The guests sat down to dinner. Madame Gerson beamed with joy beside the
minister. Guy de Lissac, Warcolier, some senators and some deputies were
of the dinner party. Monsieur and Madame Gerson never spoke of them by
their names but: _Monsieur le Sénateur, Monsieur le Député!_ They
lubricated their throats with these titles, just as bourgeois who come
in contact with highnesses swell out in addressing a prince as
_Monseigneur_, absolutely as if they were addressing themselves.
Sulpice felt in the midst of this circle in which everything was
sacrificed to _chic_, as he invariably did, the painful sensation of a
man who is continually on show. He never dined out without running
against the same menu, the same fanfare, and the same conversation.
Monsieur Gerson endeavored to draw the President of the Council into
political conversation. He wished to know Vaudrey's opinion as to the
one-man ballet. Sulpice smiled.
"Thanks!" he said. "We have just been dealing with that. I prefer
truffles, they are more savory."
Through the flowers, Adrienne could see her husband who was seated
opposite to her beside Madame Gerson. She conversed but little with Guy
de Lissac, who was sitting on her right, although the formalities of the
occasion would have suggested that Monsieur le Senator Crépeau and
Monsieur de Prangins, the deputy, should have been so placed. Madame
Gerson, however, had remarked with a smile, that Madame Vaudrey would
not feel annoyed at having Monsieur de Lissac for her neighbor. "I have
often met Monsieur de Lissac at the ministry; he is received noticeably
well there."
Not knowing any one among the guests, Adrienne was, in fact, charmed to
have Guy next to her. He was decidedly pleasing to her with his sallies,
his skepticism which, as she thought, covered more belief than he wished
to disclose. For a long time, he had felt himself entirely captivated by
her cheerful modesty and the grace of her exquisite purity. She was so
vastly different from all the other women whom he had known. How the
devil could Vaudrey bring himself to neglect so perfect a creature, who
was more attractive in her fascinating virtue than all the damsels to be
met with in society, among the demi-monde, or those of a still lower
grade? For Vaudrey remained indifferent to Adrienne; and this was a
further and manifest blow. A specialist in matters of observation like
Guy was not to be deceived therein. Madame Vaudrey had not yet
complained, but she was already suffering. Was it merely politics, or
was it some woman who was taking her husband from Adrienne? Guy did not
know, but he would know. The pretty Madame Vaudrey interested him.
"If that idiot Sulpice were not my friend, I would make love to her.
Besides," he said to himself, as he looked at Adrienne's lovely, limpid
eyes, "I should fail; there are some lakes whose tranquillity cannot be
disturbed."
Adrienne, pleased to have him beside her, enquired of him the names of
the guests. On the left of Madame Gerson sat a little, broad-backed man,
with black hair pasted over his temples, long leg-of-mutton whiskers
decorating his bright-colored cheeks, and a keen eye: he was Monsieur
Jouvenet, formerly an advocate; to-day Prefect of Police.
Senator Crépeau sat further away. He was a fat manufacturer, who talked
about alimentary products and politics. In the _Analytical Table of the
Accounts of the Sittings of the Senate_, his name shone brilliantly,
with the following as his record: "CRÉPEAU, of L'Ain, Life
Senator--Apologizes for his absence--8 January--. Apologizes for his
absence--20 February--. Member of a commission--_Journal Officiel_, p.
1441. Apologizes for not being able to take part in the labors of the
commission--4 March--. Apologizes for his absence--20 March--. Asks for
leave of absence--5 April--." Such were his services during the ordinary
work of that year. Monsieur Crépeau--of L'Ain--had earned the right to
take a rest.
"He eats very heartily," said Lissac. "His appetite is better than his
eloquence."
Next to Crépeau was another legislator, Henri de Prangins, a publicist,
an old, wrinkled, stooping, dissatisfied grumbler.
"Ah! that is Monsieur de Prangins," said Adrienne, "I have heard much
about him."
"He is a typical character," Lissac said, with a smile. "You know
Granet, _the gentleman who will become a minister_; well, Prangins is
the gentleman who would be a minister, but who never will be! Moreover,
he is five hundred times more remarkable than a hundred others who have
been in office ten times, for what reason cannot be said."
For nearly half a century Prangins, the old political wheel-horse, had
plotted and jockeyed in politics, set up and overthrown ministries,
piled up review articles on newspaper articles, contradiction on
contradiction, page on page, spoiled cartloads of paper in his vocation
of daily or fortnightly howler, and withal he was applauded, rich and
popular, famous and surrounded by flatterers, knife-and-fork companions,
without friends but not wanting clients, as he had made and spoiled
reputations, ministers, governments, and although he well knew the
vanity and nothingness of power, he aspired to secure that vain booty,
oft alleging, with bitter enviousness of authority and impatient of
tyranny, that to enjoy popularity uninterruptedly was not worth a
quarter of an hour of power, approaching with greedy eagerness the
desired lot, yet seeing it inevitably, eternally, relentlessly escape
and recede from him, plucked from his grasp as it were, like a shred of
flesh from the jaw of a Molossian. And now, in his unquenchable lust of
power, amid the monuments of combination and deception he had created,
this man was weary, disgusted and irritated,--believing himself
vanquished and smothering the anger of defeat in the luxurious isolation
of his wealth. He was neither officially influential nor liked. Feared
he was, probably, and envied because of his good fortune, recognized,
too, as a _force_, but only as acting in the whirlwind of his ideas and
struggling in the emptiness of his dreams. After having immolated
everything, youth, family, friendship, love, to this chimera: power, he
found himself old, worn-out, broken by his combats, face to face with
the folly of his hopes and the worthlessness of his will. Never had his
nervous hand been able to grasp in its transition, the fragment of
morocco of a portfolio and now that his parchment-like fingers were old
and feeble, they would never cling to that shred of power! And now this
Prangins avenged himself for the contempt or the injustice of his
colleagues and the folly of circumstances, by criticism, defiance,
mockery, denial and by loudly expressing his opinion:
"The defect of every government is that it will try to play new airs on
an old violin! Your violin is cracked, Monsieur Vaudrey! I do not
reproach you for that, you did not make it!"
Vaudrey laughed at the sally, but Warcolier felt that he was choking.
How could the minister allow his policy to be thus attacked at table?
Ah! how Warcolier would have clinched the argument of this Prangins.
Madame Gerson was delighted. The dinner was served sumptuously and went
off without a hitch. The _maître d'hôtel_ directed the service
admirably. The soirée that was to follow it would be magnificent. The
journals would most certainly report it. Gerson had invited one reporter
in spite of his dislike of journalists. Ah! those gossipers and foolish
fellows, they never forgot to describe the toilettes worn by "the pretty
Madame Gerson" at _first nights_, at the Élysée or at Charity Bazaars.
Occasionally, her husband pretended to be angered by the successes of
his wife:
"Those journalists! Just imagine, those journalists! They speak about my
wife just as they would about an actress! 'The lovely Madame Gerson wore
a gown of _crêpe de Chine_!' The lovely Madame Gerson! What has my
wife's beauty or her toilette to do with them?"
In truth, however, he felt flattered. He was only sincerely annoyed
when people respected the devilish wall of private life, the cement of
which he would have stripped off himself, in order to show his wife's
beauty. To be quoted in the paper, why! that is _chic_.
Adrienne felt a little stunned by the noise of the conversation which
increased in proportion as the dinner advanced. She was also very much
astonished and not a little grieved when Madame Gerson abruptly spoke in
a loud voice before all the guests concerning Madame Marsy, at whose
house it was, in fact, that she made the acquaintance of Vaudrey. Madame
Gerson showed her pretty teeth in a very charming manner as she tore her
old friend Sabine to pieces, as it were. In a tenderly indulgent tone
which was the more terrible, she repeated the tales that were formerly
current: the affecting death of Philippe Marsy, the painter of
_Charity_, and a particular escapade in which Sabine was involved with
Émile Cordier, one of the leaders of the _intransigeante_ school of
painters.
"What! you did not know that?" said the pretty Madame Gerson in
astonishment.
Adrienne knew nothing. She was delighted moreover to know nothing. She
heard this former friend relate how Sabine had, at one time, exhibited
at the Salon. Oh! mere students' daubs, horrid things! Still-life
subjects that might have passed for buried ones, and yet, perhaps,
Cordier retouched them.
"I thought that Madame Gerson was on the best of terms with Madame
Marsy," whispered Adrienne to Lissac, who replied:
"They have been on better! They perhaps will be so again. That is of
very little importance. Women revile each other and associate at the
same time."
Adrienne decided that she would not listen. She knew Sabine Marsy only
slightly; she was not interested as a friend; but this little execution,
gracefully carried out here by a woman who recently did the honors at
the Salon of Boulevard Malesherbes seemed to her as cowardly as
treachery. This, then, was society! And how right was her choice in
preferring solitude!
Then, in order that she might not hear the slander that was greeted with
applause by those very persons who but yesterday besieged Madame Marsy's
buffet, and who would run to-morrow to pay court to that woman, she
conversed with Lissac. She frankly told him what she suffered at Place
Beauvau. She spoke of Sulpice, as Sulpice was loved by her beyond all
else in the world.
"Fancy! I do not see him, hardly ever! The other week he passed two days
at Laon, where an exposition was held at which he was present."
"An exposition at Laon?" asked Lissac, astonished. "What exposition?"
"I do not know. I know nothing myself. Perhaps it is wrong of me not to
keep myself informed of passing events, but all that wearies me. I
detest politics and journals--I am told quite enough about them.
Politics! that which takes my husband from me! My uncle, Doctor Reboux,
often said to me: 'Never marry a doctor; he is only half a husband.'
Vaudrey is like a doctor. Always absent, with his everlasting
night-sessions."
"Night-sessions?" asked Lissac.
"Yes, at the Chamber--continually--"
Guy determined to betray nothing of his astonishment; but he knew now as
surely as if he had learned everything, why Sulpice neglected Adrienne.
The fool! some girl from the Opéra! some office-seeker who was skilfully
entangling His Excellency! That appertained to his functions then? He
was exasperated at Vaudrey and alternately looked at him and at
Adrienne. So perfect a woman! Ravishing. What an exquisite profile, so
delicate and with such a straight nose and a delightful mouth! Was
Vaudrey mad then?
The guests rose from the table, and, as usual, the men went into the
smoking-room, leaving the salon half-empty. Madame Gerson profited
thereby to continue distilling her little slanders about Sabine, which
she did while laughing heartily. In the smoking-room the men chatted
away beneath the cloud that rose from their _londrès_. The clarion tones
of Warcolier rung out above all the other voices.
Guy, seated in a corner on a divan, was still thinking of Adrienne, of
those _night-sessions_, of those expositions, of those agricultural
competitions invented by Sulpice, and caught but snatches of the
conversation, jests, and nonsensical stories which were made at the cost
of the colleagues of the Chamber and political friends:
"You know how Badiche learned at the last election that he was not
elected?"
"No, how?"
"He returned to his house, anxious as to the result of the ballot. And
he heard, what do you think? His children, a little boy and a little
girl, who on receipt of the telegram that papa was waiting for and that
mamma in her feverish expectation had opened, had already composed a
song to the air of _The Young Man Poisoned_:
Résultat très négatif,
Ballottage positif!
Badiche est ballo--
Bâté,
Est ballotté!
Oui, Badiche est ballotté;
C'est papa qu'est ballotté!