II

Madame Vaudrey drew no real pleasure from the commonplace receptions at

the ministry, or at her Wednesday _at homes_, except when by chance,

Denis Ramel permitted himself to abandon the Batignolles to call at

Place Beauvau, or when Guy enlivened this dull spot by recounting the

happenings of the outside world.

Adrienne felt herself terribly isolated; she knew hardly any one in

Paris. Since Vaudrey had installed himself in Rue de la

Chaussée-d'Antin, she had not had time to form acquaintances among the

wives of the deputies to the Assembly, the majority of whom lived in the

provinces or dwelt at Versailles for economical reasons.

Evidently the residence at the ministry had only brought her ready-made

relations, depressingly inevitable visitors who resembled office-seekers

or clients. These official receptions filled her with sadness. The

conversation always took the same hackneyed tone, disgusting in its

flattery or disquieting by reason of its allusions. People discussed

coming interpellations of ministers; government majorities, projected

legislation; the same phrases, as dreary as showers, fell with all the

regularity of drops of rain. Even young girls, brought up in this centre

of infuriated politicians, spoke of the breaking up of the majority,

reports or ballots, in the same manner as shopkeepers talk of their

trade.

Poor Adrienne exerted herself to acquire an interest in these matters.

Since her husband's very existence was involved therein, hers should

also be. She had, however, formerly dreamed of an entirely different

youth and on bright, sunshiny days she reflected that yonder on the

banks of the Isère, it was delightful in her sweet, little, provincial

house.

Besides, she carefully concealed her melancholy. She knew that she was

already reproached for being somewhat sad. A minister's wife should know

how to smile. This was what Madame Marsy never failed to repeat to her

as often as possible when she visited her at Place Beauvau. This woman

who hardly concerned herself at all about her son, allowing him to grow

up badly enough and committing all her maternal duties to the

grandmother, was perpetually cheerful, notwithstanding that her life had

been chequered by chance and her widowhood of sufficiently dramatic

character, as was said. She endeavored to play the part of an adviser,

an intimate friend to Adrienne. She frequently said to Madame Gerson,

who rarely left her, that Madame Vaudrey would be altogether charming if

she had _chic_.

"Unfortunately, she is provincial; not in her element. She still smacks

of Dauphiny. And then--what is the funniest thing: she knows nothing of

politics."

"She does not even concern herself about it," said the pretty Madame

Gerson, laughing heartily.

According to these ladies she did not take the trouble to fulfil the

rôle of a minister's wife faultlessly. Ah! if only Sabine or Blanche

Gerson occupied the position filled by this _petite bourgeoise_ of

Grenoble! Well! Paris would have seen what an Athenian Republic was.

Sabine Marsy was decidedly clever. She politely advised Adrienne,

without appearing to do so, as to many matters, in such a way as to

convey reproof under the guise of kindness. Madame Vaudrey would have

done well, as Madame Gerson also observed, to have studied the _Code du

Cérémonial_ on reaching Place Beauvau.

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.

"They do not tire me, they upset me," Adrienne replied.

"Ah! they are in full _go_, as it is called. An express train. But they

amuse themselves so much that they have not even time to smile. When the

locomotive spins along too rapidly, try to distinguish the scenery!"

Adrienne instinctively felt that under his irony this sceptic disguised

a sort of sincerity. Lissac's wit pleased her. He surprised her somewhat

at times, but the probably assumed raillery of the young man compensated

for the insipid nonsense of the conversation to which she listened

daily.

At first from mere curiosity and after from a sentiment of respectful

devotion, Guy was impelled to study that delicate and sensitive nature,

entirely swayed by love of Sulpice, that suffered at times a vague

pressure as of some indefinable anguish at the throat, as if a vacuum--a

choking vacuum--had been created about her by some air-pump.

This huge mansion seemed to her to be entirely innocent of all memories,

and though peopled with phantoms, was as commonplace and vulgar as an

apartment house. There were no associations save dust and cracks. These

salons, built for the Maréchal de Beauvau, these walls that had

listened to the sobs of Madame d'Houdetot at the death-bed of

Saint-Lambert, appeared to Adrienne to exude ennui, strangling and

inevitable ennui, solemn, official, absolute ennui, nothing but ennui in

the very decorum of the place, and isolation in the midst of power.

She cursed her loneliness, she felt lost amid the salons of this

furnished ministerial mansion, whose cold, gloomy apartments, with the

chairs symmetrically arranged along the walls, she wandered through, but

evidently without expecting any one: state chairs lacking

occupants,--ordinary chairs, domestic chairs seem to have tongues--that

never exchanged conversation. Vast, deserted rooms where the green

curtains behind the glass doors of the bookcases were eternally drawn,

bookcases without books, forever open, mournful as empty sepulchres.

Yes, this immense gilded dwelling with its Gobelins tapestries stifled

her with its terrifying gloom, where nothing, not a single article,

recalled her charming provincial home, her Grenoble house with its

garden filled with lilacs where she was often wont to read while Sulpice

worked upstairs, bent over his table crowded with papers, before his

open window. Ah! those cherished rooms, in the humble corner of the

provincial home, their happy crouching in the peaceful nest; aye, even

the happy first days in Paris, in the Chaussée-d'Antin apartments, in

which Adrienne at least felt herself in her own home, free in her

actions and thoughts, and where she could talk aloud without feeling

that an eye was constantly watching her, and ears were always strained,

in fact, a perpetual espionage upon all her actions and a criticism of

all her words.

She had reached a point when she asked herself if, even for Sulpice,

happiness was not far removed from this life of slavery, of feverish

politics, which for some time past had been visibly paling his cheeks

and rendering him nervous and altogether different from of old.

"If you did not love me so much," she said with a sweet smile, "I could

believe that you loved me no longer."

"What folly! you have only one rival, Adrienne."

"Ah! I know that very well, but that robs me of everything. It is

politics. Come! be great, and I shall be happy or resigned, as you wish.

I adore you so much! I would give you my life, so I would gladly give

you my days of weariness!"

Although she was rich, she strove to introduce into her official

surroundings the bourgeois and provincial orderly methods that she had

been so virtuously taught. She found that her desserts vanished with

frightful rapidity, that dishes scarcely touched and bottles whose

contents had only been tasted, were removed to the kitchen. She

commented thereon, but the somewhat contemptuous smile of her domestics

was her only reply and it made her feel ashamed.

Vaudrey's predecessor, Monsieur Pichereau, was exacting,

_close-fisted_. His table was meagre but there was nothing astonishing

in that, Monsieur Pichereau had a delicate stomach. Well and good, but

the predecessors of Monsieur Pichereau, they had given fêtes, they had!

It is true that one was a count and the other a marquis. One can always

tell a gentleman anywhere.

One evening, they heard one of the domestics of the ministry say to

another:

"As if it were not our money that the ministers spend! It is the

electors' money. They give us wages: we give them salaries. There it

is!"

The domestic was discharged immediately, but these remarks, however,

recurred to Adrienne's memory and filled her with dislike for the

flunkeyism that surrounded her, waiting on her with cold civility, but

without any attachment, like hotel waiters or girls at an inn that one

will leave the next day, giving them a gratuity.

Vaudrey saw much less of these daily little wounds. He lived in an

atmosphere of constant flattery, favor-begging cloaked under

complimentary phrases. Had he leisure, he would have been able to

calculate with mathematical exactitude how many angles the human form

would describe in the process of bowing and scraping. In his department,

everybody asked for something or got someone else to ask. _Promotion_,

that insatiable hunger, was the greedy dream of all that little world of

intriguing, underhand, begging employés, who opened up around the new

minister so many approaches, like military lines around a redoubt.

Sulpice felt himself besieged and the target for a crowd of greedy

ambitions. The sub-heads of departments cast bitterly envious glances at

the offices of chiefs, like hungry beggars hypnotized by the display at

Chevet's. Commendatory letters rained on him. This shower of

begging-missives nauseated the minister to such an extent that he

endeavored to arrest the stream, ordering Warcolier, the Under Secretary

of State, to be called and requesting him to reply to the deputies, to

the senators, to everybody, in fact: that he had no influence to use,

that the era of favoritism was over; that he, Vaudrey, understood that

only merit would receive official gifts. "Merit only. You understand,

Monsieur Warcolier?"

Warcolier rolled his huge eyes in astonishment; then, with the

self-satisfied smile of an expressionless beau, after passing his fat

hand through his long whiskers, yellow and streaked with gray, that

decorated his rosy cheeks, he remarked doctorally, that Monsieur le

Ministre was entering on a path that, in all conscience, he could

qualify as being only dangerous. Eh! _bon Dieu!_ one must do something

for one's friends!--Vaudrey's accession to the Department of the

Interior had given birth to many new hopes; on all grounds they must be

satisfied. Vaudrey would never be forgiven for such deception.

"What deception?" asked Sulpice. "I promised reforms and I am going to

carry them out, but people laugh at my reforms and ask what?--Places."

"Bless me!" replied Warcolier, "entirely logical."

"Be it so! but there are places and places. I cannot, however, retire a

whole staff of employés to give place to a new one. That's precisely

what they want. There is not a deputy who has not one candidate to

recommend to me."

"That's very natural, Monsieur le Ministre, seeing that there is not a

deputy who may not himself be a candidate."

"Still, he should be independent of his electors, but in truth, it is

not the rights of those who have elected them that my colleagues defend,

it is their own interests."

"Every man for himself, Monsieur le Ministre. Yesterday, even yesterday,

one of my electors whose wife has just given birth to a child, wrote me,

asking for a good nurse. That is like one of our colleagues, Perraud--of

the Vosges.--One of his electors commissioned him to take back an

umbrella with him upon his early return. The electors regard their

deputies in the light of commission merchants."

"And as tobacco bureaus! Well, I wish to have more morality than that in

State affairs. I like giving, but I know how to refuse," said Vaudrey.

"That will be easy enough so long as you are popular and solid in

Parliament; but on the day that it is clearly proved that such and such

a future minister can make himself more useful than you to the personal

interests of everybody--and there are such ministers in sight--"

"Granet, yes, I know! He promises more butter than bread, to cry quits

later in giving more dry crusts than fresh butter. But I don't care to

deceive any one."

"As you please, Monsieur le Ministre, as you please," answered

Warcolier, in a mocking and gentle tone.

Sulpice did not like this man. He was a phrase-maker. He had a vague

feeling that this Warcolier who in public affected strictly severe

principles was privately undermining him and that he yielded to favors

in order to win support. It was enough for the minister to discourage

coarse, greedy ambitions, provided that the Under Secretary of State

encouraged unsavory, eager hopes by shrewd smiles and silence that

assented to all that was desired. This little underhand work going on in

his office was unknown to Vaudrey; he did not know that out of every

refusal he gave, Warcolier secured friends; but he maintained a watchful

distrust for this republican who had become so stanch a supporter of the

Republic only since that form of government had triumphed. Besides, what

had he to fear? The President of the Council, Monsieur Collard, of

Nantes, had the unbounded confidence of the head of the State and of the

Chamber; and he was Collard's intimate friend. The majority of the

cabinet was compact. The perfect calm of the horizon was undisturbed by

a cloud. Vaudrey could rule without fear, without excitement and give

all his spare time to that woman whose piercing glance, wandering smile,

palpitating nostrils, dishevelled, fair hair, kisses, fondness, cries,

and tones pursued him everywhere.

Marianne, how he loved her! From day to day, how his love of her

increased like a madman's! It seemed to him that he suddenly found

himself in the presence of the only woman who could possibly understand

him, and in the only world in which he could live; his petty bourgeois,

sensual inexperience flourished in the little hôtel of the courtesan.

He had doubtless loved; often enough he had thought himself once more in

love; the poor grisettes, to whom he had written in verse, as he might

have sung songs to them, were gone from his thoughts, though they had

occupied his heart for a short time. He had profoundly loved her who

bore his name, perhaps he loved her still as warmly, as sincerely--the

unfortunate man!--as of old. He sometimes recalled with tearful eye, how

his whole frame trembled with love in the presence of that young girl

who had given herself entirely to him, in all her trust and sincerity,

in all her candor, and all her chastely-timid innocent modesty. But

Adrienne's love was insipid compared with the intoxicating and

appetizing voluptuousness of this woman, so adorable in her exquisite

luxury, the refinements of her charm, the singular grace of her

attitudes, of her mind, of her disjointed conversation which dared

everything, mocked, caressed, beginning with a pout and ending with some

drollery, and challenged passion by exasperating it with refusals and

mockery that changed into distracting lasciviousness.

When she extended to Vaudrey her little hand, covered with rings, and

indolent and soft, he felt as if he had received an electric shock and

that his marrow had been touched. This man of forty felt all the

enthusiasm and distraction of a youth. It seemed to him that this was

the only woman that he possibly could love, and in truth she was the

only one that he could have loved as he did, with his forgetfulness of

self, his outbursts of madness, the distracted sentiment of a love for

which he would have braved and risked everything.

When he confessed it frankly, she had a way of answering with a

questioning manner full of doubt, which conveyed the delicacy of the

woman's self-love and the intentionally refined doubt of the coquette, a

questioning _yes_:

"Yes?"

Simply that.

And in this _yes_, there was a world of tenderness, excitement and

burning promises for Sulpice.

Then he drew her to him:

"Yes, yes, yes, yes!" he repeated in burning tones, as he thrust his

head between her shoulders that emerged from her embroidered chemise,

and her neck perfumed and satiny, that he covered with eager kisses.

Yes! And he would have uttered this _yes_ before every one like a

bravado. _Yes!_ It was his delight to give himself wholly to Marianne

and to tell her again and again that nothing in the whole world could

take the place of this mistress who made him forget everything:

politics, the home, the ambition that had been his life, and his

affection for Adrienne that had been his joy.

Thanks to the Dujarrier, Marianne had paid the rent of the house, the

servants and the pressing debts. Claire Dujarrier advanced the hundred

thousand francs demanded by Mademoiselle Kayser, and which she had

apparently--in reality she took them from her own funds--borrowed from

Adolphe Gochard, her lover, who had not a sou, and in whose favor

Vaudrey signed in regular legal form, a bill of exchange at three

months' date _value received in cash_. The Dujarrier merely retained

twenty thousand francs as her commission and handed only eighty thousand

to Marianne.

"But Vaudrey's acceptance to Gochard is for one hundred thousand!"

"You are silly, my girl! What if I lose the balance? If your minister

should not pay?"

"What do you mean?"

"Stranger things have happened, my little one."

Vaudrey having paid, given his name, signed this bill of exchange, felt

the extreme joy arising from the base self-love of the man who pays a

lovely creature and who, nevertheless, believes himself loved.

In the early days, Sulpice went to Rue Prony only during the day or at

night after dinner, or on leaving a reception or the theatre. Marianne

awaited him. He came stealthily, distracted with joy. There, in the

closed chamber he remained with Marianne, who was full of pride at the

complete subjugation of the will of this man in her embrace. She amused

herself occasionally by calling him _Your Excellency_, in reading to him

from some book which spun out the ceremonial necessary in applying for

an interview with a minister:

"If ever I ask you for an audience, do you know how I must address

myself to the secretary? Listen to this book, it is funny: 'Ordinary

toilet. The etiquette for the toilet is not very strict, but it is,

however, in good taste to appear dressed as for a ceremonious call. For

women, the toilet should be simple and the gloves new.'"

She laughed as she rested almost naked in Sulpice's arms, and repeated,

looking into his eyes:

"A simple toilet!"

"And again, listen!" she said, as she resumed the book. "'In speaking to

a minister as in writing to him, one should address him as _Monseigneur_

or _Your Excellency_. On reaching the door as you leave the salon, you

should again bow respectfully.' That is amusing, ah! how amusing it

is!--Then they respect you as much as that? Your Excellency!

Monseigneur! Shall I be obliged to courtesy to you?--Your lips, give me

your lips, Monseigneur! I adore you!--You are my own minister; my

finance minister, my lover, my all! I do not respect you, but I love

you, I love you!"

He trembled to the very roots of his hair when she spoke to him thus. He

felt transports of joy in clasping her in his arms and genuine despair

when he left her. Leave her! leave her there under that lamp alone, in

that low bed where he had just forgotten that there existed anything

else in the world besides that apartment, warm with perfumes. He would

have liked to pass the whole night beside her, separating only when

satiated and overwhelmed with caresses. But how could he leave Adrienne

alone over there in the ministerial mansion? However trustful this young

wife might be, and innocent, credulous and incapable of suspicion, if he

had passed a night absent from her, she would have been terrified and

warned.

He easily invented prolonged receptions and night sessions that detained

him until an advanced hour.

"One would say that the evening sessions grow more frequent than

formerly," Adrienne remarked gently at breakfast.

"Don't talk to me about it," replied Sulpice. "In order to reach the

vacation sooner, the deputies talk twice as long."

Adrienne never opened the _Officiel_, which Vaudrey received in his

private office, pretending that the sight of a newspaper too vividly

recalled the fatiguing political life that absorbed him. One day,

however, he allowed the journals to be brought into the salon and to lie

about in Madame's room. He informed Adrienne that he was going to pass

the day in Picardy, at Guise or at Vervins, where an important deputy

had invited him to visit his factory. He would leave in the morning and

could not return until the following day toward noon.

"What a long time!" said Adrienne.

"It is still longer for me than for you, since you remain here, in our

home."

"Oh! our home! we have only one home: in Chaussée-d'Antin, or the house

at Grenoble, you know."

"Dear wife!" cried Vaudrey, as he embraced her tenderly,--sincerely,

perhaps.

And he left. He set out for Guise, returned in the evening and ordered

the Director of the Press to send to all the journals by the Havas

agency, a message which ran: _The Minister of the Interior passed the

entire day yesterday at Guise, at Monsieur Delair's, the deputy from

L'Aisne. He dined and slept at the house of his host. Monsieur Vaudrey

is to return to Paris this morning, at eleven o'clock._

Then he showed the news to Adrienne, and laughed as he said:

"It is surprising! one cannot take a single step without it appears in

print and the entire population is informed at once!"

"Tell me everything," Adrienne replied, as she embraced him with her

glance. "Are you tired? You look pale. How did you spend the day? You

made a speech? Were you applauded?"

It was mainly by kisses that Vaudrey answered. What could he say to

Adrienne? She knew perfectly well how similar all these gatherings were,

with their official routine. Monsieur Delair had been very agreeable,

but the minister had necessarily had to endure much talk, much

importunity.

"The day seemed very long to me!"

"And to me also," she said.

Sulpice indeed returned from Guise, but the last train on the previous

night had taken him to Rue Prony, at Marianne's. He had then found out

the secret of remaining at her side undisturbed for a long time, and the

telegraph, managed by the Director of the Press, enabled him to prove an

alibi to Adrienne from time to time. He had taken to Marianne a huge

bouquet of fresh flowers gathered in the park at Guise for Madame

Vaudrey by Monsieur Delair's two daughters. That appeared to him to be

quite natural.

Marianne, who was waiting for him, put the flowers in the Japanese vases

and said to him as she threw her bare arms around him:

"Very good! You thought of me!----"

The next morning Vaudrey left, more than ever enchained by the delight

of her embraces. He sometimes returned on foot, to breathe the

vivifying freshness of the roseate dawn, or taking a cab, he stretched

himself out wearily therein, as he drove to the ministry, musing over

the hours so recently passed and striving to arrest them in their

flight, to enjoy again their seductive joy and to squeeze as from a

delicious fruit, all their intoxicating poetry, delight and fascination.

He closed his eyes. He saw Marianne again with her eyes veiled as he

kissed her, he drank in the odor of her hair that fell like a sort of

fair cover over the lace pillow. It seemed that he was permeated with

her perfume. He breathed the air with wide-open nostrils to inhale it

again, to recover its scent and preserve it. His whole frame trembled

with emotion at the recollection of that lovely form that he had left

whiter than the sheet of the bed, in the dim light that filtered through

the opal-shaded lamp.

Then he thought that he must forget, and invent some tale for Adrienne.

Again he opened his eyes and trembled in spite of himself, as he saw, on

both sides of the cab, workmen slowly trudging along the sidewalks with

their hands in their pockets, their noses red, a wretched worn-out silk

scarf about their necks and swinging on their arms the supply of food

for the day, or again with their fingers numb with the cold, holding

some journal in their hands in which they read as they marched along,

the speech of "Monsieur le Ministre de l'Intérieur," that magnificent

speech not made during the night session as Sulpice had told Adrienne,

but the day before yesterday, in broad day, when the majority,

faithfully grouped about him, had applauded this phrase: _I, whose hours

are consecrated to the amelioration of the lot of the poor and who can

say with the poet,--I shall be pardoned for this feeling of vanity:_

"What I steal from my nights, I add to my days!"

Sulpice heard again the applause that he received. He saw those devoted

hands reached out to him as he descended from the tribune; he again

experienced a feeling of pride, and yet he felt dissatisfied with

himself now that he saw the other hands, the servile hands of the

applauders, hidden by the red, cold hands of a mason who held this

speech between his horny fingers.

Sulpice returned to the ministry, shaking himself as if to induce

forgetfulness, busy, weary, and still,--eternally,--as if immovably

fixed in an antechamber of Place Beauvau, he found the inevitable

place-hunters, the hornets of ministries.

Vaudrey caused these urgent people, as well as some others, to be

received by Warcolier, who asked nothing better than to make tools, to

sow the seed of his clientage. Guy de Lissac and Ramel had

simultaneously called Vaudrey's attention to the eagerness which

Warcolier manifested in toying with popularity.

"He is not wholly devoted to you, is this gentleman who prefers every

government!" said Guy.

"He will undermine you quietly!" added Ramel.

"I am satisfied of that. But I am not disturbed: I have the majority.

Oh! faithful and compact."

"Woman often changes," muttered Ramel.

Guy was troubled about Vaudrey for another reason. He vaguely suspected

that Sulpice was neglecting Adrienne. Political business, doubtless.

Vaudrey unquestionably loved his wife, who adored him and was herself

adorable. But he manifestly neglected her.

Lissac found them one day smilingly discussing a question that was

greatly occupying the journalists: divorce. Apropos of a trifle, of a

suit for separation that Adrienne had just read in the _Gazette

Tribunaux_. It referred to an adulterous husband, a pottery dealer in

Rue Paradis, Monsieur Vauthier, the lover of a singer at a rather

notorious _café-concert_, named Léa Thibault. The wife had demanded a

separation. Adrienne had just read the pleadings.

"Poor woman!" she said. "She must have suffered, indeed."

Sulpice did not reply.

"Do you know that if that were my case, I could never forgive you?"

"You are mad! What are you thinking of?"

"Oh! it is true, the idea that you could touch another woman, that you

could kiss her as you kiss me, that would make me more than angry,

horrified and disgusted. I tell you, I would never forgive you."

"Who puts all this stuff in your head? Come, I will do as I used to do,"

said Vaudrey. "Not another paper shall enter your house! What an idea,

to read the _Gazette des Tribunaux_!"

"It is because this name: _Vauthier_, somewhat resembles your own that I

was induced to read it. And then this very mournful title: _Separation

de corps_. I would prefer divorce myself. A complete divorce that severs

the past like a knife-cut."

"But what an idea!" repeated Sulpice, who was somewhat uneasy.

Vaudrey was delighted to hear Guy announced in the midst of this

discussion. They would then change the topic. But Adrienne, who was much

affected by her reading, returned to the same subject in an obstinate

sort of way and Lissac commenced to laugh.

"What a joke! To speak of divorce between you two! Never fear, madame,

your husband will never present to the Chamber a law in favor of

divorce."

"Who knows?" Sulpice answered. "I am in favor of divorce myself, yes,

absolutely."

"And I cannot understand, for my part, how a woman can belong to two

living men," said Adrienne.

"You reason for yourself. But the unhappy women who suffer--and the

unhappy men--The existing law, in fact, seeing that it admits

separation, permits divorce, but more cruel, heartrending, and unjust.

Divorce without freedom. Divorce that continues the chain."

"Sulpice is right, madame, and sooner or later, we shall certainly

arrive at that frightful divorce."

"After all, what does it matter to me?" Adrienne replied.

She threw the accursed _Gazette des Tribunaux_ into the waste basket

with its _Suit of Vauthier vs. Vauthier_. "We are not interested,

neither my husband nor I; he loves me and I love him. I am as sure of

him as he is sure of me. He may demand all the laws that are possible:

it would not be for selfish interest, for he would not profit by them."

"Never!" said Sulpice with a laugh, delighted to be released from the

magnetic influence of Adrienne's strange excitement.

There was, however, a somewhat false ring in this laugh. Face to face

with the avowed trustfulness of his wife, Sulpice experienced a slight

pricking of conscience. He thought of Marianne. His passion increased

tenfold, but this very increase of affection made him afraid. He

hastened to find himself again at Rue Prony. The Hôtel Beauvau depressed

him. It became more than ever a prison. How gladly he escaped from it!

Yes, it was a prison for him as it was for Adrienne; a prison that he

fled from to seek Marianne's boudoir, to enjoy her kisses and mirth,

while, at the same moment, his wife, the dear abandoned, disdained

creature, sad without being cognizant of the cause of her melancholy,

terrified by the emptiness of that grand ministerial mansion, that

"sounded hollow," as she said, quietly and stealthily took the official

carriage that Vaudrey sent back to her from the Chamber, and had herself

driven--where?--only she knew!

"You ought to make a great many calls," the minister had frequently

said. "It would divert your mind and it is well to appear to know a

great many persons."

But she only found pleasure in making one visit, she gave the coachman

the address of the apartments on Chaussée-d'Antin, where she had lived

long, happy years with Sulpice, sweet and peaceful under the clear light

of the lamp. She entered this deserted apartment, now as cold as a tomb,

and had the shutters opened by the concierge in order that she might see

the sunlight penetrate the room and set all the motes dancing in its

cheerful rays. She shut herself in and remained there happy, consoled;

sitting in the armchair formerly occupied by Sulpice, she pictured him

at the table at which he used to work, his inkstand before him and

surrounded by his books, his cherished books! She lived again the

vanished life. "Return!" she said to the dream, the humble dream she had

at last recovered. She rambled about those deserted rooms that on every

side reminded her of some sweet delight, here it was a kiss of chaste

and eternal love, there a smile. Ah! how easy life would have been there

all alone, happy for ever!

The Ministry! Power! Popularity! Fame! Authority! What were they worth?

Is all that worth one of the blessed hours in this little dwelling,

where the cup of bliss would have been full if the wife could have heard

the clear laugh or the faint cry of a child?

Poor Sulpice! how he was exhausting himself now in an overwhelming task!

He was giving his health and life to politics, while here he only

experienced peace, consoling caresses and the quieting of every

excitement. On the study-table there still remained some pens and some

books that were formerly in constant use.

Adrienne went away with reddened eyes from these pilgrimages, as it

were, to her former happiness. She returned to her carriage and

moistened her cambric pocket handkerchief with her warm breath, in order

to wipe her eyes so that Sulpice might not see that she had been

weeping. Then when her well-known carriage passed before the shops in

the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the wives of mercers or booksellers,

dressmakers, young girls, all of whom enviously shook their heads, said

to each other:

"The minister's wife!--Ah! she has had a glorious dream!--She is

happy!"