His Excellency the Minister Part 56

"Very well, Monsieur Eugene, I will announce you." Lissac explained that his visit was not official, he called on a personal matter.

"Is the minister in his apartments?"

"Yes, monsieur, but to-day, you know--"

What was going on to-day, then? Lissac had not noticed, in fact, that a marquee with red stripes was being erected at the entrance to the hotel, and that upholsterers were bringing in wagons benches covered with red velvet with which they were blocking the peristyle. There was a reception at the ministry.

"That will not prevent Monsieur Vaudrey from seeing me," he said.

One of the messengers opened the doors in front of him and conducted him to the floor above, where Monsieur le Ministre was then resting near the fire and glancing over the papers after breakfast.

He appeared pleased but a little astonished at seeing Lissac.

"Eh! my dear Guy, what a good idea!--Have you arrived already for the soiree? You received your invitation?"

"No," answered Lissac, "I have received nothing, or if the invitation arrived, the agents of Monsieur Jouvenet have taken it away with many other things."

"The agents! what agents?" asked the minister.

He had risen to receive Guy and remained standing in front of the fireplace looking at his friend, who questioned him with his glance to discover if Vaudrey could really be in ignorance as to such a matter.

"Ah, so! but," said Lissac with trembling voice and in a tone of angry bitterness, "do you not know then, what takes place in Paris?"

"What is happening?" asked Sulpice, who had turned slightly pale.

"They arrest men for nothing, and keep them in close confinement for two days in order to have time to search their correspondence for a doc.u.ment that compromises certain persons. It is very proper, no doubt; but that smacks too much of romanticism and the Bridge of Sighs. It is very old-fashioned and worn-out. I would not answer for your long employing such methods of government."

"Come, are you mad? What does it all signify?" asked the minister, in astonishment.

He appeared as if he really did not understand. It was clear that he did not know what Guy meant.

"Don't you read the papers, then?" Lissac asked him.

"I read the reports of the Director of the Press."

"Well, if those reports have not informed you of my arrest in the heart of the Exposition des Mirlitons, on Wednesday, they have told you nothing!--"

"Arrested! you?"

"By the agents of Monsieur Jouvenet, your Prefect of Police, to gratify your mistress, Mademoiselle Kayser!"

"Ah! my dear Guy!" said the minister, whose cheek became flushed in spots. "I should be glad if you--"

He paused for a phrase to express clearly and briefly that he required Lissac to be silent, but could not frame one. He received, as it were, a sudden and violent blow on the head. Beyond question, he did not know a word of all that Lissac had informed him. And yet this was the gossip of Paris for two days! Either naming in full, or in indicating him sufficiently clearly, the newspapers had related the adventure on their front page. Moreover, much attention had been attracted to an article in a journal with which Lucien Granet was intimately connected, wherein, in well-turned but perfidious phrases, a certain Alkibiades--Lissac had guessed that this name was applied to him--had been arrested by the orders of the archon Sulpicios at the instance of a certain Basilea, one of the most charming hetaires of the republic of Perikles. Under this Greco-Parisian disguise it was easy for everyone to discover the true names and to see behind the masks the faces intended.

At the very moment that Lissac called to ask the minister for an explanation of the acts of the Prefect Jouvenet, Madame Vaudrey was opening a copy of a journal in which these names travestied by some h.e.l.lenist of the boulevard were underlined in red pencil. The article ent.i.tled _The Mistress of an Archon_, had been specially sent to her under a cover bearing the address in a woman's handwriting, Sabine Marsy or Madame Gerson! Some friend. One always has such.

It was of Adrienne that Vaudrey thought while Lissac was giving vent to his ironical, blunt complaint. Was Guy mad to speak of Marianne aloud in this way, and in this place, a few feet away from his wife, who could hear everything? Yes, Lissac was over-excited, furious and apparently crazy. He did not lower his tone, in spite of the sudden terror expressed by Vaudrey, who seized his hand and said to him eagerly: "Why, keep quiet! Suppose some one is listening?"

He felt himself, moreover, impelled by a violent rage. If what Guy told him were correct, Marianne had made use of him and of the t.i.tle of mistress that she ought to have concealed. She had played it in order to compel Jouvenet to commit an outrage.

"Nonsense!" said Lissac, sneeringly. "Are you innocent enough to believe that she has seduced the Prefect of Police by simply telling him that she was your mistress? You don't know her. She only did this in becoming his!"

Sulpice had become livid, and he looked at Lissac with a sudden expression of hatred, as if this man had been his enemy. Guy had directly attacked his vanity and his heart with a knife-thrust, as it were, without sparing either his self-love or his pa.s.sion.

"Ah! yes," said Lissac, "I know very well that that annoys you, but it is so! I knew this young lady before you did. Let her commit all the follies that she chooses with others and throw me overboard at a pinch, as she did three days ago, all is for the best. She is playing her role.

I am only an imbecile and I am punished for it, and it is well; but, in order to attack me, to secure a very tiny paper, which put her very nicely at my mercy, that she should commit a foolish and brutal outrage against you who answer for the personnel of your administration, I cannot forgive. She thought then that I would make use of this note against her? She takes me for a rascal? If I wished to commit an act of treachery, could I not go this very moment, even without the weapon that Jouvenet's agents have taken from me, straight to her Rosas?"

"Rosas?" asked Sulpice, whose countenance contorted, and who feverishly twisted his blond beard.

"Eh! _parbleu_, yes, Rosas! On my honor, one would take you for the Minister of the Interior of the Moon! Rosas, who perhaps is her lover, but will be her husband if she wishes it! and she does!"

Poor Sulpice looked at Lissac with a terrified expression which might have been comic, did it not in its depth portray a genuine sorrow. He was oblivious to everything now, where he was, if Guy spoke too loudly, or if Adrienne could hear. He was only conscious of a terrible strain of his mind. This sudden revelation lacerated him--as if his back received the blows of a whip. He wished to know all. He questioned Lissac, forcing him into a corner, and making him hesitate, for he now feared that he would say too much, and limited himself to demanding Jouvenet's punishment.

"As to Marianne, one would see to that after," he said.

Ah! yes, certainly, Jouvenet should be punished! How? Vaudrey could not say, but from this moment the Prefect of Police was condemned. Guy's arrest, which was an act of brutal aggression, was tantamount to a dismissal signed by the Prefect himself. And Marianne! she then made a sport of Sulpice and took him for a child or a ninny!

"Not at all. For a man who loves, that is enough," replied Lissac.

Vaudrey had flung himself into an armchair, striking his fist upon the little table, covered with the journals that he had scarcely opened, and absent-mindedly pushing the chair back, the better to give way to his excessively violent threats, after the manner of weak natures.

"Do you want my advice?" Lissac abruptly asked him. "You have only what you deserve, ah! yes, that is just it! I tell you the sober truth. A wife like yours should never be forsaken for a creature like Marianne!"

"I love Adrienne sincerely!" replied Vaudrey eagerly.

"And you deceive her entirely. That is foolish. You deserve that Mademoiselle Kayser should have ridiculed, deceived and ruined you irretrievably, and that your name should never be uttered again. When one has the opportunity to possess a wife like yours, one adores her on bended knees, you understand me, and one doesn't destroy her true happiness to divert it in favor of the crowd. And what pleasure!

Jouvenet has had the same dose at a less cost!"

"You abuse the rights of friendship, somewhat," said Sulpice, rising suddenly. "I do what pleases me, as it pleases me, and I owe no account to any one, I think!"

He stopped suddenly. His feet were, as it were, nailed to the floor and his mouth closed. He seized Guy's hand and felt his flesh creep, as he saw Adrienne standing pale, and supporting herself against the doorpost, as if she had not the strength to proceed, her eyes wide open, like those of a sick person.

a.s.suredly, beyond all possible doubt, she had heard everything.

She was there! she heard!

She said nothing, but moved a step forward, upheld by a terrible effort.

Her look was that of a whipped child, of a poor creature terrified and in despair, and expressed not anger but entire collapse. She was so wan, so sad-looking, that neither Lissac nor Vaudrey dared speak. A chill silence fell upon these three persons.

While Adrienne approached the table upon which the journals were piled, Guy was the first to force a smile to throw her off the scent; Adrienne stopped him with a gesture that was intended to express that to undeceive her, that is to say, to deceive her afresh, would be a still more cowardly act. She took from among the journals that which she had just been reading without at first quite understanding it, the one that had been sent to her, underlined as with a venomous nail, and showing to Vaudrey the article that spoke of Sulpicios and Basilea, she said gently in a feeble voice, crushed by this crumbling of her hopes:

"That is known then, that affair!"

Then she sunk exhausted into the armchair in which Sulpice had been sitting, and her breast heaved with a violent sob that tore it as if it would rend it.

Sulpice looked at Lissac who was standing half-inclined, as in the presence of a misfortune. He instinctively seized the minister by the shoulder and gently forced him toward Adrienne, saying to him in a whisper, in ill-a.s.sured tones: