Nevertheless, this was one of the vexations of this girl: she was angry
because she had acted rightly. Others suffer remorse for their ill
deeds, but she suffered for her virtue. She often thought of the Duc de
Rosas, as her mother Eve must have thought of Paradise lost. She would
have stirred, astonished, conquered, crushed Paris, if she had been the
mistress of Rosas.
"What then! Whose fault was it? How foolish of one not to dare
everything!"
Now see how suddenly and unexpectedly, just as an adversary might offer
an opportunity for revenge, chance, at the turning-point of her life,
had brought back to Paris this José whom she had never forgotten, and
who perhaps remembered her, and by whom she would be recognized most
assuredly, in any case. It was an unhoped, unlooked-for opportunity that
restored Marianne's faith in herself, superstitious as she was, like all
successful gamblers.
She had fallen, but how she could raise herself by the arms of the duke!
One must be determined.
Guy and Sabine were met on the way, like two helpers. She profited by
this circumstance, using the one to reach the other and to gain Rosas
from the latter. She bore a grudge, nevertheless, against Guy de Lissac,
the insolent and silly fellow who had formerly left her. Bah! before
taking vengeance on him, it was most important to make use of him, and,
after all, revenge is so wearisome and useless.
Now Kayser's niece, Guy's mistress, a woman who had given herself or who
had been taken, who had sold herself or who had been purchased, a young
girl who remained so in features, gracefulness and the virgin charms
that clothed her courtesan's body--her smile a virgin's, her glance full
of frolic--Marianne was now within a few feet of him whom she expected,
wishing for him as a seducer desires a woman.
"If he has loved me one moment, one single moment, Rosas will love me,"
she thought.
The salon was stiflingly hot, but Marianne was determined to keep
herself in the first row, to be directly under the eye of the duke.
She felt the waves of over-heated air rise to her temples, and at times
she feared that she would faint, half-stifled as she was and
unaccustomed now to attend soirées. She remained, however, looking
anxiously toward the door, watching for the appearance of the traveller
and wondering when the pale face of the Spaniard would show itself.
At a short distance from her there was a young woman of twenty-three or
twenty-four, courted like a queen and somewhat confused by the many
questions addressed to her; robed in a white gown, she was extremely
pretty, fair, and wore natural roses in her ash-colored hair, her eyes
had a wondering expression, her cheeks were flushed, and in her amiable,
gracious manner, she disclosed a touch of provincialism, modesty and
hesitation--Marianne heard Madame Gerson say to her neighbors:
"It is the minister's wife."
"Madame Vaudrey?"
"Yes! Very charming, isn't she?"
"Ravishingly pretty! Fresh-looking!"
Then in lowered tone:
"Too fresh!"
"Rather provincial!"
And one voice replied, in an ironical, apologetic tone:
"Bless me, my dear, nothing dashing! Hair and complexion peculiarly her
own! So much the better."
Notwithstanding the low tone of this conversation, Marianne heard it
all. One by one, every one looked at this young woman who borrowed her
golden tints from the rising sun. She bore the popular name of the new
minister. She entered into prominence with him, accepting gracefully and
unaffectedly the weight of his fame. Her timid, almost restless,
uncertain smile, seemed to crave from the other women pardon for her own
success, and there, surrounded by a group of men seated near the window,
were two persons for whom chairs had just been placed, one of whom was a
young, happy man, who exhaled an atmosphere of joy, and looked from time
to time toward Adrienne and Marianne as if to see if the young wife were
annoyed.
"Where is Monsieur Vaudrey then?" Marianne asked Madame Gerson.
"Why, he is just opposite to you! There on your right, beside Monsieur
Collard, and he is devouring you with his glances."
"Ah, bah!" said Marianne with an indifferent smile.
And she looked in her turn.
She had, in fact, already noticed this very elegant man who had been
watching her for some time.
But how could she know that he was Monsieur Vaudrey? He was delightful,
moreover, sprightly in manner and of keen intelligence. A few moments
before, she had heard him, as she passed by him under Sabine's guidance,
utter some flattering remarks which had charmed her and made her smile.
Ah! that was Vaudrey?
She had often heard him spoken of. She had read of his speeches. She had
even frequently seen his photograph in the stationers' windows.
The determined air of this young man, whom she knew to be eloquent, had
pleased her. She ought then to have recognized him. He was exactly as
his photographs represented him.
Of all the glances bestowed on the minister, Marianne's especially
attracted Sulpice. A moment previously he had felt a singular charm at
the appearance of this woman, threading her way directly between the
rows of men by whom she was so crowded as to be in danger of having her
garments pulled from her body. In his love of definitions and analyses,
Vaudrey had never pictured the Parisian woman otherwise, with her
piquant and instantaneous seductiveness, as penetrating as a subtle
essence.
Marianne, smiling restlessly, looked at him and allowed him to look at
her.
Her cheeks, which were extremely pale, suddenly became flushed as if
their color were heightened by some feverish attack, when, amid the stir
caused by the curiosity of the guests, and a greeting manifested by the
shuffling of feet and the murmuring of voices, Monsieur de Rosas
appeared; his air was somewhat embarrassed, he offered his arm to Madame
Marsy, who conducted him to the narrow stage as if to present him.
"At last! ah! it is he!"
"It is really the Duc de Rosas, is it not?"
"Yes, yes, it is he!"
"He is charming!"
The name of Rosas, although only repeated in an undertone by the lips
of these women, rung in Marianne's ears, sounding like a quickstep
played on a clarion. It seemed to her that a decisive moment in her life
was announced fantastically in those utterances. Even now, while burning
with the very fever of her eagerness, she felt the gambler's
superstition. As soon as she saw José, she said to herself at once that
if he saw her and recognized her first glance, then he had not forgotten
her and she could hope for everything. Everything! "Men happily forget
less quickly than women," she thought. "Through egotism, or from regret,
some abandon themselves to their reminiscences with complacency, like
this Guy, and recognize on our countenances the lines of their own
youth. Others, perhaps, mourn over the lost opportunity, and the duke is
sentimental enough to be of that class."
She thought that Rosas must look at her, yes, at any cost; and with body
inclined, her chin resting on her gloved right hand, while the other
handled her fan with the skill peculiar to the Spanish women, she darted
at the duke a rapid glance, a glance burning with desire and in which
she expressed her whole will. The human eye has within it all the power
of attraction possessed by a magnetic needle. As if he had experienced
the actual effect of that glance fixed on his countenance, the duke
raised his head after a polite but somewhat curtly elegant bow, to look
at the audience of lovely women whom Sabine had gathered to greet him,
and, as if only Marianne had been present, he at once saw the
motionless young woman silently contemplating him.
Rosas, as he appeared within the frame formed by the red curtains, his
thin, regular and ruddy face looking pale against the white of his
cravat and the bosom of his shirt, looked like a portrait of a Castilian
of the time of Philip II., clothed in modern costume, his fashionable
black clothes relieved only by a touch of vermilion, a red rosette. But
however fashionable the cut of his clothes might be, on this man with
the vague blue eyes, and looking contemplative and sad with his upturned
moustache, the black coat assumed the appearance of a _doublet_ of old,
on which the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor looked like a diminutive
cross of Calatrava upon a velvet cloak.
In fixing, to some extent, his wandering glance on the fervent look of
Marianne, this melancholy Spanish face was instinctively lighted up with
a fleeting smile that immediately passed and was followed by a slight,
respectful bow, quite sufficient, however, to surround the young woman
with an atmosphere that seemed to glow.
"He has recognized me! at once! come!--I am not forgotten."
As in the glorious moment of victory, her bloodless face was overspread
with a dazzling expression of joy. Boldly raising her head and inviting
his glances as she had braved them, she listened, with glowing eyes,
drinking each word that flowed from his lips, her nostrils distended as
if to scent the approach of an Oriental perfume, to the recital of the
narrative commenced by the duke in a measured, cajoling tone, which grew
animated and louder.
Everybody listened to Rosas. Only the slight fluttering of fans was
heard like a beating of wings. Without changing the tone of his
discourse, and recounting his travels to his audience as if he were
addressing only Marianne, he told in a voice more Italian than Spanish,
in musical, non-guttural cadences, of his experiences on the borders of
the Nile, of the weariness of the caravans, of the nights passed under
star-strewn skies, of the songs of the camel-driver, slowly intoned like
prayers, of the gloom of solitary wastes and of the poetic associations
of the ruins slumbering amid the red sands of the desert. At times he
recited a translation of an Arabian song or remarked in passing, on some
mournful ballad, refined as a Sennett, deep as the infinite, in which
the eternal words of love, tender and affecting in all languages,
assumed an intensely poetic character under the influence of their
Semitic nature; songs in which passers-by, strangers, lovers dead for
centuries, who had strewed, as it were, their joys and their sobs over
the sands of the desert, told the color of the hair and of the eyes of
their dear ones, pleaded with their betrothed dead for the alms of love,
and promised to spectres of women rose-colored garments and flowers that
time would never wither.
These songs of Arabs dying for Nazarenes, of sons of Mohammed
sacrificing themselves for the daughters of Aïssa were so translated by
this Castilian that the exquisite charm of the original, filtered
through his rendering, lost none,--even in French,--of the special
characteristics of his own nation, a half-daughter of the Orient. And
inevitably, with its melancholy repetition, the poetry he spoke of dwelt
on wounded, suffering love, on the anguish of timid hearts, and the sobs
of unknown despairing Arabs, buried for ages under the sands of the
desert.
The duke seemed to take pleasure in dwelling on these poetic quotations
rather than on the reminiscences of his travels. His individuality, his
own impressions vanished before this passionate legacy bequeathed by one
human race to another. Marianne trembled, believing that she could see
even in Rosas's thoughts a desire to speak especially for her and to
her. Was it not thus that he spoke in his own house in the presence of
Lissac, squatting on his divan like an Arab story-teller?
She felt her youth renewed by the memory of all those past years. She
thought herself back once more in the studio on Rue de Laval. Sabine
Marsy's salon disappeared, Rosas was whispering in her ear, looking at
her, and allowing the love that he felt to be perceived, in spite of
Guy.
Guy! who was Guy? Marianne troubled herself about no one but De Rosas.
Only the duke existed now. Had Guy been blended with her life but for a
single moment? She embraced Rosas with her burning glance.
She no longer saw Sulpice, but he never looked away from Mademoiselle
Kayser. He thought her a most charming woman. A magnetic fluid, as it
were, flowed from her to this man, and he, with wandering mind, did not
hear one word of Monsieur de Rosas's narrative, but concentrated his
thoughts upon that pretty, enticing woman, whom he could not refrain
from comparing with his wife, sitting so near her at this moment.
Adrienne was very pretty, her beauty was more regular than the other's.
Her smooth, blond hair was in contrast with the tumbled, auburn locks of
Marianne, and yet, extraordinary as it was--Adrienne had never seemed to
be so cold as on that evening, as she sat there motionless, watching,
while a timid habitual smile played over her lips.
Sulpice suffered somewhat in consequence of this awkwardness on
Adrienne's part, contrasted as it was with the clever freedom of manner,
graceful attitude, and flowing outlines of that disturbing neighbor,
with her dull white countenance, half-closed mouth, strange curl of her
lips, which seemed turned up as if in challenge. She was decidedly a
Parisian, with all her intoxicating charms, that alluring, if vicious
attraction that flows from the eyes of even modest girls. Some words
spoken by Monsieur de Rosas reaching Vaudrey's ears--a description of
the somewhat fantastical preparation of poison by the Indians,
explained by the duke by way of parenthesis--suggested to Sulpice that
the most subtle, the gentlest and most certainly deadly poison was,
after all, the filtering of a woman's glance through the very flesh of a
man, and he thirsted for that longed-for poison, intoxicating and
delicious--
He was anxious for the duke to finish his remarks. What interest had he
in all those travels, those Arabic translations, that Oriental poetry,
or that poison from America? He was seized with the desire to know what
such a charming creature as Marianne thought. Ah! what a pretty girl! He
had already inquired her name; he happened to know Uncle Kayser; the
painter had formerly sent him a printed memoir _On the Method of
Moralizing Art through the Mind_.
The minister experienced on hearing Rosas the feeling of enervation that
attacked him in the Chamber when, near the dinner-hour, an orator became
too long-winded in his speech. He was unable to resist remarking in a
whisper to the President of the Council, who was near him:
"Suppose we call for the clôture?"
Monsieur Collard in a diplomatic way expressed his approval of Rosas by
a look that at the same time rebuked his colleague Vaudrey for his lack
of sufficient gravity.
The duke did not tire any one except Sulpice. He was listened to with
delight. The sentimental exterior of this man concealed a jester's
nature, and the sober appearance of this Castilian wore all the
characteristics of a polished lounger. The least smile that animated his
passive countenance became at once attractive. Marianne thought him most
delightful, or rather, she found him just what she had formerly believed
him to be, a refined, delicate and very simple man in spite of his
graciously haughty manner. When he concluded, the room echoed with the
thunder of the applause. Even in the adjoining rooms the people
applauded, for silence had been secured so as to hear his remarks. With
a wave of his gloved hand, Rosas seemed to disclaim that his discourse
merited the applause, and he received the greetings as a man of the
world receives a salutation, not as a tenor acknowledging the homage
paid to him. He strove to make his way through the group of young men
who were stationed behind him.
"At last!" said Vaudrey, in a half-whisper.
It was the moment for which he had been waiting. He would be able now to
address himself to Mademoiselle Kayser!
He hastened to offer his arm to Marianne.
Madame Marsy, eagerly and quickly, had already appropriated Monsieur de
Rosas, who was moreover surrounded and escorted by a crowd who
congratulated him noisily. Except for that, Marianne would have gone
direct to him in obedience to her desires.
Vaudrey's arm, however, was not to be despised. The new minister was
the leading figure in the assembly. She looked at Sulpice full in the
face as if to inquire the cause of his eagerness in placing himself at
her side, and observing that this somewhat mocking interrogation
disconcerted him, she smiled at him graciously.
She passed on smiling, amid the double row of guests who bowed as she
passed. She suddenly felt a sort of bewilderment, it seemed to her that
all these salutations were for her benefit. She believed herself created
for adoration. Inwardly she felt well-disposed towards Sulpice now,
because he had so gallantly chosen and distinguished her among all these
women.
After all, she would easily find Rosas again. And who knows? It would
perhaps be better that the duke should seek her. Meanwhile, she crossed
the salons, leaning on the arm of the minister. It was a kind of
triumph.
Good-naturedly and politely, but without pride, the minister received
all these attentions, becoming as they were to him in his official
capacity, and as he moved on he uttered from time to time some
commonplace compliment to Marianne, reserving his more intimate remarks
for the immediate future.
Before the buffet, brilliant with light and the gleaming of crystal, the
golden-tinted champagne sparkling in the goblets, the ruddy tone of the
punch, the many fruits, the bright-colored _granite_ and the ices,
Vaudrey stopped, releasing the arm of the young girl but remaining
beside her and passing her the sherbet which a lackey handed him over
the piled-up plates.
Groups were always encircling him; searching, half-anxious glances
greeted his. An eager hunt after smiles and greetings accompanied the
hunt for _tutti frutti_. But the minister confined his attentions to
Marianne, chafing under the eagerness of his desires, though bearing
them with good grace, as if he were really the lover of the pretty girl.
Marianne stood stirring the sherbet with the point of a silver-plated
spoon, examining this statesman, as seductive as a fashionable man, with
that womanly curiosity that divines a silent declaration. A gold weigher
does not balance more keenly in his scales an unfamiliar coin than a
woman estimates and gauges _the value_ of a stranger.
Marianne readily understood that she had fascinated Vaudrey. This
Vaudrey! Notwithstanding that he possessed a charming wife, he still
permitted himself to recognize beauty in other women, and to tell them
so, for he so informed Marianne! He declared it by his smile, his
sparkling eyes, and the protecting bearing that he instinctively
manifested in the presence of this creature who glanced at him with
perfect composure.
In the confusion attending the attack on the buffet and in the presence
of the crowd that formed a half-circle round the minister, it was not
possible for him to commit himself too much; and the conversation,
half-drowned by the noise of voices, was carried on by fits and starts;
but in order to make themselves understood, Vaudrey and Marianne drew
nearer each other and found themselves occasionally almost pressed
against each other, so that the light breath of this woman and the scent
of new-mown hay that she exhaled, wafted over Sulpice's face. He looked
at her so admiringly that it was noticeable. She was laced in a light
blue satin gown that showed her rosy arms to the elbows, and her
shoulders gleamed with a rosy tint that suggested the rays of a winter
sun lighting up the pure snow. A singular animation, half-feverish,
beamed in her small, piercing, restless eyes, and her delicate ears with
their well-marked rims were quite red. The light that fell from the wax
candles imparted to her hair a Titian red tint as if she had bound her
locks with henna during the night. She was visibly assured of her power
and smiled with a strange and provoking air.
Vaudrey felt really much disturbed, he was attracted and half-angered by
this pretty girl with dilating nostrils who calmly swallowed her glass
of sherbet. He thought her at once exquisite and lovely, doubly charming
with her Parisian grace and in her ball costume, her bare flesh as
lustrous as mother-of-pearl under the brilliant light.
Her corsage was ornamented on the left side by an embroidered black
butterfly, with outstretched wings of a brownish, brilliant tint, and
Vaudrey, with a smile, asked her, without quite understanding what he
said, if it were an emblematic crest.
She smiled.
"Precisely," she replied. "What I wear in my corsage I have in my mind.
Black butterflies--or _blue devils_, as you choose."
"You are not exceptional," said Sulpice. "All women are such."
"All women in your opinion then, are a little--what is it called? a
little out of the perpendicular--or to speak more to the point, a little
queer, Monsieur le Ministre?"
The minister smiled in his turn, and looked at Marianne, whose eyes,
seen between the blinking lids, gleamed as the electric eyes of a cat
shine between its long lashes.
"No," he said, "no, but I blame them somewhat for loving the blue only
in the butterflies of which you speak, the _blue devils_ that penetrate
their brain! They are born for blue, however, for that which the
provincial poets style 'the azure', and they shun it as if blue were
detestable. _Blue!_ Nonsense! Good for men, those simpletons, who in the
present age, are the only partisans of _blue_ in passion and in life."
Whether he desired it or not, he had drawn still closer to this creature
who studied him like a strategist while he fawned on her with his
glances, losing himself in that "blue" of which he spoke with a certain
elegance, in which he desired to express mockery, but which was
nevertheless sincere. In the same jesting tone, pointing to the light
blue of her gown, she said:
"You see, your Excellency, that all women do not dislike blue."
"If it is fashionable, _parbleu!_ And if it becomes their beauty as well
as this stuff of yours, they would adore it, most assuredly."
"They love it otherwise, too--In passion and in life. That depends on
the women--and on men," she added, showing her white teeth while smiling
graciously.
She dropped her spoon in the saucer and handed the sherbet to a servant.
With an involuntary movement--or perhaps, after all, it was a shrewdly
calculated one--she almost grazed Sulpice's cheek and lips when she
extended her round and firm arm, and Sulpice, who was somewhat
bewildered, was severely tempted, like some collegian, to kiss it in
passage.
He closed his eyes and a moment after, on reopening them, the disturbing
element having passed, he saw Marianne before him with her fan in her
hand, and as if the image of which he spoke only now recurred to his
memory, he said:
"Mademoiselle, it seems to me that in this very costume and as charming
as you are at this moment, I have seen your portrait at the Salon; is it
not so?"
"Yes," she said. "It is the very best painting that my uncle has
produced."
"I thought it excellent before seeing you," said Sulpice, "but now--"
She did not feel satisfied with the smile that accompanied the
compliment. She wished to hear the entire phrase.
"Now--?" said she, as a most seductive smile played on her lips.
"Now, I find it inferior to the original!"
"One always says so, your Excellency, except perhaps to the artist; but
I was greatly afraid that you would not think me so, arrayed in
this--this famous blue--this sky-blue that you love so much."
"And that I love a hundred times more from this evening forward," said
he, in a changed and genuinely affected tone.
She did not reply, but looked at him full in the face as if to inform
him that she understood him. He was quite pale.
"Would you not like to be one of the bright ornaments of my salon, as
you are of that of Madame Marsy?" said he, in a whisper.
"With the greatest happiness, your Excellency."
What Sulpice said was not heard by the others; but Marianne felt that
she was observed, envied already, and manifested her complete
satisfaction with a toss of her head. In this atmosphere of flattery,
oppressive as with the heavy odor of incense, she experienced a
sensation of omnipotence, the intoxication of that power with which
Vaudrey was invested, whose envied reflection was cast on her by that
simple aside spoken in the midst of the crowd.
She was delighted and exceedingly proud. She almost forgot that her
visit had been made on Rosas's account.
Vaudrey was about to add something, when Madame Marsy in passing to
greet her guests, noticed Marianne and grasping her hand:
"I beg your pardon, your Excellency," she said, "but I must take her
away from you. I have been asked for her."
"By whom?" said Vaudrey.
"Monsieur de Rosas!"
Vaudrey looked at Marianne. He observed distinctly a flash of joy
illuminate her pale face and he felt a sudden and singular discontent,
amounting almost to physical anguish. And why, great heavens?
Marianne smiled a salutation; he half-bowed and watched her as she went
away, with a sort of angry regret, as if he had something further to say
to this woman who was almost a stranger to him, and who, guided by
Sabine, now disappeared amid the crowd of black coats and bright
toilets. And then, almost immediately and suddenly, he was surrounded
and besieged by his colleagues of the Chamber, men either indifferent or
seeking favors, who only awaited the conclusion of the conversation with
Mademoiselle Kayser, which they would certainly have precipitated,
except for the fear of acting indiscreetly, in order to precipitate
themselves on him. Amid all those unknown persons who approached him,
Vaudrey sought a friend as he felt himself lost and taken by assault by
this rabble.
The sight of the face of a friend, older than himself, a spare man with
a white beard very carefully trimmed, caused him a feeling of pleasure,
and he joyfully exclaimed:
"Eh! _pardieu!_ why, here is Ramel!"
He immediately extended both hands in warm greeting to this man of sixty
years, wearing a white cravat twisted round his neck, like a neckerchief
in the old-fashioned style, and whose black waistcoat with its standing
collar of ancient pattern was conspicuous amid the open waistcoats of
the fashionably-dressed young men who had been very eagerly surrounding
the minister for the last few moments.
"Good day, Ramel!--How delighted I am to see you!"--
"And I also," said Ramel in a friendly and affectionate tone, while his
face, that seemed severe, but was only good-natured and masculine,
suddenly beamed. "It is not a little on your account that I came here."
"Really?"
"Really. I was anxious to shake hands with you. It is so long since I
saw you. How much has happened since then!"
"Ah! Ramel, who the devil would have said that I should be minister when
I took you my first article for the _Nation Française_!" said Vaudrey.
"Bah! who is not a minister?" said Ramel. "You are. Remember what
Napoléon said to Bourrienne as he entered the Tuileries: 'Here we are,
Bourrienne! now we must stay here!'"
"That is exactly what Granet said to me when he told me of the new
combination."
"Granet expressed in that more of an after-thought than your old Ramel."
"My best friend," said Sulpice with emotion, grasping this man's hands
in his.
"It is so much more meritorious on your part to tell me that," said
Ramel, "seeing that now you do not lack friendships."
"You are still a pessimist, Ramel?"
"I--A wild optimist, seeing that I believe everything and everybody! But
I must necessarily believe in the stupidity of my fellows, and upon this
point I am hardly mistaken."
"But what brings you to Madame Marsy's, you who are a perfect savage?"
"Tamed!--Because, I repeat to you, I knew that you were coming and that
Monsieur de Rosas was to speak on the subject of savages, and these
please me. If I had been rich or if I only had enough to live on, I
should have passed my life in travelling. And in the end, I shall have
lived between Montmartre and Batignolles: a tortoise dreaming that he is
a swallow--"
"Ramel, my dear fellow," said the minister, "would you wish me to give
you a mission where you could go and study whatever seemed good to you?"
"With my rheumatism? Thanks, your Excellency!" said Ramel, smiling. "No,
I am too old, and never having asked any one for anything, I am not
going to begin at my age."
"You do not ask, it is offered you."
"Well, I have no desire for that. I am at the hour of the _far niente_
that precedes the final slumber. It is a pleasant condition. One has
seen so many things and persons that one has no further desires."
"The fact is," said the minister, "that if all the people you have
obligated in your life had solicited an invitation from Madame Marsy,
these salons would not be large enough to contain them."
"Bah! they have all forgotten as I have, myself," said Ramel, with a
shake of his head and smiling pleasantly.
Vaudrey felt intense pleasure in meeting, in the midst of this crowd of
indifferent or admiring persons, the man who had formerly seen him
arrive in Paris, and with whom he had corresponded from the heart of his
province, as with a kinsman. There was, in fact, between them, a
relationship of mind and soul that united this veteran of the press with
this young statesman.
The ideal sought was the same, but the temperaments were different.
Ramel, although he had known them, had for a long time avoided those
excitements of struggle and power that inflamed Vaudrey's blood.
"It was a glorious day when my pulse became regulated," he said.
"Experience brought me the needed tonic."
Denis Ramel was a wise man. He took life as he found it, without
enthusiasm as without bitterness. He was not wealthy. More than sixty
years old, he found himself, after a life of hard, rough and continuous
struggle, as badly off as when he started out on his career, full of
burning hopes. He had passed his life honorably as a journalist--a
journalist of the good old times, of the school of thought, not of
news-tellers,--he had loyally and conscientiously exercised a profession
in which he took pleasure; he had read much, written much, consumed much
midnight oil, touched upon everything; put his fingers into every kind
of pie without soiling them, and after having valiantly turned the heavy
millstone of daily labor incessantly renewed for forty years, he had
reached the end of his journey, the brink of the grave, almost
penniless, after having skirted Fortune and seen Opportunity float
toward him her perfumed and intoxicating locks more than a hundred
times. Bent, weary, almost forgotten, and unknown and misunderstood by
the new generation, that styled this enthusiasm, more eager, moreover,
than that of juvenile faith, "old"--he saw the newcomers rise as he
might have beheld the descent of La Courtille.
"It amuses me."
Ramel had, in the course of his career as a publicist, as a dealer in
fame, assisted without taking part therein, in the formation of
syndicates, allotments of shares and financial intrigues; and putting
his shoulder to the wheel of enterprises that appeared to him to be
solid, while seeking to strike out those which appeared to be doubtful,
he had created millionaires without asking a cent from them, just as he
had made ministers without accepting even a thread of ribbon at their
hands.
This infatuating craft of a maker of men pleased him. All those pioneers
in the great human comedy, he had seen on their entrance, hesitating and
crying to him for assistance. This statesman, swelling out with his
importance in the tribune, had received the benefit of his correction of
his earlier harangues. He had encouraged, during his competition for the
Prix de Rome, this member of the Institute who to-day represented
national art at the Villa Médicis; he had seen this composer, now a
millionaire, beg for a private rehearsal as he might ask alms, and slip
into one's hands concert tickets for the Herz hall. He was the first to
point out the verses of the poet who now wore _l'habit vert_. He had
first heralded the fame of the actor now in vogue, of the tenor who
to-day had his villas at Nice, yes, Ramel was the first to say: "He is
one of the chosen few!"
Old, weary and knowing, very gentle and refined in his banter, and
refusing to be blinded or irritated by the trickeries of destiny, Denis
Ramel, when asked why, at his age and with his talents, he was neither a
deputy, nor a millionaire, nor a member of the Institute, but only a
Warwick living like a poor devil, smiled and said, with the tone of a
man who has probed to the bottom the affairs of life:
"Bah! what is the use? All that is not so very desirable. Ministers,
academicians, millionaires, prefects, men of power, I know all about
them. I have made them all my life. The majority of those who strut
about at this very time, well! well! it is I who made them!"
And, like a philosopher allowing the rabble to pass him, who might have
been their chief, but preferred to be their judge, he locked himself in
his apartments with his books, his pictures, his engravings, his little
collection slowly gathered year by year, article by article, smoking his
pipe tranquilly, and at times reviewing the pages of his life, just as
he might have fingered the leaves of a portfolio of engravings, thinking
when he chanced to meet some notable person of the day who shunned him
or merely saluted him curtly and stiffly:
"You were not so proud when you came to ask me to certify your pay-slip
for the cashier of the journal."
Ramel had always greatly esteemed Sulpice Vaudrey. This man seemed to
him to be more refined and less forgetful than others. Vaudrey had never
"posed." As a minister, he recalled with deep emotion the period of his
struggles. Ramel, the former manager of the _Nation Française_, was one
of the objects of his affection and admiration. He would have been
delighted to snatch this man from his seclusion and place him in the
first rank, to make this sexagenarian who had created and moulded so
many others, noteworthy by a sudden stroke.
Amid the tumultuous throng, and feeling overjoyed to find once more one
whom he could trust, to whom he could abandon himself entirely, he
repeated to him in all sincerity:
"Come, Ramel! Would you consent to be my secretary general?"
"No! your Excellency," Ramel answered, as a kindly smile played beneath
his white moustaches.
"To oblige me?--To help me?"
"No--Why, I am an egotist, my dear Vaudrey. Truly, that would make me
too jealous. Take Navarrot," he added, as he pointed to a fashionable
man, elegantly cravatted, carrying his head high, who had just greeted
Vaudrey, using the same phrase eight times: "My dear minister--your
Excellency--my minister--"
"Navarrot?"
"He appears to be very much attached to you!"
"You are very wicked, Ramel. He holds to the office and not to the man.
He is not the friend of the minister, but of ministers. He is one of the
ordinary touters of the ministry. He applauds everything that their
Excellencies choose to say."
"Oh! I know those touters," said the old journalist. "When a minister is
in power, they cheer him to the echo; when he is down, they belabor
him."