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It was here that Marianne, in carrying out her determination, entered with a high head, resolved to cast off her sombre misery or to sink, her plans defeated. The Dujarrier had greatly assisted her in taking up her abode, building her hopes on Mademoiselle Kayser's beauty as on some temporary profitable investment. As the old woman looked at her, she shook her head. Marianne had to be quick.
As chance offered, she read them all eagerly and examined with curiosity the pictures drawn by an Eisen or a Moreau, depicting passionate kisses exchanged under arbors, where behind curtains, short silk skirts appeared in a rumpled state. She had rapidly reached womanhood without Kayser's perceiving that she could comprehend and judge for herself.
He observed with pleasure that something like a joyful beam gleamed in Mademoiselle Kayser's gray eyes. She also doubtless thought that it was desirable to take advantage of the occasion, to seize and cling to the opportunity. "Then it is official?" she asked. "Not yet. But it is certain." What could Marianne hope for?
He would have felt prouder to have heard them say: "That is Mademoiselle Kayser's lover!" than: "That is Monsieur Vaudrey, the minister!" He felt a kind of annoyance on returning to Place Beauvau. He was still with Marianne. He recalled her attitudes, her smile, the tone of her voice.
He did not dream of Mademoiselle Kayser's coming in contact with courtesans. In the tiny, virtuous room in Rue Cuvier, Rosas thought that Marianne was in her true surroundings.
Profound ennui at once overcame him, while Marianne, in a happy frame of mind, on returning to Kayser's studio, reviewed the incidents of that evening, recalling Vaudrey's restless smile, and seeming again to hear Rosas's confidences, while she thought: "He spoke to me of the past almost in the same terms as Lissac.
The frightful, practical questions, the daily necessities, were lost sight of by this man who was burdened with the governmental question of France. Again, he never asked himself the source of Marianne's luxury. He delighted in it without thinking of analyzing anything or of knowing anything, and this ingenuously. Mademoiselle Kayser's first word must necessarily awaken him to the situation.
One of those talentless painters, who ventilated at Kayser's house, not merely their contemptuous theories, but also their down-at-the-heel shoes? To fall from one Bohemian condition to another, from exigency to want, to be the wife of one of these greasy-haired dreamers? Her whole nature shuddered in revolt at this idea.
She had felt the influence formerly of this ready, keen and daring intelligence. She troubled herself but little about Marianne's past. Kayser's niece was received everywhere, and had not Kayser decided to accompany her? He followed in the rear of the young girl. People had not observed him.
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