His Excellency the Minister

by Jules Claretie

VII

The soirée at Sabine Marsy's had caused Vaudrey to feel something like the enervation that follows intoxication. The next morning he awoke with his head heavy, after a night of feverish sleep, interrupted by sudden starts, wherein he saw that pretty, fair girl standing before him devouring sherbet and smiling gayly.

Every morning since he had been at the ministry, Sulpice had experienced a joyous sensation at finding himself again on his feet and rejoicing in life. He paced about his apartments, feeling a sort of physical delight, opening his window and looking out on the commonplace garden through which so many ministers had passed and which he called, as so many before him had done: My garden. His thoughts took him back then to that little convent garden at Grenoble. What a distance he had travelled since then! and how good it was to live!

That morning, on the contrary, the black and bare trees in the garden appeared to him to be very gloomy. He felt morose. He had been awakened early so that the despatches from the provinces might be laid before him. The information in them was quite insignificant. But then his spirit was not present. Once again he was at Sabine's, beside Marianne, so lovely in her sky-blue gown, and with her wavy locks.

If he had been free, he would have gladly sought the opportunity to see that woman again as soon as the morning commenced. He felt a kind of infantile joy in being thus perturbed and haunted. It seemed to him that this emotion made him feel younger. Formerly, on awakening, the dream of the night had followed him like some intoxication.

Formerly! but "formerly" he was not the important man, the distinguished personage of to-day.—He had not the charge of power as some others have the charge of souls. A minister has something else to do than to be under the sway of a vision. Sulpice dressed hurriedly, went down to his office, where a huge log-fire flamed behind an antique screen. He sat down in front of his large mahogany bureau, covered with papers, and on which was lying a huge black portfolio stuffed with documents bearing this title in stamped letters: Monsieur le Ministre de l'Intérieur. In the centre of the bureau had been placed a leather portfolio filled with sheets of paper bearing the title: Documents to be signed by Monsieur le Ministre. Beside this were spread out various reports, bearing upon one corner of the sheet a printed headline: Office of the Prefect of Police and Director-General of the Press.

Vaudrey settled down in his chair with the profound satisfaction of a man who has not grown weary of an acquired possession. This huge salon with its blackened pictures, cold marbles, and large, severe-looking bookcases, presented a sober bourgeois harmony that pleased him. It was like the salon of a well-to-do notary, with its tall windows overlooking the courtyard, already full of the shadows of importunate callers and favor seekers whom the secretary-general received in a room adjoining the ministerial cabinet. The minister inhaled once more the atmosphere of his new domicile before settling down to work. Every morning it was his custom to read the reports of the Director of the Press and of the Prefect of Police before all else.

He took up the report of the Prefect. Nothing serious. A slight accident on the Vincennes line near the fortifications of Paris. A train derailed. A few injured. In the Passage de l'Opéra, the previous evening, the early speech of the Minister of the Interior upon general policy, and that of the Finance Minister, who was to reply to the rumor, falsely or prematurely announcing the conversion of the five per cents, had caused an upward movement in value. All was satisfactory, all was quiet. The new minister enjoyed public confidence. Perfect.

Sulpice was delighted and passed on to the report of the Director of the Press. Except a small number of disgruntled and irreconcilable party journals, all the French and foreign papers warmly praised and supported the newly-created ministry. The Times declared that the coalition perfectly met the requirements of the existing situation. The Berlin papers did not take umbrage at it, although Monsieur Vaudrey had more than once declared his militant patriotism from the tribune. "In short," the daily report concluded, "there is a concert of praise, and public opinion is delighted to have finally secured a legitimate satisfaction through the choice of a homogeneous ministry, such as has long been desired."

"What strange literature," muttered Sulpice, almost audibly, as he threw the report with the other documents.

He recalled how, on that morning when Sulpice Vaudrey sat there for the first time, the morning following Pichereau's sudden dismissal from office, the editor of this daily press bulletin, like an automaton, mechanically and indifferently laid on the table of the minister a report wherein he said in full:

"Public opinion, by the mouth of the accepted journals, has for too long a time reposed confidence in the Pichereau administration, for the ministry to be troubled about the approaching and useless interpellation announced some days ago by Monsieur Vaudrey—of Isère—."

And it was to Vaudrey, the elected successor of Pichereau, that the report was handed naturally and as was due.

"The compilers of these little chronicles are very optimistic," thought Sulpice. "After all, probably, it is the office that is responsible for this, as, doubtless, ministers do not like to know the truth. I will see, however, that I get it."

He had, this time, a burdensome morning. Prefects were arriving by the main entrance to the ministry, the vast antechambers on the left; and friends, more intimate suitors, waited on the right, elbowing the ushers, in order to have their cards handed to the secretary-general or to the minister. There were some who, in an airy sort of way, said: "Monsieur Vaudrey," in order to appear to be on familiar terms.

Sulpice felt himself attacked on both sides at once; blockaded in his office; and he despatched the petitioners with all haste, extending his hand to them, smiling, cheerfully making them promises, happy to promise them, but grieved in principle to see humbug depicted on the human face. From time to time, in the midst of his ministerial preoccupations and conversations, the disturbing smile of Marianne suddenly appeared like a flash of lightning in a storm; and though shaking his head, to give the appearance of listening and understanding, the minister was in reality far away, near a brilliant buffet and watching a silver spoon glide between two rosy lips.

In that procession, which was to be a daily one, of petitioners, of deputies urging appointments in favor of their constituents, asking the removal of mayors, the decoration of election agents, harassing the minister with recommendations and petitions which, although couched in a humble tone, always veiled a threat, Vaudrey did not often have to do with his friends. It was a wearisome succession of lukewarm friends or recognized enemies, who rallied around a successful man. This man, although a minister for so short a time, had already a vague, disquieting impression that the administration was the property of a great number of clients, always the same, frequenters of these corridors, guests in these antechambers, well known to the ushers, and who, whoever the minister might be, had the same access and the same influence with the ministry.

There were some whom the clerks saluted in a familiar way, as if they were old acquaintances: intrepid office-seekers, unmoved by any changes in ministerial combinations. Such entered Vaudrey's cabinet in a deliberate, familiar manner, and as if feeling at home. Sulpice had once heard one of them greet an usher by his first name: "Good-morning, Gustave."

The minister asked Gustave: "Who is that gentleman?" The usher replied, with a tinge of respect in his tone: "It is one of our visitors, Monsieur le Ministre, Monsieur Eugène Renaudin. We call him only Monsieur Eugène. We have known him a long time."

This "Monsieur Eugène" had already petitioned for a prefecture, or a sub-prefecture, or—it mattered little—whatever place the minister might choose to give him.

His claims? None: he was an office-seeker.

The minister was already overwhelmed by this vulgar procession of petitioners and intermediaries, when an usher brought him a card bearing this name: Lucien Granet.

In the Chamber it was thought that Granet did not like Vaudrey too well, and Sulpice vaguely scented in him a candidate for his office. The more reason, then, that he should make himself agreeable.

"What does he want?" the minister thought.

This Granet was, moreover, a typical politician; by the side of the minister of to-day, he was the inevitable minister of to-morrow, the positive reformer, the man appointed to cleanse the Augean stables, whose coming, it was said, would immediately mark the end of all abuses, great and small.

"Ah! when Granet is minister!"

The artist without a commission consoled himself with the prospect of the Granet ministry. He would decorate the monuments when Granet became minister. The actress who looked with longing eyes toward the Comédie Française, and dreamed of playing in Molière, had her hopes centered in Granet. Granet promised to every actress an engagement at the Rue de Richelieu. I am waiting for the Granet ministry! was the consolatory reflection, interrupted by sighs, of the licentiates in law. Meanwhile those office-seekers danced attendance on Granet, and their smile was worth to the future Excellency all the sweets of office.

Granet had thus everywhere a host of clients, women and men, sighing for his success, working to bring about his ministry, intriguing in advance for his advent, and working together for his glory.

"Ah! if Granet were in power!"

"Such abuses would not exist under a Granet ministry!"

"All will be changed when Granet becomes minister!"

"That dear Granet! that good Granet! Long live Granet!"

Vaudrey was not ignorant of the fact that for some time past, Lucien Granet had been manoeuvring for his appointment to any office whatever, the most important obtainable. He was within an ace of becoming a member of the last Ministerial Coalition. He might have been Vaudrey's colleague instead of his rival. Sulpice was as glad to have him as an opponent in the Chamber as a colleague in the ministerial council. He was, however, not an adversary to be trifled with. Granet was a power in himself.

"Well!" said the minister to Granet, who entered smiling, and with a very polite greeting, "you come then to inspect your future office? Already!—"

"I?" said Granet, who did his best to be agreeable, "God prevent me from thinking of this department. It is too well filled."

"That is very gallant, my dear Granet."

"Far from disputing your portfolio, I come, on the contrary, to give you some advice as to strengthening your already excellent position."

"Advice from you, my dear colleague, should be excellent. Let us hear it."

"My dear minister, it is about the appointment of an Under Secretary of State for the Interior. Well! I have come to urge the claims of my friend, our colleague Warcolier."

While speaking, Granet, who was seated near the bureau of the minister, with his hat on his knee, was watching Vaudrey through his eyeglass; he saw that his lips twitched slightly as he hesitated before replying.

"But I am bound to Jacquier—of l'Oise," Vaudrey said abruptly.

Granet smiled. Certainly Jacquier would be a most excellent choice. He was a cool, solid and remarkable man. But he had little influence with the Chamber, frequented society rarely, was morose and exclusive, while Warcolier was a most amiable man, an excellent speaker and one who was well-known in the Chamber. He was a fine orator. He was highly esteemed by the Granet group.

"My personal friend, too, my dear minister. You would, I assure you, displease me if you did not support Warcolier this morning at the Ministerial Council, at which the nomination of under secretaries should take place. It is this morning, isn't it?"

"Certainly, in an hour's time."

Granet left the minister, repeating with considerable emphasis, which Vaudrey could not fail to remark, that the nomination of Warcolier would be favorably viewed by the majority of the deputies. A hundred times more so than that of Jacquier—of l'Oise.

"Jacquier is a bear. They don't like bears," said Granet, tapping his thumb lightly with his eyeglass.

He left Vaudrey out of humor, and very much disgusted at finding that Warcolier had already exploited the field.

In truth, Vaudrey liked Warcolier as little as he did Granet. Warcolier took life easily. He was naturally of a contented disposition. He liked people who were easily pleased. An Imperialist under the Empire, he was now a Republican under the Republic. Epicurean in his tastes, he was agreeable, clever and fond of enjoyment, and he approved of everything that went the way he desired. He sniffed the breeze light-heartedly and allowed it to swell his sail and his self-love. He did not like ill-tempered people, people who frowned or were discontented or gloomy. Having a good digestion, he could not understand the possibility of disordered stomachs. A free-liver, he could not realize that hungry people should ever think of better food. Everything was good; everything was right; everything was beautiful. Of an admirably tranquil disposition, he felt neither anger nor envy. Thinking himself superior to every one else, Warcolier never made comparisons, he did not even prefer himself: he worshipped himself. The world belonged to him, he trod the ground with a firm step, swinging his arms, his paunch smooth, his head erect and his shoulders thrown forward. He seemed to inhale, at every step, the odor of triumph. He was not the man to compromise with a defeated adversary.

Of Warcolier's literary efforts, people were familiar with his History of Work and Workers that he had formerly dedicated to His Majesty Napoléon III. in these flattering terms: "To you, sire, who have substituted for the nobility of birth, that of work, and for the pride of ancestry, that of shedding blood for one's country."

Later, in 1875, Warcolier had re-issued his History of Work and his dedication was anxiously awaited. It did not take him long to get over the difficulty. He dedicated his work to another sovereign: "To the People, who have substituted the nobility of work for that of birth, and that of blood shed for the country for that of blood shed by ancestors."

And that very name which was formerly read at the foot of professions of faith:—Appeal to Honest People. The Revolution overwhelms us! is now found at the foot of proclamations wherein this devil of a Warcolier exclaims:—Appeal to Good Citizens. Reaction now threatens us!

This was the man whom Granet and his friends had worked so hard to thrust into the position of Undersecretary of State of the Interior. Vaudrey reserved his opinion on this subject to be communicated to the President by and by.

The hour for the meeting of the Council drew near. Sulpice saw, through the white curtains of the window, his horses harnessed to his coupé and prancing in the courtyard, although it was but a short distance from Place Beauvau to the Élysée. He slipped the reports of the Prefect of Police and the Director of the Press into his portfolio and was about to leave, when the usher brought him another card.

"It is useless, I cannot see any one else."

"But the gentleman said that if the minister saw his name, he would most assuredly see him."

Vaudrey took the card that was extended to him on the tray:

"Jéliotte! He is right. Show him in."

He removed his hat and went straight toward the door, that was then opened to admit a pale-faced, lean man with long black whiskers that formed a sort of horsetail fringe to his face. Jéliotte was a former comrade in the law courts, an advocate in the Court of Appeal, and he entered, bowing ceremoniously to Sulpice, who with a pleased face and outstretched hands, went to welcome the old companion of his youth.

Jéliotte bowed with a certain affectation of respect, and smiled nervously.

"How happy I am to see you," Vaudrey said.

"You still address me in the old familiar way," Jéliotte answered, showing his slightly broken and yellow teeth.

"What an idea! Have I forfeited your good opinion, that I should abandon our familiar form of address?"

"Honors, then, have not changed you; well! so much the better," said Jéliotte. "You ask me how I am? Oh! always the same!—I work hard—I am out of your sight—but I applaud all your successes."

While Jéliotte was speaking of Vaudrey's successes, he sat on the edge of a chair, staring at his hat, and wagging his jaw as if he were cracking a nut between his frail teeth.

"I have been delighted at your getting into the cabinet. Delighted for your sake—"

"You ought also to be delighted on your own account, my good Jéliotte. Whatever I may hereafter be able to do—"

Jéliotte cut the minister short and said in a tone as dry as tinder:

"Oh! my dear Sulpice, believe one thing,—that I ask you nothing."

"Why?"

"Because—no, nothing. And I repeat, nothing."

"And you would be wrong if I could be friendly to you or useful."

"I have said nothing, and I stick to nothing. You will meet quite enough office-seekers in your career—"

"Evidently!"

"Petitioners also!"

"Most assuredly!"

"Well! I am neither a petitioner nor an office-seeker nor a sycophant. I am your friend."

"And you are right, for I have great affection for you."

"I am your friend and your devoted friend. I should consider it a rascally thing to ask you for anything. A rascally thing, I say! You are in office, you are a minister, so much the better, yes, so much the better! But, at least, don't let your friends pester you, like vermin crawling before you, because you are all-powerful. I will never crawl before you, I warn you. I shall remain just what I am. You will take me just as I am or not at all. That will depend altogether upon the change of humor that the acquisition of honors may produce in you—"

"Jéliotte! we shall see, Jéliotte!"

"Well! You can take me or leave me. And as I do not wish to be confounded with the cringing valets who crowd your antechambers—"

"You crowd nothing, you will not dance attendance. Have I asked you to dance attendance?"

"No, not yet—I called simply to see if I should be received. Yes, it is merely in the nature of an experiment—it is made. It is to your honor, I admit, but I will not repeat it—I shall disappear. It is more simple. Yes, I have told you and I was determined to tell you that you will never see me, so long as you are a minister."

"Ah! Jéliotte! Jéliotte!"

"Never—not until you have fallen—For one always falls—"

"Fortunately," said Sulpice, with a laugh.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, that depends. I say: when you have fallen—then, oh! then, don't fear, I will not be the one to turn my back on you—"

"You are very kind."

"Whatever you may have said or done, you understand, while you are in power—and power intoxicates men!—I will always offer you my hand. Yes, this hand shall always be extended to you. You will find plenty of people who will turn their backs on you at that moment. Not I! I am a friend in dark days—"

"That is understood."

"I will leave you to your glory, Vaudrey. I crave pardon for not styling you: Monsieur le Ministre; I could not. It is not familiar to me. I cannot help it. I am not the friend for the hour of success, but for that of misfortune."

"And you will return?"

"When you are overthrown!—"

"Thank you!"

"That is like me! I love my friends."

"When they are down!" said Sulpice.

"That is so!" exclaimed Jéliotte.

"And is that all you had to say to me?" the minister asked.

"Is not that enough?"

"Yes! yes! Au revoir, Jéliotte."

"Au revoir! Till—you know when."

"Yes. When I feel my position threatened, I will call upon you. Don't be afraid. That time will come."

"The idiot!" said Sulpice, angrily shrugging his shoulders, when the advocate was gone.

He snatched his hat and went out hurriedly to his carriage, the messengers rising to bow to him as he passed through the antechamber.

It was hardly necessary for him to order his coachman to drive to the Élysée. The duties of each day were so well ordered in advance, and besides, the attendants at the department knew quite as well as the minister if a Council was to be held at the Élysée.

Sulpice was somewhat upset. Jéliotte's visit, following that of Granet, presented the human species in an evil aspect. He had never felt envious of any one, and it seemed to him that the whole world should be gratified at his modest bearing under success.

"For, after all, I triumph, that is certain!—That animal of a Jéliotte is not such a simpleton!—There are many who, if they were in my place, would swagger!"

So he complacently awarded himself a patent of modesty.

The carriage stopped at the foot of the steps of the Élysée. Sulpice always felt an exquisite joy in alighting from his carriage, his portfolio pressed to his side, and leaping over the carpet-covered steps of the stone staircase leading to the Council Chambers. He passed through them, as he did everywhere, between rows of spectators who respectfully bowed to him. Devoted friends extended their hands respectfully toward his overcoat. Certainly, he only knew the men by their heads, bald or crowned with locks, as the case might be. His colleagues were gathered together, awaiting him, and chatting in the salon, decorated in white and gold, the invariable salon of official apartments with the inevitable Sèvres vases with deep-blue, light-green or buff color grounds, placed upon consoles or pedestals. The portfolios appeared stuffed or empty, limp or bursting with paper bundles, under the arms of their Excellencies. Suddenly a door was opened, the ushers fell back and the President approached, looking very serious and taking his accustomed place opposite to the President of the Council with the formality of an orderly, the Minister of the Interior on the left of the President of the Republic, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the right.

Then, in turn, each minister, beginning at the right, reported the business of his department, sometimes debated in private council. Each having completed his information, bowed to his neighbor on the right, and said:

"I have finished. It is your turn, my dear colleague."

The President listened. Sulpice sometimes allowed himself to muse while seated at this green-covered table, forgetting altogether the affairs under consideration. Sometimes he recalled those green-covered tables of the Council Chambers of the Grenoble Prefecture, finding that this Ministerial Council recalled the mean impression invoked by his provincial recollections, at other times, a vein of poesy would flit across his mind, or an eloquent word would reach his ear, suggesting to him the thought that, after all, these men seated there before their open portfolios, turning over or scattering about the papers, nevertheless represented cherished France and held in their leather pouches the secrets, the destinies, aye, even the very fate of the fatherland.

And this Sulpice, overjoyed to expand at his ease in the delights of power, sitting there in his accustomed chair,—a chair which now seemed to be really his own—enjoying a sort of physical satisfaction ever new, inhaling power like the fumes of a nargileh, forgot himself, however, and suddenly felt himself recalled to the urgent reality when his colleague, the Minister of War, a spare man with a grizzled moustache, dropped an infrequent remark in which, in the laconic speech of a soldier, could be comprehended some cause of anxiety or of hope. Sulpice listened then, more moved than he was willing to have it appear, trying, in his turn, to hide all his artistic and patriotic anxieties under that firm exterior which his colleague of the Department of Foreign Affairs wore, a dull-eyed, listless face, and cheeks that might be made of pasteboard.

The business of the Council was of little importance that morning. The Keeper of the Seals, Monsieur Collard—of Nantes—a fat, puffing, apoplectic man with somewhat glassy, round eyes, proposed to the President, who listened attentively but without replying, some reform to which Vaudrey was perfectly indifferent. He did not even hear his colleague's dull speech, the latter lost himself in useless considerations, while the Minister of War looked at him, as if his eyes, loaded with grapeshot said, in military fashion: "Sacrebleu! get done!"

Vaudrey looked out of the window at the dark horizon of the winter sky and the gray tints of the leafless trees, and watched the little birds that chased one another among the branches. His thoughts were far, very far away from the table where the sober silence was broken by the interminable phrases of the Minister of Justice, whose words suggested the constant flow of an open spigot.

The vision of a female form at the end of the garden appeared to him, a form that, notwithstanding the cold, was clothed in the soft blue gown that Marianne wore yesterday at Sabine's. He seemed to catch that fleeting smile, the exact expression of which he sought to recall, that peculiar glance, cunning and enticing, that exquisite outline of a perfect Parisian woman. How charming she was! And how sweet that name, Marianne!

Let us see indeed, what in reality could such a woman be! Terrible, perhaps, but certainly irresistible!

Not for years had Vaudrey felt such an anxiety or allowed himself to be, as it were, carried away by such a dominating influence. Waking, he found Marianne the basis of all his thoughts, as she was during his slumber.

And so charming!

"Monsieur le Ministre de l'Intérieur is the next to address the Council."

Vaudrey had not noticed that Monsieur Collard—of Nantes—had finished his harangue, and that after the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had just concluded his remarks. Vaudrey, therefore, needed a moment's reflection, a hasty self-examination to recognize his own personality: Monsieur le Ministre de l'Intérieur! This title only called up his ego after a momentary reflection, a sort of simulated astonishment under the cloak of a pensive attitude. Vaudrey's colleagues did not perceive that this man seated beside them was, as it were, lost in meditation.

Sulpice, moreover, had little to say. Nothing serious. The confirmation of the favorable reports that had been made to him. Within a week he would finish his plan of prefectorial changes. He simply required the Council to deal at once with the nomination of the Undersecretaries of State.

It was then that Vaudrey realized the extraordinary influence that Lucien Granet must possess. From the very opening of the discussion, the minister felt that his candidate, Jacquier—of l'Oise—was defeated in advance by Warcolier. Granet must have laid siege to the ministers one by one. The President was entirely in Warcolier's favor. Warcolier's amiability, tact, the extraordinary facility with which he threw overboard previous opinions, were so many claims in his favor. It was necessary to give pledges to new converts, to prove that the government was not closed against penitents.

"That is a very Christian theory," said Vaudrey, "and truly, I am neither in favor of jacobinism nor suspicion, but there is something ironical in granting this amnesty to turncoats."

"But it is decidedly politic," said Monsieur Collard—of Nantes.

"It is a premium offered to the new converts."

"Eh! eh! that is not so badly done!"

Vaudrey knew perfectly well that it was useless to insist, he must put up with Warcolier. It was his task to manage matters so that this man should not have unlimited power in the ministry.

Warcolier was elected and the President signed his appointment at the earliest possible moment.

"A nomination discounted in advance," thought Vaudrey, who again recalled Granet's polite but threatening smile.

He felt somewhat nervous and annoyed at this result. But what could be done? To divert his thoughts, he listened to his colleagues' communications. The Minister of War commenced to speak, and in a tone of irritated surprise, instead of the lofty, patriotic considerations that Vaudrey expected of him, Vaudrey heard him muttering behind his moustache about soldiers' cap-straps, shakos, gaiter-buttons, shoulder-straps, cloth and overcoats. That was all. It was the vulgar report of a shoemaker or a tailor, or of a contractor detailing the items of his account.

Sulpice was anxious for the Council to be over. The President, before the close of the session, repeated, with all the seriousness of a judge of the Court of Appeal: "Above all, messieurs, no innovations, don't try to do too well, let things alone. Don't let us trouble about business! Let us be content to live! The session is ended."

"Not about business?" said Vaudrey to himself.

He understood power in quite a different way. Longing for improvements, he did not understand how to let himself be dragged on like a cork upon a stream, by the wave of daily events. He was determined to put his ideas into force, to give life and durability to his ministry. There was no use in being a minister if he must continue the habitual go-as-you-please of current politics. In that case, the first chief of bureau one might meet would make as good a minister as he.

At the moment of leaving the Council Chamber, the Minister of War said to him, in a jocose, brusque way: "Well! my dear colleague, Warcolier's election does not seem to have pleased you? Bah! if he has changed shoulders with his gun, that only proves that he knows how to drill."

And the soldier laughed heartily behind his closely buttoned frock coat.

Vaudrey got into his carriage and returned to the ministry to breakfast.

Formerly the breakfast hour was generally the time of joyous freedom for Sulpice. He felt soothed beside Adrienne and forgot his daily struggles.

In their home on Chaussée d'Antin, he usually abandoned himself freely to lively and cheerful conversation, to allow his wife to find in him, the man of forty years, the fiancé, the young husband of former days. But here, before these exclusive domestics, the familiars of the ministry, planted around the table like so many inspectors, rather than servants, he dared not manifest himself. He scarcely spoke. He felt that he was watched and listened to. The valet who passed him the dishes watched over Monsieur le Ministre. He imagined that his attendants in their silent reflections compared the present minister with those that had gone before him. On one occasion, one of the domestics replied to a remark made by Adrienne: "Monsieur Pichereau, who preceded Monsieur le Ministre, and Monsieur le Comte d'Harville, who preceded Monsieur Pichereau, considered my service very proper, madame."

Adrienne accepted as well as she could the necessities of her new position. Since that was power, let power rule! She was resigned to those wastes whose luxury was apparent, since the political fortunes of her husband cast her there, like a prisoner, in that huge, commonplace, ministerial mansion, wherein none of the joys of home or of that Parisian apartment that she had furnished with such refined taste were left her. She felt half lost in those vast, cold salons of that ancient Hôtel Beauvau,—cold in spite of their stoves, and which partook at one and the same time of the provisional domicile and the furnished apartment,—with its defaced gilded panels, and here and there a crack in the ceiling, and those vulgar ornaments, those wearisome imitation Chardins with their cracked colors and those old-fashioned pictures of Roqueplan, giving to everything at once one date, a bygone style. With what a truly melancholy smile Adrienne greeted the friends who came to see her on her reception day, when they remarked to her: "Why, you are in a palace!"

"Yes, but I much prefer my accustomed furniture and my own house."

Sulpice, free at last from that Council and the morning receptions, as he alighted from his carriage, caused Madame to be informed that he had returned.

Adrienne, who was looking pretty in a tight-fitting, black velvet gown, approached him with a smile and was suddenly overcome with sadness on seeing him absorbed in thought. She dared not question him, but being somewhat anxious, she, nevertheless, inquired the cause of his frowning expression.

"You have your bad look, my good Sulpice," she smilingly said.

He then quickly explained the Warcolier business.

"Is that all? Bah!" she said, "you will have many other such annoyances."

She was smiling graciously.

"That is politics!—And then you like it—At least, confine your likes to that, Sulpice," she said, drawing near to Vaudrey.

She was about to present her forehead for his kiss, as formerly, but she drew back abruptly. A valet entered with a dignified air and ceremoniously announced that breakfast was served.

Vaudrey ate without appetite. Adrienne watched him tenderly, her eyes were kind and gentle. How nervous he was and quickly disturbed! Truly, Warcolier's appointment was not worth his giving himself the least anxiety about.

She was going to speak to him about it. Vaudrey imposed silence by a sign. The motionless domestics were listening.

Like Sulpice, Adrienne suffered the annoyance of a constant surveillance. She was hungry when she sat down to table, but her appetite had vanished. The viands were served cold, brought on plates decorated with various designs and marked with the initials of Louis Philippe, L.P., intertwined, or with the monogram of the Empire, N.; the gilt was worn off, the fillets of gold half obliterated: a service of Sèvres that had been used everywhere, in imperial dwellings, national palaces, and was at last sent to the various ministries as the remnant of the tables of banished sovereigns.

Instead of eating, Adrienne musingly looked at the decorations. It seemed to her that she was in a gloomy restaurant where the badly served dishes banished her appetite. Sulpice, sad himself, scarcely spoke and in mute preoccupation, in turn confused the shrewd, sly Granet, the intriguing Warcolier, and Marianne Kayser, whose image never left him. He was discontented with himself and excited by the persistency with which the image of this woman haunted him.

In vain did Adrienne smile and seek to divert him from the thoughts that besieged him—she was herself in a melancholy mood, without knowing why, and her endeavors were but wasted; if he abandoned the train of his reflections, it was merely to express a thought in rapid tones, and he seemed momentarily to shake off his torpor; he replied to his wife's forced smile by a mechanical grimace, and immediately relapsed into his nervously silent state.

In the hours of anxious struggle, she had often seen him thus, hence she was not alarmed. If she had been in her own home, instead of occupying this strange mansion, she would have rushed to him, and seated on his knees, taken his burning head between her little hands and said: "Come now! what ails you? what is the matter? Tell me everything so that, child as I may be, I may comfort my big boy."

But there, still in the presence of those people, always in full view, she dared not. She carefully and anxiously watched Sulpice's mortified countenance. Since his entry on his ministerial functions, this was the first occasion, probably, that he had been so preoccupied.

"There is something the matter with you, is there not, my dear?"

"No—nothing—Besides—"

The minister's glance was a sufficient conclusion to his remark. Moreover, how could he, even if he had some trouble to confide, make it known before the ever watchful lackeys? Before these impassive attendants, who, though apparently obsequious, might in reality be hostile, and who looked at them with cold glances? What a distance separated them from the old-time intimacies, the cherished interchange of thought interrupted by piquant kisses and laughter, just like a young husband and wife!

In truth, Adrienne had not thought of it: Sulpice could not talk.

"You will serve the coffee at once," she said.

She made haste in order that she might take refuge in her own apartment to be alone with her husband. He, however, as if he shunned this tête-à-tête, eager as he was for solitude, quickly attributed his unpleasant humor to neuralgia or headache. Too much work or too close application of mind.

"At the Ministerial Council perhaps?" remarked Adrienne inquiringly.

"Yes, at the Council,—I must take a little fresh air—I will take a round in the Bois—The day is dry—That will do me good!"

"Will you take me?" she said gayly.

"If you wish," he replied. Then, in an almost embarrassed tone, he added:

"Perhaps it will be better for me to go alone—I have to think—to work—There is no sitting at the Chamber to-day; and the day is entirely at my own disposal."

"Just as you please," Adrienne replied, looking at Sulpice with a tender and submissive glance. "It would, however, have been so delightful and beneficial to have gone to the Bois together on such a bright day! But you and your affairs before everything, you are right; take an airing, be off, come, breathe—I shall be glad to see you return smiling cheerfully as in the sweet days."

Sulpice looked at his young wife with a fondness that almost inspired him with remorse. In her look there was so complete an expression of her love. Then her affection was so deep, and her calm like the face of a motionless lake was so manifest, and she loved him so deeply, so intelligently. And how trustful, too!

He was impelled now to beg her don her cloak and to have a fur robe put into the coupé and set out now, when the sun was gradually showing itself, like two lovers bound for a country party. At the same time he felt a desperate longing to be alone, to abandon himself to his new idea and to the image that beset him. He felt that he was leaving Adrienne for Marianne.

He did not hold to the suggestion, in fact, he repeated that it would be better if he were alone. As there would be no session of the Chamber for a whole week, he would go out with Adrienne the next day. The coachman could drive them a long distance, even to Saint-Cloud or Ville-d'Avray. They would breakfast together all alone, unknown, in the woods.

"Truly?" said Adrienne.

"Truly! I feel the necessity of avoiding so many demonstrations in my honor."

Sulpice laughed.

"I am stifled by them," he said, as he kissed Adrienne, whose face was pink with delight at the thought of that unrestrained escapade.

"How you blush!" said Sulpice, ingenuously. "What is the matter with you?"

"With me? Nothing."

She looked at him anxiously.

"You think my complexion too ruddy! I have not the Parisian tint. Only remain a minister for some time, and that will vanish. There is no dispraise in that."

She again offered her brow to him.

He left her, happy to feel himself free.

At last! For an entire day he was released from the ordinary routine of his life; from the wrangling of the assembly, the hubbub of the corridors, the gossip of the lobbies, interruptions, interrupted conversations, from all that excitement that he delighted in, but which at times left him crushed and feverish at the close of the day. He became once more master of his thoughts, of his meditation. He belonged to himself. It was almost impossible to recover his self-mastery in the stormy arena into which he was thrust, happy to be there, and where his distended nostrils inhaled, as it were, the fumes of sulphur.

At times, amid the whirlwind of politics, he suffered from a yearning for rest, a sick longing for home quiet, a desire to be free, to go between the acts, as it were, to vegetate in some corner of the earth and to resume in very truth an altogether different life from the exasperating, irritating life that he led in Paris, always, so to speak, under the lash; or, still better, to change the form of his activity, to travel, to feed his eyes on new images, the fresh verdure, or the varied scenes of unknown cities.

But the years had rolled by amid the excitement and nervous strain of political life. He lived with Adrienne in an artificial and overheated atmosphere. Happy because he was loved, that his ambitions were realized, that he charmed an assembly of men by the same power that had obtained him the adoration of this woman, yes, he was happy, very happy: to bless life, to excite envy, to arouse jealousy, to appear simply ridiculous if he complained of destiny; and nevertheless, at the bottom of his soul, discontented without knowing why, consumed by intangible, feverish instincts, ill-defined desires for Parisian curiosities, having dreamed in his youth of results very inferior to those he had realized, yet finding when he analyzed the realities that he enjoyed, that the promises of his dreams were more intoxicating than the best realizations.

Vaudrey was an ambitious man, but he was ambitious to perform valiant feats. Life had formerly seemed to him to be made up of glory, triumphal entries into cities, accompanied by the fluttering of flags and the flourish of trumpets. He pictured conquests, victories, exaltations! Theatrical magnificence! But now, more ironical, he was contented with quasi-triumphs, if his restless, anxious nature could be satisfied with what he obtained.

Adrienne loved him. He loved her profoundly.

Why had the meeting with Marianne troubled him so profoundly, then? Manifestly, Mademoiselle Kayser realized the picture of his vanished dreams, and the desires of a particular love that the passion for Adrienne, although absolute, could not satisfy. This man had a nature of peculiar ardor—or rather, curious desires, a greedy desire to know, an itching need to approach and peep into abysses.

Sometimes it seemed to Vaudrey that he had not lived at all, and this was the fear and desire of his life: to live that Parisian life which flattered all his instincts and awoke and reanimated all his dreams. But yesterday it had appeared to him when he met this young woman who raised her eyes to him, half-veiled by her long eyelashes, that a stage-curtain had been raised, disclosing dazzling fairy scenery, and since then that scenery had been always before him. It banished, during his drive, all peace, and while the coupé threaded its way along the Faubourg Saint-Honoré toward the Arc-de-Triomphe, the minister who, but two hours before, had been plunged in state affairs, settled himself down in a corner of the carriage, his legs swaddled in a robe and his feet resting on a foot-warmer, looking at, but without observing the cold figures that walked rapidly past him, the houses lighted up by the sun's rays, and the dry pavements, and he thought of those strange eyes and those black butterflies, which seemed to him to flutter over that fair hair like swallows over a field of ripe wheat.

It pleased him to think of that woman. It was an entirely changed preoccupation, a relaxation. A curious, strangely agreeable sensation: his imagination thus playing truant, and wandering toward that vision, renewed his youth. He experienced therein the perplexities that troubled him at twenty. Love in the heart means fewer white hairs on the brow. And then, indeed, he would never, perhaps, see Mademoiselle Kayser again! He would, however, do everything to see her again at the coming soirée at the ministry, an invitation—Suddenly his thoughts abruptly turned to Ramel, whom he also wished to invite and meet again. He loved him so dearly. It was he who formerly, in the journalistic days, and at the time of the battles fought in the Nation Française, had called Denis "a conscience in a dress-coat."

Therefore, since he had an afternoon to spare, he would call on Ramel. He was determined to show him that he would never preserve the dignity of a minister with him.

"Rue Boursault, Batignolles," he said to the coachman, lowering one of the windows; "after that, only to the Bois!"

The coachman drove the coupé toward the right, reaching the outer boulevards by way of Monceau Park.

Vaudrey was delighted. He was going to talk open-heartedly to an old friend. Ah, Ramel! he was bent on remaining in the background, on being nothing and loving his friends only when they were in defeat, as Jéliotte had said. Well, Vaudrey would take him as his adviser. This devil of a Ramel, this savage fellow should govern the state in spite of himself.

The minister did not know Ramel's present lodging which he had occupied only a short time. He expected to find dignified poverty and a cold apartment. As soon as Denis opened the door to him, he found himself in a workman's dwelling that had been transformed by artistic taste into the small museum of a virtuoso. After having passed through a narrow corridor, and climbed a small, winding staircase, Vaudrey rang at the third floor of a little house in Rue Boursault and entered a well-kept apartment full of sunlight.

Hanging on the walls were engravings and crayons in old-fashioned frames. A very plain mahogany bookcase contained some select volumes, which, though few, were frequently perused and were swollen with markers covered with notes. The apartment was small and humble: a narrow bedroom with an iron bedstead, a dressing room, a tiny dining-room furnished with cane-seated chairs, and the well-lighted study with his portraits and his frames of the old days. But with this simplicity, as neat as a newly-shaved old man, all was orderly, and arranged and cared for with scrupulous attention.

This modest establishment, the few books, the deep peace, the oblivion found in this Batignolles lodging, in this home of clerks, poor, petty tradesmen and workmen, sufficed for Ramel. He rarely went out and then only to take a walk from which he soon returned exhausted. He had formerly worked so assiduously and had given, in and out of season, all his energy, his nerves and his body, improvising and scattering to the winds his appeals, his protests, his heart, his life, through the columns of the press. What an accumulation of pages, now destroyed or buried beneath the dust of neglected collections! How much ink spilled! And how much life-blood had been mingled with that ink!

Ramel willingly passed long hours every day at his study window, looking out on the green trees or at the high walls of a School of Design opposite, or at the end of a tricolored flag that waved from the frontal of a Primary Normal School that he took delight in watching; then at the right, in the distance, throbbing like an incessant fever, he saw the bustling life of the Saint-Lazare Station, where with every shrill whistle of the engines, he saw white columns of smoke mount skyward and vanish like breaths.

"Smoke against smoke," thought Ramel, with his pipe between his teeth. "And it would be just as well for one to struggle—a lost unity—against folly, as for a single person to desire to create as much smoke as all these locomotives together!"

Ramel appeared to be delighted to see Vaudrey, whose name the housekeeper murdered by announcing him as Monsieur Vaugrey. He placed a chair for him, and asked him smilingly, what he wanted "with an antediluvian journalist."

"A mastodon of the press," he said.

What had Vaudrey come for?

His visit had no other object than to enjoy again a former faithful affection, the advice he used to obtain, and also to try to drag the headstrong Ramel into the ministry. Would not the directorship of the press tempt him?

"With it, the directing of the press!" said Denis. "It is much better to have an opposition press than one that you have under your thumb. Friendly sheets advise only foolishly."

"Why, Vaudrey, do you know," suddenly exclaimed the veteran journalist, "that you are the first among my friends who have come into power—I say the first—who has ever thought of me?"

"You cannot do me a greater pleasure than tell me so, my dear Ramel. I know nothing more contemptible than ingrates. In my opinion, to remember what one owes to people, is to be scrupulously exact; it is simply knowing orthography."

"Well! mercy! there are a devilish lot of people who don't know if the word gratitude is spelled with an e or an a. No, people are not so well skilled as that in orthography. There are not a few good little creatures to be sent back to school. All the more reason to be thankful for having learned by heart—by heart, that is the way to put it, my dear Vaudrey—your participles."

Sulpice was well acquainted with Ramel's singular wit, a little sly, but tinged with humor, like pure water into which a drop of gin has been poured, more perfumed than bitter. He knew no man more indulgent and keen-sighted than him.

"For what should I bear a grudge against people?" said the veteran. "For their stupidity? I pity them, I haven't time to dislike them; one can't do everything."

Besides, the minister felt altogether happy to be with this man no longer in vogue, but who might be likened to coins that have ceased to be current and have acquired a higher value as commemorative medals. He could unbosom himself to him: treachery was impossible. He longed to have such a stay beside him, and still urged him, but Ramel was inflexible.

"But as I have already said—if I have need of you?"

"Of me? I am too old."

"Of your advice?"

"Well! it is not necessary for me to give you my address, since you find yourself here now, or to tell you that you can depend on me, seeing you know me."

Vaudrey felt that it was useless to pursue the matter further. He was not talking with a misanthrope or a scorner, but with a learned man. He would find at hand whenever he needed it, the old, ever faithful devotedness of this white-haired man, who, with skull-cap on his head, was smoking his pipe near the window when the minister entered.

"Then, you are happy, Ramel?" said Sulpice, a little astonished, perhaps.

"Perfectly so."

"You have no ambition for anything whatever?"

"Nothing, I await philosophically the hour for the monument."

He smiled when he saw that his own familiar remark was puzzling Vaudrey.

"The monument, there, on one side: Villa Montmartre!—Oh! I am not anxious to have done with life. It is amusing enough at times. But, after all, it is necessary to admit that the comedy ends when it is finished. One fine day, I shall be found sleeping somewhere, here in my armchair, or in my bed, suddenly, or perhaps after a long illness—this would weary me, as a lingering illness is repugnant to me—and you will read in one or two journals a short paragraph announcing that the obsequies of Monsieur Denis Ramel, one-time editor of a host of democratic newspapers, a celebrated man in his day, but little known recently, will take place on such a day at such an hour. Few will attend, but I ask you to be present—that is, if there is no important sitting at the Chamber."

Old Ramel twirled his moustache with his long, lean fingers as he spoke these last words into which he infused a dash of irony. He nullified it, however, as he extended his frankly opened hand and said to Sulpice Vaudrey:

"What I have said to you is very cheerful! A thousand pardons. The more so that I do not think of doubting you for a single moment—You have always been credulous. That is your defect, and it is a capital one. In the world of business men and politicians, who are for the most part egotists, of mediocrities, or to speak plainly—I know no more picturesque term—of dodgers,—you move about with all the illusions and tastes of an artist. You are like the brave fellows of our army, poets of war, as it were, who hurled themselves to their destruction against regiments of engineers. Certainly, my dear minister, I shall always be delighted to give you my counsel, you whom I used to call my dear child, and if the observations of a living waif can serve you in anything, count on me. Dispose of me, and if by chance I can be useful to you, I shall feel myself amply repaid."

"Ah!" cried Sulpice, "if you only knew how much good it does me to hear the sincere thoughts of a man one can rely on! How different is their ring from that of others!"

He then allowed himself to pass by an easy transition to the confessions of his first deceptions or annoyances.

The selection that very morning, of Warcolier as Under Secretary of State in a Republican administration, a man who had played charades at Compiègne, had thrown him into a state of angry excitement.

Ramel, however, burst into laughter.

"Ah, nonsense! You will see many other such! Why, governments always do favors to their enemies when their opponents pretend to lower their colors! What good is it to serve friends? They love you."

"This does not vex you, then, old Republican?"

"I, an old soldier grown white in harness," said Ramel, whose moustache still played under his smile, "that doesn't disturb my peace in the least. I comfort myself with the thought that my dream, my ideal, to use a trite expression, is not touched by such absurdities, and I am persuaded that progress does not lag and that the cause of liberty gains ground, in spite of so much injustice and folly. I confess, however, that I sometimes feel the strange emotion that a man might experience on seeing, after the lapse of years, the lovely woman whom he loved to distraction at twenty, in the arms of a person whom he did not particularly respect."

Ramel had lighted his pipe, and half-hidden by the bluish wreaths of smoke, chatted away, quite happy on his side to give himself up to the revelation of the secret of his heart without the least bitterness, and like an elder brother, advised this man, who was still young and whom he had compared formerly to one of those too fine pieces of porcelain that the least shock would crack.

"Ah!" he said abruptly, "above all, my dear Vaudrey, do not fear to appear in the tribune more uncouth and assertive than you really are. In times when the word sympathetic becomes an insult, it is wiser to have the manners of a boor. Tact is a good thing."

"I shall never succeed in that," said Sulpice, smiling as usual.

"So much the worse! What has been wanting in my case is not to have been able to secure the title of our antipathetic confrère. The modest and refined people are dupes. By virtue of swelling their necks, turkeys succeed in resembling peacocks. Believe me, my dear friend, it is dangerous to have too refined a taste, even in office, even in the rank in which you are placed. One hesitates to proclaim the excessively stupid things that stir the crowd, and the blockhead who is bold enough to declare his folly creates a hellish noise with his nonsense, while a man of refinement, who is not always a squeamish man, remains in his corner unseen. Remember that more moths are caught at night with a greasy candle than with a diamond of the first water."

"You speak in paradox—" Sulpice began.

"And you think I am making paradoxes? Not in the least, I will give you—not at cost, for it has cost me dearly, but in block,—my stock of experience. Do with it what you please, and, above all, beware of alle donne!"

"Women?" asked the minister, with involuntary disquiet.

"Women, exactly. Encircling every minister there is a squadron of seductive women, who though perhaps more fully clothed than the flying squadron of the Medicis, is certainly not less dangerous. Women who complain that they are denied political rights, have in reality all, since they are able to rule administrations and knock ministers off, as the Du Barry did her oranges! When I speak of women, you will observe well that I do not speak of your admirable wife," said Ramel, with a respect that was most touching, coming from this honest veteran.

"While we are gossiping," he resumed, "I am going to tell you frankly what strikes me most clearly in the present conjuncture. You will gather from it what you choose. In these days, my dear Vaudrey, what is most remarkable is the facility men have for destroying their credit and wearing themselves out. Politics, especially, entails a formidable consumption. It seems that the modern being is not cut out to wear long. This, perhaps, is due to the fact that public business, whichever party wins, is always committed to men who are ill-prepared for their good fortune. I do not say this of you, who, intellectually speaking, are an exception. But men are no longer bathed in the Styx, or perhaps they show the heel too quickly. For some years, moreover, the strange phenomenon has presented itself of the provincial towns being the prey of Parisian manufacturers, who reconstruct them and demolish their picturesque antiquity, in order to garnish their boulevards and fine mansions, while Paris, on the contrary, is directed and governed by provincials, who provincialize it just as the Parisian companies parisianize the provinces. Our provincials, astonished to find themselves at the head of Parisian movement, lose their heads somewhat and rush with immoderate appetites at the delicate feast. They have the gluttony of famished children, and on the most perilous question they are simply gourmands. It is woman again to whom I refer. The country squires and gentlemen riders, who have grown old in their province with the love of farm-wenches, or small tradesmen professing medicine or law within their sub-prefectures, after having made verses for the female tax-gatherer, all, you understand, all are hungry to know that unknown creature: woman. And speedily enough the woman has drained their Excellencies. Oh! yes, even to the marrow! She robs the Opposition of its energy; the faithful to liberty, of the virility of their faith. Energetic ministers or ministers with ideas are not long before woman destroys both their strength and their ideas. Eh! parbleu! it is just because they do not rule Paris as one pleads a civil suit in a provincial court."

The minister listened with a somewhat anxious, sober air to these truisms, clear-cut as with a knife, expressed by the old journalist without passion, without exasperation, without anger. He was, in fact, pleased that Ramel should speak to him so candidly.

Yes, indeed, what the old "veteran,"—as Denis sometimes called himself—said, were Vaudrey's own sentiments. These sufficiently saddening observations he had himself made more than once. It was precisely to put an end to such abuses, folly, and provincialism, this hobbling spirit inculcated in a great nation, that he had assumed power, and was about to increase his efforts.

He thanked Ramel profusely and sincerely. This visit would not be his last, he would often return to this Rue Boursault where he knew that a true friend would be waiting.

"And you will be right," said Denis. "Nowhere will you find a love more profound, or hear truths more frankly spoken. You see, Vaudrey, the walls of the ministerial apartments are too thick. There, neither the noise of carriages nor the sound of street-cries is heard. I have passed a few days in a palace—in '48,—at the Tuileries, as a national guard: at the end of two hours, I heard nothing. The carpets, the curtains, stifled everything, and, believe me, a cannon might have been fired without my hearing anything more than an echo, much less could I hear the truth! Besides, people do not like to pronounce truth too loudly. They are afraid."

"I swear to you that I will listen to everything," replied Sulpice, "and I will strive to understand everything. And since I have the power—"

Denis Ramel shook his head:

"Power? Ah! you will see if that is ever taken in any but homoeopathic doses! Why, you will have against you the bureaux, those sacrosanct bureaux that have governed this country since bureaucracy has existed, and they will cram more than one Warcolier down your throat, I warn you."

"Yes, if I allow it," said Vaudrey haughtily.

"Eh! my poor friend, you have already allowed it," said the veteran.

He had risen, Vaudrey had taken his hat, and he said to the minister, leaning on his arm, with gentle familiarity, as he led him to the door:

"Power is like a kite, but there is always some rascal who holds the thread."

"Come, come," said Vaudrey, "you are a pessimist!"

"I confess that Schopenhauer is not unpleasant to me—sometimes."

Thereupon they separated, after a cordial grasp of the hand, and Denis Ramel resumed his pipe and his seat at the window corner, while the minister carried away from this interview, as if he had not already been in the habit of a frank interchange of opinions, an agreeable though perhaps anxious impression.

He felt the need of mentally digesting this conversation: the idea of going back, on this beautiful February day, to his official apartments did not enter his mind. He was overcome by a springtime hunger.

"To the Bois! Around the Lake!" he said to the coachman, as he re-entered his carriage.

The air was as balmy as on an afternoon in May. Vaudrey lowered the carriage window to breathe freely. This exterior boulevard that he rolled along was full of merry pedestrians. One would have thought it was a Sunday afternoon. Old people, sitting on benches, were enjoying the early sun.

Sulpice looked at them, his brain busy with Ramel's warnings. He had just called him a pessimist, but inwardly he acknowledged that the old stager, who had remained a philosopher, spoke the truth. Woman! Why had Ramel spoken to him of woman?

This half-disquieting thought speedily left Sulpice, attracted as he was by the joyous movement, the delight of the eyes which presented itself to his view.

In thus journeying to the Bois, he felt a delightful emotion of solitude and forgetfulness. He gradually recovered his self-possession and became himself once more. He drew his breath more freely in that long avenue where, at this hour of the day, few persons passed. There was no petition to listen to, no salutation to acknowledge.

Ah! how easy it would be to be happy, to sweetly enjoy the Paris that fascinated him instead of burning away his life! Just now, at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe, he had seen people dressed in blouses, sleeping like Andalusian beggars before the walls of the Alhambra. Little they cared for the fever of success! Perhaps they were wise.

An almost complete solitude reigned over the Bois. Vaudrey saw, as he glanced between the copsewood, now growing green, only a few isolated pedestrians, some English governesses in charge of scampering children, the dark green uniform of a guard or the blue blouse of a man who trimmed the trees.

The coachman drove slowly and Sulpice, enjoying the intoxication of this early sun, lowered the shade and breathed the keen air while he repeated to himself that peaceful joy was within the reach of everybody at Paris.

"But why is this wood so deserted? It is so pleasant here."

He almost reproached himself for not having brought Adrienne. She would have been so happy for this advanced spring day. She required so little to make her smile: mere crumbs of joy. She was better than he.

He excused himself by reflecting that he would not have been able to talk to Ramel.

And then it would have been necessary to talk to Adrienne, whereas the joy of the present moment was this solitary silence, the bath of warm air taken in the complete forgetfulness of the habitual existence.

The sight of the blue, gleaming lake before him, encircled with pines, like an artificial Swiss lake, compelled him to look out of the window.

The coachman slowly drove the carriage to the left in order to make the tour of the Lake.

Vaudrey looked at the sheet of water upon which the light played, and on which two or three skiffs glided noiselessly, even the sound of their oars not reaching his ears.

At the extremity of the alley, a carriage was standing, a hackney coach whose driver was peacefully sleeping in the sunshine, with his head leaning on his right shoulder, his broad-brimmed hat, bathed in the sunshine, serving him as a shade.

It was the only carriage there, and a few paces from the border of the water, standing out in dark relief against the violet-blue of the lake, a woman stood surrounded by a group of ducks of all shades, running after morsels of brown bread while uttering their hoarse cries.

Two white swans had remained in the water and looked at her with a dignified air, at a distance.

At the first glance at this woman, Sulpice felt a strange emotion. His legs trembled and his heart was agitated.

He could not be mistaken, he certainly recognized her. Either there was an extraordinary resemblance between them, or it was Mademoiselle Kayser herself.

Marianne? Marianne on the edge of this Lake at an hour when there was no one at the Bois? Vaudrey believed neither in superstitions nor in predestination. Nevertheless, he considered the meeting extraordinary, but there is in this fantastic life a reality that brings in our path the being about whom one has just been thinking. He had frequently observed this fact. He had already descended from his carriage to go to her, taking a little pathway under the furze in order to reach the water's edge. There was no longer any doubt, it was she. Evidently he was to meet Mademoiselle Kayser some day. But how could chance will that he should desire to take that promenade to the Lake at the very hour that the young woman had driven there?

As he advanced, he thought how surprised Marianne would be. As he walked along, he looked at her.

She stood near a kind of wooden landing jutting out over the water. Over her black dress she had flung a short cloak of satin, embroidered with jet which sparkled in the sunlight. The light wind gently waved a black feather that hung from her hat, in which other feathers were entwined with a fringe of old gold bullion. Vaudrey noted every detail of this living statuette of a Parisian woman: between a little veil knotted behind her head and the lace ruching of her cloak, light, golden curls fell on her neck, and in that frame of light, this elegant woman, this silhouette standing out in full relief against the sky and the horizon line of the water, with a pencil of rays gilding her fair locks, seemed more exquisite and more the "woman" to Sulpice than in the décolleté of a ball costume.

When she heard the crushing of the sand by Sulpice's footsteps as he approached her with timid haste, she turned abruptly. Under her small black veil, drawn tightly over her face, and whose dots looked like so many patches on her face, Vaudrey at first observed Marianne's almost sickly paleness, then her suddenly joyous glance. A furtive blush mounted even to the young girl's cheek.

"You here?" she said—"you, Monsieur le Ministre?"

She had already imparted an entirely different tone to these questions. There was more abandon in the first, which seemed more like a cry, but the second betrayed a sudden politeness, perhaps a little affected.

Vaudrey replied by some commonplace remark. It was a fine day; he was tired; he wished to warm himself in this early sunshine. But she?—

"Oh! I—really I don't know why I am here. Ask the—my coachman. He has driven me where he pleased."

She spoke in a curt, irritated tone, under which either deception or grief was hidden.

She was still mechanically throwing crumbs of bread around her, which were eagerly snatched at by the many-colored ducks, white or gray, black, spotted, striped like tulips, marbled like Cordovan leather, with iridescent green or blue necks, whose tone suggested Venetian glassware, all of them hurrying, stretching their necks, opening their bills, or casting themselves at Marianne's feet, fighting, then almost choking themselves to swallow the enormous pieces of bread that were sold by a dealer close at hand.

"Ah! bless me! I did not think I should have the honor of meeting you here," she said.

"The honor?" said Vaudrey. "I, I should say the joy."

She looked straight into his eyes, frankly.

"I do not know what joy is, to-day," she said. "I come from the Continental Hotel, where I hoped to see—"

"What is that?"

"Nothing—"

"If it were nothing, you would not have frowned so."

"Oh! well! a friend—a friend whom I have again found—and who has disappeared. Just so,—abruptly—No matter, perhaps, after all! What happens, must happen. In short—and to continue my riddle, behold me feeding these ducks. God knows why! I detest the creatures. The state feeds them badly, Monsieur le Ministre, I tell you: they are famished. Well? well?" she said to a species of Indian duck, bolder than the others, who snapped at the hem of her skirt to attract attention and to demand fresh mouthfuls.

She commenced to laugh nervously, and said:

"That one isn't afraid."

She threw him a morsel that he swallowed with a greedy gulp.

"Do you know, Monsieur le Ministre, that the story of these ducks is that of the human species? There are some that have got nothing of all the bread that I have thrown them, and there are others who have gorged enough to kill them with indigestion. How would you classify that? Poor political economy."

"Oh, oh!" said Vaudrey. "You are wandering into the realms of lofty philosophy!—"

"Apropos of that, yes," said Marianne, as she pointed to the line of birds that hurried on all sides, left the water, waddled about, uttering their noisy cries. "You know that when one is sad, one philosophizes anent everything."

"And you are sad?" asked Sulpice, in a voice that certainly quivered slightly.

She threw away, without breaking it, the piece of bread that was left, brushed her gloved fingers, and, turning toward the minister, said with a smile that would make the flesh creep:

"Very sad. Oh! what would you have? The black butterflies, you know, the blue devils."

He saw her again, just as she had appeared before him yesterday, with arms and shoulders bare, lovely and seductive, and now, with her shoulders hidden under her cloak, her face half-veiled and quite pale, he thought her still more disquietingly charming. Moreover, the strangeness of the situation, the chance meeting, imparted something of mystery to their conversation and the attraction of an assignation.

Ah! how happy he felt at having desired to breathe the air of the Bois! It now seemed to him that he had only come there for her sake. Once more it appeared to him that some magnetic thought led to this deserted spot these two beings, who but yesterday had only exchanged commonplace remarks and who, in this sunbathed solitude, under these trees, in the fresh breeze of the departing winter, met again, impelled toward each other, drawn on by the same sympathy.

"Do you know what I was thinking of?" she said, smiling graciously. "Yes, of what I was thinking as I cast the brown bread to those ducks? An idyll, is it not? Well! I was thinking that if one dared—a quick plunge into such a sheet of water—very pure—quite tempting—Eh! well! it would end all."

Vaudrey did not reply. He looked at her stupidly, his glance betraying the utmost anxiety.

"Oh! fear nothing," she said. "A whim! and besides, I can swim better than the swans, there is no danger."

He had seized her hands instinctively and he experienced a singular delight in feeling the flesh of Marianne's wrists under his fingers.

"You are feverish," he said.

"I should be, at any rate."

Her voice was still harsh, as if she were distressed.

"The departure of—of that friend—has, then, caused you much suffering?"

"Suffering? No. Vexation, yes—You have built many castles of cards in your life—Come! how stupid I am!" she said bitterly. "You still build many of them. Well! there it is, you see!"

She had withdrawn her hands from Sulpice, and walked away slowly from the border of the lake, going toward the end of the path where her coachman awaited her, his eyes closed and his mouth open.

"Where are you going on leaving the Bois?" asked Vaudrey.

"I? I don't know."

He had made a movement.

"Oh! once more I tell you, don't be afraid," she said. "I want to live. Fear nothing, I will go home, parbleu."

"Home?"

"Or to my uncle's."

"But, really, Monsieur le Ministre," she said, "you are taking upon yourself the affairs of Monsieur Jouvenet, your Prefect of Police. I know him well, and certainly he asks fewer questions than Your Excellency."

"That, perhaps," said Vaudrey, with a smile, "is because he has less anxiety about you than I have."

"Ah! bah!" said Marianne.

She had by this time got close to her hackney coach and looked at the coachman for a moment. "Don't you think it would be very wrong to waken him?" she said. "Will you accompany me for a moment, Monsieur le Ministre?"

Vaudrey paled slightly, divining under this question a seductive prospect.

Marianne's gray eyes were never turned from him.

They walked along slowly, followed by the coupé whose lengthened shadow was projected in front of them along the yellow pathway, moving beside the lake where the swans floated with their pure white wings extended and striking the water with their feet, raising all around them a white foam, like snow falling in flakes. The blue heavens were reflected in the water. The grass, of a burnt-green, almost gray color, looked like worn velvet here and there, showing the weft and spotted with earth.

Side by side they walked, Vaudrey earnestly watching Marianne, while she gazed about her and pointed out to him the gray, winter-worn rocks, the smooth ivy, and on the horizon some hinds browsing, in the far distance, as in a desert, the bare grass as yellow as ripe wheat, around a pond, in a gloomy landscape, russet horizons against a pale sky, presenting a forlorn, mysterious and fleeting aspect.

"One would think one's self at the end of the world," said Sulpice, with lowered voice and troubled heart.

A slight laugh from Marianne was her only reply, as she pointed with the tip of her finger to an inscription on a sign:

"To Croix-Catelan!" she said. "That end of the world is decidedly Parisian!"

"Nevertheless, see how isolated we are to-day."

It seemed as if she had divined his thought, for she took a path that skirted a road and there, in the narrowest strip of soft, fresh soil, on which the tiny heels of her boots made imprints like kisses upon a cheek, she walked in front of him, the shadows of the small branches dappling her black dress, while Vaudrey, deeply moved, still looked at her, framed as she was by trees with moss-covered trunks and surrounded with brambles, a medley of twisted branches.

And Sulpice felt, at each step that he took, a more profound emotion. Along this russet-tinted wood, stood out here and there the bright trunks of birch-trees, and far above it, the pale blue sky; the abyss of heaven, strewn with milky clouds and throughout the course of this pathway arose like a Cybelean incense, a healthful and fresh odor that filled the lungs and infused a desire to live.

To live! and, thought Sulpice, but a moment ago this lovely, slender girl spoke of dying. He approached her gently, walking by her side, at first not speaking, then little by little returning to that thought and almost whispering in her ear—that rosy ear that stood out against the paleness of her cheek:

"Is it possible to think of anything besides the opening spring, in this wood where everything is awakening to life? Is it really true, Marianne, that you really wished to die?"

He did not feel astonished at having dared to call her by name. It seemed as if he had known her for years. He forgot everything, as if the world was nothing but a dream and that this dream presented this woman's face.

"Yes," she replied. "Upon my honor, I was weary of life, but I see that most frequently at the very moment when one despairs—"

She stopped suddenly.

"Well?" he asked, as he waited for her to continue.

"Nothing. No, nothing!"

She commenced to laugh, calling his attention to the end of the path, to a broader alley which brought them back to the edge of the lake, whose blue line they saw in the distance.

"Blue on blue," she said, pointing to the sky and the water. "You reproach me for not liking blue, Monsieur le Ministre, see! I am taking an azure bath. This horizon is superb, is it not?"

Vaudrey debated with himself if she were jesting. Why should she give him that title which here and at such a moment, had such an out-of-place ring?

She glanced at him sidelong with a little droll expression, her pretty mouth yielding to a smile that enticed a kiss.

"We shall soon have returned to my carriage," she said. "Already!"

"That already pleases me," said Sulpice.

"It is true. This short promenade is nothing, but it suffices to make one forget many things."

"Does it not?" exclaimed Vaudrey.

The shadow of his coupé was still projected between them along the ochre-colored road.

"Do you come to the Bois often?" asked the minister.

"No. Why?"

"Because I shall frequently return here," he said in a trembling voice.

"Really!—Then, oh! why then, it would be love-making?" said Marianne, who pierced him with her warm, tender glances.

He wished to seize this woman's hand and print a kiss thereon, or to press his lips upon her bare neck upon which the golden honey-colored ringlets danced in the bright sunlight.

"On these clear, fine days," she said in an odd tone, emphasizing every word, "it is very likely that I shall return frequently to visit this pathway. Eh! what is that?" she said, turning around.

She was dragging a dry bramble that had fastened its thorns to the folds of her satin skirt and she stopped to shake it off.

"Stop," said Sulpice.

He desired to tread on the russet-colored bramble.

"You will tear my gown," said Marianne. "The bramble clings too tightly."

Then he stooped, gently removed the thorn, and Marianne, her bosom turned toward him and half-stooping, looked at that man—a minister—almost kneeling before her in this wood.

He cast the bramble away from him.

"There," he said.

"Thanks."

As he rose, he felt Marianne's fresh breath on his forehead. It fell on his face, as sweet as new-mown hay. He became very pale and looked at her with so penetrating an expression that she blushed slightly—from pleasure, perhaps,—and until they reached the carriage where her coachman was still sleeping, they said nothing further, fearing that they had both said too much.

At the moment when she entered her carriage, Sulpice, suddenly, with an effort at boldness, said to her, as he leaned over the door:

"I must see you again, Marianne."

"What is the use?" she said, keeping her eyes fixed on his.

"Where shall I see you?" he asked, without replying to her question.

"I do not know—at my house—"

"At your house?"

"Wait," she added abruptly, "I will write to you."

"You promise me?"

"On my word of honor. At the ministry, Personal, isn't that so?"

"Yes!—Ah! you are very good!" he cried, without knowing what he was saying, while Marianne's coachman whipped his horses and the carriage disappeared in the direction of Paris.

It seemed to Vaudrey, who remained standing, that little gloved fingers appeared behind the window and that he caught glimpses of a face hidden under a black, dotted veil.

The carriage disappeared in the distance.

"To the ministry!" said the minister, as he got into his carriage.

He stretched himself out as if intoxicated. He looked at all the carriages along the drive of the Bois de Boulogne, the high life was already moving toward the Lake. In calèches, old ladies in mourning appeared with pale nuns, and old men with red decorations stretched out under lap-robes. Pretty girls with pale countenances pierced with bright eyes, like fragments of coal in flour, showed themselves at the doors of the coupés, close to the muzzles of pink-nosed, well-combed, white-haired little dogs. Vaudrey strove to find Marianne amid that throng, to see her again. She was far away.

He thought only of her, while his coupé went down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, bustling with noise and movement and flooded with light. The coachman took a side street and the carriage disappeared through an open gateway between two high posts surmounted by two lamps, in a passage leading to a huge white mansion whose slate roof was ablaze with sunlight. An infantry soldier in red trousers, with a shako on his head, mounted guard and stood motionless beside a brown-painted sentry-box that stood at the right. Above the gateways a new tricolor flag, in honor of the new ministry, waved in the sunshine.

Against the ministerial edifice were two gas fixtures bearing two huge capital letters: R.F., ready to be illuminated on important reception nights.

Two lackeys hastily opening the door, rushed up to the halted carriage and stood at its door.

"Adieu! Marianne," thought Sulpice, as he placed his foot in the antechamber of this vast mansion as cold as a tomb.

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Part First Chapter VII

She was still mechanically throwing crumbs of bread around her, which were eagerly snatched at by the many-colored ducks ...

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