His Excellency the Minister Part 18

He felt as if he were surrounded with all the perfume of youth. On a console beside Marianne, stood a vase of inlaid enamel containing sprigs of white lilacs which as she leaned forward, surrounded her fair head as with an aureole of spring. Her locks were encircled with milk-white flowers and bright green leaves, transparent and clear, like the limpid green of water; and at times these sprigs were gently shaken, dropping a white bud on Marianne's hair, that looked like a drop of milk amid a heap of ruddy gold.

Ah! how at this moment, all the poetry, all the past with its unacknowledged love swelled Rosas's heart and rushed to his lips. In this brilliantly-lighted salon, under the blaze of the lights, amid the shimmering reflections of the satin draperies, he forgot everything in his rapture at the presence of this woman, lovely to adoration, whose glance penetrated his very veins and filled him with restless thoughts.

The distant music, gentle, penetrating and languishing, some soothing air from Gounod, reached them like a gentle breeze wafted into the room.

Jose believed himself to be in a dream.

"Ah! if you only knew, madame," he said, becoming more pa.s.sionate with each word that he spoke, as if he had been gulping down some liqueur, "if you only knew how you have travelled with me everywhere, in thought, there, carried with me like a scapular--"

"My portrait?" said Marianne. "I remember it. I was very slender then, prettier, a young girl, in fact."

"No! no! not your portrait. I tore that up in a fit of frenzy."

"Tore it up?"

"Yes, as I thought that those eyes, those lips and that brow belonged to another."

Marianne's cheeks became pallid.

"But I have taken with me something better than that portrait: I preserved you, you were always present, and pretty, so pretty--as you are now, Marianne--Look at yourself! No one could be lovelier!"

"And why," she said slowly, speaking in a deep, endearing tone, "why did you not speak to me thus, of old?"

"Ah! of old!" said the duke angrily.

She allowed her head to fall on the back of the divan; looking at this man as she well knew how, and insensibly creeping closer to him, she breathed in his ears these burning words:

"Formerly, one who was your friend was beside me, is that not so?"

"Do not speak to me of him," Jose said abruptly.

"On the contrary, I am determined to tell you that even if I had loved him, I should not have hesitated for a moment to leave him and follow you. But I did not love him."

"Marianne!"

"You won't believe me? I never loved him. I have never been his mistress."

"I do not ask your secret. I do not speak of him," said the duke, who had now become deadly pale.

"And I am determined to speak to you of him. Never, you understand, never was Guy de Lissac my lover. No, in spite of appearances; he has never even kissed my lips. I thought I loved him, but before yielding, I had time to discover that I did not love him! And I waited, I swear to you, expecting that you would say to me: 'I love you!'"

"I?"

"You," said Marianne, in a feeble tone. "You never guessed then?"

And she crept with an exquisitely undulating movement still closer to Rosas, who, as if drawn by some magnetic fluid, surrendered his face to this woman with the wandering eyes, half-open lips, from which a gentle sigh escaped and died away in the duke's hair.

He said nothing, but hastily seizing Marianne's hand, he drew her face close to his lips, her pink nostrils dilated as if the better to breathe the incense of love; and wild, distracted, intoxicated, he pressed his feverish, burning lips upon that fresh mouth that he felt exhaled the perfume of a flower that opens to the morning dew.

"I love you now, I loved you then!--" Marianne said to him, after that kiss that paled his cheeks.

Rosas had risen: a thunder of applause greeted the termination of a song in the other salon and the throng was pouring into the smaller salon.

Marianne saw Uncle Kayser, who was arguing with Ramel, whose kindly, lean face wore an expression of weariness. She also rose, grasped the duke's hands with a nervous pressure and said as she still gazed at him:

"There is my uncle. We shall see each other again, shall we not?"

She crushed Rosas with her electric glance.

Preceding the duke, she went straight to Kayser and took his arm, leaning on it as if to show that she was not alone, that she had a natural protector, and was not, as Rosas might have supposed, a girl without any position.

Kayser was almost astonished at the eagerness of his niece.

"Let us go!" she said to him.

"What! leave? Why, there is to be a supper."

"Well! we will sup at the studio," she replied nervously. "We will discuss the morality of art."

She had now attained her end. She realized that anything she might add would cool the impression already made on the duke. She wished to leave him under the intoxication of that kiss.

"Let us go!" said Kayser, drawing himself up in an ill-humored way.

"Since you wish it--what a funny idea!--Ramel," he said, extending his hand to the old journalist, "if your feelings prompt you, I should like to show you some canvases."

"I go out so rarely," said Ramel.

"Huron!" said the painter.

"Puritan!" said Marianne, also offering her hand to Denis Ramel.

Rosas looked after her and saw her disappear amongst the guests in the other salon, under the bright flood of light shed by the chandeliers; and when she was gone, it seemed to him that the little j.a.panese salon was positively empty and that night had fallen on it. Profound ennui at once overcame him, while Marianne, in a happy frame of mind, on returning to Kayser's studio, reviewed the incidents of that evening, recalling Vaudrey's restless smile, and seeming again to hear Rosas's confidences, while she thought: "He spoke to me of the past almost in the same terms as Lissac. Is human nature at the bottom merely commonplace, that two men of entirely different characters make almost identical confessions?" While she was recalling that pa.s.sionate moment, the duke was experiencing a feeling of disappointment because of their interrupted conversation, and he reproached himself for not having followed Marianne, for having allowed her to escape without telling her--

But what had he to tell her?

He had said everything. He had entirely surrendered, had opened his soul, as transparent as crystal. And this notwithstanding that he had vowed in past days that he would keep his secret locked within him. He had smothered his love under his frigid Castilian demeanor. And now, suddenly, like a child, on the first chance meeting with that woman, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a confession that he had been rigidly withholding!

Ah! it was because he loved her, and had always loved her. There was only one woman in the whole world for him,--this one. He did not lie.

Marianne's smile haunted him, wherever he was. In her glance was a poison that he had drunk, which set his blood on fire. He was hers.

Except for the image of Lissac, he would most certainly have returned long since to Paris to seek Mademoiselle Kayser.

But Lissac was there. He recalled how much Guy had loved her. He had more than once made the third in their company. He had often accompanied Lissac to Marianne's door. How then had she dared to say just now that she had never been his mistress?

But how was he to believe her?

And why, after all, should she have lied? What interest had she?--

In proportion as Rosas considered the matter, he grew more angry with himself, and in the very midst of the crowd, he was seized with a violent attack of frenzy, such as at times suddenly determined him to seek absolute solitude. He was eager to escape.

In order to avoid Madame Marsy, who was perhaps seeking him, he slipped through the groups of people and reached the door without being seen, leaving without formal salutation, as the English do.