On rising the following morning, after a feverish night, Sulpice
realized a feeling of absolute moral destruction. It seemed to him that
he had lost a dear being. In that huge, silent hôtel one would have
thought that a corpse was lying. He did not dare to present himself to
Adrienne. He could not tell what to say to her. He went downstairs
slowly, crossing the salons that were still decorated with the now
fading flowers, to reach his cabinet. The carpet was littered with the
broken leaves of dracænas and petals that had fallen from the azaleas,
and presented the gloomy, forsaken aspect peculiar to the morrow of a
fête. The furniture, stripped of its coverings, offered the faded tint
of old maids at their rising. With heavy head, he sat at his desk and
looked at the piled-up documents with a vague expression. Always the
eternal pile of despatches, optimistic reports, and banal summaries of
the daily press. Nothing new, nothing interesting, all was going well.
This tired world had no history.
The minister still remained there, absorbed as after an unhealthy
insomnia, when Warcolier entered, ever serious, with his splendid,
redundant phrases and his usual attitude of a pedantic rhetor. He came
to inform the minister that a matter of importance, perhaps of a
troublesome nature, loomed on the horizon. Granet was preparing an
interpellation. Oh! upon a matter without any real importance. An affair
of a procession that had taken place at Tarbes, accompanied by some
little disturbance. It was only a pretext, but it was sufficient,
perhaps, to rally a majority around the _minister of to-morrow_. Old
Henri de Prangins, with his eye on a portfolio, and always thirsting for
power, was keeping Granet company: the man who would never be a minister
with the man who was sure to be.
"Well, what has this to do with me?" asked Vaudrey indifferently.
Granet! Prangins! He was thinking of a very different matter. Adrienne
knew all and Marianne deceived him. She was to marry Rosas.
The very serious Warcolier manifested much surprise at the little energy
displayed by Monsieur le Ministre. He expected to see him bound, in
order to rebound, as he said, believing himself witty. Was Vaudrey
himself giving up the game? Was Granet then sure of the game? He
surmised it and had already taken the necessary measures in that
direction. But surely if Granet were the rising sun, Vaudrey was himself
abandoning his character of the setting sun. He was not setting, he was
falling. A sovereign contempt for this man entered Warcolier's lofty
soul, Warcolier the friend of success.
"Then you do not understand, Monsieur le Président?"
Vaudrey drew himself up with a sudden movement that was frequent with
him. He struck the table on which his open portfolio rested, and said:
"I understand that Granet wants that portfolio! Well, be it so! I set
little store by it, but he does not have it yet!"
"That is something like it! It is worthy of a brave man to show a
resolute front to his enemies! It is in battle that talent is
retempered, as formerly in the Styx were tempered--"
"I know," said Sulpice.
Warcolier's intelligent smile was not understood by the minister.
Sulpice, who was in despair over his shattered domestic joys, had no
wish to enter on a struggle except to bring about a reaction on himself.
To hold his own against Granet, was to divert his own present sadness.
"All right," he said to Warcolier. "Let Granet interpellate us when he
pleases--In eight days, to-morrow, yes, to-day even, I am ready!"
"Interpellate _us_!" thought Warcolier. "You should say, interpellate
_you_."
He had already got out of the scrape himself.
Vaudrey debated with himself as to whether he would try to see Adrienne.
No? What should he say to her? It would be better to let a little time
shed its balm upon the wound. Then, too, if he wished to bar the way to
Granet, he had not too much time before him. The shrewd person should
act promptly.
"I shall see him on the Budget Committee!" thought Vaudrey.
He found it necessary now to force an interest in the struggle which a
few months before would have found him eagerly panting to enter on. The
honeymoon of his love of power had passed. He had too keenly felt, one
after another, the discouragements of the office that he sought in order
to _do good_, to reform, to act, in the pursuit of which he found
himself, from the first moment, clashing with routine, old-fashioned
ideas, petty ambitions, the general welfare, all the brood of selfish
interests. It had been his to dream a sort of Chimera bearing the
country toward Progress on outstretched wings: he found himself
entangled in the musty mechanism of a worn-out and rancid-smelling
engine, that dragged the State as a broken-winded horse might have done.
Then, little by little, weariness and disgust had penetrated the heart
of this visionary who desired to live, to assert himself in putting an
end to so many abuses, and whom his colleagues, his chiefs of division,
his chief of service, the chief of the State himself cautiously advised:
"Make no innovations! Let things go! That has gone on so for so long!
What is the use of changing? It will still do very well!"
Ah! it was to throw off the shackles and to try the impossible! Vaudrey
found himself hemmed in between his dearest hopes and the most
disheartening realities. He was asked for offices, not reforms. The men
charged with the fate of the country were not straggling after progress,
they were looking after their own interests, their landed and
shopkeeping interests. He felt nauseated by all this. He held those
deputies in contempt who besieged his cabinet and filled his antechamber
in order to beg, claim and demand. All of them sought something, and
they were almost strangled by the solicitations of their own
constituents. They appeared to Sulpice to be rather the commissionaires
of universal suffrage than the servants. This abasement before the
manipulators of the votes made Vaudrey indignant. He felt that France
was becoming by degrees a vast market for favors, a nation in which
everyone asked office from those who to keep their own promised
everything, and the thought filled him with terror. The ministers,
wedded to their positions, became the mere servants of the deputies,
while the latter obeyed the orders of their constituents. All was kept
within a vast network of office-seeking and trafficking. And with it
all, a hatred of genuine talent, bitter selfishness and the crushing
narrowness of ideas!
Vaudrey recalled a story that had been told him, how during the Empire,
the Emperor, terrified, feeling himself isolated, asked and searched for
a man, and how a certain little bell in the Tuileries was especially
provided to warn the chamberlains of the entry into the château of a new
face, of the visit of a stranger, in order that the camarilla, warned by
the particular ring, would have time to place themselves on their guard,
and to send the newcomer to the right about if he might become an aid to
the master and a danger to the servants. Well! Sulpice did not hear that
invisible and secret bell, but he guessed its presence, he divined its
presence around him, warning the interested, always ready to chase away
the stranger; he felt that its secret thread was everywhere thrown
around the powerful, the mighty of four days or a quarter of a century
and that, so long as influence existed in the world, there would be
courtiers and that these courtiers, eager for a crumb, would prevent the
stranger, that is to say, truth, from reaching the light, fearing that
this stranger might play the part of the lion and chase the flies away
from the honeycomb.
Thus, how much nausea and contempt he felt for that transient power
which in spite of himself was rendered useless! A power that placed him
at the mercy of the bawling of a colleague or an enemy, and even at the
mercy of that all-powerful master so readily dissatisfied: everybody. He
had seen, at too close quarters, the vile intrigues, the depressing
chafferings, the grinding of that political kitchen in which so many
people,--this Warcolier with his voluble rhetoric, this Granet with his
conceited smile of superiority,--were hungering to hold the handle of
the saucepan. He recalled a remark that Denis Ramel had often repeated
to him: "What is the use of putting one's self out in order to bask in
the sunshine? The best are in the shade."
He was seized with lawful indignation against his own ambitions, against
the lack of energy that prevented him from sweeping away all
obstacles,--men, and routine,--and he recalled with afflicting
bitterness his entry on public life, in the blaze of divine light, and
his dreams, his poor noble dreams! "A great minister! I will be a great
minister!"
"Ah! yes, indeed! one is a minister, that is all! And that is enough! It
is often too much! We shall see indeed what he will do, that Granet who
ought to do so much!"
Vaudrey laughed nervously.
"What he will do? Nothing! Nothing! Still nothing! That is very easy! To
do anything, one should be a great man and not a politician captivated
with the idea of reaching the summit of power. Ah! _parbleu!_ to be a
great man! 'That is the question.'"
He grew very excited over the proud rebellion of his old faith and
shattered hopes against the negative success he had obtained. Besides,
there was no reason for giving up the struggle. There was a council to
be held at the Élysée. He went there, but at this moment of disgust,
disgust of everything and himself, this palace like all the rest, seemed
to him to be gloomy and mean. An usher in black coat and white cravat,
wearing a chain around his neck, wandered up and down the antechamber,
according to custom, his shoes covered with the dust from the carpet
trodden upon by so many people, either applicants or functionaries. The
gaslight burning in broad day as in the offices in London was reflected
on the cold walls that shone like marble. Doors ornamented with gilt
nails and round, ivory knobs and without locks, were noiselessly
swinging to and fro. Wearied office-seekers with tired countenances were
spread out upon the garnet-colored velvet chairs, which were like those
of a middle-class, furnished house.
From time to time, the tiresome silence was broken by the sound of near
or distant electric bells. Vaudrey, who arrived before his colleagues,
studiously contemplated the surroundings ironically. An estafette, a
gendarme, arrived with a telegram; the usher signed a receipt for it.
That was all the life that animated this silent palace. A man with a
military air, tall, handsome and in tightly-buttoned frock-coat, passed
and saluted the President of the Council; then, Jouvenet, the Prefect of
Police, looking like a notary's senior clerk, his abundant black hair
plastered on his head, a large, black portfolio under his arm,
approached the minister and bowed. Vaudrey, having Lissac in mind,
returned his salutation coldly.
"I will speak to you presently, Monsieur le Préfet."
"Good! Monsieur le Ministre!"
In spite of the foot-soldier and the Parisian guard on duty at the door
of the palace, all that now seemed to Vaudrey to lack official
solemnity, and resembled rather a temporary and melancholy occupation.
"Bah! And if I should never set my foot in this place again," he
thought, as he remembered Granet's interpellation, "what would it matter
to me?"
He was informed first at the Council and then at the Chamber, that
Granet would not introduce his question until the next day. Vaudrey had
the desired time to prepare himself. In the Budget Committee, where he
met Granet, the _minister of to-morrow_ asked him an inopportune
question concerning the expenses of the administration. Vaudrey was
angered and felt inclined to treat it as a personal question. It now
only remained for his adversaries to begin to suspect him! To appear so
was even now too much. Sulpice took Granet up promptly, the latter
assured him that "his colleague and friend, the President of the
Council," had entirely misconstrued the meaning of his words.
"Well and good!" said Vaudrey.
He was not sorry that the interpellation was not to take place at once.
Before to-morrow, he would have placed his batteries. And then he would
think of quieting Adrienne, of regaining her, perhaps. On returning to
the ministry, he caused some inquiries to be made as to whether Madame
were not sick. Madame had gone out. She had gone out as if she were
making a pilgrimage to a cemetery, to the apartment in Rue de la
Chaussée-d'Antin, whereon might have been written: _Here lies_. It was
like the tomb of her happiness.
She would not see Sulpice again. In the evening, however, she consented
to speak to him.
Her poor, gentle face was extremely pale, and as if distorted by some
violent pain.
"You will find some excuse," she said, "for announcing that I am ill. I
am leaving for Grenoble. I have written to my uncle, the Doctor expects
me, and all that now remains to me is a place in his house."
"Adrienne!" murmured Sulpice.
She closed her eyes, for this suppliant voice doubtless caused her a
new grief, but neither gesture nor word escaped her. She was like a
walking automaton. Even her eyes expressed neither reproach nor anger,
they seemed dim.
There was something of death in her aspect.
After a few moments, she said: "I hope that my resolve will not work any
prejudice to your political position. In that direction I will still do
my duty to the full extent of my strength. But people will not trouble
themselves to inquire whether I am at Grenoble or Paris. They trouble
themselves very little about me."
By a gesture, he sought to retain her. She had already entered her room,
and Vaudrey felt that between this woman and him there stood something
like a wall. He had now only to love Marianne.
To love Marianne, ah! yes, the unhappy man, he still loved her. When he
thought of Marianne, it was more in wrath, when he thought of Adrienne,
it was more in pity; but, certainly, his wife's determination to leave
Paris caused him less emotion than the thought that his mistress was to
wed Rosas.
That very evening he went to Marianne's.
They told him that Madame was at the theatre. Where? With whom? Neither
Jean nor Justine knew.
Vaudrey despised himself for jealously questioning the servants who,
when together, would burst with laughter in speaking of him.
"Oh! miserable fool!" he said to himself. "There was only one woman who
loved you:--Adrienne!"
Nevertheless, he recalled Marianne in the hours of past love, and the
recollection of her kisses and sobs still made his flesh creep. The
tawny tints that played in her hair as it strayed unfastened over the
pillow, the endearing caresses of her bare arms, he wished to see and
feel again. He calculated in his ferocious egotism that Adrienne's wrath
would afford him more complete liberty for a time, and that he would
have Marianne more to himself, if she were willing.
He had written to Mademoiselle Kayser, but his letter had remained
unanswered. He thought that he would go to Mademoiselle Vanda's house
the next day, after the Chamber was up. Very late, he added, since the
sitting would be prolonged. Long and decisive, as the fate of his
ministry was at stake.
Granet's interpellation did not make him unusually uneasy. He had
acquainted himself in the morning with a résumé of the journals. Public
opinion seemed favorable to the Vaudrey ministry, _except in the case of
some insufferable radical organs, and with which he need not in anyway
concern himself_, read the report. Vaudrey did not remember that it was
in almost these very terms that the daily résumé of the press expressed
itself on the eve of Pichereau's fall, to the Minister of the Interior,
in speaking of Pichereau's cabinet.
"I shall have a majority of sixty votes," he said to himself.
"Everything will be carried--save honor!"
He thought of Adrienne as he thus wished.
The session of the Chamber was to furnish him the most cruel deception.
Granet had most skilfully prepared his plan of attack. Vaudrey's
ministry was threatened on all sides by lines of approach laid out
without Sulpice's knowledge. Granet had promised, here and there, new
situations, or had undertaken to confirm the old. He came to the assault
of the ministry with a compact battalion of clients entirely devoted to
his fortunes, which were their own. They did not reproach Vaudrey too
strongly with anything, unless it was that these impatient ones
considered that he had given away all that he had to give, prefectures,
sub-prefectures, councillors' appointments, crosses of the Legion of
Honor, and especially for having lasted too long. Vaudrey would fall
less because he had forfeited esteem than because others were impatient
to succeed him. Granet was tired of being only the _minister of
to-morrow_, he wished to have his day. He had just affirmed his policy,
he asserted that the whole country, weary of Vaudrey's compromises,
demanded a more homogeneous ministry. Homogeneity! Nothing could be said
against such a word. Granet favored the policy of homogeneity. This
vocable comprehended his entire programme. The Vaudrey Cabinet lacked
homogeneity! The President of the Republic decidedly ought to form a
homogeneous cabinet.
"Granet is then homogeneous?" said Sulpice, with a forced laugh, as he
sat on the ministerial bench while Lucien Granet was speaking from the
tribune, his right hand thrust into his frock-coat.
The _bon mot_ uttered by the President of the Council, although spoken
loudly enough, did not enliven any one, neither his colleagues who felt
themselves threatened nor his usual _claqueurs_ who felt themselves
vanquished. Navarrot, the ministerial claqueur, was already applauding
Granet most enthusiastically. _Monsieur le Ministre_ felt himself about
to become an ex-minister. He vaguely felt as if he were in the vacuum of
an air-pump.
The order of the day of distrust, smoothed over by Granet with the
formulas of perfidious politeness--castor-oil in orange-juice, as
Sulpice himself called it, trying to pluck up courage and wit in the
face of misfortune,--that order of the day that the Vaudrey Cabinet
would not accept, was adopted by a considerable majority: one hundred
and twenty-two votes.
For Sulpice, it was a crushing defeat.
"One hundred and twenty-two deputies," he said, still speaking in a loud
voice in the corridors, "to whom I have refused the appointment of some
mayor or the removal of some rural guard!"
Warcolier, ever dignified, remarked in his usual style, that this manner
of defending himself probably lacked some of that nobility which becomes
a defeat bravely endured.
Vaudrey had only one course open, to send in his resignation. He was
beaten, thoroughly beaten. He returned to the Hôtel Beauvau and after
preparing his letter he took it himself to the President at the Élysée.
The President accepted it without betraying any feeling, as an employé
at the registry office receives any deed of declaration. Two or three
commonplace expressions of regret, a diplomatic shake of the hand,
expressive of official sympathy, that was all. Vaudrey returned to the
ministry and ordered his servants to prepare everything for leaving the
ministerial mansion.
"When is that to be, Monsieur le Ministre?"
"To-morrow," answered Vaudrey, to whom the title seemed ironical and
grated on his nerves.
He caused himself to be announced to Adrienne.
Adrienne, weary looking, was seated before a small desk writing, and
beneath her fair hair, her face still looked as white as that of a
corpse.
"There is some news," Vaudrey said to her abruptly. "I am no longer
minister!"
"Ah!" she said.
Not a tremor, not a word of consolation. Three days previously, she
would have leaped to his neck and said: "How happy we shall be! I have
you back; I have found you again! What joy!"
Again, she would have tried to console him had he been suffering.
Now, she remained passive, frozen, indifferent to that news.
"We shall leave the Hôtel Beauvau!" said Sulpice.
"I am already preparing to leave," she replied. "My trunks are packed."
"Will you do me the kindness of leaving here with me and of going back
to Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin with me?--After that, you can set out at
once for Grenoble. But let us have no sign of scandal. The world must be
considered."
She had listened to him coldly, unmoved by his trembling voice.
"That is proper," she said ironically. "The world must be thought of. I
will wait then before leaving."
He was stupefied to find so much coldness and so unswerving a
determination in this woman, as gentle as a child--my _wife-child_, he
so frequently said to her of old. In her presence he felt ill at ease,
discontented, hesitating whether he should throw himself at her feet and
wring pardon from her, or fly from her and be with Marianne, perhaps
forever. But no, it was Adrienne, his poor, his dear Adrienne that he
would keep and love! Ah! if she pardoned him! If he had dared to kneel
at her feet, to plead and to weep! But this living corpse froze him, he
was afraid of her, of that gentle and devoted creature.
He went downstairs again, saying to himself that he would take a hurried
dinner and then go to Rue Prony.
He was, however, obliged to occupy himself in despatching the last
current business. He must hand over his official duties to his
successor. There was a mocking expression in these words: _his
successor!_
"After all, he will have one also!"
He still had unexpected heartbreakings to experience. People to whom he
had promised appointments and decorations came, almost breathless,
suddenly stirred by the news, to entreat him to sign the nominations and
to prepare the decrees while he was _still_ minister. The ravens were
about the corpse. _Monsieur Eugène_, still bowing low, although not
quite so low as heretofore, endeavored to dismember Vaudrey the
Minister. He wanted a little piece, only one piece! A sub-prefecture of
the third class!
He had already been informed at the Élysée that Granet was to be his
successor. _Parbleu!_ he expected it! But the realization of his fears
annoyed him. And who would Granet keep for his Secretary of State?
Warcolier, yes Warcolier, with the promise of giving him the first
vacant portfolio.
"How correct was Ramel's judgment?" thought Sulpice.
Vaudrey, with a sort of rage urging him, immediately set himself about a
task as mournful as a funeral: packing up. It now seemed to him that he
had just suffered a total overthrow. Books and papers were being packed
in baskets. Before he was certain of his fall, he thought it was
delightful to escape from so much daily bother, but now he felt as if he
were being discrowned and ruined. Ruin! It truly threatened him indeed
and held him by the throat. He had realized on many pieces of property
within the past year for Marianne!
Adrienne, on the contrary, left this great cold hôtel of Place Beauvau,
as if she were leaving a prison, with a comforting sense of deliverance.
A bad dream was ended. She could lay down her official mask, weep at
ease, complain at will, fly to that Dauphiny where her youth was left.
She would leave to-morrow. Doctor Reboux awaited her in ignorance.
After having given his first orders and arranged his most important
documents, Sulpice went out to walk to Marianne's. At first he wandered
along mechanically without realizing that he was going toward the quays,
almost fearing the interview with his mistress, now that he was only a
defeated man. He had nearly reached the Seine before he was aware of it.
He looked at his watch.
Eleven o'clock.
Marianne had been awaiting him for some time.
He now followed, with the slow march of persons oppressed with a sense
of weariness, these deserted quays, that terrace on the bank of the
river, whose balustrades permitted glimpses of the silhouettes of
slender trees. He met no one. Upon the Place de la Concorde, still wet
with the scarce dried rain of this November night, as mild as an evening
in spring, permeated by a warm mist, he looked for a moment at the
Palace of the Corps Législatif, gloomy-looking and outlining its roofs
against the misty sky, whose gleams fell on the horizon with a bluish
tint, while upon the broad sidewalks, the jets of gas magnified the
reddened reflections with their own ruddy hues. Along the grand avenue
of the Champs-Élysées there were only two immense parallel rows of
gas-lamps and here and there, moving, luminous points that looked like
glow-worms. Vaudrey mechanically stopped a moment to contemplate the
scene.
That did not interest him, but something within him controlled him. He
continued to walk unwittingly in the direction of Parc Monceau. The
solitude of the Champs-Élysées pleased him. While passing before an
important club with its windows lighted, he instinctively shuddered.
Through the lace-like branches of the trees, he looked at the green
shades, the lustres, the unpolished sconces, with the backgrounds of red
and gold hangings, and the great, gold frames, and he imagined that they
were discussing the causes of his defeat and the success of Granet.
"They are speaking of me, in there! They are talking about my fall! He
is fallen! Fallen! Beaten!--They are laughing, they are making jokes!
There are some there who yesterday were asking me for places."
He continued on his way without quickening his pace; the deserted café
concerts, as melancholy-looking as empty stages, the wreaths of
suspended pearl-like lamps illuminated during the summer months but now
colorless, seemed ironical amid the clumps of bare trees as gloomy as
cemetery yews, exhaling a sinister, forsaken spirit as if this solitude
were full of extinct songs, defunct graces, phantoms, and last year's
mirth. And Vaudrey felt a strangely delicious sensation even in his
bitterness at this impression of solitude, as if he might have been
lost, forgotten forever, in the very emptiness of this silent corner.
Going on, he passed before the Élysée.
A _sergent de ville_ who was slowly pacing up and down in front of an
empty sentry-box, his two hands ensconced in the sleeves of his coat,
the hood of which he had turned up, cast a sidelong glance at him,
almost suspiciously, as if wondering what a prowler could want to do
there, at such an hour.
"He does not know whom he has looked at," he said. "And yesterday, only
yesterday, he would have saluted me subserviently!"
The windows of the Élysée facing the street were still lighted up and
Vaudrey thought that shadows were moving behind the white curtains.
"The President has not yet retired! He has probably received Granet! And
Warcolier!--Warcolier!"
Before the large door opening on Faubourg Saint-Honoré, four lamps were
burning over the head of a Parisian guard on duty, with his musket on
his shoulder, the light shining on the leather of his shako. Some
weary-looking guardians of the peace were chatting together. At the end
of the court before the perron, a small, red carpet was laid upon the
steps and in front of the marquee faint lights gleamed. Vaudrey recalled
that joyous morning when he entered there, arriving and descending from
his carriage with his portfolio under his arm.
He hurried his steps and found himself on Place Beauvau. His glance was
attracted by the grille, the hôtel, the grand court at the end of the
avenue. Sulpice experienced a feeling of sudden anger as he passed in
front of the Ministry of the Interior whose high grille, now closed, he
had many times passed through, leaning back in his coupé. He pictured
himself entering there, where he would never again return except as a
place-seeker like those eternal beggars who blocked its antechambers. He
still heard the cry of the lackey when the coachman crushed the sand of
the courtyard under the wheels of the carriage: "Monsieur le Ministre's
carriage!"--He went upstairs, the lackeys saluted him, the coupé rolled
off toward the Bois.
Now, here in that vulgar mansion another was displaying himself, seated
on the same seats, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same bed
and giving his orders to the same servants. He experienced a strange
sensation, as of a theft, of some undue influence, of suffering an
ejectment by a stranger from some personal property, and this Granet,
the man sent there as he had been, by a vote, seemed to him to be a
smart fellow, a filibuster and an intruder.
"How one becomes accustomed to thinking one's self at home everywhere!"
thought Vaudrey.
He partially forgot the keen wound given to his self-love by the time
that he found himself close to Parc Monceau approaching Rue Prony. In
Marianne's windows the lights were shining. To see that woman and hold
her again in his arms, overjoyed, that happiness would console him for
all his mortifications. Marianne's love was worth a hundred times more
than the delights of power.
Marianne Kayser was evidently waiting for Sulpice. She received him in
her little, brilliantly-lighted salon, superb amid these lights, in a
red satin robe de chambre that lent a strange seductiveness to her bare
arms and neck which shone with a pale and pearly lustre beneath the
light.
Vaudrey felt infinitely moved, almost painfully though deliciously
stirred, as he always did when in the presence of this lovely creature.
She extended her hand to him, saying in a singular tone that astonished
him:
"_Bonjour, vous!_"
"Well!" she said at once, pointing to a journal which was lying on the
carpet, "is there anything new?"
"Yes," he said. "But what is that to me? I don't think of that when I am
near you!"
"Oh! besides, my dear," Marianne continued, "your darling sin has not
been to think of two things at one time! I don't understand anything of
politics, it bothers me. I have been advised, however, that you have
been thrashed by that Granet!"
"Thrashed, yes," said Sulpice, laughing, "you use peculiar phrases!--"
"Topical ones. I am of the times! But it appears that one must read the
journals to learn about you. I am going to tell you some news however,
before it appears in print."
"That interests me?"
"Perhaps, but it most assuredly interests me!"
"Important news?" asked Sulpice.
"Important or great, as you will!"
He nibbled his blond moustache nervously.
Guy had not deceived him.
"Then I think I know your news, my dear Marianne!"
"Tell me!" she said, as she stretched herself on a divan, her arms
crossed, looking ravishingly lovely in her red gown.
He sought some forcible phrase that would crush her, but he could find
none. His only desire was to take that fair face in his hands and to
fasten his lips thereon.
Marianne smiled maliciously.
"It is true then," Vaudrey exclaimed, "that you love Monsieur de
Rosas?"
"There, you are well-informed! It is strange! Perhaps that is because
you are no longer a minister!"
"You love Rosas?"
"Yes, and I am marrying him. I have the honor to announce to you my
marriage to Monsieur le Duc José de Rosas, Marquis de Fuentecarral. It
surprises me, but it is so!--I have known days when I have not had six
sous to take the omnibus, and now I am to be a duchess! This does not
seem to please you? Are you selfish, then?"
Stretched on her divan, her neck and arms sparkling under the light of
the sconces, she appeared to make sport of Vaudrey's stupefaction as he
looked at her almost with fright.
"Now, my dear," she said curtly, but politely, as she toyed with a ring
on her finger, "this is why I desired to see you to-day. It is to tell
you that if you care to remain friendly on terms that forbid sensual
enjoyment, which is not objectionable in putting a lock on the past, you
may visit the Duchesse de Rosas just as you have Mademoiselle Kayser.
But if you are bent on finding in the Duchesse de Rosas the good-natured
girl that I have been toward you, and you are quite capable of it, for
you are a sentimental fellow, then it will be useless to even appear to
have ever known each other. I am turning the key on my life. _Crac!
Bonsoir_, Sulpice!"
The unhappy man! He had cherished the thought of still visiting his
mistress, but he found there an unlooked-for being, a new creature, who
was unmistakably determined, in spite of her cunning charm, and she
spoke to him in stupefying, ironical language.
"You would have me go mad, Marianne?"
"Why! what an idea! The phrase is decidedly romantic.--You should
dispense with the blue in love as well as the exaggeration in politics."
"Marianne," Vaudrey said abruptly, "do you know that for your sake I
have destroyed my home and mortally wounded my wife?"
"Well," she replied, "did I ask you to do so? I pleased you, you pleased
me; that was quite enough. I desire no one's death and if you have
allowed everything to be known, it is because you have acted
indiscreetly or stupidly! But I who do not wish to mortally wound," she
emphasized these words with a smile--"my husband, I expect him to
suspect nothing, know nothing, and as you are incapable of possessing
enough intelligence not to play Antony with him, let us stop here.
Adieu, then, my dear Vaudrey!"
She extended her hand to him, that soft hand that imparted an electrical
influence when he touched it.
"Well, what!--You are pouting?"
"I love you," he replied distractedly. "I love you, you hear, and I wish
to keep you!"
"Ah! no, no! no roughness," she said with a laugh, as he, taking a seat
near her, tried to draw her to him in his arms.
"To keep you, although belonging to another," whispered Vaudrey slowly.
"For whom do you take me?" said Marianne, proudly drawing herself up.
"If I have a husband, I require that he be respected. A man who gives
his name to a woman is clearly entitled to be dealt with truthfully!"
"Then," stammered Sulpice, "what?--Must we never see each other again?"
"We shall recognize each other."
"You drive me away?"
"As a lover!"
"Ah! stay," said Vaudrey, as, pale with anger, he walked across the
room, "you are a miserable woman, a courtesan, you understand, a
courtesan!--Guy has told me everything! You gave yourself to Jouvenet to
avenge yourself on Lissac, you made a tool of me and you are making a
sport of Rosas who is marrying you!--What have I not done for you!--I
have ruined myself! yes, ruined myself!"
"My dear," interrupted Marianne, "see the difference between a gentleman
like Monsieur de Rosas and a little bourgeois like yourself. The duke
might have ruined himself for me but he would never have reproached me.
One never speaks of money to a woman. You are a very honest, domestic
man and you were born to worship your wife! You should stick to her! You
are not made of the stuff of a true-born lover. What you have just told
me is the remark of a loon!"
"Ah! if I had only known you!"
"Or anything! But I am better than you, you see. I was better advised
than you. The bill of exchange that you owe to the Dujarrier or to
Gochard,--whichever you like--it inconveniences you, I know!"
"Yes," said Vaudrey, "but--"
"You would not, I think, desire me to pay it with the duke's money, that
Monsieur de Rosas should pay your debts?"
"Marianne," cried Sulpice, livid with rage.
"Bless me! you speak to me of money? You chant your ruin to me! The _De
Profundis_ of your money-box, should I know that? I question with myself
as to what it means!--However, knowing you to be financially
embarrassed, I have myself found you help--Yes, I told someone who
understands how to extricate business men, that you were embarrassed!"
"I?"
"There is nothing to blush about. I told Molina the _Tumbler_--You know
him?"
Did he know him! At that very moment he saw the ruddy gold moon that
represented the banker's face amid all the expanse of his shining flesh.
He trembled as if in the face of temptation.
"Molina is a man of means," said Marianne. "If you need money, you can
have it there! And now, once more, leave me to my new life! The past is
as if it had never been!--_Bonjour, Bonsoir!_--and adieu, go!--Give me
your hand!"
She smiled so strangely, half lying on the divan, and stretched out her
white hand, which he covered with kisses, murmuring:
"Well, yes, adieu! Yes, adieu!--But once more--once!--this evening--I
love you so dearly!--Will you?"
She quietly reached out her bare arm toward a silk bell-rope that she
jerked suddenly and Vaudrey rose enraged and humiliated.
"Show Monsieur Vaudrey out," Marianne said to Justine, as she appeared
at the door. "Then you may go to bed, my girl!"
Vaudrey left this woman's house in a fit of frenzy. She had just treated
him who had paid for the divan on which she was reclining as a genuine
duchess might have treated a man who had been insolently disrespectful
toward her. He was almost inclined to laugh at it.
"It is well done! well done for you! Ah! the dolt! To trust a wanton! To
trust Warcolier! To trust everybody! To trust everybody except
Adrienne!--"
He, mechanically and without thought, resumed the way to Place Beauvau,
forgetting that the ministerial home was no longer his. The porter--who
knows? might not have opened the gate to him. The lackeys would have
driven him off as the girl had done whom he had paid, yes, paid, paid!
For she was a harlot, nothing more!
Gradually, the thought of that debt swelled by successive bills of
exchange, and almost forgotten during the recent days of feverish
excitement, took possession of his mind, he remembered that it must be
discharged on the first day of December, in five days, and the thought
troubled him like an impending danger. The prospect had often, during
the last few weeks, made him anxious. He saw the months pass, the days
flit with extraordinary rapidity, and the maturity, the inevitable due
date draw near with the mathematical regularity of a clock. So long as
months were ahead he felt no anxiety. Like gamblers he counted on
chance. Besides, he still had some farms in Dauphiny. In short, a word
to his notary and he could speedily get out of danger. Then, too, the
date of payment was far away. He calculated that by economy as to his
personal income and his official salary he could meet the bill to
Gochard, whose very name sometimes made him laugh. But Marianne's
exactions, unforeseen outlays, the eternal _leakage_ of Parisian life
had quite prevented saving, and had dissipated in a thousand little
streams the money that he wished to pay out in a lump in December. He
soon grew alarmed by degrees at the approach of the maturity of the
debt. He had written to his notary at Grenoble, and this old friend had
replied that the farms of Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, mortgaged and cut up
one after another, now represented only a ridiculous value, but that
after all, Vaudrey had nothing to be concerned about, seeing that
Madame Vaudrey's fortune was intact.
Adrienne's fortune! That then was all that remained to Vaudrey, and that
might be his salvation. A fortune that was not very considerable, but
still solid and creditable. But even if he were strangled by debt,
dunned and driven into a corner, could he pay the debts he had
contracted for his mistress by means of his wife's fortune? He was
disgusted at the thought. It was impossible.
Vaudrey felt his head turn under the humiliation of his double defeat,
the loss of parliamentary confidence, and Marianne's insulting laugh,
and urged by the anxiety he felt about the obligation to be met in eight
days, in his bewilderment he thought of writing to Gochard of Rue des
Marais, to ask for time. This Gochard must be a half-usurer. Certain of
being paid, some day, he would perhaps be delighted to renew the bill of
exchange in inordinately swelling the amount. The letter was written and
Vaudrey mailed it himself the following morning.
That very evening Adrienne was to leave. He endeavored to dissuade her
from her plan. She did not even reply to him. She stood looking at a
crystal vase on the chimney-piece in which were some winter roses,
Christmas roses, fresh and milk-white, that had been sent as a souvenir
from yonder Dauphiny. Her glance rested fixedly on that fair bouquet
that seemed like a bursting cloud of whiteness.
"Then," said Vaudrey, "it is settled--quite settled--you are going?"
"I am."
"In three hours?"
"In three hours!"
"I know where those roses were gathered," said Sulpice tenderly. "It was
at the foot of the window where we leaned elbow to elbow and dreamed."
"Yes," Adrienne answered, in a broken voice whose sound was like that
which might have been given out by the vase had it been struck and
shattered. "We had lovely dreams! The reality has indeed belied them!"
"Adrienne!" he murmured.
She made no reply.
He tried to approach her, feeling ashamed as he thought that he had
similarly wished to approach Marianne.
She instinctively drew back.
"You remember," she said coldly, "that one day when we were speaking
about divorce, I told you that there was a very simple way of divorce?
It was never to see each other again, never, to be nothing more to each
other from the day on which confidence should die?--You have deceived
me, it is done. I am a stranger to you! If I were a mother, I should
have duties to fulfil. I would not have failed therein. I would have
endured everything for a son!--Nothing is left to me. I have not even
the joy of caressing a child that would have consoled me. I am your
widow while you yet live. Well, be it so. You have willed it, there,
then, is divorce!"
For the third time since Adrienne had learned everything, he tried to
stammer the word _pardon_. He felt it was useless. This sensitive being
had withdrawn within herself and wrapped herself, as with a cloak, in
all her outraged chastity. He could only humiliate himself without
softening her. All Adrienne's deceived trustfulness and insulted love
strengthened her in her determination never to forgive.
She would go.
Vaudrey in despair returned to his study, where the books that had been
sent from the ministry were piled upon the carpet in all the confusion
attending an entry into occupation. The servant at once brought him his
lamp and handed him a package of cards in envelopes,--cards of
condolence as for a death--and a large card, saying: "That gentleman is
here!"
"Molina!" said Vaudrey, becoming very pale. "Show him in!"
The fat Salomon entered puffing and smiling, and spread himself out on
an armchair as he said to the former minister:
"Well, how goes it?--Not too badly crushed, eh?--Bah! what is it after
all to quit office?--Only a means for returning to it, sometimes!"
"All the same," he said with his cackling laugh that sounded like the
jingling of a money-bag, "there are too many changes of ministers! They
change them like shirts! It puts me out. I get used to one Excellency
and he is put aside! So it is settled, henceforth I will not say
Excellency save to the usher or an office-boy!"
He accompanied his clumsy jests with a loud laugh, then, changing his
tone:
"Come, that is not all. I came to speak of business to you."
He looked Vaudrey full in the face with his piercing glance, took from
his pocketbook a printed sheet and said in a precise tone:
"Here is an opportunity where your title of former minister will serve
you better than that of minister. So much is being said of Algeria, its
mines and its fibre. Well, read that!"
Vaudrey took the paper. It was the prospectus, very skilfully drawn, of
a company established to introduce gas into Algeria, almost as far as
the Sahara. They promised the subscribers wonders and miracles: acres
upon acres of land as a bonus. There was a fortune to be made. Meantime,
they would issue six thousand shares of five hundred francs. It was
three millions they were asking from the public. A mere trifle.
"They might ask ten," said Molina, smiling. "They would give it!"
"And you wish me to subscribe to your Algerian gas?" asked Vaudrey.
The fat Molina burst out into loud laughter this time.
"I? I simply wish to give you the opportunity to make a fortune!"
"How?"
"That is one scheme. I will bring you four, five, ten of them! I have
another, the Luxemburg coal. A deposit equal to that of Charleroi. You
have only to allow me to print in the list of directors: Monsieur
Sulpice Vaudrey, former President of the Council."
Vaudrey looked the fat man squarely in the face.
"Besides you will be in good company!" said the banker as he read over
the names of deputies, senators, statesmen, coupled with those of
financiers.
Sulpice knew most of them.
He despised nearly all of them. It was such that Molina styled _good
company!_
"And those mines, are you certain they will produce what you promise?"
"Ah!" said Salomon, "that is the engineers' matter! Here is the report
of a mining engineer who is perhaps straining after effect and doing a
little puffing up! But one must go with the times! He who ventures
nothing, has nothing. In war, one risks one's skin; in business, one
risks one's money. That is war."
Vaudrey debated with himself whether he should tear the prospectus in
pieces and throw them in the face of the fat man.
"My dear Vaudrey," said the _Tumbler_, "you have a vein that is
entirely your own. A former minister remains always a former minister.
Well, such a title as that is turned to account. It is quoted, like any
other commodity. You are not rich, that fact proves your honesty,
although in America, and we are Americanizing ourselves devilishly much,
that would only be the measure of your stupidity. You can become rich, I
have the means of making myself agreeable to you and you have the
opportunity of becoming useful to us."
"In a word, you buy my name?"
"I hire it from you! Very dearly," said Molina, still laughing.
"Certainly," said Vaudrey, "you did not understand me on the first
occasion that you called on me to speak about money, and when I
questioned with myself whether I should ask you not to call again."
Molina interrupted him abruptly by rising. He felt that an insult was
about to be uttered. He parried it by anticipating it.
"Stupidity!" he said. "Here is the prospectus. There are the names of
the directors. You will consider. It has never injured any one to take
advantage of his position. The puritans, in an age of trickery, are
idiots; I say so. What I propose to you surprises you. To place your
name beside that of Monsieur Pichereau or Monsieur Numa de Baranville!
It is as simple as saying good-day. Perhaps you think then that you will
be the only one? They all do it, all those who are extravagant and
shrewd. It is a matter of coquetting in these days over a hundred-sou
piece! Come, I will wager that Monsieur Montyon would not mince
matters--especially if he had transferable paper in circulation!"
"You know that?" said Vaudrey, turning pale.
"Ah! I know many others in like condition! Come, no false modesty! It is
a matter of business only! I tell you again, I have many other cases.
All this is in order to have the pleasure of offering you certificates
for attendance fees. I will open a credit for you of two hundred
thousand francs, if you wish. We will arrange matters afterwards."
"I will leave you these declarations of faith!" added Molina, showing
the prospectus of the gas undertaking. "Fear nothing! It is not more
untruthful than the others! It is unnecessary to show me out. _A la
revista!_"
He disappeared abruptly, Vaudrey hearing the floor of the hall creak
under this man's hippopotamus feet, and the unhappy Sulpice who had spun
so many, such glorious and grand dreams, dreams of liberty, freedom and
virtue, civic regeneration, reconstructed national morals and character,
the sacredness of the hearth and the education of the conscience; this
Vaudrey, bruised by life, overthrown by his vices, was there under the
soft light of his lamp, looking with staring eye, as a being who wishes
to die contemplates the edge of an abyss, looking at that printed paper
soliciting subscriptions, beating the big drum of the _promoter_ in
order to entrap the vast and ever-credulous horde.
His name! To put his name there! The name of Vaudrey that he had dreamed
of reading at the foot of so many noble, eternal and reforming laws, to
inscribe it upon that paper beneath so many cunning names, jugglers,
habitual drainers of the public cash-box. To fall to that! To do that!
To lend himself?
To sell himself!
And why not sell himself? Who would discharge this bill of exchange? The
Gochard paper! The debt of the past! The price of the nights spent with
Marianne! The hundred thousand francs for that girl's kisses!
Sulpice felt in the weakness increased by a growing fever, that his
self-possession was leaving him. All his ideas clashed confusedly. Amid
the chaos, only one clear idea remained; a hundred and sixty thousand
francs had to be found. Where were they to be found? Yes, where? Through
Molina, who offered him two hundred thousand! This open credit seemed to
him like an opened-up placer in which he had only to dig with his nails.
The cunning and thick voice of the Hebrew banker echoed in Sulpice's
ears: "They all do it!" It was not so difficult to give his name, or to
_hire_ it, as Salomon said. Who the devil would notice it at a time when
indifference passes over scandals as the sea covers the putrid
substances on the shore and washes them with its very scum?
"They all do it!"
No, despite the irony of the handler of money, there are some
consciences that refuse to yield: and then, what then?--Vaudrey had
desired virtue of a different kind and other morals! Ah! how he had
suffered the poison to penetrate him; even to his bones! How Marianne
had deformed and moulded him at her fancy, and he still thought of her
only with unsatisfied longings for her kisses and ardor! Ah! women!
Woman! Yes, indeed, yes, woman was the great source of moral weakness
and inactivity. She used politics in her own way, in destroying
politicians. If he had only left office with head erect and not dragging
the chain-shot of debt! But that bill of exchange! Who would pay that?
"Eh! Molina, _parbleu!_ Molina! Molina!"
He was right, too, that triumphant Jew with his insolent good humor. It
is an absurd thing, after all, to be prudish and to thrust away the dish
that is offered you. To be rich is, in fact, quite as good as to be
powerful! Money remains! That is the only real thing in the world! It
would be a fine sight to see a man refuse the opportunity to make a
fortune, and to refuse it--why? For a silly, conscientious scruple. And
after all, business was the very life of modern society. This Molina,
circulating his money, was as useful as many others who circulate
ideas.
"His Algerian gas is a work of civilization just like any other!"
Urged by the necessity of escaping from that debt that strangled him
like a running noose, Sulpice gradually arrived at argumentative
sophistries, which were but capitulations to his own probity, cowardly
arrangements with his own conscience. His name? Well, he would turn it
into money since it was worth a gold ingot! The journalist who sells his
thought, the artist who sells his marble, the writer who sells his
experiences and his recollections, equally sell their names and for
money, the flesh of their flesh. Like a living answer and a remorse, he
saw the lean face and white moustache of Ramel, who was seated at the
window, breathing the warm rays of the sun, in the little room on Rue
Boursault, but he answered, speaking aloud:
"Well, what?--Ramel is a saint, a hero!--But I am no saint. I am a man
and I will live!"
Somewhat angered, he took the prospectus that Molina had left him and
rereading it again and again, he relapsed into a sitting posture and
with haggard eyes scanned the loud-swelling lines of that commercial
announcement, seeking therein some pretext for accepting. For he would
accept, that was done. Nothing more was to be said, his conscience
yielded. He was inclined to laugh.
"Still another victim caught and floored by Molina the _Tumbler!_"
He remained there, terrified at the prospect of the quasi-association he
had determined on and by his complicity with a jobber of questionable
business.
With his eye fixed upon this solicitation for capital, wherein were the
words which would formerly have repelled him: _joint stock company_,
_capital stock_, _public subscription_, _subscription certificate_, and at
the head of which he was about to inscribe his name as one of the
directors, at the foot of a capitulation, as it were, Sulpice had not
seen, standing in the doorway of his half-lighted study, a woman in
travelling costume, who stopped for a moment to look at the unfortunate,
dejected man within the shade of the lamp which made him look more bald
than he was, then advanced gently toward him, coughing slightly--for she
did not dare to call him by his name or touch him with her gloved
hand--to warn him that she was there.
Vaudrey turned round abruptly, instinctively pushing aside Molina's
prospectus, as if he already felt some shame in holding it in his hands.
He flushed as he recognized Adrienne.
The young woman's reserved attitude showed absolute firmness. She came
to say adieu, she was about to leave.
He had not even the energy to keep her. He was afraid of an unbending
reply that would have been an outrage.
"Do you intend to become associated with Molina?" Adrienne asked in a
clear voice, as she looked at Sulpice, who had risen.
"What! Molina?" he stammered.
"Yes, oh! he understands business. On leaving, he called on me. He
thought that I had still sufficient influence over you to urge you, as
he says, to make your fortune. He told me that you were in want of
money, and after having been sharp enough to try the husband, he offered
me, as you might give a commission to a courtesan, I do not know what
emerald ornament, if I would advise you to accept his proposals!--That
gentleman does not know the people with whom he is dealing!"
"Wretch!" said Vaudrey. "He did that?"
"And I thanked him," Adrienne replied calmly. "I did not know that you
had debts and that, in order to pay them, you had come so near accepting
the patronage of such a man. He told me so and he rendered me and you a
service."
"Me?"
Vaudrey snatched up the prospectus of the Algerian gas and angrily tore
it in pieces.
"We shall probably not see each other again," said Adrienne, in a firm
voice that contrasted strangely with her gentle grace; "but I shall
never forget that I bear your name and that being mine, I will ever
honor it."
She handed Sulpice a document.
"Here is a power of attorney to Monsieur Beauvais, my notary. All that
you need of my dowry to free yourself from liabilities is yours. I do
not wish to know why you have incurred debts, I am anxious only to know
that you have paid them, and my signature provides you with the means to
do so."
Dejected, his heart burning, and his sobs rising, Sulpice uttered a loud
cry as he rushed toward her:
"Adrienne!"
She withdrew her hand slowly while he was trying to seize it.
"You have nothing to thank me for," she said. "I am a partner, saving,
as I best can, the honor of the house. That association is better than
Molina's."
"Adieu," she added bitterly.
"Are you going--? Going away?" asked Sulpice, trying to give to his
entreaty something like an echo of the love of the former days.
"Whose fault is it?" replied the young woman, in a voice as chilly as
steel.
She was no longer the Adrienne of old, the little timid provincial with
blushing cheek and trembling gesture. Sorrow, the most terrible of
disillusions, had hardened and, as it were, petrified her. Vaudrey felt
that to ask forgiveness would be in vain. Time only could soften that
poor woman, obstinately unbending in her grief. He needed but to observe
her attitude and cutting tones to fully realize that.
"It is quite understood," she continued, treating this question of her
happiness as if she were cutting deep into her flesh and severing the
tenderest fibres of her being, but without trembling,--"it is quite
understood, is it not, that we shall make no scene or scandal? We are
separated neither judicially nor even in appearance. We live apart by
mutual consent, far from each other, without anything being known by
outsiders of this definitive rupture."
"Adrienne!" Sulpice repeated, "it is impossible, you will not leave!"
"Oh!" she said. "I gave myself and I have taken myself back. Your
entreaties will not now alter my determination. I am eager to leave
Paris. It seems to me that I have regained myself and that I escape from
falsity, lies, and infamy, and from a swarm of insects that crawl over
my body!--I bid you farewell, and farewell it is!"
"Well, let it be so!" exclaimed Vaudrey. "Go! But if it is a stranger
who leaves me, I will accept nothing from her. Here is the authority.
Will you take it back?"
"I? No, I will not take it back! If you desire me to be worthy of the
name that you have given me, keep it honored, at least, in the sight of
the world, since to betray a woman, to mock and insult her, is not
dishonoring. I alone have the right to save you from shame. Do not deny
me the privilege that I claim. I do not desire that the man who has been
my husband should descend to the questionable intrigues of a Molina.
You have outraged me enough, do not impose this last insult on me!"
"For the last time, adieu!"
She went out, and he allowed her to disappear, overwhelmed by this
living mourning of a faith. She fled and he allowed her to descend the
stairway, followed by her femme de chambre. She entered the carriage
that was waiting for her below, in Rue Chaussée-d'Antin, but he had not
the courage, hopeless as he was, to follow the carriage whose rumbling
he heard above the noise of the street as it rolled away more quickly
and more heavily than the others, and it seemed to him that its wheels
had crushed his bosom.
"Ah! what a wretch I have been!" he said as he struck his knee with his
closed fist. "How unhappy I am! Adrienne!"
He rose abruptly, as if moved by a spring, and bounded toward a window
which he threw wide open to admit the cold wind of this November
evening, and tried to distinguish among the many carriages that rolled
through the brownish mud, with their lighted lamps shining like so many
eyes, to discover, to imagine the carriage that was bearing Adrienne
away. He believed that he recognized it in a vehicle that was threading
its way, loaded with trunks, almost out of sight yonder.
He leaned upon the window-sill, and like a shipwrecked sailor who sees a
receding ship, he called out, with a loud cry lost in the tempest of
that bustling and busy street:
"Adrienne! Adrienne!"
No reply! The carriage had disappeared in the distance, in the fog.
For a moment, Sulpice remained there crushed but drawn by the noise of
the street, as if by some whirlpool in the deep sea. Had he been thrown
out and been dashed upon the pavements, he would have been happy. Only a
void seemed about him, and before him that black hollow in which moved
confusedly only strangers who in no way formed part of his life.
This isolation terrified him. At last, he went downstairs in haste,
threw himself into a carriage and had himself driven to the railway,
intending to see Adrienne again.
"Quickly! quickly! at your best speed!"
The driver whipped up his horses and the carriage-windows clattered with
the noise of old iron.
Vaudrey arrived too late. The train had left twenty minutes before. He
had reflected too long at his window.
"Besides," he said to himself sadly, "she would not have forgiven me!
She will never forget!"
Buried in the corner of the coach that took her away, and closing her
eyes, recalling all her past life, so cruelly ironical to-day, Adrienne,
disturbed by the noise and rolling of the train that increased her
feverish condition, felt her heart swell, and poor, broken creature
that she was, called all her strength to her aid to refrain from
weeping, from crying out in her grief. She was taking away, back to the
country, the half-withered Christmas roses received from Grenoble, and
in the morbid confusion of the ideas that clashed in her poor brain, she
saw once more Lissac's blanched face and heard Guy tell her again: "It
is because you are a virtuous woman that I love you!"
"A virtuous woman! Does he know how to love as well as the others?" she
murmured, as she thought of Vaudrey whom she would never see again, and
whom she no longer loved.
"See! I am a widow now, and a widow who will never love anyone, and who
will never marry again."