Chapter 17

Then, after a slight toss of the head and still smiling, she opened one of the drawers of the small Inaltia cabinet and slipped into it the satin paper to which the minister had affixed his signature and which she had carefully folded four times. She considered that autograph worth a thousand times more gold than the few pieces that remained scattered about the drawer, like so many waifs of luxury. Then, slowly returning to her armchair, she sank into it, clasping her two hands behind her head and gazing at the ceiling, her thoughts wandered in dreams--a crowd of little ambitious thoughts passed through her brain like drifting clouds across the sky--and while with the top of her foot she again beat her nervous march on the hem of her petticoat, her lips, the lips whose fever had been taken away by Vaudrey, still preserved the strange turn of the corners that indicated the unsatiated person who sees, however, his opportunity arrive.

She was as fully mistress of herself as Vaudrey was embarrassed and unbalanced. He seemed to hear voices laughing and singing within him and his brain was inflamed with joy. Before him opened the immense prospects of his dreams. Glorious as it was to be all-powerful, it was better to be loved. Everything whirled about within his brain, he thought he still heard Denis Ramel talking to him, and in a twinkling, Marianne's smiling face appeared, and with a kiss she interrupted the old journalist's sallies, and Sulpice saw her, too, as it were half-fainting, through the window of her fiacre, like a pastel half-hidden beneath the glass.

He was delighted to walk about for a moment when the carriage had set him down on the asphalted space that surrounds the Madeleine. The walk was beneficial. He raised his head instinctively, expanded his lungs with the air, and threw out his chest. He thought that people looked at him attentively. Some passers-by turned round to see him. He would have felt prouder to have heard them say: "That is Mademoiselle Kayser's lover!" than: "That is Monsieur Vaudrey, the minister!"

He felt a kind of annoyance on returning to Place Beauvau. He was still with Marianne. He recalled her attitudes, her smile, the tone of her voice. Public matters now fastened their collar on him, there were signatures to be subscribed, reports to be read, telegrams, routine work; in a word, vulgar professional duties were to be resumed. He did not at once go to his cabinet. Warcolier, the Under Secretary of State, received and despatched ordinary matters.

Through some strange caprice, he felt a desire to see Adrienne very soon after leaving Marianne, perhaps to know how he would feel and if "_cela se voyait_" as they say. There was also a feeling of remorse involved in this eagerness. He wished to satisfy himself that Adrienne was not suffering, and as formerly, to smile on her as if redoubled affection would, in his own eyes, obliterate his fault.

Adrienne was in her salon. Sulpice heard the sound of voices beyond the door. Some one was talking.

"Madame has a visitor?" he inquired of the domestic.

"Yes, Monsieur le Ministre--Monsieur de Lissac."

"What! Guy! what chance brings him here!" Sulpice thought.

He opened the door and entered, extending his hand to his friend.

"How lucky! it is very kind of you to come."

Guy stood, hat in hand, while Vaudrey stooped toward Adrienne to kiss her brow unceremoniously in the presence of his friend.

"Oh!" said Lissac, "I have not come to greet Your Excellency. It is your charming wife that I have called on."

"I thank you for it," said Sulpice, "my poor Adrienne does not receive many visits outside the circle of official relations."

"And she does not get very much entertainment! So I promise myself to come and pay court to her--or such court as you would wish--from time to time. Madame," said Lissac jocosely, "it is a fact that this devilish minister deserves that you should receive declarations from morning to night while he is over yonder ogling his portfolio. Such a husband as he is, is not to be found again--"

Adrienne, blushing a little, looked at Vaudrey with her usual expression of tender devotion as profound as her soul. Sulpice made an effort to smile at Lissac's pleasantries.

"No, take care, you know!" added Guy. "As Madame Vaudrey is so often alone, I shall allow myself to come here sometimes to keep her company, and I won't guarantee to you that I won't fall in love with her."

He turned respectfully toward Adrienne and added, with the correct bearing of a gentleman:

"Madame, all this is only to make him comprehend that nothing in the world, not even a rag of morocco,--is his portfolio a morocco one?--is worth the happiness of having such a wife as you. And the miserable fellow doesn't suspect it. You see, I speak of you as the Opposition journals do."

Sulpice tried to smile but he divined under Guy's jesting, a serious and truthful purpose. Perhaps Adrienne had just been allowing herself to complain of the sadness and dreariness of her life. He was hurt by it. After all, he did all that he could to gratify his wife. But a man like him was not, in fact, born to remain forever tied down. The wife of a minister must bear her part of the burden, since there must be a burden.

As if Adrienne had divined Sulpice's very thoughts, she quickly added, interrupting the jester who had somewhat confused the minister:

"Don't pay any attention to Monsieur de Lissac. I am very happy just as I am."

Vaudrey had taken her hand to clasp it between his fingers with a slightly nervous grasp. The trustful, good-natured, pure smile that Adrienne gave him, recalled the anxious, distracted expression on Marianne's lip.

"Dear wife!"

He sought to find a word, a cry, some consolation, a sort of caress, proceeding from one heart and penetrating the other. He could find none.

"Come!" said Guy. "I am going to leave you, and if you will allow me, madame, I will occasionally come here and tell you all the outside tittle-tattle."

"You will always be welcome, Monsieur de Lissac," Adrienne said, as she extended her hand to him.

Guy bowed to Madame Vaudrey in a most profoundly respectful way.

Sulpice accompanied him through the salons as far as the hall.

"Do you want me to tell you?" said Lissac. "Your wife is very weary, take care! This big mansion is not very cheerful. One must inevitably catch colds in it, and then a woman to be all alone here! A form of imprisonment! Do not neglect to wheedle the majority, my dear minister, but don't forget your wife. Come! I will not act traitorously toward you, but I warn you that if I often find your wife melancholy, as she is to-day, I will tell her that I adore her. Yes! yes! your wife is charming. I would give all the orders in the world for a lock of her hair. Adieu, Monsieur le Ministre."

"Great idiot," said Vaudrey, giving him a little friendly, gentle tap on the neck.

"Be it so, but if you do not love her well enough, I shall fall in love with her, and I forewarn you that it is much better that I should than any other. Au revoir."

"Au revoir!" Sulpice repeated.

He tried now to force a smile and went down to his cabinet, where he found heaped-up reports awaiting his attention and he turned the pages over nervously and read them in a very bad humor.

* * * * *

_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-ch-a-r-d."_

II

Madame Vaudrey drew no real pleasure from the commonplace receptions at the ministry, or at her Wednesday _at homes_, except when by chance, Denis Ramel permitted himself to abandon the Batignolles to call at Place Beauvau, or when Guy enlivened this dull spot by recounting the happenings of the outside world.

Adrienne felt herself terribly isolated; she knew hardly any one in Paris. Since Vaudrey had installed himself in Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, she had not had time to form acquaintances among the wives of the deputies to the Assembly, the majority of whom lived in the provinces or dwelt at Versailles for economical reasons.

Evidently the residence at the ministry had only brought her ready-made relations, depressingly inevitable visitors who resembled office-seekers or clients. These official receptions filled her with sadness. The conversation always took the same hackneyed tone, disgusting in its flattery or disquieting by reason of its allusions. People discussed coming interpellations of ministers; government majorities, projected legislation; the same phrases, as dreary as showers, fell with all the regularity of drops of rain. Even young girls, brought up in this centre of infuriated politicians, spoke of the breaking up of the majority, reports or ballots, in the same manner as shopkeepers talk of their trade.

Poor Adrienne exerted herself to acquire an interest in these matters. Since her husband's very existence was involved therein, hers should also be. She had, however, formerly dreamed of an entirely different youth and on bright, sunshiny days she reflected that yonder on the banks of the Isère, it was delightful in her sweet, little, provincial house.

Besides, she carefully concealed her melancholy. She knew that she was already reproached for being somewhat sad. A minister's wife should know how to smile. This was what Madame Marsy never failed to repeat to her as often as possible when she visited her at Place Beauvau. This woman who hardly concerned herself at all about her son, allowing him to grow up badly enough and committing all her maternal duties to the grandmother, was perpetually cheerful, notwithstanding that her life had been chequered by chance and her widowhood of sufficiently dramatic character, as was said. She endeavored to play the part of an adviser, an intimate friend to Adrienne. She frequently said to Madame Gerson, who rarely left her, that Madame Vaudrey would be altogether charming if she had _chic_.

"Unfortunately, she is provincial; not in her element. She still smacks of Dauphiny. And then--what is the funniest thing: she knows nothing of politics."

"She does not even concern herself about it," said the pretty Madame Gerson, laughing heartily.

According to these ladies she did not take the trouble to fulfil the rôle of a minister's wife faultlessly. Ah! if only Sabine or Blanche Gerson occupied the position filled by this _petite bourgeoise_ of Grenoble! Well! Paris would have seen what an Athenian Republic was.

Sabine Marsy was decidedly clever. She politely advised Adrienne, without appearing to do so, as to many matters, in such a way as to convey reproof under the guise of kindness. Madame Vaudrey would have done well, as Madame Gerson also observed, to have studied the _Code du Cérémonial_ on reaching Place Beauvau.

Like Madame Marsy, Madame Gerson had gradually gained Adrienne's friendship. From an ostentatious desire to be able to tell of what happened at the ministry; to be on the first list of guests, when the minister received or gave a ball, Sabine Marsy, who had suffered from the mania of aspiring to become an artist, patronized the _intransigeant_ painters and exhibited at the salon, now set her mind on playing the rôle of a political figure in Paris. Madame Gerson, _Blanche_, as Sabine called her, had a similar ambition, but simply from a desire to be in fashion.

She wished to bring herself into notice. Everything attracted her, tempted her. She belonged, body and soul, to that machine with its manifold gearing, brilliant, noisy, active, puffing like a locomotive, that is called _chic_. _Chic_, that indefinite, indefinable word, changeable and subtle like a capillary hygrometer, is a Parisian tyranny that grinds out more fashionable lives than the King of Dahomey offers as victims on his great feast days. For Blanche, everything in this most stimulated, over-excited, feverishly deranged life, was reduced to these two inevitable conclusions: what was _chic_ and what was not _chic_. Not only was this the inevitable guide in reference to style, clothing, hat, gloves, costume, material, jewelry, the dress that she should wear, but also the book that should be read, the play that should be heard, the operatic score that should be strummed on the piano, the bonbon that should be presented, the opinion that one should hold, the picture one should comment upon, all was hopelessly a question of _chic_.

Madame Gerson would have preferred to be compromised in the matter of her honor rather than to be ridiculed as to her opinions or to express an idea that was not chic. The necessary result was that all this woman's conversation--and she often came to see Madame Vaudrey,--was on well-known topics; so that Adrienne knew in advance what Blanche's opinion was upon such and such a matter, and that ideas could only pass muster with Madame Gerson when they bore the stamp of chic, just as a coin, to escape suspicion of being counterfeit, must bear the stamp of the mint.

Blanche would have been heartbroken if she had not been seen in the President's salon on the occasion of a great reception at the Élysée; at the ministry, on the evening of a comedy; if she had not been in the front rank of the ladies' gallery on the day of interpellation at the Assembly; if she had not been greeted from the top of the grand stand by some minister, on Grand Prix day; if she had not been the first at the varnishing; the first at the general rehearsals, a little _chic_,--the first everywhere. Slender, delicate, but hardy as a Parisian, she dragged her exhausted husband, with her hand of fine steel, through receptions, balls, soirées, salons, talking loudly, judging everything, chattering, cackling and haranguing, delighted to mount, with head erect, the grand staircase of a minister and feel the joy of plunging her little feet into the official moquettes as if her heels had been made for state carpets; swelling with pride when she heard the usher, amid the hubbub of the reception, call loudly the name which meant the fashionable couple, a couple found at every fête:

"Monsieur and Madame Gerson!"

While the husband, fatigued, weary, left his office heavy-headed, after having eaten a hasty meal, put on his dress coat and white tie in haste, got into his carriage in haste, hurriedly accompanied his wife, left her in order to take a doze on an armchair during the height of the ball, woke in haste, returned home in haste, slept hurriedly, rose the same, dragging this indefatigable creature about with him like a convict's chain, she smiled at others, enticed others, waltzed with others, adorned herself for others, keeping for him only her weariness, her yawns, her pallor and her sick-headaches.

For these two galley-slaves of _chic_, the winter passed in this manner, as fatiguing as months of penal servitude, and they went none too soon, when the summer arrived, to breathe the sea air or enjoy the sunshine of the country, in order to restore their frames, wan, worn-out, seedy and "gruelled," as Sabine Marsy said, when she recalled her connection with the artists.

"Ah! how much better I like my home!" thought Madame Vaudrey.

Sabine and Madame Gerson, with the wives of the ministers, those of the chiefs of departments, and the regular visitors, were the most assiduous in their attentions to Adrienne, whom they considered decidedly provincial. She, stupefied, was alarmed by these Parisian bustlers, that resembled machines in running order, jabbering away as music-boxes play.

"Do they tire you?" said Guy de Lissac to her bluntly one evening, succumbing to a feeling of pity for this pensive young woman,--who was a hundred times prettier than Madame Gerson, whose beauty was so highly extolled in the journals,--this minister's wife, who voluntarily kept herself in the background with a timidity that betrayed no awkwardness, but was in every way attractive, especially to a man about town like Guy.

"They do not tire me, they upset me," Adrienne replied.

"Ah! they are in full _go_, as it is called. An express train. But they amuse themselves so much that they have not even time to smile. When the locomotive spins along too rapidly, try to distinguish the scenery!"

Adrienne instinctively felt that under his irony this sceptic disguised a sort of sincerity. Lissac's wit pleased her. He surprised her somewhat at times, but the probably assumed raillery of the young man compensated for the insipid nonsense of the conversation to which she listened daily.

At first from mere curiosity and after from a sentiment of respectful devotion, Guy was impelled to study that delicate and sensitive nature, entirely swayed by love of Sulpice, that suffered at times a vague pressure as of some indefinable anguish at the throat, as if a vacuum--a choking vacuum--had been created about her by some air-pump.

This huge mansion seemed to her to be entirely innocent of all memories, and though peopled with phantoms, was as commonplace and vulgar as an apartment house. There were no associations save dust and cracks. These salons, built for the Maréchal de Beauvau, these walls that had listened to the sobs of Madame d'Houdetot at the death-bed of Saint-Lambert, appeared to Adrienne to exude ennui, strangling and inevitable ennui, solemn, official, absolute ennui, nothing but ennui in the very decorum of the place, and isolation in the midst of power.

She cursed her loneliness, she felt lost amid the salons of this furnished ministerial mansion, whose cold, gloomy apartments, with the chairs symmetrically arranged along the walls, she wandered through, but evidently without expecting any one: state chairs lacking occupants,--ordinary chairs, domestic chairs seem to have tongues--that never exchanged conversation. Vast, deserted rooms where the green curtains behind the glass doors of the bookcases were eternally drawn, bookcases without books, forever open, mournful as empty sepulchres.

Yes, this immense gilded dwelling with its Gobelins tapestries stifled her with its terrifying gloom, where nothing, not a single article, recalled her charming provincial home, her Grenoble house with its garden filled with lilacs where she was often wont to read while Sulpice worked upstairs, bent over his table crowded with papers, before his open window. Ah! those cherished rooms, in the humble corner of the provincial home, their happy crouching in the peaceful nest; aye, even the happy first days in Paris, in the Chaussée-d'Antin apartments, in which Adrienne at least felt herself in her own home, free in her actions and thoughts, and where she could talk aloud without feeling that an eye was constantly watching her, and ears were always strained, in fact, a perpetual espionage upon all her actions and a criticism of all her words.

She had reached a point when she asked herself if, even for Sulpice, happiness was not far removed from this life of slavery, of feverish politics, which for some time past had been visibly paling his cheeks and rendering him nervous and altogether different from of old.

"If you did not love me so much," she said with a sweet smile, "I could believe that you loved me no longer."

"What folly! you have only one rival, Adrienne."

"Ah! I know that very well, but that robs me of everything. It is politics. Come! be great, and I shall be happy or resigned, as you wish. I adore you so much! I would give you my life, so I would gladly give you my days of weariness!"

Although she was rich, she strove to introduce into her official surroundings the bourgeois and provincial orderly methods that she had been so virtuously taught. She found that her desserts vanished with frightful rapidity, that dishes scarcely touched and bottles whose contents had only been tasted, were removed to the kitchen. She commented thereon, but the somewhat contemptuous smile of her domestics was her only reply and it made her feel ashamed.

Vaudrey's predecessor, Monsieur Pichereau, was exacting, _close-fisted_. His table was meagre but there was nothing astonishing in that, Monsieur Pichereau had a delicate stomach. Well and good, but the predecessors of Monsieur Pichereau, they had given fêtes, they had! It is true that one was a count and the other a marquis. One can always tell a gentleman anywhere.

One evening, they heard one of the domestics of the ministry say to another:

"As if it were not our money that the ministers spend! It is the electors' money. They give us wages: we give them salaries. There it is!"

The domestic was discharged immediately, but these remarks, however, recurred to Adrienne's memory and filled her with dislike for the flunkeyism that surrounded her, waiting on her with cold civility, but without any attachment, like hotel waiters or girls at an inn that one will leave the next day, giving them a gratuity.

Vaudrey saw much less of these daily little wounds. He lived in an atmosphere of constant flattery, favor-begging cloaked under complimentary phrases. Had he leisure, he would have been able to calculate with mathematical exactitude how many angles the human form would describe in the process of bowing and scraping. In his department, everybody asked for something or got someone else to ask. _Promotion_, that insatiable hunger, was the greedy dream of all that little world of intriguing, underhand, begging employés, who opened up around the new minister so many approaches, like military lines around a redoubt.

Sulpice felt himself besieged and the target for a crowd of greedy ambitions. The sub-heads of departments cast bitterly envious glances at the offices of chiefs, like hungry beggars hypnotized by the display at Chevet's. Commendatory letters rained on him. This shower of begging-missives nauseated the minister to such an extent that he endeavored to arrest the stream, ordering Warcolier, the Under Secretary of State, to be called and requesting him to reply to the deputies, to the senators, to everybody, in fact: that he had no influence to use, that the era of favoritism was over; that he, Vaudrey, understood that only merit would receive official gifts. "Merit only. You understand, Monsieur Warcolier?"

Warcolier rolled his huge eyes in astonishment; then, with the self-satisfied smile of an expressionless beau, after passing his fat hand through his long whiskers, yellow and streaked with gray, that decorated his rosy cheeks, he remarked doctorally, that Monsieur le Ministre was entering on a path that, in all conscience, he could qualify as being only dangerous. Eh! _bon Dieu!_ one must do something for one's friends!--Vaudrey's accession to the Department of the Interior had given birth to many new hopes; on all grounds they must be satisfied. Vaudrey would never be forgiven for such deception.

"What deception?" asked Sulpice. "I promised reforms and I am going to carry them out, but people laugh at my reforms and ask what?--Places."

"Bless me!" replied Warcolier, "entirely logical."

"Be it so! but there are places and places. I cannot, however, retire a whole staff of employés to give place to a new one. That's precisely what they want. There is not a deputy who has not one candidate to recommend to me."

"That's very natural, Monsieur le Ministre, seeing that there is not a deputy who may not himself be a candidate."

"Still, he should be independent of his electors, but in truth, it is not the rights of those who have elected them that my colleagues defend, it is their own interests."

"Every man for himself, Monsieur le Ministre. Yesterday, even yesterday, one of my electors whose wife has just given birth to a child, wrote me, asking for a good nurse. That is like one of our colleagues, Perraud--of the Vosges.--One of his electors commissioned him to take back an umbrella with him upon his early return. The electors regard their deputies in the light of commission merchants."