II
Madame Marsy was awaiting Guy de Lissac's return from the greenroom. From the moment she caught sight of Vaudrey standing within the range of her opera-glasses, she was seized with the eager desire to make him an habitué of her salon, the new salon that had just been launched. Madame Marsy was bitten by that tarantula whose bite makes modern society move as if afflicted with Saint Vitus's dance. A widow, rich and still young, very much admired, she had set herself to play the rôle of a leader in society to pass away the time. She was one of those women forever passing before the reporters' note-book, as others pass in front of a photographic apparatus. Of her inner life, however, very little was known to the public. But the exact shade of her hair, the color of her eyes, the cut of her gowns, the address of her tradesmen, the menu of her dinners, the programme of her concerts, the names of her guests, the visitors to her salon, the address of her mansion, were all familiar to every one, and Madame Marsy was daily reported by the chroniclers to the letter, painted, dressed and undressed.
There was some romantic gossip whispered about her. It was said that she had formerly led Philippe Marsy, the artist, a hard life. This artist was the painter of Charity, the picture so much admired at the Luxembourg, where it hangs between a Nymph by Henner and a Portrait of a Lady by Carolus Duran. She was pretty, free, and sufficiently rich since the sale of the contents of Philippe Marsy's studio. His slightest sketches had fetched enormous sums under Monsieur Pillet's hammer at the Hôtel Drouot, and Sabine after an appropriate interval of mourning, opened her salon.
Solitary, though surrounded by friends, she created no jealousy among her admirers, whose homage she received with perfect equanimity, as if become weary and desirous of a court but not of a favorite. She had a son at college who was growing up; he, however, was rarely to be met with in his mother's little hôtel in the Boulevard Malesherbes. This pale, slender youth in his student's uniform would sometimes steal furtively up the staircase to pay his mother a visit as a stranger might have done, never staying long, however, but hurrying off again to rejoin an old woman who waited at the corner of the street and who would take him by the arm and walk away with him—Madame Marsy, his grandmother.
It was the grandmother who was bringing up the boy. She and a kind-hearted fellow, François Charrière, a sculptor, who as he said himself, was nothing of a genius, but who, however, designed models and advantageously sold them to the manufacturers of lamps in the Rue Saint-Louis au Marais. It was Charrière who, in fulfilment of a vow made to his friend Marsy, acted as guardian to the boy.
Nobody in Paris now remembered anything about Philippe Marsy. In the course of time, all the little rumors are hushed in the roar and rattle of Parisian life. Only some semi-flattering rumors were connected with Sabine's name, together with some mysterious reminiscences. Moreover, she had the special attraction of a hostess who imparts to her salon the peculiar charm and flavor of unceremonious hospitality. One was only obliged to wear a white cravat about his throat, he did not have to starch his wits.
Only very recently had Sabine Marsy's salon acquired the reputation of being an easy-going one, where one was sure of a welcome, a sort of rendezvous where every one could be found as in the corridor of a theatre on the night of a first appearance, or on the sidewalk of a boulevard; a salon well-filled, that could rank with the semi-official and very distinguished one presided over by Madame Evan, and those others quieter, more sober—if a little Calvinistic—of the select Alsatian colony.
Sabine Marsy must have had a great deal of tact, force of character and perseverance in carrying out her plans, to have reached this point, more difficult to her, moreover, than it would have been to any other, as she had no political backing whatever. Her connection with society was entirely through the world of artists. Many of these, however, had brought to her salon some of the Athenians of the political world, connoisseurs, good conversationalists, handsome men, who freely declared with Vaudrey, that a republic could not exist without the assistance of women, that to women Orleanism was due, and those charming fellows had made Madame Marsy's hospitable salon the fashion.
Besides it is easy enough in Paris to have a salon if one knows how to give dinners. Some squares of Bristol board engraved by Stern and posted to good addresses, will attract with an almost disconcerting facility, a crowd of visitors who will swarm around a festive board like bees around a honeycomb.
Then too, Madame Marsy was herself so captivating. She was always on the watch for some new celebrity, as a game-keeper watches for a hare that he means to shoot presently. One of her daily tasks was to read the Journal Officiel in order to discover in the orator of to-day the Minister of State of to-morrow. She was always well informed beforehand which artist or sculptor would be likely to win the medal of honor at the Salon, and was the first to invite such a one and to let him know that it was she who had discovered him. In literature, she encouraged the new school, liking it for the attention it attracted. It was also her aim to give to her salon a literary as well as a political color. Artists and statesmen elbowed one another there.
For some days now, she had thought of giving a reception which was to be a surprise to her friends. She had heard of Japanese exhibitions being given at other houses. She herself was determined to give a soirée exotique. It happened just then that a friend of Guy de Lissac, Monsieur José de Rosas, a great lounger, had returned from a journey around the world. What a piece of good fortune! She too had known De Rosas formerly, and if she could only get him to consent, she could announce a most attractive soirée: the travels of such a man as Monsieur de Rosas: a rare treat!
"The Comtesse d'Horville gives literary matinées," said Sabine, quite on fire with the idea; "Madame Evan has poems and tragedies read at her receptions, I shall have lecturers and savants, since that is fashionable."
And what a woman wishes, a grandee of Spain willed, it appeared. Monsieur de Rosas decided, egged on a little by Guy de Lissac, to come and relate to Madame Marsy's friends his adventures in strange lands. The invitations to the soirée were already out.
Madame Marsy had also obtained a promise from three Ministers of State that they would be present. She had spread the news far and wide. A little more and she would have had their names printed on the programmes for the evening. She had had a success quite unlooked for—a promise from Monsieur Pichereau to be present—from Pichereau, that starched Puritan, and all the newspapers had announced his intention. When suddenly—stupidly—a cabinet crisis had arisen at the most unexpected moment, a useless crisis. Granet had interpellated Pichereau with a view to succeed him, and Pichereau fell without Granet succeeding him. A Ministry had been hastily formed, with Collard at its head, and Sulpice Vaudrey as Minister of the Interior in place of Pichereau! And all those Ministers of State who had promised to be present to hear Monsieur de Rosas at Madame Marsy's, fell from power with Pichereau.
"Such a Cabinet!" Sabine had exclaimed in a rage. "A Cabinet of pasteboard capuchins."
"A Ministry of pasteboard, certainly," Guy had answered.
Madame Marsy was quite beside herself. Granet indeed! Why could he not have waited a day or two longer before upsetting the whole administration. It would have been quite as easy to have overthrown Pichereau a day after her soirée as a few days before. Was Granet then, in a great hurry to be made minister? Oh! her opinion of him had always been a correct one! An ambitious schemer. He had triumphed, or at least he had expected to triumph. And the consequence was that Sabine found herself without a Minister to introduce to her guests. It was as if Granet had purposely designed this.
No, she did not know a single member of the new Cabinet. She had spoken once to the President of the council, Collard, a former advocate of Nantes, at a reception at the Élysée. Collard had even, in passing by her, torn off a morsel of the lace of her flounce. How charmingly, too, he had excused himself! But this acquaintanceship with him would hardly justify her in asking him brusquely to honor her with his presence at this soirée upon which her social success depended.
Her intimate friend, pretty Madame Gerson, who assisted her in doing the honors of her salon until the time when she herself would have a rival salon and take Sabine's guests away from her, sought in vain to comfort her by assuring her that Pichereau would be sure to come. He had promised to do so. He was a sincere man, and his word could be relied on. He would, moreover, bring his former colleagues from the Departments of Public Instruction, and Post and Telegraph. He had promised. Oh! yes, Pichereau! Pichereau, however, mattered very little to Sabine now! Ex-ministers, indeed! she could always have enough of them. It was not that kind that she wanted. She did not care about her salon being called the Invalides as that of a rival was called the Salon des Refuseès. No, certainly not, that was something she would never consent to.
Granet's impatience had upset all her plans.
So Madame Marsy, side by side in her box with Madame Gerson, whose dark, brilliant beauty set off her own fair beauty, had listened with a bored and sulky manner to the first act of L'Africaine, while Monsieur Gerson conversed timidly, half under his breath, with Guy de Lissac, who made the fourth occupant of the box.
At the end of the second act, however, Lissac suddenly caught sight of Vaudrey's smiling countenance beside Granet's waxed moustaches in the manager's box.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, "there is Vaudrey!"
Madame Marsy, however, had already caught sight of him. She turned her opera-glass upon the new Cabinet Minister, whose carefully arranged blonde beard was parted in the middle and spread out in two light tufts over his white necktie, his silky moustaches turned jauntily upwards against his fleshy cheeks. Sabine, continuing to look at the newcomer through her glass, saw as he moved within the shadow of the box, this man of forty, with a very agreeable and still youthful face, and as he leaned over the edge of the box to look at the audience, she noted that he had a slight bald spot on the top of his skull between the fair tufts that adorned the sides of his head.
"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, "I thought that he was a dark man."
"No, no," answered Lissac, "on the contrary, he was a fair, handsome youth when we both studied law here in Paris together."
Madame Marsy, as if she had been touched by an electric spark, turned quickly round on her chair to look at Guy, displaying to him as she did so, a lovely face, surmounting the most beautiful shoulders imaginable.
"What! you know the minister so intimately?"
"Very intimately."
"Then, my dear Lissac, you can do me the greatest favor. No, I do not ask you to do it, I insist on it."
Over the pretty Andalusian features of Madame Gerson, a mocking smile played.
"I have guessed it," she exclaimed.
"And so have I," said Lissac. "You wish me to present the new Minister of the Interior to you? You have a friend you want appointed to a prefecture."
"Not at all. I only want him to take Pichereau's place at my reception. My dear Lissac, my kind Lissac," she continued in dulcet tones, and clasping her little gloved hands entreatingly, like a child begging for a toy, "persuade Monsieur Vaudrey to accept this invitation of mine and you will be a love, you understand, Lissac, a love!"
But Guy had already risen and with a touch of his thumb snapping out his crush hat, he opened the door of the box, saying to Sabine as he did so:
"Take notice that I ask nothing in return for this favor!"
Madame Marsy began to laugh.
"Ah!" she cried, "that is discreet, but I am willing to subscribe to any condition!"
"Selika is cold beside you," said Lissac as he disappeared through the open doorway, "I will bring you your minister in ten minutes."
Sabine waited nervously. The curtain had just fallen on the third act. The manager's box was empty. Guy would doubtless be obliged to rejoin Vaudrey, and neither the minister nor his friend would be seen again. Just then some one knocked at the door of the box. Monsieur Gerson, overcome by fatigue, and weary as only a man can be who is dragged against his will night after night to some place of amusement, was dozing in the rear of the box. At a word from his wife he got up and hastened to open the door. It proved to be an artist, an old friend of Philippe Marsy, who came to invite Sabine to his studio to "admire" his Envoy that he had just finished for the Salon. Sabine received him graciously, and promised him somewhat stiffly that she would do so. She tapped impatiently with her fan upon her fingers as the orchestra began to play the prelude to the fourth act. It was quite certain that Lissac had failed in his mission.
Suddenly, in the luminous space made by the open door, Guy's elegant figure appeared for a moment, disappearing immediately to allow a man to pass who entered, smiling pleasantly, and at whom a group of people, standing in the lobby behind, were gazing. He bowed as Lissac said to Sabine:
"Allow me, madame, to present to you His Excellency the Minister of the Interior."
Sabine, suddenly beaming with joy, saw no one but Sulpice Vaudrey amongst the group of men in dress-clothes who gave way to allow the dignitary to pass. She had eyes only for him!
She arose, pushing back her chair instinctively, as the Minister entered, Monsieur and Madame Gerson standing at one side and Sabine on the other and bowing to him,—Sabine triumphant, Madame Gerson curious, Monsieur Gerson flattered though sleepy.
Sulpice seated himself at Madame Marsy's side, with the amiable condescension of a great man charmed to play the agreeable, and to visit, at the solicitation of a friend, a fair woman whom all the world delighted to honor. It seemed to him to put the finishing touch to that success and power which had been his only a few days.
He went quite artlessly and by instinct wherever he might have the chance to inhale admiring incense. It seemed to him as if he were swimming in refreshing waters. Everything delighted him. He wished to be obliging to every one. It seemed to him but natural that a woman of fashion like Sabine should wish to meet him and offer him her congratulations, as he himself, without knowing her, should desire to listen to her felicitations. To speak in complimentary terms was as natural to him as to listen to the compliments of others.
He delighted in the atmosphere of adulation which surrounded him, these two pretty women who smiled upon him with a gratitude so impressive, pleased him. Sabine appeared especially charming to him when, speaking with the captivating grace of a Parisian, she said:
"I hardly know how to thank my friend Monsieur de Lissac for inducing you to listen to the entreaties of one who solicits—"
"Solicits, madame?" said the minister with an eagerness which seemed already to answer her prayer affirmatively.
"I hope your Excellency will consent to honor with your presence a reunion of friends at my house—a reunion somewhat trivial, for this occasion, but clever enough."
"A reunion?" replied Vaudrey, still smiling.
"Monsieur de Lissac has not told you then, what my hopes are?"
"We are too old friends, Lissac and I, for him not to allow me the pleasure of hearing from your own lips, madame, in what way I may be of service to you, or to any of your friends."
Sabine smiled at this well-turned phrase uttered in the most gallant tone.
Who then, could have told her that Vaudrey was a provincial? An intimate enemy or an intimate friend. But he was not at all provincial. On the contrary, Vaudrey was quite charming.
"Monsieur de Rosas has had the kindness, your Excellency, to promise to come to my house next Saturday and give a chatty account of his travels. He will be, I am quite sure, most proud to know that in his audience—"
Sulpice neatly and half modestly turned aside the compliment that was approaching.
He knew Monsieur de Rosas. He had read and greatly admired some translations of the Persian poets by that lettered nobleman, which had been printed for circulation only amongst the author's most intimate friends. Vaudrey had first met Monsieur de Rosas at a meeting of a scientific society. Rosas was an eminent man as well as a poet, and one whom he would be greatly pleased to meet again. A hero of romance as erudite as a Benedictine. Charming, too, and clever! Something like a Cid who has become a boulevard lounger on returning from Central Asia.
This portrait of Rosas was a clever one indeed, and Sabine nodded acquiescence again and again as each point was hit off by Vaudrey. He, in his turn, basked comfortably in the light of her smiles, and listened with pleasure to the sound of his own voice. He could catch glimpses through the box curtains from between these two charming profiles—one a brunette, the other a blonde—of the vast auditorium all crimson and gold, blazing with lights and crowded with faces. From this well-dressed crowd, from these boxes where one caught sight of white gleaming shoulders, half-gloved arms, flower-decked heads, sparkling necklaces, flashing glances, it seemed to Vaudrey as if a strange, subtle perfume arose—the perfume of women, an intoxicating odor, in the midst of this radiancy that rivaled the brilliant sun at its rising.
Upon the stage, amid the dazzling splendor of the ballet, in the milky ray of the electric light, the swelling skirts whirled, the pink slippers that he had seen but a moment before near by, and the gleaming, silver helmets, the tinfoil and the spangles shone in the dance. A fairy light enveloped all these stage splendors; and this luxurious ensemble, as seen from the depths of the box, seemed to him to be the glory of an unending apotheosis, a sort of fête given to celebrate his entrance on his public career.
Then, in the unconcealed effusion of his delight, without any effort at effect, speaking frankly to this woman, to Guy, and to Gerson, as if he were communing with himself to the mocking accompaniment of this Hindoo music, he revealed his joys, his prospects, and his dreams. He replied to Sabine's congratulations by avowing his intention to devote himself entirely to his country.
"In short, your Excellency," she said, "you are really going to do great things?"
He gazed dreamily around the theatre, smiling as if he beheld some lucky vision, and answered:
"Really, madame, I accepted office only because I felt it was my duty and as a means of doing good. I intend to be just—to be honest. I should like to discover some unappreciated genius and raise him from the obscurity in which an unjust fate has shrouded him, to the height where he belongs. If we are to do no better than those we have succeeded, it was useless to turn them out!"
"Ah! pardieu," said Lissac, while Madame Marsy smiled and nodded approval of Vaudrey's words, "you and your colleagues are just now in the honeymoon of your power."
"We will endeavor to make this honeymoon of as long duration as possible," laughingly replied Sulpice. "I believe in the case of power, as in marriage, that the coming of the April moon is the fault of the parties connected with it."
"It takes a shrewd person indeed to know why April moons rise at all!" said Guy. Vaudrey's thoughts turned involuntarily toward Adrienne, his own pretty wife, who was waiting for him in the great lonely apartments at the Ministry which they had just taken possession of as they might occupy rooms at a hotel.
He felt a sudden desire to return to her, to tell her of the incidents of this evening. Yes, to tell her everything, even to his visit behind the scenes—but he remained where he was, not knowing how to take leave of Madame Marsy just yet, and she, in her turn, divined from the slackened conversation that he was anxious to be off.
"I was waiting for that strain," said Madame Marsy to Guy, "now that it is over, I will go."
Vaudrey did not reply, awaiting Sabine's departure, so as to conduct her to her carriage.
People hurried out into the lobbies to see him pass by. Upon the staircases, attendants and strangers saluted him. It seemed to Vaudrey that he moved among those who were in sympathy with him. Lissac followed him with Madame Gerson on his arm; her jaded husband sighed for a few hours' sleep.
In the sharp, frosty air of a night in January, Sulpice, enveloped in otter fur, stood with Madame Marsy on his arm, waiting for the appearance of that lady's carriage, which was emerging from the luminous depths of the Place, accompanied by another carriage without a monogram or crest; it was that of the minister.
Sulpice gazed before him down the Avenue de l'Opéra, brilliant with light, and the bluish tints of the Jablockoff electric apparatus flooded him with its bright rays; it seemed to him as if all this brilliancy blazed for him, like the flattering apotheosis which had just before fallen upon him as he crossed the stage of the Opéra. It seemed like an aureole lighted up especially to encircle him!
Sabine asked Vaudrey as he escorted her to her carriage:
"Madame Vaudrey will, I trust, do me the honor to accompany your Excellency to my house? I will take the liberty to-morrow of calling on her to invite her."
The Minister bowed a gracious acquiescence.
Sabine finally thanked him by a gracious smile: her small gloved hand raised the window of the coupé, and the carriage was driven off rapidly, amid the din of horses' hoofs.
"Good-bye," said Lissac to Vaudrey.
"Cannot I offer you a seat in my carriage?"
"Thank you, but I am not two steps away from the Rue d'Aumale."
Vaudrey turned towards Madame Gerson; she and her husband bowed low.
"May I not set you down at your house, madame?"
"Your Excellency is very kind, but we have our own carriage!"
"Au revoir," said Vaudrey to Lissac, "come and breakfast with me to-morrow."
"With pleasure!"
"To the ministry!" said Vaudrey to the coachman as he stepped into his carriage.
He sank back upon the cushions with a feeling of delight as if glad to be alone. All the scenes of that evening floated again before his eyes. He felt once more in his nostrils the subtle, penetrating perfume of the greenroom, he saw again the blue eyes of the little danseuse. The admiring looks, the respectful salutes, the smiles of the women, the soft, caressing tones of Sabine, and Madame Gerson's pearly teeth, he saw or heard all these again, and above all, this word clear as a clarion, triumphant as a trumpet's blast: Success! All this came back again to him.
"You have succeeded!"
He heard Guy's voice again speaking this to him in joyous tones. Succeeded! It was certainly true.
Minister! Was it possible! He had at his beck and call a whole host of functionaries and servitors! He it was who had the power to make the whole machine of government move—he, the lawyer from Grenoble—who ten years ago would have thought it a great honor to have been appointed to a place in the department of Isère!
All those people whom he could see in the shadow of the lighted boulevards buying the newspapers at the kiosks, would read therein his name and least gesture and action.
"Monsieur le Ministre has taken up his residence on the Place Beauvau. Monsieur Vaudrey this morning received the heads of the Bureaus and the personnel of the Department of the Ministry of the Interior. Monsieur Vaudrey, with the assistance of Monsieur Henri Jacquier of Oise, undersecretary of State, is actively engaged in examining the reports of prefects and under-prefects. Monsieur will doubtless make some needed reforms in the administration of the prefectures." Everywhere, in all the newspapers, Monsieur Vaudrey! The Minister of the Interior! He, his name, his words, his projects, his deeds!
Success! Yes, it was his, it had come!
Never in his wildest visions had he dreamed of the success that he had attained. Never had he expected to catch sight of such bright rays as those which now shone down upon him from that star, which with the superstition of an ambitious man, he had singled out. Success! Success!
And now all the world should see what he would do. Already in his own little town, in his speeches, during the war, at the elections of 1871, and especially at Versailles, during the years of struggle and political intrigue, in the tribune, or as a commissioner or sub-commissioner, he had given proofs of his qualifications as a statesman, but the touchstone of man is power. Emerging from his semi-obscurity into the sunshine of success, he would at last show the world what he was and what he could do. Power! To command! To create! To impress his ideas upon a whole nation! To have succeeded! succeeded! succeeded! Sulpice's dreams were realized at last.
And whilst the ministerial carriage was driving at a gallop towards the Place Beauvau, Sabine, muffled up in her furs, her fine skin caressed by the blue-fox border of her pelisse, said to herself, quite indifferent to the man himself, but delighted to have a minister's name to enroll upon her list of guests:
"He is a simpleton—Vaudrey—but a very charming simpleton, nevertheless."
The iron gates of the Place Beauvau were thrown back for his Excellency's carriage to enter. The gravel creaked under the wheels, as the coupé turning off to the left, stopped under the awning over the door.
Sulpice alighted. The great door opened to admit him. Two white-cravatted servants occupied a bench while awaiting the minister's return.
Sulpice ran lightly up the great marble staircase leading to his private apartments. Handing his hat and coat to a servant in the antechamber, he gayly entered the little salon, where he found his wife sitting by a table reading La Revue by the light of a shaded lamp. At the sight of her pretty, fresh young face extended to greet him, with her blue eyes and smiling air, at the sound of her clear, sweet, but rather timid voice asking a little anxiously: "Well?" Sulpice took the fair face in both his hands and his burning lips imprinted a long kiss on the white forehead, over which a few curls of golden hair strayed.
"Well, my dear Adrienne, I have been greatly interested. All the kindness with which I was received, the evident delight with which the new cabinet has been welcomed by the people, even the grimaces of Pichereau whom I met,—if you only knew where—all gave me pleasure, delighted me, and yet made me fear. Minister! Do you know what I have been thinking of since I was made a minister?"
"Of what have you been thinking?" asked the young wife, who, with her hands folded, gazed trustingly and sweetly into Sulpice's feverish eyes.
"I?—I have been telling myself that it is not enough to be a minister. One must be a great minister! You understand, Adrienne, a great minister!"
As he spoke he took Adrienne's hands in his, and the young wife glanced up admiringly at this young man burning with hope, who stood there before her, declaring: "I will be great!"
She had never dreamed of his reaching such heights as these on that day when she felt the fingers of her fiancé trembling in her hand, the day that Sulpice had whispered the words in her ear which made her heart leap with joy: "I love you, Adrienne, I shall always love you—Always!"