Sulpice took away from this ceremony in the presence of a crowded congregation an impression at once perfumed and dazzling: the perfumes of flowers, the play of light, the greetings of the organ, and within and about him, all the intoxication of love, singing a song of happiness.
All that was now far away! nearly six years had elapsed since that day, six years of bitter struggle, during which Vaudrey fought the harder, defended his ideas of liberty with fervid eloquence, disputed step by step, and through intense work came to the front, living at Paris just as he did in the province, having his books brought from there to his apartment in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, close to the railroad that he took every morning when he regretfully left Adrienne, Adrienne to whom he returned every evening that political meetings and protracted sittings did not rob him of those happy evenings, which were in truth the only evenings that he really lived.
Adrienne seldom went out, not caring to display herself and shunning the bustle, living at Paris, as at Grenoble, in peaceful seclusion, caring only for the existence of her husband, his work, and his speeches that he prepared with so much courageous labor. She sat up with him until very late, glancing over the books, the summaries of the laws and the old parliamentary reports.
At times she was terrified at the ardor with which Sulpice devoted himself to these occupations. She greatly desired to take her part and was grieved at being unable to assist him by writing from his dictation, or by examining these old books. She felt terribly anxious when Vaudrey had to make a speech from the tribune. She dared not go to hear him, but knowing that he was to speak, she had not the courage to remain at home. Anxiously she ascended to the public gallery. She shuddered and was almost ready to faint, when she heard the voice of the president break what seemed to her an icy silence, with the words: Monsieur Vaudrey has the ear of the Assembly.
The sound of Sulpice's voice seemed changed to her. Fearfully she asked herself if fright was strangling him. She dared not look at him. It seemed to her that the people were laughing, making a disturbance and coughing, but not listening to him. Why had she come? She would never do so again. An icy chill took possession of her. Then suddenly she heard a storm of applause that seemed like an outburst of sympathy. Hands were clapped, voices applauded. She half raised herself, and leaning upon the rail of the gallery, saw Sulpice between the crowded heads, towering above the immense audience, radiant and calm, standing with his arms folded or his hands resting on the tribune, below the chair occupied by a motionless, white-cravatted man, and throwing back his fair head, hurling, as from a full heart, his words, his wishes and his faith. All this she saw with supreme happiness and felt proud of the man whose name she bore.
At that moment, she would fain have cried out to every one that she was his, that she adored him, that he was her pride, even as she was his joy! She would like to have folded him to her, to cling to his neck and to repeat before all that crowd: I love you!
But she reserved all her tender effusions for the intimacy of their home, in order to calm the enthusiasm, oftentimes desperate, of this nervous man whom everything threw into a feverish excitement, this grand man, as they called him at Grenoble, who was for her only a great child whom she adored and kept in check by her girlish devotion combined with her motherly, delicate attentions.
Vaudrey, however, more ambitious to do good than to obtain power, and spending his life in the conflicts of the Chamber, saw the years slipping away without realizing that he was making any progress, not a single step forward in the direction of his goal. Since the war, the years had passed for him as well as for those of his generation, with confusing rapidity, and suddenly, all at once, after having been in some sense slumbering, flattering himself that a man of thirty has a future before him, he was rudely awakened to the astonishing truth that he was forty.
Forty! Sulpice had experienced a certain melancholy in advancing the figure by ten, and whatever position he had acquired within his party, within the circle of his friends, his dream was to reach still higher, he was tired of playing second-rate parts, and eager to stand before the footlights in full blaze, in the first rôle.
In the snug interior that Adrienne furnished, he enjoyed all material happiness. She soothed him, brought his dreams back to the region of the real, terrified at times by his discouragements, his anger, and still more by his illusions concerning men and things.