“England has paid up; there are your milliards,” maliciously whispered Louise in Mme. Sidonie’s ear.
And Mme. Michelin, her mouth slightly parted with enraptured desire, threw back her alme’s veil, fondled the gold with glittering eyes, while the group of serious men went into transports. M. Toutin-Laroche, beaming all over, whispered a few words in the ear of the baron, whose face was becoming mottled with yellow patches. But the Mignon and Charrier couple, less discreet, said with coarse candour:
“Damn it! there’s enough there to pull down all Paris and build it up again.”
The remark seemed a deep one to Saccard, who began to suspect that the Mignon and Charrier pair made fun of people under the guise of idiocy. When the curtains once more fell to, and the piano finished its triumphal march with a loud tumult of notes thrown pellmell, like last shovelfuls of crown-pieces, the applause burst forth louder, more prolonged.
Meantime, in the middle of the tableau, the minister, accompanied by his secretary, M. de Saffré, had appeared at the door of the drawingroom. Saccard, who was impatiently looking out for his brother, wanted to rush forward to welcome him. But the latter, with a movement of the hand, begged him not to stir. And he slowly approached the group of serious men. When the curtains had closed, and he was recognized, a long whisper travelled round the drawingroom, all heads looked round: the minister counterbalanced the success of Les Amours du Beau Narcisse et de la Nymphe Écho.
“You are a poet, monsieur préfet,” he said, smiling, to M. Hupel de la Noue. “You once published a volume of verse, Les Volubilis, I believe?… I see the cares of administration have not drained your imagination.”
The préfet detected, in this compliment, the sting of an epigram. The sudden advent of his chief disconcerted him, the more so as, on giving a glance to see if his dress was in order, he noticed on the sleeve of his coat the little white hand, which he did not dare to brush off. He bowed, stammered.
“Really,” continued the minister, addressing M. Toutin-Laroche, the Baron Gouraud, the other personages present, “all that gold was a wonderful spectacle…. We should be able to do great things if M. Hupel de la Noue would coin money for us.”
This was, in ministerial language, the same remark as that of the Mignon and Charrier couple. Then M. Toutin-Laroche and the others paid their court, rung the changes on the minister’s last phrase: the Empire had done wonders already; it was not gold that was wanting, thanks to the great experience of the government; never had France stood so high in the councils of Europe; and the gentlemen ended by uttering such platitudes that the minister himself changed the conversation. He listened to them with his head erect, the corners of his mouth a little raised, which gave to his fat, white, cleanshaven face an expression of dubiousness and smiling disdain.
Saccard manœuvred so as to find an excuse to change the subject and to make his announcement of the marriage of Maxime and Louise. He assumed an air of great familiarity, and his brother, with mock geniality, was goodnatured enough to help him by pretending great affection for him. He was really the superior of the two, with his steady gaze, his evident contempt for petty rascality, his broad shoulders, which, with a shrug, could have floored all that crew. When at last the marriage came into question, he became charming, he let it be understood that he had his wedding-present ready; he was so good as to talk of Maxime’s being appointed an auditor to the Council of State. He went so far as twice to repeat to his brother, with an air of absolute good-fellowship:
“Tell your son I will be his witness.”
M. de Mareuil crimsoned with delight. Saccard was congratulated. M. Toutin-Laroche offered himself as a second witness. Then, suddenly, they began to talk of divorce. A member of the opposition, said M. Haffner, had just had “the lamentable audacity” to defend this social scandal. And every one protested. Their sense of propriety found vent in profound observations. M. Michelin smiled faintly upon the minister, while the Mignon and Charrier couple noted with astonishment that the collar of his dress-coat was worn.
Meanwhile M. Hupel de la Noue remained ill at ease, leaning against the armchair of the Baron Gouraud, who had contented himself with silently shaking hands with the minister. The poet dared not leave the spot. An indefinable feeling, the dread of appearing ridiculous, the fear of losing the good graces of his chief detained him, despite his furious desire to go and pose the ladies on the stage for the last tableau. He waited for some happy remark to occur to him and restore him to favour. But he could think of nothing. He felt more and more embarrassed when he perceived M. de Saffré; he took his arm, hooked himself on to him as to a live-saving plank. The young man had just arrived, he was a fresh victim.
“Haven’t you heard what the marquise said?” asked the préfet.
But he was so perturbed that he no longer knew how to put the story spicily. He floundered.
“I said to her, ‘You have a charming costume’; and she replied….”
“‘I have a much prettier one underneath,’“ quietly added M. de Saffré. “It’s old, my dear sir, very old.”
M. Hupel de la Noue looked at him in consternation. The repartee was an old one, and he was just about still more deeply to penetrate into his commentary on the candour of this cry from the heart!
“Old,” replied the secretary, “old as the hills: Mme. d’Espanet has already said it twice at the Tuileries.”
This was the last straw. What did the Préfet care now for the minister, for the whole drawingroom? He turned to go towards the stage, when the piano played a prelude, in a sad tone, with the trembling of notes that weep; then the plaintive strain expanded, dragged on at length, and the curtains parted. M. Hupel de la Noue, who had already half disappeared, returned to the drawingroom when he heard the soft grating of the curtain-rings. He was pale, exasperated; he made a violent effort to keep himself from apostrophizing the ladies. They had posed themselves without him! It must have been that little d’Espanet woman who had egged them on to hasten the changes of dress and dispense with his assistance. It was all wrong, it was worth nothing at all!
He returned, mumbling inarticulate words. He looked at the stage, shrugging his shoulders, muttering:
“Echo is too near the edge…. And Narcissus’s leg, it’s not dignified, not dignified in the least ….”
The Mignon and Charrier couple, who had drawn near in order to hear “the explanation,” ventured to ask him “What the young man and the young girl were doing, lying down on the ground.” But he made no reply, he refused to explain his poem any further; and as the contractors insisted:
“Why, it no longer concerns me, since those ladies choose to hurt my neck so.”
The piano sobbed softly. On the stage, a glade, into which the electric ray threw a sheet of sunlight, revealed a vista of foliage. It was an ideal glade, with blue trees, big yellow and red flowers, that rose as high as the oaks. There, on a grassy mound, lay Venus and Plutus, side by side, surrounded by nymphs who had hastened from the neighbouring thickets to serve as their escort. There were daughters of the trees, daughters of the springs, daughters of the mountains, all the laughing, naked divinities of the forest. And the god and goddess triumphed, punished the indifference of the proud one who had scorned them, while the group of nymphs looked on curiously and with pious affright at the vengeance of Olympus in the foreground. There the drama was unfolded. The beauteous Narcissus, lying on the margin of a brook that came down from the back of the stage, was contemplating himself in the limpid mirror; and realism had been carried so far that a strip of real looking-glass had been placed at the bottom of the brook. But he had already ceased to be the free stripling, the forest wanderer. Death surprised him in the midst of his rapt admiration of his own image, Death enervated him, and Venus, with outstretched finger, like a fairy in a transformation-scene, hurled the fatal doom at his head.