His Excellency the Minister Part 54

"Well?"--said the coachman, looking with blinking eyes at this pale-faced, distraught-looking woman.

She remained there as if seeking an idea, a purpose.

"Where shall we go?" repeated the driver.

Suddenly Marianne's face trembled with a joyous expression and she abruptly said:

"To the Prefecture of Police!"

_The general rose, grasping his gla.s.s as if he would s.h.i.+ver it, and while the _parfait_ overflowed on to the plates, he cried in a hoa.r.s.e voice, as if he were at the head of his division:_

_"I love bronze--I love bronze--...."_

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BANQUET]

VI

There was a crowd at the _Mirlitons_ Exposition.

A file of waiting carriages lined the kerbstone the whole length of Place Vendome. Beneath the arch and within the portal, groups of fas.h.i.+onable persons elbowed each other on entering or leaving, and exchanged friendly polite greetings; the women quizzing the new hats, little hoods of plush or large _Rembranesque_ hats in which the delicate Parisian faces were lost as under the roof of a cabriolet. The liveried lackeys perfunctorily glanced at the cards of admission that the holders hardly took the trouble to present. One was seated at a table mechanically handing out catalogues. Through the open door of the Club's Theatre could be seen gold frames suspended from the walls, terra cottas and marbles on their pedestals, and around the pictures and sculptures a dense crowd, ma.s.ses of black hats inclined toward the paintings, side by side with pretty feminine heads crowned with Gainsborough hats adorned with plumes. It was impossible to see at close quarters the pieces offered for the sale that was for that day the engrossing topic of conversation of _All Paris_.

"A veritable salon in miniature!" said Guy aloud to an art critic who was taking notes. "But to examine it comfortably one should be quite alone. For an hour past I have been trying to get a look at the Meissonier, but have not been able to do so. It is stifling here. I will return another time."

He quickly grasped the hand that held the pencil, and which was extended to him, and tried to make a pa.s.sage through the crowd to the exit.

Pushed and pus.h.i.+ng, he smiled and apologized for his inability to disengage his arms that were held by the crowd as if in a vise, in order to salute the friends he recognized. At length he reached, giving vent to a grunt of satisfaction, the hall where visitors were sitting on divans, chatting, either less eager to view the pictures or satisfied in their desires. There, Guy instinctively looked at a mirror and examined the knot of his cravat. He did not notice that a gentleman with a closely b.u.t.toned frock-coat, on seeing him, quietly rose from the divan on which he had been sitting, and approached him, mechanically pulling the skirts of his coat meanwhile, so as to smooth the creases.

He simply touched Monsieur de Lissac's shoulder with the tip of his finger.

Guy turned round, expecting to recognize a friend.

"You are surely Monsieur de Lissac?" said the man in the frock-coat, with the refined manners of a gentleman.

"Yes!" said Lissac, somewhat astonished at the coldness of his manner.

"Be good enough to accompany me, monsieur, I am a Commissioner of the Judiciary Delegations!"

Lissac thought he misunderstood him.

"I confess that I don't quite understand you," he began, with a rather significant smile.

"I am a Commissioner of Police," the other replied, "and I am ordered to arrest you."

He suddenly exposed his insignia like the end of a sash, and by a very polite gesture, with an amiable and engaging manner, pointed to the way out by the side of the archway of the hotel.

"I have two of my men yonder, monsieur, but you will not place me under the necessity of--"

"What is this, monsieur?" said Lissac. "I frankly confess that I understand nothing of this enigma. I hope you will explain it to me."

All this was said in a conversational tone, _mezzo voce_, and accompanied with smiles. No one could have guessed what these two men were saying to each other. Only, Guy was very pale and his somewhat haughty glance around him seemed to indicate that he was seeking some support or witness.

He uttered a slight exclamation of satisfaction on perceiving the journalist to whom he had just before spoken a few words before a little canvas by Meissonier.

"My dear Brevans," he said in a loud voice, "here is an unpublished item for your journal. This gentleman has laid his hand on my collar."

With a sly look he indicated the Commissioner of Police, who did not budge.

"What! my dear fellow?"

"They have arrested me, that is all," said Lissac.

"Monsieur," the Commissioner quickly interrupted in a low voice, "no commotion, please. For my sake--and for yours."

He lightly touched Lissac's b.u.t.tonhole with the end of his finger, as if to intimate that there was the explanation of his arrest, and Guy suddenly became very red and stamped his foot.

"Idiot that I am!--I am at your orders, monsieur," he said, making a sign to the Commissioner to pa.s.s out.

He again saluted the stupefied journalist, and the Commissioner bowing to him, out of politeness or prudence, Guy pa.s.sed before him, angrily twirling his mustache.

Besides Brevans, n.o.body in all that crowd suspected that a man had just been arrested in the midst of the Exposition. Unless the journalist had hawked the news from group to group, it would not have been suspected.

Lissac found at the door of the Club on Place Vendome a hired carriage which had come up as soon as the driver saw the Commissioner. Two agents, having the appearance of good, peaceable bourgeois, were walking about, chatting together on the sidewalk, as if on duty. The Commissioner said to one of them:

"I have no further need of you, Crabot will do."

Crabot, a little man with the profile of a weasel, slowly mounted the box beside the coachman, and the Commissioner of Police took his seat next to Lissac, who had nervously plucked the rosette of the Portuguese Order of Christ from his b.u.t.tonhole.

"What!" he said. "Really, then, it is for this? Because I wear this ribbon without having paid five or six louis into the Chancellery?--I have always intended to do so, but, believe me, I have not had the time.

But a fiscal question does not warrant publicly insulting--"

"I do not know if it is for that," interrupted the Commissioner; "but it is evident that a recent note in the _Officiel_ points directly to the illegal wearing of foreign decorations. You do not read the _Officiel_, Monsieur de Lissac."

Guy shrugged his shoulders as if he considered the matter perfectly ridiculous. It seemed to him that behind the alleged pretext there was some secret cause, something like a feminine intrigue. He vaguely recalled that he had seen Marianne one evening at Madame de Marsy's smile at the Prefect of Police, that Jouvenet who flirted so agreeably with that pretty girl in a corner of the salon. And then, too, at the theatre, in Marianne's box, the prefect found his way. At the first moment, the idea that Marianne had a hand in this arrest took possession of his mind. He saw her standing before him at his house, posing her little nervous, fidgety hand on his breast at the very spot occupied by this rosette; again he saw her smiling mysteriously, accompanying it with a caress which seemed to suggest the desire to end in a scratch.

Was it really true that Marianne was sufficiently audacious to have brought about this coup de theatre? No, there was some error. The stupid zeal of some subordinate officer was manifested in this outrage. Some cowardly charge had perhaps been made against him at the prefecture.

Every man who crosses a street has so many enemies that look at him as he pa.s.ses as if they would spy on him! There are so many undeclared hatreds crawling in the rotten depths of this Parisian bog! One fine morning one feels one's self stung in the heel. It is nothing: only some anonymous gossip; some unknown person taking revenge!

At the prefecture, they would doubtless inform Guy as to the cause of the attack: in questioning him, he would himself certainly be permitted to interrogate. He was stunned on arriving at the clerk's office to find that they took his description, just as they would that of a common offender, a night-walker or a rascal. He wished to enter a protest and became annoyed. He flew into a rage for a moment, then he reflected that there was nothing to be done but to submit to the bites of the iron teeth of the police routine in which he was suddenly entangled. They searched his pockets and he felt their vile hands graze his skin. He experienced a strongly rebellious sentiment and notwithstanding his present enforced calm, from time to time he demanded to see the Prefect of Police, the Chief of the Munic.i.p.al Police, the _Juge d'Instruction_, he did not know whom, but at least some one who was responsible.

"You have my card, send my card to Monsieur Jouvenet; he knows me!"

They made no reply.