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Her story was a sad one of a wicked childhood, ignorant youth, wasted early years, melancholy, sins, outbursts of faith, falls, returns of love, pride, virtue, restitution through repentance, scourged hopes, dead confidences, the entire heartrending existence of a woman who had left more of her heart than of the flesh of her body clinging to the nails of her calvaries: all, though ordinary and commonplace, was so cruel in its truth that it appealed at once to Sulpice's heart, a heart bursting with pity, to that credulous man who was attracted by all that seemed to him so exquisitely painful and new about this woman.
When she heard the crushing of the sand by Sulpice's footsteps as he approached her with timid haste, she turned abruptly. Under her small black veil, drawn tightly over her face, and whose dots looked like so many patches on her face, Vaudrey at first observed Marianne's almost sickly paleness, then her suddenly joyous glance. A furtive blush mounted even to the young girl's cheek.
But from the minister's first words, although the banker could not get to the point, intimidated as he was by Sulpice's honest look, it was clear that Vaudrey surmised some repugnant suggestions in the hesitating words of this man. What! Molina hesitating? He did not go straight to the point, squarely, according to his custom, Molina the illustrious Tumbler?
In the confusion attending the attack on the buffet and in the presence of the crowd that formed a half-circle round the minister, it was not possible for him to commit himself too much; and the conversation, half-drowned by the noise of voices, was carried on by fits and starts; but in order to make themselves understood, Vaudrey and Marianne drew nearer each other and found themselves occasionally almost pressed against each other, so that the light breath of this woman and the scent of new-mown hay that she exhaled, wafted over Sulpice's face.
She was quite pale as she looked over Sulpice's shoulder and saw him rapidly write several lines on the paper, then she spelled: "Adolphe Gochard Go-go-c-h-ar-d." "There it is!" he said, as he handed her the sheet of paper. "I wish to know what is thereon, or I would never consent." She took the paper between her fingers as if to tear it to pieces. Sulpice prevented her.
But there, still in the presence of those people, always in full view, she dared not. She carefully and anxiously watched Sulpice's mortified countenance. Since his entry on his ministerial functions, this was the first occasion, probably, that he had been so preoccupied. "There is something the matter with you, is there not, my dear?" "No nothing Besides "
The session of the Chamber was to furnish him the most cruel deception. Granet had most skilfully prepared his plan of attack. Vaudrey's ministry was threatened on all sides by lines of approach laid out without Sulpice's knowledge. Granet had promised, here and there, new situations, or had undertaken to confirm the old.
The etiquette for the toilet is not very strict, but it is, however, in good taste to appear dressed as for a ceremonious call. For women, the toilet should be simple and the gloves new." She laughed as she rested almost naked in Sulpice's arms, and repeated, looking into his eyes: "A simple toilet!" "And again, listen!" she said, as she resumed the book.
With an involuntary movement or perhaps, after all, it was a shrewdly calculated one she almost grazed Sulpice's cheek and lips when she extended her round and firm arm, and Sulpice, who was somewhat bewildered, was severely tempted, like some collegian, to kiss it in passage.
Your Excellency will pardon the children, he continued, bobbing round me, as I took the old seat on the three-legged stool before the hearth. 'The night is cold and there is no fire in your room. While he ran to and fro with my cloak and bags, little Gil, to whom I had stood at St Sulpice's, borrowing ten crowns the same day, I remember, came shyly to play with my sword hilt.
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