Chapter 23

Vaudrey could scarcely prevent himself from laughing hysterically, in spite of his ministerial dignity, and when he returned to Grenoble, his carriage full of the flowers that they had showered on him, he could only answer to Adrienne, who asked him if he had spoken well, if it had been a fine affair, by throwing his bouquets on the floor and saying:

"I have laughed heartily, but I am crushed, stupefied! What a headache!"

And Sulpice wrote all that to Marianne, and innocent that he was, told her: "Ah! all those applauding voices are not worth a single word from you! When shall I see you, Marianne, dear heart?"

"At the latest possible date!" _the dear heart_ said.

She regarded the close of summer and the beginning of autumn with extreme vexation, for it would bring with it the parliamentary session and Vaudrey, and inflict on her the presence of her lover.

Sulpice provided her liberally with all that her luxurious appetites demanded, and it was for good reasons that she decided not to break with him, although for a long time she had sacrificed this man in her inclinations. "Ah! when I shall be able to bounce him!" she said, expressing herself like a courtesan. She could not, she would not accept anything from Rosas. On that side, the game was too fine to be compromised. She could with impunity accept the position of mistress of Vaudrey, but with José she must appear to preserve, as it were, an aureole of modesty, of virginal charms, that she did not possess.

In fact, the Spaniard's mind became singularly crystallized, and she turned this result to good account: in proportion as he associated himself with the real Marianne, he created a fictitious Marianne, ideal, kind, _spirituelle_, perhaps ignorant, but subtile and corrupted in mind, who amused and disconcerted him at one and the same time. He had left the Continental Hotel, and rented a house on Avenue Montaigne, Champs-Élysées, where he sometimes entertained Marianne as he might have done a princess. At such times she gossiped while smoking Turkish tobacco. Her Parisian grace, her champagne-like effervescent manner, seduced and charmed this serious, pale traveller, whose very smile was tinged with melancholy.

He completely adored this woman and no longer made an effort to resist. He entirely forgot that it was through Guy that he had known her. It seemed to him that he had himself discovered her, and besides, she had never loved Guy. No, certainly not. She was frank enough to acknowledge everything. Then she denied that Lissac ever--Then what! If it should be true? But no! no! Marianne denied it. He blindly believed in Marianne.

All the conflicting, frantic arguments that men make when they are about to commit some foolish action were at war in José's brain. The more so as he did not attempt to analyze his feelings. He passed, near this pretty woman whose finger-tips he hardly dared kiss, the most delicious summer of his life. Once, however, on going out with Marianne in the Champs-Élysées, he had met the old Dujarrier with the swollen eyelids and the yellow hair that he had known formerly. One of his friends, the Marquis Vergano, had committed suicide at twenty for this woman who was old enough to be his mother. The Dujarrier had stopped and greeted Marianne, but as she remarked herself, a thousand bows and scrapes were thrown away, for Rosas had hardly noticed her with a glacial look.

"Why do you return that woman's salutation?" he at once asked Marianne.

"I need her. She has done me services."

"That is surprising! I thought her incapable of doing anything but harm."

He did not dream of Mademoiselle Kayser's coming in contact with courtesans. In the tiny, virtuous room in Rue Cuvier, Rosas thought that Marianne was in her true surroundings. She would frequently sit at the piano--one of the few pieces of furniture contained in this apartment,--and play for Rosas Oriental melodies that would transport him far away in thought, to the open desert, by the slow lulling of David's _Caravane_, then abruptly change to that familiar air, that rondeau of the Variétés that he hummed yonder, on his dunghill, forsaken--

"Voyez-vous, là-bas, Cette maison blanche--"

"I love that music-hall air!" she said.

He now no longer meditated resuming travel, or quitting Paris. Mademoiselle Kayser's hold on him grew more certain every day. The suspicion of odd mystery that enveloped this girl intensified his passion.

He sometimes asked her what her uncle was doing.

"He? Why, he has obtained, thanks to Monsieur Vaudrey, the decoration of a hydropathic establishment, _Les Thermes des Batignolles_. He has commenced the cartoon for a fresco: _Massage Moralizing the People_. We shall see that in his studio."

"Do you know," Marianne continued, "what I would like to see?"

"What, then?"

"Spain, your own country. Where were you born, Rosas?"

"At Toledo. I own the family château there."

"With portraits and armor?"

"Yes, with portraits and armor."

"Well, I would like to go to Toledo, to see that château. It must be magnificent."

"It is gloomy, simply gloomy. A fortress on a rock. Gray stone, a red rock, scorched by the sun. Huge halls half Moorish in style. Walls as thick as those of a prison. Steel knights, standing with lance in hand as in _Eviradnus_! Old portraits of stern ancestors cramped in their doublets, or Duchesses de Rosas, with pale faces, sad countenances, buried in their collars whose _guipures_ have been limned by Velasquez or Claude Coëllo. Immense cold rooms where the visitors' footfalls echo as over empty tombs. A splendor that savors of the vault. You would die of ennui at the end of two hours and of cold at the end of eight days."

"Die of cold in Spain?"

"There is a cold of the soul," the duke replied with a significant smile. "That I have travelled so much, is probably due to my desire to escape from that place! But you at Toledo, at Fuentecarral,--that is the name of my castle,--a Parisian like you! It would be cruel. As well shut up a humming-bird in a bear-pit. No! thank God, I have other nooks in Spain that will shelter us, my dear sparrow of the boulevards! Under the Andalusian jasmines, beneath the oleanders of Cordova or Seville, under the fountains whose basins are decorated with azulejos, and in which sultanas bathe, my jasmins could never sufficiently exhale their perfume, my fountains could never murmur harmoniously enough to furnish you a joyous welcome--when you go--if you go--But Toledo! My terrible castle Fuentecarral! It is in vain that I am impenitently romantic, I would not take you there for anything in the world. It would be as if ice fell on your shoulders. Fuentecarral? Ugh!--that smacks of death."

While he spoke, Marianne looked at him with kindling eyes and in thought roamed through those sweet-scented gardens, and she craved to see herself in that tomblike fortress Fuentecarral, passing in front of the pale female ancestors of Rosas, aghast at the _froufrou_ of the _Parisian woman_.

José thought Marianne's burning glance was an expression of her love. Ah! how completely the last six months in Paris had riveted him to this woman, who was the mistress of another! One day,--Vaudrey had just left Marianne at the _rond-point_ of the Champs-Élysées,--the duke seeing her enter his house, said abruptly to her:

"I was about to write you, Marianne."

"Why, my dear duke?"

"To ask an appointment."

"You are always welcome, my friend, at our little retreat."

He made her sit down, seized both her hands, and looked at her earnestly as he said:

"Swear to me that you have never been Lissac's mistress!"

She did not even quiver, but was as calm as if she had long awaited this question.

She boldly met José's glance and said:

"Does one ask such a question of the woman one loves?"

"Suppose that I ask this question of the Duchesse de Rosas!" said the Spaniard, with quivering lip.

She became as pale as he.

"I do not understand--" she said.

The duke remained silent for a moment; then his entire soul passed into his voice:

"I have no family, Marianne. I am entirely my own master, and I love you. If you swear to me that you have not been Guy's mistress--"

"Nobody has the right to say that he has even touched my lips," replied Marianne firmly. "Only one man, he who took me, an innocent girl, and left me heart-broken, disgusted, believing I should never again love, before I met you. He is dead."

"I know," said Rosas, "you confided that to me formerly.--A widow save in name, I offer you, yes, I! my name, my love, my whole life--will you take them?"

"Eh! you know perfectly well that I love you!" she exclaimed, as she frantically gave him the burning and penetrating kiss that had never left his lips since the soirée at Sabine's.

"Then, no one--no one?" José repeated.

"No one!"

"On honor?"

"On honor!"

"Oh! how I love you!" he said, distractedly, all his passion shattering his coldness of manner, as the sun melts the snow. "If you but knew how jealous and crazed I am about you!--I desire you, I adore you, and I condemn myself to remain glacial before you, beneath your glance that fires my blood--I love you, and the recollection of Guy hindered me from telling you that all that is mine belongs to you--I am a ferocious creature, you know, capable of mad outbursts, senseless anger, and unreasoning flight--Yes, I have wished to escape from you again. Well! no, I remain with you; I love you, I love you!--You shall be my wife, do you hear? My wife!--Ah! what a moment of bliss! I have loved you for years! Have you not seen it, Marianne?"

"I have seen it and I loved you! I also have kept silence! I saw plainly that you believed that I had given myself to another--No, no, I am yours, nothing but yours! All my love, all myself, take it; I have kept it for you; for I hate the past, more than that, I do not know that it exists--It is despised, obliterated, it is nothing! But you, ah! you, you are my life!"

She left José's, her youth renewed, haughty, intoxicated with delight. She walked along alone, in the paths of the Champs-Élysées, the rusty leaves falling in showers at the breath of the already cold wind, her heels ringing on the damp asphalt. She marched straight ahead, her thoughts afire from her intoxicating emotions. It seemed that Paris belonged to her.

That evening, she was to go to the theatre. It was arranged that Vaudrey should wait for her at the entrance with a hired carriage and take her to Rue Prony. She wrote to him that she could not leave the house. A slight headache. Uncle Kayser undertook to have the letter taken by a commissionaire.

"Unless you would rather have me go to the ministry!"

"Are you mad?" Marianne said.

"That is true, it would be immoral."

She wished to have the evening to herself, quite alone, so that she could let her dreams take flight.

Dreams? Nonsense! On the contrary, it was a dazzling reality: a fortune, a title, a positive escape from want and the mire. What a revenge!

"It is enough to drive one mad!"

Sudden fears seized her; the terror of the too successful gambler. What if everything crumbled like a house of cards! She wished that she were several weeks older.

"Time passes so quickly, and yet one has a desire to spur it on."

Now in the solitude of her house she felt weary. She could neither read nor think, and became feverish. She regretted that she had written to Vaudrey. She wished to go to the theatre. A new operetta would be a diversion, and why should she not go? She had the ticket for her box. She could at once inform Vaudrey that her headache had vanished.

"And then he bores me!--Especially now."

Matters, however, must not be abruptly changed. Suppose Rosas should take a sudden fancy to fly off again! Besides, she had mutual interests with the minister, there was an account to be settled.

"The Gochard paper?--Bah! he will pay it. More-ever, I am not involved in that."

Suddenly she thought that she would act foolishly if she did not go where she pleased. Sulpice might think what he pleased. She got her maid to dress her hair.

"Madame is going to the theatre?"

"Yes, Justine. To the Renaissance!"

She was greatly amused at the theatre, and was radiant with pleasure. She was the object of many glances, and felt delighted at being alone. One of the characters in the operetta was a duchess whose adventures afforded the audience much diversion. She abandoned herself to her dreams, her thoughts wandering far from the theatre, the footlights and the actors, to the distant orange groves yonder.

During an entr'acte some one knocked at the door of her box. She turned around in surprise. It was Jouvenet, the Prefect of Police, who came to greet her in a very gallant fashion. The prefect--he had gained at the palais in former days, the title of _L'Avocat Pathelin_,--with insinuating and wheedling manners, hastened to pay his meed of respect to Marianne when he met her. There was no necessity to stand on ceremony with him. He knew all her secrets. Such a man, more-ever, must be treated prudently, as he can make himself useful. Never had Jouvenet spoken to her of Vaudrey, he was too politic in matters of state. But as a man who knows that everything in this world is transient, he skilfully maintained his place in the ranks, considering that a Prefect of Police might not be at all unlikely to succeed a President of the Council.

Marianne permitted him to talk, accepted all his gallantries as she might have done bonbons, and with a woman's wit kept him at a distance without wounding his vanity.

Jouvenet with the simple purpose of showing her that he was well-informed, asked her, stroking his whiskers as he did so, if she often saw the Duc de Rosas. What a charming man the duke was! And while the young woman watched him as if to guess his thoughts, he smiled at her.

The prefect, not wishing to appear too persistent, changed the conversation with the remark:

"Ah! there is one of our old friends ogling you!"

"An old friend?"

It was in fact Guy de Lissac who was standing at the balcony training his glass upon the box.

Marianne had only very occasionally met Lissac, but for some time she had suspected him of being secretly hostile to her. Guy bore her a grudge for having taken Sulpice away from Adrienne. He pitied Madame Vaudrey and perhaps his deep compassion was blended with another sentiment in which tenderness had taken the place of a more modified interest. He was irritated against the blind husband because he could not see the perfect charms of that delicate soul, so timid and at the same time so devoted. Although he had not felt justified in showing his annoyance to Vaudrey, he had manifested his dislike to Marianne under cover of his jesting manner, and she had been exceedingly piqued thereby. Wherefore did this man who could not understand her, interfere, and why did he add to the injuries of old the mockery of to-day?

"After all, perhaps it is through jealousy," she thought. "The dolt!"

Guy did not cease to look at her through his glass.

"Does that displease you?" Jouvenet asked.

"Not at all. What is that to me?"

"This Lissac was much in love with you!"

"Ah! Monsieur le Préfet!" Marianne observed sharply. "I know that your office inclines you to be somewhat inquisitive, but it would be polite of you to allow my past to sleep in your dockets. They are famous shrouds!"

Jouvenet bit his lips and in turn brought his glass to bear on Lissac.

"See," he said, "he makes a great deal of the cross of the Christ of Portugal! It is in very bad taste! I thought he was a shrewder man!"

"The order of Christ is then in bad odor?"

"On the contrary; but as it is like the Legion of Honor in color, he is prohibited from wearing it in his buttonhole without displaying the small gold cross--And I see only the red there--"

"I beg your pardon, Monsieur le Préfet, there is one."

"Oh! my glass is a wretched one!--But even so, I do not believe Monsieur de Lissac is authorized by the Grand Chancellor to wear his decoration. That is easily ascertained!--I will nevertheless not fail to insert in the _Officiel_ to-morrow a note relative to the illegality of wearing certain foreign decorations--"

"Is this note directed against Lissac?"

"Not at all. But he reminds me of a step that I have wished to take for a long time: the enforcement of the law."

The entr'acte was over. Jouvenet withdrew, repeating all kinds of remarks with double meanings that veiled declarations of love; that if the occasion arose, he would place himself entirely at her service, and that some day she might be very glad to meet him--

"I thank you, Monsieur le Préfet, and I will avail myself of your kindness," replied Marianne, out of courtesy.

Something suggested to her that Guy would pay his respects to her during the next entr'acte, were it only to jest about Jouvenet's visit, seeing that he was regarded as a compromising acquaintance, and she was not wrong.

Behind his monocle, his keen, mocking glance seemed like a taunting smile.

"Well," he said, in a somewhat abrupt tone, as he sat near Marianne, "I congratulate you, my dear friend."

"Why?" she answered with surprise.

"On the great news, _parbleu!_ Your marriage."

She turned slightly pale.

"How do you know?--"

"I have seen the duke. He called on me."

"On you? What for?"

"Can't you make a little guess--a very little guess--"

"To ask you if I had been your mistress? Lissac, you are very silly."

"Yes, my dear Marianne, prepare yourself somewhat for the position of a duchess. A gentleman, to whom you have sworn that I have never been your lover, could not doubt your word!--José asked me nothing. He simply stated his determination to see what I would say, or gather from my looks what I thought of it."

"And you said?"

"What I had to say to him: I congratulated him!"

Marianne raised her gray eyes to Lissac's face.

"Congratulate?" she said slowly.

"The woman he marries is pretty enough, I think?"

"Ah! my dear, a truce to insolent trifles!--what is it that has possessed you for some time past?"

"Nothing, but something has possessed you--or some one."

"Rosas?"

"No, Vaudrey!"

"I will restore him to you. Oh! oh! you are surprisingly interested in Vaudrey. Vaudrey or his wife?" she remarked.

She smiled with her wicked expression.

"Duchess," said Lissac, "accustom yourself to respect virtuous women!"

"Is it to talk of such pleasant trifles that you have gained access to my box?"

"No, it is to ask you for some special information."

"What?"

"Is it true, is it really true that you are about to wed Rosas?" he asked in an almost cordial tone.

"Why not?" she replied, as she raised her head.

"Because--I am going to be frank--I have always regarded you as an absolutely straightforward woman, a woman of honor--You once claimed so to be. Mad, fantastic, you often are; charming, always; but dishonest, never. To take Rosas's love, even his fortune, would be natural enough, but to take his name would be a very questionable act and a skilful one, but lacking in frankness."

"That is to say that I may devour him like a courtesan, but not marry him as a--"

"As a young girl, no, you cannot do that. And you put me--I am bound to tell you so and I take advantage of the intermission to do so--in a delicate position. If I declared the truth to Rosas, I act toward you as a rascal. If I keep silent to my friend, my true friend, I act almost like a knave."

"Did Rosas ask you to speak to me?"

"No, but there is a voice within me that pricks me to speech and tells me that if I allow you to marry the duke, I am committing myself to a questionable affair--Do you know what he asked me?--To be his witness."

If Marianne had been in a laughing mood, she would have laughed heartily.

"It is absurd," she said. "You did not consent?"

"Yes, indeed, I have consented. Because I really hoped that you would relieve me from such an undesirable duty, a little too questionable."

"You would like?--What would you like?"

"I wish--no, I would have you not marry Monsieur de Rosas."

Marianne shrugged her shoulders.

She clearly felt the threat conveyed in Lissac's words, but she desired to show from the first that she disdained them. What right, after all, had this casual acquaintance to mix himself up in her life affairs? Because, one day, she had been charitable enough to give him her youth and her body! The duty of friendship! The rights of friendship! To protect Vaudrey! To defend Rosas! Words, tiresome words!

"And what if I wish to marry him, myself?--Would you prevent it?"

"Yes, if I could!" he said firmly. "It is time that to the freemasonry of women we should oppose the freemasonry of men."

"You are cruelly cowardly enough when you are alone, what would you be then when you are together?" said Marianne, with a malignant expression. "In fact," said she, after a moment's pause, "what would you have? What? Decide!--Will you send my letters to the duke?"

"That is one way," said Lissac, calmly. "It is a _woman's_ way, that!"

"You have my letters still?"

"Preciously preserved."

He had not contemplated such a threat, but she quickly scented a danger therein.

"Suppose I should ask the return of those letters, perhaps you would restore them to me?"

"Probably," he said.

"Suppose I asked you to bring them to me, you know, in that little out of the way room of which I spoke to you one day?"

She had leaned gently toward Lissac and her elbows grazed the knees of her former lover.

"I would wear, that day, one of those otter-trimmed toques that you have not forgotten."

She saw that he trembled, as if he were moved by some unsatisfied desire for her. She felt reassured.

"Nonsense!" she said with a smiling face. "You are not so bad as you pretend to be."

The manager tapped the customary three blows behind the curtain, and the orchestra began the prelude to the third act.

"Adieu for a brief period, my enemy!" said Marianne, extending her hand.

He hesitated to take that hand. At length, taking it in his own, he said:

"Leave me Rosas!"

"Fie! jealous one! Don't I leave Vaudrey to you?"

She laughed, while Lissac went away dissatisfied.

"I will have my letters, at all risks," thought Marianne when he had disappeared. "It is more prudent."

That night she slept badly, and the following morning rose in a very ill-humor. Her face expressed fatigue, her eyes were encircled with dark rings and burned feverishly, but withal, her beauty was heightened. All the morning she debated as to the course she should take, and finally decided to write to Guy, when Sulpice Vaudrey arrived, and beaming with delight, informed Marianne that he had the entire day to spend with her.

"I learned through Jouvenet this morning that you were able to go to the theatre. Naughty one, to steal an evening from me. But I have all to-day, at least."

And he sat down in the salon like a man spreading himself out in his own house. Marianne was meditating some scheme to get rid of him when the chamber-maid entered, presenting a note on a tray.

"What is that?"

"A messenger, madame, has brought this letter."

Marianne read the paper hurriedly.

Vaudrey observed that she blushed slightly.

"Is the messenger still there, Justine?"

"No, madame, he is gone. He said that there was no reply."

Marianne quickly tore in small pieces the note she had just read.

"Some annoyance?" asked Vaudrey.

"Yes, exactly."

"May I know?"

"No, it does not interest you. A family affair."

"Ah! your uncle?" asked Vaudrey, smiling.

"My uncle, yes!"

"He has asked that he be permitted to exhibit at the Trocadero the cartoons that he has finished: _The Artist's Mission_, _Hydropathy the Civilizer_, I don't know what in fact, a series of symbolical compositions--"

"With the _mirliton_ device underneath?--Yes, I know," said Marianne.

She snapped her fingers in her impatience.