His Excellency the Minister Part 60

A woman's perfume and something like the keen odor of flowers a.s.sailed his nostrils. He had never felt the impulse of burning compa.s.sion which at a sign from this saint, would have driven him to attempt the impossible, to affront the noisy throng yonder.

"Loved by him, yes, by him!" answered Adrienne, with the mournful shake of the head of one who sees her joy vanish in the distance like a sinking bark.

She had been so happy! She had thought herself so dearly loved! Ah!

those many cowardly lies uttered by Sulpice!

"Do not speak to me of him!" she suddenly said. "I hate him, too!--I do more than that! I despise him! I never wish to see him again!--never.

You hear! never!"

"What will you do?" Lissac asked.

"I know nothing about it!--I wish to leave! Now, I have no more parading to make in this ball, I think, I have no longer to receive the guests whose insulting smiles were like blows! I will go, go!"

"Adrienne!"

"Will go at once!"

She felt no astonishment at hearing the name Adrienne spoken suddenly and unreflectingly by Guy de Lissac.

She looked at him with a glance that reached his soul, not knowing what she said:

"Leave now! While the ball is in progress. To leave solitude to him, suddenly--here! And that woman, if he wishes her, and if the other who is marrying her will yield her to him!"

She was carried away, her mind wandered, as if unbalanced by her grief, all her efforts at self-control ending in a relaxation of her strained nerves.

"I will leave!--I do not wish to see him again!"

"Leave to-night?"

"For Gren.o.ble--I don't know where!--But to fly from him; ah! yes; to escape from him! Take me away, Monsieur de Lissac!" she said distractedly, as she seized his hand. "I should go mad here!"

She had unconsciously taken refuge, as it were, in the arms of the man who loved her, and Lissac felt the exquisite grace of the body abandoned to him, without the woman's reflecting upon it, without loving him, lost--

It is quite certain that in her nervous, heart-broken condition, Adrienne was not considering whether his affection for her sprung from friendship or from love.

For a moment this master skeptic, Guy, felt that he was committing the greatest folly of his life.

The young woman did not understand; nevertheless, even without love, he clearly felt that this chasteness and grace, all that there was exquisitely seductive about her, belonged to him--if he dared--

"You are feverish, Adrienne," he said, as he took her hands as he would a child's.

"I am choking here!--I wish to leave!--take me away!"

"Nonsense," said Lissac. "What are you thinking about? They are calling for you, yonder."

"It is because they call for me that I wish to escape. Don't you see that I abhor all those people; that I detest them as much as I despise them? Take me away!"

Lissac had become very pale. He tried to smile at Adrienne--the heroic smile of a wounded man undergoing amputation--and he whispered:

"Don't you know very well, madame, that you would not have taken two steps in the street, on my arm, before you would become a lost woman?"

"Well," she said, "what of that, since it is they who are loved!--"

"No, madame," Guy replied, "I love you. I may say so, because you are a virtuous woman, and I have no right to take you away, do you understand?

because I love you."

He, too, had summoned all his strength to impart to his confession, which he would have expressed with ardor, the cold tone of a phrase.

But that was enough. Adrienne recoiled before this avowal.

He loved her. He told her so!

It is true, she could not leave the mansion on his arm.

She rested her glance on Lissac and extended her hand to him, saying, as she felt suddenly recalled to herself:

"You are an honest man!"

"According to my moods," said Guy, with a sad smile.

The door of the little salon opened, and Ramel entered.

"I have called in a doctor," he said.

"For me?" asked Adrienne. "Thanks! I am quite strong!"

Then boldly going to Ramel:

"Will you have the goodness to take me to Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin, Monsieur Ramel?"

"Why?"

"Because I will not remain one hour longer in a house where my husband has the right to receive his mistress!--Monsieur de Lissac refuses to accompany me. Your arm, Ramel!"

"Madame," Ramel answered gently, "I knew that Monsieur de Lissac was a man of intelligence. It seems to me that he is a man of heart. You should remain here for your own sake, for your name's sake, for your husband's. It is your duty. As to Mademoiselle Kayser, you can return to the salons, for she has just left with Monsieur de Rosas."

Adrienne remained for a moment with her sad eyes fixed on Ramel; then shaking her head:

"You knew it also? Everybody knew it then, except me?"

"Well!" said Ramel, a good-natured smile playing in his white mustache, "now it is necessary to forget."

"Never!" replied Adrienne.

Then proudly drawing herself up, she took Denis's arm and without even glancing in her mirror, she went off toward the salons.

"Your bouquet, madame," said Lissac, who was still pale and his voice trembled.

"True!" said Adrienne.