Chapter 9

Vaudrey felt really much disturbed, he was attracted and half-angered by this pretty girl with dilating nostrils who calmly swallowed her glass of sherbet. He thought her at once exquisite and lovely, doubly charming with her Parisian grace and in her ball costume, her bare flesh as lustrous as mother-of-pearl under the brilliant light.

Her corsage was ornamented on the left side by an embroidered black butterfly, with outstretched wings of a brownish, brilliant tint, and Vaudrey, with a smile, asked her, without quite understanding what he said, if it were an emblematic crest.

She smiled.

"Precisely," she replied. "What I wear in my corsage I have in my mind. Black butterflies--or _blue devils_, as you choose."

"You are not exceptional," said Sulpice. "All women are such."

"All women in your opinion then, are a little--what is it called? a little out of the perpendicular--or to speak more to the point, a little queer, Monsieur le Ministre?"

The minister smiled in his turn, and looked at Marianne, whose eyes, seen between the blinking lids, gleamed as the electric eyes of a cat shine between its long lashes.

"No," he said, "no, but I blame them somewhat for loving the blue only in the butterflies of which you speak, the _blue devils_ that penetrate their brain! They are born for blue, however, for that which the provincial poets style 'the azure', and they shun it as if blue were detestable. _Blue!_ Nonsense! Good for men, those simpletons, who in the present age, are the only partisans of _blue_ in passion and in life."

Whether he desired it or not, he had drawn still closer to this creature who studied him like a strategist while he fawned on her with his glances, losing himself in that "blue" of which he spoke with a certain elegance, in which he desired to express mockery, but which was nevertheless sincere. In the same jesting tone, pointing to the light blue of her gown, she said:

"You see, your Excellency, that all women do not dislike blue."

"If it is fashionable, _parbleu!_ And if it becomes their beauty as well as this stuff of yours, they would adore it, most assuredly."

"They love it otherwise, too--In passion and in life. That depends on the women--and on men," she added, showing her white teeth while smiling graciously.

She dropped her spoon in the saucer and handed the sherbet to a servant. With an involuntary movement--or perhaps, after all, it was a shrewdly calculated one--she almost grazed Sulpice's cheek and lips when she extended her round and firm arm, and Sulpice, who was somewhat bewildered, was severely tempted, like some collegian, to kiss it in passage.

He closed his eyes and a moment after, on reopening them, the disturbing element having passed, he saw Marianne before him with her fan in her hand, and as if the image of which he spoke only now recurred to his memory, he said:

"Mademoiselle, it seems to me that in this very costume and as charming as you are at this moment, I have seen your portrait at the Salon; is it not so?"

"Yes," she said. "It is the very best painting that my uncle has produced."

"I thought it excellent before seeing you," said Sulpice, "but now--"

She did not feel satisfied with the smile that accompanied the compliment. She wished to hear the entire phrase.

"Now--?" said she, as a most seductive smile played on her lips.

"Now, I find it inferior to the original!"

"One always says so, your Excellency, except perhaps to the artist; but I was greatly afraid that you would not think me so, arrayed in this--this famous blue--this sky-blue that you love so much."

"And that I love a hundred times more from this evening forward," said he, in a changed and genuinely affected tone.

She did not reply, but looked at him full in the face as if to inform him that she understood him. He was quite pale.

"Would you not like to be one of the bright ornaments of my salon, as you are of that of Madame Marsy?" said he, in a whisper.

"With the greatest happiness, your Excellency."

What Sulpice said was not heard by the others; but Marianne felt that she was observed, envied already, and manifested her complete satisfaction with a toss of her head. In this atmosphere of flattery, oppressive as with the heavy odor of incense, she experienced a sensation of omnipotence, the intoxication of that power with which Vaudrey was invested, whose envied reflection was cast on her by that simple aside spoken in the midst of the crowd.

She was delighted and exceedingly proud. She almost forgot that her visit had been made on Rosas's account.

Vaudrey was about to add something, when Madame Marsy in passing to greet her guests, noticed Marianne and grasping her hand:

"I beg your pardon, your Excellency," she said, "but I must take her away from you. I have been asked for her."

"By whom?" said Vaudrey.

"Monsieur de Rosas!"

Vaudrey looked at Marianne. He observed distinctly a flash of joy illuminate her pale face and he felt a sudden and singular discontent, amounting almost to physical anguish. And why, great heavens?

Marianne smiled a salutation; he half-bowed and watched her as she went away, with a sort of angry regret, as if he had something further to say to this woman who was almost a stranger to him, and who, guided by Sabine, now disappeared amid the crowd of black coats and bright toilets. And then, almost immediately and suddenly, he was surrounded and besieged by his colleagues of the Chamber, men either indifferent or seeking favors, who only awaited the conclusion of the conversation with Mademoiselle Kayser, which they would certainly have precipitated, except for the fear of acting indiscreetly, in order to precipitate themselves on him. Amid all those unknown persons who approached him, Vaudrey sought a friend as he felt himself lost and taken by assault by this rabble.

The sight of the face of a friend, older than himself, a spare man with a white beard very carefully trimmed, caused him a feeling of pleasure, and he joyfully exclaimed:

"Eh! _pardieu!_ why, here is Ramel!"

He immediately extended both hands in warm greeting to this man of sixty years, wearing a white cravat twisted round his neck, like a neckerchief in the old-fashioned style, and whose black waistcoat with its standing collar of ancient pattern was conspicuous amid the open waistcoats of the fashionably-dressed young men who had been very eagerly surrounding the minister for the last few moments.

"Good day, Ramel!--How delighted I am to see you!"--

"And I also," said Ramel in a friendly and affectionate tone, while his face, that seemed severe, but was only good-natured and masculine, suddenly beamed. "It is not a little on your account that I came here."

"Really?"

"Really. I was anxious to shake hands with you. It is so long since I saw you. How much has happened since then!"

"Ah! Ramel, who the devil would have said that I should be minister when I took you my first article for the _Nation Française_!" said Vaudrey. "Bah! who is not a minister?" said Ramel. "You are. Remember what Napoléon said to Bourrienne as he entered the Tuileries: 'Here we are, Bourrienne! now we must stay here!'"

"That is exactly what Granet said to me when he told me of the new combination."

"Granet expressed in that more of an after-thought than your old Ramel."

"My best friend," said Sulpice with emotion, grasping this man's hands in his.

"It is so much more meritorious on your part to tell me that," said Ramel, "seeing that now you do not lack friendships."

"You are still a pessimist, Ramel?"

"I--A wild optimist, seeing that I believe everything and everybody! But I must necessarily believe in the stupidity of my fellows, and upon this point I am hardly mistaken."

"But what brings you to Madame Marsy's, you who are a perfect savage?"

"Tamed!--Because, I repeat to you, I knew that you were coming and that Monsieur de Rosas was to speak on the subject of savages, and these please me. If I had been rich or if I only had enough to live on, I should have passed my life in travelling. And in the end, I shall have lived between Montmartre and Batignolles: a tortoise dreaming that he is a swallow--"

"Ramel, my dear fellow," said the minister, "would you wish me to give you a mission where you could go and study whatever seemed good to you?"

"With my rheumatism? Thanks, your Excellency!" said Ramel, smiling. "No, I am too old, and never having asked any one for anything, I am not going to begin at my age."

"You do not ask, it is offered you."

"Well, I have no desire for that. I am at the hour of the _far niente_ that precedes the final slumber. It is a pleasant condition. One has seen so many things and persons that one has no further desires."

"The fact is," said the minister, "that if all the people you have obligated in your life had solicited an invitation from Madame Marsy, these salons would not be large enough to contain them."

"Bah! they have all forgotten as I have, myself," said Ramel, with a shake of his head and smiling pleasantly.

Vaudrey felt intense pleasure in meeting, in the midst of this crowd of indifferent or admiring persons, the man who had formerly seen him arrive in Paris, and with whom he had corresponded from the heart of his province, as with a kinsman. There was, in fact, between them, a relationship of mind and soul that united this veteran of the press with this young statesman.

The ideal sought was the same, but the temperaments were different. Ramel, although he had known them, had for a long time avoided those excitements of struggle and power that inflamed Vaudrey's blood.

"It was a glorious day when my pulse became regulated," he said. "Experience brought me the needed tonic."

Denis Ramel was a wise man. He took life as he found it, without enthusiasm as without bitterness. He was not wealthy. More than sixty years old, he found himself, after a life of hard, rough and continuous struggle, as badly off as when he started out on his career, full of burning hopes. He had passed his life honorably as a journalist--a journalist of the good old times, of the school of thought, not of news-tellers,--he had loyally and conscientiously exercised a profession in which he took pleasure; he had read much, written much, consumed much midnight oil, touched upon everything; put his fingers into every kind of pie without soiling them, and after having valiantly turned the heavy millstone of daily labor incessantly renewed for forty years, he had reached the end of his journey, the brink of the grave, almost penniless, after having skirted Fortune and seen Opportunity float toward him her perfumed and intoxicating locks more than a hundred times. Bent, weary, almost forgotten, and unknown and misunderstood by the new generation, that styled this enthusiasm, more eager, moreover, than that of juvenile faith, "old"--he saw the newcomers rise as he might have beheld the descent of La Courtille.

"It amuses me."

Ramel had, in the course of his career as a publicist, as a dealer in fame, assisted without taking part therein, in the formation of syndicates, allotments of shares and financial intrigues; and putting his shoulder to the wheel of enterprises that appeared to him to be solid, while seeking to strike out those which appeared to be doubtful, he had created millionaires without asking a cent from them, just as he had made ministers without accepting even a thread of ribbon at their hands.

This infatuating craft of a maker of men pleased him. All those pioneers in the great human comedy, he had seen on their entrance, hesitating and crying to him for assistance. This statesman, swelling out with his importance in the tribune, had received the benefit of his correction of his earlier harangues. He had encouraged, during his competition for the Prix de Rome, this member of the Institute who to-day represented national art at the Villa Médicis; he had seen this composer, now a millionaire, beg for a private rehearsal as he might ask alms, and slip into one's hands concert tickets for the Herz hall. He was the first to point out the verses of the poet who now wore _l'habit vert_. He had first heralded the fame of the actor now in vogue, of the tenor who to-day had his villas at Nice, yes, Ramel was the first to say: "He is one of the chosen few!"

Old, weary and knowing, very gentle and refined in his banter, and refusing to be blinded or irritated by the trickeries of destiny, Denis Ramel, when asked why, at his age and with his talents, he was neither a deputy, nor a millionaire, nor a member of the Institute, but only a Warwick living like a poor devil, smiled and said, with the tone of a man who has probed to the bottom the affairs of life:

"Bah! what is the use? All that is not so very desirable. Ministers, academicians, millionaires, prefects, men of power, I know all about them. I have made them all my life. The majority of those who strut about at this very time, well! well! it is I who made them!"

And, like a philosopher allowing the rabble to pass him, who might have been their chief, but preferred to be their judge, he locked himself in his apartments with his books, his pictures, his engravings, his little collection slowly gathered year by year, article by article, smoking his pipe tranquilly, and at times reviewing the pages of his life, just as he might have fingered the leaves of a portfolio of engravings, thinking when he chanced to meet some notable person of the day who shunned him or merely saluted him curtly and stiffly:

"You were not so proud when you came to ask me to certify your pay-slip for the cashier of the journal."

Ramel had always greatly esteemed Sulpice Vaudrey. This man seemed to him to be more refined and less forgetful than others. Vaudrey had never "posed." As a minister, he recalled with deep emotion the period of his struggles. Ramel, the former manager of the _Nation Française_, was one of the objects of his affection and admiration. He would have been delighted to snatch this man from his seclusion and place him in the first rank, to make this sexagenarian who had created and moulded so many others, noteworthy by a sudden stroke.

Amid the tumultuous throng, and feeling overjoyed to find once more one whom he could trust, to whom he could abandon himself entirely, he repeated to him in all sincerity:

"Come, Ramel! Would you consent to be my secretary general?"

"No! your Excellency," Ramel answered, as a kindly smile played beneath his white moustaches.

"To oblige me?--To help me?"

"No--Why, I am an egotist, my dear Vaudrey. Truly, that would make me too jealous. Take Navarrot," he added, as he pointed to a fashionable man, elegantly cravatted, carrying his head high, who had just greeted Vaudrey, using the same phrase eight times: "My dear minister--your Excellency--my minister--"

"Navarrot?"

"He appears to be very much attached to you!"

"You are very wicked, Ramel. He holds to the office and not to the man. He is not the friend of the minister, but of ministers. He is one of the ordinary touters of the ministry. He applauds everything that their Excellencies choose to say."

"Oh! I know those touters," said the old journalist. "When a minister is in power, they cheer him to the echo; when he is down, they belabor him."

Vaudrey looked at him and laughingly said: "Begone, journalist!"

"But at any rate,"--and here he extended his hand to Ramel,--"you will see me this evening?"

"Certainly."

"And you still live at--?"

"Rue Boursault, Boulevard des Batignolles."

"Till then, my dear Ramel! If occasion require, you will not refuse to give me your advice?"

"Nor my devotion. But without office, remember without office," said Ramel, still smiling.

Vaudrey took great delight in chatting with his old friend, but for a moment he had been seized with an eager desire to find amid the increasing crowd that thronged the salons, the pretty girl who had appeared to him like a statue of Desire, whetted desire, but even in her charms somewhat unwholesome, yet disturbing and appetizing.

He had come to Sabine Marsy's only by chance and as if to display in public the joy of his triumph, just as a newly decorated man willingly accepts invitations in order to show off his new ribbon, but he now felt happy for having done so. He had promised himself only to put himself in evidence and then disappear with Adrienne to the enjoyment of their usual chats, to taste that intimacy that was so dear to him, but which, since his establishment on Place Beauvau, had vanished.

He habitually disliked such receptions as that in which he now took part, those soirées as fatiguing as those crowds where one packs six hundred persons in salons capable of holding only sixty: commonplace receptions, where the master of the house is as happy when he refuses invitations as a theatre-manager when his play is the rage; where one is stifled, crushed, and where one can only reach the salon after a pugilistic encounter, and where the capture of a glass of syrup entails an assault, and the securing of an overcoat demands a battle. He held in horror those salons where there is no conversation, where no one is acquainted, where, because of the hubbub of the crowd or the stifling silence attending a concert, one cannot exchange either ideas or phrases, not even a furtive handshake, because of the packing and crushing of the guests. It was a miracle that he had just been able to exchange a few words with Mademoiselle Kayser and Ramel. The vulgarity of the place had at once impressed him,--the more so because he was the object of attraction for all those crowded faces.

All that gathering of insignificant, grave and pretentious young men, who, while they crowded, made their progress in the ranks of the sub-prefects, councillors of prefectures, picking up nominations under the feet of the influential guests as they would cigar stumps, disgusted him; men of twenty years, born, as it were, with white cravats, pretentious and pensive, creatures of office and not of work, haunting the Chambers and the antechambers, mere collectors of ideas, repeaters of serious commonplaces, salon democrats who would not offer their ungloved hand to a workman on the street; staff-majors ambitious of honors and not of devotion, whom he felt crowding around him, with smiles on their lips and applications in their pockets. How he preferred the quiet pleasure of reading at the fireside, a chat with a friend, or listening to one of Beethoven's sonatas, or a selection from Mendelssohn played by Adrienne, whose companionship made the unmarked flight of the hours pass more sweetly.

It was for that that he was created. At least he thought so and believed it. And now this salon that he had simply desired to traverse, at once seemed altogether delightful to him. And all this was due to his meeting a divine creature in the midst of this crowd. He was eager to find Marianne, to see her again. She aroused his curiosity as some enigma might.

What, then, was this woman, was she virtuous or of questionable status? Ah! she was a woman, or rather ten women in one, at the very least! A woman from head to foot! A woman to her finger tips, a refined, Parisian woman, perverse even in her virginity, and a virgin perhaps in her perversity. A problem in fair flesh.

As Vaudrey hurriedly left the buffet, every one made way for him, and he crossed the salons, eagerly looking out for Marianne. As he passed along, he saw Guy de Lissac sitting on a chair upholstered in garnet satin, his right hand resting on the gilded back and chatting with Adrienne who was fanning herself leisurely. On noticing Sulpice, the young woman smiled at him even at a distance, the happy smile of a loving woman, and she embraced him with a pure glance, asking a question without uttering a word, knowing well that he habitually left in great haste.

"Do you wish to return?" was the meaning of her questioning glance.

He passed before her, replying with a smile, but without appearing to have understood her, and disappeared in another salon, while Lissac said to Adrienne:

"What about the ministry, madame?"

"Oh! don't speak to me of it!--it frightens me. In those rooms, it seems to me that I am not at home. Do you know just what I feel? I fancy myself travelling, never, however, leaving the house. Ministers certainly should be bachelors. Men have all the honor, but their wives endure all the weariness."

"There must, however, be at the bottom of this weariness, some pleasure, since they so bitterly regret to take leave of it."

"Ah! _Dieu!_" said Adrienne. "Already I believe that I should regret nothing. No, I assure you, nothing whatever."

She, too, might have desired,--as Vaudrey did formerly--to leave the soirée, to be with her husband again, and she thought that Sulpice found it necessary to remain longer, since he had not definitely decided on going away.

The new salon that he entered, communicated with a smaller, circular one, hung with Japanese silk draperies, and lighted by a Venetian chandelier that cast a subdued light over the divans upon which some of the guests sat chatting. Sulpice immediately divined, as if by instinct, that Marianne was there. He went straight in that direction, and as he entered the doorway, through the opening framed by two pale blue portières, he saw in front of him, sitting side by side, the pretty girl and the Duc de Rosas to whom she had listened so attentively, almost devotedly, a little earlier; he recalled this now.

The light fell directly on Mademoiselle Kayser's shoulders and played over her fair hair. The duke was looking at her.

Vaudrey took but a single step forward.

He experienced an altogether curious and inexplicable sensation. This tête-à-tête displeased him.

At that moment, on half-turning round,--perhaps by chance--she perceived the minister and greeting him with a sweet smile, she rose and beckoned to him to approach her.

The sky-blue satin hangings, on which the light fell, seemed like a natural framework for the beautiful blonde creature.

"Your Excellency," she said, "permit me to introduce my friend, the Duc de Rosas, he is too accomplished not to appreciate eloquence and he entertains the greatest admiration for you."

Rosas had risen in his turn, and greeted the minister with a very peculiar half-inclination, not as a suitor in the presence of a powerful man, but as a nobleman greeting a man of talent.

Vaudrey sought to discover an agreeable word in the remarks of this man but he failed to do so. He had, nevertheless, just before applauded Rosas's remarks, either out of condescension or from politeness. But it seemed to him that here the duke was no longer the same man. He gave him the impression of an intruder who had thrust himself in the way that led to some possible opportunity. He nevertheless concealed all trace of the ill-humor that he himself could not define or explain, and ended by uttering a commonplace phrase in praise of the duke, but which really meant nothing.

As he was about to move away, Marianne detained him by a gesture:

"Well, your Excellency," she remarked, with a charming play of her lips as she smiled, "you see,"--and she pointed to the blue draperies of the little salon, as dainty as a boudoir--"you see that there are some women who like blue."

"Yes, Madame Marsy!--" Vaudrey answered, with an entirely misplaced irony that naturally occurred to him, as a reproach.

"So do I," said Marianne. "We have only chatted together five minutes, but I have found that time enough to discover that you and I have many tastes in common. I am greatly flattered thereby."

"And I am very happy," replied Vaudrey, who was disturbed by her direct glances that pierced him like a blade.