"Do you wish it?" asked Marianne, with a toss of her head, speaking in a very sweet voice.
"Decidedly. It is selfish, but I wish to feel myself not a little at home here," Sulpice replied.
He seized her hands, her plump, soft, coaxing hands, and as he clasped them within his own, he carried them to his lips and kissed them, as well as her face, neck, ear and mouth, which he covered with kisses; and Marianne, still holding the satin paper that the minister had just signed, said with a laugh as she feebly defended herself:
"Come—come—have done with it! Oh! the big boy!—You will leave nothing for another time!"
He left the house, his head was swimming, and he was permeated with strong odors. He flung to the coachman an address half-way to the ministry.
"Place de la Madeleine."
He shut his eyes to picture Marianne.
As soon as she was alone, her lips curled as a smile of satisfied vanity played over them. She began by reading the lines that he had so hastily written: I guarantee to Monsieur Adolphe Gochard a bill of exchange at three months, if he agrees to advance that amount to Mademoiselle Dujarrier who will hand it to Mademoiselle Marianne Kayser.
"Well! the Dujarrier was right," she said; "a woman's scheming works easier than a sinapism."
Then, after a slight toss of the head and still smiling, she opened one of the drawers of the small Inaltia cabinet and slipped into it the satin paper to which the minister had affixed his signature and which she had carefully folded four times. She considered that autograph worth a thousand times more gold than the few pieces that remained scattered about the drawer, like so many waifs of luxury. Then, slowly returning to her armchair, she sank into it, clasping her two hands behind her head and gazing at the ceiling, her thoughts wandered in dreams—a crowd of little ambitious thoughts passed through her brain like drifting clouds across the sky—and while with the top of her foot she again beat her nervous march on the hem of her petticoat, her lips, the lips whose fever had been taken away by Vaudrey, still preserved the strange turn of the corners that indicated the unsatiated person who sees, however, his opportunity arrive.