Chapter VII (2)

"This does not vex you, then, old Republican?"

"I, an old soldier grown white in harness," said Ramel, whose moustache still played under his smile, "that doesn't disturb my peace in the least. I comfort myself with the thought that my dream, my _ideal_, to use a trite expression, is not touched by such absurdities, and I am persuaded that progress does not lag and that the cause of liberty gains ground, in spite of so much injustice and folly. I confess, however, that I sometimes feel the strange emotion that a man might experience on seeing, after the lapse of years, the lovely woman whom he loved to distraction at twenty, in the arms of a person whom he did not particularly respect."

Ramel had lighted his pipe, and half-hidden by the bluish wreaths of smoke, chatted away, quite happy on his side to give himself up to the revelation of the secret of his heart without the least bitterness, and like an elder brother, advised this man, who was still young and whom he had compared formerly to one of those too fine pieces of porcelain that the least shock would crack.

"Ah!" he said abruptly, "above all, my dear Vaudrey, do not fear to appear in the tribune more uncouth and assertive than you really are. In times when the word _sympathetic_ becomes an insult, it is wiser to have the manners of a boor. Tact is a good thing."

"I shall never succeed in that," said Sulpice, smiling as usual.

"So much the worse! What has been wanting in my case is not to have been able to secure the title of _our antipathetic confrère_. The modest and refined people are dupes. By virtue of swelling their necks, turkeys succeed in resembling peacocks. Believe me, my dear friend, it is dangerous to have too refined a taste, even in office, even in the rank in which you are placed. One hesitates to proclaim the excessively stupid things that stir the crowd, and the blockhead who is bold enough to declare his folly creates a hellish noise with his nonsense, while a man of refinement, who is not always a squeamish man, remains in his corner unseen. Remember that more moths are caught at night with a greasy candle than with a diamond of the first water."

"You speak in paradox--" Sulpice began.

"And you think I am making paradoxes? Not in the least, I will give you--not at cost, for it has cost me dearly, but in block,--my stock of experience. Do with it what you please, and, above all, beware of _alle donne!_"

"Women?" asked the minister, with involuntary disquiet.

"Women, exactly. Encircling every minister there is a squadron of seductive women, who though perhaps more fully clothed than the flying squadron of the Medicis, is certainly not less dangerous. Women who complain that they are denied political rights, have in reality all, since they are able to rule administrations and knock ministers off, as the Du Barry did her oranges! When I speak of women, you will observe well that I do not speak of your admirable wife," said Ramel, with a respect that was most touching, coming from this honest veteran.

"While we are gossiping," he resumed, "I am going to tell you frankly what strikes me most clearly in the present conjuncture. You will gather from it what you choose. In these days, my dear Vaudrey, what is most remarkable is the facility men have for destroying their credit and wearing themselves out. Politics, especially, entails a formidable consumption. It seems that the modern being is not cut out to wear long. This, perhaps, is due to the fact that public business, whichever party wins, is always committed to men who are ill-prepared for their good fortune. I do not say this of you, who, intellectually speaking, are an exception. But men are no longer bathed in the Styx, or perhaps they show the heel too quickly. For some years, moreover, the strange phenomenon has presented itself of the provincial towns being the prey of Parisian manufacturers, who reconstruct them and demolish their picturesque antiquity, in order to garnish their boulevards and fine mansions, while Paris, on the contrary, is directed and governed by provincials, who provincialize it just as the Parisian companies parisianize the provinces. Our provincials, astonished to find themselves at the head of Parisian movement, lose their heads somewhat and rush with immoderate appetites at the delicate feast. They have the gluttony of famished children, and on the most perilous question they are simply gourmands. It is _woman_ again to whom I refer. The country squires and gentlemen riders, who have grown old in their province with the love of farm-wenches, or small tradesmen professing medicine or law within their sub-prefectures, after having made verses for the female tax-gatherer, all, you understand, all are hungry to know that unknown creature: _woman_. And speedily enough the woman has drained their Excellencies. Oh! yes, even to the marrow! She robs the Opposition of its energy; the faithful to liberty, of the virility of their faith. Energetic ministers or ministers with ideas are not long before woman destroys both their strength and their ideas. Eh! _parbleu!_ it is just because they do not rule Paris as one pleads a civil suit in a provincial court."

The minister listened with a somewhat anxious, sober air to these truisms, clear-cut as with a knife, expressed by the old journalist without passion, without exasperation, without anger. He was, in fact, pleased that Ramel should speak to him so candidly.

Yes, indeed, what the old "veteran,"--as Denis sometimes called himself--said, were Vaudrey's own sentiments. These sufficiently saddening observations he had himself made more than once. It was precisely to put an end to such abuses, folly, and provincialism, this hobbling spirit inculcated in a great nation, that he had assumed power, and was about to increase his efforts.

He thanked Ramel profusely and sincerely. This visit would not be his last, he would often return to this Rue Boursault where he knew that a true friend would be waiting.

"And you will be right," said Denis. "Nowhere will you find a love more profound, or hear truths more frankly spoken. You see, Vaudrey, the walls of the ministerial apartments are too thick. There, neither the noise of carriages nor the sound of street-cries is heard. I have passed a few days in a palace--in '48,--at the Tuileries, as a national guard: at the end of two hours, I heard nothing. The carpets, the curtains, stifled everything, and, believe me, a cannon might have been fired without my hearing anything more than an echo, much less could I hear the truth! Besides, people do not like to pronounce truth too loudly. They are afraid."

"I swear to you that I will listen to everything," replied Sulpice, "and I will strive to understand everything. And since I have the power--"

Denis Ramel shook his head:

"Power? Ah! you will see if that is ever taken in any but homoeopathic doses! Why, you will have against you the _bureaux_, those sacrosanct _bureaux_ that have governed this country since bureaucracy has existed, and they will cram more than one Warcolier down your throat, I warn you."

"Yes, if I allow it," said Vaudrey haughtily.

"Eh! my poor friend, you have already allowed it," said the veteran.

He had risen, Vaudrey had taken his hat, and he said to the minister, leaning on his arm, with gentle familiarity, as he led him to the door:

"Power is like a kite, but there is always some rascal who holds the thread."

"Come, come," said Vaudrey, "you are a pessimist!"

"I confess that Schopenhauer is not unpleasant to me--sometimes."

Thereupon they separated, after a cordial grasp of the hand, and Denis Ramel resumed his pipe and his seat at the window corner, while the minister carried away from this interview, as if he had not already been in the habit of a frank interchange of opinions, an agreeable though perhaps anxious impression.

He felt the need of _mentally digesting_ this conversation: the idea of going back, on this beautiful February day, to his official apartments did not enter his mind. He was overcome by a springtime hunger.

"To the Bois! Around the Lake!" he said to the coachman, as he re-entered his carriage.

The air was as balmy as on an afternoon in May. Vaudrey lowered the carriage window to breathe freely. This exterior boulevard that he rolled along was full of merry pedestrians. One would have thought it was a Sunday afternoon. Old people, sitting on benches, were enjoying the early sun.

Sulpice looked at them, his brain busy with Ramel's warnings. He had just called him a pessimist, but inwardly he acknowledged that the old stager, who had remained a philosopher, spoke the truth. Woman! Why had Ramel spoken to him of woman?

This half-disquieting thought speedily left Sulpice, attracted as he was by the joyous movement, the delight of the eyes which presented itself to his view.

In thus journeying to the Bois, he felt a delightful emotion of solitude and forgetfulness. He gradually recovered his self-possession and became himself once more. He drew his breath more freely in that long avenue where, at this hour of the day, few persons passed. There was no petition to listen to, no salutation to acknowledge.

Ah! how easy it would be to be happy, to sweetly enjoy the Paris that fascinated him instead of burning away his life! Just now, at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe, he had seen people dressed in blouses, sleeping like Andalusian beggars before the walls of the Alhambra. Little they cared for the fever of success! Perhaps they were wise.

An almost complete solitude reigned over the Bois. Vaudrey saw, as he glanced between the copsewood, now growing green, only a few isolated pedestrians, some English governesses in charge of scampering children, the dark green uniform of a guard or the blue blouse of a man who trimmed the trees.

The coachman drove slowly and Sulpice, enjoying the intoxication of this early sun, lowered the shade and breathed the keen air while he repeated to himself that peaceful joy was within the reach of everybody at Paris.

"But why is this wood so deserted? It is so pleasant here."

He almost reproached himself for not having brought Adrienne. She would have been so happy for this advanced spring day. She required so little to make her smile: mere crumbs of joy. She was better than he.

He excused himself by reflecting that he would not have been able to talk to Ramel.

And then it would have been necessary to talk to Adrienne, whereas the joy of the present moment was this solitary silence, the bath of warm air taken in the complete forgetfulness of the habitual existence.

The sight of the blue, gleaming lake before him, encircled with pines, like an artificial Swiss lake, compelled him to look out of the window.

The coachman slowly drove the carriage to the left in order to make the tour of the Lake.

Vaudrey looked at the sheet of water upon which the light played, and on which two or three skiffs glided noiselessly, even the sound of their oars not reaching his ears.

At the extremity of the alley, a carriage was standing, a hackney coach whose driver was peacefully sleeping in the sunshine, with his head leaning on his right shoulder, his broad-brimmed hat, bathed in the sunshine, serving him as a shade.

It was the only carriage there, and a few paces from the border of the water, standing out in dark relief against the violet-blue of the lake, a woman stood surrounded by a group of ducks of all shades, running after morsels of brown bread while uttering their hoarse cries.

Two white swans had remained in the water and looked at her with a dignified air, at a distance.

At the first glance at this woman, Sulpice felt a strange emotion. His legs trembled and his heart was agitated.

He could not be mistaken, he certainly recognized her. Either there was an extraordinary resemblance between them, or it was Mademoiselle Kayser herself.

Marianne? Marianne on the edge of this Lake at an hour when there was no one at the Bois? Vaudrey believed neither in superstitions nor in predestination. Nevertheless, he considered the meeting extraordinary, but there is in this fantastic life a reality that brings in our path the being about whom one has just been thinking. He had frequently observed this fact. He had already descended from his carriage to go to her, taking a little pathway under the furze in order to reach the water's edge. There was no longer any doubt, it was she. Evidently he was to meet Mademoiselle Kayser some day. But how could chance will that he should desire to take that promenade to the Lake at the very hour that the young woman had driven there?

As he advanced, he thought how surprised Marianne would be. As he walked along, he looked at her.

She stood near a kind of wooden landing jutting out over the water. Over her black dress she had flung a short cloak of satin, embroidered with jet which sparkled in the sunlight. The light wind gently waved a black feather that hung from her hat, in which other feathers were entwined with a fringe of old gold bullion. Vaudrey noted every detail of this living statuette of a Parisian woman: between a little veil knotted behind her head and the lace ruching of her cloak, light, golden curls fell on her neck, and in that frame of light, this elegant woman, this silhouette standing out in full relief against the sky and the horizon line of the water, with a pencil of rays gilding her fair locks, seemed more exquisite and more the "woman" to Sulpice than in the décolleté of a ball costume.

When she heard the crushing of the sand by Sulpice's footsteps as he approached her with timid haste, she turned abruptly. Under her small black veil, drawn tightly over her face, and whose dots looked like so many patches on her face, Vaudrey at first observed Marianne's almost sickly paleness, then her suddenly joyous glance. A furtive blush mounted even to the young girl's cheek.

"You here?" she said--"you, Monsieur le Ministre?"

She had already imparted an entirely different tone to these questions. There was more abandon in the first, which seemed more like a cry, but the second betrayed a sudden politeness, perhaps a little affected.

Vaudrey replied by some commonplace remark. It was a fine day; he was tired; he wished to warm himself in this early sunshine. But she?--

"Oh! I--really I don't know why I am here. Ask the--my coachman. He has driven me where he pleased."

She spoke in a curt, irritated tone, under which either deception or grief was hidden.

She was still mechanically throwing crumbs of bread around her, which were eagerly snatched at by the many-colored ducks, white or gray, black, spotted, striped like tulips, marbled like Cordovan leather, with iridescent green or blue necks, whose tone suggested Venetian glassware, all of them hurrying, stretching their necks, opening their bills, or casting themselves at Marianne's feet, fighting, then almost choking themselves to swallow the enormous pieces of bread that were sold by a dealer close at hand.

"Ah! bless me! I did not think I should have the honor of meeting you here," she said.

"The honor?" said Vaudrey. "I, I should say the joy."

She looked straight into his eyes, frankly.

"I do not know what joy is, to-day," she said. "I come from the Continental Hotel, where I hoped to see--"

"What is that?"

"Nothing--"

"If it were nothing, you would not have frowned so."

"Oh! well! a friend--a friend whom I have again found--and who has disappeared. Just so,--abruptly--No matter, perhaps, after all! What happens, must happen. In short--and to continue my riddle, behold me feeding these ducks. God knows why! I detest the creatures. The state feeds them badly, Monsieur le Ministre, I tell you: they are famished. Well? well?" she said to a species of Indian duck, bolder than the others, who snapped at the hem of her skirt to attract attention and to demand fresh mouthfuls.

She commenced to laugh nervously, and said:

"That one isn't afraid."

She threw him a morsel that he swallowed with a greedy gulp.

"Do you know, Monsieur le Ministre, that the story of these ducks is that of the human species? There are some that have got nothing of all the bread that I have thrown them, and there are others who have gorged enough to kill them with indigestion. How would you classify that? Poor political economy."

"Oh, oh!" said Vaudrey. "You are wandering into the realms of lofty philosophy!--"

"Apropos of that, yes," said Marianne, as she pointed to the line of birds that hurried on all sides, left the water, waddled about, uttering their noisy cries. "You know that when one is sad, one philosophizes anent everything."

"And you are sad?" asked Sulpice, in a voice that certainly quivered slightly.

She threw away, without breaking it, the piece of bread that was left, brushed her gloved fingers, and, turning toward the minister, said with a smile that would make the flesh creep:

"Very sad. Oh! what would you have? The black butterflies, you know, the blue devils."

He saw her again, just as she had appeared before him yesterday, with arms and shoulders bare, lovely and seductive, and now, with her shoulders hidden under her cloak, her face half-veiled and quite pale, he thought her still more disquietingly charming. Moreover, the strangeness of the situation, the chance meeting, imparted something of mystery to their conversation and the attraction of an assignation.

Ah! how happy he felt at having desired to breathe the air of the Bois! It now seemed to him that he had only come there for her sake. Once more it appeared to him that some magnetic thought led to this deserted spot these two beings, who but yesterday had only exchanged commonplace remarks and who, in this sunbathed solitude, under these trees, in the fresh breeze of the departing winter, met again, impelled toward each other, drawn on by the same sympathy.

"Do you know what I was thinking of?" she said, smiling graciously. "Yes, of what I was thinking as I cast the brown bread to those ducks? An idyll, is it not? Well! I was thinking that if one dared--a quick plunge into such a sheet of water--very pure--quite tempting--Eh! well! it would end all."

Vaudrey did not reply. He looked at her stupidly, his glance betraying the utmost anxiety.

"Oh! fear nothing," she said. "A whim! and besides, I can swim better than the swans, there is no danger."

He had seized her hands instinctively and he experienced a singular delight in feeling the flesh of Marianne's wrists under his fingers.

"You are feverish," he said.

"I should be, at any rate."

Her voice was still harsh, as if she were distressed.

"The departure of--of that friend--has, then, caused you much suffering?"

"Suffering? No. Vexation, yes--You have built many castles of cards in your life--Come! how stupid I am!" she said bitterly. "You still build many of them. Well! there it is, you see!"

She had withdrawn her hands from Sulpice, and walked away slowly from the border of the lake, going toward the end of the path where her coachman awaited her, his eyes closed and his mouth open.

"Where are you going on leaving the Bois?" asked Vaudrey.

"I? I don't know."

He had made a movement.

"Oh! once more I tell you, don't be afraid," she said. "I want to live. Fear nothing, I will go home, _parbleu_."

"Home?"

"Or to my uncle's."

"But, really, Monsieur le Ministre," she said, "you are taking upon yourself the affairs of Monsieur Jouvenet, your Prefect of Police. I know him well, and certainly he asks fewer questions than Your Excellency."

"That, perhaps," said Vaudrey, with a smile, "is because he has less anxiety about you than I have."

"Ah! bah!" said Marianne.

She had by this time got close to her hackney coach and looked at the coachman for a moment. "Don't you think it would be very wrong to waken him?" she said. "Will you accompany me for a moment, Monsieur le Ministre?"

Vaudrey paled slightly, divining under this question a seductive prospect.

Marianne's gray eyes were never turned from him.

They walked along slowly, followed by the coupé whose lengthened shadow was projected in front of them along the yellow pathway, moving beside the lake where the swans floated with their pure white wings extended and striking the water with their feet, raising all around them a white foam, like snow falling in flakes. The blue heavens were reflected in the water. The grass, of a burnt-green, almost gray color, looked like worn velvet here and there, showing the weft and spotted with earth.

Side by side they walked, Vaudrey earnestly watching Marianne, while she gazed about her and pointed out to him the gray, winter-worn rocks, the smooth ivy, and on the horizon some hinds browsing, in the far distance, as in a desert, the bare grass as yellow as ripe wheat, around a pond, in a gloomy landscape, russet horizons against a pale sky, presenting a forlorn, mysterious and fleeting aspect.

"One would think one's self at the end of the world," said Sulpice, with lowered voice and troubled heart.

A slight laugh from Marianne was her only reply, as she pointed with the tip of her finger to an inscription on a sign:

"_To Croix-Catelan!_" she said. "That end of the world is decidedly Parisian!"

"Nevertheless, see how isolated we are to-day."

It seemed as if she had divined his thought, for she took a path that skirted a road and there, in the narrowest strip of soft, fresh soil, on which the tiny heels of her boots made imprints like kisses upon a cheek, she walked in front of him, the shadows of the small branches dappling her black dress, while Vaudrey, deeply moved, still looked at her, framed as she was by trees with moss-covered trunks and surrounded with brambles, a medley of twisted branches.

And Sulpice felt, at each step that he took, a more profound emotion. Along this russet-tinted wood, stood out here and there the bright trunks of birch-trees, and far above it, the pale blue sky; the abyss of heaven, strewn with milky clouds and throughout the course of this pathway arose like a Cybelean incense, a healthful and fresh odor that filled the lungs and infused a desire to live.

To live! and, thought Sulpice, but a moment ago this lovely, slender girl spoke of dying. He approached her gently, walking by her side, at first not speaking, then little by little returning to that thought and almost whispering in her ear--that rosy ear that stood out against the paleness of her cheek:

"Is it possible to think of anything besides the opening spring, in this wood where everything is awakening to life? Is it really true, Marianne, that you really wished to die?"

He did not feel astonished at having dared to call her by name. It seemed as if he had known her for years. He forgot everything, as if the world was nothing but a dream and that this dream presented this woman's face.

"Yes," she replied. "Upon my honor, I was weary of life, but I see that most frequently at the very moment when one despairs--"

She stopped suddenly.

"Well?" he asked, as he waited for her to continue.

"Nothing. No, nothing!"

She commenced to laugh, calling his attention to the end of the path, to a broader alley which brought them back to the edge of the lake, whose blue line they saw in the distance.

"Blue on blue," she said, pointing to the sky and the water. "You reproach me for not liking blue, Monsieur le Ministre, see! I am taking an azure bath. This horizon is superb, is it not?"

Vaudrey debated with himself if she were jesting. Why should she give him that title which here and at such a moment, had such an out-of-place ring?

She glanced at him sidelong with a little droll expression, her pretty mouth yielding to a smile that enticed a kiss.

"We shall soon have returned to my carriage," she said. "Already!"

"That _already_ pleases me," said Sulpice.

"It is true. This short promenade is nothing, but it suffices to make one forget many things."

"Does it not?" exclaimed Vaudrey.

The shadow of his coupé was still projected between them along the ochre-colored road.

"Do you come to the Bois often?" asked the minister.

"No. Why?"

"Because I shall frequently return here," he said in a trembling voice.

"Really!--Then, oh! why then, it would be love-making?" said Marianne, who pierced him with her warm, tender glances.

He wished to seize this woman's hand and print a kiss thereon, or to press his lips upon her bare neck upon which the golden honey-colored ringlets danced in the bright sunlight.

"On these clear, fine days," she said in an odd tone, emphasizing every word, "it is very likely that I shall return frequently to visit this pathway. Eh! what is that?" she said, turning around.

She was dragging a dry bramble that had fastened its thorns to the folds of her satin skirt and she stopped to shake it off.

"Stop," said Sulpice.

He desired to tread on the russet-colored bramble.

"You will tear my gown," said Marianne. "The bramble clings too tightly."

Then he stooped, gently removed the thorn, and Marianne, her bosom turned toward him and half-stooping, looked at that man--a minister--almost kneeling before her in this wood.

He cast the bramble away from him.

"There," he said.

"Thanks."

As he rose, he felt Marianne's fresh breath on his forehead. It fell on his face, as sweet as new-mown hay. He became very pale and looked at her with so penetrating an expression that she blushed slightly--from pleasure, perhaps,--and until they reached the carriage where her coachman was still sleeping, they said nothing further, fearing that they had both said too much.

At the moment when she entered her carriage, Sulpice, suddenly, with an effort at boldness, said to her, as he leaned over the door:

"I must see you again, Marianne."

"What is the use?" she said, keeping her eyes fixed on his.

"Where shall I see you?" he asked, without replying to her question.

"I do not know--at my house--"

"At your house?"

"Wait," she added abruptly, "I will write to you."

"You promise me?"

"On my word of honor. At the ministry, _Personal_, isn't that so?"

"Yes!--Ah! you are very good!" he cried, without knowing what he was saying, while Marianne's coachman whipped his horses and the carriage disappeared in the direction of Paris.

It seemed to Vaudrey, who remained standing, that little gloved fingers appeared behind the window and that he caught glimpses of a face hidden under a black, dotted veil.

The carriage disappeared in the distance.

"To the ministry!" said the minister, as he got into his carriage.

He stretched himself out as if intoxicated. He looked at all the carriages along the drive of the Bois de Boulogne, the high life was already moving toward the Lake. In calèches, old ladies in mourning appeared with pale nuns, and old men with red decorations stretched out under lap-robes. Pretty girls with pale countenances pierced with bright eyes, like fragments of coal in flour, showed themselves at the doors of the coupés, close to the muzzles of pink-nosed, well-combed, white-haired little dogs. Vaudrey strove to find Marianne amid that throng, to see her again. She was far away.

He thought only of her, while his coupé went down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, bustling with noise and movement and flooded with light. The coachman took a side street and the carriage disappeared through an open gateway between two high posts surmounted by two lamps, in a passage leading to a huge white mansion whose slate roof was ablaze with sunlight. An infantry soldier in red trousers, with a shako on his head, mounted guard and stood motionless beside a brown-painted sentry-box that stood at the right. Above the gateways a new tricolor flag, in honor of the new ministry, waved in the sunshine.

Against the ministerial edifice were two gas fixtures bearing two huge capital letters: R.F., ready to be illuminated on important reception nights.

Two lackeys hastily opening the door, rushed up to the halted carriage and stood at its door.

"Adieu! Marianne," thought Sulpice, as he placed his foot in the antechamber of this vast mansion as cold as a tomb.

* * * * *

_She was still mechanically throwing crumbs of bread around her, which were eagerly snatched at by the many-colored ducks_ ...