Chapter 16

Kayser, whom he had once met at Marianne's, had answered such a question by remarking that his niece was a _sly puss_ who understood life thoroughly and would be sure to make headway. But that was all.

"I have suspected for a long time that that little head was not capable of much," the painter had added. "I considered her a light-headed creature, nothing more. Fool that I was! she is a shrewd woman, a clever woman, a true woman. I only find fault with her for one thing."

"What?" asked Vaudrey.

"Do you ask what, Monsieur le Ministre? The style of her establishment. It is flashy, tawdry, noisy, it is boudoir art. It lacks seriousness! It lacks morality! I would have in it figures that have style, character. I don't ask for saintly pictures, but moral allegories, austere art. I understand only the severe in art. I am a puritan in the matter of the brush. For that reason, I shall attain nothing in these days of _genre_ and water-color painting."

And Kayser went on painting allegories, to digest his dinner, the pâté de foie gras washed down with kummel, of which he had just partaken at his niece's.

Vaudrey himself viewed those Japanese trifles, those screens, those carpets, those pedestals surmounted by terra-cotta figures presenting in their nudity the flesh tints of woman, those clock-cases above the doors, that profusion of knickknacks, of furniture, of ottomans, that soft upholstery that seemed to be made only to excuse a fall--nay, even urged to sudden temptations, to chance love, to violent caprices; and on leaving the house, where he had spoken to Marianne only in compliments a hundred times repeated, and where she had but re-echoed sarcasms full of tender, double meanings, as a woman who would undoubtedly yield, but would not offer herself, he bore away with him in his nostrils and, as it were, in his clothes, a permeating, feminine odor, which would now follow him everywhere, and everywhere float about him in whiffs, urging him to return to that house in which a new world seemed to be opening to him.

He would not long persist in enquiring how Marianne Kayser had procured all those baubles that so highly incensed the puritan instincts of her honest uncle. He found himself urged forward with profound delight in this adventure whose mysterious features pleased him. Bah! the very fact that he found so much inexplicable in the life of this woman enticed him all the more. It seemed to him that not only had he entered upon a romantic course, but that he was himself the hero of the romance. Never, in the days when he rolled about, an unknown student, on the Parisian wave, and had lifted his thoughts toward some pale patrician girl, toward some pretty creature he had caught a glimpse of, leaning back in a dark-blue coupé, or framed in by the red velvet hangings of a proscenium box, had he more perfectly incarnated the ideal of his desire than in so charming a creature. Dreams of power, visions of love of his twentieth year, had now become tangible to him and at forty he stretched out his feverish hand toward them all.

"Could Ramel have been right?" he said to himself, "and I, only a provincial, athirst for Parisine? But what matter? Let Mademoiselle Kayser be what she will and I what I may be, it seems to me that I have never loved any one as I love this woman."

"Not even Adrienne," added a faint, trembling voice from within. But Sulpice had a ready answer to stifle it: Adrienne could not be compared with any creature in the world. Adrienne was the charm, the daily comfort of the domestic hearth. She was the wife, not the "woman." She was the darling, not the love. Vaudrey would have severed one of his arms to spare her any heavy sorrow, but he was not anxious about Adrienne. She knew nothing, she would know nothing. And what fault, moreover, had he committed hitherto? In that word _hitherto_, a host of mental reservations were involved that Sulpice would gladly have obliterated with his nails, he was ready to cry out with the same good faith,--that of the husband who deceives the wife whom he loves:

"What wrong have I done?"

One afternoon,--there was no session of the Chamber that day,--Marianne was seated in her little salon. She was warming the tips of her slippers, that furtively peeped from beneath the lace of her skirt as a little bird might protrude its beak from a nest, her right leg crossed over the other, and she appeared to be musing, her chin resting on her delicate hand.

She was weary. Justine, her recently engaged femme de chambre, who, like the silverware, was provided by the Dujarrier, came to announce with the discreet, bantering little smile of servants, that Monsieur Dachet, the upholsterer, had called twice.

"The upholsterer!"

Marianne frowned slightly.

"What did he say?"

"Nothing, that he would return to-morrow."

"You call that nothing?" said Marianne, with a short laugh.

When Justine had left the room, she went straight to a small, black, Italian cabinet inlaid with ivory, of which one drawer was locked. In opening it, the sound of gold coins rattling on the wood caused her to smile; then, with the tips of her white fingers, she spread out the louis at the bottom of the drawer, which she abruptly closed, making a wry face, and folding her arms, she returned to her seat in front of the fire, beating her right foot nervously upon the wrought-iron fender.

"The Dujarrier's money will not go much further," she thought. "It is finished."

She thought of striking a decisive blow. Up to the present time, her relations with Sulpice had floated in the regions of the sentimentalities of the novel, or of romance. The minister believed himself loved for love's sake. He saw in Marianne only an eccentric girl free from all prejudices and every duty, who disposed of her life as seemed best to her, without being under the necessity of accounting to either husband or lover. Free, she made of her liberty pleasure or passion according to her fancy. The frightful, practical questions, the daily necessities, were lost sight of by this man who was burdened with the governmental question of France. Again, he never asked himself the source of Marianne's luxury. He delighted in it without thinking of analyzing anything or of knowing anything, and this ingenuously. Mademoiselle Kayser's first word must necessarily awaken him to the situation.

She knew that Vaudrey was to come, and suddenly leaving the fire, she arrayed herself for him in a black satin peignoir lined with red surah, with lapels of velvet thrown widely apart and allowing the whiteness of her neck and chest to be seen under folds of old lace. Her fair hair fell upon her velvet collar, and surmounting this strange costume, her pale face against the background of the red-draped salon assumed the disturbing charm of an apparition.

On seeing her, Sulpice could not refrain from stopping short and looking at her in admiration. Seated there, in the centre of her salon, she was awaiting him and arranging bundles of papers in a basket with gilded feet and lined with pink satin. She extended her hand to him. It was a pale hand, as inanimate as the hand of a dead person, and she languidly asked him why he remained there stupefied without approaching her.

"I am looking," said the minister.

"You are always the most gallant of men," said Marianne, and she added:

"You are not already tired then of looking at me? Usually, caprices do not last so long."

"The affection that I have for you is not a caprice."

"What is it, then? I am curious--"

"It is a passion, Marianne, an absolute, deep, mad passion--"

"Oh! nonsense! nonsense!" said Marianne. "I know that you speak wonderfully well, I have heard you in the tribune. A declaration of love costs you no more than a ministerial declaration. But to-day, my dear minister, I am not disposed to listen to it even from you."

In these last words, there was a certain tenderness that in a measure modified the expression of weariness or sulkiness which Marianne suggested. Sulpice inferred therefrom an implied acceptance of his proffered love.

"Yes," said she abruptly; "I am very sad, frightfully sad."

"Without a cause?" asked Vaudrey.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh! I am not of those who allow their nerves to control them. When I am out of sorts, there is invariably a cause. Let that be understood once for all."

"And the cause?--I should be delighted to learn it, Marianne, for I swear to you that I would always bear a half of your troubles and pains."

"Thanks!--But in life there are troubles so commonplace that one could only acknowledge them to the most intimate friends."

"You have no more devoted friend than I am," replied Vaudrey, in a tone that conveyed unmistakable conviction.

She knew it positively. She could read that heart like an open page.

"When one meets friends like you, one is the more solicitous to keep them and to avoid saddening them with stupid affairs."

"But why?" asked Vaudrey, drawing close to Marianne. "What troubles you? I beseech you to tell me!"

He gazed earnestly at her eyes, seeking in the depths of their blue pupils a secret or a confession that evaded him, and with an instinctive movement he seized Marianne's hands which she abandoned to him; they were quite cold. As he bent toward her to plead with her to speak, he felt her gentle breath, inhaled the perfume of her delicate, fair skin, and saw the exquisite curves of her body outlined beneath the black folds of her satin peignoir. Marianne's knee gently pressed his own while her heavy eyelids fell like veils over the young woman's eyes, in which Vaudrey thought he observed tears.

"Marianne, I entreat you, if you have any sorrow whatever, that I can assuage, I pray you, tell me of it!"

"Eh! if it were a sorrow!--" she said, quickly withdrawing her left hand from Sulpice's warm grasp. "But it is worse: it is a financial worry, yes, financial," she said brusquely, on observing that Vaudrey's face depicted astonishment.

She seized the handful of papers that she had thrown into the work-basket, and said in a tone that was expressive of mingled wrath and disgust:

"There now, you see that? They are bills for this house: the accounts of clamorous creditors, upholsterers, locksmiths, builders and I don't know what besides!"

"What! your house?"

"You thought that I had paid for it? It is a rented one and nothing in it is paid for. I owe for all, and to a hungry pack."

She began to laugh.

"Do you imagine then that old Kayser's niece could lead this life in which you see her? Without a sou, should I possess all that you see here?--No!--I have perpetrated the folly of ordering all these things for which I am now indebted and which must be paid for at once, and now I am about to be sued. There! you were determined to urge me to confess all that--Such are my worries and they are not yours, so I ask your pardon, my dear Vaudrey: so let us talk of something else. Well! how did the Fraynais interpellation turn out?--What has taken place in the Chamber?"

"Let us speak only of you, Marianne," said the minister, who looked at the young woman with a sort of frank compassion as a friendly physician looks at a sick person.

She nervously snapped her fingers and with her feet crossed, beat the little feverish march that she had previously done.

He drew still closer to her, trying to calm her and to obtain some explanation, some information from her; and Marianne, as if she had already yielded in at once confiding her secret unreflectingly, refused at present to accord him the full measure of her confidence. She repeated that nothing that could be a source of annoyance or sordid, ought to sadden her friends. Besides, one ought to draw the line at one's life-secret. She was entitled, in fact, to maintain silence. That Vaudrey should question her so, caused her horrible suffering.

"And you, Marianne," he said, "you torture me much more by not replying to me, to whom the least detail of your life is interesting. To me who see you preoccupied and distressed, when I wish, I swear to you, to banish all your sadness."

She turned toward him with an abrupt movement and with her gray, gold-speckled eyes flashing, she seemed to yield to a violent, sudden and almost involuntary decision and said to Sulpice:

"Then you wish to know even the wretchedness of my life? So be it! But I warn you that it is not very cheerful. For," said she, after a moment's silence,--Sulpice shuddered under her glance,--"it is better to be frank, and if you love me as you say you do, you should know me thoroughly; you can then decide what course to take. For myself, I am accustomed to deception."

Ah! although this woman were ready to tell him everything, Vaudrey felt sure that her confidence could only intensify the love that he felt. She had risen, her arms were crossed over her black gown whose red velvet trimming suggested open wounds, her ardent eyes were in strong contrast with her pale face, her lips of unusually heightened color expressed a strange sensuality that invited a kiss, while her nostrils dilated under the impulse of bitter anger--standing thus, she began to narrate her life to Vaudrey who was seated in front of her, looking up to her--as if at her knees. Her story was a sad one of a wicked childhood, ignorant youth, wasted early years, melancholy, sins, outbursts of faith, falls, returns of love, pride, virtue, restitution through repentance, scourged hopes, dead confidences, the entire heartrending existence of a woman who had left more of her heart than of the flesh of her body clinging to the nails of her calvaries:--all, though ordinary and commonplace, was so cruel in its truth that it appealed at once to Sulpice's heart, a heart bursting with pity, to that credulous man who was attracted by all that seemed to him so exquisitely painful and new about this woman.

"Perhaps I am worrying you?" she asked abruptly.

"You!" said he.

He looked at her with a tear in his eye.

Marianne's eyes gleamed with a sudden light.

"Well!" she said, "such is my life! I have loved, I have been betrayed. I have had faith in some one and I awakened one fine morning with this prospect before me: to sink in the deep mud or to do like so many others,--to take a lover and save myself through luxury, since I could not recover myself through passion. Bah! the world shows more leniency toward those who succeed than toward those who repent. All that is necessary is to succeed, and on my word--you know Monsieur de Rosas well?"

"No," stammered Vaudrey, before whose mind the duke's blond face appeared.

"You heard him the other evening!"

"I mean that I have never spoken to him. Well! what of Monsieur de Rosas?"

"Monsieur de Rosas loved me. Oh!" she said, interrupting a gesture made by Vaudrey, "wait. He said that he loved me. He is rich. Why should I not have been Rosas's mistress? Deal for deal, that was a good bargain, at least! I accept Rosas! It was to receive him that I was foolish enough to make my purchases without reckoning, without knowing. What's that for a Rosas?" she said, as she crushed the bundle of bills between her fingers.

"And--Monsieur de Rosas?" asked Vaudrey, who was quite pale.

"He?"

Marianne laughed.

"Well, he has gone--I have told you as much. He has, moreover, perhaps, done wisely. I regretted him momentarily--but, bah! I should have sent him away--yes, very quickly, just so! without even allowing him to touch the tips of my fingers."

"Rosas?" repeated the minister, looking keenly into Marianne's eyes.

"Rosas!" she again said, lowering her voice. "And do you know why I would have done that?"

"No--" answered Sulpice trembling.

"Simply because I no longer loved him, and that I loved another."

She had spoken these last words slowly and in such passionate, vibrating tones that Sulpice felt himself shudder with delight.

"Ah," he said, as he went toward her, "is that the reason? Truly, Marianne, is that the reason?"

She had not confessed whom she loved, she had spoken only by her looks. But Sulpice felt that he belonged to her, he was burning with passion, transported, insane from this avowal; his hands sought hers and drew her to him. He clasped her to his bosom, intoxicated by the pressure of this body against his own, and added in a very low tone while his fingers alternately wandered over her satiny neck and her silky hair:

"How can I help loving you, Marianne? Is it true, really true? You love me?--Ah! what the great nobleman has not done, do you think I cannot do? You are in your own home, you understand, Marianne.--Then, as he touched the young woman's exquisite ears with his lips, he added:

"Our home--will you have it so?--Our home!--"

He felt, as she remained in his embrace with her body leaning against his, that she quivered throughout her frame; his lips wandered from her ear to her cheek and then to her lips, there they rested long in a ravishing kiss that filled him with the languishing sensation of swooning, he holding her so tightly that, with a smile, she disengaged herself, pink with her blushes, and bright-eyed, said, with an expression of peculiar delight:

"It is sealed now!"

Sulpice, even in his youthful days, had never felt so intoxicating a sensation as that which he enjoyed to-day. It was a complete abandonment of himself, a forgetfulness of everything in the presence of his absolute intoxication. All the realities of life that were ready to take possession of him on leaving this place melted before this dream: the possession of that woman. He forgot the assembly, the foyer, that human crowd that he ruled from the height of the tribune, and Adrienne, who was seated yonder at the window, awaiting him. He forgot everything. Like those who possess the singular faculty of easily receiving and losing impressions, he fancied that his horizon was limited to these walls with their silken hangings, these carpets, this feminine salon, opening on a boudoir, a retreat whence escaped the odors of flowers and perfume bottles.

Then, too, a special feeling of pride entered his heart. He felt his joy increased tenfold at the thought that he, the petty bourgeois from Grenoble, had snatched this woman from a duke and, like a great nobleman, had paid the debts that she had contracted. He raised his head proudly from an instinctive impulse of vanity. Rosas! He, the son of honest Dauphiny folks, would crush him with his liberality.

"What shall I do to silence those creditors?" he said to Marianne,--whose hands he held and whose face grazed his in a way that almost made him frantic.

"Nothing," she replied. "What you have promised me is enough. Now I feel that I am saved. Our house, you said so, we are in our own house here. If the creditors will not believe me when I tell them to have patience--"

"They will believe you," said Vaudrey. "Come, we will find the means--On my signature, any one will lend me money."

It seemed that Marianne was expecting this word _money_, coarse but eloquent, in order to tell Vaudrey that an old friend, Claire Dujarrier, was on intimate terms with a certain Adolphe Gochard, who upon the endorsement of a responsible person, would certainly advance a hundred thousand francs that he had at this moment lying idle. Gochard only needed a bill of exchange in his favor for one hundred thousand francs at three months' date, plus interest at five per cent. This Gochard was a very straightforward capitalist, who did not make it a business to lend money, but merely to oblige. It was Madame Dujarrier who had introduced him and Marianne would have already availed herself of his courtesy, if she had believed herself able to repay it at the appointed date.

"And where does this Monsieur Gochard live?" Vaudrey promptly asked.

"Oh! it would not be necessary for you to go to see him," replied Marianne. "On receipt of a bill of exchange from me, Madame Dujarrier would undertake to let me have a hundred thousand francs from hand to hand."

"A hundred thousand francs!--In three months," said Vaudrey to himself, "in a vast placer like Paris, one can find many veins of gold."

He had, besides, his personal property and land in Dauphiny. If need be, without Adrienne's even knowing it, he could mortgage his farms at Saint-Laurent-du-Pont!

"Monsieur de Rosas would not have hesitated. But in his case there would have been no merit," said Mademoiselle Kayser.

At the name of that man, coupled with the recollection of him, Sulpice felt himself spurred to a decision. Clearly the great millionaire noble would not have delayed before snatching this woman from the claws of her creditors. A hundred thousand francs, a mere trifle for the count! Well, Vaudrey would give it as the Spaniard would have done. He would find it. Within three months, he would have put everything right; he did not know how, but that mattered little.

"Have you a pen, Marianne?"

The minister had not noticed the sheet of white paper that was lying on the blotting pad of Russia leather, among the satin finished envelopes and the ivory paper-cutters.

"What are you going to do, my friend?"

She pretended to put away the green, sharkskin penholder lying near the inkstand, but drew it imperceptibly nearer to Sulpice, who with a quick movement had already seated himself in front of the secrétaire.

"A minister's signature is sufficient, I suppose?" he said with a smile.

He commenced to write.

"What did you say?--Gochard?--"

She was quite pale as she looked over Sulpice's shoulder and saw him rapidly write several lines on the paper, then she spelled:

"Adolphe Gochard--Go-go-c-h-ar-d."

"There it is!" he said, as he handed her the sheet of paper.

"I wish to know what is thereon, or I would never consent."

She took the paper between her fingers as if to tear it to pieces. Sulpice prevented her.

"No," he said, "I request you to keep it; it is the best reply you can give to those people.--Rely on me!"

"Do you wish it?" asked Marianne, with a toss of her head, speaking in a very sweet voice.

"Decidedly. It is selfish, but I wish to feel myself not a little at home here," Sulpice replied.

He seized her hands, her plump, soft, coaxing hands, and as he clasped them within his own, he carried them to his lips and kissed them, as well as her face, neck, ear and mouth, which he covered with kisses; and Marianne, still holding the satin paper that the minister had just signed, said with a laugh as she feebly defended herself:

"Come--come--have done with it! Oh! the big boy!--You will leave nothing for another time!"

He left the house, his head was swimming, and he was permeated with strong odors. He flung to the coachman an address half-way to the ministry.

"Place de la Madeleine."

He shut his eyes to picture Marianne.

As soon as she was alone, her lips curled as a smile of satisfied vanity played over them. She began by reading the lines that he had so hastily written: _I guarantee to Monsieur Adolphe Gochard a bill of exchange at three months, if he agrees to advance that amount to Mademoiselle Dujarrier who will hand it to Mademoiselle Marianne Kayser_.

"Well! the Dujarrier was right," she said; "a woman's scheming works easier than a sinapism."