His Excellency the Minister Part 55

The Commissioner who had arrested him was not there. Guy found himself in the presence of what were as pieces of human machinery, working silently, without noise of wheels, and caring for his protests no more than they did for the wind that blew through the corridors.

"See, on my honor, I am not a rascal!" he said. "What have I done? I have stupidly pa.s.sed this bit of red ribbon into my b.u.t.tonhole. Well!

that is an offence, it is not a crime! People are not arrested for that!

I will pay the fine, if fine there is! You are not going to keep me here with thieves?"

In that jail, he endeavored to preserve his appearance as a fas.h.i.+onable elegant and an ironical man of the world, treating his misadventure in a spirit of haughty disdain; but his overstrained nerves led him to act with a sort of cold fury that gave him the desire to openly oppose, as in a duel, his many adversaries.

"I beg you to remain calm," one of these men repeated to him from time to time in a pa.s.sionless way.

"Oh! that is easy enough for you to say," cried Lissac. "I ask you once more, where is Monsieur Jouvenet?--I wish to see Monsieur Jouvenet!"

"Monsieur le Prefect cannot be seen in this way," was the reply.

"Moreover, you haven't to see any one; you have only to wait."

"Wait for what?"

They led Guy de Lissac through the pa.s.sages to the door of a new cell, which they opened before him.

"Then," he said, as he tried to force a troubled smile, "I am a prisoner? Quite seriously? As in melodrama? This is high comedy!"

He asked if he would soon be examined, at least. They didn't know. They hardly replied to him. Could he write, at any rate? Notify any one?

Protest? What should he do? He heard from the lips of a keeper who had the appearance of a very honest man, the information, crus.h.i.+ng as a verdict: "You are in close confinement, as it is called!"

_In close confinement?_ Were they mocking him? In secret, he, Lissac?

Evidently, they wanted to make fun; it was absurd, it was unlikely, such things only happened in operettas. He would heartily relish it at the Cafe Riche presently, when he went to dine. _In close confinement?_ He was no longer annoyed at the jest, so amusing had it become. For an old Parisian like him, it was a facetious romance and almost amusing.

"A climax!"

Evening pa.s.sed and night came. They brought Lissac a meal, and the _jest_, as he called it, in no way came to an end. He did not close his eyes for the whole night. He was stifled, and grew angry within the narrow cage in which they had locked him. All sorts of wild projects of revenge pa.s.sed through his brain. He would send his seconds to Monsieur Jouvenet, he would protest in the papers. He would have public opinion in his favor.

Then his scepticism came to his aid, and shrugging his shoulders, he said:

"Bah! public opinion! It will ridicule me, that's all! It will accuse me of desiring to make a stir, to cut off my dog's tail. To-day, Alcibiades would thus cut off his, but the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would bring an action against him."

He waited for the next morning with the feverish anxiety of those who cannot sleep. Certainly he would be examined at the first moment. They did so in the case of the vagabonds gathered in during the night and dumped into the _lions' den_. The whole day pa.s.sed without Lissac's seeing any other faces than those of his turnkeys, and these men were almost mutes. Then his irritation was renewed. He turned his useless anger against himself, as he could not insult the walls.

Night came round, and spite of himself, he slept for a short time on the wretched prison pallet. He began to find the facetious affair too prolonged and too gloomy. They took him just in time, the second day after his arrest, before a kind of magistrate or police judge, who, after having reminded him that the law was clear in respect of the wearing of foreign orders, announced that the matter was settled by a decree of _nolle prosequi_.

"That is to say," said Lissac, in anger, "that two nights pa.s.sed in close confinement is regarded as ample punishment? If I am guilty of a crime, I deserve much more than that. But, if only a mere peccadillo is attributable to me, I consider it too much; and I swear to you that I intend, in my turn, to summon to justice for illegal arrest--"

"Keep quiet," curtly interrupted the magistrate. "That is the best thing you can do!"

Lissac, meantime, felt a sort of physical delight in leaving those cold pa.s.sages and that stone dwelling.

The fresh breeze of a gray November day appeared to him to be as gentle as in spring. It seemed that he had lived in that den for weeks. He flung himself into a carriage, had himself driven home, and was received by his concierge with stupefied amazement.

"You, monsieur?" he said. "Already!"

This _already_ was pregnant with suggestiveness, and puzzled Lissac. The rumor had, in fact, spread throughout the quarter, and probably the porter had helped it along--that Guy had been arrested for complicity in some political intrigue, though of what nature was unknown.

Nevertheless, the previous evening, the agents of police had come to the apartments in Rue d'Aumale and had searched everything, moved, tried and probed everything. Evidently they were in quest of papers.

"Papers?" cried Lissac. "Her letter, _parbleu!_"

He was no longer in doubt. The delicate, dreaded hand of Marianne was at the bottom of all that. She had made some bargain with Monsieur Jouvenet, as between a woman and a debauchee! The Prefect of Police was not the loser: Marianne Kayser had the wherewithal to satisfy him.

"The miserable wench!" Lissac repeated as he went up to his apartment.

He rang and his servant appeared, looking as bewildered as the porter.

The apartment was still topsy-turvy. The valet de chambre had not dared to put the things in order, as if there reigned, amid the scattered packages and the yawning drawers, the majesty of the official seal.

They had examined everything, forced locks and removed packets of letters.

The small Italian cabinet, that contained Marianne's letter, had had its drawers turned over, like pockets turned inside out. Marianne's letter to Lissac, the sc.r.a.p of paper which the police hunted, without knowing whose will they were obeying, that confession of a crazy mistress to a lover who was smitten to his very bones, was no longer there.

"Ah! I will see Vaudrey! I will see him and tell him!" said Lissac aloud.

"Will monsieur breakfast?"

"Yes, as quickly as possible. Two eggs and tea, I am in a hurry."

He was anxious to rush off to the ministry. Was the Chamber sitting to-day? No. He would perhaps then find Sulpice at his first call. The messengers knew him.

He speedily hastened to Place Breda, looking for a carriage. On the way, he stumbled against a man who came down on the same side, smoking a cigar.

"Oh! Monsieur de Lissac!"

Guy instinctively stepped back one pace; he recognized Uncle Kayser.

Then, suddenly, his anger, which up to that time he had been able to restrain, burst forth, and in a few words energetic and rapid, he told Simon, who remained bewildered and somewhat pale, as if one had tried to force a quarrel on him, what he thought of Marianne's infamy.

The uncle said nothing, regretted that he had met Lissac, and contented himself with stammering from time to time:

"She has done that?--What! she has done that?--Ah! the rogue."

"And what do you say about it, you, Simon Kayser?"

"I?--What do I say about it?--Why--"

Little by little he recovered his sang-froid, looking at matters from the lofty heights of his artist's philosophy.

"It is rather too strong. What do you want?--It is not even moral, but it has _character!_ And in art, after the moral idea comes _character!_ Ah! bless me! character, that is something!--Otherwise, I disapprove. It is brutal, vulgar, that lack of ideal. I defy you to symbolize that.

_Love Avenging Itself Against Love_--_Jealousy Calling the Police to Its Aid in Order to Triumph over Dead Love!_ It is old, it lacks originality, it smacks of Prud'hon!--The Correggio of the decollete!--It is like Ta.s.saert, it is of the sprightly kind!--I would never paint so, that is what I say about it!"

Guy had no reply for this imperturbable moralist and he regretted that he had lost time in speaking to him. But his uncontrollable rage choked him. Enough remained however to show all his feelings to Vaudrey.

The minister was not in his cabinet. A messenger asked Lissac if he would speak to Monsieur Warcolier, the Under Secretary of State.

"I, I," then said a man who rose from the chair in which he had been sitting in the antechamber, "I should be glad to see Monsieur Warcolier--Monsieur Eugene, you know."