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As he passed along, he saw Guy de Lissac sitting on a chair upholstered in garnet satin, his right hand resting on the gilded back and chatting with Adrienne who was fanning herself leisurely.
"The Allies, sir," said the Major, with some heat, "would be guilty of no such barbarous action." But de Lissac shook his head, with the same sad smile. "You do not know, Major," said he. "Do you suppose that I should have fled to Scotland and changed my name if I had not more to fear than my comrades who remained in Paris? I was anxious to live, for I was sure that my little man would come back.
I would not answer for your long employing such methods of government." "Come, are you mad? What does it all signify?" asked the minister, in astonishment. He appeared as if he really did not understand. It was clear that he did not know what Guy meant. "Don't you read the papers, then?" Lissac asked him. "I read the reports of the Director of the Press."
Marianne had only very occasionally met Lissac, but for some time she had suspected him of being secretly hostile to her. Guy bore her a grudge for having taken Sulpice away from Adrienne. He pitied Madame Vaudrey and perhaps his deep compassion was blended with another sentiment in which tenderness had taken the place of a more modified interest.
Nevertheless, the previous evening, the agents of police had come to the apartments in Rue d'Aumale and had searched everything, moved, tried and probed everything. Evidently they were in quest of papers. "Papers?" cried Lissac. "Her letter, parbleu!" He was no longer in doubt. The delicate, dreaded hand of Marianne was at the bottom of all that.
And was she the woman Guy knew her so well! to return thus, only to conjure up the vanished recollections, to communicate the secret of her present sorrows and to permit Lissac to inhale the odor of a departed perfume, more airy than the blue smoke-wreaths that escaped from her cigarette?
The uncle said nothing, regretted that he had met Lissac, and contented himself with stammering from time to time: "She has done that? What! she has done that? Ah! the rogue." "And what do you say about it, you, Simon Kayser?" "I? What do I say about it? Why " Little by little he recovered his sang-froid, looking at matters from the lofty heights of his artist's philosophy.
Marianne laughed. "Come, but you are idyllic, my dear Guy," said she, looking at Lissac. "Melancholy, nothing more." "Let us say elegiac. Those little fits have come upon you rather late in the day, have they not? A little valerian and quinine, made up into silver-coated pills, is a sovereign remedy." "You are making fun of me." "No," she said.
And this devilish Rosas, who is mad enough over her to tie himself to her and to overlook everything he ought to know, would be capable of marrying her all the same! Much good may it do him!" "But, tell me," continued Lissac, whose cutting tone suddenly became serious, "have you read the paper?" "No! What is there in it?"
Besides, the duke, who was madly in love and whose desire was daily whetted by Marianne, would have been capable, as Lissac said, of accepting everything and forgetting all, so that he might clasp the woman in his arms.
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