Chapter VI (2)

The soirée, moreover, was terribly wearisome to Lissac. He wandered from group to group to find some one with whom to exchange ideas but he hardly found anyone besides Denis Ramel. The same political commonplaces retailed everywhere, at Madame Gerson's or at Madame Marsy's, as in the corridors of the Chamber, were re-decocted and reproduced in the corners of the salon of the Ministry, and around the besieged buffet attacked by the most ferocious gluttony. _Interpellation_, _Majority_, _New Cabinet_, _Homogeneous_, _Ministry of the Elections_, _Ballot_, _One Man Ballot_. Guy went, weary of the conflict, to the room in which the concert was given and listened to some operatic piece, or watched between the heads, the hidden profile of some female singer or an actor and heard the bursts of laughter that greeted the new monologue _The Telephone_, rendered in a clear voice with the coolness of an English clown, by a gentleman in a dress coat: _See! I am Monsieur Durand--you know, Durand--of Meaux?--Exactly--A woman deceives me--How did I learn it?--By the telephone. My friend Durand--Durand--of Etampes--We are not related--Emile Durand said to me: Durand, why haven't you a telephone?--It is true, I hadn't one--Durand--the other Durand--Durand--of Etampes--has one--Then--_And Lissac, somewhat listless, left this corner of the salon and stumbled against a group of men who surrounded an old gentleman much decorated, wearing the _grand cordon rouge_ crosswise, a yellow ribbon at his neck, who, with the gravity of an English statesman, said, thrusting his tongue slightly forward to secure his false teeth from falling:

"I like monologues less than chansonnettes!--I, who address you, have taken lessons from Levassor."

"Levassor, Your Excellency?" answered in chorus a lot of little bald-headed young men--diplomats.

"Levassor," replied the old gentleman who was the very celebrated ambassador of a great foreign power. "Oh! I was famous in the song: _The Englishman Who Was Seasick_!"

While the little young men smiled, approved and loudly applauded, the old ambassador to whom the interests of a people were entrusted, hummed in a low tone, amid the noise of the reception:

"Aoh! aoh! Je suis _mélède_,
Bien _mélède_! Très _mélède_!"

Guy de Lissac shrugged his shoulders. He had heard a great deal of this man. This diplomat of the chansonnette evoked his pity. Where was he then? At Paris or at Brives-la-Gaillarde? At a ball at the Hôtel Beauvau or in some provincial sub-prefecture?

Just before, he had heard Warcolier utter this epic expression:

"If I were minister, I would give fireworks. They are warlike and inoffensive at the same time!"

The voice of a young man with a Russian accent who talked politics in a corner, pleased him:

"I am," he said aloud, "from a singular country: the Baltic provinces, where society is governed by deputies who, by birth, have the right to make laws, and I consider politics so tiresome, fatiguing and full of disgust and weariness as an occupation, that one ought to consider one's self most fortunate that there are people condemned to take hold of this rancid pie, while others pass their lives in thinking, reading, talking and loving."

"That is good," thought Lissac. "There is one, at least, who is not so stupid. It is true, perhaps because I think just the same."

Nevertheless, he went and listened, mixing with the crowd, haphazard. His preoccupation was not there. In reality, he thought only of Adrienne. How the poor woman must suffer!

With a feeling of physical and moral overthrow, she had left the threshold of the salon, where she had been standing since the commencement of the soirée. She was mixing with the crowd in her desire to forget her sorrows amid the deafening of the music, the songs, the laughter, and the murmur of the human billows that filled her salons. She had taken her place in front of the little improvised theatre, beside all those ladies who dissected her toilette, scanned her pallid face, analyzed and examined her piece by piece, body and soul. But there, seated near the stage, exactly in front of her, exposing, as in a stall, her blonde beauty, and radiant as a Titian, was that Marianne whose gleaming white shoulders appeared above her black satin corsage. Again she saw her, as but a little while before, unavoidable, haughty and bold, smiling with insolence.

At every minute she was attracted by a movement of a head, or fan, or a laugh from this pretty creature, who leaned toward Sabine Marsy, then raised her brow and showed, in all the brilliancy of fatal beauty, her black corsage, striped with those fine red roses. And now Adrienne's anger, the grief that she had trampled under for some hours, increased from moment to moment, heightened and stung by the sight of this creature, by all kinds of bitter thoughts and by visions of treason and baffled love. She felt that she was becoming literally mad at the thought that, upon those red and painted lips, Sulpice had rested his, that his hands had stroked those shoulders, unwound that hair, that this woman's body had been folded in his arms. Ah! it was enough to make her rise and cry out to that creature: "You are a wretch. Get you gone! Get you gone, I say!"

And if she did so?

Why not? Had they the right to scorn her thus in public because she owned an official title and position? Was not this vulgar salon of a furnished mansion _her_ salon then?

Now it seemed to her that they were whispering about her; that they were sneering behind their fans, and that all these women knew her secret and her history.

Why should they not know them? All Paris must have read that mocking, offensive and singular article: _The Mistress of an Archon_! All these people had, perhaps, learned it by heart. There were people here who frequented the salons and who probably kept the article in their pockets.

Yes, that would be to commit a folly, to brave everything and to destroy all!

Sulpice, then, did not know her; he believed her to be insignificant because she was gentle, resigned to everything because she was devoted to his love and his glory?--Ah! devoted even to the point of killing herself, devoted to the extent of dying, or living poor, working with her own hands, if only he loved her, if only he never lied to her!

"And here was his mistress!"

His mistress! His mistress!

She repeated this name with increasing rage, reiterating it, inwardly digesting it, as if it were something terribly bitter. His mistress, that lovely, insolent creature! Yes, very lovely, but manifestly terrible and capable of driving a feeble being like Vaudrey to commit every folly, nay, worse, infamy.

"And it is such women that are loved! Ah! Idiots! idiots that we are!"

The first part of the concert was terminating. Happily, too, for Adrienne was choking. The minister must, as a matter of politeness, express his thanks to the cantatrices from the Opéra, and to the actresses from the Comédie Française, the artistes whose names appeared on the programme. Vaudrey was obliged to pass the rows of chairs in order to reach the little salon behind the stage, which served as a foyer. Adrienne saw him coming to her side, and looking very pale, though he made an effort to smile. He was uncomfortable and anxious. In passing before Marianne, he tried to look aside, but Mademoiselle Kayser stopped him in spite of himself, by slightly extending her foot and smiling at him, when he turned toward her, with a prolonged, interested and strange expression.

Adrienne felt that she was about to faint. She took a few tottering steps out of the salon, then she stopped as if her head were swimming. Some one was on hand to support her. She felt that a hand was holding her arm, she heard some one whisper in her ear:

"It is too much, is it not?"

She recognized Lissac's voice.

Guy looked at her for a moment, quite prepared for this great increase of suffering.

"Take me away," she murmured. "I can bear no more!--I can bear no more!"

She was longing to escape from all that noise, that atmosphere that lacked air, and from Marianne's look and smile that pierced her. She went, as if by chance, instinctively guiding Lissac, led by him to a little, salon far from the reception rooms, and which was reserved for her and protected by a door guarded by an usher. It might have been thought that she expected this solitude would be necessary to her as an escape from the fright of that reception, to which her overstrained and sick nerves made her a prey.

In passing, Lissac had whispered to Ramel, who was at his elbow:

"Tell Sulpice that Madame Vaudrey is ill!"

"Ill?"

"You see that she is!"

When Adrienne was within the little salon hung with garnet silk draperies, in which the candelabras and sconces were lighted, she sank into an armchair, entirely exhausted and overwhelmed by the fearful resistance she had made to her feelings. She remained there motionless, her eye fixed, her face pale, and both hands resting on the arms of her chair, abstractedly looking at the pattern of the carpet.

Guy stood near, biting his lips as he thought of the madman Vaudrey and that wretched Marianne.

"She at least obeys her instincts! But he!"

"Ah! it is too much; yes, it is too much!" repeated Adrienne, as if Lissac were again repeating that phrase.

It seemed to her that she had been thrust into some cowardly situation; that she had been subjected to a shower of filth! It was hideous, repugnant. She now saw, in the depths of her life, events that she had never before seen; her vision had suddenly become clear. Dark details she could now explain. Vaudrey's falsehoods were suddenly manifested.

"He lied! Ah! how he had lied!"

She recalled his anxiety to hide the journals from her, his oft-repeated suggestions, his precautions, the increasing number of his night-sessions that made him pale. Pale from debauchery! And she pitied him! She begged him not to kill himself for the politics that was eating his life. Again she saw on the lips of her _Wednesday's_ guests the furtive smiles that were hidden behind muffs when she spoke of those nocturnal sessions of the Chamber, which were only nights passed in Marianne's bed! How those Parisians must have laughed at her and ridiculed the credulity of the woman who believes herself loved, but who is deceived and mocked at! Madame Gerson, Sabine! How overjoyed they must have been when, in their salons, they referred to the little, stupid Provincial who was ignorant of these tricks!

She felt ridiculed and tortured, more tortured than baffled, for her vanity was nothing in comparison with her love, her poor, artless and trusting love!

"Sulpice, I should never have believed--Never!--"

Why had they left Grenoble, their little house on the banks of the Isère? They loved each other there, it was Paris that had snatched him away! Paris! She hated it now. She hated that reputation that had carried Vaudrey into office, the politics that had robbed her of a kind and loving husband,--for he had loved her, she was sure of that,--and which had made him the lover of a courtesan, the liar and coward that he was!

"Do you see?" she said to Lissac suddenly. "I detest these walls!"

She pointed to the gilded ceilings with an angry gesture.

"Since I entered here, my life has come to a close!--It is that, that which has taken him from me!--Ah! this society, this politics, these meannesses, this life exposed to every one and everything, to temptation and to fall, I am entirely sick of, I am disgusted with. Let me be snatched from it, let me be taken away! Everywhere here, one might say, there is an atmosphere of lying!"

"Do you hear? She laughs, she is happy! She! And I, ah! I!"

She had risen to her feet, suddenly recovering all her energy, as if stirred by the air of a Hungarian dance, whose strains dimly reached them from the distant, warm salons, where Marianne was disporting her beauty--

"Ah! I hate this hôtel, the noise and the women!" said Adrienne. "This horde ranged about the buffet, this salon turned into a restaurant, the false salutations, the commonplace protestations,--this society, all this society, I detest it!--I will have no more of it!--It seems to me that it all is mocking me, and that its smiles are only for that courtesan!--But if I had driven her out?--Who brought her?"

"Her uncle and Monsieur de Rosas!"

"Monsieur de Rosas?"

"Who marries her!"

Adrienne nervously uttered a loud, harsh laugh, as painful as if it were caused by a spasm.

"Who marries her! Then these creatures are married?--Ah! they are married--They are honored, too, are they not? And because they are more easy of approach, they are thought more beautiful and more agreeable than those who are merely honest wives? Ah! it is too silly!--Rosas! I took him for a man of sense!--If I were to tell him myself that she is my husband's mistress, what would the duke answer?"

"He would not believe you, and you would not do that, madame!" said Lissac.

"Why?"

"Because it would be an act of cowardice, and because you are the best, the noblest of women!"

Instinctively he drew near her, lowering his voice, embracing with his glance that fine, charming beauty, that grief heightened by a burning brilliancy.

She raised her fine, clear eyes to Lissac, whose look troubled her, and said:

"And how have these served me?--Kindness, trickery!--Trickery, chastity!--Ask all these men! All of them will go to Mademoiselle Kayser and not to me!"

"To you, madame," murmured Guy, "all that there is of devotion and earnestness, yes, all of the tenderest and the truest will go to you as respectful homage."

"Respect?--Yes, respect to us!--And with it goes the home! But to her! Ah! to her, love! And what if I wish to be loved myself?"

"Loved by him!" said Lissac in a low tone, as if he did not know what he said; and his hands instinctively sought Adrienne's. They trembled.

A woman's perfume and something like the keen odor of flowers assailed his nostrils. He had never felt the impulse of burning compassion which at a sign from this saint, would have driven him to attempt the impossible, to affront the noisy throng yonder.

"Loved by him, yes, by him!" answered Adrienne, with the mournful shake of the head of one who sees her joy vanish in the distance like a sinking bark.

She had been so happy! She had thought herself so dearly loved! Ah! those many cowardly lies uttered by Sulpice!

"Do not speak to me of him!" she suddenly said. "I hate him, too!--I do more than that! I despise him! I never wish to see him again!--never. You hear! never!"

"What will you do?" Lissac asked.

"I know nothing about it!--I wish to leave! Now, I have no more parading to make in this ball, I think, I have no longer to receive the guests whose insulting smiles were like blows! I will go, go!"

"Adrienne!"

"Will go at once!"

She felt no astonishment at hearing the name Adrienne spoken suddenly and unreflectingly by Guy de Lissac.

She looked at him with a glance that reached his soul, not knowing what she said:

"Leave now! While the ball is in progress. To leave solitude to him, suddenly--here! And that woman, if he wishes her, and if the other who is marrying her will yield her to him!"

She was carried away, her mind wandered, as if unbalanced by her grief, all her efforts at self-control ending in a relaxation of her strained nerves.

"I will leave!--I do not wish to see him again!"

"Leave to-night?"

"For Grenoble--I don't know where!--But to fly from him; ah! yes; to escape from him! Take me away, Monsieur de Lissac!" she said distractedly, as she seized his hand. "I should go mad here!"

She had unconsciously taken refuge, as it were, in the arms of the man who loved her, and Lissac felt the exquisite grace of the body abandoned to him, without the woman's reflecting upon it, without loving him, lost--

It is quite certain that in her nervous, heart-broken condition, Adrienne was not considering whether his affection for her sprung from friendship or from love.

For a moment this master skeptic, Guy, felt that he was committing the greatest folly of his life.

The young woman did not understand; nevertheless, even without love, he clearly felt that this chasteness and grace, all that there was exquisitely seductive about her, belonged to him--if he dared--

"You are feverish, Adrienne," he said, as he took her hands as he would a child's.

"I am choking here!--I wish to leave!--take me away!"

"Nonsense," said Lissac. "What are you thinking about? They are calling for you, yonder."

"It is because they call for me that I wish to escape. Don't you see that I abhor all those people; that I detest them as much as I despise them? Take me away!"

Lissac had become very pale. He tried to smile at Adrienne--the heroic smile of a wounded man undergoing amputation--and he whispered:

"Don't you know very well, madame, that you would not have taken two steps in the street, on my arm, before you would become a lost woman?"

"Well," she said, "what of that, since it is they who are loved!--"

"No, madame," Guy replied, "I love you. I may say so, because you are a virtuous woman, and I have no right to take you away, do you understand? because I love you."

He, too, had summoned all his strength to impart to his confession, which he would have expressed with ardor, the cold tone of a phrase.

But that was enough. Adrienne recoiled before this avowal.

He loved her. He told her so!

It is true, she could not leave the mansion on his arm.

She rested her glance on Lissac and extended her hand to him, saying, as she felt suddenly recalled to herself:

"You are an honest man!"

"According to my moods," said Guy, with a sad smile.

The door of the little salon opened, and Ramel entered.

"I have called in a doctor," he said.

"For me?" asked Adrienne. "Thanks! I am quite strong!"

Then boldly going to Ramel:

"Will you have the goodness to take me to Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, Monsieur Ramel?"

"Why?"

"Because I will not remain one hour longer in a house where my husband has the right to receive his mistress!--Monsieur de Lissac refuses to accompany me. Your arm, Ramel!"

"Madame," Ramel answered gently, "I knew that Monsieur de Lissac was a man of intelligence. It seems to me that he is a man of heart. You should remain here for your own sake, for your name's sake, for your husband's. It is your duty. As to Mademoiselle Kayser, you can return to the salons, for she has just left with Monsieur de Rosas."

Adrienne remained for a moment with her sad eyes fixed on Ramel; then shaking her head:

"You knew it also? Everybody knew it then, except me?"

"Well!" said Ramel, a good-natured smile playing in his white mustache, "now it is necessary to forget."

"Never!" replied Adrienne.

Then proudly drawing herself up, she took Denis's arm and without even glancing in her mirror, she went off toward the salons.

"Your bouquet, madame," said Lissac, who was still pale and his voice trembled.

"True!" said Adrienne.

She fastened her bouquet of drooping roses to her corsage and without daring to look at Lissac again, she re-entered, leaning on Ramel's arm.

Left alone in the salon, Guy remained a moment to shake his head.

"Poor, dear creature!" he said. "If I had been young enough not to understand the position in which her madness placed me, or base enough to profit by it, what a pretty little preface to a great folly she was about to commit this evening! Well! this attack of morality will perhaps count in my favor some day."

He stooped down and picked up a rose that had fallen from Adrienne's bouquet to the carpet.

He smiled as he took up the flower and looked at it.

"One learns at any age!" he thought, as he put the flower in his coat. "That, at least, is a love souvenir that they will not send the police to rob me of."