Part 15 (1/2)
Vaudrey looked at Marianne. He observed distinctly a flash of joy illuminate her pale face and he felt a sudden and singular discontent, amounting almost to physical anguish. And why, great heavens?
Marianne smiled a salutation; he half-bowed and watched her as she went away, with a sort of angry regret, as if he had something further to say to this woman who was almost a stranger to him, and who, guided by Sabine, now disappeared amid the crowd of black coats and bright toilets. And then, almost immediately and suddenly, he was surrounded and besieged by his colleagues of the Chamber, men either indifferent or seeking favors, who only awaited the conclusion of the conversation with Mademoiselle Kayser, which they would certainly have precipitated, except for the fear of acting indiscreetly, in order to precipitate themselves on him. Amid all those unknown persons who approached him, Vaudrey sought a friend as he felt himself lost and taken by a.s.sault by this rabble.
The sight of the face of a friend, older than himself, a spare man with a white beard very carefully trimmed, caused him a feeling of pleasure, and he joyfully exclaimed:
”Eh! _pardieu!_ why, here is Ramel!”
He immediately extended both hands in warm greeting to this man of sixty years, wearing a white cravat twisted round his neck, like a neckerchief in the old-fas.h.i.+oned style, and whose black waistcoat with its standing collar of ancient pattern was conspicuous amid the open waistcoats of the fas.h.i.+onably-dressed young men who had been very eagerly surrounding the minister for the last few moments.
”Good day, Ramel!--How delighted I am to see you!”--
”And I also,” said Ramel in a friendly and affectionate tone, while his face, that seemed severe, but was only good-natured and masculine, suddenly beamed. ”It is not a little on your account that I came here.”
”Really?”
”Really. I was anxious to shake hands with you. It is so long since I saw you. How much has happened since then!”
”Ah! Ramel, who the devil would have said that I should be minister when I took you my first article for the _Nation Francaise_!” said Vaudrey.
”Bah! who is not a minister?” said Ramel. ”You are. Remember what Napoleon said to Bourrienne as he entered the Tuileries: 'Here we are, Bourrienne! now we must stay here!'”
”That is exactly what Granet said to me when he told me of the new combination.”
”Granet expressed in that more of an after-thought than your old Ramel.”
”My best friend,” said Sulpice with emotion, grasping this man's hands in his.
”It is so much more meritorious on your part to tell me that,” said Ramel, ”seeing that now you do not lack friends.h.i.+ps.”
”You are still a pessimist, Ramel?”
”I--A wild optimist, seeing that I believe everything and everybody! But I must necessarily believe in the stupidity of my fellows, and upon this point I am hardly mistaken.”
”But what brings you to Madame Marsy's, you who are a perfect savage?”
”Tamed!--Because, I repeat to you, I knew that you were coming and that Monsieur de Rosas was to speak on the subject of savages, and these please me. If I had been rich or if I only had enough to live on, I should have pa.s.sed my life in travelling. And in the end, I shall have lived between Montmartre and Batignolles: a tortoise dreaming that he is a swallow--”
”Ramel, my dear fellow,” said the minister, ”would you wish me to give you a mission where you could go and study whatever seemed good to you?”
”With my rheumatism? Thanks, your Excellency!” said Ramel, smiling. ”No, I am too old, and never having asked any one for anything, I am not going to begin at my age.”
”You do not ask, it is offered you.”
”Well, I have no desire for that. I am at the hour of the _far niente_ that precedes the final slumber. It is a pleasant condition. One has seen so many things and persons that one has no further desires.”
”The fact is,” said the minister, ”that if all the people you have obligated in your life had solicited an invitation from Madame Marsy, these salons would not be large enough to contain them.”
”Bah! they have all forgotten as I have, myself,” said Ramel, with a shake of his head and smiling pleasantly.
Vaudrey felt intense pleasure in meeting, in the midst of this crowd of indifferent or admiring persons, the man who had formerly seen him arrive in Paris, and with whom he had corresponded from the heart of his province, as with a kinsman. There was, in fact, between them, a relations.h.i.+p of mind and soul that united this veteran of the press with this young statesman.
The ideal sought was the same, but the temperaments were different.