-a-tete with his mistress,--thought with increasing vexation of the approaching maturity of his bill of exchange; within two months he would have to pay the hundred thousand francs which he had undertaken to pay Marianne's creditor.

"It is astonis.h.i.+ng how quickly time pa.s.ses!"

At breakfast the following day, Adrienne saw that her husband was more than usually preoccupied.

"Are political affairs going badly?"

"No--on the contrary--"

"Then why are you melancholy?"

"I am a little fatigued."

"Then," said Madame Vaudrey, "you will scold me."