Chapter 12

He removed his hat and went straight toward the door, that was then opened to admit a pale-faced, lean man with long black whiskers that formed a sort of horsetail fringe to his face. Jéliotte was a former comrade in the law courts, an advocate in the Court of Appeal, and he entered, bowing ceremoniously to Sulpice, who with a pleased face and outstretched hands, went to welcome the old companion of his youth.

Jéliotte bowed with a certain affectation of respect, and smiled nervously.

"How happy I am to see you," Vaudrey said.

"You still address me in the old familiar way," Jéliotte answered, showing his slightly broken and yellow teeth.

"What an idea! Have I forfeited your good opinion, that I should abandon our familiar form of address?"

"Honors, then, have not changed you; well! so much the better," said Jéliotte. "You ask me how I am? Oh! always the same!--I work hard--I am out of your sight--but I applaud all your successes."

While Jéliotte was speaking of Vaudrey's successes, he sat on the edge of a chair, staring at his hat, and wagging his jaw as if he were cracking a nut between his frail teeth.

"I have been delighted at your getting into the cabinet. Delighted for your sake--"

"You ought also to be delighted on your own account, my good Jéliotte. Whatever I may hereafter be able to do--"

Jéliotte cut the minister short and said in a tone as dry as tinder:

"Oh! my dear Sulpice, believe one thing,--that I ask you nothing."

"Why?"

"Because--no, nothing. And I repeat, nothing."

"And you would be wrong if I could be friendly to you or useful."

"I have said _nothing_, and I stick to _nothing_. You will meet quite enough office-seekers in your career--"

"Evidently!"

"Petitioners also!"

"Most assuredly!"

"Well! I am neither a petitioner nor an office-seeker nor a sycophant. I am your friend."

"And you are right, for I have great affection for you."

"I am your friend and your devoted friend. I should consider it a rascally thing to ask you for anything. A rascally thing, I say! You are in office, you are a minister, so much the better, yes, so much the better! But, at least, don't let your friends pester you, like vermin crawling before you, because you are all-powerful. I will never crawl before you, I warn you. I shall remain just what I am. You will take me just as I am or not at all. That will depend altogether upon the change of humor that the acquisition of honors may produce in you--"

"Jéliotte! we shall see, Jéliotte!"

"Well! You can take me or leave me. And as I do not wish to be confounded with the cringing valets who crowd your antechambers--"

"You crowd nothing, you will not dance attendance. Have I asked you to dance attendance?"

"No, not yet--I called simply to see if I should be received. Yes, it is merely in the nature of an experiment--it is made. It is to your honor, I admit, but I will not repeat it--I shall disappear. It is more simple. Yes, I have told you and I was determined to tell you that you will never see me, so long as you are a minister."

"Ah! Jéliotte! Jéliotte!"

"Never--not until you have fallen--For one always falls--"

"Fortunately," said Sulpice, with a laugh.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, that depends. I say: when you have fallen--then, oh! then, don't fear, I will not be the one to turn my back on you--"

"You are very kind."

"Whatever you may have said or done, you understand, while you are in power--and power intoxicates men!--I will always offer you my hand. Yes, this hand shall always be extended to you. You will find plenty of people who will turn their backs on you at that moment. Not I! I am a friend in dark days--"

"That is understood."

"I will leave you to your glory, Vaudrey. I crave pardon for not styling you: Monsieur le Ministre; I could not. It is not familiar to me. I cannot help it. I am not the friend for the hour of success, but for that of misfortune."

"And you will return?"

"When you are overthrown!--"

"Thank you!"

"That is like me! I love my friends."

"When they are down!" said Sulpice.

"That is so!" exclaimed Jéliotte.

"And is that all you had to say to me?" the minister asked.

"Is not that enough?"

"Yes! yes! _Au revoir_, Jéliotte."

"_Au revoir!_ Till--you know when."

"Yes. When I feel my position threatened, I will call upon you. Don't be afraid. That time will come."

"The idiot!" said Sulpice, angrily shrugging his shoulders, when the advocate was gone.

He snatched his hat and went out hurriedly to his carriage, the messengers rising to bow to him as he passed through the antechamber.

It was hardly necessary for him to order his coachman to drive to the Élysée. The duties of each day were so well ordered in advance, and besides, the attendants at the department knew quite as well as the minister if a Council was to be held at the Élysée.

Sulpice was somewhat upset. Jéliotte's visit, following that of Granet, presented the human species in an evil aspect. He had never felt envious of any one, and it seemed to him that the whole world should be gratified at his modest bearing under success.

"For, after all, I triumph, that is certain!--That animal of a Jéliotte is not such a simpleton!--There are many who, if they were in my place, would swagger!"

So he complacently awarded himself a patent of modesty.

The carriage stopped at the foot of the steps of the Élysée. Sulpice always felt an exquisite joy in alighting from his carriage, his portfolio pressed to his side, and leaping over the carpet-covered steps of the stone staircase leading to the Council Chambers. He passed through them, as he did everywhere, between rows of spectators who respectfully bowed to him. Devoted friends extended their hands respectfully toward his overcoat. Certainly, he only knew the men by their heads, bald or crowned with locks, as the case might be. His colleagues were gathered together, awaiting him, and chatting in the salon, decorated in white and gold, the invariable salon of official apartments with the inevitable Sèvres vases with deep-blue, light-green or buff color grounds, placed upon consoles or pedestals. The portfolios appeared stuffed or empty, limp or bursting with paper bundles, under the arms of their Excellencies. Suddenly a door was opened, the ushers fell back and the President approached, looking very serious and taking his accustomed place opposite to the President of the Council with the formality of an orderly, the Minister of the Interior on the left of the President of the Republic, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the right.

Then, in turn, each minister, beginning at the right, reported the business of his department, sometimes debated in private council. Each having completed his information, bowed to his neighbor on the right, and said:

"I have finished. It is your turn, my dear colleague."

The President listened. Sulpice sometimes allowed himself to muse while seated at this green-covered table, forgetting altogether the affairs under consideration. Sometimes he recalled those green-covered tables of the Council Chambers of the Grenoble Prefecture, finding that this Ministerial Council recalled the mean impression invoked by his provincial recollections, at other times, a vein of poesy would flit across his mind, or an eloquent word would reach his ear, suggesting to him the thought that, after all, these men seated there before their open portfolios, turning over or scattering about the papers, nevertheless represented cherished France and held in their leather pouches the secrets, the destinies, aye, even the very fate of the fatherland.

And this Sulpice, overjoyed to expand at his ease in the delights of power, sitting there in his accustomed chair,--a chair which now seemed to be really his own--enjoying a sort of physical satisfaction ever new, inhaling power like the fumes of a nargileh, forgot himself, however, and suddenly felt himself recalled to the urgent reality when his colleague, the Minister of War, a spare man with a grizzled moustache, dropped an infrequent remark in which, in the laconic speech of a soldier, could be comprehended some cause of anxiety or of hope. Sulpice listened then, more moved than he was willing to have it appear, trying, in his turn, to hide all his artistic and patriotic anxieties under that firm exterior which his colleague of the Department of Foreign Affairs wore, a dull-eyed, listless face, and cheeks that might be made of pasteboard.

The business of the Council was of little importance that morning. The Keeper of the Seals, Monsieur Collard--of Nantes--a fat, puffing, apoplectic man with somewhat glassy, round eyes, proposed to the President, who listened attentively but without replying, some reform to which Vaudrey was perfectly indifferent. He did not even hear his colleague's dull speech, the latter lost himself in useless considerations, while the Minister of War looked at him, as if his eyes, loaded with grapeshot said, in military fashion: "_Sacrebleu!_ get done!"

Vaudrey looked out of the window at the dark horizon of the winter sky and the gray tints of the leafless trees, and watched the little birds that chased one another among the branches. His thoughts were far, very far away from the table where the sober silence was broken by the interminable phrases of the Minister of Justice, whose words suggested the constant flow of an open spigot.

The vision of a female form at the end of the garden appeared to him, a form that, notwithstanding the cold, was clothed in the soft blue gown that Marianne wore yesterday at Sabine's. He seemed to catch that fleeting smile, the exact expression of which he sought to recall, that peculiar glance, cunning and enticing, that exquisite outline of a perfect Parisian woman. How charming she was! And how sweet that name, Marianne!

Let us see indeed, what in reality could such a woman be! Terrible, perhaps, but certainly irresistible!

Not for years had Vaudrey felt such an anxiety or allowed himself to be, as it were, carried away by such a dominating influence. Waking, he found Marianne the basis of all his thoughts, as she was during his slumber.

And so charming!

"Monsieur le Ministre de l'Intérieur is the next to address the Council."

Vaudrey had not noticed that Monsieur Collard--of Nantes--had finished his harangue, and that after the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had just concluded his remarks. Vaudrey, therefore, needed a moment's reflection, a hasty self-examination to recognize his own personality: _Monsieur le Ministre de l'Intérieur!_ This title only called up his _ego_ after a momentary reflection, a sort of simulated astonishment under the cloak of a pensive attitude. Vaudrey's colleagues did not perceive that this man seated beside them was, as it were, lost in meditation.

Sulpice, moreover, had little to say. Nothing serious. The confirmation of the favorable reports that had been made to him. Within a week he would finish his plan of prefectorial changes. He simply required the Council to deal at once with the nomination of the Undersecretaries of State.

It was then that Vaudrey realized the extraordinary influence that Lucien Granet must possess. From the very opening of the discussion, the minister felt that his candidate, Jacquier--of l'Oise--was defeated in advance by Warcolier. Granet must have laid siege to the ministers one by one. The President was entirely in Warcolier's favor. Warcolier's amiability, tact, the extraordinary facility with which he threw overboard previous opinions, were so many claims in his favor. It was necessary to give pledges to new converts, to prove that the government was not closed against penitents.

"That is a very Christian theory," said Vaudrey, "and truly, I am neither in favor of jacobinism nor suspicion, but there is something ironical in granting this amnesty to turncoats."

"But it is decidedly politic," said Monsieur Collard--of Nantes.

"It is a premium offered to the new converts."

"Eh! eh! that is not so badly done!"

Vaudrey knew perfectly well that it was useless to insist, he must put up with Warcolier. It was his task to manage matters so that this man should not have unlimited power in the ministry.

Warcolier was elected and the President signed his appointment at the earliest possible moment.

"A nomination discounted in advance," thought Vaudrey, who again recalled Granet's polite but threatening smile.

He felt somewhat nervous and annoyed at this result. But what could be done? To divert his thoughts, he listened to his colleagues' communications. The Minister of War commenced to speak, and in a tone of irritated surprise, instead of the lofty, patriotic considerations that Vaudrey expected of him, Vaudrey heard him muttering behind his moustache about soldiers' cap-straps, shakos, gaiter-buttons, shoulder-straps, cloth and overcoats. That was all. It was the vulgar report of a shoemaker or a tailor, or of a contractor detailing the items of his account.

Sulpice was anxious for the Council to be over. The President, before the close of the session, repeated, with all the seriousness of a judge of the Court of Appeal: "Above all, messieurs, no innovations, don't try to do too well, let things alone. Don't let us trouble about business! Let us be content to live! The session is ended."

"Not about business?" said Vaudrey to himself.

He understood power in quite a different way. Longing for improvements, he did not understand how to let himself be dragged on like a cork upon a stream, by the wave of daily events. He was determined to put his ideas into force, to give life and durability to his ministry. There was no use in being a minister if he must continue the habitual go-as-you-please of current politics. In that case, the first chief of bureau one might meet would make as good a minister as he.

At the moment of leaving the Council Chamber, the Minister of War said to him, in a jocose, brusque way: "Well! my dear colleague, Warcolier's election does not seem to have pleased you? Bah! if he has changed shoulders with his gun, that only proves that he knows how to drill."

And the soldier laughed heartily behind his closely buttoned frock coat.

Vaudrey got into his carriage and returned to the ministry to breakfast.

Formerly the breakfast hour was generally the time of joyous freedom for Sulpice. He felt soothed beside Adrienne and forgot his daily struggles.

In their home on Chaussée d'Antin, he usually abandoned himself freely to lively and cheerful conversation, to allow his wife to find in him, the man of forty years, the fiancé, the young husband of former days. But here, before these exclusive domestics, the familiars of the ministry, planted around the table like so many inspectors, rather than servants, he dared not manifest himself. He scarcely spoke. He felt that he was watched and listened to. The valet who passed him the dishes watched over Monsieur le Ministre. He imagined that _his attendants_ in their silent reflections compared the present minister with those that had gone before him. On one occasion, one of the domestics replied to a remark made by Adrienne: "Monsieur Pichereau, who preceded Monsieur le Ministre, and Monsieur le Comte d'Harville, who preceded Monsieur Pichereau, considered my service very proper, madame."

Adrienne accepted as well as she could the necessities of her new position. Since that was power, let power rule! She was resigned to those wastes whose luxury was apparent, since the political fortunes of her husband cast her there, like a prisoner, in that huge, commonplace, ministerial mansion, wherein none of the joys of home or of that Parisian apartment that she had furnished with such refined taste were left her. She felt half lost in those vast, cold salons of that ancient Hôtel Beauvau,--cold in spite of their stoves, and which partook at one and the same time of the provisional domicile and the furnished apartment,--with its defaced gilded panels, and here and there a crack in the ceiling, and those vulgar ornaments, those wearisome imitation Chardins with their cracked colors and those old-fashioned pictures of Roqueplan, giving to everything at once _one date_, a bygone style. With what a truly melancholy smile Adrienne greeted the friends who came to see her on her reception day, when they remarked to her: "Why, you are in a palace!"

"Yes, but I much prefer my accustomed furniture and my own house."

Sulpice, free at last from that Council and the morning receptions, as he alighted from his carriage, caused _Madame_ to be informed that he had returned.

Adrienne, who was looking pretty in a tight-fitting, black velvet gown, approached him with a smile and was suddenly overcome with sadness on seeing him absorbed in thought. She dared not question him, but being somewhat anxious, she, nevertheless, inquired the cause of his frowning expression.

"You have your bad look, my good Sulpice," she smilingly said.

He then quickly explained the Warcolier business.

"Is that all? Bah!" she said, "you will have many other such annoyances."

She was smiling graciously.

"That is politics!--And then you like it--At least, confine your likes to that, Sulpice," she said, drawing near to Vaudrey.

She was about to present her forehead for his kiss, as formerly, but she drew back abruptly. A valet entered with a dignified air and ceremoniously announced that breakfast was served.

Vaudrey ate without appetite. Adrienne watched him tenderly, her eyes were kind and gentle. How nervous he was and quickly disturbed! Truly, Warcolier's appointment was not worth his giving himself the least anxiety about.

She was going to speak to him about it. Vaudrey imposed silence by a sign. The motionless domestics were listening.

Like Sulpice, Adrienne suffered the annoyance of a constant surveillance. She was hungry when she sat down to table, but her appetite had vanished. The viands were served cold, brought on plates decorated with various designs and marked with the initials of Louis Philippe, L.P., intertwined, or with the monogram of the Empire, N.; the gilt was worn off, the fillets of gold half obliterated: a service of Sèvres that had been used everywhere, in imperial dwellings, national palaces, and was at last sent to the various ministries as the remnant of the tables of banished sovereigns.

Instead of eating, Adrienne musingly looked at the decorations. It seemed to her that she was in a gloomy restaurant where the badly served dishes banished her appetite. Sulpice, sad himself, scarcely spoke and in mute preoccupation, in turn confused the shrewd, sly Granet, the intriguing Warcolier, and Marianne Kayser, whose image never left him. He was discontented with himself and excited by the persistency with which the image of this woman haunted him.

In vain did Adrienne smile and seek to divert him from the thoughts that besieged him--she was herself in a melancholy mood, without knowing why, and her endeavors were but wasted; if he abandoned the train of his reflections, it was merely to express a thought in rapid tones, and he seemed momentarily to shake off his torpor; he replied to his wife's forced smile by a mechanical grimace, and immediately relapsed into his nervously silent state.

In the hours of anxious struggle, she had often seen him thus, hence she was not alarmed. If she had been in her own home, instead of occupying this strange mansion, she would have rushed to him, and seated on his knees, taken his burning head between her little hands and said: "Come now! what ails you? what is the matter? Tell me everything so that, child as I may be, I may comfort my big boy."

But there, still in the presence of those people, always in full view, she dared not. She carefully and anxiously watched Sulpice's mortified countenance. Since his entry on his ministerial functions, this was the first occasion, probably, that he had been so preoccupied.

"There is something the matter with you, is there not, my dear?"

"No--nothing--Besides--"

The minister's glance was a sufficient conclusion to his remark. Moreover, how could he, even if he had some trouble to confide, make it known before the ever watchful lackeys? Before these impassive attendants, who, though apparently obsequious, might in reality be hostile, and who looked at them with cold glances? What a distance separated them from the old-time intimacies, the cherished interchange of thought interrupted by piquant kisses and laughter, just like a young husband and wife!

In truth, Adrienne had not thought of it: Sulpice could not talk.

"You will serve the coffee at once," she said.

She made haste in order that she might take refuge in her own apartment to be alone with her husband. He, however, as if he shunned this tête-à-tête, eager as he was for solitude, quickly attributed his unpleasant humor to neuralgia or headache. Too much work or too close application of mind.

"At the Ministerial Council perhaps?" remarked Adrienne inquiringly.

"Yes, at the Council,--I must take a little fresh air--I will take a round in the Bois--The day is dry--That will do me good!"

"Will you take me?" she said gayly.

"If you wish," he replied. Then, in an almost embarrassed tone, he added:

"Perhaps it will be better for me to go alone--I have to think--to work--There is no sitting at the Chamber to-day; and the day is entirely at my own disposal."

"Just as you please," Adrienne replied, looking at Sulpice with a tender and submissive glance. "It would, however, have been so delightful and beneficial to have gone to the Bois together on such a bright day! But you and your affairs before everything, you are right; take an airing, be off, come, breathe--I shall be glad to see you return smiling cheerfully as in the sweet days."

Sulpice looked at his young wife with a fondness that almost inspired him with remorse. In her look there was so complete an expression of her love. Then her affection was so deep, and her calm like the face of a motionless lake was so manifest, and she loved him so deeply, so intelligently. And how trustful, too!

He was impelled now to beg her don her cloak and to have a fur robe put into the coupé and set out now, when the sun was gradually showing itself, like two lovers bound for a country party. At the same time he felt a desperate longing to be alone, to abandon himself to his new idea and to the image that beset him. He felt that he was leaving Adrienne for Marianne.

He did not hold to the suggestion, in fact, he repeated that it would be better if he were alone. As there would be no session of the Chamber for a whole week, he would go out with Adrienne the next day. The coachman could drive them a long distance, even to Saint-Cloud or Ville-d'Avray. They would breakfast together all alone, unknown, in the woods.

"Truly?" said Adrienne.

"Truly! I feel the necessity of avoiding so many demonstrations in my honor."

Sulpice laughed.

"I am stifled by them," he said, as he kissed Adrienne, whose face was pink with delight at the thought of that unrestrained escapade.

"How you blush!" said Sulpice, ingenuously. "What is the matter with you?"

"With me? Nothing."

She looked at him anxiously.

"You think my complexion too ruddy! I have not the Parisian tint. Only remain a minister for some time, and that will vanish. There is no dispraise in that."

She again offered her brow to him.

He left her, happy to feel himself free.