"You know that—this evening—"
"Yes, yes," she replied, "do not be anxious about anything! I am still the minister's wife, if I am Madame Vaudrey no longer."
He tried in vain to reply.
Adrienne had already disappeared.
"There is the end of my happiness!" Sulpice stammered as he suddenly confronted an unknown situation dark as an abyss. "Ah! how wretched I am! Very wretched! whose fault is it?"
He plunged gladly into the work of examining the bundles of reports from the prefects, feverishly inspecting them to deafen and blind his conscience, and seized at every moment with a desire to make an appeal to Adrienne or to go and insult Marianne. Oh! especially to tell Marianne that she had betrayed him, that she was a wretch, that she was the mistress of Rosas, the mistress of Jouvenet, a strumpet like any other strumpet, yes, a strumpet!
Amid all the disturbance of that day of harsh misfortune, perhaps he thought more of the Marianne that he had lost than of the Adrienne that he had outraged; while the wife questioned with herself if it were really she coming and going, automatically trying on her ball costume, abandoning her head to the hair-dresser, feeling that in two hours she would be condemned to smile on the minister's guests, the senators and the deputies and play the part of a spectre, marching in the land of dreams, in a nightmare that choked her, fastened on her throat and heart and prompted her to cry and weep, all her poor nerves intensely strained and sick, subdued by the energy of a tortured person, imposing on herself the task of not appearing to suffer and—a still more atrocious thing—of not even suffering in reality and waiting, yes, waiting to sob.
In the evening, everything blazed on the façade of the ministry. The rows of gas-jets suggested that a public fête was being held in the Hôtel Beauvau. The naming capital letters R.F. were boldly outlined against the dark sky, the three colors of the flags looked bright in the ruddy light of the gas. Carriages rolled over the sanded courtyard, giving up at the carpeted entrance to the hôtel the invited guests dressed in correct style, the women wrapped in ample cloaks with gold fringe or trimmed with fur, and all poured into the antechamber, brushing against the Gardes de Paris in white breeches, with grounded arms, forming a row and standing out like Caryatides against the shining, large leaved green flowers on which their white helmets shone by the light of the lustres. In the dressing-room, the clothing was piled up, tied together in haste; the antechamber was quickly crossed, the women in passing casting rapid glances at the immense mirrors; a servant asked the names of the guests and repeated them to an usher, whose loud voice penetrated these salons that for many years had heard so many different names, of all parties, under all régimes, and proclaimed them in the usual commonplace manner, while murdering the most celebrated of them. Upon the threshold of the salon, filled with fashionable people and flooded with intense light, stood the minister, who had been receiving, greeting, bowing, ever since the opening of the soirée, to those who arrived, some of whom he did not know; crowding behind him, correctly dressed, stood his secretaries, the members of his cabinet appropriating their shares of the greetings extended to the Excellency, and at his side stood Madame Vaudrey, pale and smiling as the creatures of the other world; she also bowed and from time to time extended her gloved hand mechanically; pale she looked in her décolleté gown of white satin, clasped at the shoulders with two pearl clasps, a bouquet of natural roses in her corsage, and standing there like a melancholy spectre on the very threshold of the festive salons.
When she perceived Guy enter, she greeted him with a sad smile, and Vaudrey eagerly offered his hand to him as if he relied greatly on him to arrange matters.
Adrienne's repressed grief had pained Lissac. While to the other guests she appeared to be only somewhat fatigued, to him the open wound and sorrow were visible. He plunged into the crowd. Beneath the streaming light the diamonds on the women's shoulders gleamed like the lustres' crystals. Within a frame of gobelins and Beauvais tapestry taken from the repository, was an improvised scene that looked like a green and pink nest of camellias, dracænas and palms. The bright toilettes of the women already seated before this scenic effect presented a wealth of pale blue, white or pink silk, mother-of-pearl shoulders, diamonds, and bows of pink or feather headdresses. Guy recognized Madame Marsy in the front row, robed in a very low-cut, sea-green satin robe with a bouquet of flowers at the tip of the shoulder, who while fanning herself looked with haughty impertinence at the pretty Madame Gerson, her former friend. Madame Evan was numerously surrounded, she was the most charming of all the stylish set and the woman whom all the others tried to copy.