Chapter 26

The uncle said nothing, regretted that he had met Lissac, and contented himself with stammering from time to time:

"She has done that?--What! she has done that?--Ah! the rogue."

"And what do you say about it, you, Simon Kayser?"

"I?--What do I say about it?--Why--"

Little by little he recovered his sang-froid, looking at matters from the lofty heights of his artist's philosophy.

"It is rather too strong. What do you want?--It is not even moral, but it has _character!_ And in art, after the moral idea comes _character!_ Ah! bless me! character, that is something!--Otherwise, I disapprove. It is brutal, vulgar, that lack of ideal. I defy you to symbolize that. _Love Avenging Itself Against Love_--_Jealousy Calling the Police to Its Aid in Order to Triumph over Dead Love!_ It is old, it lacks originality, it smacks of Prud'hon!--The Correggio of the décolleté!--It is like Tassaert, it is of the sprightly kind!--I would never paint so, that is what I say about it!"

Guy had no reply for this imperturbable moralist and he regretted that he had lost time in speaking to him. But his uncontrollable rage choked him. Enough remained however to show all his feelings to Vaudrey.

The minister was not in his cabinet. A messenger asked Lissac if he would speak to Monsieur Warcolier, the Under Secretary of State.

"I, I," then said a man who rose from the chair in which he had been sitting in the antechamber, "I should be glad to see Monsieur Warcolier--Monsieur Eugène, you know."

"Very well, Monsieur Eugène, I will announce you." Lissac explained that his visit was not official, he called on a personal matter.

"Is the minister in his apartments?"

"Yes, monsieur, but to-day, you know--"

What was going on to-day, then? Lissac had not noticed, in fact, that a marquee with red stripes was being erected at the entrance to the hôtel, and that upholsterers were bringing in wagons benches covered with red velvet with which they were blocking the peristyle. There was a reception at the ministry.

"That will not prevent Monsieur Vaudrey from seeing me," he said.

One of the messengers opened the doors in front of him and conducted him to the floor above, where Monsieur le Ministre was then resting near the fire and glancing over the papers after breakfast.

He appeared pleased but a little astonished at seeing Lissac.

"Eh! my dear Guy, what a good idea!--Have you arrived already for the soirée? You received your invitation?"

"No," answered Lissac, "I have received nothing, or if the invitation arrived, the agents of Monsieur Jouvenet have taken it away with many other things."

"The agents! what agents?" asked the minister.

He had risen to receive Guy and remained standing in front of the fireplace looking at his friend, who questioned him with his glance to discover if Vaudrey could really be in ignorance as to such a matter.

"Ah, so! but," said Lissac with trembling voice and in a tone of angry bitterness, "do you not know then, what takes place in Paris?"

"What is happening?" asked Sulpice, who had turned slightly pale.

"They arrest men for nothing, and keep them in close confinement for two days in order to have time to search their correspondence for a document that compromises certain persons. It is very proper, no doubt; but that smacks too much of romanticism and the Bridge of Sighs. It is very old-fashioned and worn-out. I would not answer for your long employing such methods of government."

"Come, are you mad? What does it all signify?" asked the minister, in astonishment.

He appeared as if he really did not understand. It was clear that he did not know what Guy meant.

"Don't you read the papers, then?" Lissac asked him.

"I read the reports of the Director of the Press."

"Well, if those reports have not informed you of my arrest in the heart of the Exposition des Mirlitons, on Wednesday, they have told you nothing!--"

"Arrested! you?"

"By the agents of Monsieur Jouvenet, your Prefect of Police, to gratify your mistress, Mademoiselle Kayser!"

"Ah! my dear Guy!" said the minister, whose cheek became flushed in spots. "I should be glad if you--"

He paused for a phrase to express clearly and briefly that he required Lissac to be silent, but could not frame one. He received, as it were, a sudden and violent blow on the head. Beyond question, he did not know a word of all that Lissac had informed him. And yet this was the gossip of Paris for two days! Either naming in full, or in indicating him sufficiently clearly, the newspapers had related the adventure on their front page. Moreover, much attention had been attracted to an article in a journal with which Lucien Granet was intimately connected, wherein, in well-turned but perfidious phrases, a certain Alkibiades--Lissac had guessed that this name was applied to him--had been arrested by the orders of the archon Sulpicios at the instance of a certain Basilea, one of the most charming hetaires of the republic of Perikles. Under this Greco-Parisian disguise it was easy for everyone to discover the true names and to see behind the masks the faces intended.

At the very moment that Lissac called to ask the minister for an explanation of the acts of the Prefect Jouvenet, Madame Vaudrey was opening a copy of a journal in which these names travestied by some Hellenist of the boulevard were underlined in red pencil. The article entitled _The Mistress of an Archon_, had been specially sent to her under a cover bearing the address in a woman's handwriting, Sabine Marsy or Madame Gerson! Some friend. One always has such.

It was of Adrienne that Vaudrey thought while Lissac was giving vent to his ironical, blunt complaint. Was Guy mad to speak of Marianne aloud in this way, and in this place, a few feet away from his wife, who could hear everything? Yes, Lissac was over-excited, furious and apparently crazy. He did not lower his tone, in spite of the sudden terror expressed by Vaudrey, who seized his hand and said to him eagerly: "Why, keep quiet! Suppose some one is listening?"

He felt himself, moreover, impelled by a violent rage. If what Guy told him were correct, Marianne had made use of him and of the title of mistress that she ought to have concealed. She had played it in order to compel Jouvenet to commit an outrage.

"Nonsense!" said Lissac, sneeringly. "Are you innocent enough to believe that she has seduced the Prefect of Police by simply telling him that she was your mistress? You don't know her. She only did this in becoming his!"

Sulpice had become livid, and he looked at Lissac with a sudden expression of hatred, as if this man had been his enemy. Guy had directly attacked his vanity and his heart with a knife-thrust, as it were, without sparing either his self-love or his passion.

"Ah! yes," said Lissac, "I know very well that that annoys you, but it is so! I knew this young lady before you did. Let her commit all the follies that she chooses with others and throw me overboard at a pinch, as she did three days ago, all is for the best. She is playing her rôle. I am only an imbecile and I am punished for it, and it is well; but, in order to attack me, to secure a very tiny paper, which put her very nicely at my mercy, that she should commit a foolish and brutal outrage against you who answer for the personnel of your administration, I cannot forgive. She thought then that I would make use of this note against her? She takes me for a rascal? If I wished to commit an act of treachery, could I not go this very moment, even without the weapon that Jouvenet's agents have taken from me, straight to her Rosas?"

"Rosas?" asked Sulpice, whose countenance contorted, and who feverishly twisted his blond beard.

"Eh! _parbleu_, yes, Rosas! On my honor, one would take you for the Minister of the Interior of the Moon! Rosas, who perhaps is her lover, but will be her husband if she wishes it! and she does!"

Poor Sulpice looked at Lissac with a terrified expression which might have been comic, did it not in its depth portray a genuine sorrow. He was oblivious to everything now, where he was, if Guy spoke too loudly, or if Adrienne could hear. He was only conscious of a terrible strain of his mind. This sudden revelation lacerated him--as if his back received the blows of a whip. He wished to know all. He questioned Lissac, forcing him into a corner, and making him hesitate, for he now feared that he would say too much, and limited himself to demanding Jouvenet's punishment.

"As to Marianne, one would see to that after," he said.

Ah! yes, certainly, Jouvenet should be punished! How? Vaudrey could not say, but from this moment the Prefect of Police was condemned. Guy's arrest, which was an act of brutal aggression, was tantamount to a dismissal signed by the Prefect himself. And Marianne! she then made a sport of Sulpice and took him for a child or a ninny!

"Not at all. For a man who loves, that is enough," replied Lissac.

Vaudrey had flung himself into an armchair, striking his fist upon the little table, covered with the journals that he had scarcely opened, and absent-mindedly pushing the chair back, the better to give way to his excessively violent threats, after the manner of weak natures.

"Do you want my advice?" Lissac abruptly asked him. "You have only what you deserve, ah! yes, that is just it! I tell you the sober truth. A wife like yours should never be forsaken for a creature like Marianne!"

"I love Adrienne sincerely!" replied Vaudrey eagerly.

"And you deceive her entirely. That is foolish. You deserve that Mademoiselle Kayser should have ridiculed, deceived and ruined you irretrievably, and that your name should never be uttered again. When one has the opportunity to possess a wife like yours, one adores her on bended knees, you understand me, and one doesn't destroy her true happiness to divert it in favor of the crowd. And what pleasure! Jouvenet has had the same dose at a less cost!"

"You abuse the rights of friendship, somewhat," said Sulpice, rising suddenly. "I do what pleases me, as it pleases me, and I owe no account to any one, I think!"

He stopped suddenly. His feet were, as it were, nailed to the floor and his mouth closed. He seized Guy's hand and felt his flesh creep, as he saw Adrienne standing pale, and supporting herself against the doorpost, as if she had not the strength to proceed, her eyes wide open, like those of a sick person.

Assuredly, beyond all possible doubt, she had heard everything.

She was there! she heard!

She said nothing, but moved a step forward, upheld by a terrible effort.

Her look was that of a whipped child, of a poor creature terrified and in despair, and expressed not anger but entire collapse. She was so wan, so sad-looking, that neither Lissac nor Vaudrey dared speak. A chill silence fell upon these three persons.

While Adrienne approached the table upon which the journals were piled, Guy was the first to force a smile to throw her off the scent; Adrienne stopped him with a gesture that was intended to express that to undeceive her, that is to say, to deceive her afresh, would be a still more cowardly act. She took from among the journals that which she had just been reading without at first quite understanding it, the one that had been sent to her, underlined as with a venomous nail, and showing to Vaudrey the article that spoke of Sulpicios and Basilea, she said gently in a feeble voice, crushed by this crumbling of her hopes:

"That is known then, that affair!"

Then she sunk exhausted into the armchair in which Sulpice had been sitting, and her breast heaved with a violent sob that tore it as if it would rend it.

Sulpice looked at Lissac who was standing half-inclined, as in the presence of a misfortune. He instinctively seized the minister by the shoulder and gently forced him toward Adrienne, saying to him in a whisper, in ill-assured tones:

"Kiss her then! One pardons when one loves!"

With a supplicating cry, Vaudrey threw himself on his knees before Adrienne, while Lissac hastily opened the door and left, feeling indeed that he could not say a word and that Vaudrey only could obtain Vaudrey's pardon.

"I, in my anger," he said, "he, in his jealousy, have allowed ourselves to get into a passion. It is stupid. One should speak lower."

He went away, much dissatisfied with himself and but little less with Vaudrey. Again he considered this man foolish, adored as he was by such a wife, whom he deceived. He was not sure that at the bottom of his own heart he did not feel a sentiment of love toward Adrienne. Ah! if he had been loved by such a creature, he would have been capable of great things!--He would have arranged and utilized his life instead of spoiling it. In place of vulgar love, he would have kept this unique love intact from the altar to the tomb!

Pale and tottering, and a child once more under her sorrow, as he had just seen her, she was so adorably lovely that he had received an entirely new impression, one of almost jealousy against Sulpice, and therefore, brusquely overcoming this strange, unseemly emotion, he had himself thrust Vaudrey toward his wife and had departed hastily, as if he felt that he must hurry away and never see them again. But as he left, on the contrary, he saw her again with her sad, wretched, suffering look and the young wife's sorrowful voice went with him, repeating in a tone of broken-hearted grief:

"That is known then!"

"Ah! that miserable fellow, Vaudrey!" thought Guy.

In going out, he had to wait a moment in the antechamber, to admit of the passage of some vases of flowers, green shrubs and variegated foliage plants that were being brought in to decorate the salons. A fête! And this evening! In the arrival of those flowers for decoration, at the moment when chance, clumsily or wickedly, so suddenly revealed that crushing news, Guy saw so much irony that he could not forbear looking at them for a moment, almost insulting in their beauty and their hothouse bloom.

Would Adrienne have the courage or strength to undertake the reception of the evening, within a few hours? Guy was annoyed at having come.

"I could well have waited and kept my anger to myself. The unhappy woman would have known nothing."

"Bah!" he added. "She is kind, she adores Sulpice, it is only a passing storm. She will forgive!"

He promised himself, moreover, to return in the evening, to excuse himself to Adrienne, to comfort her if he could.

"There is some merit, after all, in that," he thought again. "On my word! I believe I love her and yet I am angry with that animal Vaudrey for not loving her enough."

She will forgive!--Lissac knew courtesans but he did not know this woman, energetic as she was under her frail appearance, a child, a little provincial lost in the life of Paris, lost and, as it were, absorbed in the hubbub of political circles, smitten with her husband, who comprehended in her eyes every seduction and superiority, having given herself entirely and wishing to wholly possess the elect being who possessed her, in whom she trusted and to whom she gave herself, body and soul, with all her confidence, her innocence and her modesty. He did not know what such a sensitive, nervously frail nature could feel on the first terrible impulses, full of enthusiasm under her exterior coldness, of resolution concealed under her timid manners, capable of madness, distracted in spite of her reason and calm; this candor of thought, of education, and associations that made her, with all her irresistible attractiveness, the virtuous woman with all her charm.

Adrienne had at first read the journal that had been sent to her without understanding anything about it. Alkibiades, Basilea, the mistress of the Archon, what signified that to her? What did it mean? Then suddenly her thought rested on the name of Sulpice, travestied in the Greek of parody, Sulpicios. Was it of her husband that they intended to speak? She immediately felt a bitter anguish at heart, but it was a matter only of allowing one's self to be impressed by a journalistic pleasantry, as contemptible as an anonymous letter! She would think no more about it. She must concentrate her thoughts on the evening's reception. There was to be an official repast, followed by a soirée. She had nothing to concern herself about in regard to the menu; Chevet undertook that. For the ministerial dinners there was a fixed price as in restaurants. Hosts and guests live _au cabaret_, they dine at so much a head. Adrienne endeavored to occupy herself with the musical soirée, with the programmes that they brought her, with the names of comedians and female singers, printed on vellum, and with those bouquets with which the vases of her little salon were decorated. Ah! well, yes, in spite of the feverish activity, she could think only of that article in the journal, that miserable article, every line of which flamed before her eyes just as when one has looked too long at a fire. She had been seized with the temptation there and then to openly ask Sulpice what these veiled illusions meant.

"I hope, indeed," she thought, with her contempt of all lying, "that he will not charge me with suspecting him. No, certainly, I do not suspect him."

She went to the little cabinet where Sulpice sometimes read or worked after breakfast, and there, as if she had thrown herself upon an open knife, she suddenly heard those sinister words which pierced her very flesh like pointed blades.

They were speaking of another woman. Lissac said in a loud tone: Your mistress! and Vaudrey allowed it to be said!--

A mistress! what mistress? Marianne Kayser! Oh, that woman of whom Sulpice had so often spoken in an indifferent manner, that pretty creature, so often seen, seductive, wonderfully beautiful, terrifyingly beautiful, it was she! Your mistress! Sulpice had a mistress! He lied, he deceived. He? She was betrayed! Was it possible? If it were possible? But it was true! Eh! _parbleu_, yes, it was true--And this, then, was why they had sent her this horrible article! She knew now.

She had been tempted to enter the room suddenly, to throw herself between these men and interrupt their conversation. She had not the strength. And then, what Lissac said had the effect of consoling her!--Guy's reproaches to Sulpice were such as she would have liked to cast at him, if she could have found speech now. But not a word could she frame. She was stunned, dumb and like a crushed being. She knew only one thing, that she suffered horribly, as she had never before suffered.

At first she allowed Vaudrey, who knelt at her feet, as Lissac had told him on going away, to take her hand that hung listlessly down. Then she gently withdrew it as if she felt herself seized by an instinctive sense of outraged modesty.

Vaudrey tried to speak. At first only confused words, silly excuses, clumsy falsehoods, cruelly absurd phrases--_caprices_, _nothing serious_, _whim_, _madness_--so many avowals, so many insults, came to his lips. But then, before the silence of Adrienne, he could say nothing more, he was speechless, overwhelmed, and sought a hand that was refused.

"Will you never forgive me?" he asked at last, not knowing too well what he said.

"Never!" she said coldly.

She rose and with as much sudden energy as but a moment before she had felt of weakness, she crossed the room.

"Are you going away?" stammered Sulpice.

"Yes, I must be alone--Ah! quite alone," she said, with a sort of gesture of disgust as she saw her husband approach her.

He stopped and said, as if by chance:

"You know that--this evening--"

"Yes, yes," she replied, "do not be anxious about anything! I am still the minister's wife, if I am Madame Vaudrey no longer."

He tried in vain to reply.

Adrienne had already disappeared.

"There is the end of my happiness!" Sulpice stammered as he suddenly confronted an unknown situation dark as an abyss. "Ah! how wretched I am! Very wretched! whose fault is it?"

He plunged gladly into the work of examining the bundles of reports from the prefects, feverishly inspecting them to deafen and blind his conscience, and seized at every moment with a desire to make an appeal to Adrienne or to go and insult Marianne. Oh! especially to tell Marianne that she had betrayed him, that she was a wretch, that she was the mistress of Rosas, the mistress of Jouvenet, a strumpet like any other strumpet, yes, a strumpet!

Amid all the disturbance of that day of harsh misfortune, perhaps he thought more of the Marianne that he had lost than of the Adrienne that he had outraged; while the wife questioned with herself if it were really she coming and going, automatically trying on her ball costume, abandoning her head to the hair-dresser, feeling that in two hours she would be condemned to smile on the minister's guests, the senators and the deputies and play the part of a spectre, marching in the land of dreams, in a nightmare that choked her, fastened on her throat and heart and prompted her to cry and weep, all her poor nerves intensely strained and sick, subdued by the energy of a tortured person, imposing on herself the task of not appearing to suffer and--a still more atrocious thing--of not even suffering in reality and waiting, yes, waiting to sob.

In the evening, everything blazed on the façade of the ministry. The rows of gas-jets suggested that a public fête was being held in the Hôtel Beauvau. The naming capital letters R.F. were boldly outlined against the dark sky, the three colors of the flags looked bright in the ruddy light of the gas. Carriages rolled over the sanded courtyard, giving up at the carpeted entrance to the hôtel the invited guests dressed in correct style, the women wrapped in ample cloaks with gold fringe or trimmed with fur, and all poured into the antechamber, brushing against the _Gardes de Paris_ in white breeches, with grounded arms, forming a row and standing out like Caryatides against the shining, large leaved green flowers on which their white helmets shone by the light of the lustres. In the dressing-room, the clothing was piled up, tied together in haste; the antechamber was quickly crossed, the women in passing casting rapid glances at the immense mirrors; a servant asked the names of the guests and repeated them to an usher, whose loud voice penetrated these salons that for many years had heard so many different names, of all parties, under all régimes, and proclaimed them in the usual commonplace manner, while murdering the most celebrated of them. Upon the threshold of the salon, filled with fashionable people and flooded with intense light, stood the minister, who had been receiving, greeting, bowing, ever since the opening of the soirée, to those who arrived, some of whom he did not know; crowding behind him, correctly dressed, stood his secretaries, the members of his cabinet appropriating their shares of the greetings extended to the Excellency, and at his side stood Madame Vaudrey, pale and smiling as the creatures of the other world; she also bowed and from time to time extended her gloved hand mechanically; pale she looked in her décolleté gown of white satin, clasped at the shoulders with two pearl clasps, a bouquet of natural roses in her corsage, and standing there like a melancholy spectre on the very threshold of the festive salons.

When she perceived Guy enter, she greeted him with a sad smile, and Vaudrey eagerly offered his hand to him as if he relied greatly on him to arrange matters.