Chapter 21

His mistress! Why his mistress, since he had shown her that perhaps?--

"Idiot that I am!" thought Marianne. "Suppose I play my cards for marriage?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It will cost no more!"

Married! Duchess! and Duchesse de Rosas! At first she laughed. Duchess! I am asking a little from you! The mistress of Pierre Méran, the artist's drudge, the wretch who abducted her and debauched her, adding his depravity to hers, and who died of consumption while quite young, after having plunged this girl into vice, this Marianne Kayser, born and moulded for vice: she a duchess!

"It would be too funny, my dear!" she thought.

Never had Vaudrey, whom she saw that evening at Rue Prony, seemed so provincial, or, as she said, so _Sulpice_. Besides, he was gloomy and unable to express himself clearly at first, but finally he brought himself to acknowledge that he was embarrassed about providing for the bill of exchange--she understood--

"No, I do not know!"

"The bill of exchange in favor of Monsieur Gochard!"

"Ah! that is so. Well! if you cannot pay it, my dear, I will advise--I will seek--"

There was nothing to seek. Vaudrey would evidently get himself out of the affair--but the document matured at an unfortunate time. He did not dare to mortgage La Saulière, his farm at Saint-Laurent-du-Pont. He had reflected that Adrienne might learn all about it. And then--

Marianne broke in upon his confidences.

"Don't speak to me about these money matters, my friend, you know that sort of thing disgusts me!--"

"I understand you and ask your pardon."

They were to see each other again the next day, as parliament was to take a rest.

"What joy! Not to be away from you for the whole of the day!" remarked Vaudrey.

"Well then, till to-morrow!"

She felt intense pleasure in being alone again, wrapped in her sheets, with the light of the lamp that ordinarily shone upon her hours of love with Sulpice, still burning, and to be free to dream of her Spanish grandee who had said, plainly, with the trembling of passion on his lips: "I should esteem you enough to become your husband!"

She passed the night in reverie.

Vaudrey, in spite of the joy of the morrow,--a long tête-à-tête with his mistress,--thought with increasing vexation of the approaching maturity of his bill of exchange; within two months he would have to pay the hundred thousand francs which he had undertaken to pay Marianne's creditor.

"It is astonishing how quickly time passes!"

At breakfast the following day, Adrienne saw that her husband was more than usually preoccupied.

"Are political affairs going badly?"

"No--on the contrary--"

"Then why are you melancholy?"

"I am a little fatigued."

"Then," said Madame Vaudrey, "you will scold me."

"Why?"

"I have led Madame Gerson to hope--You know whom I mean, Madame Marsy's friend,--I have almost promised her that you would accept an invitation to dine at her house."

For a moment Vaudrey was put out.

Another evening taken! Hours of delight stolen from Marianne!

"I have done wrong?" asked Adrienne, as she rested her pretty but somewhat sad face on her husband's bosom. "I did it because it is so great a pleasure to me to spend an entire evening with you, even at another's house. Remember you have so many official dinners, banquets and invitations that you attend alone. When the minister's wife is invited with him, it is a fête-day for the poor, little forsaken thing. I do not have much of you, it is true, but I see you, I hear you talking and I am happy. Do not chide me for having said that we would go to Madame Gerson's. The more so, because she is a charming woman. Ah! when she speaks of you! 'So great a minister!' Don't you know what she calls you?--'A Colbert!'"

Vaudrey could not restrain a smile.

"Come, after that, one cannot refuse her invitation. It is the _Monseigneur_ of the beggar," said he, kissing Adrienne's brow. "And when do we dine at Madame Gerson's?"

"On Monday next; I shall have at least one delightful evening to see you," said the young wife sweetly.

The minister entered his cabinet. Almost immediately after, a messenger handed him a card: _Molina, Banker_.

"How strange it is!" thought Sulpice. "I had him in mind."

In the course of his troublesome reflections concerning the Gochard paper, Vaudrey persistently thought of that fat, powerful man who laughed and harangued in a loud voice in the greenroom of the ballet, as he patted with his fat fingers the delicate chin of Marie Launay.

Why! if he were willing, this Molina--Molina the Tumbler!--for him it is a mere bagatelle, a hundred thousand francs!

Salomon Molina entered the minister's cabinet just as he made his way into the foyer of the Opéra, with swelling chest, tilted chin and stomach thrust forward.

"Monsieur le Ministre," he said in a clear voice, as he spread himself out in the armchair that Vaudrey pointed out to him, "I notify you that you have my maiden visit!--I am still in a state of innocency! On my honor, this is the first time I have set my foot within a minister's office!"

He manifested his independence--born of his colossal influence--by his satisfied and successful air. The former Marseillaise clothes-dealer, in his youth pouncing upon the sailors of the port and Maltese and Levantine seamen, to palm off on them a second-hand coat or trousers, as the wardrobe dealers of the Temple hook the passer-by, Salomon Molina, who had paraded his rags and his hopes on the Canebière, dreaming at the back of his dark shop of the triumphs, the pleasures, the revels and the indigestions that money affords, had, moreover, always preserved the bitterness of those wretched days and his red, Jewish lip expressed the gall of his painful experiences.

His first word as he entered Vaudrey's cabinet, asserting the virginity of his efforts at solicitation, betrayed his bitterness.

Now, triumphant, powerful, delighted, feasted and fat, his massive form, his gross flesh and his money were in evidence all over Paris. His huge paunch, shaking with laughter, filled the stage-boxes at the theatres. He expanded his broad shoulders as he reclined in the calèche that deposited him on race-days at the entrance of the weighing-enclosure. He held by the neck, as it were, everything of the Parisian quarry that yelps and bounds about money, issues of stock, and the food of public fortune: bankers, stock-brokers, and jobbers, financial, political and exchange editors, wretches running after a hundred sous, statesmen in a fair way to fortune; and he distributed to this little crowd, just as he would throw food into a kennel, the discounts and clippings of his ventures, taking malicious pleasure, the insolent delight of a fortunate upstart, in feigning at the moment when loans were issued, sickness that had no existence, in order to have the right of keeping his chamber, of hearing persons of exalted names ringing at his door and dancing attendance upon him,--powerful, influential and illustrious persons,--him, the second-hand dealer and chafferer from Marseilles.

It was then that he tasted the joy of supreme power, that delight which titillated even his marrow, and after having rested all day, the prey of a convenient neuralgia, he experienced the unlimited pleasure of force overcoming mind, the blow of a fist crushing a weakling, as with a white cravat he appeared in some salon, in the greenroom of the ballet, or in the dressing-room of a _première_, saying with the mocking smile of triumph and the assurance attending a gorged appetite:

"I was sick to-day, I suffered from neuralgia! The Minister of Finance called on me!--Baron Nathan came to get information from me!"

Among all the pleasures experienced by this man, he valued feminine virtue occasionally purchased with gold as little in comparison with the virgin souls, honor and virtue that he often succeeded in humiliating, in bending before him like a reed, and snuffing out with his irony, whenever necessity placed at his mercy any of those puritanical beings who had passed sometimes with haughty brow before the millions of this man of money. It was then that the clothes-dealer took his revenge in all its hideousness. There was no pity to be expected from this fat, smiling and easy-going man. His fat fingers strangled more certainly than the lean hands of a usurer. Molina never pardoned.

Ah! if this fellow went to see the minister, most assuredly he wanted a favor from him.

But what?

It was extraordinary, but before Vaudrey, Molina who could hold his own among rascals, found himself ill at ease. There was in the frank look of this _ninny_, as Molina the _Tumbler_ had one evening called him while talking politics, such direct honesty that the banker, accustomed as he was to dealings with sharks and intriguers, did not quite know how to open the question, nevertheless a very important matter was in hand.

"A rich plum," thought Molina.

A matter of railways, a concession to be gained. A matter of private interest, disguised under the swelling terms of the public welfare, the national needs. Millions were to be gained. Molina was charged with the duty of sounding the President of the Council and the Minister of Public Works. Two honest men. The _dodge_, as the _Tumbler_ said, was to make them swallow the affair under the guise of patriotism. A strategical railroad. The means of rapid locomotion in case of mobilization. With such high-sounding words, _strategy_, _frontier_, _safety_, they could carry a good many points.

Unfortunately, Vaudrey was rather skittish on these particular questions, besides he was informed on the matter. He felt his flesh creep while Molina was speaking. Just before, on seeing the banker's card, the idea of the money of which the fat man was one of the incarnations, had suddenly dawned upon him as a hope. Who knows? By Molina's aid, he might, perhaps, free himself from anxiety about the Gochard bill of exchange!--But from the minister's first words, although the banker could not get to the point, intimidated as he was by Sulpice's honest look, it was clear that Vaudrey surmised some repugnant suggestions in the hesitating words of this man.

What! Molina hesitating? He did not go straight to the point, squarely, according to his custom, Molina the illustrious _Tumbler_? Eh! no! the intentionally cold bearing of the minister decidedly discomposed him. Vaudrey's glance never wandered from his for a moment. When the promoter pronounced the word Bourse, a disdainful curl played upon Sulpice's lips, but not a word escaped him. Molina heard his own voice break the silence of the ministerial cabinet and he felt himself entangled. He came to propose a combination, a bonus, and he did not suspect that Vaudrey would refuse to have a hand in it. And here, this devilish minister appeared not to understand, did not understand, perhaps, or else he understood too well. Molina was not accustomed to such hard-of-hearing people. With his fat hand, he had dropped into the hands of senators and ministers of the former régime, a sum for which the only receipt given was a smile. He was accustomed to the style of conversation carried on by hints and ended between intelligent people by a _shake of the hand_, that in which some bits of paper rested: bank-notes or paid-up shares. And this Vaudrey knew nothing! So he felt himself obliged to explain himself clearly, to stoop to dotting every _i_, at the risk of being shown out of doors.

Molina was too shrewd to run this risk. He would return at another time, seeing that the minister turned a deaf ear, but _pécaïre_! he sweat huge drops in seeking roundabout phrases, this man who never minced his words and habitually called things by their proper names. Was the like ever seen! A pettifogger from Grenoble to _floor_ Salomon Molina!

"It made me warm," said the money-maker, on leaving the cabinet, "but, deuce take it! I'll have my revenge. One is not a minister always. You shall pay me dearly, my little fellow, for that uncomfortable little time."

Vaudrey had thoroughly understood the matter, but he did not intend to allow it to be seen that he did. That was a simpler way. He had not had to dismiss the buyer of consciences; he had enjoyed his embarrassment and that was sufficient.

"What, however, if I had spoken to him of money before he had shown his hand! If I had accepted from him--!" he said to himself.

He shuddered at the thought as he had previously done while Molina was talking to him. A single imprudence, a single confidence might easily have placed him under the hand of this fat man. He must, however, find some solution. The days were rolling away and the bills signed for Marianne would in a very short time reach maturity.

"When I think that this Molina could in one day enable me to gain three times this sum."

Salomon had just told him: "To forestall the news on the Bourse is sometimes worth gold ingots!" A _forestaller_! As well say the revelation of a State secret, base speculation, almost treachery! And yet on hearing these words that covered up an insult, he had not even rung for the messenger to show Molina out, but had striven to comprehend nothing!

As the result of this conversation, he felt uncomfortable. The man had left an odor of pollution, as it were, behind him.

Vaudrey must needs be soon reassured respecting the Gochard paper. In visiting Marianne, he observed that his mistress was a shrewd woman. She informed him immediately that Claire Dujarrier whom she had seen, would secure a renewal from Gochard, who was unknown to Vaudrey, from three months to three months until the expiration of six months in consideration of an additional twenty thousand francs for each period of ninety days.

"I did not understand that at first," Marianne began by remarking.

"Oh!" said Sulpice, "I understand perfectly, it is absolute usury. But time is ready money, and in six months it will be easier for me to pay one hundred and forty thousand francs than a hundred thousand to-day. I have plans."

"What?"

"Very difficult to explain, but quite clear in my mind! The important part is not to have the date of maturity on the first of June, but on the first of December."

"Then nothing is more simple. Madame Dujarrier will arrange it."

"Is Madame Dujarrier a providence then?"

"Almost," said Marianne coldly.

Sulpice was intoxicated with joy, realizing that he had before him all the necessary time in which to free himself from his embarrassment, when Marianne should have returned him his first acceptance for one hundred thousand francs against a new one for one hundred and forty thousand. He breathed again. From the twenty-sixth of April to the first of December, he had nearly seven months in which to free himself. He repeated the calculation that he had formerly made when he said: "I have ample time!"

He reëntered the Hôtel Beauvau in a cheerful mood, Adrienne was delighted. She feared to see him return nervous and dejected.

"Then you will be brilliant presently at Madame Gerson's."

"Stop! that's so. It is this evening in fact!--"

He had forgotten it.

Marianne, too, was not free. She was going, she said, to Auteuil for that bill of exchange. Vaudrey did not therefore, regret the soirée. His going to Madame Gerson's was now a matter of indifference to him.

"As for me, I am so happy, oh! so happy!" said Adrienne, clapping her little hands like a child.

In undressing, Vaudrey fortunately found this document which he had folded in four and left in his waistcoat pocket:

"On the first of June next, I will pay to the order of Monsieur Adolphe Gochard of No. 9, Rue Albouy, the sum of One Hundred Thousand Francs, value received in cash.

"SULPICE VAUDREY, "Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, 37."

He turned pale on reading it. If Adrienne had seen it!--

He burned the paper at a candle.

"I am imprudent," he said to himself. "Poor Adrienne! I should not like to cause her any distress."

She was overjoyed as she made the journey in the ministerial carriage from Place Beauvau to the Gersons' mansion. At last she had a rapid, stolen moment in which she could recover the old-time joy of happy solitude, full of the exquisite agitation of former days.

"Do you recall the time when you took me away like this, on the evening of our marriage?" she whispered to him, as the carriage was driven off at a gallop.

He took her hands and pressed them.

"You still love me, don't you, Sulpice?--You believe too, that I love you more than all the world?"

"Yes, I believe it!"

"You would kill me if I deceived you?--I, ah, if you deceived me, I do not know what I should do.--Although I think that you are here, that I hold you, that I love you, you may still belong to another woman--"

"Again! you have already said that. Are you mad?" said Sulpice. "See! we have reached our destination."

Madame Gerson had brilliantly illuminated her house in Rue de Boulogne with lights, filled it with flowers, and spread carpets everywhere to receive the President of the Council. The house was too small to accommodate the guests, who were about to be stifled therein. She packed them into her dining-room. For the soirée which was to follow, she had sounded the roll-call of her friends. She was bent on founding a new salon, on showing Madame Marsy that she was not alone to be the rival of Madame Evan.

Madame Gerson was not on friendly terms with Sabine Marsy. People were ignorant as to the cause. Adrienne, who was not familiar with the history of such little broils, was very much surprised to learn of this fact.

"She claims that we take away all her _personnel_," said Madame Gerson. "It is not my fault if people enjoy themselves at our house. I hope that you will find pleasure here, Monsieur le Président."

Vaudrey bowed. "Madame Gerson could not doubt it."

The guests sat down to dinner. Madame Gerson beamed with joy beside the minister. Guy de Lissac, Warcolier, some senators and some deputies were of the dinner party. Monsieur and Madame Gerson never spoke of them by their names but: _Monsieur le Sénateur, Monsieur le Député!_ They lubricated their throats with these titles, just as bourgeois who come in contact with highnesses swell out in addressing a prince as _Monseigneur_, absolutely as if they were addressing themselves.

Sulpice felt in the midst of this circle in which everything was sacrificed to _chic_, as he invariably did, the painful sensation of a man who is continually on show. He never dined out without running against the same menu, the same fanfare, and the same conversation.

Monsieur Gerson endeavored to draw the President of the Council into political conversation. He wished to know Vaudrey's opinion as to the one-man ballet. Sulpice smiled.

"Thanks!" he said. "We have just been dealing with that. I prefer truffles, they are more savory."

Through the flowers, Adrienne could see her husband who was seated opposite to her beside Madame Gerson. She conversed but little with Guy de Lissac, who was sitting on her right, although the formalities of the occasion would have suggested that Monsieur le Senator Crépeau and Monsieur de Prangins, the deputy, should have been so placed. Madame Gerson, however, had remarked with a smile, that Madame Vaudrey would not feel annoyed at having Monsieur de Lissac for her neighbor. "I have often met Monsieur de Lissac at the ministry; he is received noticeably well there."

Not knowing any one among the guests, Adrienne was, in fact, charmed to have Guy next to her. He was decidedly pleasing to her with his sallies, his skepticism which, as she thought, covered more belief than he wished to disclose. For a long time, he had felt himself entirely captivated by her cheerful modesty and the grace of her exquisite purity. She was so vastly different from all the other women whom he had known. How the devil could Vaudrey bring himself to neglect so perfect a creature, who was more attractive in her fascinating virtue than all the damsels to be met with in society, among the demi-monde, or those of a still lower grade? For Vaudrey remained indifferent to Adrienne; and this was a further and manifest blow. A specialist in matters of observation like Guy was not to be deceived therein. Madame Vaudrey had not yet complained, but she was already suffering. Was it merely politics, or was it some woman who was taking her husband from Adrienne? Guy did not know, but he would know. The pretty Madame Vaudrey interested him.

"If that idiot Sulpice were not my friend, I would make love to her. Besides," he said to himself, as he looked at Adrienne's lovely, limpid eyes, "I should fail; there are some lakes whose tranquillity cannot be disturbed."

Adrienne, pleased to have him beside her, enquired of him the names of the guests. On the left of Madame Gerson sat a little, broad-backed man, with black hair pasted over his temples, long leg-of-mutton whiskers decorating his bright-colored cheeks, and a keen eye: he was Monsieur Jouvenet, formerly an advocate; to-day Prefect of Police.

Senator Crépeau sat further away. He was a fat manufacturer, who talked about alimentary products and politics. In the _Analytical Table of the Accounts of the Sittings of the Senate_, his name shone brilliantly, with the following as his record: "CRÉPEAU, of L'Ain, Life Senator--Apologizes for his absence--8 January--. Apologizes for his absence--20 February--. Member of a commission--_Journal Officiel_, p. 1441. Apologizes for not being able to take part in the labors of the commission--4 March--. Apologizes for his absence--20 March--. Asks for leave of absence--5 April--." Such were his services during the ordinary work of that year. Monsieur Crépeau--of L'Ain--had earned the right to take a rest.

"He eats very heartily," said Lissac. "His appetite is better than his eloquence."

Next to Crépeau was another legislator, Henri de Prangins, a publicist, an old, wrinkled, stooping, dissatisfied grumbler.

"Ah! that is Monsieur de Prangins," said Adrienne, "I have heard much about him."

"He is a typical character," Lissac said, with a smile. "You know Granet, _the gentleman who will become a minister_; well, Prangins is the gentleman who would be a minister, but who never will be! Moreover, he is five hundred times more remarkable than a hundred others who have been in office ten times, for what reason cannot be said."