"_Du Gavarni_!"
"Apropos, on what majority do you count, Monsieur le Président?"
"One hundred and thirty-nine."
"That is a large one."
"I! my dear fellow,"--it was old Prangins speaking to Senator
Crépeau,--"I do not count myself as likely to be included in the next
ministry, no! I do not delude myself, but I shall be in the second--or
rather in the third--no, in the fourth--yes, in the fourth
ministry--Assuredly!"
An asthmatic cough, the cough of an old man, interrupted his remarks.
Guy heard Warcolier, as he held a small glass of kirsch in his hand, say
with a laugh:
"I have a way of holding my electors in leash. Not only when I visit
them do I address them as _my friend, my brave_, which flatters them,
but from time to time, I write them autograph letters. They look upon
that like ready money. Some of them, the good fellows, are flattered:
'He has written to me, he is not proud!' Others, the suspicious fellows,
are reassured: 'Now--I have his signature, I have him!' And there you
are!"
They laughed heartily.
"How they laugh _afterward_," thought Lissac, "at the electors whose
shoes they would blacken _beforehand_."
"The course that I have followed is very simple," said another. "I
desired to become sub-prefect so as to become a prefect and a prefect to
become a deputy, and a deputy so as to reach a receiver-generalship. The
salaries assured, why, there's the crowning of a career."
"Why, that fellow _plays the whole gamut_," again thought Guy, "but he
is frank!"
"I read very little," now replied Crépeau to Warcolier--"I do not much
care for pure literature--we politicians, we need substantial reading
that will teach us to think."
"I believe you!--" murmured this Parisian Guy, still smoking and
listening. "Go to school, my good man!"
The conversation thus intermingled and confused, horrified and irritated
this _blasé_ by its gravity and selfishness. He summed up an entire
character in a single phrase and shook his head as he very shrewdly
remarked: "Suppose _Universal Suffrage_ were listening?"
Lissac did not take any part in these conversations. It was his delight
to observe. He drew amusement from all these wearisome commonplaces,
according to his custom as a curious spectator.
He was about, however, to rise and approach Vaudrey, who was
instinctively coming toward him, when the Prefect of Police, Monsieur
Jouvenet, without noticing it, placed himself between the minister and
his friend.
Jouvenet spoke in a low tone to Vaudrey, smiling at the same time very
peculiarly and passing his fingers through his whiskers. Whatever
discretion the prefect employed, Guy was near enough to him to hear the
name of Marianne Kayser, which surprised him.
Marianne! what question of Marianne could there be between these two
men?
Lissac observed that Vaudrey suddenly became very pale.
He drew still nearer, pretending to finish a cup of coffee while
standing. Then he heard these words very distinctly:
"A reporter saw you leave her house the other evening!"
Guy moved away very quickly. He felt a sort of sudden bewilderment, as
if the few words spoken by the Prefect of Police were the natural result
of his conversation with Adrienne, an immediate response thereto.
"It would be astonishing if Marianne--" thought Lissac.
Besides, he would know soon. He would merely question Vaudrey.
As soon as Jouvenet, always polite, grave and impassive, had left
"Monsieur le Ministre" in a state of visible nervousness, almost of
anxiety, he entered upon his plan.
"You know Mademoiselle Kayser intimately then?" he asked Vaudrey, who,
taken aback, looked at him for a moment without replying and endeavored
to grasp Lissac's purpose.
"Am I imprudent?" further asked Guy.
"No, but who has told you--?"
"Nothing, your Prefect of Police only spoke a little too loud. He seemed
to me to understand."
Vaudrey's hand rapidly seized Lissac's wrist.
"Hush! be silent!"
"Very well! Good!" said Lissac to himself. "Poor little Adrienne."
"I will tell you all about that later. Oh! nothing is more simple! It
isn't what you think!"
"I am sure of that!" answered Lissac, with a smile.
In a mechanical way, and as if to evade his friend, Sulpice left the
smoking-room for the salon, tritely observing:
"We must rejoin the ladies--the cigar kills conversation--"
He felt uncomfortable. It was the first time that Jouvenet had informed
him that there are agents for learning the movements of ministers. The
Prefect of Police, in a chance conversation at the Opéra with the
editor-in-chief of a very Parisian journal, had suppressed a rumor which
stated that a minister hailing from Grenoble set propriety at defiance
in his visits to Rue Prony. It would have been as well to print
Vaudrey's name.
Hitherto he had been able to enjoy his passion for Marianne without
scandal and secretly. His mysterious intrigue was now known to the
police, to everybody, to a reporter who had stumbled against him on
leaving a supper-party at the house of a courtesan in the neighborhood.
The minister was bitterly annoyed. The very flattering applause that
the women bestowed upon him when he returned to the salon could not
dissipate his ill-humor. He tried to chat and respond to the affected
remarks of Madame Gerson and to the smiles of the women; but he was
embarrassed and nervous. Adrienne thought he looked ill.
Everything was spoken of in the light but pretentious, easy tone of the
conversation of those second-rate salons where neither ideas nor men are
made, where, on the contrary, they are accepted, ready-made and _en
bloc_. On every question, the picture in vogue, the favorite book, the
man of the hour, they expressed themselves by the same stereotyped,
expected word, borrowed from the ceaseless repetition of current
polemics. Nothing was new. The conversation was as well worn as an old
farthing. Adrienne was pained to see a man of Vaudrey's intelligence
compelled to listen to these truisms and wondered if he would presently
reproach her for having brought him into the suffocating void of this
Parisian establishment where all was superficial, glittering and _chic_.
She was in a hurry to get away. She saw that Sulpice was growing weary,
and took advantage of the first opportunity to whisper to him:
"Would you like to go?"
"Yes, let us go!" he said.
He sought Lissac and repeated to him that he would have something to say
to him, and Guy bowed to the Minister and Madame Vaudrey, who left too
early to please the Gersons.
Adrienne, out of heart and discouraged by commonplace gossip and
slander, was eager to be again with her husband, to tell him that
nothing could compensate her for the deep joy of the tête-à-tête, their
evenings passed together as of old--he remembered them well,--when he
read to her from the works of much-loved poets.
"Poetry!" said Vaudrey. "Will you be quiet! The Gersons would find me as
antiquated as Ramel. It is old-fashioned."
"I am no longer surprised," added the young wife, "at being so little
fashionable. Morally speaking, those hot-houses of platitudes stifle
one. Never fear, Sulpice, I shall not be the one to ever again drag you
into salons. Are you tired? Are you weary?"
"No, I was thinking of something else," replied Vaudrey, who really was
thinking of Marianne.
Madame Vaudrey had not left Madame Gerson's salon before that pretty
little Parisian whispered imprudently enough in the ear of a female
friend:
"Our ministers' wives are always from Carpentras, Pont-à-Mousson, or
Moulins; don't you think so?"
"And what would you have!" said Lissac, who on this evening heard
everything that he ought not to hear, "it is as good as being from the
_Moulin-Rouge_!"
Madame Gerson smiled, thought the expression charming, very apt, very
happy, but again reflected that Lissac was exceedingly considerate
toward Adrienne and that Madame Vaudrey was a little too indulgent
toward Monsieur de Lissac.
V
Since the moment when it had entered her mind that she might find
something more than a lover in Monsieur de Rosas, Marianne had been
sorely puzzled. She was playing a strong hand. Between the minister and
the duke she must make a choice.
She did not care seriously for Vaudrey. In fact she found that he was
ridiculously unreserved. "He is a simple fellow!" she said to Claire
Dujarrier. But she had sufficient _amour-propre_ to retain him, and she
felt assured that Sulpice was weak enough to obey her in everything:
such an individual was not to be disdained. As to Rosas, she felt a
sentiment which certainly was not love, but rather a feeling of
astonishment, a peculiar affection. Rosas held her in respect, and she
was flattered by his timid bearing, as he had in his veins the blood of
heroes. He spoke almost entirely of his love, which, however, he never
proposed to her to test, and this platonic course, which in Vaudrey's
case she would have considered _simple_, appeared to her to be "good
form" in the great nobleman's case. The duke raised her in her own
eyes.
He had never repeated that word, doubtless spoken by him at random:
marriage, and Marianne was too discreet and shrewd to appear to have
specially noticed it. She did not even allude to it. She waited
patiently. With the lapse of time, she thought, Rosas would be the more
surely in her grasp. Meantime it was necessary to live and as she was
bent on maintaining her household, she kept Vaudrey, whom she might need
at any moment.
Her part was to carry on these two intrigues simultaneously, leading
Rosas to believe that the minister was her friend only, nothing more,
the patron of Uncle Kayser, and making Vaudrey think that since she had
dismissed the duke he had become resigned and would "suppress his
sighs." She could have sworn, in all sincerity, that José was not her
lover.
To mislead Vaudrey was not a very difficult task. Sulpice was literally
blinded by this love.--For a moment, he had been aroused by Jouvenet's
intimation that his secret was known to others. For a while he seemed to
have kept himself away from Marianne; but after taking new precautions,
he returned trembling with ardent passion to Mademoiselle Vanda's hôtel,
where his mistress's kiss, a little languid, awaited him.
Months passed thus, the entire summer, the vacation of the Chamber, the
dull season in Paris. Adrienne set out for Dauphiny, where Vaudrey was
to preside over the Conseil-Général, and she felt a childish delight on
finding herself once more in the old house at Grenoble, where she had
formerly been so happy! Yet even beneath this roof, within these walls,
the mute witnesses of his virtuous love, especially when alone, Vaudrey
thought of Marianne, he had but one idea, that of seeing her again, of
clasping her in his arms, and he wrote her passionate letters each day,
which she hardly glanced over and with a shrug of her shoulders burned
as of no importance.
In the depths of his province he grew weary of the continual bustle of
fêtes, receptions held in his honor, addresses delivered by him,
ceremonies over which he had to preside, deputations received, statues
inaugurated. Statues! always statues! In the lesser towns, at Allevard
or Marestel, he was dragged from the _mairie_ to the _Grande Place_,
between rows of firemen, in noisy processions, whose accompanying brass
instruments split his ears, under pink-striped tents, draped with
tricolor flags, before interminable files of gymnastic societies, glee
clubs, corporate bodies, associations, Friends of Peace, or Friends of
War societies! Then wandering harangues; commonplace remarks, spun out;
addresses, sprinkled with Latin by professors of rhetoric; declarations
of political faith by eloquent municipal councillors, all delighted to
grab at a minister when the opportunity offered. How many such harangues
Vaudrey heard! More than in the Chamber. More thickly they came, more
compressed, more severe than in the Chamber. What advice, political
considerations and remonstrances winding up with demands for offices!
What cantatas that begged for subsidies! Everywhere demands: demands for
subsidies, demands for grants, demands for help, demands for
decorations! Nothing but harass, enervation, lassitude, deafening
clamor. They wished to kill him with their shouts: _Vive Vaudrey!_
The Prefect and the Commandant General of the division were constantly
on guard about Vaudrey, who was dragged about in torture between these
two coat-embroidered officers. From the lips of the prefect, Vaudrey
heard the same commonplace utterances: progress, the future, the fusion
of parties and interests, the greatness of the department, the cotton
trade and the tanneries, the glory of the minister who--of the minister
whom--of the glorious child of the country--of the eagle of Dauphiny.
_Vive Vaudrey! Vive Vaudrey!_ The general, at least, varied his effects.
He grumbled and wrung his hands, and on the day of the inauguration of
the statue of a certain Monsieur Valbonnans, a former deputy and
celebrated glove manufacturer,--also the glory of the country,--Vaudrey
heard the soldier murmur from morning till night, with a movement of his
jaw that made his imperial jerk: "_I love bronze! I love bronze!_" with
a persistency that stupefied the minister.
This was, perhaps, the only recollection of a cheerful nature that
Vaudrey retained of his trips in Isère. This eternal murmuring of the
general: _I love bronze! I love bronze!_ had awakened him, and he gayly
asked himself what devilish sort of appetite that soldier had who
continually repeated his phrase in a ravenous tone. Seated beside him on
the platform, while the glee-club sung an elegy in honor of the late
Monsieur Valbonnans, which was composed for the occasion by an amateur
of the town:
Monsieur Valbonnans' praise let's chant, yes, chant!
His gloves the best, as all must grant,
The best extant!
while the flourish of trumpets took up the refrain and the firemen
unveiled, amid loud acclamations, the statue of Monsieur Valbonnans,
which bore these words on the pedestal: _To the Inventor, the Patriot,
the Merchant_; while, too, the prefect still poured in Vaudrey's left
ear his inexhaustible observations: the glove trade, the glory of Isère;
the progress, the interest, the greatness of the department, the
minister who--the minister whom--(_Vive Vaudrey!_) Sulpice still heard,
even amid the acclamations, the mechanical rumbling of the general's
voice, repeating, reasserting, rehearsing: "_I love bronze! I love
bronze!_"
On the evening of the banquet, the minister at length obtained an
explanation of this extraordinary affection. The general rose, grasping
his glass as if he would shiver it, and while the _parfait_ overflowed
on to the plates, he cried in a hoarse voice, as if he were at the head
of his division:
"I love bronze--I love bronze--because it serves for the erection of
statues and the casting of cannon. I love bronze because its voice wins
battles, the artillery being to-day the superior branch, although the
cavalry is the most chivalrous! I love bronze because it is the image of
the heart of the soldier, and I should like to see in our country an
army of men of bronze who--whom--"
He became confused and muddled, and rolled his white eyes about in his
purpled face and to close his observations brandished his glass as if it
had been his sword, and amid a frenzy of applause from the guests, he
valiantly howled: "I love bronze! I love bronze!"
Vaudrey could scarcely prevent himself from laughing hysterically, in
spite of his ministerial dignity, and when he returned to Grenoble, his
carriage full of the flowers that they had showered on him, he could
only answer to Adrienne, who asked him if he had spoken well, if it had
been a fine affair, by throwing his bouquets on the floor and saying:
"I have laughed heartily, but I am crushed, stupefied! What a headache!"
And Sulpice wrote all that to Marianne, and innocent that he was, told
her: "Ah! all those applauding voices are not worth a single word from
you! When shall I see you, Marianne, dear heart?"
"At the latest possible date!" _the dear heart_ said.
She regarded the close of summer and the beginning of autumn with
extreme vexation, for it would bring with it the parliamentary session
and Vaudrey, and inflict on her the presence of her lover.
Sulpice provided her liberally with all that her luxurious appetites
demanded, and it was for good reasons that she decided not to break with
him, although for a long time she had sacrificed this man in her
inclinations. "Ah! when I shall be able to bounce him!" she said,
expressing herself like a courtesan. She could not, she would not accept
anything from Rosas. On that side, the game was too fine to be
compromised. She could with impunity accept the position of mistress of
Vaudrey, but with José she must appear to preserve, as it were, an
aureole of modesty, of virginal charms, that she did not possess.
In fact, the Spaniard's mind became singularly crystallized, and she
turned this result to good account: in proportion as he associated
himself with the real Marianne, he created a fictitious Marianne, ideal,
kind, _spirituelle_, perhaps ignorant, but subtile and corrupted in
mind, who amused and disconcerted him at one and the same time. He had
left the Continental Hotel, and rented a house on Avenue Montaigne,
Champs-Élysées, where he sometimes entertained Marianne as he might have
done a princess. At such times she gossiped while smoking Turkish
tobacco. Her Parisian grace, her champagne-like effervescent manner,
seduced and charmed this serious, pale traveller, whose very smile
was tinged with melancholy.
He completely adored this woman and no longer made an effort to resist.
He entirely forgot that it was through Guy that he had known her. It
seemed to him that he had himself discovered her, and besides, she had
never loved Guy. No, certainly not. She was frank enough to acknowledge
everything. Then she denied that Lissac ever--Then what! If it should be
true? But no! no! Marianne denied it. He blindly believed in Marianne.
All the conflicting, frantic arguments that men make when they are about
to commit some foolish action were at war in José's brain. The more so
as he did not attempt to analyze his feelings. He passed, near this
pretty woman whose finger-tips he hardly dared kiss, the most delicious
summer of his life. Once, however, on going out with Marianne in the
Champs-Élysées, he had met the old Dujarrier with the swollen eyelids
and the yellow hair that he had known formerly. One of his friends, the
Marquis Vergano, had committed suicide at twenty for this woman who was
old enough to be his mother. The Dujarrier had stopped and greeted
Marianne, but as she remarked herself, a thousand bows and scrapes were
thrown away, for Rosas had hardly noticed her with a glacial look.
"Why do you return that woman's salutation?" he at once asked Marianne.
"I need her. She has done me services."
"That is surprising! I thought her incapable of doing anything but
harm."
He did not dream of Mademoiselle Kayser's coming in contact with
courtesans. In the tiny, virtuous room in Rue Cuvier, Rosas thought that
Marianne was in her true surroundings. She would frequently sit at the
piano--one of the few pieces of furniture contained in this
apartment,--and play for Rosas Oriental melodies that would transport
him far away in thought, to the open desert, by the slow lulling of
David's _Caravane_, then abruptly change to that familiar air, that
rondeau of the Variétés that he hummed yonder, on his dunghill,
forsaken--
"Voyez-vous, là-bas,
Cette maison blanche--"
"I love that music-hall air!" she said.
He now no longer meditated resuming travel, or quitting Paris.
Mademoiselle Kayser's hold on him grew more certain every day. The
suspicion of odd mystery that enveloped this girl intensified his
passion.
He sometimes asked her what her uncle was doing.
"He? Why, he has obtained, thanks to Monsieur Vaudrey, the decoration of
a hydropathic establishment, _Les Thermes des Batignolles_. He has
commenced the cartoon for a fresco: _Massage Moralizing the People_. We
shall see that in his studio."
"Do you know," Marianne continued, "what I would like to see?"
"What, then?"
"Spain, your own country. Where were you born, Rosas?"
"At Toledo. I own the family château there."
"With portraits and armor?"
"Yes, with portraits and armor."
"Well, I would like to go to Toledo, to see that château. It must be
magnificent."
"It is gloomy, simply gloomy. A fortress on a rock. Gray stone, a red
rock, scorched by the sun. Huge halls half Moorish in style. Walls as
thick as those of a prison. Steel knights, standing with lance in hand
as in _Eviradnus_! Old portraits of stern ancestors cramped in their
doublets, or Duchesses de Rosas, with pale faces, sad countenances,
buried in their collars whose _guipures_ have been limned by Velasquez
or Claude Coëllo. Immense cold rooms where the visitors' footfalls echo
as over empty tombs. A splendor that savors of the vault. You would die
of ennui at the end of two hours and of cold at the end of eight days."
"Die of cold in Spain?"
"There is a cold of the soul," the duke replied with a significant
smile. "That I have travelled so much, is probably due to my desire to
escape from that place! But you at Toledo, at Fuentecarral,--that is the
name of my castle,--a Parisian like you! It would be cruel. As well
shut up a humming-bird in a bear-pit. No! thank God, I have other nooks
in Spain that will shelter us, my dear sparrow of the boulevards! Under
the Andalusian jasmines, beneath the oleanders of Cordova or Seville,
under the fountains whose basins are decorated with azulejos, and in
which sultanas bathe, my jasmins could never sufficiently exhale their
perfume, my fountains could never murmur harmoniously enough to furnish
you a joyous welcome--when you go--if you go--But Toledo! My terrible
castle Fuentecarral! It is in vain that I am impenitently romantic, I
would not take you there for anything in the world. It would be as if
ice fell on your shoulders. Fuentecarral? Ugh!--that smacks of death."
While he spoke, Marianne looked at him with kindling eyes and in thought
roamed through those sweet-scented gardens, and she craved to see
herself in that tomblike fortress Fuentecarral, passing in front of the
pale female ancestors of Rosas, aghast at the _froufrou_ of the
_Parisian woman_.
José thought Marianne's burning glance was an expression of her love.
Ah! how completely the last six months in Paris had riveted him to this
woman, who was the mistress of another! One day,--Vaudrey had just left
Marianne at the _rond-point_ of the Champs-Élysées,--the duke seeing her
enter his house, said abruptly to her:
"I was about to write you, Marianne."
"Why, my dear duke?"
"To ask an appointment."
"You are always welcome, my friend, at our little retreat."
He made her sit down, seized both her hands, and looked at her earnestly
as he said:
"Swear to me that you have never been Lissac's mistress!"
She did not even quiver, but was as calm as if she had long awaited this
question.
She boldly met José's glance and said:
"Does one ask such a question of the woman one loves?"
"Suppose that I ask this question of the Duchesse de Rosas!" said the
Spaniard, with quivering lip.
She became as pale as he.
"I do not understand--" she said.
The duke remained silent for a moment; then his entire soul passed into
his voice:
"I have no family, Marianne. I am entirely my own master, and I love
you. If you swear to me that you have not been Guy's mistress--"
"Nobody has the right to say that he has even touched my lips," replied
Marianne firmly. "Only one man, he who took me, an innocent girl, and
left me heart-broken, disgusted, believing I should never again love,
before I met you. He is dead."
"I know," said Rosas, "you confided that to me formerly.--A widow save
in name, I offer you, yes, I! my name, my love, my whole life--will you
take them?"
"Eh! you know perfectly well that I love you!" she exclaimed, as she
frantically gave him the burning and penetrating kiss that had never
left his lips since the soirée at Sabine's.
"Then, no one--no one?" José repeated.
"No one!"
"On honor?"
"On honor!"
"Oh! how I love you!" he said, distractedly, all his passion shattering
his coldness of manner, as the sun melts the snow. "If you but knew how
jealous and crazed I am about you!--I desire you, I adore you, and I
condemn myself to remain glacial before you, beneath your glance that
fires my blood--I love you, and the recollection of Guy hindered me from
telling you that all that is mine belongs to you--I am a ferocious
creature, you know, capable of mad outbursts, senseless anger, and
unreasoning flight--Yes, I have wished to escape from you again. Well!
no, I remain with you; I love you, I love you!--You shall be my wife, do
you hear? My wife!--Ah! what a moment of bliss! I have loved you for
years! Have you not seen it, Marianne?"
"I have seen it and I loved you! I also have kept silence! I saw plainly
that you believed that I had given myself to another--No, no, I am
yours, nothing but yours! All my love, all myself, take it; I have kept
it for you; for I hate the past, more than that, I do not know that it
exists--It is despised, obliterated, it is nothing! But you, ah! you,
you are my life!"
She left José's, her youth renewed, haughty, intoxicated with delight.
She walked along alone, in the paths of the Champs-Élysées, the rusty
leaves falling in showers at the breath of the already cold wind, her
heels ringing on the damp asphalt. She marched straight ahead, her
thoughts afire from her intoxicating emotions. It seemed that Paris
belonged to her.
That evening, she was to go to the theatre. It was arranged that Vaudrey
should wait for her at the entrance with a hired carriage and take her
to Rue Prony. She wrote to him that she could not leave the house. A
slight headache. Uncle Kayser undertook to have the letter taken by a
commissionaire.
"Unless you would rather have me go to the ministry!"
"Are you mad?" Marianne said.
"That is true, it would be immoral."
She wished to have the evening to herself, quite alone, so that she
could let her dreams take flight.
Dreams? Nonsense! On the contrary, it was a dazzling reality: a fortune,
a title, a positive escape from want and the mire. What a revenge!
"It is enough to drive one mad!"
Sudden fears seized her; the terror of the too successful gambler. What
if everything crumbled like a house of cards! She wished that she were
several weeks older.
"Time passes so quickly, and yet one has a desire to spur it on."
Now in the solitude of her house she felt weary. She could neither read
nor think, and became feverish. She regretted that she had written to
Vaudrey. She wished to go to the theatre. A new operetta would be a
diversion, and why should she not go? She had the ticket for her box.
She could at once inform Vaudrey that her headache had vanished.
"And then he bores me!--Especially now."
Matters, however, must not be abruptly changed. Suppose Rosas should
take a sudden fancy to fly off again! Besides, she had mutual interests
with the minister, there was an account to be settled.
"The Gochard paper?--Bah! he will pay it. More-ever, I am not involved
in that."
Suddenly she thought that she would act foolishly if she did not go
where she pleased. Sulpice might think what he pleased. She got her maid
to dress her hair.
"Madame is going to the theatre?"
"Yes, Justine. To the Renaissance!"
She was greatly amused at the theatre, and was radiant with pleasure.
She was the object of many glances, and felt delighted at being alone.
One of the characters in the operetta was a duchess whose adventures
afforded the audience much diversion. She abandoned herself to her
dreams, her thoughts wandering far from the theatre, the footlights and
the actors, to the distant orange groves yonder.
During an entr'acte some one knocked at the door of her box. She turned
around in surprise. It was Jouvenet, the Prefect of Police, who came to
greet her in a very gallant fashion. The prefect--he had gained at the
palais in former days, the title of _L'Avocat Pathelin_,--with
insinuating and wheedling manners, hastened to pay his meed of respect
to Marianne when he met her. There was no necessity to stand on ceremony
with him. He knew all her secrets. Such a man, more-ever, must be
treated prudently, as he can make himself useful. Never had Jouvenet
spoken to her of Vaudrey, he was too politic in matters of state. But as
a man who knows that everything in this world is transient, he skilfully
maintained his place in the ranks, considering that a Prefect of Police
might not be at all unlikely to succeed a President of the Council.
Marianne permitted him to talk, accepted all his gallantries as she
might have done bonbons, and with a woman's wit kept him at a distance
without wounding his vanity.
Jouvenet with the simple purpose of showing her that he was
well-informed, asked her, stroking his whiskers as he did so, if she
often saw the Duc de Rosas. What a charming man the duke was! And while
the young woman watched him as if to guess his thoughts, he smiled at
her.
The prefect, not wishing to appear too persistent, changed the
conversation with the remark:
"Ah! there is one of our old friends ogling you!"
"An old friend?"
It was in fact Guy de Lissac who was standing at the balcony training
his glass upon the box.
Marianne had only very occasionally met Lissac, but for some time she
had suspected him of being secretly hostile to her. Guy bore her a
grudge for having taken Sulpice away from Adrienne. He pitied Madame
Vaudrey and perhaps his deep compassion was blended with another
sentiment in which tenderness had taken the place of a more modified
interest. He was irritated against the blind husband because he could
not see the perfect charms of that delicate soul, so timid and at the
same time so devoted. Although he had not felt justified in showing his
annoyance to Vaudrey, he had manifested his dislike to Marianne under
cover of his jesting manner, and she had been exceedingly piqued
thereby. Wherefore did this man who could not understand her, interfere,
and why did he add to the injuries of old the mockery of to-day?
"After all, perhaps it is through jealousy," she thought. "The dolt!"
Guy did not cease to look at her through his glass.
"Does that displease you?" Jouvenet asked.
"Not at all. What is that to me?"
"This Lissac was much in love with you!"
"Ah! Monsieur le Préfet!" Marianne observed sharply. "I know that your
office inclines you to be somewhat inquisitive, but it would be polite
of you to allow my past to sleep in your dockets. They are famous
shrouds!"
Jouvenet bit his lips and in turn brought his glass to bear on Lissac.
"See," he said, "he makes a great deal of the cross of the Christ of
Portugal! It is in very bad taste! I thought he was a shrewder man!"
"The order of Christ is then in bad odor?"
"On the contrary; but as it is like the Legion of Honor in color, he is
prohibited from wearing it in his buttonhole without displaying the
small gold cross--And I see only the red there--"
"I beg your pardon, Monsieur le Préfet, there is one."
"Oh! my glass is a wretched one!--But even so, I do not believe Monsieur
de Lissac is authorized by the Grand Chancellor to wear his decoration.
That is easily ascertained!--I will nevertheless not fail to insert in
the _Officiel_ to-morrow a note relative to the illegality of wearing
certain foreign decorations--"
"Is this note directed against Lissac?"
"Not at all. But he reminds me of a step that I have wished to take for
a long time: the enforcement of the law."
The entr'acte was over. Jouvenet withdrew, repeating all kinds of
remarks with double meanings that veiled declarations of love; that if
the occasion arose, he would place himself entirely at her service, and
that some day she might be very glad to meet him--
"I thank you, Monsieur le Préfet, and I will avail myself of your
kindness," replied Marianne, out of courtesy.
Something suggested to her that Guy would pay his respects to her during
the next entr'acte, were it only to jest about Jouvenet's visit, seeing
that he was regarded as a compromising acquaintance, and she was not
wrong.
Behind his monocle, his keen, mocking glance seemed like a taunting
smile.
"Well," he said, in a somewhat abrupt tone, as he sat near Marianne, "I
congratulate you, my dear friend."
"Why?" she answered with surprise.
"On the great news, _parbleu!_ Your marriage."
She turned slightly pale.
"How do you know?--"
"I have seen the duke. He called on me."
"On you? What for?"
"Can't you make a little guess--a very little guess--"
"To ask you if I had been your mistress? Lissac, you are very silly."
"Yes, my dear Marianne, prepare yourself somewhat for the position of a
duchess. A gentleman, to whom you have sworn that I have never been
your lover, could not doubt your word!--José asked me nothing. He simply
stated his determination to see what I would say, or gather from my
looks what I thought of it."
"And you said?"
"What I had to say to him: I congratulated him!"
Marianne raised her gray eyes to Lissac's face.
"Congratulate?" she said slowly.
"The woman he marries is pretty enough, I think?"
"Ah! my dear, a truce to insolent trifles!--what is it that has
possessed you for some time past?"
"Nothing, but something has possessed you--or some one."
"Rosas?"
"No, Vaudrey!"
"I will restore him to you. Oh! oh! you are surprisingly interested in
Vaudrey. Vaudrey or his wife?" she remarked.
She smiled with her wicked expression.
"Duchess," said Lissac, "accustom yourself to respect virtuous women!"
"Is it to talk of such pleasant trifles that you have gained access to
my box?"
"No, it is to ask you for some special information."
"What?"
"Is it true, is it really true that you are about to wed Rosas?" he
asked in an almost cordial tone.
"Why not?" she replied, as she raised her head.
"Because--I am going to be frank--I have always regarded you as an
absolutely straightforward woman, a woman of honor--You once claimed so
to be. Mad, fantastic, you often are; charming, always; but dishonest,
never. To take Rosas's love, even his fortune, would be natural enough,
but to take his name would be a very questionable act and a skilful one,
but lacking in frankness."
"That is to say that I may devour him like a courtesan, but not marry
him as a--"
"As a young girl, no, you cannot do that. And you put me--I am bound to
tell you so and I take advantage of the intermission to do so--in a
delicate position. If I declared the truth to Rosas, I act toward you as
a rascal. If I keep silent to my friend, my true friend, I act almost
like a knave."
"Did Rosas ask you to speak to me?"
"No, but there is a voice within me that pricks me to speech and tells
me that if I allow you to marry the duke, I am committing myself to a
questionable affair--Do you know what he asked me?--To be his witness."
If Marianne had been in a laughing mood, she would have laughed
heartily.
"It is absurd," she said. "You did not consent?"
"Yes, indeed, I have consented. Because I really hoped that you would
relieve me from such an undesirable duty, a little too questionable."
"You would like?--What would you like?"
"I wish--no, I would have you not marry Monsieur de Rosas."
Marianne shrugged her shoulders.
She clearly felt the threat conveyed in Lissac's words, but she desired
to show from the first that she disdained them. What right, after all,
had this casual acquaintance to mix himself up in her life affairs?
Because, one day, she had been charitable enough to give him her youth
and her body! The duty of friendship! The rights of friendship! To
protect Vaudrey! To defend Rosas! Words, tiresome words!
"And what if I wish to marry him, myself?--Would you prevent it?"
"Yes, if I could!" he said firmly. "It is time that to the freemasonry
of women we should oppose the freemasonry of men."
"You are cruelly cowardly enough when you are alone, what would you be
then when you are together?" said Marianne, with a malignant expression.
"In fact," said she, after a moment's pause, "what would you have? What?
Decide!--Will you send my letters to the duke?"
"That is one way," said Lissac, calmly. "It is a _woman's_ way, that!"
"You have my letters still?"
"Preciously preserved."
He had not contemplated such a threat, but she quickly scented a danger
therein.
"Suppose I should ask the return of those letters, perhaps you would
restore them to me?"
"Probably," he said.
"Suppose I asked you to bring them to me, you know, in that little out
of the way room of which I spoke to you one day?"
She had leaned gently toward Lissac and her elbows grazed the knees of
her former lover.
"I would wear, that day, one of those otter-trimmed toques that you have
not forgotten."
She saw that he trembled, as if he were moved by some unsatisfied desire
for her. She felt reassured.
"Nonsense!" she said with a smiling face. "You are not so bad as you
pretend to be."
The manager tapped the customary three blows behind the curtain, and the
orchestra began the prelude to the third act.
"Adieu for a brief period, my enemy!" said Marianne, extending her hand.
He hesitated to take that hand. At length, taking it in his own, he
said:
"Leave me Rosas!"
"Fie! jealous one! Don't I leave Vaudrey to you?"
She laughed, while Lissac went away dissatisfied.
"I will have my letters, at all risks," thought Marianne when he had
disappeared. "It is more prudent."
That night she slept badly, and the following morning rose in a very
ill-humor. Her face expressed fatigue, her eyes were encircled with dark
rings and burned feverishly, but withal, her beauty was heightened. All
the morning she debated as to the course she should take, and finally
decided to write to Guy, when Sulpice Vaudrey arrived, and beaming with
delight, informed Marianne that he had the entire day to spend with her.
"I learned through Jouvenet this morning that you were able to go to the
theatre. Naughty one, to steal an evening from me. But I have all
to-day, at least."
And he sat down in the salon like a man spreading himself out in his own
house. Marianne was meditating some scheme to get rid of him when the
chamber-maid entered, presenting a note on a tray.
"What is that?"
"A messenger, madame, has brought this letter."
Marianne read the paper hurriedly.
Vaudrey observed that she blushed slightly.
"Is the messenger still there, Justine?"
"No, madame, he is gone. He said that there was no reply."
Marianne quickly tore in small pieces the note she had just read.
"Some annoyance?" asked Vaudrey.
"Yes, exactly."
"May I know?"
"No, it does not interest you. A family affair."
"Ah! your uncle?" asked Vaudrey, smiling.
"My uncle, yes!"
"He has asked that he be permitted to exhibit at the Trocadero the
cartoons that he has finished: _The Artist's Mission_, _Hydropathy the
Civilizer_, I don't know what in fact, a series of symbolical
compositions--"
"With the _mirliton_ device underneath?--Yes, I know," said Marianne.
She snapped her fingers in her impatience.
The letter that she had torn up had been written by Rosas, and received
by Uncle Kayser at his studio, whence he had forwarded it to his niece.
The duke informed Marianne that he would wait for her at five o'clock at
Avenue Montaigne. He had something to say to her. He had passed the
entire night reflecting and dreaming. She remembered her own wild
dreams. Had Rosas then caught her thought floating like an atom on the
night wind?
At five o'clock! She would be punctual. But how escape Vaudrey? She
could not now feign sickness since she had received him! Moreover, he
would instal himself near her and bombard her with his attentions. Was
there any possible pretext, any way of getting out now? Her lover had
the devoted, radiant look of a loved man who relied on enjoying a long
interview with his mistress. He looked at her with a tender glance.
"The fool--The sticker!" thought Marianne. "He will not leave!"
The best course was to go out. She would lose him on the way.
"What time have you, my dear minister?"
"One o'clock!"
"Then I have time!" she said.
Vaudrey seemed surprised. Marianne unceremoniously informed him, in
fact, that she had some calls to make, to secure some purchases.
"How disagreeable!"
"Yes, for me!"
"I beg your pardon," said Sulpice, correcting himself.
She sent for a coupé and damp and keen as the weather was, she
substituted for the glorious day of snug, intimate joy that Vaudrey had
promised himself, a succession of weary hours passed in the draught
caused by badly-fitting windows, while making a series of trips hither
and thither, Marianne meantime cudgelling her brains to find a way to
leave her lover on the way, or at least to notify Rosas.
But above all to notify Lissac! It was Lissac whom she was determined to
see. Yes, absolutely, and at once. The more she considered the matter,
the more dangerous it appeared to her.
Sulpice had not given her a moment of freedom at her house, in which to
write a few lines. He might have questioned her and that would be
imprudent.
"I wish, however, to tell Guy to expect me!--Where? Rue Cuvier? He
would not go there!--No, at his house!"
On the way she found the means.
Vaudrey evidently was at liberty for the day and, master of his time, he
would not leave her. This he repeated at every turn of the wheel. She
ordered the driver to take her to _The Louvre_.
"I have purchases to make!"
Sulpice could not accompany her, so he waited for her at the entrance on
Place du Palais-Royal, nestled in a corner of the carriage, the blinds
of which were lowered in order that he might not be seen. He felt very
cold.
Marianne slowly crossed between the stalls on the ground floor, hardly
looking at the counters bearing the Japanese goods, the gloves and the
artificial flowers. She ascended a winding iron stairway draped with
tapestries, her tiny feet sinking into the moquette that covered the
steps, and entered a noiseless salon where men and women were silently
sitting before three tables, writing or reading, just as in the
_drawing-room_ of a hotel. At a large round table, old ladies and young
girls sat looking at the pictures in _Illustration_, the caricatures in
the _Journal Amusant_, and the sketches in _La Vie Parisienne_. Others,
at the second table, were reading the daily papers, some of which were
rolled about their holders like a flag around its staff, or the _Revue
des Deux Mondes_. Further on, at a red-covered table furnished with
leather-bound blotters and round, glass inkstands in which the ink
danced with a purple reflection, people were writing, seated on chairs
covered in worn, garnet-colored velvet, with mahogany frames. This
gloomy apartment was brightened by broad-leaved green plants, and was
lighted from the roof by means of a flat skylight.
Marianne walked direct to the table on which the paper was symmetrically
arranged in a stationery rack, and quickly seating herself, she laid her
muff down, half-raised her little veil, and beat a tattoo with her tiny
hand on the little black leather blotter before her, then taking off her
gloves, she took at random some sheets of paper and some envelopes
bearing the address of the establishment on the corners. As she looked
around for a pen, Marianne could not refrain from smiling, she thought
of that poor Sulpice down there, waiting in the carriage and probably
shivering in the draughts issuing from the disjointed doors. And he a
minister!
"Such is adultery in Paris!" she said to herself, happy to make him
suffer.
She did not hurry. She was amused by her surroundings. A uniformed man
promenaded the salon, watching the stationery in the cases and replacing
it as it was used. If required, he sold stamps to any one present. A
letter-box was attached near the tall chimney, bearing the hours of
collection.
Beside Marianne, elbow to elbow, and before her, were principally women,
some writing with feverish haste, others hesitatingly, and amongst them
were two girls opposite her, who as they finished their letters chuckled
in a low tone and passed them one to the other, say-to each other, as
they chewed their plaid penholders:
"It is somewhat cold, eh! He will say: _Eh, well, it is true then!_"
The two pretty, cheerful girls before her were doubtless breaking in
this way some liaison, amusing themselves by sending an unexpected blow
to some poor fellow, and enjoying themselves by spoiling paper; the one
writing, the other reading over her companion's shoulder and giving vent
to merry laughter under her Hungarian toque, a huge Quaker-collar almost
covering her shoulders and her little jacket with its large steel
buttons.
This feminine head-gear made Marianne think of Guy. Her eyes, catlike in
expression, gleamed maliciously.
She took some paper and essayed to frame some tempting, tender phrases,
something nebulous and exciting, but she could not.
"What I would like to write him is that he is a wretch and that I hate
him!" she thought.
Then she stopped and looked about her, altogether forgetting Vaudrey.
The contrast between that silent reading-room and the many-colored crowd
in that Oriental bazaar, whose murmurs reached her ears like the roaring
of a distant sea, and of which she could see only the corner clearly
defined by the framework of the doors, amused Marianne, who with a smile
on her lips, enjoyed the mischievous delight of fooling a President of
the Council.
"At least that avenges me for the cowardice that the _other_ forced me
to commit!"
Then mechanically regarding the crowd that flowed through these _docks_,
that contained everything that could please or disgust a whole world at
once, the crowd, the clerks, the carpets, the linen, the crowding, the
heaping,--all seemed strange and comic to her, novel and not Parisian,
but American and up-to-date.
"Oh! decidedly up-to-date!--And so convenient!" she said, as she heard
the young girls laugh when they finished their love-letters.
Then she began to write, having surely found the expressions she sought.
She sent Rosas a letter of apology: she would be at his house to-morrow
at the same hour. To-day, her uncle took up her day, compelling her to
go to see his paintings, to visit the Louvre, to buy draperies for an
Oriental scene that he intended to paint. If Rosas did not receive the
letter in time, it mattered little! To Lissac,--and this was the main
consideration,--she intimated that she would call on him the next
morning at ten o'clock.
"Rendezvous box!" she said, as she slipped her two letters into the
letter-box. "This extreme comfort is very ironical."
She smiled as she thought how long it would take to count the number of
the little hands, some trembling, some bold, that had slipped into the
rectilinear mouth of the letter-box some little missive that was either
the foretaste or the postscript of adultery.
Then she went downstairs and rejoined Vaudrey, who was impatiently
tapping the floor of the carriage with his foot.
"I was a long time there, I ask your pardon," said Marianne.
"At any rate, I hope you have bought something that suited you?" asked
Vaudrey, who seemed to have caught a cold.
"Nothing at all. There is nothing in that store!"
Vaudrey was alarmed. Were they to visit one after the other all the
fancy goods stores?
Marianne took pity on him.
"Let us return, shall we?" she asked.
She called to the coachman: "Rue Prony!" while Sulpice, whom she
unwillingly took with her, though he wearily yawned, seized her hand and
said as he sneezed:
"Ah! how kind you are!"
The next day, Marianne rang the bell of Lissac's house in Rue d'Aumale,
a little before the appointed hour.
"Punctual as a creditor!" she thought.
She reached Guy's, ready for anything. She was very pale and charming in
her light costume, and she entered as one would go into a fray with
head high. She would not leave the place until she had recovered her
letters.
It was only for those scraps of paper that she again, as it were, bound
and tied herself to her past; she wished to cut herself away from it and
to tear them to pieces with her teeth. But what if Guy should refuse to
give them up to her? That could not be possible, although he was
sincerely attached to Rosas. Still, between gratitude to a woman and
duty to a friend, a man might hesitate, when he is a corrupted Parisian
like Lissac.
"His affection for José will not carry him to the length of forgetting
all that I have given him of myself!" Marianne thought.
Then shrugging her shoulders:
"After all, these men have such a freemasonry between them, as _he_
said!--And they speak of our fraternity, we women!--It is nothing
compared with theirs!"
Guy did not show any displeasure on hearing Mademoiselle Kayser
announced. He was waiting for her. As Marianne could not feel free so
long as he held the proof of her imprudence, some day or other she must
inevitably seek him to supplicate or threaten him. The letter received
overnight had apprised him that that moment had arrived.
He had just finished dressing when she entered. His suède gloves were
laid out flat on a little table beside his hat, his stick and a small
antique cloisonné vase into which were thrown the many-colored rosettes
of his foreign decorations, some of them red, amid which a little gold
cross glistened like some brilliant beetle settled on a deep-hued rose.
"I wager that you are going out!" Marianne remarked abruptly. "Clearly,
you did not expect me!--Haven't you received my letter?"
"My dear Marianne," he replied, as he slowly finished adjusting the knot
of his cravat, "that is the very remark you made when you condescended
to reappear at my house after a lapse of some years. You have too modest
a way of announcing yourself; I assure you that, for my part, I always
expect you--and that with impatience. But to-day, more than on any other
occasion, because of your charming note."
She knew Guy well enough to perceive that his exquisite politeness only
concealed a warlike irony. She did not reply, but stood smiling in front
of the fireplace and warmed her toes at the light flames that leapt
about the logs.
"You are exceedingly polite," she said at last. "On honor, I like you
very much--you laugh? I say very much--Yes, in spite--In no case, have
you had aught to complain of me."
She half turned, resting her left hand on the edge of the velvet-covered
mantel, and cast a furtive, gentle glance at Lissac that recalled a
multitude of happy incidents.
"I have never complained," said the young man, "and I have frequently
expressed my thanks!"
Marianne laughed at the discreet manner so ceremoniously adopted by
Lissac.
"You are silly, come!--We have a great liking for each other, and it is
in the name of that affection that I come to ask a service."
"You have only to speak, my dear Marianne," Lissac answered, as if he
had not noticed the intimacy her words expressed.
He affected a cold politeness; Marianne replied to him with apparent
renewed tenderness. She looked at him for some time as if she hesitated
and feared, her glance penetrating Lissac's, and begging with a tearful
petition that wished to kindle a flame in his eyes.
"What I have to say to you will take some time. I am afraid--"
"Of what?" he asked.
"I don't know. You are in a hurry? I interfere with you, perhaps!"
"Not the least in the world. I breakfast at the Club, take a turn in the
Bois, and drop in at the _Mirlitons_ to see the opening. You see that I
should be entitled to very little merit in sacrificing to you a
perfectly wasted day."
"Is the present Exposition of the _Mirlitons_ well spoken of?" asked
Marianne, indifferently.
"Very. It is a collection of things that are to be sold for the benefit
of a deceased artist. Would you like to go there at four o'clock?"
"No, thanks!--And I repeat, my dear Guy, that I will not hinder you, you
know, if I have been indiscreet in giving you an appointment!--"
She seemed to be mechanically toying with the silk rosettes in the
little vase; she picked them up and let them drop from her fingers like
grains.
"These are yours?" she asked.--"Come near that I may put them on!"
She went to Guy, smilingly, and resting her body against his for its
entire length, she paused for a moment while she held the lapel of his
jacket, and from head to foot she gazed at him with a look that seemed
to impregnate him with odor and turned him pale.
"What an idea, Marianne! I do not wear these ribbons now."
"A childish one. I remember that I was the first to place in this
buttonhole some foreign decoration that Monsieur de Rosas brought you--"
She pronounced this name boldly, as if she would bring on the battle.
"That suits you well," she continued. "Orders on your coat are like
diamonds in our ears--they are of no use, but they are pretty."
She had passed a red rosette through the buttonhole, and lowering his
head, Guy saw her fair brow, her blond locks within reach of his lips.
They exhaled a perfume--the odor of hay, that he liked so well--and
those woman's fingers on his breast, the fingers of the woman whom he
had mocked the previous night at the theatre, caused him a disturbing
sensation. He gently disengaged himself, while Marianne repeated: "That
suits you well--" Then her hand fell on his and she pressed his fingers
in her burning and soft palm and said, as she half lowered her head
toward him:
"Do you know why I have come? You know that I am silly. Well, naughty
one, the other evening in that box when you punished me with your irony,
all my love for you returned!--Ah! how foolish we are, we women! Tell
me, Guy, do you recall the glorious days we have spent? Those
recollections retain their place in the heart! Has the idea of living
again as in the past never occurred to you? It was so sweet!"
Lissac laughed a little nervously and trembled slightly, trying to joke
but feeling himself suddenly weakening in the presence of this woman
whose wrath or contemptuous smile he preferred.
He recognized all the vanished perfumes. The sensation of trembling
delight that years had borne away now returned to him. The silent
pressure of the hands recalled nights of distraction. He half shut his
eyes, a sudden madness overcame him, although he was sufficiently calm
to say to himself that she had an end in view, this woman's coming to
him, loveless, to speak of love to him, herself unmoved by the senses,
to awaken vanished feelings, to offer herself with the irresistible
skill of desire: a dead passion born of caprice.
"Nevertheless, it is you who left me, satiated after taking from me all
that you were capable of loving," she said. "Do you know one thing,
however, Guy? There is more than one woman in a woman. There are as many
as she possesses of passions or joys, and the Marianne of to-day is so
different from the one who was your mistress formerly!--You would never
leave me, if you were my lover now!"
She tempted this man whose curiosity was aroused, accustomed as he was
to casual and easy love adventures. He foresaw danger, but there within
reach of his lips were experienced kisses, an ardent supplicant, a
proffered delight, full of burning promise. In a sort of anger, he
seized the woman who recalled all the past joys, uttered the well-known
cries, and who suddenly, as in a nervous attack, deliriously plucked the
covering from her bosom, and bared with the boldness of beauty that
knows itself to be irresistible, her white arms, her brilliant,
untrammeled breasts, the sparkling splendor of her flesh, with her
golden hair unfastened, as she used to appear lying on a pillow of fair
silk, almost faint and between her kisses, that were as fierce as bites,
uttering: "I love you--you--I adore you--" And the lovely, imperious
girl again became, almost without a word having been exchanged, the
submissive woman carried away by lascivious ardor; and Guy, confused and
speechless, no longer reasoning, was unable to say whether Marianne
belonged to him, or he to the mistress of former days, become the
mistress of to-day.
He held her clasped to him, his hand raising her pale, languishing face
about which her fair hair fell loosely; to him she looked like one
asleep, her pink nostrils still dilating with a spasmodic movement, and
it seemed to him that he had just suffered from the perturbing contact
of a courtesan in the depths of some luxurious den.
It was an immediate reawakening, enervating but furious. She had given
herself impulsively. He recovered himself similarly. The sudden contact
of two bodies resulted in the immediate recoil of two beings.
With more bitter shame, he had had similar morose awakenings after a
dissipated night, his heart, his brave heart thumping against the
passionate form, often lean and sallow, of some satiated girl, fearfully
weary.
What cowardice! Was it Vaudrey's mistress or the future wife of Rosas
who had clung to his lips?
He felt disgusted at heart.
Yet she was adorable, this still young and lovely Marianne.
With cruel perspicacity, he already foresaw that he would be guilty of
cowardly conduct in yielding to this sudden weakness, and ashamed of
himself he disengaged himself from her hysterical embrace, while
Marianne squatted on his bed, throwing back her hair from her face,
still smiling as she looked at him and asked:
"Well--what? What is the matter with you, then?"
She rose slowly, slipping upon the carpet while he went to the window to
look mechanically into the yard. Between these two creatures but a
moment before clasped together, a sudden icy coldness sprung up as if
each had divined that the hour was about to sound, terrible as a knell,
when their affairs must be settled. The kisses of love are to be paid
for.
Standing before the mirror, half undressed, Marianne was arranging her
hair. Her white shoulders, her still heaving and oppressed bosom were
still exposed within the border of her fine chemisette. She felt her
wrists, instinctively examining her bracelets, and looked toward the bed
in an absent sort of way as if to see if some charm had not slipped from
them.
"Guy," she said abruptly, but in a tone which she tried to make
endearing, "promise me that you will not refuse what I am about to ask
you."
"I promise."
They now quite naturally substituted for the "thou" of affectionate
address, the more formal "you," secretly realizing that after the
intertwining of their bodies, their real individualities independent of
all surprises or sensual appetite, would find themselves face to face.
"I could wish that our affection--and it is profound, is it not,
Guy?--dated only from the moment that we have just passed."
"I do not regret the past," he said.
"Nor I! Yet I would like to efface it--yes, by a single stroke!"
She held between her white fingers some rebellious little locks of hair
that had come out, which she had rolled and twisted, and casting them
into the clear flame, she said:
"See! to burn it like that!--_Pft!_--"
"Burn it?" Lissac repeated.
He had left the window, returned to Marianne and smiling in his turn, he
said:
"Why burn it?--Because it is tiresome or because it is dangerous?"
"Both!" she replied.
She paused for a moment before continuing, drew up over her arms the
lace of her chemisette, then half bending her head, and looking at Guy
like a creditor of love she said:
"You still have my letters, my dear?"
"Your letters?"
"Those of the old days?"
"That is so," he said. "The past."
He understood everything now.
"You came to ask me to return them?"
"I have been, you must admit, very considerate, not to have claimed
them--before!"
"You have been--generous!" answered Lissac, with a gracious smile.
He opened his secrétaire, one of the drawers of which contained little
packages folded and tied with bands of silk ribbon, that slept the sleep
of forgotten things.
"There are your letters, my dear Marianne! But you have nothing to fear;
they have never left this spot."
The eyes of the young woman sparkled with a joyous light. Slowly as if
afraid that Guy would not give them to her, she extended her bare arm
toward the packet of letters and snatched it suddenly.
"My letters!"
"It is an entire romance," said Lissac.
"Less the epilogue!" she said, still enveloping him with her intense
look.
She placed the packet on the velvet-covered mantelpiece and hastily
finished dressing. Then taking between her fingers those little letters
in their old-fashioned envelopes bearing her monogram, and that still
bore traces of a woman's perfume, she looked at them for a moment and
said to Lissac:
"You have read them occasionally?"
"I know them by heart!"
"My poor letters!--I was quite sincere, you know, when I wrote you
them!--They must be very artless! Yours, that I have burned, were too
clever. I remember that one day you wrote me from Holland: 'I pass my
life among chefs-d'oeuvre, but my mind is far away from them. I have
Rembrandt and Ruysdaël; but the smallest millet seed would be more to my
liking: millet is _fair!_' Well, that was very pretty, but much too
refined. True love has no wit.--All this is to convey to you that
literature will not lose much by the disappearance of my disconnected
scrawls."
She suddenly threw the packet into the fire and watched the letters as
they lightly curled, at first spotted with fair patches, and enveloped
in light smoke, then bursting into flame that cast its rosy reflection
on Marianne's face. Little by little all disappeared save a patch of
black powder on the logs, that danced like a mourning veil fluttering in
the wind and immediately disappeared up the chimney:--the dust of dead
love, the ashes of oaths, all black like mourning crêpe.
Marianne watched the burning of the letters, bending her forehead, while
a strange smile played on her lips, and an expression as of triumphant
joy gleamed in her eyes.
When the work was done, she raised her head and turned toward Guy and in
a quivering voice, she said proudly and insolently:
"_Requiescat!_ See how everything ends! It is a long time since lovers
who have ceased to love invented cremation! Nothing is new under the
sun!"
She was no longer the same woman. A moment before she manifested a sort
of endearing humility, but now she was ironically boastful, looking at
Lissac with the air of one triumphing over a dupe. He bit his lips
slightly, rubbing his hands together, while examining her sidelong,
without affectation. Marianne's ironical smile told him all that she now
had to say.
It was not the first time that he had been a witness to such a
transformation of the feminine countenance before and after the return
of letters. Guy for some time had ceased to be astonished at anything in
connection with women.
"Now, my dear," said Marianne, "I hope that you will do me the kindness
of allowing me to go on in my own way in life, and that I shall not have
the annoyance of finding you again in the way of my purpose."
"I confess," Lissac replied, "that I should be the worst of ingrates if
I did not forget many things in consideration of what I owe you, both in
the present and in the past. Your burned letters still shed their
fragrance!"
Marianne touched the half-consumed logs with the tip of her foot and the
débris of the paper fluttered around her shoe like little black
butterflies.
"I wish I could have destroyed the past as I have made those letters
flame! It weighs on me, it chokes me! You do not imagine, perhaps," she
said, "that I have forgiven you for your flight and all that followed
it?--If, for a moment, I almost stumbled in the mire, the fault was
yours, for I loved you and you abandoned me, as a man forsakes a
strumpet.--So, you see, my dear, a woman never forgets it, and I would
have cried out long before, if I had felt myself free, free as I am now
that those letters are burned, the poor letters of a stupid mistress,
confiding in her lover who is overcome with weariness, and who is only
thinking of deserting her, while she is still intoxicated in yielding to
him--and because I adored you--yes, truly--because I was your mistress,
do you arrogate to yourself the right of preventing me from marrying as
I wish, and of drawing myself out of the bog into which, perhaps, by
your selfishness, I have fallen? Ah, my dear fellow, really I am
somewhat surprised at you, I swear!--I said nothing because of those
scraps of paper, that you would have been cowardly enough, I assert, to
show Rosas and every line of which told how foolish I had been to love
you."
"Monsieur de Rosas would never have seen them!" said Lissac severely.
She did not seem to hear him.
"But now, what? Thank God," she continued, "there is nothing, and you
have delivered those letters to me that you ought never to have
returned. And I have paid you for them, paid for them with new caresses
and a last prostitution! Well! that ends it, doesn't it? There is
nothing more between us, nothing, nothing, nothing!--And these two
beings, who exchanged here their loveless kisses, the kisses of a
debauchee and a courtesan, will never recognize each other again, I
hope--you hear, never recognize each other again--when they meet in
life. Moreover, I will take care to avoid meetings!"
Guy said nothing.
He twirled his moustache slightly and continued to look at Marianne
sideways without replying.
This indifference, though doubtless assumed, nevertheless annoyed the
young woman.
"Go, find Monsieur de Rosas now!" she said. "Tell him that you have been
my lover, he will not believe you."
"I am satisfied of that," Lissac replied very calmly.
She realized a threat in his very calmness. But what had she to fear
now?
She fastened her ironical glance on Lissac, the better to defy him, and
to enjoy his defeat.
With extended hands, he noiselessly tapped his fingers together, the
gesture of a person who waits, sure of himself and displaying a mocking
silence.
"Then adieu!" she said abruptly. "I hope that we shall never see each
other again!"
"How can you help it?" said Lissac, smiling. "In Paris!"
He sat down on a chair, while Marianne stood, putting on her gloves.
"On my word, my dear Marianne, for a clever woman you are outrageously
sanguine."
"I?"
"And credulous! You credit me with the simplicity of the Age of Gold,
then?--Is it possible?--Do you think a corrupted Parisian like myself
would allow himself to be trifled with like a schoolboy by a woman as
extremely seductive as I confess you are? But, my dear friend, the first
rule in such matters is only to completely disarm one's self when it is
duly proved that peace has been definitely signed and that a return to
offensive tactics is not to be feared. You have shown your little pink
claws too nimbly, Marianne. Too quickly and too soon. In one of those
drawers, there are still one or two letters left, I was about to say,
that belong to the series of letters that are slumbering: exquisite,
perfumed, eloquent, written in that pretty, fine and firm writing that
you have just thrown into the fire, and those letters I would only have
given you on your continuing to act fairly. They were my reserve. It is
an elementary rule never to use all one's powder at a single shot, and
one never burns _en bloc_ such delicate autographs. They are too
valuable! Tell me, will you disdain to recognize me when you meet me,
Miss Marianne?"
She remained motionless, pale and as if frozen.
"Then you have kept?--" she said.
"A postscriptum, if you like, yes."
"Are you lying now, or did you lie in giving me the packet that has been
burned?"
"I did not tell you that the packet was complete, and what I now tell
you is the simple truth! I regret it, but you have compelled me to keep
my batteries, in too quickly unmasking your own."
Marianne pulled off her gloves in anger.
"If you do not give me everything here that belongs to me, you are a
coward; you hear, a coward, Monsieur de Lissac!"
"Oh! your insults are of as little importance as your kisses! but they
are less agreeable!"
She clearly saw that she had thrown off the mask too soon, and that
Lissac would not now allow himself to be snared by her caresses or
disarmed by her threats. The game was lost.
Lost, or merely compromised?
She looked about her with an expression of powerless rage, like a very
graceful wild beast enclosed in a cage. Her letters, her last letters
must be here, in one of those pieces of furniture whose drawers she
might open with her nails. She threw her gloves on the floor and
mechanically tore into shreds--as she always did when in a rage--between
her nervous fingers, her fine cambric handkerchief reduced to rags.
"Be very careful what you are doing, Guy," she said at last, casting a
malicious look at him, "I have purchased these letters from you, for I
hate you, I repeat it, and these letters you owe to me as you would owe
money promised to a wench. If you do not give them to me, I will have
them, notwithstanding."
"Really?"
"I promise you I will."
"And suppose I have burned them?"
"You lie, you have them here, you have kept them. You have behaved
toward me like a thief."
"Nonsense, Marianne," said Lissac coldly, "on my faith, I see I have
done well to preserve some weapon against you. You are certainly very
dangerous!"
"More than you imagine," she replied.
He moved slightly backward, seeing that she wished to pass him to reach
the door.
"You will not give me back my letters?" she asked in a harsh and
menacing tone as she stood on the threshold of the room.
Guy stooped without heeding her and picked up the gloves that were lying
on the carpet and handed them to the young woman:
"This is your property, I think?"
This was said with insolently refined politeness.
Marianne took the gloves, and as a last insult, like a blow on the
cheek, she threw them at Guy's face, who turned aside and the gloves
fell on the bed where just before these two hatreds had come together in
kisses of passion.
"Miserable coward!" said Marianne, surveying Lissac from head to foot
with an expression of scorn, while he stood still, his monocle dangling
at the end of a fine cord on his breast, near the buttonhole of his
jacket that bore the red rosette; his face was pale but wore a sly
expression.
That silk rosette looked there like a vermilion note stamped on a dark
ground, and it seemed to pierce like a luminous drill into Marianne's
eyes; and with her head erect, pallid face and trembling lip she passed
before the domestic who hastened to open the door and went downstairs,
repeating to herself with all the distracted fury of a fixed idea:
"To be avenged! To be avenged! Oh! to be avenged!"
She jumped into a cab.
"Well?"--said the coachman, looking with blinking eyes at this
pale-faced, distraught-looking woman.
She remained there as if seeking an idea, a purpose.
"Where shall we go?" repeated the driver.
Suddenly Marianne's face trembled with a joyous expression and she
abruptly said:
"To the Prefecture of Police!"
* * * * *
_The general rose, grasping his glass as if he would shiver it,
and while the _parfait_ overflowed on to the plates, he cried
in a hoarse voice, as if he were at the head of his division:_
_"I love bronze--I love bronze--...."_
[Illustration: THE BANQUET]