Part 23 (1/2)

Not for years had Vaudrey felt such an anxiety or allowed himself to be, as it were, carried away by such a dominating influence. Waking, he found Marianne the basis of all his thoughts, as she was during his slumber.

And so charming!

”Monsieur le Ministre de l'Interieur is the next to address the Council.”

Vaudrey had not noticed that Monsieur Collard--of Nantes--had finished his harangue, and that after the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had just concluded his remarks. Vaudrey, therefore, needed a moment's reflection, a hasty self-examination to recognize his own personality: _Monsieur le Ministre de l'Interieur!_ This t.i.tle only called up his _ego_ after a momentary reflection, a sort of simulated astonishment under the cloak of a pensive att.i.tude. Vaudrey's colleagues did not perceive that this man seated beside them was, as it were, lost in meditation.

Sulpice, moreover, had little to say. Nothing serious. The confirmation of the favorable reports that had been made to him. Within a week he would finish his plan of prefectorial changes. He simply required the Council to deal at once with the nomination of the Undersecretaries of State.

It was then that Vaudrey realized the extraordinary influence that Lucien Granet must possess. From the very opening of the discussion, the minister felt that his candidate, Jacquier--of l'Oise--was defeated in advance by Warcolier. Granet must have laid siege to the ministers one by one. The President was entirely in Warcolier's favor. Warcolier's amiability, tact, the extraordinary facility with which he threw overboard previous opinions, were so many claims in his favor. It was necessary to give pledges to new converts, to prove that the government was not closed against penitents.

”That is a very Christian theory,” said Vaudrey, ”and truly, I am neither in favor of jacobinism nor suspicion, but there is something ironical in granting this amnesty to turncoats.”

”But it is decidedly politic,” said Monsieur Collard--of Nantes.

”It is a premium offered to the new converts.”

”Eh! eh! that is not so badly done!”

Vaudrey knew perfectly well that it was useless to insist, he must put up with Warcolier. It was his task to manage matters so that this man should not have unlimited power in the ministry.

Warcolier was elected and the President signed his appointment at the earliest possible moment.

”A nomination discounted in advance,” thought Vaudrey, who again recalled Granet's polite but threatening smile.

He felt somewhat nervous and annoyed at this result. But what could be done? To divert his thoughts, he listened to his colleagues'

communications. The Minister of War commenced to speak, and in a tone of irritated surprise, instead of the lofty, patriotic considerations that Vaudrey expected of him, Vaudrey heard him muttering behind his moustache about soldiers' cap-straps, shakos, gaiter-b.u.t.tons, shoulder-straps, cloth and overcoats. That was all. It was the vulgar report of a shoemaker or a tailor, or of a contractor detailing the items of his account.

Sulpice was anxious for the Council to be over. The President, before the close of the session, repeated, with all the seriousness of a judge of the Court of Appeal: ”Above all, messieurs, no innovations, don't try to do too well, let things alone. Don't let us trouble about business!

Let us be content to live! The session is ended.”

”Not about business?” said Vaudrey to himself.

He understood power in quite a different way. Longing for improvements, he did not understand how to let himself be dragged on like a cork upon a stream, by the wave of daily events. He was determined to put his ideas into force, to give life and durability to his ministry. There was no use in being a minister if he must continue the habitual go-as-you-please of current politics. In that case, the first chief of bureau one might meet would make as good a minister as he.

At the moment of leaving the Council Chamber, the Minister of War said to him, in a jocose, brusque way: ”Well! my dear colleague, Warcolier's election does not seem to have pleased you? Bah! if he has changed shoulders with his gun, that only proves that he knows how to drill.”

And the soldier laughed heartily behind his closely b.u.t.toned frock coat.

Vaudrey got into his carriage and returned to the ministry to breakfast.

Formerly the breakfast hour was generally the time of joyous freedom for Sulpice. He felt soothed beside Adrienne and forgot his daily struggles.

In their home on Chaussee d'Antin, he usually abandoned himself freely to lively and cheerful conversation, to allow his wife to find in him, the man of forty years, the fiance, the young husband of former days.

But here, before these exclusive domestics, the familiars of the ministry, planted around the table like so many inspectors, rather than servants, he dared not manifest himself. He scarcely spoke. He felt that he was watched and listened to. The valet who pa.s.sed him the dishes watched over Monsieur le Ministre. He imagined that _his attendants_ in their silent reflections compared the present minister with those that had gone before him. On one occasion, one of the domestics replied to a remark made by Adrienne: ”Monsieur Pichereau, who preceded Monsieur le Ministre, and Monsieur le Comte d'Harville, who preceded Monsieur Pichereau, considered my service very proper, madame.”

Adrienne accepted as well as she could the necessities of her new position. Since that was power, let power rule! She was resigned to those wastes whose luxury was apparent, since the political fortunes of her husband cast her there, like a prisoner, in that huge, commonplace, ministerial mansion, wherein none of the joys of home or of that Parisian apartment that she had furnished with such refined taste were left her. She felt half lost in those vast, cold salons of that ancient Hotel Beauvau,--cold in spite of their stoves, and which partook at one and the same time of the provisional domicile and the furnished apartment,--with its defaced gilded panels, and here and there a crack in the ceiling, and those vulgar ornaments, those wearisome imitation Chardins with their cracked colors and those old-fas.h.i.+oned pictures of Roqueplan, giving to everything at once _one date_, a bygone style. With what a truly melancholy smile Adrienne greeted the friends who came to see her on her reception day, when they remarked to her: ”Why, you are in a palace!”

”Yes, but I much prefer my accustomed furniture and my own house.”