His Excellency the Minister Part 58

"At least," said Lissac.

He continued to traverse the salons, always returning instinctively toward the door at which Adrienne stood, with pale face and wandering look, and scarcely hearing, poor woman, the unfamiliar names that the usher uttered at equal intervals, like a speaking machine.

"Monsieur Durosoi!--Monsieur and Madame Brechet!--Monsieur the Minister of Public Works!--Monsieur the Prefect of the Aube!--Monsieur the Count de Grigny!--Monsieur Henri de Prangins!--Monsieur the General d'Herbecourt!--Monsieur the Doctor Vilandry!--Monsieur and Madame Tochard!"

She had vowed that she would be strong, and allow nothing to be seen of the despair that was wringing her heart. She compelled herself to smile.

In nightmares and hours of feverish unrest, she had suffered the same vague, morbid feeling that she now experienced. All that pa.s.sed about her seemed to be unreal. These white-cravatted men, these gaily-dressed women, the file of guests saluting her at the same spot in the salon, with the same expression of a.s.sumed respect and trite politeness, appeared to her but a succession of phantoms. Neither a name nor an a.s.sociation did she attach to those countenances that beamed on her with an official smile or gravely a.s.sumed a correct seriousness. She felt weary, overwhelmed and heavy-headed at the sight of this continued procession of strangers on whom it was inc.u.mbent that she should smile and to whom she must bow out of politeness, in virtue of that duty of state which she wished to fulfil to the last degree, poor soul!

The distant music of Fahrbach's polkas or Strauss's waltzes seemed like an added accompaniment that mocked the sadness of her unwholesome dream.

"And yet, in all that crowd of women who salute her, there are some who are jealous of her! Many envy her!" thought Guy, who was looking on.

Adrienne did not look at Vaudrey. She was afraid that if her eyes met her husband's fixed on her own, she would lose her sang-froid and suddenly burst into sobs, there before the guests. That would have been ridiculous. This blonde, so feebly gentle, isolated herself, therefore, with surprising determination and seemed to see nothing save her own thought, the unique thought: "Be strong. You shall weep at your ease when you are alone, far away from these people, far away from this crowd, alone with yourself, entirely alone, entirely alone!"

Vaudrey was very pale, but carried away, in spite of himself, by the joy which he felt in receiving all the ill.u.s.trious and powerful men of the state, foreign amba.s.sadors, the Presidents of the Senate and the Chamber, the ministers, his colleagues, deputies, wealthy financiers, renowned publicists, in fact, everything that counts and has a name in Paris,--this minister, happy to see the crowd running to him, at his house, bowing, paying homage to him, for a moment forgot the crus.h.i.+ng events of that day, the sudden thunderbolt falling on him and perhaps, as he had said, crus.h.i.+ng his hearthstone.

He no longer thought of anything but what he saw: salutations, bowed heads, inclinations that succeeded each other with the regularity of a clock, that succession of homages to the little Gren.o.ble advocate, now become Prime Minister.

Oblivious of everything else, he had lost the recollection of his mistress, and he suddenly grew pale and looked instinctively with terror at Adrienne, who was as pale as a corpse.--A visitor had just been announced by the usher, in his metallic voice, and the name that he cried mechanically, as he had uttered all the others, echoed there like an insult.

Guy de Lissac shook through his entire frame, as he too heard it.

"Monsieur Simon Kayser and Mademoiselle Kayser!"--cried the usher.

Still another name rang out from that clarion voice:

"Monsieur le Duc de Rosas!"

Neither Vaudrey nor Adrienne heard this name. Sulpice felt urged to rush toward Marianne to entreat her to leave. It is true, he had invited her.

In spite of Jouvenet who knew all, and in spite of so many others who suspected the truth, she desired to be present at that fete at the ministry and to show herself to all. Vaudrey had warned her, however. He had written to her a few hours before, entreating her, nay, almost commanding, her, not to come, and she was there. She entered, advancing with head erect, leaning on the arm of her uncle, his white cravat hidden by his artist's beard and on his lips a disdainful smile.

Adrienne asked herself whether she was really dreaming now. Approaching her, she saw, crossing the salon with a queenly step, that lovely, insolent creature, trailing a long black satin skirt, her superb bosom imprisoned in a corsage trimmed with jet, and crossed, as it were, with a blood-red stripe formed by a cordon of roses. Marianne's fawn-colored head seemed to imperiously defy from afar the pale woman who stood with her two hands falling at her side as if overwhelmed.

The vision, for vision it was, approached like one of the nightmares that haunt people's dreams. Adrienne's first glance encountered the direct gaze of Marianne's gray eyes. Behind Mademoiselle Kayser came De Rosas, his ruddy Castilian face that was ordinarily pensive beamed to-day, but Madame Vaudrey did not perceive him. She saw only this woman, the woman who was approaching her, in her own house, insolently, impudently, to defy her after having outraged her, to insult her after having deceived her!

Adrienne felt a violent wrath rising within her and suddenly her entire being seemed longing to bound toward Marianne, to drive her out after casting her name in her teeth.

Instinctively she looked around her with the wild glance of a wretched woman who no longer knows what to do, as if seeking for some a.s.sistance or advice.

Vaudrey's wan pallor and Lissac's supplicating gesture appealed to her and at once restored her to herself. It was true! she had no right to cause a scandal. She was within the walls of the ministry, in a common salon into which this girl had almost a right to enter, just like so many others lost in the crowd of guests. For Adrienne, it was not merely a question of personal vanity or honor that was at stake, but also Vaudrey's reputation. She felt herself _in view_, ah! what a word:--in view, that it to say, she was like an actress to whom neither a false step nor a false note is permitted; compelled to smile while death was at her heart, to parade while her entrails were torn with grief, forced to feign and to wear a mask in the presence of all who were there, and to lie to all the invited guests, indifferent and inimical, as Ramel said, and who were looking about ready at any moment to sneer and to hiss.

She recovered, by an effort that swelled her heart, strength to show nothing of the feeling of indignant rebellion that was stifling her.

She closed her eyes.

Marianne Kayser pa.s.sed onward, losing herself with Simon and De Rosas in the human furrow that opened before her and immediately closed upon her, and followed by a murmur of admiration.

Adrienne had not however seen the pale, insolent countenance of the young woman so closely approach her suffering and disconsolate face.

Above all, she had not seen the jealous, rapid glance that flashed unconsciously in Vaudrey's eyes when he saw Jose de Rosas triumphantly following the imperious Marianne. Ah! that look of sorrowful anger would have penetrated like a red-hot iron into Adrienne's soul. That glance that Guy caught a glimpse of told eloquently of wounded love and bruised vanity on the part of that man who, placed here between these two women, his mistress and the other, suffered less from the sorrow caused to Adrienne than from Marianne's treason in deserting him for this Spaniard.

Lissac was exasperated. He felt prompted to rush between Marianne and Rosas and say to him:

"You are mad to accompany this woman! Mad and ridiculous! She is deceiving you as she has deceived Vaudrey, as she has deceived me, and as she will deceive everybody."

He purposely placed himself in Mademoiselle Kayser's way. She had appeared scarcely to recognize him and had brushed against him without apparent emotion, but with a disdainful pout. Her arm had sought that of Rosas, as if she now were sure of her duke.

Guy too, felt that he could not cause a scene at the ball, for this would have brought a scandal on Vaudrey. He had just before repeated to Adrienne: "Courage." This was now his own watchword, and yet he sought out Jouvenet to whisper to the Prefect of Police what he thought of his conduct. Jouvenet had come and gone. Granet, as if he had divined Lissac's preoccupation, looked at him sneeringly as he whispered to the fat Molina who was seated near him:

"Alkibiades!"

The soiree, moreover, was terribly wearisome to Lissac. He wandered from group to group to find some one with whom to exchange ideas but he hardly found anyone besides Denis Ramel. The same political commonplaces retailed everywhere, at Madame Gerson's or at Madame Marsy's, as in the corridors of the Chamber, were re-decocted and reproduced in the corners of the salon of the Ministry, and around the besieged buffet attacked by the most ferocious gluttony. _Interpellation_, _Majority_, _New Cabinet_, _h.o.m.ogeneous_, _Ministry of the Elections_, _Ballot_, _One Man Ballot_. Guy went, weary of the conflict, to the room in which the concert was given and listened to some operatic piece, or watched between the heads, the hidden profile of some female singer or an actor and heard the bursts of laughter that greeted the new monologue _The Telephone_, rendered in a clear voice with the coolness of an English clown, by a gentleman in a dress coat: _See! I am Monsieur Durand--you know, Durand--of Meaux?--Exactly--A woman deceives me--How did I learn it?--By the telephone. My friend Durand--Durand--of Etampes--We are not related--Emile Durand said to me: Durand, why haven't you a telephone?--It is true, I hadn't one--Durand--the other Durand--Durand--of Etampes--has one--Then--_And Lissac, somewhat listless, left this corner of the salon and stumbled against a group of men who surrounded an old gentleman much decorated, wearing the _grand cordon rouge_ crosswise, a yellow ribbon at his neck, who, with the gravity of an English statesman, said, thrusting his tongue slightly forward to secure his false teeth from falling:

"I like monologues less than chansonnettes!--I, who address you, have taken lessons from Leva.s.sor."

"Leva.s.sor, Your Excellency?" answered in chorus a lot of little bald-headed young men--diplomats.

"Leva.s.sor," replied the old gentleman who was the very celebrated amba.s.sador of a great foreign power. "Oh! I was famous in the song: _The Englishman Who Was Seasick_!"

While the little young men smiled, approved and loudly applauded, the old amba.s.sador to whom the interests of a people were entrusted, hummed in a low tone, amid the noise of the reception:

"Aoh! aoh! Je suis _melede_, Bien _melede_! Tres _melede_!"

Guy de Lissac shrugged his shoulders. He had heard a great deal of this man. This diplomat of the chansonnette evoked his pity. Where was he then? At Paris or at Brives-la-Gaillarde? At a ball at the Hotel Beauvau or in some provincial sub-prefecture?

Just before, he had heard Warcolier utter this epic expression:

"If I were minister, I would give fireworks. They are warlike and inoffensive at the same time!"

The voice of a young man with a Russian accent who talked politics in a corner, pleased him:

"I am," he said aloud, "from a singular country: the Baltic provinces, where society is governed by deputies who, by birth, have the right to make laws, and I consider politics so tiresome, fatiguing and full of disgust and weariness as an occupation, that one ought to consider one's self most fortunate that there are people condemned to take hold of this rancid pie, while others pa.s.s their lives in thinking, reading, talking and loving."

"That is good," thought Lissac. "There is one, at least, who is not so stupid. It is true, perhaps because I think just the same."

Nevertheless, he went and listened, mixing with the crowd, haphazard.

His preoccupation was not there. In reality, he thought only of Adrienne. How the poor woman must suffer!

With a feeling of physical and moral overthrow, she had left the threshold of the salon, where she had been standing since the commencement of the soiree. She was mixing with the crowd in her desire to forget her sorrows amid the deafening of the music, the songs, the laughter, and the murmur of the human billows that filled her salons.

She had taken her place in front of the little improvised theatre, beside all those ladies who dissected her toilette, scanned her pallid face, a.n.a.lyzed and examined her piece by piece, body and soul. But there, seated near the stage, exactly in front of her, exposing, as in a stall, her blonde beauty, and radiant as a t.i.tian, was that Marianne whose gleaming white shoulders appeared above her black satin corsage.

Again she saw her, as but a little while before, unavoidable, haughty and bold, smiling with insolence.

At every minute she was attracted by a movement of a head, or fan, or a laugh from this pretty creature, who leaned toward Sabine Marsy, then raised her brow and showed, in all the brilliancy of fatal beauty, her black corsage, striped with those fine red roses. And now Adrienne's anger, the grief that she had trampled under for some hours, increased from moment to moment, heightened and stung by the sight of this creature, by all kinds of bitter thoughts and by visions of treason and baffled love. She felt that she was becoming literally mad at the thought that, upon those red and painted lips, Sulpice had rested his, that his hands had stroked those shoulders, unwound that hair, that this woman's body had been folded in his arms. Ah! it was enough to make her rise and cry out to that creature: "You are a wretch. Get you gone!

Get you gone, I say!"

And if she did so?

Why not? Had they the right to scorn her thus in public because she owned an official t.i.tle and position? Was not this vulgar salon of a furnished mansion _her_ salon then?