His Excellency the Minister Part 50

And he sat down in the salon like a man spreading himself out in his own house. Marianne was meditating some scheme to get rid of him when the chamber-maid entered, presenting a note on a tray.

"What is that?"

"A messenger, madame, has brought this letter."

Marianne read the paper hurriedly.

Vaudrey observed that she blushed slightly.

"Is the messenger still there, Justine?"

"No, madame, he is gone. He said that there was no reply."

Marianne quickly tore in small pieces the note she had just read.

"Some annoyance?" asked Vaudrey.

"Yes, exactly."

"May I know?"

"No, it does not interest you. A family affair."

"Ah! your uncle?" asked Vaudrey, smiling.

"My uncle, yes!"

"He has asked that he be permitted to exhibit at the Trocadero the cartoons that he has finished: _The Artist's Mission_, _Hydropathy the Civilizer_, I don't know what in fact, a series of symbolical compositions--"

"With the _mirliton_ device underneath?--Yes, I know," said Marianne.

She snapped her fingers in her impatience.

The letter that she had torn up had been written by Rosas, and received by Uncle Kayser at his studio, whence he had forwarded it to his niece.

The duke informed Marianne that he would wait for her at five o'clock at Avenue Montaigne. He had something to say to her. He had pa.s.sed the entire night reflecting and dreaming. She remembered her own wild dreams. Had Rosas then caught her thought floating like an atom on the night wind?

At five o'clock! She would be punctual. But how escape Vaudrey? She could not now feign sickness since she had received him! Moreover, he would instal himself near her and bombard her with his attentions. Was there any possible pretext, any way of getting out now? Her lover had the devoted, radiant look of a loved man who relied on enjoying a long interview with his mistress. He looked at her with a tender glance.

"The fool--The sticker!" thought Marianne. "He will not leave!"

The best course was to go out. She would lose him on the way.

"What time have you, my dear minister?"

"One o'clock!"

"Then I have time!" she said.

Vaudrey seemed surprised. Marianne unceremoniously informed him, in fact, that she had some calls to make, to secure some purchases.

"How disagreeable!"

"Yes, for me!"

"I beg your pardon," said Sulpice, correcting himself.

She sent for a coupe and damp and keen as the weather was, she subst.i.tuted for the glorious day of snug, intimate joy that Vaudrey had promised himself, a succession of weary hours pa.s.sed in the draught caused by badly-fitting windows, while making a series of trips. .h.i.ther and thither, Marianne meantime cudgelling her brains to find a way to leave her lover on the way, or at least to notify Rosas.

But above all to notify Lissac! It was Lissac whom she was determined to see. Yes, absolutely, and at once. The more she considered the matter, the more dangerous it appeared to her.

Sulpice had not given her a moment of freedom at her house, in which to write a few lines. He might have questioned her and that would be imprudent.

"I wish, however, to tell Guy to expect me!--Where? Rue Cuvier? He would not go there!--No, at his house!"

On the way she found the means.

Vaudrey evidently was at liberty for the day and, master of his time, he would not leave her. This he repeated at every turn of the wheel. She ordered the driver to take her to _The Louvre_.

"I have purchases to make!"

Sulpice could not accompany her, so he waited for her at the entrance on Place du Palais-Royal, nestled in a corner of the carriage, the blinds of which were lowered in order that he might not be seen. He felt very cold.

Marianne slowly crossed between the stalls on the ground floor, hardly looking at the counters bearing the j.a.panese goods, the gloves and the artificial flowers. She ascended a winding iron stairway draped with tapestries, her tiny feet sinking into the moquette that covered the steps, and entered a noiseless salon where men and women were silently sitting before three tables, writing or reading, just as in the _drawing-room_ of a hotel. At a large round table, old ladies and young girls sat looking at the pictures in _Ill.u.s.tration_, the caricatures in the _Journal Amusant_, and the sketches in _La Vie Parisienne_. Others, at the second table, were reading the daily papers, some of which were rolled about their holders like a flag around its staff, or the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Further on, at a red-covered table furnished with leather-bound blotters and round, gla.s.s inkstands in which the ink danced with a purple reflection, people were writing, seated on chairs covered in worn, garnet-colored velvet, with mahogany frames. This gloomy apartment was brightened by broad-leaved green plants, and was lighted from the roof by means of a flat skylight.

Marianne walked direct to the table on which the paper was symmetrically arranged in a stationery rack, and quickly seating herself, she laid her m.u.f.f down, half-raised her little veil, and beat a tattoo with her tiny hand on the little black leather blotter before her, then taking off her gloves, she took at random some sheets of paper and some envelopes bearing the address of the establishment on the corners. As she looked around for a pen, Marianne could not refrain from smiling, she thought of that poor Sulpice down there, waiting in the carriage and probably shivering in the draughts issuing from the disjointed doors. And he a minister!

"Such is adultery in Paris!" she said to herself, happy to make him suffer.

She did not hurry. She was amused by her surroundings. A uniformed man promenaded the salon, watching the stationery in the cases and replacing it as it was used. If required, he sold stamps to any one present. A letter-box was attached near the tall chimney, bearing the hours of collection.

Beside Marianne, elbow to elbow, and before her, were princ.i.p.ally women, some writing with feverish haste, others hesitatingly, and amongst them were two girls opposite her, who as they finished their letters chuckled in a low tone and pa.s.sed them one to the other, say-to each other, as they chewed their plaid penholders:

"It is somewhat cold, eh! He will say: _Eh, well, it is true then!_"

The two pretty, cheerful girls before her were doubtless breaking in this way some liaison, amusing themselves by sending an unexpected blow to some poor fellow, and enjoying themselves by spoiling paper; the one writing, the other reading over her companion's shoulder and giving vent to merry laughter under her Hungarian toque, a huge Quaker-collar almost covering her shoulders and her little jacket with its large steel b.u.t.tons.

This feminine head-gear made Marianne think of Guy. Her eyes, catlike in expression, gleamed maliciously.

She took some paper and essayed to frame some tempting, tender phrases, something nebulous and exciting, but she could not.

"What I would like to write him is that he is a wretch and that I hate him!" she thought.

Then she stopped and looked about her, altogether forgetting Vaudrey.

The contrast between that silent reading-room and the many-colored crowd in that Oriental bazaar, whose murmurs reached her ears like the roaring of a distant sea, and of which she could see only the corner clearly defined by the framework of the doors, amused Marianne, who with a smile on her lips, enjoyed the mischievous delight of fooling a President of the Council.

"At least that avenges me for the cowardice that the _other_ forced me to commit!"