His Excellency the Minister

by Jules Claretie

V

On the pavement of the Boulevard Malesherbes, two policemen, wrapped in their hooded coats, restrained the crowd that gathered in front of the huge double-door of the house occupied by Madame Marsy. A double row of curious idlers stood motionless, braving benumbed fingers while watching the carriages that rolled under the archway, which, after quickly depositing at the foot of the brilliantly lighted perron women enveloped in burnooses and men in white gloves, their faces half-hidden by fur collars, turned and crossed the row of approaching coupés.

For an hour past there had been a double file of carriages, and a continuous stream of guests arriving on foot, who threw their cigars at the foot of the perron, chatting as they ascended the steps, which were protected by a covering of glass. The curious pointed out the faces of well-known persons. It was said in the neighborhood that the greater part of the ministers had accepted invitations.

Madame Marsy's salons were brilliant under the blazing lights. Guests jostled each other in the lobbies. Overcoats and mantles were thrown in heaps or strung up in haste, the gloved hands reaching out as in the lobby of a theatre to receive the piece of numbered pasteboard.

"You have No. 113," said Monsieur de Lissac to Marianne, who had just entered, wearing a pale blue cloak, and leaning on his arm.

She smiled as she slipped the tiny card into her pocket.

"Oh! I am not superstitious!"

She beamed with satisfaction.

People in the hall stood aside in order to allow this pretty creature to pass by; her fair hair fell over her plump, though slender, white shoulders, and the folds of her satin skirt, falling over her magnificent hips, rustled as she walked.

Lissac, with his eyeglass fixed, and ceremoniously carrying his flattened opera-hat, advanced toward the salon, amid the greedy curiosity of the guests who contemplated the exquisite grace of the lovely girl as if they were inhaling its charm.

Madame Marsy stood at the entrance of the salon, looking attractive in a toilet of black silk which heightened her fair beauty, and, with extended hands, smilingly greeted all her guests, while the charming Madame Gerson, refined and tactful, aided her in receiving.

Sabine appeared perfectly charmed on perceiving Marianne. She had felt the influence formerly of this ready, keen and daring intelligence. She troubled herself but little about Marianne's past. Kayser's niece was received everywhere, and had not Kayser decided to accompany her? He followed in the rear of the young girl. People had not observed him. He chatted with a man about sixty years old, with a white beard and very gentle eyes who listened to him good-naturedly while thinking perhaps of something else.

"Ah! my old Ramel, how glad I am to see you!" he said with theatrical effusion.

"It is a fact that we rarely see each other. What has become of you, Kayser?"

"I? I work. I protest, you know, I have never compromised—Never—The dignity of art—"

Their voices were drowned by the hubbub of the first salon, already filled with guests; Sabine meanwhile took Marianne, whom Lissac surrendered, and led her toward a larger salon with red decorations, wherein the chairs were drawn up in lines before an empty space, forming, thanks to the voluminous folds of the curtains, a sort of stage on which, doubtless, some looked-for actor was about to appear.

Nearly all these chairs were already occupied. The lovely faces of the women were illuminated by the dazzling light. Everybody turned toward Marianne as she entered the room, under the guidance of Sabine, who led her quickly toward one of the unoccupied seats, close to the improvised stage on which, evidently, Monsieur de Rosas was going to speak.

Madame Gerson had taken her seat near Marianne, who searched her black, bright eyes with a penetrating glance in order to interrogate the thoughts of this friend of the family. Madame Gerson was delighted. Sabine, dear Sabine, had achieved a success, yes, a success! Monsieur Vaudrey was there! And Madame Vaudrey, too! And Monsieur Collard—of Nantes—the President of the Council! And Monsieur Pichereau, who, after all, had been a minister!

"That makes almost three ministers, one of whom is President of the Council! Sabine is overcome with joy, yes, absolutely crazy! Think of it: Madame Hertzfield, Sabine's rival, never had more than two ministers at a time in her salon."

She added, prattling in soft, linnet-like tones, that Madame Hertzfield's salon was losing its prestige. Only sub-prefects were created there. But Sabine's salon was the antechamber to the prefectures!

"And if you knew how charming Monsieur Vaudrey is—a delightful conversationalist—he has dined excellently—he was twice served with an entrée!"

Marianne listened, but her mind was wandering far away. She was debating with herself as to when Monsieur de Rosas would appear on that narrow strip of waxed floor before her.

Guy had correctly surmised: it was Rosas and Rosas only whom this woman was seeking in Sabine's salon. She wished to see him again, to talk to him, to tempt destiny. A fancy.—A final caprice. Why not?

Marianne thought that she played a leading part there. She remembered this José very well, having met him more than once in former days with Guy. A Parisian Castilian, more Parisian than Spanish, he spoke with exquisite finish the classic tongue, and with the free-and-easy manner of a frequenter of the boulevards, chatted in the slang of the pavement or of the greenroom; he was an eminent virtuoso and collector, an author when the desire seized him, but only in his own interest, liberal in his opinions, lavish in his disposition, attractive in his manners; an eager traveller, he had, at thirty years of age, seen all that was to be seen, he had visited India and Japan, drunk camel's milk under the tents of the Kirgheez, and eaten dates with the Kabyles, and narrated with a sort of appetizing irony, love adventures which might have seemed romantic brag, if it were not that he lessened their improbability by his raillery. He was a kind of belated Byron, who might have been cured of his romantic tastes by the wounds and contact of reality.

She especially recalled a visit in Guy's company to José at an apartment that the duke had furnished in Rue de Laval. He occupied a painter's large studio, draping it with Oriental tapestry, crowding it with knickknacks and panoplies of weapons: an extravagant luxury,—something like the embarrassment of riches in a plundered caravansary. It was there that José had regaled Marianne and Guy with coffee served in Turkish fashion, and while they chatted, they had smoked that pale Oriental tobacco, that the Spaniard, quoting some Persian poets, gallantly compared to the perfumed locks of Mademoiselle Kayser.

During her years of hardship, she had many a time recalled that auburn-haired, handsome fellow, with his blue eye, pensive and searching, and lower lip curled disdainfully over his tawny beard trimmed in Charles V. style, as he reclined there, stretched on Hindoo rugs, chanting some monotonous song as slow as the movement of a caravan.

"Isn't my friend Rosas a delightful fellow?" Guy had asked her.

"Delightful!"

"And clever! and learned! and entertaining! and, what is not amiss, a multi-millionaire!"

Marianne thought of the absolute power, satisfied desires, whims and possible dreams that were linked with that man. He was a mass of perambulating gold. How many times she had dreamed, in the mists of her recollection, of that somewhat haughty smile that curled his delicate mustache, and those keen-edged teeth gleaming though his reddish beard, as if greedy to bury themselves deep in flesh!

But where was the duke now? Among the Kabyles or the Mormons? At Tahiti, Greenland, or gone to the devil? The papers had once announced that he was organizing an expedition to the North Pole. Perhaps he was lost among the icebergs in the Arctic Seas! She smiled at that, sighing involuntarily with sincere emotion, but prompted by selfish regret.

It had seemed to her that José had more than once permitted himself to express his affection for her. Politely, correctly, of course, as a gallant man addresses a friend's mistress, but manifesting in his reserve a host of understood sentiments and tender restraint that suggested hidden or implied declarations. Marianne had pretended not to understand him. At that time, she loved Guy or thought that she loved him, which amounts to the same thing. She contented herself with smiling at the flirtation of Monsieur de Rosas.

"I have perhaps been very stupid," she said to herself. "Pshaw! he might have been as silly as I, if occasion demanded. The obligations of friendship! The phantom of Guy!"

She suddenly stopped and this name escaped her lips: José—Joseph!

Nevertheless, this was one of the vexations of this girl: she was angry because she had acted rightly. Others suffer remorse for their ill deeds, but she suffered for her virtue. She often thought of the Duc de Rosas, as her mother Eve must have thought of Paradise lost. She would have stirred, astonished, conquered, crushed Paris, if she had been the mistress of Rosas.

"What then! Whose fault was it? How foolish of one not to dare everything!"

Now see how suddenly and unexpectedly, just as an adversary might offer an opportunity for revenge, chance, at the turning-point of her life, had brought back to Paris this José whom she had never forgotten, and who perhaps remembered her, and by whom she would be recognized most assuredly, in any case. It was an unhoped, unlooked-for opportunity that restored Marianne's faith in herself, superstitious as she was, like all successful gamblers.

She had fallen, but how she could raise herself by the arms of the duke! One must be determined.

Guy and Sabine were met on the way, like two helpers. She profited by this circumstance, using the one to reach the other and to gain Rosas from the latter. She bore a grudge, nevertheless, against Guy de Lissac, the insolent and silly fellow who had formerly left her. Bah! before taking vengeance on him, it was most important to make use of him, and, after all, revenge is so wearisome and useless.

Now Kayser's niece, Guy's mistress, a woman who had given herself or who had been taken, who had sold herself or who had been purchased, a young girl who remained so in features, gracefulness and the virgin charms that clothed her courtesan's body—her smile a virgin's, her glance full of frolic—Marianne was now within a few feet of him whom she expected, wishing for him as a seducer desires a woman.

"If he has loved me one moment, one single moment, Rosas will love me," she thought.

The salon was stiflingly hot, but Marianne was determined to keep herself in the first row, to be directly under the eye of the duke.

She felt the waves of over-heated air rise to her temples, and at times she feared that she would faint, half-stifled as she was and unaccustomed now to attend soirées. She remained, however, looking anxiously toward the door, watching for the appearance of the traveller and wondering when the pale face of the Spaniard would show itself.

At a short distance from her there was a young woman of twenty-three or twenty-four, courted like a queen and somewhat confused by the many questions addressed to her; robed in a white gown, she was extremely pretty, fair, and wore natural roses in her ash-colored hair, her eyes had a wondering expression, her cheeks were flushed, and in her amiable, gracious manner, she disclosed a touch of provincialism, modesty and hesitation—Marianne heard Madame Gerson say to her neighbors:

"It is the minister's wife."

"Madame Vaudrey?"

"Yes! Very charming, isn't she?"

"Ravishingly pretty! Fresh-looking!"

Then in lowered tone:

"Too fresh!"

"Rather provincial!"

And one voice replied, in an ironical, apologetic tone:

"Bless me, my dear, nothing dashing! Hair and complexion peculiarly her own! So much the better."

Notwithstanding the low tone of this conversation, Marianne heard it all. One by one, every one looked at this young woman who borrowed her golden tints from the rising sun. She bore the popular name of the new minister. She entered into prominence with him, accepting gracefully and unaffectedly the weight of his fame. Her timid, almost restless, uncertain smile, seemed to crave from the other women pardon for her own success, and there, surrounded by a group of men seated near the window, were two persons for whom chairs had just been placed, one of whom was a young, happy man, who exhaled an atmosphere of joy, and looked from time to time toward Adrienne and Marianne as if to see if the young wife were annoyed.

"Where is Monsieur Vaudrey then?" Marianne asked Madame Gerson.

"Why, he is just opposite to you! There on your right, beside Monsieur Collard, and he is devouring you with his glances."

"Ah, bah!" said Marianne with an indifferent smile.

And she looked in her turn.

She had, in fact, already noticed this very elegant man who had been watching her for some time.

But how could she know that he was Monsieur Vaudrey? He was delightful, moreover, sprightly in manner and of keen intelligence. A few moments before, she had heard him, as she passed by him under Sabine's guidance, utter some flattering remarks which had charmed her and made her smile.

Ah! that was Vaudrey?

She had often heard him spoken of. She had read of his speeches. She had even frequently seen his photograph in the stationers' windows.

The determined air of this young man, whom she knew to be eloquent, had pleased her. She ought then to have recognized him. He was exactly as his photographs represented him.

Of all the glances bestowed on the minister, Marianne's especially attracted Sulpice. A moment previously he had felt a singular charm at the appearance of this woman, threading her way directly between the rows of men by whom she was so crowded as to be in danger of having her garments pulled from her body. In his love of definitions and analyses, Vaudrey had never pictured the Parisian woman otherwise, with her piquant and instantaneous seductiveness, as penetrating as a subtle essence.

Marianne, smiling restlessly, looked at him and allowed him to look at her.

Her cheeks, which were extremely pale, suddenly became flushed as if their color were heightened by some feverish attack, when, amid the stir caused by the curiosity of the guests, and a greeting manifested by the shuffling of feet and the murmuring of voices, Monsieur de Rosas appeared; his air was somewhat embarrassed, he offered his arm to Madame Marsy, who conducted him to the narrow stage as if to present him.

"At last! ah! it is he!"

"It is really the Duc de Rosas, is it not?"

"Yes, yes, it is he!"

"He is charming!"

The name of Rosas, although only repeated in an undertone by the lips of these women, rung in Marianne's ears, sounding like a quickstep played on a clarion. It seemed to her that a decisive moment in her life was announced fantastically in those utterances. Even now, while burning with the very fever of her eagerness, she felt the gambler's superstition. As soon as she saw José, she said to herself at once that if he saw her and recognized her first glance, then he had not forgotten her and she could hope for everything. Everything! "Men happily forget less quickly than women," she thought. "Through egotism, or from regret, some abandon themselves to their reminiscences with complacency, like this Guy, and recognize on our countenances the lines of their own youth. Others, perhaps, mourn over the lost opportunity, and the duke is sentimental enough to be of that class."

She thought that Rosas must look at her, yes, at any cost; and with body inclined, her chin resting on her gloved right hand, while the other handled her fan with the skill peculiar to the Spanish women, she darted at the duke a rapid glance, a glance burning with desire and in which she expressed her whole will. The human eye has within it all the power of attraction possessed by a magnetic needle. As if he had experienced the actual effect of that glance fixed on his countenance, the duke raised his head after a polite but somewhat curtly elegant bow, to look at the audience of lovely women whom Sabine had gathered to greet him, and, as if only Marianne had been present, he at once saw the motionless young woman silently contemplating him.

Rosas, as he appeared within the frame formed by the red curtains, his thin, regular and ruddy face looking pale against the white of his cravat and the bosom of his shirt, looked like a portrait of a Castilian of the time of Philip II., clothed in modern costume, his fashionable black clothes relieved only by a touch of vermilion, a red rosette. But however fashionable the cut of his clothes might be, on this man with the vague blue eyes, and looking contemplative and sad with his upturned moustache, the black coat assumed the appearance of a doublet of old, on which the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor looked like a diminutive cross of Calatrava upon a velvet cloak.

In fixing, to some extent, his wandering glance on the fervent look of Marianne, this melancholy Spanish face was instinctively lighted up with a fleeting smile that immediately passed and was followed by a slight, respectful bow, quite sufficient, however, to surround the young woman with an atmosphere that seemed to glow.

"He has recognized me! at once! come!—I am not forgotten."

As in the glorious moment of victory, her bloodless face was overspread with a dazzling expression of joy. Boldly raising her head and inviting his glances as she had braved them, she listened, with glowing eyes, drinking each word that flowed from his lips, her nostrils distended as if to scent the approach of an Oriental perfume, to the recital of the narrative commenced by the duke in a measured, cajoling tone, which grew animated and louder.

Everybody listened to Rosas. Only the slight fluttering of fans was heard like a beating of wings. Without changing the tone of his discourse, and recounting his travels to his audience as if he were addressing only Marianne, he told in a voice more Italian than Spanish, in musical, non-guttural cadences, of his experiences on the borders of the Nile, of the weariness of the caravans, of the nights passed under star-strewn skies, of the songs of the camel-driver, slowly intoned like prayers, of the gloom of solitary wastes and of the poetic associations of the ruins slumbering amid the red sands of the desert. At times he recited a translation of an Arabian song or remarked in passing, on some mournful ballad, refined as a Sennett, deep as the infinite, in which the eternal words of love, tender and affecting in all languages, assumed an intensely poetic character under the influence of their Semitic nature; songs in which passers-by, strangers, lovers dead for centuries, who had strewed, as it were, their joys and their sobs over the sands of the desert, told the color of the hair and of the eyes of their dear ones, pleaded with their betrothed dead for the alms of love, and promised to spectres of women rose-colored garments and flowers that time would never wither.

These songs of Arabs dying for Nazarenes, of sons of Mohammed sacrificing themselves for the daughters of Aïssa were so translated by this Castilian that the exquisite charm of the original, filtered through his rendering, lost none,—even in French,—of the special characteristics of his own nation, a half-daughter of the Orient. And inevitably, with its melancholy repetition, the poetry he spoke of dwelt on wounded, suffering love, on the anguish of timid hearts, and the sobs of unknown despairing Arabs, buried for ages under the sands of the desert.

The duke seemed to take pleasure in dwelling on these poetic quotations rather than on the reminiscences of his travels. His individuality, his own impressions vanished before this passionate legacy bequeathed by one human race to another. Marianne trembled, believing that she could see even in Rosas's thoughts a desire to speak especially for her and to her. Was it not thus that he spoke in his own house in the presence of Lissac, squatting on his divan like an Arab story-teller?

She felt her youth renewed by the memory of all those past years. She thought herself back once more in the studio on Rue de Laval. Sabine Marsy's salon disappeared, Rosas was whispering in her ear, looking at her, and allowing the love that he felt to be perceived, in spite of Guy.

Guy! who was Guy? Marianne troubled herself about no one but De Rosas. Only the duke existed now. Had Guy been blended with her life but for a single moment? She embraced Rosas with her burning glance.

She no longer saw Sulpice, but he never looked away from Mademoiselle Kayser. He thought her a most charming woman. A magnetic fluid, as it were, flowed from her to this man, and he, with wandering mind, did not hear one word of Monsieur de Rosas's narrative, but concentrated his thoughts upon that pretty, enticing woman, whom he could not refrain from comparing with his wife, sitting so near her at this moment.

Adrienne was very pretty, her beauty was more regular than the other's. Her smooth, blond hair was in contrast with the tumbled, auburn locks of Marianne, and yet, extraordinary as it was—Adrienne had never seemed to be so cold as on that evening, as she sat there motionless, watching, while a timid habitual smile played over her lips.

Sulpice suffered somewhat in consequence of this awkwardness on Adrienne's part, contrasted as it was with the clever freedom of manner, graceful attitude, and flowing outlines of that disturbing neighbor, with her dull white countenance, half-closed mouth, strange curl of her lips, which seemed turned up as if in challenge. She was decidedly a Parisian, with all her intoxicating charms, that alluring, if vicious attraction that flows from the eyes of even modest girls. Some words spoken by Monsieur de Rosas reaching Vaudrey's ears—a description of the somewhat fantastical preparation of poison by the Indians, explained by the duke by way of parenthesis—suggested to Sulpice that the most subtle, the gentlest and most certainly deadly poison was, after all, the filtering of a woman's glance through the very flesh of a man, and he thirsted for that longed-for poison, intoxicating and delicious—

He was anxious for the duke to finish his remarks. What interest had he in all those travels, those Arabic translations, that Oriental poetry, or that poison from America? He was seized with the desire to know what such a charming creature as Marianne thought. Ah! what a pretty girl! He had already inquired her name; he happened to know Uncle Kayser; the painter had formerly sent him a printed memoir On the Method of Moralizing Art through the Mind.

The minister experienced on hearing Rosas the feeling of enervation that attacked him in the Chamber when, near the dinner-hour, an orator became too long-winded in his speech. He was unable to resist remarking in a whisper to the President of the Council, who was near him:

"Suppose we call for the clôture?"

Monsieur Collard in a diplomatic way expressed his approval of Rosas by a look that at the same time rebuked his colleague Vaudrey for his lack of sufficient gravity.

The duke did not tire any one except Sulpice. He was listened to with delight. The sentimental exterior of this man concealed a jester's nature, and the sober appearance of this Castilian wore all the characteristics of a polished lounger. The least smile that animated his passive countenance became at once attractive. Marianne thought him most delightful, or rather, she found him just what she had formerly believed him to be, a refined, delicate and very simple man in spite of his graciously haughty manner. When he concluded, the room echoed with the thunder of the applause. Even in the adjoining rooms the people applauded, for silence had been secured so as to hear his remarks. With a wave of his gloved hand, Rosas seemed to disclaim that his discourse merited the applause, and he received the greetings as a man of the world receives a salutation, not as a tenor acknowledging the homage paid to him. He strove to make his way through the group of young men who were stationed behind him.

"At last!" said Vaudrey, in a half-whisper.

It was the moment for which he had been waiting. He would be able now to address himself to Mademoiselle Kayser!

He hastened to offer his arm to Marianne.

Madame Marsy, eagerly and quickly, had already appropriated Monsieur de Rosas, who was moreover surrounded and escorted by a crowd who congratulated him noisily. Except for that, Marianne would have gone direct to him in obedience to her desires.

Vaudrey's arm, however, was not to be despised. The new minister was the leading figure in the assembly. She looked at Sulpice full in the face as if to inquire the cause of his eagerness in placing himself at her side, and observing that this somewhat mocking interrogation disconcerted him, she smiled at him graciously.

She passed on smiling, amid the double row of guests who bowed as she passed. She suddenly felt a sort of bewilderment, it seemed to her that all these salutations were for her benefit. She believed herself created for adoration. Inwardly she felt well-disposed towards Sulpice now, because he had so gallantly chosen and distinguished her among all these women.

After all, she would easily find Rosas again. And who knows? It would perhaps be better that the duke should seek her. Meanwhile, she crossed the salons, leaning on the arm of the minister. It was a kind of triumph.

Good-naturedly and politely, but without pride, the minister received all these attentions, becoming as they were to him in his official capacity, and as he moved on he uttered from time to time some commonplace compliment to Marianne, reserving his more intimate remarks for the immediate future.

Before the buffet, brilliant with light and the gleaming of crystal, the golden-tinted champagne sparkling in the goblets, the ruddy tone of the punch, the many fruits, the bright-colored granite and the ices, Vaudrey stopped, releasing the arm of the young girl but remaining beside her and passing her the sherbet which a lackey handed him over the piled-up plates.

Groups were always encircling him; searching, half-anxious glances greeted his. An eager hunt after smiles and greetings accompanied the hunt for tutti frutti. But the minister confined his attentions to Marianne, chafing under the eagerness of his desires, though bearing them with good grace, as if he were really the lover of the pretty girl.

Marianne stood stirring the sherbet with the point of a silver-plated spoon, examining this statesman, as seductive as a fashionable man, with that womanly curiosity that divines a silent declaration. A gold weigher does not balance more keenly in his scales an unfamiliar coin than a woman estimates and gauges the value of a stranger.

Marianne readily understood that she had fascinated Vaudrey. This Vaudrey! Notwithstanding that he possessed a charming wife, he still permitted himself to recognize beauty in other women, and to tell them so, for he so informed Marianne! He declared it by his smile, his sparkling eyes, and the protecting bearing that he instinctively manifested in the presence of this creature who glanced at him with perfect composure.

In the confusion attending the attack on the buffet and in the presence of the crowd that formed a half-circle round the minister, it was not possible for him to commit himself too much; and the conversation, half-drowned by the noise of voices, was carried on by fits and starts; but in order to make themselves understood, Vaudrey and Marianne drew nearer each other and found themselves occasionally almost pressed against each other, so that the light breath of this woman and the scent of new-mown hay that she exhaled, wafted over Sulpice's face. He looked at her so admiringly that it was noticeable. She was laced in a light blue satin gown that showed her rosy arms to the elbows, and her shoulders gleamed with a rosy tint that suggested the rays of a winter sun lighting up the pure snow. A singular animation, half-feverish, beamed in her small, piercing, restless eyes, and her delicate ears with their well-marked rims were quite red. The light that fell from the wax candles imparted to her hair a Titian red tint as if she had bound her locks with henna during the night. She was visibly assured of her power and smiled with a strange and provoking air.

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.

She had resumed her place on the divan, but Vaudrey had already forgiven her tête-à-tête with Rosas—and in truth, what had he to forgive?—This burning glance had effaced everything. He bore it away like a bright ray and still shuddered at the sensation he experienced.

He was in a hurry to leave. He now felt a sudden attack of nervousness. He was at the same moment charmed and bored. Again he resumed—amid the throng that made way for him, humbly performing its duty as a crowd—his rôle of minister, raising his head, and greeting with his official smile, but, at the bottom of his heart, really consumed by an entirely different thought. His brain was full of blue, of floating clouds, and he still heard Marianne's voice ringing in his ears with an insinuating tone, whispering: "We have many tastes in common," together with all kinds of mutual understandings which, as it were, burned like a fire in his heart.

He saw Adrienne still seated in the same place and smiling sweetly at him,—a smile of ardent devotion, but which seemed to him to be lukewarm. He leaned toward her, reached his hands out and said to De Lissac, hurriedly, as he grasped his hand: "We meet later, do we not, Guy?" Then he disappeared in the antechamber, while the servants hurried toward Madame Vaudrey, bearing her cloak, and as Vaudrey put on his overcoat, a voice called out:

"His Excellency's carriage."

"I am exhausted," said Adrienne, when she had taken her place in the carriage. "What about yourself?"

"I? not at all! I am not at all tired. It was very entertaining! One must show one's self now—"

"I know that very well," the young wife replied.

Like a child who is anxious to go to sleep, she gently rested her hood-covered head on Sulpice's shoulder. Her tiny hands sought her husband's hand, to press it beneath her cloak, as warm as a nest; and after she had closed her eyes, overcome as she was by weariness, her breathing seemed to become gradually almost as regular as in slumber, and Sulpice Vaudrey recalled once more, beneath the light of the chandeliers, that pretty blonde, with her half-bare arms and shoulders, and strange eyes, who moistened her dry lips and smiled as she swallowed her sherbet.

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