Chapter 29

The session of the Chamber was to furnish him the most cruel deception. Granet had most skilfully prepared his plan of attack. Vaudrey's ministry was threatened on all sides by lines of approach laid out without Sulpice's knowledge. Granet had promised, here and there, new situations, or had undertaken to confirm the old. He came to the assault of the ministry with a compact battalion of clients entirely devoted to his fortunes, which were their own. They did not reproach Vaudrey too strongly with anything, unless it was that these impatient ones considered that he had given away all that he had to give, prefectures, sub-prefectures, councillors' appointments, crosses of the Legion of Honor, and especially for having lasted too long. Vaudrey would fall less because he had forfeited esteem than because others were impatient to succeed him. Granet was tired of being only the _minister of to-morrow_, he wished to have his day. He had just affirmed his policy, he asserted that the whole country, weary of Vaudrey's compromises, demanded a more homogeneous ministry. Homogeneity! Nothing could be said against such a word. Granet favored the policy of homogeneity. This vocable comprehended his entire programme. The Vaudrey Cabinet lacked homogeneity! The President of the Republic decidedly ought to form a homogeneous cabinet.

"Granet is then homogeneous?" said Sulpice, with a forced laugh, as he sat on the ministerial bench while Lucien Granet was speaking from the tribune, his right hand thrust into his frock-coat.

The _bon mot_ uttered by the President of the Council, although spoken loudly enough, did not enliven any one, neither his colleagues who felt themselves threatened nor his usual _claqueurs_ who felt themselves vanquished. Navarrot, the ministerial claqueur, was already applauding Granet most enthusiastically. _Monsieur le Ministre_ felt himself about to become an ex-minister. He vaguely felt as if he were in the vacuum of an air-pump.

The order of the day of distrust, smoothed over by Granet with the formulas of perfidious politeness--castor-oil in orange-juice, as Sulpice himself called it, trying to pluck up courage and wit in the face of misfortune,--that order of the day that the Vaudrey Cabinet would not accept, was adopted by a considerable majority: one hundred and twenty-two votes.

For Sulpice, it was a crushing defeat.

"One hundred and twenty-two deputies," he said, still speaking in a loud voice in the corridors, "to whom I have refused the appointment of some mayor or the removal of some rural guard!"

Warcolier, ever dignified, remarked in his usual style, that this manner of defending himself probably lacked some of that nobility which becomes a defeat bravely endured.

Vaudrey had only one course open, to send in his resignation. He was beaten, thoroughly beaten. He returned to the Hôtel Beauvau and after preparing his letter he took it himself to the President at the Élysée.

The President accepted it without betraying any feeling, as an employé at the registry office receives any deed of declaration. Two or three commonplace expressions of regret, a diplomatic shake of the hand, expressive of official sympathy, that was all. Vaudrey returned to the ministry and ordered his servants to prepare everything for leaving the ministerial mansion.

"When is that to be, Monsieur le Ministre?"

"To-morrow," answered Vaudrey, to whom the title seemed ironical and grated on his nerves.

He caused himself to be announced to Adrienne.

Adrienne, weary looking, was seated before a small desk writing, and beneath her fair hair, her face still looked as white as that of a corpse.

"There is some news," Vaudrey said to her abruptly. "I am no longer minister!"

"Ah!" she said.

Not a tremor, not a word of consolation. Three days previously, she would have leaped to his neck and said: "How happy we shall be! I have you back; I have found you again! What joy!"

Again, she would have tried to console him had he been suffering.

Now, she remained passive, frozen, indifferent to that news.

"We shall leave the Hôtel Beauvau!" said Sulpice.

"I am already preparing to leave," she replied. "My trunks are packed."

"Will you do me the kindness of leaving here with me and of going back to Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin with me?--After that, you can set out at once for Grenoble. But let us have no sign of scandal. The world must be considered."

She had listened to him coldly, unmoved by his trembling voice.

"That is proper," she said ironically. "The world must be thought of. I will wait then before leaving."

He was stupefied to find so much coldness and so unswerving a determination in this woman, as gentle as a child--my _wife-child_, he so frequently said to her of old. In her presence he felt ill at ease, discontented, hesitating whether he should throw himself at her feet and wring pardon from her, or fly from her and be with Marianne, perhaps forever. But no, it was Adrienne, his poor, his dear Adrienne that he would keep and love! Ah! if she pardoned him! If he had dared to kneel at her feet, to plead and to weep! But this living corpse froze him, he was afraid of her, of that gentle and devoted creature.

He went downstairs again, saying to himself that he would take a hurried dinner and then go to Rue Prony.

He was, however, obliged to occupy himself in despatching the last current business. He must hand over his official duties to his successor. There was a mocking expression in these words: _his successor!_

"After all, he will have one also!"

He still had unexpected heartbreakings to experience. People to whom he had promised appointments and decorations came, almost breathless, suddenly stirred by the news, to entreat him to sign the nominations and to prepare the decrees while he was _still_ minister. The ravens were about the corpse. _Monsieur Eugène_, still bowing low, although not quite so low as heretofore, endeavored to dismember Vaudrey the Minister. He wanted a little piece, only one piece! A sub-prefecture of the third class!

He had already been informed at the Élysée that Granet was to be his successor. _Parbleu!_ he expected it! But the realization of his fears annoyed him. And who would Granet keep for his Secretary of State? Warcolier, yes Warcolier, with the promise of giving him the first vacant portfolio.

"How correct was Ramel's judgment?" thought Sulpice.

Vaudrey, with a sort of rage urging him, immediately set himself about a task as mournful as a funeral: packing up. It now seemed to him that he had just suffered a total overthrow. Books and papers were being packed in baskets. Before he was certain of his fall, he thought it was delightful to escape from so much daily bother, but now he felt as if he were being discrowned and ruined. Ruin! It truly threatened him indeed and held him by the throat. He had realized on many pieces of property within the past year for Marianne!

Adrienne, on the contrary, left this great cold hôtel of Place Beauvau, as if she were leaving a prison, with a comforting sense of deliverance. A bad dream was ended. She could lay down her official mask, weep at ease, complain at will, fly to that Dauphiny where her youth was left. She would leave to-morrow. Doctor Reboux awaited her in ignorance.

After having given his first orders and arranged his most important documents, Sulpice went out to walk to Marianne's. At first he wandered along mechanically without realizing that he was going toward the quays, almost fearing the interview with his mistress, now that he was only a defeated man. He had nearly reached the Seine before he was aware of it. He looked at his watch.

Eleven o'clock.

Marianne had been awaiting him for some time.

He now followed, with the slow march of persons oppressed with a sense of weariness, these deserted quays, that terrace on the bank of the river, whose balustrades permitted glimpses of the silhouettes of slender trees. He met no one. Upon the Place de la Concorde, still wet with the scarce dried rain of this November night, as mild as an evening in spring, permeated by a warm mist, he looked for a moment at the Palace of the Corps Législatif, gloomy-looking and outlining its roofs against the misty sky, whose gleams fell on the horizon with a bluish tint, while upon the broad sidewalks, the jets of gas magnified the reddened reflections with their own ruddy hues. Along the grand avenue of the Champs-Élysées there were only two immense parallel rows of gas-lamps and here and there, moving, luminous points that looked like glow-worms. Vaudrey mechanically stopped a moment to contemplate the scene.

That did not interest him, but something within him controlled him. He continued to walk unwittingly in the direction of Parc Monceau. The solitude of the Champs-Élysées pleased him. While passing before an important club with its windows lighted, he instinctively shuddered. Through the lace-like branches of the trees, he looked at the green shades, the lustres, the unpolished sconces, with the backgrounds of red and gold hangings, and the great, gold frames, and he imagined that they were discussing the causes of his defeat and the success of Granet.

"They are speaking of me, in there! They are talking about my fall! He is fallen! Fallen! Beaten!--They are laughing, they are making jokes! There are some there who yesterday were asking me for places."

He continued on his way without quickening his pace; the deserted café concerts, as melancholy-looking as empty stages, the wreaths of suspended pearl-like lamps illuminated during the summer months but now colorless, seemed ironical amid the clumps of bare trees as gloomy as cemetery yews, exhaling a sinister, forsaken spirit as if this solitude were full of extinct songs, defunct graces, phantoms, and last year's mirth. And Vaudrey felt a strangely delicious sensation even in his bitterness at this impression of solitude, as if he might have been lost, forgotten forever, in the very emptiness of this silent corner.

Going on, he passed before the Élysée.

A _sergent de ville_ who was slowly pacing up and down in front of an empty sentry-box, his two hands ensconced in the sleeves of his coat, the hood of which he had turned up, cast a sidelong glance at him, almost suspiciously, as if wondering what a prowler could want to do there, at such an hour.

"He does not know whom he has looked at," he said. "And yesterday, only yesterday, he would have saluted me subserviently!"

The windows of the Élysée facing the street were still lighted up and Vaudrey thought that shadows were moving behind the white curtains.

"The President has not yet retired! He has probably received Granet! And Warcolier!--Warcolier!"

Before the large door opening on Faubourg Saint-Honoré, four lamps were burning over the head of a Parisian guard on duty, with his musket on his shoulder, the light shining on the leather of his shako. Some weary-looking guardians of the peace were chatting together. At the end of the court before the perron, a small, red carpet was laid upon the steps and in front of the marquee faint lights gleamed. Vaudrey recalled that joyous morning when he entered there, arriving and descending from his carriage with his portfolio under his arm.

He hurried his steps and found himself on Place Beauvau. His glance was attracted by the grille, the hôtel, the grand court at the end of the avenue. Sulpice experienced a feeling of sudden anger as he passed in front of the Ministry of the Interior whose high grille, now closed, he had many times passed through, leaning back in his coupé. He pictured himself entering there, where he would never again return except as a place-seeker like those eternal beggars who blocked its antechambers. He still heard the cry of the lackey when the coachman crushed the sand of the courtyard under the wheels of the carriage: "Monsieur le Ministre's carriage!"--He went upstairs, the lackeys saluted him, the coupé rolled off toward the Bois.

Now, here in that vulgar mansion another was displaying himself, seated on the same seats, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same bed and giving his orders to the same servants. He experienced a strange sensation, as of a theft, of some undue influence, of suffering an ejectment by a stranger from some personal property, and this Granet, the man sent there as he had been, by a vote, seemed to him to be a smart fellow, a filibuster and an intruder.

"How one becomes accustomed to thinking one's self at home everywhere!" thought Vaudrey.

He partially forgot the keen wound given to his self-love by the time that he found himself close to Parc Monceau approaching Rue Prony. In Marianne's windows the lights were shining. To see that woman and hold her again in his arms, overjoyed, that happiness would console him for all his mortifications. Marianne's love was worth a hundred times more than the delights of power.

Marianne Kayser was evidently waiting for Sulpice. She received him in her little, brilliantly-lighted salon, superb amid these lights, in a red satin robe de chambre that lent a strange seductiveness to her bare arms and neck which shone with a pale and pearly lustre beneath the light.

Vaudrey felt infinitely moved, almost painfully though deliciously stirred, as he always did when in the presence of this lovely creature.

She extended her hand to him, saying in a singular tone that astonished him:

"_Bonjour, vous!_"

"Well!" she said at once, pointing to a journal which was lying on the carpet, "is there anything new?"

"Yes," he said. "But what is that to me? I don't think of that when I am near you!"

"Oh! besides, my dear," Marianne continued, "your darling sin has not been to think of two things at one time! I don't understand anything of politics, it bothers me. I have been advised, however, that you have been thrashed by that Granet!"

"Thrashed, yes," said Sulpice, laughing, "you use peculiar phrases!--"

"Topical ones. I am of the times! But it appears that one must read the journals to learn about you. I am going to tell you some news however, before it appears in print."

"That interests me?"

"Perhaps, but it most assuredly interests me!"

"Important news?" asked Sulpice.

"Important or great, as you will!"

He nibbled his blond moustache nervously.

Guy had not deceived him.

"Then I think I know your news, my dear Marianne!"

"Tell me!" she said, as she stretched herself on a divan, her arms crossed, looking ravishingly lovely in her red gown.

He sought some forcible phrase that would crush her, but he could find none. His only desire was to take that fair face in his hands and to fasten his lips thereon.

Marianne smiled maliciously.

"It is true then," Vaudrey exclaimed, "that you love Monsieur de Rosas?"

"There, you are well-informed! It is strange! Perhaps that is because you are no longer a minister!"

"You love Rosas?"

"Yes, and I am marrying him. I have the honor to announce to you my marriage to Monsieur le Duc José de Rosas, Marquis de Fuentecarral. It surprises me, but it is so!--I have known days when I have not had six sous to take the omnibus, and now I am to be a duchess! This does not seem to please you? Are you selfish, then?"

Stretched on her divan, her neck and arms sparkling under the light of the sconces, she appeared to make sport of Vaudrey's stupefaction as he looked at her almost with fright.

"Now, my dear," she said curtly, but politely, as she toyed with a ring on her finger, "this is why I desired to see you to-day. It is to tell you that if you care to remain friendly on terms that forbid sensual enjoyment, which is not objectionable in putting a lock on the past, you may visit the Duchesse de Rosas just as you have Mademoiselle Kayser. But if you are bent on finding in the Duchesse de Rosas the good-natured girl that I have been toward you, and you are quite capable of it, for you are a sentimental fellow, then it will be useless to even appear to have ever known each other. I am turning the key on my life. _Crac! Bonsoir_, Sulpice!"

The unhappy man! He had cherished the thought of still visiting his mistress, but he found there an unlooked-for being, a new creature, who was unmistakably determined, in spite of her cunning charm, and she spoke to him in stupefying, ironical language.

"You would have me go mad, Marianne?"

"Why! what an idea! The phrase is decidedly romantic.--You should dispense with the blue in love as well as the exaggeration in politics."

"Marianne," Vaudrey said abruptly, "do you know that for your sake I have destroyed my home and mortally wounded my wife?"

"Well," she replied, "did I ask you to do so? I pleased you, you pleased me; that was quite enough. I desire no one's death and if you have allowed everything to be known, it is because you have acted indiscreetly or stupidly! But I who do not wish to mortally wound," she emphasized these words with a smile--"my husband, I expect him to suspect nothing, know nothing, and as you are incapable of possessing enough intelligence not to play Antony with him, let us stop here. Adieu, then, my dear Vaudrey!"

She extended her hand to him, that soft hand that imparted an electrical influence when he touched it.

"Well, what!--You are pouting?"

"I love you," he replied distractedly. "I love you, you hear, and I wish to keep you!"

"Ah! no, no! no roughness," she said with a laugh, as he, taking a seat near her, tried to draw her to him in his arms.

"To keep you, although belonging to another," whispered Vaudrey slowly.

"For whom do you take me?" said Marianne, proudly drawing herself up. "If I have a husband, I require that he be respected. A man who gives his name to a woman is clearly entitled to be dealt with truthfully!"

"Then," stammered Sulpice, "what?--Must we never see each other again?"

"We shall recognize each other."

"You drive me away?"

"As a lover!"

"Ah! stay," said Vaudrey, as, pale with anger, he walked across the room, "you are a miserable woman, a courtesan, you understand, a courtesan!--Guy has told me everything! You gave yourself to Jouvenet to avenge yourself on Lissac, you made a tool of me and you are making a sport of Rosas who is marrying you!--What have I not done for you!--I have ruined myself! yes, ruined myself!"

"My dear," interrupted Marianne, "see the difference between a gentleman like Monsieur de Rosas and a little bourgeois like yourself. The duke might have ruined himself for me but he would never have reproached me. One never speaks of money to a woman. You are a very honest, domestic man and you were born to worship your wife! You should stick to her! You are not made of the stuff of a true-born lover. What you have just told me is the remark of a loon!"

"Ah! if I had only known you!"

"Or anything! But I am better than you, you see. I was better advised than you. The bill of exchange that you owe to the Dujarrier or to Gochard,--whichever you like--it inconveniences you, I know!"

"Yes," said Vaudrey, "but--"

"You would not, I think, desire me to pay it with the duke's money, that Monsieur de Rosas should pay your debts?"

"Marianne," cried Sulpice, livid with rage.

"Bless me! you speak to me of money? You chant your ruin to me! The _De Profundis_ of your money-box, should I know that? I question with myself as to what it means!--However, knowing you to be financially embarrassed, I have myself found you help--Yes, I told someone who understands how to extricate business men, that you were embarrassed!"

"I?"

"There is nothing to blush about. I told Molina the _Tumbler_--You know him?"

Did he know him! At that very moment he saw the ruddy gold moon that represented the banker's face amid all the expanse of his shining flesh. He trembled as if in the face of temptation.

"Molina is a man of means," said Marianne. "If you need money, you can have it there! And now, once more, leave me to my new life! The past is as if it had never been!--_Bonjour, Bonsoir!_--and adieu, go!--Give me your hand!"

She smiled so strangely, half lying on the divan, and stretched out her white hand, which he covered with kisses, murmuring:

"Well, yes, adieu! Yes, adieu!--But once more--once!--this evening--I love you so dearly!--Will you?"

She quietly reached out her bare arm toward a silk bell-rope that she jerked suddenly and Vaudrey rose enraged and humiliated.

"Show Monsieur Vaudrey out," Marianne said to Justine, as she appeared at the door. "Then you may go to bed, my girl!"

Vaudrey left this woman's house in a fit of frenzy. She had just treated him who had paid for the divan on which she was reclining as a genuine duchess might have treated a man who had been insolently disrespectful toward her. He was almost inclined to laugh at it.

"It is well done! well done for you! Ah! the dolt! To trust a wanton! To trust Warcolier! To trust everybody! To trust everybody except Adrienne!--"

He, mechanically and without thought, resumed the way to Place Beauvau, forgetting that the ministerial home was no longer his. The porter--who knows? might not have opened the gate to him. The lackeys would have driven him off as the girl had done whom he had paid, yes, paid, paid! For she was a harlot, nothing more!

Gradually, the thought of that debt swelled by successive bills of exchange, and almost forgotten during the recent days of feverish excitement, took possession of his mind, he remembered that it must be discharged on the first day of December, in five days, and the thought troubled him like an impending danger. The prospect had often, during the last few weeks, made him anxious. He saw the months pass, the days flit with extraordinary rapidity, and the maturity, the inevitable due date draw near with the mathematical regularity of a clock. So long as months were ahead he felt no anxiety. Like gamblers he counted on chance. Besides, he still had some farms in Dauphiny. In short, a word to his notary and he could speedily get out of danger. Then, too, the date of payment was far away. He calculated that by economy as to his personal income and his official salary he could meet the bill to Gochard, whose very name sometimes made him laugh. But Marianne's exactions, unforeseen outlays, the eternal _leakage_ of Parisian life had quite prevented saving, and had dissipated in a thousand little streams the money that he wished to pay out in a lump in December. He soon grew alarmed by degrees at the approach of the maturity of the debt. He had written to his notary at Grenoble, and this old friend had replied that the farms of Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, mortgaged and cut up one after another, now represented only a ridiculous value, but that after all, Vaudrey had nothing to be concerned about, seeing that Madame Vaudrey's fortune was intact.

Adrienne's fortune! That then was all that remained to Vaudrey, and that might be his salvation. A fortune that was not very considerable, but still solid and creditable. But even if he were strangled by debt, dunned and driven into a corner, could he pay the debts he had contracted for his mistress by means of his wife's fortune? He was disgusted at the thought. It was impossible.

Vaudrey felt his head turn under the humiliation of his double defeat, the loss of parliamentary confidence, and Marianne's insulting laugh, and urged by the anxiety he felt about the obligation to be met in eight days, in his bewilderment he thought of writing to Gochard of Rue des Marais, to ask for time. This Gochard must be a half-usurer. Certain of being paid, some day, he would perhaps be delighted to renew the bill of exchange in inordinately swelling the amount. The letter was written and Vaudrey mailed it himself the following morning.