as solemn and proper in his ordinary demeanor as a Sunday-school tract. Sulpice could not refrain from crying out merrily: "Bless me! Monsieur Pichereau!"
The other shook his butter-colored skull as if he had suddenly received a stinging blow on it with a switch, and his red face became crimson-hued at the sight of Sulpice, his successor in office, standing before him, politely holding out to him his two gloved hands.
Guy de Lissac was no longer laughing.
Their two Excellencies found themselves face to face at the foot of the greenroom staircase, in the midst of a crowd of brahmins, dancers, negresses, and female supernumeraries; two Excellencies meeting there; one smiling, the other grimacing beneath the glance of this curious, shrewd little world.
"Ah! I have caught you, my dear colleague," cried Sulpice, very much amused at Pichereau's embarrassed air, his coat buttoned close like a Quaker's and his little eyes blinking behind his spectacles, and looking as sheepish as a sacristan caught napping.
"Me?" stammered Pichereau. "Me? But my dear Minister, it's you—yes, you whom I came expressly to seek!"
"Here?" said Vaudrey.
"Yes, here!"
"Really?"
"I had something to say to you—I—yes, I wanted—"
The unlucky Pichereau mechanically pulled and jerked at his waistcoat, then assuming a dignified, grave air, he whistled and hesitated, and finally stammered:
"I wished to speak with you—yes—to consult with you upon a matter of grave importance—concerning Protestant communities."
Sulpice could not restrain his laughter.
Pichereau, with his look of a Calvinistic preacher, was throwing from behind his spectacles glowing looks in the direction where Marie Launay stood listening to and laughing at the badinage of Molina. Some newspaper reporters, scenting a handy paragraph, came sauntering up to overhear some fragment of the conversation between the minister of yesterday and him of to-day.
Guy de Lissac stood carelessly by, secretly very much amused at Pichereau, who did not move, but rubbing his hands nervously together was trying to appear at ease, yet by his sour smile at his successor allowing it to be plainly seen how gladly he would have strangled Vaudrey.
"My dear colleague," said Sulpice, gayly, "we will talk elsewhere about your communities. This is hardly the place. Non est hic locus! Good-bye!"
"Good-bye, your Excellency," replied Pichereau with forced politeness.
Vaudrey drew Lissac away, saying with a suppressed laugh:
"Oh! oh! the Quaker! He has laid down his portfolio, but he has kept the key to the greenroom, it seems."
"It would appear," replied Guy, "that the door leading into the greenroom may open to scenes of consolation for fallen greatness. The blue eyes of Marie Launay always serve as a sparadrap to a fallen minister!"
"Was the fat Molina right? To lose the votes of the majority is perhaps the malady of the knee of ministers," said Vaudrey merrily.
He laughed again, very much amused at the irritable, peevish yet cringing attitude of Pichereau, the Genevan doctrinaire, who sought consolation in the greenroom of the ballet, whilst his five or six daughters sat at home, probably reading some chaste English romance, or practising sacred music within the range of the green spectacles of their governess.
"But!" said he gayly, "to fall from power is nothing, provided one falls into the arms of ballet-girls."
Part First Chapter I
Molina burst out laughing … when he ran his eye over the list and found accompanying the names of ballet-dancers and members of the chorus, the distinguished particles of some habitués.
II
Madame Marsy was awaiting Guy de Lissac's return from the greenroom. From the moment she caught sight of Vaudrey standing within the range of her opera-glasses, she was seized with the eager desire to make him an habitué of her salon, the new salon that had just been launched. Madame Marsy was bitten by that tarantula whose bite makes modern society move as if afflicted with Saint Vitus's dance. A widow, rich and still young, very much admired, she had set herself to play the rôle of a leader in society to pass away the time. She was one of those women forever passing before the reporters' note-book, as others pass in front of a photographic apparatus. Of her inner life, however, very little was known to the public. But the exact shade of her hair, the color of her eyes, the cut of her gowns, the address of her tradesmen, the menu of her dinners, the programme of her concerts, the names of her guests, the visitors to her salon, the address of her mansion, were all familiar to every one, and Madame Marsy was daily reported by the chroniclers to the letter, painted, dressed and undressed.
There was some romantic gossip whispered about her. It was said that she had formerly led Philippe Marsy, the artist, a hard life. This artist was the painter of Charity, the picture so much admired at the Luxembourg, where it hangs between a Nymph by Henner and a Portrait of a Lady by Carolus Duran. She was pretty, free, and sufficiently rich since the sale of the contents of Philippe Marsy's studio. His slightest sketches had fetched enormous sums under Monsieur Pillet's hammer at the Hôtel Drouot, and Sabine after an appropriate interval of mourning, opened her salon.
Solitary, though surrounded by friends, she created no jealousy among her admirers, whose homage she received with perfect equanimity, as if become weary and desirous of a court but not of a favorite. She had a son at college who was growing up; he, however, was rarely to be met with in his mother's little hôtel in the Boulevard Malesherbes. This pale, slender youth in his student's uniform would sometimes steal furtively up the staircase to pay his mother a visit as a stranger might have done, never staying long, however, but hurrying off again to rejoin an old woman who waited at the corner of the street and who would take him by the arm and walk away with him—Madame Marsy, his grandmother.
It was the grandmother who was bringing up the boy. She and a kind-hearted fellow, François Charrière, a sculptor, who as he said himself, was nothing of a genius, but who, however, designed models and advantageously sold them to the manufacturers of lamps in the Rue Saint-Louis au Marais. It was Charrière who, in fulfilment of a vow made to his friend Marsy, acted as guardian to the boy.
Nobody in Paris now remembered anything about Philippe Marsy. In the course of time, all the little rumors are hushed in the roar and rattle of Parisian life. Only some semi-flattering rumors were connected with Sabine's name, together with some mysterious reminiscences. Moreover, she had the special attraction of a hostess who imparts to her salon the peculiar charm and flavor of unceremonious hospitality. One was only obliged to wear a white cravat about his throat, he did not have to starch his wits.
Only very recently had Sabine Marsy's salon acquired the reputation of being an easy-going one, where one was sure of a welcome, a sort of rendezvous where every one could be found as in the corridor of a theatre on the night of a first appearance, or on the sidewalk of a boulevard; a salon well-filled, that could
