Part 36 (1/2)
”Don't talk to me about it,” replied Sulpice. ”In order to reach the vacation sooner, the deputies talk twice as long.”
Adrienne never opened the _Officiel_, which Vaudrey received in his private office, pretending that the sight of a newspaper too vividly recalled the fatiguing political life that absorbed him. One day, however, he allowed the journals to be brought into the salon and to lie about in Madame's room. He informed Adrienne that he was going to pa.s.s the day in Picardy, at Guise or at Vervins, where an important deputy had invited him to visit his factory. He would leave in the morning and could not return until the following day toward noon.
”What a long time!” said Adrienne.
”It is still longer for me than for you, since you remain here, in our home.”
”Oh! our home! we have only one home: in Chaussee-d'Antin, or the house at Gren.o.ble, you know.”
”Dear wife!” cried Vaudrey, as he embraced her tenderly,--sincerely, perhaps.
And he left. He set out for Guise, returned in the evening and ordered the Director of the Press to send to all the journals by the Havas agency, a message which ran: _The Minister of the Interior pa.s.sed the entire day yesterday at Guise, at Monsieur Delair's, the deputy from L'Aisne. He dined and slept at the house of his host. Monsieur Vaudrey is to return to Paris this morning, at eleven o'clock._
Then he showed the news to Adrienne, and laughed as he said:
”It is surprising! one cannot take a single step without it appears in print and the entire population is informed at once!”
”Tell me everything,” Adrienne replied, as she embraced him with her glance. ”Are you tired? You look pale. How did you spend the day? You made a speech? Were you applauded?”
It was mainly by kisses that Vaudrey answered. What could he say to Adrienne? She knew perfectly well how similar all these gatherings were, with their official routine. Monsieur Delair had been very agreeable, but the minister had necessarily had to endure much talk, much importunity.
”The day seemed very long to me!”
”And to me also,” she said.
Sulpice indeed returned from Guise, but the last train on the previous night had taken him to Rue p.r.o.ny, at Marianne's. He had then found out the secret of remaining at her side undisturbed for a long time, and the telegraph, managed by the Director of the Press, enabled him to prove an alibi to Adrienne from time to time. He had taken to Marianne a huge bouquet of fresh flowers gathered in the park at Guise for Madame Vaudrey by Monsieur Delair's two daughters. That appeared to him to be quite natural.
Marianne, who was waiting for him, put the flowers in the j.a.panese vases and said to him as she threw her bare arms around him:
”Very good! You thought of me!----”
The next morning Vaudrey left, more than ever enchained by the delight of her embraces. He sometimes returned on foot, to breathe the vivifying freshness of the roseate dawn, or taking a cab, he stretched himself out wearily therein, as he drove to the ministry, musing over the hours so recently pa.s.sed and striving to arrest them in their flight, to enjoy again their seductive joy and to squeeze as from a delicious fruit, all their intoxicating poetry, delight and fascination.
He closed his eyes. He saw Marianne again with her eyes veiled as he kissed her, he drank in the odor of her hair that fell like a sort of fair cover over the lace pillow. It seemed that he was permeated with her perfume. He breathed the air with wide-open nostrils to inhale it again, to recover its scent and preserve it. His whole frame trembled with emotion at the recollection of that lovely form that he had left whiter than the sheet of the bed, in the dim light that filtered through the opal-shaded lamp.
Then he thought that he must forget, and invent some tale for Adrienne.
Again he opened his eyes and trembled in spite of himself, as he saw, on both sides of the cab, workmen slowly trudging along the sidewalks with their hands in their pockets, their noses red, a wretched worn-out silk scarf about their necks and swinging on their arms the supply of food for the day, or again with their fingers numb with the cold, holding some journal in their hands in which they read as they marched along, the speech of ”Monsieur le Ministre de l'Interieur,” that magnificent speech not made during the night session as Sulpice had told Adrienne, but the day before yesterday, in broad day, when the majority, faithfully grouped about him, had applauded this phrase: _I, whose hours are consecrated to the amelioration of the lot of the poor and who can say with the poet,--I shall be pardoned for this feeling of vanity:_
”What I steal from my nights, I add to my days!”
Sulpice heard again the applause that he received. He saw those devoted hands reached out to him as he descended from the tribune; he again experienced a feeling of pride, and yet he felt dissatisfied with himself now that he saw the other hands, the servile hands of the applauders, hidden by the red, cold hands of a mason who held this speech between his h.o.r.n.y fingers.
Sulpice returned to the ministry, shaking himself as if to induce forgetfulness, busy, weary, and still,--eternally,--as if immovably fixed in an antechamber of Place Beauvau, he found the inevitable place-hunters, the hornets of ministries.
Vaudrey caused these urgent people, as well as some others, to be received by Warcolier, who asked nothing better than to make tools, to sow the seed of his clientage. Guy de Lissac and Ramel had simultaneously called Vaudrey's attention to the eagerness which Warcolier manifested in toying with popularity.
”He is not wholly devoted to you, is this gentleman who prefers every government!” said Guy.
”He will undermine you quietly!” added Ramel.
”I am satisfied of that. But I am not disturbed: I have the majority.