His Excellency the Minister Part 8

Adrienne saw her husband's cheek flush as he read this letter, which Sulpice promptly handed her, while his eyes sparkled with delight.

"It is done! Read!"

Adrienne turned pale.

Collard notified his "colleague" that the ministerial combination of which he was the head had succeeded. The President awaited at the elysee the arrival of the new ministers. He tendered Vaudrey the portfolio of the Interior.

"A minister!" said Adrienne, now overcome with delight.

Vaudrey had risen and, a little uneasy, was mechanically searching for something, still holding his napkin in his hand.

"My hat," he said. "My overcoat. A carriage."

Adrienne, with her hands clasped in a sort of childish admiration, looked at him as if he had become suddenly transformed. All his being, in fact, expressed complete satisfaction. He embraced Adrienne almost frantically, kissed her again and again, and left her, then descended the staircase with the speed of a lover hastening to a rendezvous.

This political honeymoon was still at its height at the moment when the delighted Vaudrey, seeing everything rosy-hued, was satisfying his astonished curiosity in the greenroom of the ballet. He entered office, animated by all the good purposes inspired by absolute faith. It seemed to him that he was about to save the world, to regenerate the government, and to destroy abuses.

"It is very difficult to become a minister," he said, smiling, "but nothing is easier than to be a great minister. It only demands a determination to do good!"

"And the power to do it," replied his friend Granet, somewhat ironically.

What! power? Nothing was more simple, since Vaudrey held the reins of power!--If others wrecked the hopes of their friends, it was because they had not dared, because they had not the will!

They would now see what he would do himself! Not to-morrow either, nor in a month--but at once.

He entered the ministry boldly, like a good-natured despot, determined to reform, study and rearrange everything; and a victim to the feverish and glorious zeal of a neophyte, he was a little surprised to encounter, at the very outset, the obstinate resistance of routine, ignorance, and the unyielding mechanism of that vast machine, more eternal than empires: Ad-min-is-tra-tion.

Bah! he would have satisfaction! Patience would overcome all. After all, time is on one's side.

"Time? Already!" replied Granet, who was a perpetual scoffer.

Adrienne, overwhelmed with surprise, enjoyed the reflections from the golden aurora of power that so sweetly tinted Sulpice's life. She shared her husband's triumphs without haughtiness, and now, however she might love her domestic life, it was inc.u.mbent upon her to pa.s.s more of her time in society than formerly, _to show herself_, as Sulpice said, and, surrounded by the success and flattery she enjoyed, she felt that that obligation was only an added joy, whose contentment she reflected on her husband.

When she entered a salon, she was greeted with a flattering murmur of admiration and good-natured curiosity. The women looked at her and the men surrounded her.

"Madame Vaudrey?"

"The minister's wife!"

"Charming!"

"Quite young!"

"Somewhat provincial!"

"So much the more attractive!"

"That is true, as fresh as a peach!"

She endeavored to atone by a gracious, very sincere modesty, for the enviable position in which chance had suddenly placed her. It was said of her that she accepted a compliment as timidly as a boarding-school miss receives a prize. They forgave her for retaining her rosy cheeks because of her white and exquisitely shaped hands. She was not considered to be "_trop de Gren.o.ble_." Witty people called her the pretty _Dauphinoise_, and the flatterers the little Dauphine.

In short, her _success_ was great! So said the chroniclers; the entrance of a fas.h.i.+onable woman into a salon being daily compared with that of an actress on the stage.

It was especially because Vaudrey appeared to be so happy, that his young wife was so contented. She felt none of the vainglory of power.

Generally alone in the vast, deserted apartments of the ministry, with all their commonplace, luxurious appointments, she more than once regretted the home in the Chaussee-d'Antin, where they enjoyed--but too rarely--a renewal of the cherished solitude of the first months of their union, the familiar chats of the Gren.o.ble days, the prolonged conversations, exchanges of thoughts, hopes and reminiscences--already!

only recollections,--and she sometimes said to Sulpice, who was feverishly excited and glowed with delight at having reached the summit of power:

"Do you know what this place suggests to me? Why, living in a hotel!"

"And you are right," Vaudrey gaily answered; "we are at a hotel, but it is the hotel in which the will of France lodges!"

"You understand, my dear, that if you are happy--"

"Very happy! it is only now that I can show what I am made of. You shall see, Adrienne, you shall see what I will do and become within a year."

Within a year!

IV

Guy de Lissac occupied a small summer-house forming a residence situated at the end of a court on Rue D'Aumale. He had given carte-blanche for the arrangement of this bachelor's nest,--a nest in which sitting-hens without eggs succeeded each other rapidly,--to one of those upholsterers who installed, in regulation style, the knickknacks so much in vogue, and who sell at very high prices to Bourse operators and courtesans the spurious Clodions and imitation Boulles that they pick up by chance at auction sales.

Lissac, who had sufficient taste to discover artistic nuggets in the gutters of Paris, had found it very convenient to wake up one fine morning in a little mansion crowded with j.a.panese bric-a-brac, Chinese satin draperies, tapestries, Renaissance chests and terra-cotta figures writhing upon their sculptured bases. The upholsterer had taste, Lissac had money. The knickknacks were genuine. There was a coquettish attractiveness about the abode that made itself evident in every detail.

This bachelor's suite lacked, however, something personal, something living, some cherished object, the mark of some particular taste, some pa.s.sion for a period, for a thing, or pictures or books. In this jumble of ill-matched curiosities, where ivory _netzkes_ on tables surrounded Barye bronzes and Dresden figures, there lacked some evidence of an individual character that would give a dominant tone, an original key, to the collection. This worldly dwelling, with its white lacquered bed and Louis XV. canopy and its heads of birds carved in wood like the queen's bed at Trianon, vaguely resembled the apartments of a fas.h.i.+onable woman.

But Guy had hung around here and there a Samoura sabre, Malay krises, Oriental daggers in purple velvet sheaths, and upon the green tapestry background of the antechamber a panoply on which keen-bladed swords with steel guards were mingled with Scotch claymores with silver hilts, thus giving a masculine character to this hotel of a fas.h.i.+onable lounger, steeped with the odor of ylang-ylang like the little house of a pretty courtesan.

This Guy enjoyed in Paris a free and easy life, leaving to Vaudrey, his old college-comrade at Gren.o.ble, the pursuit of the pleasures of political life, and, as Lissac said in that bantering tone which is peculiar to Parisian gossip, the relish of the "sweets of power"; for himself, what kept him in Paris was Paris itself, just that and nothing more:--its pleasures, its first nights, its surprises, its women, that flavor of scandal and perfume of refined immorality that seemed peculiar to his time and surroundings.

He had squandered two fortunes, one after the other, without feeling any regret; he had made a brush at journalism, tried finance, won at the Bourse, lost at the clubs, knew everybody and was known by all, had a smiling lip, was sound of tooth, loved the girls, was dreaded by the men, was of fine appearance, and was unquestionably n.o.ble, which permitted him to enjoy all the frolics of Bohemian life without sullying himself, having always discovered a forgotten uncle or met some considerate friend to pay his gambling debts and adjust his differences on the Bourse speculations at the very nick of time; just now he was well in the saddle and decidedly attractive, with a sound heart and a well-lined pocket, enjoying, not disliking life, which seemed to him a term of imprisonment to be pa.s.sed merrily--a Parisian to the finger-tips and to the bottom of his soul, worse than a Parisian in fact, a Parisianized provincial inoculated with _Parisine_, just as certain sick persons are with morphine, judging men by their wit, actions by their results, women by the size of their gloves; as sceptical as the devil, wicked in speech and considerate in thought, still agile at forty, claiming even that this is man's best time--the period of fortune and gallantry--sliding along in life and taking things as he found them, wisely considering that a day's snow or rain lasts no longer than a day's suns.h.i.+ne, and that, after all, a wretched night is soon over.

On leaving Vaudrey the previous night, Lissac had pa.s.sed part of the night at his club on Place Vendome. He had played and won. He had gone to sleep over a fas.h.i.+onable novel, very faithfully written, but wearisome in the extreme, and he had awakened late and somewhat heavy-headed. There were fringes of snow upon the window-sills and upon the house facing his little mansion. The roofs were hidden under a large white sheet and half lost in the grayish-white background of the sky.

"Detestable weather! So much the better," thought Lissac, "I shall have no visitors."

"I will see no one," he said to his servant. "In such weather no one but borrowers will come."

He had just finished his dejeuner, plunging a Russian enamelled silver spoon into his egg, his tea smoking at his side in a burnished silver teapot with j.a.panese designs, when, notwithstanding his orders, the servant handed him a card written in pencil on a sc.r.a.p of paper torn from a note-book.

"It is not a borrower, monsieur!"

Guy seized the paper disdainfully, thinking, in spite of the servant's opinion, that he would find the name of a beggar who had not even had his name printed on a piece of Bristol-board, and, adjusting his gla.s.s, he deciphered the fine writing on the paper; then after involuntarily exclaiming: _Ah! bah_! and _well! well!_ greatly astonished, he said as he rose:

"Show her in!"