His Excellency the Minister Part 22

"Oh! my dear Sulpice, believe one thing,--that I ask you nothing."

"Why?"

"Because--no, nothing. And I repeat, nothing."

"And you would be wrong if I could be friendly to you or useful."

"I have said _nothing_, and I stick to _nothing_. You will meet quite enough office-seekers in your career--"

"Evidently!"

"Pet.i.tioners also!"

"Most a.s.suredly!"

"Well! I am neither a pet.i.tioner nor an office-seeker nor a sycophant. I am your friend."

"And you are right, for I have great affection for you."

"I am your friend and your devoted friend. I should consider it a rascally thing to ask you for anything. A rascally thing, I say! You are in office, you are a minister, so much the better, yes, so much the better! But, at least, don't let your friends pester you, like vermin crawling before you, because you are all-powerful. I will never crawl before you, I warn you. I shall remain just what I am. You will take me just as I am or not at all. That will depend altogether upon the change of humor that the acquisition of honors may produce in you--"

"Jeliotte! we shall see, Jeliotte!"

"Well! You can take me or leave me. And as I do not wish to be confounded with the cringing valets who crowd your antechambers--"

"You crowd nothing, you will not dance attendance. Have I asked you to dance attendance?"

"No, not yet--I called simply to see if I should be received. Yes, it is merely in the nature of an experiment--it is made. It is to your honor, I admit, but I will not repeat it--I shall disappear. It is more simple.

Yes, I have told you and I was determined to tell you that you will never see me, so long as you are a minister."

"Ah! Jeliotte! Jeliotte!"

"Never--not until you have fallen--For one always falls--"

"Fortunately," said Sulpice, with a laugh.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, that depends. I say: when you have fallen--then, oh! then, don't fear, I will not be the one to turn my back on you--"

"You are very kind."

"Whatever you may have said or done, you understand, while you are in power--and power intoxicates men!--I will always offer you my hand. Yes, this hand shall always be extended to you. You will find plenty of people who will turn their backs on you at that moment. Not I! I am a friend in dark days--"

"That is understood."

"I will leave you to your glory, Vaudrey. I crave pardon for not styling you: Monsieur le Ministre; I could not. It is not familiar to me. I cannot help it. I am not the friend for the hour of success, but for that of misfortune."

"And you will return?"

"When you are overthrown!--"

"Thank you!"

"That is like me! I love my friends."

"When they are down!" said Sulpice.

"That is so!" exclaimed Jeliotte.

"And is that all you had to say to me?" the minister asked.

"Is not that enough?"

"Yes! yes! _Au revoir_, Jeliotte."

"_Au revoir!_ Till--you know when."

"Yes. When I feel my position threatened, I will call upon you. Don't be afraid. That time will come."

"The idiot!" said Sulpice, angrily shrugging his shoulders, when the advocate was gone.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed his hat and went out hurriedly to his carriage, the messengers rising to bow to him as he pa.s.sed through the antechamber.

It was hardly necessary for him to order his coachman to drive to the elysee. The duties of each day were so well ordered in advance, and besides, the attendants at the department knew quite as well as the minister if a Council was to be held at the elysee.

Sulpice was somewhat upset. Jeliotte's visit, following that of Granet, presented the human species in an evil aspect. He had never felt envious of any one, and it seemed to him that the whole world should be gratified at his modest bearing under success.

"For, after all, I triumph, that is certain!--That animal of a Jeliotte is not such a simpleton!--There are many who, if they were in my place, would swagger!"

So he complacently awarded himself a patent of modesty.

The carriage stopped at the foot of the steps of the elysee. Sulpice always felt an exquisite joy in alighting from his carriage, his portfolio pressed to his side, and leaping over the carpet-covered steps of the stone staircase leading to the Council Chambers. He pa.s.sed through them, as he did everywhere, between rows of spectators who respectfully bowed to him. Devoted friends extended their hands respectfully toward his overcoat. Certainly, he only knew the men by their heads, bald or crowned with locks, as the case might be. His colleagues were gathered together, awaiting him, and chatting in the salon, decorated in white and gold, the invariable salon of official apartments with the inevitable Sevres vases with deep-blue, light-green or buff color grounds, placed upon consoles or pedestals. The portfolios appeared stuffed or empty, limp or bursting with paper bundles, under the arms of their Excellencies. Suddenly a door was opened, the ushers fell back and the President approached, looking very serious and taking his accustomed place opposite to the President of the Council with the formality of an orderly, the Minister of the Interior on the left of the President of the Republic, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the right.

Then, in turn, each minister, beginning at the right, reported the business of his department, sometimes debated in private council. Each having completed his information, bowed to his neighbor on the right, and said:

"I have finished. It is your turn, my dear colleague."

The President listened. Sulpice sometimes allowed himself to muse while seated at this green-covered table, forgetting altogether the affairs under consideration. Sometimes he recalled those green-covered tables of the Council Chambers of the Gren.o.ble Prefecture, finding that this Ministerial Council recalled the mean impression invoked by his provincial recollections, at other times, a vein of poesy would flit across his mind, or an eloquent word would reach his ear, suggesting to him the thought that, after all, these men seated there before their open portfolios, turning over or scattering about the papers, nevertheless represented cherished France and held in their leather pouches the secrets, the destinies, aye, even the very fate of the fatherland.

And this Sulpice, overjoyed to expand at his ease in the delights of power, sitting there in his accustomed chair,--a chair which now seemed to be really his own--enjoying a sort of physical satisfaction ever new, inhaling power like the fumes of a nargileh, forgot himself, however, and suddenly felt himself recalled to the urgent reality when his colleague, the Minister of War, a spare man with a grizzled moustache, dropped an infrequent remark in which, in the laconic speech of a soldier, could be comprehended some cause of anxiety or of hope. Sulpice listened then, more moved than he was willing to have it appear, trying, in his turn, to hide all his artistic and patriotic anxieties under that firm exterior which his colleague of the Department of Foreign Affairs wore, a dull-eyed, listless face, and cheeks that might be made of pasteboard.

The business of the Council was of little importance that morning. The Keeper of the Seals, Monsieur Collard--of Nantes--a fat, puffing, apoplectic man with somewhat gla.s.sy, round eyes, proposed to the President, who listened attentively but without replying, some reform to which Vaudrey was perfectly indifferent. He did not even hear his colleague's dull speech, the latter lost himself in useless considerations, while the Minister of War looked at him, as if his eyes, loaded with grapeshot said, in military fashion: "_Sacrebleu!_ get done!"

Vaudrey looked out of the window at the dark horizon of the winter sky and the gray tints of the leafless trees, and watched the little birds that chased one another among the branches. His thoughts were far, very far away from the table where the sober silence was broken by the interminable phrases of the Minister of Justice, whose words suggested the constant flow of an open spigot.

The vision of a female form at the end of the garden appeared to him, a form that, notwithstanding the cold, was clothed in the soft blue gown that Marianne wore yesterday at Sabine's. He seemed to catch that fleeting smile, the exact expression of which he sought to recall, that peculiar glance, cunning and enticing, that exquisite outline of a perfect Parisian woman. How charming she was! And how sweet that name, Marianne!

Let us see indeed, what in reality could such a woman be! Terrible, perhaps, but certainly irresistible!