CABINET MINISTER!
Three months have passed since that expedition to Mount Cordova.
Parliament had met at Versailles in a deluge of November rain, which
brought the low cloudy sky down to the lakes in the parks, enveloped
everything in mist and wrapped the two Chambers in a dreary dampness
and darkness; but it had done nothing to cool the heat of political
hatreds. The opening was stormy and threatening. Train after train
filled with deputies and senators followed and crossed each other,
hissing, whistling, spluttering, blowing defiant smoke at each other
as if animated by the same passions and intrigues they were carrying
through the torrents of rain. During this hour in the train, discussion
and loud-voiced conversation prevail above all the tumult of rushing
wheels in the different carriages, as violently and furiously as if
they were in the Chamber.
The noisiest, the most excited of all is Roumestan. He has already
delivered himself of two speeches since Parliament met. He addresses
committees, talks in the corridors, in the railway station, in the
café, and makes the windows tremble in the photographer’s shop where
all the Rights assemble. Little else is seen but that restless outline
and heavy form, his big head always in motion, the roll of his broad
shoulders, so formidable in the eyes of the Ministry, which he is about
to “down” according to all the rules, like one of the stoutest and most
supple of his native Southern wrestlers.
Ah! the blue sky, the tabors, the cicadas, all the bright pleasures of
his vacation days--how far away they seem, how utterly dislocated and
vanished! Numa never gives them a moment’s thought nowadays, entirely
carried away as he is by the whirl of his double life as politician and
man of the law. Like his old master Sagnier, when he went into politics
he did not renounce the law, and every evening from six o’clock to
eight his office in the Rue Scribe is thronged with clients.
It looked like a legation, this office managed by Roumestan. The
first secretary, his right-hand man, his counsellor and friend, was a
very good legal man of business named Méjean, a Southerner, as were
all Numa’s following; but from the Cévennes, the rocky region of the
South, which is more like Spain than Italy, where the inhabitants
have retained in their manners and speech the prudent reserve and
level-headed common-sense of the renowned Sancho.
Vigorous, robust, already a little bald, with the sallow complexion
of sedentary workers, Méjean alone did all the work of the office,
clearing away papers, preparing speeches, trying to reconcile
facts with his friend’s sonorous phrases--some say his future
brother-in-law’s. The other secretaries, Messieurs de Rochemaure and
de Lappara, two young graduates related to the noblest families in the
province, are only there for show, in training for political life under
Roumestan’s guidance.
Lappara, a handsome tall fellow with a neat leg, a ruddy complexion
and a blond beard, son of the old Marquis de Lappara, chief of the
Right in the Bordeaux district, is a fair type of that Creole South; he
is a gabbler and adventurer, with a love for duels and prodigalities
(_escampatives_). Five years of life in Paris, one hundred thousand
francs gone in “bucking the tiger” at the clubs, paid for with his
mother’s diamonds, had sufficed to give him a good boulevard accent and
a fine crusty tone of gold on his manners.
Viscount Charlexis de Rochemaure, a compatriot of Numa, is of a very
different kind. Educated by the Fathers of the Assumption, he had made
his law studies at home under the superintendence of his mother and an
abbé; he still retained from that early education a candid look and the
timid manners of a theological student that contrasted vividly with his
goatee in the style of Louis XIII, the combination making him seem at
one and the same time foxy and a muff.
Big Lappara tries hard to initiate this young Tony Lumpkin into the
mysteries of Parisian life. He teaches him how to dress himself, what
is _chic_ and what is not _chic_, to walk with his neck forward and
his mouth drawn down and to seat himself all of a piece, as it were,
with his legs extended in order not to wrinkle his trousers at the
knees. He would like to shake his simple faith in men and things, to
cure him of that love of superstitions which simply classes him among
the quill-drivers.
Not a bit of it! the viscount likes his work and when he is not at the
Palace or the Chamber with Roumestan, as to-day for instance, he sits
for hours at the secretaries’ table in the office next to the chief’s
and practises engrossing. The Bordeaux man, on the contrary, has drawn
an arm-chair up to the window, and in the twilight, with a cigar in
his mouth and his legs stretched out, lazily watches through the
falling rain and the steaming asphalt the long procession of carriages
driving up to the doors with every whip in the air; for to-day is Mme.
Roumestan’s Thursday.
What a lot of people! and still they come; more and more carriages!
Lappara, who boasts of knowing thoroughly the liveries of the great
people in Paris, calls out the names as he recognizes them: “Duchesse
de San Donnino, Marquis de Bellegarde--hello! the Mauconseils, too! Now
I’d like to know what that means?” and turning towards a tall, thin
person who stands by the mantelpiece drying his worsted gloves and his
light-colored trousers, too thin for the season, carefully turned up
over his cloth shoes: “Have you heard anything, Bompard?”
“Heard anythink? Sartainly I have,” was the answer in a broad accent.
Bompard, Roumestan’s mameluke, has the honorary position of a fourth
secretary who does outside business, goes to look for news and sings
his patron’s praises about the streets. This occupation does not
seem to be a lucrative one, judging from his appearance, but that is
really not Numa’s fault. Aside from the midday meal and an occasional
half-louis, this singular kind of parasite could never be induced to
accept anything; and how he supported existence remained as great a
mystery as ever to his best friends. To ask him if he knows anything,
to doubt the imagination of Bompard, is to show a fine simplicity of
soul!
“Yes, gentlemen, and somethink vary serious.”
“What is it?”
“The Marshal has just been shot at.” For one moment consternation
reigns; the young men look at each other. Then Lappara stretches
himself in his chair and asks languidly:
“How about your asphalt affair, old man--how is it getting on?”
“_Vai!_ the asphalt--I have something much better than that.”
Not at all surprised that his news of the attempted assassination of
the Marshal had produced so little effect, he now proceeded to unfold
to them his new scheme. A wonderful thing, and so simple! It was to
scoop the prizes of one hundred and twenty thousand francs that the
Swiss governments offers yearly at the Federal shooting-matches. He had
been a crack shot at larks in his day; with a little practice he could
easily get his hand in again and secure a hundred and twenty thousand
francs annually to the end of his life. Such an easy way to do it, _au
moins!_ Traversing Switzerland by short marches, going slowly, from
canton to canton, rifle on _showlder_.
The man of schemes grew warm with his subject, climbed mountains,
crossed glaciers, descended vales and torrents and shook down
avalanches before his astonished young listeners. Of all the imaginings
of that disordered brain this was certainly the most astonishing,
delivered with an air of perfect conviction, with a fire and flame
that, burning inwardly, covered his brow with corrugated wrinkles.
His ravings were only hushed by the breathless arrival of Méjean, who
came rushing in much excited:
“Great news!” he said throwing his bag upon the table. “The Ministry is
fallen!”
“It can’t be possible!”
“Roumestan takes the Ministry of Public Instruction....”
“I knew that,” said Bompard; and as they smiled, he added:
“_Par-fait-emain_, gentlemen! I was there; I have just come from there.”
“And you didn’t mention it before!”
“Why should I? No one ever believes me. I think it is my _agsent_,” he
added resignedly and with a candid air, the fun of which was lost in
the prevailing excitement.
Roumestan a Cabinet Minister!
“Ah, my boys, what a shifty, smart fellow the chief is!” Lappara kept
saying, throwing himself back in his chair with his legs near the
ceiling. “Hasn’t he played his cards well!”
Rochemaure looked up indignant:
“Don’t talk of smartness and shiftiness, my friend; Roumestan is
conscientiousness itself. He goes straight ahead like a bullet--”
“In the first place, there are no bullets nowadays, my child--only
shells; and shells do this--” and with the tip of his boot he indicated
the curving course of a trajectory:
“Scandal-monger!”
“Idiot!”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!”
Méjean wondered to himself over this extraordinary man Roumestan, this
complicated nature whom even those who knew him most intimately could
judge so differently.
“A shifty fellow!--conscientiousness itself!”
The public judged of him in the same double way. He who knew him
thoroughly was conscious of the shallowness and indolence that modified
his tireless ambition and made him at the same time better and
worse than his reputation. But was it really true, this news of his
Ministerial portfolio? Anxious to know the truth, Méjean glanced in the
glass to see if he was in proper shape, and, stepping across the hall,
entered the apartments of Mme. Roumestan.
From the antechamber where the footmen waited with their ladies’ wraps
could be heard the hum of many voices deadened by the heavy, luxurious
hangings and high ceilings. Rosalie generally received in her little
drawing-room, furnished as a winter garden with cane seats and pretty
little tables, the light just filtering in between the green leaves
of the plants that filled the windows. That had always sufficed her
in her lowly position as a simple lady overshadowed by her husband’s
greatness, perfectly without social ambition and passing among those
who did not know her superiority for a good-enough person of no great
importance. But to-day the two large drawing-rooms were humming and
crowded to overflowing; new people were constantly arriving, friends to
the remotest degree, even to the slightest acquaintanceship, people to
whose faces it would have puzzled Rosalie to attach a name.
Dressed very simply in a gown of violet, most becoming to her slender
figure and the whole harmonious personality of her being, she received
every one alike with her gentle little smile, her manner somewhat
haughty--her _réfréjon_, or “uppish” air, as Aunt Portal had once
expressed it. Not the slightest elation at her new position--rather a
little surprise and uneasiness, but her feelings kept well concealed!
She went from group to group as the daylight faded rapidly in the lower
story of the city house and the servants brought lamps and lighted
the candles. The rooms assumed their festal air as at their evening
receptions, the rich shining hangings and oriental rugs and tapestries
glittering like colored stones in the light.
“Ah, Monsieur Méjean!” and Rosalie came up to him, glad to feel an
intimate friend near her in this crowd of strangers. They understood
each other perfectly. This Southerner who had learned to be cool and
the emotional Parisian had similar ways of seeing and judging things,
and together they acted as counterweights to the weaknesses and
extravagances of Numa.
“I came in to see if the news were true. But there is no doubt about
it,” said he, glancing at the crowded rooms. She handed him the
telegram she had received from her husband and said in a low voice:
“What do you think of it?”
“It is a great responsibility, but you will be there.”
“And you too,” she answered, pressing his hand, and then turned away to
meet other new-comers.
The fact was that more people kept arriving but no one went away. They
were waiting for Roumestan; they wished to hear all the particulars
of the affair from his own lips--how with one lift of his shoulder he
had managed to upset them all. Some of the new arrivals who had just
come from the Chamber were already bringing with them bits of news and
scraps of conversations. Every one crowded about them in pleasurable
excitement. The women especially were wildly interested. Under the big
hats which came into fashion that winter their pretty cheeks flushed
with that fine rosy tint, that fever one sees in the players round the
tables at the gambling house at Monte Carlo. The fashion of hats this
year was a revival of the days of the Fronde, soft felt hats with long
feathers; perhaps it was this that made their wearers so interested in
politics. But all these ladies appeared well up in such matters; they
talked in purest parliamentary language, emphasizing their remarks with
blows from their little muffs; all of them sang the praises of the
leader. In fact this exclamation could be heard on every side: “What a
man! what a man!”
In a corner sat old Béchut, a professor at the Collège de France, a
very ugly man all nose--an immense scientist’s nose that seemed to have
elongated itself from poking into books. He was taking the success
of Roumestan as the text for one of his favorite theories--that all
the weakness in the modern world comes from the too prominent place
in it given to women and children. Ignorance and toilets, caprice and
brainlessness! “You see, sir, that is where Roumestan is so strong!
He has no children and he has known how to escape the influence of
woman. So he has followed one straight, firm path; no turning aside,
no deviation!” The solemn personage whom he was addressing, councillor
at the Court of Cassation, a simple-looking, round-headed little man
whose ideas rattled about in his empty skull like corn in a gourd, drew
himself up approvingly in a magisterial way, as who should say: “I also
am a superior man, sir! I also have escaped from the influences to
which you refer.”
Seeing that people were listening, the professor spoke louder and cited
the great names of history, Cæsar, Richelieu, Frederick, Napoleon,
scientifically proving at the same time that in the scale of thinking
creatures woman was on a much lower grade than man. “And, as a matter
of fact, if we examine the cellular tissues....”
But what was much more amusing to examine was the expression on the
faces of the wives of these two gentlemen, who were sitting side by
side, all attention, taking a cup of tea--which genial meal, with its
goodies hot from the oven, its steaming samovar and rattle of spoons
on costly china, was just being served to the guests. The younger
lady, Mme. de Boë, had made of her gourd-headed husband, a used-up
nobleman with nothing but debts, a magistrate in the Court of Cassation
through the influence of her family; people shuddered to think of this
spendthrift, who had quickly wasted all his wife’s fortune and his own,
having the public moneys in his control. Mme. Béchut, a former beauty
and still beautiful, with long-lidded, intelligent eyes and delicate
features, showed only by a contraction of her mouth that she had been
at war with the world for years and was consumed with a tireless and
unscrupulous ambition. Her sole effort had been to push into the front
rank her very commonplace professor. By means that unfortunately were
only too well known she had compelled the doors of the Institute
and the Collège de France to open to him. There was a whole world
of meaning in the grim smile that these two women exchanged over
their teacups--and perhaps, if one were to search carefully among the
gentlemen, there were a good many other men in the throng who had not
been exactly injured by feminine influence.
Suddenly Roumestan appeared. Disregarding the shouts of welcome and
congratulations of the guests, he crossed the room quickly, went
straight to his wife and kissed her on both cheeks before she could
prevent this rather trying demonstration before the public. But what
could have better disproved the assertion of the professor? All the
ladies cried “bravo!” Much hand-shaking and embracing ensued and then
an attentive silence as Numa, leaning against the chimney-piece, began
to relate briefly the results of the day.
The great blow arranged a week ago to be struck to-day, the plots
and counter-plots, the wild rage of the Left at its defeat, his own
overwhelming triumph, his rush to the tribune, even to the very
intonation he had used to the Marshal when he replied: “That depends on
you, Mr. President”--he told everything, forgot nothing, with a gayety
and warmth that were contagious.
Then, becoming grave, he enumerated the great responsibilities of his
position; the reform of the University with its crowd of youths to be
brought up hoping for the realization of better things--this allusion
was understood and greeted with loud applause; but he meant to surround
himself with enlightened men, to beg for the good will and devotion of
all. With moist eyes he mustered the groups about him. “I call on you,
friend Béchut, and you, my dear De Boë--”
They were all so in earnest that no one stopped to ask in what manner
the dull wits of the councillor at the Court of Cassation could aid
in the reform of the University. But then the number of persons of
that sort whom Roumestan had urged that afternoon to aid him in his
tremendous duties of the Public Instruction was really incalculable.
As regards the fine arts, however, he felt more at ease, so he said;
there they would not refuse help! A flattering murmur of laughter and
exclamations stopped his further words.
As to that department there was but one voice in all Paris, even
among his worst enemies--Numa was the man for the work. Now at last
there would be a jury for art, a lyric theatre, an official art! But
the Minister cut these dithyrambics off and remarked in a gay and
familiar tone that the new Cabinet was composed almost exclusively of
Southerners. Out of eight members Provence, Bordeaux, Périgord and
Languedoc had supplied six; and then, growing excited: “Aha, the South
is climbing, the South is climbing! Paris is ours. We have everything.
It rests with you, gentlemen, to profit by it. For the second time the
Latins have conquered Gaul!”
He looked indeed like a Latin of the conquest, his head like a
medallion with broad flat surfaces on the cheeks, with his dark
complexion and unceremonious ways, his carelessness, so out of place in
this Parisian drawing-room. In the midst of the cheers and laughter
greeting his last speech Numa, always a good actor, knowing well how to
leave as soon as he had shot his bolt, suddenly quitted the fireplace
and signing to Méjean to follow him passed from the room by one of the
smaller doors, leaving Rosalie to make his excuses for him. He was to
dine at Versailles with the Marshal; he had hardly the time to dress
and sign a few papers.
“Come and help me dress,” said he to a servant who was laying the
table with three plates, for Roumestan, Madame and Bompard, around
that basket of flowers which Rosalie had fresh at every meal. He felt
a thrill of delight that he was not to dine there; the tumult of
enthusiasm that he had left behind him in the drawing-room excited in
him the desire for more gayety and more brilliant company. Besides, a
Southerner is never a domestic man. The Northern nations alone have
invented to meet their wretched climate the word “home,” that intimate
family circle to which the Provençal and the Italian prefer the gardens
of cafés and the noise and excitement of the streets.
Between the dining-room and the office was a small reception room,
usually full of people at this hour, anxiously watching the clock and
looking abstractedly at the illustrated papers, but quite preoccupied
by their legal woes. Méjean had sent them all away to-day, for he did
not think Numa could attend to them. One, however, had refused to
go: a big fellow in ready-made garments and awkward as a corporal in
citizen’s dress.
“Ah, God be with ye, Monsieur Roumestan; how are things? I have been
hoping so long that you would come!”
The accent, the swarthy face, that jaunty air--Numa had seen them
somewhere before, but where?
“You have forgotten me?” said the stranger. “Valmajour, the taborist.”
“Oh yes, yes, of course.”
He was about to pass on, but Valmajour planted himself before him and
informed him that he had arrived the day before yesterday. “I couldn’t
get here before, because when one moves a whole family, it takes a
little time to get installed.”
“A whole family?” said Numa with bulging eyes.
“_Bé!_ yes; my father and my sister. We have done as you advised.”
Roumestan looked distressed and embarrassed, as he always did when
called upon to redeem notes like this or fulfil a promise, lightly
given in order to make himself agreeable, but with little idea of
future acceptance. Dear me, he was only too glad to be of use to
Valmajour! He would consider it and see what he could do. But this
evening he was very much hurried--exceptional circumstances--the
invitation of the President. But as the peasant made no sign of going:
“Come in here,” said he, and they went into the study.
As Numa sat at his desk reading over and signing several papers
Valmajour glanced about the handsome room, richly furnished and
carpeted, with book-shelves covering all the walls, surmounted by
bronzes, busts and works of art, reminiscences each one of glorious
causes--a portrait of the king signed by his own royal hand. And he was
much impressed by the solemnity of it all--the stiffness of the carved
chairs, the rows of books, above all the presence of the servant,
correct in his severe black costume, coming and going and arranging
quickly on chairs his master’s evening clothes and immaculate linen.
But over there in the light of the lamps the big kind face and familiar
profile of Roumestan that he knew so well reassured him. His letters
finished, Roumestan began to dress, and while the servant drew off his
master’s trousers and shoes he asked Valmajour questions and learned to
his dismay that before leaving home they had sold everything that they
owned in the world--mulberry-trees, vineyards, farm, everything!
“You sold your farm, foolish fellow?”
“Well, my sister was somewhat afraid, but my father and I insisted upon
it. I said to them, ‘What risk is it when we are going to Numa and when
he is getting us to come?’”
It needed all the taborist’s naïveté to dare talk in that free and
easy way before a Minister. It was not Valmajour’s simplicity that
struck Numa most; it was the thought of the great crowd of enemies
that he had made for himself by this incorrigible mania for promises.
Now I ask you--what need was there to go and disturb the quiet life
of these poor people? and he went over in his memory all the details
of his visit to Mount Cordova, the scruples of the peasant girl and
the pains that he took to overcome them. What for? what devil tempted
him? He, this peasant, was dreadful. And as to his talent, he did
not remember much about it, concerned as he was at having this whole
family on his shoulders. He knew beforehand how his wife would reproach
him--remembered her cold look as she said: “Still, words must mean
_something!_” And now, in his new position at the source and spring of
favors, what a lot of trouble he was going to create for himself as a
result of his own fatal benevolence!
But the gladsome thought that he was a Minister and the consciousness
of his power restored his spirits almost at once. On such pinnacles as
his, why should such small things worry him? Master of all the fine
arts, with all the theatres and places of amusement under his thumb,
it would be a trifle to make the fortune of these luckless people.
Restored to his own self-complacency, he changed his tone and in order
to keep the peasant in his place told him solemnly and from a lofty
place to what important distinction he had been that day appointed.
Unhappily he was at that moment only half dressed, his feet in silk
stockings rested on the floor and his portly form was arrayed in
white flannel underclothes trimmed with pink ribbons. Valmajour could
not connect the word “Minister” in his mind with a fat man in his
shirt-sleeves, so he continued to call him _Moussu_ Numa, to talk to
him about his own “music” and the new songs that he had learned. Ah,
he feared no tabor-player in all Paris now!
“Listen, I will show you.”
He flew toward the next room to get his tabor but Roumestan stopped him.
“I tell you I am in a great hurry, deuce take you!”
“All right, all right, another time then,” said the peasant
good-naturedly.
And seeing Méjean approaching he thought it necessary to begin to tell
him the story of the fife with three stops.
“It come to me right in the middle of the night, listening to the
singing of the nightingoyle; thought I to meself: ‘How is it,
Valmajour--’”
It was the same little story that he had told them in the amphitheatre:
having found it successful, he cleverly clung to it, repeating it word
for word. But this time his manner became less assured, a certain
embarrassment gaining from moment to moment as Roumestan finished his
toilet and stood before him in all the severity of his black evening
clothes and enormous shirt-front of fine linen with its studs of
Oriental pearls, which the valet handed him piece by piece.
Moussu Numa seemed to him to have grown taller, his head, held stiffly,
solemnly, for fear of disarranging his immaculate white muslin tie,
seemed lighted up by the pale beams radiating from the cross of Saint
Anne around his neck and the big order of Isabella the Catholic, like
a sun, pinned upon his breast. And suddenly the peasant, seized by
a wave of respect and fright, realized that he stood in the presence
of one of those privileged beings of the earth, that strange, almost
superhuman creature, the powerful god to whom the prayers and desires
and supplications of his worshippers are sent only on large stamped
paper, so high up, indeed, that humbler devotees are never privileged
to see him, so haughty that they only whisper his name with fear and
trembling, in a sort of restrained fear and ignorant emphasis--the
Minister!
Poor Valmajour! He was so upset by this idea that he hardly heard
Roumestan’s kind words of farewell, asking him to come again in a
fortnight when he would be installed in his new quarters at the
Ministry.
“All right, all right, your Excellency.”
He backed towards the door, still dazzled by the orders and
extraordinary expression of his transfigured compatriot. Numa was
delighted at this sudden timidity, which was a tribute to what he
henceforward called his “ministerial air,” his curling lip, his
frowning brow and his severe, reserved manner.
A few moments later his Excellency was rolling towards the railway
station, forgetting this tiresome episode and lulled by the gentle
motion of the coupé with its bright lamps as he flew to meet his new
and exalted engagements. He was already preparing the telling points in
his first speech, composing his plan of campaign, his famous letter to
the rectors and thinking of the excitement caused all over Europe when
they should read his nomination in to-morrow’s papers, when, at the
turn of the boulevard, in the light of a gas-lamp reflected in the wet
asphalt, he caught sight of the taborist, his tabor hanging from his
arm, deafened and frightened, waiting for an opportunity to cross the
street which was at that hour, as all Paris hastened to re-enter its
gates, a moving mass of carriages and wagons, while crowded omnibuses
jolted swaying along and the horns of the tramway conductors sounded
at intervals. In the falling shades of night and the steam of dampness
which the rain threw up from the hurrying crowd, in this great jostling
crowd the poor boy seemed so lost, exiled and overwhelmed by the tall,
unfriendly buildings around him--he seemed so pitifully unlike the
handsome Valmajour at the door of his _mas_, giving the rhythm to the
locusts with his tabor, that Roumestan turned away his head and, for
a few moments, a feeling of remorse threw a cloud over the radiant
pathway of his triumph.