Chapter 20

What could Marianne hope for? Again, she had no well-defined object; but she watched her opportunity, and since Vaudrey's power was enlarged, well, she was to profit by it. Claire Dujarrier, who had already served her so well, could be useful to her again and advise her advantageously. That will be seen.

"Are you desirous of attending Collard's funeral?" Vaudrey asked Marianne.

She laughed as she asked:

"Why! what do you think that would be to me?"

"It will be very fine. All the authorities, the magistrates, the Institute, the garrison of Paris will be present."

"Then you think it is amusing to see soldiers file past? I am not at all curious! You will describe it all to me and that will be quite sufficient for me."

Vaudrey walked at the head of the cortége that accompanied through Place Vendôme and Rue de la Paix, black with the crowd, the funeral procession of Collard--of Nantes--to the Madeleine. Troops of the line in parade uniforms lined the route. From time to time was heard the muffled roll of drums shrouded in crêpe. The funeral car was immense and was crowded with wreaths. As with bowed head he accompanied the funeral procession of his colleague, almost his friend,--but, bah! friendship of committees and sub-committees!--Sulpice was sufficiently an artist to be somewhat impressed with the contrast afforded by the display of official pomp crowning the rather obscure life of the Nantes advocate. He had ever obtrusively before him, as if haunted by the spectre of the Poor Man before Don Juan, the lean face of Garnier and the white moustache of Ramel. Which of the two had better served his cause, Ramel vanquished or Collard--of Nantes--dying in the full blaze of success?

He pondered over this during the whole of the ceremony. He thought of it while the notes of the organ swelled forth, while the blue flames of the burning incense danced, and while the butts of the soldiers' muskets sounded from time to time on the flagstones, as the men stood around the bier and followed the orders of the officer who commanded them.

On leaving the ceremony, Granet approached Sulpice while gently stroking his waxed moustache, and said in an ironical tone:

"Do you know that it is suggested that a statue be raised in Collard's honor?"

"Really?"

"Yes, because he is considered to have shown a great example."

"What?"

"He is one of those rare cases of ministers dying in office. Imitate him, my dear minister,--to the latest possible moment."

Sulpice made an effort to smile at Granet's pleasantry. This cunning fellow decidedly displeased him; but there was nothing to take offence at, it was mere diplomatic pleasantry expressed politely.

Before returning to the ministry, Vaudrey had himself driven to Rue Prony. Jean, the domestic, told him that Madame had gone out; she had been under the necessity of going to her uncle's. After all, Sulpice thought this was a very simple matter; but he was determined to see Marianne, so he ordered his carriage to be driven to the artist's studio. Uncle Kayser opened the door, bewildered at receiving a call from the minister and, at the same time, showing that he was somewhat uneasy, coughing very violently, as if choked with emotion, or perhaps as a signal to some one.

"Is Mademoiselle Kayser here?" asked Sulpice.

"Yes--Ah! how odd it is--Chance wills that just now one of our friends--a connoisseur of pictures--"

Vaudrey had already thrust open the door of the studio and he perceived, sitting near Marianne and holding his hat in his hand, a young man with pale complexion and reddish beard, whom Mademoiselle Kayser, rising quickly and without any appearance of surprise, eagerly presented to him:

"Monsieur José de Rosas!"

In the simple manner in which she had pronounced this name, she had infused so triumphant an expression, such manifest ostentation, that Vaudrey felt himself suddenly wounded, struck to the heart.

He recalled everything that Marianne had said to him about this man.

He greeted Rosas with somewhat frigid politeness and from the tone in which Marianne began to speak to him, he at once realized that she had some interest in allowing the Spaniard to surmise nothing. She unduly emphasized the title by which she addressed him, repeating a little too frequently: "Monsieur le Ministre."--Whenever Vaudrey sought to catch her glance she looked away in a strange fashion and managed to avoid carrying on any formal conversation with Sulpice. On the contrary, she addressed Rosas affably, asking what he had done in London, what he had become and what he brought back new.

"Nothing," José answered with a peculiar expression that displeased Vaudrey. "Nothing but the conviction that one lives only in Paris surrounded by persons whom one vainly seeks to avoid and toward whom one always returns--in spite of one's self, at times."

Vaudrey observed the almost proud, triumphant expression that flashed in Marianne's eyes. He vaguely realized an indirect confession expressed in that trite remark made by Rosas. The Spaniard's voice trembled slightly as he spoke.

Marianne smiled as she listened.

"You have taken a new journey, monsieur?" asked Sulpice, uncertain what bearing to assume.

"Oh! just a temporary absence! A trip to London--"

"Have you returned long?"

"Only this morning."

His first call was at Simon Kayser's house, where perhaps, he expected to see Marianne. And the proof--

Vaudrey instinctively thought that it was a very hasty matter to call so soon on Uncle Kayser. This man's first visit was not to the painter's studio, but in reality to the woman who--Sulpice still heard Marianne declare that--who would not become his mistress. There was something strange in that. Eh! _parbleu!_ it was perhaps Monsieur de Rosas who had sent for Marianne.

She endeavored to make it clear that only chance was responsible for bringing them together here, but Sulpice doubted, he was uneasy and angry.

He felt almost determined to declare, if it were only by a word, the prize of possession, the conquest of this woman, whom he felt that Rosas was about to contend with him for.

She surmised everything and interrupted Sulpice even before he could have spoken and, with a sort of false respect, displayed before Rosas the friendship which Monsieur le Ministre desired to show her and of which she was proud.

"By the way, my dear minister, as to your appointment as President of the Council?"

Vaudrey knit his brows.

"That is so! I ask your pardon. I am betraying a state secret. Monsieur de Rosas will not abuse it. Isn't that so, Monsieur le Duc?"

Rosas bowed; Vaudrey was growing impatient.

"Madame Vaudrey will, of course, be delighted at this appointment, Monsieur le Ministre?" continued Marianne.

She smiled at Sulpice who was greatly astonished to hear Adrienne's name mentioned there; then, turning to Rosas, she charmingly depicted a quasi-idyllic sketch of the affection of Monsieur le Ministre for Madame Vaudrey. A model household. There was nothing surprising in that, moreover. "Monsieur le Ministre" was so amiable--yes, truly amiable, without any flattery,--and Madame Vaudrey so charming!

Sulpice, who was very nervous and had become slightly pale, endeavored to discover the meaning of this riddle. He asked himself what Marianne was thinking about, what she meant to say or dissimulate.

Monsieur de Rosas sat motionless on his chair, very cool, looking calmly on without speaking a word.

He seemed to await an opportunity to leave the studio, and since Vaudrey had arrived he had only spoken a few brief phrases in strict propriety.

Marianne, all smiles and happy, with beaming eyes, interrogated Vaudrey and sought to provide a subject of conversation for the unexpected interview of these two men. Was there a great crowd at Collard's funeral? Who had sung at the ceremony? Vaudrey answered these questions rapidly, like a man absorbed in other thoughts.

After a moment's interval, Monsieur de Rosas arose and bowed to Marianne with gentlemanly formality.

"Are you going, my dear duke?"

"Yes, I have seen you again. You are getting along well. I am satisfied."

"You will come again, at any rate? My uncle has some new compositions to show you."

"Oh! great ideas," began Kayser. "Things that will make famous frescoes!--For a palace--or the Pantheon!--either one!"

He had looked alternately at the duke and Vaudrey.

Rosas bowed to the minister and withdrew without replying, followed by Kayser and Marianne who, on reaching the threshold of the salon, seized his hand and pressed it nervously within her own soft one and said quickly:

"You will return, oh! I beg you! Ah! it is too bad to have run away! You will come back!"

She was at once entreating and commanding him. Rosas did not reply, but she felt in the trembling of his hand, as he pressed her own, in his brilliant glance, that she would see him again. And since he had returned to Paris alone, weary of being absent from her, perhaps, seeing that he had hastened back after having desired to free himself from her, did it not seem this time that he was wholly captivated?

All this was expressed by a pressure of the fingers, a glance, a sigh.

Rosas went rapidly away, like one distracted. Marianne, who motioned to Uncle Kayser to disappear, reappeared in the studio, entirely self-possessed.

Vaudrey had risen from the divan on which he had been sitting and he was standing, waiting.

"I believed that I understood that you had dismissed Monsieur de Rosas?"

"I might have told you that I did so, since it is true."

"You smiled at him, nevertheless, just now."

"Yes."

"A man who begged you to be his mistress!"

"And whom I rejected, yes!"

She looked at Sulpice with her winsome, sidelong glance, curling her lovely pink lips that he had kissed so many times.

"Then you love that man?"

"I! not at all, only it is flattering to me to have him return like that, just like some penitent little boy."

"I do not understand--"

"_Parbleu!_ you are not a woman, that is all that that proves!--It is irritating to our self-love to see people too promptly accept the dismissal one gives them. What! Don't they suffer? Don't they say anything? Don't they complain? Monsieur de Rosas comes back to me, that proves that he was hurt, and I triumph. Now, do you understand?"

"And--that joy that I observed is--?"

"It is because Monsieur de Rosas is in Paris."

"And you don't love him? You don't love him?" asked Vaudrey, clasping Marianne's hands in his.

She laughed and said:

"I do not love him in the least."

"And you love me?"

"Yes, you, I love you!"

"Marianne, you know that it would be very wicked and wrong to lie! It is not necessary to love me at all if you must cease to love me!"

"In other words, one should never lend money unless one is obliged to lend one's whole fortune."

He felt extremely dissatisfied with Marianne's ironical remark. She looked at him with an odd expression which was all the more disquieting and intoxicating.

"Let us speak no more about that, shall we?" she said. "I repeat to you that I am satisfied at having seen Monsieur de Rosas again, because it affords my self-love its revenge. Now, whether he comes back or not, it matters little to me. He has made the _amende honorable_. That is the principal thing, and you, my dear, must not be jealous; I find Othello's rôle tiresome; oh! yes, tiresome!--The more so, because you have no right to treat me as a Desdemona. The Code does not permit it."

"You want to remind me again, then, that I am married? A moment ago, you stabbed me by pin-thrusts."

"In speaking of your household? Say then with knife-thrusts."

"Why did you mention my wife before Monsieur de Rosas?"

"Why," said Marianne, "you do not understand anything. It was for your sake, for you alone, in order to explain the presence in Marianne's house, of a minister who is considered to lead a puritan life. Nothing could be more simple!--Would you have me tell him that you neglect your wife and that you are my lover? Perhaps you would have liked that better!"

"Yes, perhaps," said Vaudrey passionately.

"Vain fellow!" the pretty girl said as she placed upon his mouth her little hand which he kept upon his lips. "Then you would like me to parade our secrets everywhere and to publicly announce our happiness?"

"I should like," he said, as he removed his lips from the soft palm of her hand, "that all the world should know that you are mine, mine only--only mine, are you not?--That man?"

His eyes entreated her and lost their fire.

Marianne shrugged her shoulders.

"Let Monsieur de Rosas alone in tranquillity and let us return to my house, _our house_," she said, with a tender expression in her eyes.

"You do not love him?"

"No."

"And you love me?"

"I have told you so."

"You love me? You love me?"

"I love you!--Ah!" she said, "how unhappy you would be, nevertheless, if I told you aloud some day in one of the lobbies of the Assembly what you ask me to repeat here in a whisper."

"I should prefer that to losing you and to knowing that you did not love me."

"He is telling the truth, however, the great fool!" cried Marianne, laughing.

"The real, sincere, profound truth!"

He drew her to him, seated on the vulgar divan where Simon Kayser was wont to display his paradoxes, and encircling her waist with both arms he felt her yielding form beneath her satin gown, and wished her to bend her fair face to his lips that were craving a kiss.

Marianne took his face between her soft hands, and looking at him with an odd smile, tender and ironical at once, at this big simpleton who was completely dominated by her mocking tenderness, she said:

"You are just the same Sulpice!"--as she spoke, she bent over him engagingly, and laughed merrily while he kissed her.

IV

José de Rosas thought himself much more the master of himself than he actually was.

This energetic man, firm as a very fine steel blade, had hoped to find that in living at a distance from Marianne, he might forget her or at least strengthen himself against her influence. He found on his return that he was, however, more seduced by her than before, his heart was wholly filled and gnawed by the distracting image of the pretty girl. He had borne away with him to London, as everywhere in fact, the puzzling smile, the sparkling glance of this woman's gray eyes that ceaselessly appeared to him at his bedside, and beside him, like some phantom.

The phantom of a living creature whose kiss still burned his lips like a live coal. A phantom that he could clasp in his arms, carry away and possess. All the virgin sentiments of this man whose life had been the half-savage one of a trapper, a savant or a wanderer, turned toward Marianne as to an incarnated hope, a living, palpitating chimera.

José felt certain that if he returned to Paris it was all over with him, and that he was giving his life to that woman. But he returned. His fight against himself over, the first visit he made, once again, was to the den where he knew well that he could discover Marianne's whereabouts. He went to her as he might walk to a gulf. Under his cold demeanor of a Castilian of former days, he was intensely passionate and would neither reflect nor resist. He had experienced that delightful sensation of impulse when, upon the rapids at the other end of the globe, the river carried into a whirlpool his almost engulfed boat. He would doubtless have been stupefied had he found Marianne installed in a fashionable little mansion. She promised herself to explain that to him when she next saw him while informing him, there and then, that she had taken up her abode there. A mere whim: Mademoiselle Vanda having gone away, the idea had attracted her of sleeping within a courtesan's curtains. "I will tell him that this transient luxury recalls my former follies when I made him believe that I was spending an inheritance from my grandmother."

She had, indeed, already lied to him, for the money she had formerly squandered had been provided by De Lissac, but even then it was necessary--for the duke was in expectancy--to conceal its source from Rosas, hence the story of the inheritance that never existed. But she at once thoroughly realized that the surroundings which were favorable to the progress of the duke's love were not the bedroom and the dressing-room of Mademoiselle Vanda. What difference would Rosas have found between her and the fashionable courtesans whom he had loved, or rather, enriched, in passing? He would not believe this new lie this time.

All that luxury might seduce Sulpice Vaudrey; it would have disgusted José. What satisfied the appetite of the little, successful bourgeois would nauseate the gentleman.

As soon as Rosas returned to her, happy and stupefied at the same time, extravagantly happy in his joy, her plan of campaign was at once arranged. She did not wish to receive him in the vulgar hôtel, where the clubmen had wiped their feet upon the carpets. She entreated him, since he wished to see her again, to see her at her "own house," yes, really, at her own house, in that little, unknown room, in Rue Cuvier, far from the noise of Paris and near the Botanical Garden, a kind of hidden cell into which no one entered.

"No one but me," she said.

The order had been given to Uncle Kayser in advance: in case Rosas should reappear, Simon was to at once inform his niece and prevent the duke from discovering Marianne's new address. And this had been done.

The duke was then going to see Mademoiselle Kayser only at Rue Cuvier, after having rediscovered her at Uncle Simon's.

He felt in advance a kind of gratitude to this woman who thus abandoned the secret of her soul to him; giving him to understand that it was there that she passed her days, buried in her recollections, dreaming of her departed years, of that which had been, of that which might be, a living death.

Marianne had shrewdly divined the case. For this great soul, mystery added a new sentiment to the feelings that Rosas experienced. The first time that he found himself in that little abode where Simon Kayser's niece awaited him, he was deeply moved, as if he had penetrated into the pure chamber of a young girl. There, yonder, in that distant quarter, he found a peaceful retreat for one wounded by life, thirsting for solitude and passing there secret hours in the midst of loved books; in fact, the discreet dwelling of a poor teacher who had collected some choice _bibelots_ that she had found by chance. Rosas there felt himself surrounded by perfect virtue, amid the salvage of a happier past. Marianne thus became what he imagined her to be, superior to her lot, living an intellectual life, consoling herself for the mortification of existence and the hideous experiences of life by poet's dreams, in building for herself in Paris itself a sort of Thebais, where she was finally free and mistress of herself and where, when she was sad, she was not compelled to wear a mask or a false smile, and was free from all pretended gaiety. And she was so often sad!

She had occasionally mentioned to Rosas the assumed name under which she lived at that place.

"Mademoiselle Robert!"

He had manifested surprise thereat.

"Yes, I do not wish them to know anything of me, not even my name. You should understand the necessity that certain minds have for repose and forgetfulness. Did not one of your sovereigns take his repose lying in his coffin? Well! I envy him and when I have pushed the bolt of my little room in Rue Cuvier, I tremble with delight, just as if I felt my heart beating in a coffin. Do not tell any one. They would desire to know and see. People are so curious and so stupid!"

Marianne now seemed to be still more strange and seductive to Rosas. All this romantic conduct, commonplace as it was, with which she surrounded herself, exalted her in the estimation of the duke. She became in that little chamber where she was simply Mademoiselle Robert, a hundred times more charming and attractive to him than any problem: a veritable Parisian sphinx.

She was not his mistress. He loved her too deeply, with a holy, respectful passion, to take her hastily, as by chance, and Marianne was too skilful to risk any imprudent act, well-knowing that if she yielded too quickly, it would not be a woman who would fall into the duke's arms, but an idol that descended from its pedestal.

In the silence of the old house in the deserted quarter, they held conversations in the course of which Rosas freely abandoned himself, and through which she gained every day a more intimate knowledge of the character of that man who was so different from those who hitherto had sought her for pleasure.

Thus, the very respect that he instinctively felt for her, impelled her to love him.

She had not been accustomed to such treatment. Every masculine look that since her puberty she had felt riveted upon her, clearly expressed even before the lips spoke: "You are beautiful. You please me. Will you?" Rosas, at least, said: "I love you," before: "I desire you."

Tainted in the body which she had given, offered, abandoned, sold, she felt that she was respected by him even in that body, and although she considered him silly, she thought him superior to all others, or at least different, and that was a sufficient motive for loving him.

One day she said to him in a peculiar tone and with her distracting smile:

"Do you know, my dear José, there is one thing I should not have believed? You are bashful!"

He turned slightly pale.

"Sincere love is always bashful and clumsy. By that it may be known."

"Perhaps!" said Marianne.

Their conversations, however, only concerned love, so that Rosas might speak of his passion or of his reminiscences.

She once asked him if he would despise a woman if she became his mistress.

"No!" he said, with a smile, "it is only a Frenchman who would despise the woman who surrendered herself. Other nations treat love more seriously. They do not consider the gift of one's self in the light of a fall."

Marianne looked at him full in the face with a strange expression.

"What, then, if I love you well enough to become your mistress?"

"I should still esteem you enough to become your husband!"

She felt her color change.

Was it a sport on the part of Monsieur de Rosas? Why had he spoken to her thus? Had he reflected upon what he had just said?

José added in a very gentle tone:

"Will you permit me to ask you a question, Marianne?"

"You may ask me anything. I will frankly answer all your questions."

"What was Monsieur Sulpice Vaudrey doing at your uncle's the other day? Was he there to see you?"

Marianne smiled.

"Why, the minister simply came to talk of business matters. I hardly see him except for Uncle Kayser, who is soliciting an official commission,--you heard him--"

"Does Monsieur Vaudrey pay his addresses to you?"

"Necessarily. Oh! but only out of pure French gallantry. Mere politeness. He loves his wife and he knows very well that I don't love any one."

"No one?" asked Rosas.

"I do not love any one yet," repeated Marianne, opening her gray eyes with a wide stare under the Spaniard's anxious glance.

From that day, her mind was possessed of a new idea that imperiously directed it. When Rosas had returned to her, she had only regarded him as a possible lover, rich and agreeable. The mistress of a minister, she would become the mistress of a duke. A millionaire duke. The change would be profitable, assuming that she could not retain both. Her calculations were speedily made. She would only make Rosas pay more dearly for the resistance he had offered before surrendering himself.

But now, abruptly and without her having thought of it, he had, with the incautiousness of a soldier who discloses his attack and lays himself open to a bully who tries to provoke him, the duke showed her the extent of his violent passion by a single phrase that feverishly agitated her.