His Excellency the Minister Part 37

"You ought to make a great many calls," the minister had frequently said. "It would divert your mind and it is well to appear to know a great many persons."

But she only found pleasure in making one visit, she gave the coachman the address of the apartments on Chaussee-d'Antin, where she had lived long, happy years with Sulpice, sweet and peaceful under the clear light of the lamp. She entered this deserted apartment, now as cold as a tomb, and had the shutters opened by the concierge in order that she might see the sunlight penetrate the room and set all the motes dancing in its cheerful rays. She shut herself in and remained there happy, consoled; sitting in the armchair formerly occupied by Sulpice, she pictured him at the table at which he used to work, his inkstand before him and surrounded by his books, his cherished books! She lived again the vanished life. "Return!" she said to the dream, the humble dream she had at last recovered. She rambled about those deserted rooms that on every side reminded her of some sweet delight, here it was a kiss of chaste and eternal love, there a smile. Ah! how easy life would have been there all alone, happy for ever!

The Ministry! Power! Popularity! Fame! Authority! What were they worth?

Is all that worth one of the blessed hours in this little dwelling, where the cup of bliss would have been full if the wife could have heard the clear laugh or the faint cry of a child?

Poor Sulpice! how he was exhausting himself now in an overwhelming task!

He was giving his health and life to politics, while here he only experienced peace, consoling caresses and the quieting of every excitement. On the study-table there still remained some pens and some books that were formerly in constant use.

Adrienne went away with reddened eyes from these pilgrimages, as it were, to her former happiness. She returned to her carriage and moistened her cambric pocket handkerchief with her warm breath, in order to wipe her eyes so that Sulpice might not see that she had been weeping. Then when her well-known carriage pa.s.sed before the shops in the Faubourg Saint-Honore, the wives of mercers or booksellers, dressmakers, young girls, all of whom enviously shook their heads, said to each other:

"The minister's wife!--Ah! she has had a glorious dream!--She is happy!"

III

Marianne was contented. Not that her ambition was completely satisfied, but after all, Sulpice in place of Rosas was worth having. Though a minister was only a pa.s.sing celebrity, he was a personage. From the depths of the bog in which she lately rolled, she would never have dared to hope for so speedy a revenge.

Speedy, a.s.suredly, but perhaps not sufficient. Her eager hunger increased with her success. Since Vaudrey was hers, she sought some means of bringing about some adventure that would give her fortune. What could be asked or exacted from Sulpice? She recalled the traditions of fantastic bargains, of extensive furnishings. She would find them. She had but to desire, since he had abandoned himself, bound hand and foot, like a child.

She knew him now, all his candor, all his weakness, for, in the presence of this blase woman, weary of love, Vaudrey permitted himself to confide his thoughts with unreserved freedom, opening his heart and disclosing himself with a clean breast in this duel with a woman:--a duel of self-interest which he mistook for pa.s.sion.

She had studied him at first and speedily ranked him, calling him:

"An innocent!"

She felt that in this house in Rue p.r.o.ny, where she was really not in her own home but was installed as in a conquered territory, Sulpice was dazzled. Like a provincial, as Granet described him so often, he entered there into a new world.

Uncle Kayser frequently called to see his niece. Severe in taste, he cast long, disdainful looks at the tapestries and the artistic trifles that adorned the house. In his opinion, it was rubbish and the luxury of a decaying age. He never changed his tune, always riding the hobby-horse of an aesthetic moralist.

"It lacks severity, all this furnishing of yours," was his constantly repeated criticism to Marianne, as he sat smoking his pipe on a divan, as was his custom in his own, wretched studio.

Then, in an abrupt way, with his eye wandering over the ceiling as if he were following the flight of a chimera, he would say:

"Why! your minister must do a great deal, if all this comes from the ministry!"

Marianne interrupted him. It was no business of his to mix himself up with matters that did not concern him. Above all, he must hold his tongue. Did he forget that Vaudrey was married? The least indiscretion--

"Oh! don't alarm yourself," the painter broke in, "I am as dumb as a carp, the more so since your escapade is not very praiseworthy!--For you have, in fact, deserted the domestic hearth--yes, you have deserted the hearth.--It is pretty here, a little like a courtesan's, perhaps, but pretty, all the same.--But you must acknowledge that it is a case of interloping. It is not the genuine home with its dignity, its virtuous severity, its--What time does your minister come? I would like to speak to him--"

"To preach morality to him?" asked Marianne, glancing at her uncle with an ironical expression.

"Not at all. I am considered to be ignorant--No, I have a plan to decorate in a uniform way, all the mayors' offices in Paris and I want to propose it to him--_The Modern Marriage_, an allegorical treatment!--_Law Imposing Duty on Love_. Something n.o.ble, full of expression, moralizing. Art that will set people thinking, for the contemplation of lofty works can alone improve the morals and the ma.s.ses--You understand?"

"Perfectly. You want a commission!"

"Ah! that's a contemptible word, hold! A commission! Is a true artist commissioned? He obeys his inspiration, he follows his ideal--A commission! a commission! Ugh!--On my word, you would break the wings of faith! Little one, have you any of that double zero k.u.mmel left, that you had the other day?"

Marianne sought to spare Sulpice the importunities of her uncle. She wished to keep the minister's entire influence for herself.

She had nothing to fear, moreover. Sulpice was hers as fully as she believed. Like so many others who have lived without living, Sulpice did not know _woman_, and Marianne was ten times a woman, woman-child, woman-lover, woman-courtesan, woman-girl, and every day and every night she appeared to her lover renewed and surprising, freshly created for pa.s.sion and pleasure. Everything about her, even the frame that surrounded her beauty, the dwelling, perfumed with pa.s.sionate love, distractedly captivated Sulpice. Behind the dense curtains in the dressing-room upholstered like a boudoir, with its carpet intended only for naked feet, as the reclining chair with its extra covering of Oriental silk was adapted to moments of languishing repose, Sulpice saw and contemplated the vast wardrobe with its three mirrors reflecting the huge marble washstand with its silver spigots, its silver bowl, wherein the scented water gleamed opal-like with its perfumes, the gas illuminating the brushes decorated with monograms, standing out against the white marble, the manicure sets of fine steel, the dark-veined tortoise-sh.e.l.l combs, the coquettish superfluity of scissors and files scattered about amongst knickknacks, inlaid enamels, and j.a.panese ivory ornaments, and there, stretched out and watching Marianne, who came and went before him with a smile on her face, her hair unfastened, sometimes with bare shoulders, Sulpice saw, through a half-open door in the middle of a bathroom floored with blue Delft tiles, the bath that steamed with a perfumed vapor, odorous of thyme, and the water which was about to envelop in its warm embrace that rosy form that displayed beneath the lights and under the full blaze of the gas, the nudity of her flesh beneath a transparent Surah chemise, silky upon the living silk.

Milk-white reflections seemed to play on her shoulders and Sulpice never forgot those ardent visions that followed him, clung to him, thrust themselves before his gaze and into his recollections, never leaving him, either at the Chamber, the Council Board or even when he was with Adrienne.--The young woman, seeing his absorption, hesitated to disturb his thoughts, political as they were, no doubt, while he mused upon his hours of voluptuous enjoyment, forever recalling the youthful roundness of her shoulders, and the inflections of her body, the ivory-like curve of her neck, whose white nape rested upon him, and her curls escaped from the superb arrangement of her hair, held in its place at the top by a comb thrust into this fair ma.s.s like a claw plunged into flesh.

Vaudrey must have had an active and prompt intelligence at times to forget suddenly these pa.s.sionate images, when he unexpectedly found himself compelled to ascend the tribune during a discussion or to express his opinion clearly at the Ministerial Council. He increased his power, finding, perhaps, a new excitement, a new spur in the love that renewed his youth. He had never been seen more active and more stirring in the Chamber, though he was somewhat nervous. He determined to put himself in evidence at the Ministry and to prove to the phrase-monger Warcolier that he knew how to act. The President of the Council, Monsieur Collard--of Nantes--said several times to Sulpice:

"Too much zeal, my dear minister. A politician ought to be cooler."

"I shall be cooler with age!" Sulpice replied with a laugh.

From time to time he went to seek advice from Ramel, as he had promised.

The little shopkeepers and laundresses of Rue Boursault hardly suspected when they saw a coupe stop at the door of the old journalist, that a minister alighted from it.

Sulpice felt amid the bustle of his life, amid the spurring and over-excited events of his existence, the need of talking with his old friend. Besides, Rue Boursault was on the way to Rue p.r.o.ny. As Marianne was frequently not at home, Sulpice would spend the time before her return in chatting with Ramel.

"Well! Ramel, are you satisfied with me?"

"How could I be otherwise? You are an honest man and faithful and devoted to your ideas. I am not afraid of you, but I am of those by whom you are surrounded."

"Warcolier?"

"Warcolier and many others, of those important fellows who ask me--when they deign to speak to me--with an insignificant air of superiority and almost of pity, the idiots: 'Well! you are no longer doing anything!

When will you do something?' As if I had not done too much already, seeing that I have made them!"

Denis Ramel smiled superciliously and the minister looked with a sort of respect at this vanguard warrior, this laborer of the early morn who had never received his recompense or even claimed it.

"I should like you to resume your journal in order to announce all these truths," Vaudrey said to him.

"Do you think so? Why, a journal that would proclaim the truth to everybody would not last six months, since no one would buy it."

As Sulpice was about to go, there was a ring at Ramel's door.

"Ah! who can it be? A visit. I beg you will excuse me, my dear Vaudrey."

Denis went to open the door.

It was a man of about fifty, dressed in the garb of a poor workman, wearing a threadbare greatcoat and trousers that were well polished at the knees, who as he entered held his round, felt hat in his hand. He was thin, pale and tired-looking, with a dark, dull complexion and a voice weak rather than hoa.r.s.e. He bowed timidly, repeating twice: "I earnestly ask your pardon;" and then he remained standing on the threshold, without advancing or retiring, in an embarra.s.sed att.i.tude, while a timid smile played beneath his black beard, already sprinkled with gray.

"Pardon--I disturb you--I will return--"

"Come in, Garnier," said Ramel.

The man entered, saluting Vaudrey, who was not known to him, and at a gesture from Denis, he took a seat on the edge of a chair, scarcely sitting down and constantly twirling his round-shaped hat between his lean fingers. From time to time, he raised his left hand to his mouth to check the sound of a dry cough which rose in his muscular throat, that might be supposed to be a prey to laryngitis.