Part 32 (1/2)
About this time Hippolyte Ceres learned through a little scandalous newspaper (it is always through the newspapers that ministers are informed of the affairs of State) that the Prime Minister dined every evening with Mademoiselle Lysiane of the Folies Dramatiques, whose charm seemed to have made a great impression on him. Thenceforth Ceres took a gloomy joy in watching his wife. She came in every evening to dine or dress with an air of agreeable fatigue and the serenity that comes from enjoyment.
Thinking that she knew nothing, he sent her anonymous communications.
She read them at the table before him and remained still listless and smiling.
He then persuaded himself that she gave no heed to these vague reports, and that in order to disturb her it would be necessary to enable her to verify her lover's infidelity and treason for herself. There were at the Ministry a number of trustworthy agents charged with secret inquiries regarding the national defence. They were then employed in watching the spies of a neighbouring and hostile Power who had succeeded in entering the Postal and Telegraphic service. M. Ceres ordered them to suspend their work for the present and to inquire where, when, and how, the Minister of the Interior saw Mademoiselle Lysiane. The agents performed their missions faithfully and told the minister that they had several times seen the Prime Minister with a woman, but that she was not Mademoiselle Lysiane. Hippolyte Ceres asked them nothing further. He was right; the loves of Paul Visire and Lysiane were but an alibi invented by Paul Visire himself, with Eveline's approval, for his fame was rather inconvenient to her, and she sighed for secrecy and mystery.
They were not shadowed by the agents of the Ministry of Commerce alone.
They were also followed by those of the Prefect of Police, and even by those of the Minister of the Interior, who disputed with each other the honour of protecting their chief. Then there were the emissaries of several royalist, imperialist, and clerical organisations, those of eight or ten blackmailers, several amateur detectives, a mult.i.tude of reporters, and a crowd of photographers, who all made their appearance wherever these two took refuge in their perambulating love affairs, at big hotels, small hotels, town houses, country houses, private apartments, villas, museums, palaces, hovels. They kept watch in the streets, from neighbouring houses, trees, walls, stair-cases, landings, roofs, adjoining rooms, and even chimneys. The Minister and his friend saw with alarm all round their bed room, gimlets boring through doors and shutters, and drills making holes in the walls. A photograph of Madame Ceres in night attire b.u.t.toning her boots was the utmost that had been obtained.
Paul Visire grew impatient and irritable, and often lost his good humour and agreeableness. He came to the cabinet meetings in a rage and he, too, poured invectives upon General Debonnaire--a brave man under fire but a lax disciplinarian--and launched his sarcasms at against the venerable admiral Vivier des Murenes whose s.h.i.+ps went to the bottom without any apparent reason.
Fortune Lapersonne listened open-eyed, and grumbled scoffingly between his teeth:
”He is not satisfied with robbing Hippolyte Ceres of his wife, but he must go and rob him of his catchwords too.”
These storms were made known by the indiscretion of some ministers and by the complaints of the two old warriors, who declared their intention of flinging their portfolios at the beggar's head, but who did nothing of the sort. These outbursts, far from injuring the lucky Prime Minister, had an excellent effect on Parliament and public opinion, who looked on them as signs of a keen solicitude for the welfare of the national army and navy. The Prime Minister was the recipient of general approbation.
To the congratulations of the various groups and of notable personages, he replied with simple firmness: ”Those are my principles!” and he had seven or eight Socialists put in prison.
The session ended, and Paul Visire, very exhausted, went to take the waters. Hippolyte Ceres refused to leave his Ministry, where the trade union of telephone girls was in tumultuous agitation. He opposed it with an unheard of violence, for he had now become a woman-hater. On Sundays he went into the suburbs to fish along with his colleague Lapersonne, wearing the tall hat that never left him since he had become a Minister.
And both of them, forgetting the fish, complained of the inconstancy of women and mingled their griefs.
Hippolyte still loved Eveline and he still suffered. However, hope had slipped into his heart. She was now separated from her lover, and, thinking to win her back, he directed all his efforts to that end.
He put forth all his skill, showed himself sincere, adaptable, affectionate, devoted, even discreet; his heart taught him the delicacies of feeling. He said charming and touching things to the faithless one, and, to soften her, he told her all that he had suffered.
Crossing the band of his trousers upon his stomach.
”See,” said he, ”how thin I have got.”
He promised her everything he thought could gratify a woman, country parties, hats, jewels.
Sometimes he thought she would take pity on him.
She no longer displayed an insolently happy countenance. Being separated from Paul, her sadness had an air of gentleness. But the moment he made a gesture to recover her she turned away fiercely and gloomily, girt with her fault as if with a golden girdle.
He did not give up, making himself humble, suppliant, lamentable.
One day he went to Lapersonne and said to him with tears in his eyes:
”Will you speak to her?”
Lapersonne excused himself, thinking that his intervention would be useless, but he gave some advice to his friend.
”Make her think that you don't care about her, that you love another, and she will come back to you.”
Hippolyte, adopting this method, inserted in the newspapers that he was always to be found in the company of Mademoiselle Guinaud of the Opera.
He came home late or did not come home at all, a.s.sumed in Eveline's presence an appearance of inward joy impossible to restrain, took out of his pocket, at dinner, a letter on scented paper which he pretended to read with delight, and his lips seemed as in a dream to kiss invisible lips. Nothing happened. Eveline did not even notice the change.
Insensible to all around her, she only came out of her lethargy to ask for some louis from her husband, and if he did not give them she threw him a look of contempt, ready to upbraid him with the shame which she poured upon him in the sight of the whole world. Since she had loved she spent a great deal on dress. She needed money, and she had only her husband to secure it for her; she was so far faithful to him.
He lost patience, became furious, and threatened her with his revolver.