and very distinguished one presided over by Madame Evan, and those others quieter, more sober—if a little Calvinistic—of the select Alsatian colony.
Sabine Marsy must have had a great deal of tact, force of character and perseverance in carrying out her plans, to have reached this point, more difficult to her, moreover, than it would have been to any other, as she had no political backing whatever. Her connection with society was entirely through the world of artists. Many of these, however, had brought to her salon some of the Athenians of the political world, connoisseurs, good conversationalists, handsome men, who freely declared with Vaudrey, that a republic could not exist without the assistance of women, that to women Orleanism was due, and those charming fellows had made Madame Marsy's hospitable salon the fashion.
Besides it is easy enough in Paris to have a salon if one knows how to give dinners. Some squares of Bristol board engraved by Stern and posted to good addresses, will attract with an almost disconcerting facility, a crowd of visitors who will swarm around a festive board like bees around a honeycomb.
Paris is a town of guests.
Then too, Madame Marsy was herself so captivating. She was always on the watch for some new celebrity, as a game-keeper watches for a hare that he means to shoot presently. One of her daily tasks was to read the Journal Officiel in order to discover in the orator of to-day the Minister of State of to-morrow. She was always well informed beforehand which artist or sculptor would be likely to win the medal of honor at the Salon, and was the first to invite such a one and to let him know that it was she who had discovered him. In literature, she encouraged the new school, liking it for the attention it attracted. It was also her aim to give to her salon a literary as well as a political color. Artists and statesmen elbowed one another there.
For some days now, she had thought of giving a reception which was to be a surprise to her friends. She had heard of Japanese exhibitions being given at other houses. She herself was determined to give a soirée exotique. It happened just then that a friend of Guy de Lissac, Monsieur José de Rosas, a great lounger, had returned from a journey around the world. What a piece of good fortune! She too had known De Rosas formerly, and if she could only get him to consent, she could announce a most attractive soirée: the travels of such a man as Monsieur de Rosas: a rare treat!
"The Comtesse d'Horville gives literary matinées," said Sabine, quite on fire with the idea; "Madame Evan has poems and tragedies read at her receptions, I shall have lecturers and savants, since that is fashionable."
And what a woman wishes, a grandee of Spain willed, it appeared. Monsieur de Rosas decided, egged on a little by Guy de Lissac, to come and relate to Madame Marsy's friends his adventures in strange lands. The invitations to the soirée were already out.
Madame Marsy had also obtained a promise from three Ministers of State that they would be present. She had spread the news far and wide. A little more and she would have had their names printed on the programmes for the evening. She had had a success quite unlooked for—a promise from Monsieur Pichereau to be present—from Pichereau, that starched Puritan, and all the newspapers had announced his intention. When suddenly—stupidly—a cabinet crisis had arisen at the most unexpected moment, a useless crisis. Granet had interpellated Pichereau with a view to succeed him, and Pichereau fell without Granet succeeding him. A Ministry had been hastily formed, with Collard at its head, and Sulpice Vaudrey as Minister of the Interior in place of Pichereau! And all those Ministers of State who had promised to be present to hear Monsieur de Rosas at Madame Marsy's, fell from power with Pichereau.
"Such a Cabinet!" Sabine had exclaimed in a rage. "A Cabinet of pasteboard capuchins."
"A Ministry of pasteboard, certainly," Guy had answered.
Madame Marsy was quite beside herself. Granet indeed! Why could he not have waited a day or two longer before upsetting the whole administration. It would have been quite as easy to have overthrown Pichereau a day after her soirée as a few days before. Was Granet then, in a great hurry to be made minister? Oh! her opinion of him had always been a correct one! An ambitious schemer. He had triumphed, or at least he had expected to triumph. And the consequence was that Sabine found herself without a Minister to introduce to her guests. It was as if Granet had purposely designed this.
No, she did not know a single member of the new Cabinet. She had spoken once to the President of the council, Collard, a former advocate of Nantes, at a reception at the Élysée. Collard had even, in passing by her, torn off a morsel of the lace of her flounce. How charmingly, too, he had excused himself! But this acquaintanceship with him would hardly justify her in asking him brusquely to honor her with his presence at this soirée upon which her social success depended.
Her intimate friend, pretty Madame Gerson, who assisted her in doing the honors of her salon until the time when she herself would have a rival salon and take Sabine's guests away from her, sought in vain to comfort her by assuring her that Pichereau would be sure to come. He had promised to do so. He was a sincere man, and his word could be relied on. He would, moreover, bring his former colleagues from the Departments of Public Instruction, and Post and Telegraph. He had promised. Oh! yes, Pichereau! Pichereau, however, mattered very little to Sabine now! Ex-ministers, indeed! she could always have enough of them. It was not that kind that she wanted. She did not care about her salon being called the Invalides as that of a rival was called the Salon des Refuseès. No, certainly not, that was something she would never consent to.
Granet's impatience had upset all her plans.
So Madame Marsy, side by side in her box with Madame Gerson, whose dark, brilliant beauty set off her own fair beauty, had listened with a bored and sulky manner to the first act of L'Africaine, while Monsieur Gerson conversed timidly, half under his breath, with Guy de Lissac, who made the fourth occupant of the box.
At the end of the second act, however, Lissac suddenly caught sight of Vaudrey's smiling countenance beside Granet's waxed moustaches in the manager's box.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, "there is Vaudrey!"
Madame Marsy, however, had already caught sight of him. She turned her opera-glass upon the new Cabinet Minister, whose carefully arranged blonde beard was parted in the middle and spread out in two light tufts over his white necktie, his silky moustaches turned jauntily upwards against his fleshy cheeks. Sabine, continuing to look at the newcomer through her glass, saw as he moved within the shadow of the box, this man of forty, with a very agreeable and still youthful face, and as he leaned over the edge of the box to look at the audience, she noted that he had a slight bald spot on the top of his skull between the fair tufts that adorned the sides of his head.
"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, "I thought that he was a dark man."
"No, no," answered Lissac, "on the contrary, he was a fair, handsome youth when we both studied law here in Paris together."
Madame Marsy, as if she had been touched by an electric spark, turned quickly round on her chair to look at Guy, displaying to him as she did so, a lovely face, surmounting the most beautiful shoulders imaginable.
"What! you know the minister so intimately?"
"Very intimately."
"Then, my dear Lissac, you can do me the greatest favor. No, I do not ask you to do it, I insist on it."
Over the pretty Andalusian features of Madame Gerson, a mocking smile played.
"I have guessed it," she exclaimed.
"And so have I," said Lissac. "You wish me to present the new Minister of the Interior to you? You have
