His Excellency the Minister Part 52

Lissac laughed a little nervously and trembled slightly, trying to joke but feeling himself suddenly weakening in the presence of this woman whose wrath or contemptuous smile he preferred.

He recognized all the vanished perfumes. The sensation of trembling delight that years had borne away now returned to him. The silent pressure of the hands recalled nights of distraction. He half shut his eyes, a sudden madness overcame him, although he was sufficiently calm to say to himself that she had an end in view, this woman's coming to him, loveless, to speak of love to him, herself unmoved by the senses, to awaken vanished feelings, to offer herself with the irresistible skill of desire: a dead pa.s.sion born of caprice.

"Nevertheless, it is you who left me, satiated after taking from me all that you were capable of loving," she said. "Do you know one thing, however, Guy? There is more than one woman in a woman. There are as many as she possesses of pa.s.sions or joys, and the Marianne of to-day is so different from the one who was your mistress formerly!--You would never leave me, if you were my lover now!"

She tempted this man whose curiosity was aroused, accustomed as he was to casual and easy love adventures. He foresaw danger, but there within reach of his lips were experienced kisses, an ardent supplicant, a proffered delight, full of burning promise. In a sort of anger, he seized the woman who recalled all the past joys, uttered the well-known cries, and who suddenly, as in a nervous attack, deliriously plucked the covering from her bosom, and bared with the boldness of beauty that knows itself to be irresistible, her white arms, her brilliant, untrammeled b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the sparkling splendor of her flesh, with her golden hair unfastened, as she used to appear lying on a pillow of fair silk, almost faint and between her kisses, that were as fierce as bites, uttering: "I love you--you--I adore you--" And the lovely, imperious girl again became, almost without a word having been exchanged, the submissive woman carried away by lascivious ardor; and Guy, confused and speechless, no longer reasoning, was unable to say whether Marianne belonged to him, or he to the mistress of former days, become the mistress of to-day.

He held her clasped to him, his hand raising her pale, languishing face about which her fair hair fell loosely; to him she looked like one asleep, her pink nostrils still dilating with a spasmodic movement, and it seemed to him that he had just suffered from the perturbing contact of a courtesan in the depths of some luxurious den.

It was an immediate reawakening, enervating but furious. She had given herself impulsively. He recovered himself similarly. The sudden contact of two bodies resulted in the immediate recoil of two beings.

With more bitter shame, he had had similar morose awakenings after a dissipated night, his heart, his brave heart thumping against the pa.s.sionate form, often lean and sallow, of some satiated girl, fearfully weary.

What cowardice! Was it Vaudrey's mistress or the future wife of Rosas who had clung to his lips?

He felt disgusted at heart.

Yet she was adorable, this still young and lovely Marianne.

With cruel perspicacity, he already foresaw that he would be guilty of cowardly conduct in yielding to this sudden weakness, and ashamed of himself he disengaged himself from her hysterical embrace, while Marianne squatted on his bed, throwing back her hair from her face, still smiling as she looked at him and asked:

"Well--what? What is the matter with you, then?"

She rose slowly, slipping upon the carpet while he went to the window to look mechanically into the yard. Between these two creatures but a moment before clasped together, a sudden icy coldness sprung up as if each had divined that the hour was about to sound, terrible as a knell, when their affairs must be settled. The kisses of love are to be paid for.

Standing before the mirror, half undressed, Marianne was arranging her hair. Her white shoulders, her still heaving and oppressed bosom were still exposed within the border of her fine chemisette. She felt her wrists, instinctively examining her bracelets, and looked toward the bed in an absent sort of way as if to see if some charm had not slipped from them.

"Guy," she said abruptly, but in a tone which she tried to make endearing, "promise me that you will not refuse what I am about to ask you."

"I promise."

They now quite naturally subst.i.tuted for the "thou" of affectionate address, the more formal "you," secretly realizing that after the intertwining of their bodies, their real individualities independent of all surprises or sensual appet.i.te, would find themselves face to face.

"I could wish that our affection--and it is profound, is it not, Guy?--dated only from the moment that we have just pa.s.sed."

"I do not regret the past," he said.

"Nor I! Yet I would like to efface it--yes, by a single stroke!"

She held between her white fingers some rebellious little locks of hair that had come out, which she had rolled and twisted, and casting them into the clear flame, she said:

"See! to burn it like that!--_Pft!_--"

"Burn it?" Lissac repeated.

He had left the window, returned to Marianne and smiling in his turn, he said:

"Why burn it?--Because it is tiresome or because it is dangerous?"

"Both!" she replied.

She paused for a moment before continuing, drew up over her arms the lace of her chemisette, then half bending her head, and looking at Guy like a creditor of love she said:

"You still have my letters, my dear?"

"Your letters?"

"Those of the old days?"

"That is so," he said. "The past."

He understood everything now.

"You came to ask me to return them?"

"I have been, you must admit, very considerate, not to have claimed them--before!"

"You have been--generous!" answered Lissac, with a gracious smile.

He opened his secretaire, one of the drawers of which contained little packages folded and tied with bands of silk ribbon, that slept the sleep of forgotten things.

"There are your letters, my dear Marianne! But you have nothing to fear; they have never left this spot."

The eyes of the young woman sparkled with a joyous light. Slowly as if afraid that Guy would not give them to her, she extended her bare arm toward the packet of letters and s.n.a.t.c.hed it suddenly.

"My letters!"

"It is an entire romance," said Lissac.

"Less the epilogue!" she said, still enveloping him with her intense look.

She placed the packet on the velvet-covered mantelpiece and hastily finished dressing. Then taking between her fingers those little letters in their old-fashioned envelopes bearing her monogram, and that still bore traces of a woman's perfume, she looked at them for a moment and said to Lissac:

"You have read them occasionally?"

"I know them by heart!"

"My poor letters!--I was quite sincere, you know, when I wrote you them!--They must be very artless! Yours, that I have burned, were too clever. I remember that one day you wrote me from Holland: 'I pa.s.s my life among chefs-d'oeuvre, but my mind is far away from them. I have Rembrandt and Ruysdael; but the smallest millet seed would be more to my liking: millet is _fair!_' Well, that was very pretty, but much too refined. True love has no wit.--All this is to convey to you that literature will not lose much by the disappearance of my disconnected scrawls."

She suddenly threw the packet into the fire and watched the letters as they lightly curled, at first spotted with fair patches, and enveloped in light smoke, then bursting into flame that cast its rosy reflection on Marianne's face. Little by little all disappeared save a patch of black powder on the logs, that danced like a mourning veil fluttering in the wind and immediately disappeared up the chimney:--the dust of dead love, the ashes of oaths, all black like mourning crepe.

Marianne watched the burning of the letters, bending her forehead, while a strange smile played on her lips, and an expression as of triumphant joy gleamed in her eyes.

When the work was done, she raised her head and turned toward Guy and in a quivering voice, she said proudly and insolently:

"_Requiescat!_ See how everything ends! It is a long time since lovers who have ceased to love invented cremation! Nothing is new under the sun!"

She was no longer the same woman. A moment before she manifested a sort of endearing humility, but now she was ironically boastful, looking at Lissac with the air of one triumphing over a dupe. He bit his lips slightly, rubbing his hands together, while examining her sidelong, without affectation. Marianne's ironical smile told him all that she now had to say.