The Works of Guy de Maupassant Volume VI Part 31

"There," he said, "I had warned you. I ought not to have introduced you to Monsieur and Madame du Roy de Cantel, Senior."

She began to laugh, too, and replied: "I am delighted now. They are good folk, whom I am beginning to like very well. I will send them some presents from Paris." Then she murmured: "Du Roy de Cantel, you will see that no one will be astonished at the terms of the notification of our marriage. We will say that we have been staying for a week with your parents on their estate." And bending towards him she kissed the tip of his moustache, saying: "Good morning, George."

He replied: "Good morning, Made," as he pa.s.sed an arm around her waist.

In the valley below they could see the broad river like a ribbon of silver unrolled beneath the morning sun, the factory chimneys belching forth their clouds of smoke into the sky, and the pointed spires rising above the old town.

X

The Du Roys had been back in Paris a couple of days, and the journalist had taken up his old work pending the moment when he should definitely a.s.sume Forestier's duties, and give himself wholly up to politics. He was going home that evening to his predecessor's abode to dinner, with a light heart and a keen desire to embrace his wife, whose physical attractions and imperceptible domination exercised a powerful impulse over him. Pa.s.sing by a florist's at the bottom of the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, he was struck by the notion of buying a bouquet for Madeleine, and chose a large bunch of half-open roses, a very bundle of perfumed buds.

At each story of his new staircase he eyed himself complacently in the mirrors, the sight of which continually recalled to him his first visit to the house. He rang the bell, having forgotten his key, and the same man-servant, whom he had also kept on by his wife's advice, opened the door.

"Has your mistress come home?" asked George.

"Yes, sir."

But on pa.s.sing through the dining-room he was greatly surprised to find the table laid for three, and the hangings of the drawing-room door being looped up, saw Madeleine arranging in a vase on the mantelpiece a bunch of roses exactly similar to his own. He was vexed and displeased; it was as though he had been robbed of his idea, his mark of attention, and all the pleasure he antic.i.p.ated from it.

"You have invited some one to dinner, then?" he inquired, as he entered the room.

She answered without turning round, and while continuing to arrange the flowers: "Yes, and no. It is my old friend, the Count de Vaudrec, who has been accustomed to dine here every Monday, and who has come as usual."

George murmured: "Ah! very good."

He remained standing behind her, bouquet in hand, with a longing to hide it or throw it away. He said, however: "I have brought you some roses."

She turned round suddenly, smiling, and exclaimed: "Ah! how nice of you to have thought of that."

And she held out her arms and lips to him with an outburst of joy so real that he felt consoled. She took the flowers, smelt them, and with the liveliness of a delighted child, placed them in the vase that remained empty opposite the other. Then she murmured, as she viewed the result: "How glad I am. My mantelpiece is furnished now." She added almost immediately, in a tone of conviction: "You know Vaudrec is awfully nice; you will be friends with him at once."

A ring announced the Count. He entered quietly, and quite at his ease, as though at home. After having gallantly kissed the young wife's fingers, he turned to the husband and cordially held out his hand, saying: "How goes it, my dear Du Roy?"

It was no longer his former stiff and starched bearing, but an affable one, showing that the situation was no longer the same. The journalist, surprised, strove to make himself agreeable in response to these advances. It might have been believed within five minutes that they had known and loved one another for ten years past.

Then Madeleine, whose face was radiant, said: "I will leave you together, I must give a look to my dinner." And she went out, followed by a glance from both men. When she returned she found them talking theatricals apropos of a new piece, and so thoroughly of the same opinion that a species of rapid friendship awoke in their eyes at the discovery of this absolute ident.i.ty of ideas.

The dinner was delightful, so intimate and cordial, and the Count stayed on quite late, so comfortable did he feel in this nice little new household.

As soon as he had left Madeleine said to her husband: "Is he not perfect? He gains in every way by being known. He is a true friend--safe, devoted, faithful. Ah, without him--"

She did not finish the sentence, and George replied: "Yes, I find him very agreeable. I think that we shall get on very well together."

She resumed: "You do not know, but we have some work to do together before going to bed. I had not time to speak to you about it before dinner, because Vaudrec came in at once. I have had some important news, news from Morocco. It was Laroche-Mathieu, the deputy, the future minister, who brought it to me. We must work up an important article, a sensational one. I have the facts and figures. We will set to work at once. Bring the lamp."

He took it, and they pa.s.sed into the study. The same books were ranged in the bookcase, which now bore on its summit the three vases bought at the Golfe Juan by Forestier on the eve of his death. Under the table the dead man's mat awaited the feet of Du Roy, who, on sitting down, took up an ivory penholder slightly gnawed at the end by the other's teeth.

Madeleine leant against the mantelpiece, and having lit a cigarette related her news, and then explained her notions and the plan of the article she meditated. He listened attentively, scribbling notes as he did so, and when she had finished, raised objections, took up the question again, enlarged its bearing, and sketched in turn, not the plan of an article, but of a campaign against the existing Ministry. This attack would be its commencement. His wife had left off smoking, so strongly was her interest aroused, so vast was the vision that opened before her as she followed out George's train of thought.

She murmured, from time to time: "Yes, yes; that is very good. That is capital. That is very clever."

And when he had finished speaking in turn, she said: "Now let us write."

But he always found it hard to make a start, and with difficulty sought his expressions. Then she came gently, and, leaning over his shoulder, began to whisper sentences in his ear. From time to time she would hesitate, and ask: "Is that what you want to say?"

He answered: "Yes, exactly."

She had piercing shafts, the poisoned shafts of a woman, to wound the head of the Cabinet, and she blended jests about his face with others respecting his policy in a curious fashion, that made one laugh, and, at the same time, impressed one by their truth of observation.

Du Roy from time to time added a few lines which widened and strengthened the range of attack. He understood, too, the art of perfidious insinuation, which he had learned in sharpening up his "Echoes"; and when a fact put forward as certain by Madeleine appeared doubtful or compromising, he excelled in allowing it to be divined and in impressing it upon the mind more strongly than if he had affirmed it.

When their article was finished, George read it aloud. They both thought it excellent, and smiled, delighted and surprised, as if they had just mutually revealed themselves to one another. They gazed into the depths of one another's eyes with yearnings of love and admiration, and they embraced one another with an ardor communicated from their minds to their bodies.

Du Roy took up the lamp again. "And now to bye-bye," said he, with a

kindling glance.

She replied: "Go first, sir, since you light the way."

He went first, and she followed him into their bedroom, tickling his neck to make him go quicker, for he could not stand that.

The article appeared with the signature of George Duroy de Cantel, and caused a great sensation. There was an excitement about it in the Chamber. Daddy Walter congratulated the author, and entrusted him with the political editorship of the _Vie Francaise_. The "Echoes" fell again to Boisrenard.

Then there began in the paper a violent and cleverly conducted campaign against the Ministry. The attack, now ironical, now serious, now jesting, and now virulent, but always skillful and based on facts, was delivered with a cert.i.tude and continuity which astonished everyone.

Other papers continually cited the _Vie Francaise_, taking whole pa.s.sages from it, and those in office asked themselves whether they could not gag this unknown and inveterate foe with the gift of a prefecture.

Du Roy became a political celebrity. He felt his influence increasing by the pressure of hands and the lifting of hats. His wife, too, filled him with stupefaction and admiration by the ingenuity of her mind, the value of her information, and the number of her acquaintances. Continually he would find in his drawing-room, on returning home, a senator, a deputy, a magistrate, a general, who treated Madeleine as an old friend, with serious familiarity. Where had she met all these people? In society, so she said. But how had she been able to gain their confidence and their affection? He could not understand it.

"She would make a terrible diplomatist," he thought.

She often came in late at meal times, out of breath, flushed, quivering, and before even taking off her veil would say: "I have something good to-day. Fancy, the Minister of Justice has just appointed two magistrates who formed a part of the mixed commission. We will give him a dose he will not forget in a hurry."

And they would give the minister a dose, and another the next day, and a third the day after. The deputy, Laroche-Mathieu, who dined at the Rue Fontaine every Tuesday, after the Count de Vaudrec, who began the week, would shake the hands of husband and wife with demonstrations of extreme joy. He never ceased repeating: "By Jove, what a campaign! If we don't succeed after all?"

He hoped, indeed, to succeed in getting hold of the portfolio of foreign affairs, which he had had in view for a long time.

He was one of those many-faced politicians, without strong convictions, without great abilities, without boldness, and without any depth of knowledge, a provincial barrister, a local dandy, preserving a cunning balance between all parties, a species of Republican Jesuit and Liberal mushroom of uncertain character, such as spring up by hundreds on the popular dunghill of universal suffrage. His village machiavelism caused him to be reckoned able among his colleagues, among all the adventurers and abortions who are made deputies. He was sufficiently well-dressed, correct, familiar, and amiable to succeed. He had his successes in society, in the mixed, perturbed, and somewhat rough society of the high functionaries of the day. It was said everywhere of him: "Laroche will be a minister," and he believed more firmly than anyone else that he would be. He was one of the chief shareholders in Daddy Walter's paper, and his colleague and partner in many financial schemes.

Du Roy backed him up with confidence and with vague hopes as to the future. He was, besides, only continuing the work begun by Forestier, to whom Laroche-Mathieu had promised the Cross of the Legion of Honor when the day of triumph should come. The decoration would adorn the breast of Madeleine's second husband, that was all. Nothing was changed in the main.

It was seen so well that nothing was changed that Du Roy's comrades organized a joke against him, at which he was beginning to grow angry.

They no longer called him anything but Forestier. As soon as he entered the office some one would call out: "I say, Forestier."

He would pretend not to hear, and would look for the letters in his pigeon-holes. The voice would resume in louder tones, "Hi! Forestier."

Some stifled laughs would be heard, and as Du Roy was entering the manager's room, the comrade who had called out would stop him, saying: "Oh, I beg your pardon, it is you I want to speak to. It is stupid, but I am always mixing you up with poor Charles. It is because your articles are so infernally like his. Everyone is taken in by them."