Like Madame Marsy, Madame Gerson had gradually gained Adrienne's friendship. From an ostentatious desire to be able to tell of what happened at the ministry; to be on the first list of guests, when the minister received or gave a ball, Sabine Marsy, who had suffered from the mania of aspiring to become an artist, patronized the intransigeant painters and exhibited at the salon, now set her mind on playing the rôle of a political figure in Paris. Madame Gerson, Blanche, as Sabine called her, had a similar ambition, but simply from a desire to be in fashion.
She wished to bring herself into notice. Everything attracted her, tempted her. She belonged, body and soul, to that machine with its manifold gearing, brilliant, noisy, active, puffing like a locomotive, that is called chic. Chic, that indefinite, indefinable word, changeable and subtle like a capillary hygrometer, is a Parisian tyranny that grinds out more fashionable lives than the King of Dahomey offers as victims on his great feast days. For Blanche, everything in this most stimulated, over-excited, feverishly deranged life, was reduced to these two inevitable conclusions: what was chic and what was not chic. Not only was this the inevitable guide in reference to style, clothing, hat, gloves, costume, material, jewelry, the dress that she should wear, but also the book that should be read, the play that should be heard, the operatic score that should be strummed on the piano, the bonbon that should be presented, the opinion that one should hold, the picture one should comment upon, all was hopelessly a question of chic.
Madame Gerson would have preferred to be compromised in the matter of her honor rather than to be ridiculed as to her opinions or to express an idea that was not chic. The necessary result was that all this woman's conversation—and she often came to see Madame Vaudrey,—was on well-known topics; so that Adrienne knew in advance what Blanche's opinion was upon such and such a matter, and that ideas could only pass muster with Madame Gerson when they bore the stamp of chic, just as a coin, to escape suspicion of being counterfeit, must bear the stamp of the mint.
Blanche would have been heartbroken if she had not been seen in the President's salon on the occasion of a great reception at the Élysée; at the ministry, on the evening of a comedy; if she had not been in the front rank of the ladies' gallery on the day of interpellation at the Assembly; if she had not been greeted from the top of the grand stand by some minister, on Grand Prix day; if she had not been the first at the varnishing; the first at the general rehearsals, a little chic,—the first everywhere. Slender, delicate, but hardy as a Parisian, she dragged her exhausted husband, with her hand of fine steel, through receptions, balls, soirées, salons, talking loudly, judging everything, chattering, cackling and haranguing, delighted to mount, with head erect, the grand staircase of a minister and feel the joy of plunging her little feet into the official moquettes as if her heels had been made for state carpets; swelling with pride when she heard the usher, amid the hubbub of the reception, call loudly the name which meant the fashionable couple, a couple found at every fête:
"Monsieur and Madame Gerson!"
While the husband, fatigued, weary, left his office heavy-headed, after having eaten a hasty meal, put on his dress coat and white tie in haste, got into his carriage in haste, hurriedly accompanied his wife, left her in order to take a doze on an armchair during the height of the ball, woke in haste, returned home in haste, slept hurriedly, rose the same, dragging this indefatigable creature about with him like a convict's chain, she smiled at others, enticed others, waltzed with others, adorned herself for others, keeping for him only her weariness, her yawns, her pallor and her sick-headaches.
For these two galley-slaves of chic, the winter passed in this manner, as fatiguing as months of penal servitude, and they went none too soon, when the summer arrived, to breathe the sea air or enjoy the sunshine of the country, in order to restore their frames, wan, worn-out, seedy and "gruelled," as Sabine Marsy said, when she recalled her connection with the artists.
"Ah! how much better I like my home!" thought Madame Vaudrey.
Sabine and Madame Gerson, with the wives of the ministers, those of the chiefs of departments, and the regular visitors, were the most assiduous in their attentions to Adrienne, whom they considered decidedly provincial. She, stupefied, was alarmed by these Parisian bustlers, that resembled machines in running order, jabbering away as music-boxes play.
"Do they tire you?" said Guy de Lissac to her bluntly one evening, succumbing to a feeling of pity for this pensive young woman,—who was a hundred times prettier than Madame Gerson, whose beauty was so highly extolled in the journals,—this minister's wife, who voluntarily kept herself in the background with a timidity that betrayed no awkwardness, but was in every way attractive, especially to a man about town like Guy.