His Excellency the Minister Part 43

"Why?"

"I have led Madame Gerson to hope--You know whom I mean, Madame Marsy's friend,--I have almost promised her that you would accept an invitation to dine at her house."

For a moment Vaudrey was put out.

Another evening taken! Hours of delight stolen from Marianne!

"I have done wrong?" asked Adrienne, as she rested her pretty but somewhat sad face on her husband's bosom. "I did it because it is so great a pleasure to me to spend an entire evening with you, even at another's house. Remember you have so many official dinners, banquets and invitations that you attend alone. When the minister's wife is invited with him, it is a fete-day for the poor, little forsaken thing.

I do not have much of you, it is true, but I see you, I hear you talking and I am happy. Do not chide me for having said that we would go to Madame Gerson's. The more so, because she is a charming woman. Ah! when she speaks of you! 'So great a minister!' Don't you know what she calls you?--'A Colbert!'"

Vaudrey could not restrain a smile.

"Come, after that, one cannot refuse her invitation. It is the _Monseigneur_ of the beggar," said he, kissing Adrienne's brow. "And when do we dine at Madame Gerson's?"

"On Monday next; I shall have at least one delightful evening to see you," said the young wife sweetly.

The minister entered his cabinet. Almost immediately after, a messenger handed him a card: _Molina, Banker_.

"How strange it is!" thought Sulpice. "I had him in mind."

In the course of his troublesome reflections concerning the Gochard paper, Vaudrey persistently thought of that fat, powerful man who laughed and harangued in a loud voice in the greenroom of the ballet, as he patted with his fat fingers the delicate chin of Marie Launay.

Why! if he were willing, this Molina--Molina the Tumbler!--for him it is a mere bagatelle, a hundred thousand francs!

Salomon Molina entered the minister's cabinet just as he made his way into the foyer of the Opera, with swelling chest, tilted chin and stomach thrust forward.

"Monsieur le Ministre," he said in a clear voice, as he spread himself out in the armchair that Vaudrey pointed out to him, "I notify you that you have my maiden visit!--I am still in a state of innocency! On my honor, this is the first time I have set my foot within a minister's office!"

He manifested his independence--born of his colossal influence--by his satisfied and successful air. The former Ma.r.s.eillaise clothes-dealer, in his youth pouncing upon the sailors of the port and Maltese and Levantine seamen, to palm off on them a second-hand coat or trousers, as the wardrobe dealers of the Temple hook the pa.s.ser-by, Salomon Molina, who had paraded his rags and his hopes on the Canebiere, dreaming at the back of his dark shop of the triumphs, the pleasures, the revels and the indigestions that money affords, had, moreover, always preserved the bitterness of those wretched days and his red, Jewish lip expressed the gall of his painful experiences.

His first word as he entered Vaudrey's cabinet, a.s.serting the virginity of his efforts at solicitation, betrayed his bitterness.

Now, triumphant, powerful, delighted, feasted and fat, his ma.s.sive form, his gross flesh and his money were in evidence all over Paris. His huge paunch, shaking with laughter, filled the stage-boxes at the theatres.

He expanded his broad shoulders as he reclined in the caleche that deposited him on race-days at the entrance of the weighing-enclosure. He held by the neck, as it were, everything of the Parisian quarry that yelps and bounds about money, issues of stock, and the food of public fortune: bankers, stock-brokers, and jobbers, financial, political and exchange editors, wretches running after a hundred sous, statesmen in a fair way to fortune; and he distributed to this little crowd, just as he would throw food into a kennel, the discounts and clippings of his ventures, taking malicious pleasure, the insolent delight of a fortunate upstart, in feigning at the moment when loans were issued, sickness that had no existence, in order to have the right of keeping his chamber, of hearing persons of exalted names ringing at his door and dancing attendance upon him,--powerful, influential and ill.u.s.trious persons,--him, the second-hand dealer and chafferer from Ma.r.s.eilles.

It was then that he tasted the joy of supreme power, that delight which t.i.tillated even his marrow, and after having rested all day, the prey of a convenient neuralgia, he experienced the unlimited pleasure of force overcoming mind, the blow of a fist crus.h.i.+ng a weakling, as with a white cravat he appeared in some salon, in the greenroom of the ballet, or in the dressing-room of a _premiere_, saying with the mocking smile of triumph and the a.s.surance attending a gorged appet.i.te:

"I was sick to-day, I suffered from neuralgia! The Minister of Finance called on me!--Baron Nathan came to get information from me!"

Among all the pleasures experienced by this man, he valued feminine virtue occasionally purchased with gold as little in comparison with the virgin souls, honor and virtue that he often succeeded in humiliating, in bending before him like a reed, and snuffing out with his irony, whenever necessity placed at his mercy any of those puritanical beings who had pa.s.sed sometimes with haughty brow before the millions of this man of money. It was then that the clothes-dealer took his revenge in all its hideousness. There was no pity to be expected from this fat, smiling and easy-going man. His fat fingers strangled more certainly than the lean hands of a usurer. Molina never pardoned.

Ah! if this fellow went to see the minister, most a.s.suredly he wanted a favor from him.

But what?

It was extraordinary, but before Vaudrey, Molina who could hold his own among rascals, found himself ill at ease. There was in the frank look of this _ninny_, as Molina the _Tumbler_ had one evening called him while talking politics, such direct honesty that the banker, accustomed as he was to dealings with sharks and intriguers, did not quite know how to open the question, nevertheless a very important matter was in hand.

"A rich plum," thought Molina.

A matter of railways, a concession to be gained. A matter of private interest, disguised under the swelling terms of the public welfare, the national needs. Millions were to be gained. Molina was charged with the duty of sounding the President of the Council and the Minister of Public Works. Two honest men. The _dodge_, as the _Tumbler_ said, was to make them swallow the affair under the guise of patriotism. A strategical railroad. The means of rapid locomotion in case of mobilization. With such high-sounding words, _strategy_, _frontier_, _safety_, they could carry a good many points.

Unfortunately, Vaudrey was rather skittish on these particular questions, besides he was informed on the matter. He felt his flesh creep while Molina was speaking. Just before, on seeing the banker's card, the idea of the money of which the fat man was one of the incarnations, had suddenly dawned upon him as a hope. Who knows? By Molina's aid, he might, perhaps, free himself from anxiety about the Gochard bill of exchange!--But from the minister's first words, although the banker could not get to the point, intimidated as he was by Sulpice's honest look, it was clear that Vaudrey surmised some repugnant suggestions in the hesitating words of this man.

What! Molina hesitating? He did not go straight to the point, squarely, according to his custom, Molina the ill.u.s.trious _Tumbler_? Eh! no! the intentionally cold bearing of the minister decidedly discomposed him.

Vaudrey's glance never wandered from his for a moment. When the promoter p.r.o.nounced the word Bourse, a disdainful curl played upon Sulpice's lips, but not a word escaped him. Molina heard his own voice break the silence of the ministerial cabinet and he felt himself entangled. He came to propose a combination, a bonus, and he did not suspect that Vaudrey would refuse to have a hand in it. And here, this devilish minister appeared not to understand, did not understand, perhaps, or else he understood too well. Molina was not accustomed to such hard-of-hearing people. With his fat hand, he had dropped into the hands of senators and ministers of the former regime, a sum for which the only receipt given was a smile. He was accustomed to the style of conversation carried on by hints and ended between intelligent people by a _shake of the hand_, that in which some bits of paper rested: bank-notes or paid-up shares. And this Vaudrey knew nothing! So he felt himself obliged to explain himself clearly, to stoop to dotting every _i_, at the risk of being shown out of doors.

Molina was too shrewd to run this risk. He would return at another time, seeing that the minister turned a deaf ear, but _pecare_! he sweat huge drops in seeking roundabout phrases, this man who never minced his words and habitually called things by their proper names. Was the like ever seen! A pettifogger from Gren.o.ble to _floor_ Salomon Molina!

"It made me warm," said the money-maker, on leaving the cabinet, "but, deuce take it! I'll have my revenge. One is not a minister always. You shall pay me dearly, my little fellow, for that uncomfortable little time."

Vaudrey had thoroughly understood the matter, but he did not intend to allow it to be seen that he did. That was a simpler way. He had not had to dismiss the buyer of consciences; he had enjoyed his embarra.s.sment and that was sufficient.

"What, however, if I had spoken to him of money before he had shown his hand! If I had accepted from him--!" he said to himself.

He shuddered at the thought as he had previously done while Molina was talking to him. A single imprudence, a single confidence might easily have placed him under the hand of this fat man. He must, however, find some solution. The days were rolling away and the bills signed for Marianne would in a very short time reach maturity.

"When I think that this Molina could in one day enable me to gain three times this sum."

Salomon had just told him: "To forestall the news on the Bourse is sometimes worth gold ingots!" A _forestaller_! As well say the revelation of a State secret, base speculation, almost treachery! And yet on hearing these words that covered up an insult, he had not even rung for the messenger to show Molina out, but had striven to comprehend nothing!

As the result of this conversation, he felt uncomfortable. The man had left an odor of pollution, as it were, behind him.

Vaudrey must needs be soon rea.s.sured respecting the Gochard paper. In visiting Marianne, he observed that his mistress was a shrewd woman. She informed him immediately that Claire Dujarrier whom she had seen, would secure a renewal from Gochard, who was unknown to Vaudrey, from three months to three months until the expiration of six months in consideration of an additional twenty thousand francs for each period of ninety days.

"I did not understand that at first," Marianne began by remarking.

"Oh!" said Sulpice, "I understand perfectly, it is absolute usury. But time is ready money, and in six months it will be easier for me to pay one hundred and forty thousand francs than a hundred thousand to-day. I have plans."

"What?"

"Very difficult to explain, but quite clear in my mind! The important part is not to have the date of maturity on the first of June, but on the first of December."

"Then nothing is more simple. Madame Dujarrier will arrange it."

"Is Madame Dujarrier a providence then?"

"Almost," said Marianne coldly.

Sulpice was intoxicated with joy, realizing that he had before him all the necessary time in which to free himself from his embarra.s.sment, when Marianne should have returned him his first acceptance for one hundred thousand francs against a new one for one hundred and forty thousand. He breathed again. From the twenty-sixth of April to the first of December, he had nearly seven months in which to free himself. He repeated the calculation that he had formerly made when he said: "I have ample time!"

He reentered the Hotel Beauvau in a cheerful mood, Adrienne was delighted. She feared to see him return nervous and dejected.

"Then you will be brilliant presently at Madame Gerson's."

"Stop! that's so. It is this evening in fact!--"

He had forgotten it.