His Excellency the Minister | Page 8

their bare arms, smiling and
twisting about, their satin-shod feet resting upon gray velvet footstools,
seemed to him, as they occupied the slanting floor, to move in a cloud
of dust, and to be robbed of all naturalness and freshness.
"And is this all?" the minister exclaimed almost involuntarily.
"What!" answered Granet, "you seem hard to please!"
Amongst all these girls, there had been manifested an expression of
mingled curiosity, coquetry and banter on Vaudrey's appearance in
their midst. His presence in the manager's box had been noticed and his
coming to the greenroom expected. Every one had hurried thither.
Sulpice was pointed out. He was the cynosure of all eyes. On the
divans beneath the mirror, some young, well-dressed, bald men,
surrounded--perhaps by chance--by laughing ballet-girls, now
half-concealed themselves behind the voluminous skirts of the girls
about them, and bent their heads, thus rendering their baldness more
visible, just as a woman buries her nose in her bouquet to avoid
recognizing an acquaintance.
Vaudrey, observing this ruse, smiled a slight, sarcastic smile. He
recognized behind the shielding petticoats, some of his prefects, those
from the environs of Paris, come from Versailles and Chartres, or from
some sub-prefectures, and gallantly administering the affairs of France
from the heart of the greenroom. Amiable functionaries of the Ministry
of Fine Arts also came here to study æstheticism between the acts.
All members of the different régimes seemed to be fraternizing in
ironical promiscuousness here, and Vaudrey in a whisper drew Granet's
attention to this. Old beaux of the time of the Empire, with dyed and
waxed moustaches, with dyed or grizzled hair flattened on their temples,
their flabby cheeks cut across by stiff collars as jelly is cut by a knife,
were hobnobbing, fat and lean, with young fops of the Republic, who
with their sharp eyes, wide-open nostrils, their cheeks covered with

brown or flaxen down, their hair carefully brushed, or already bald,
seemed quite surprised to find themselves in such a place, and chattered
and cackled among themselves like beardless conscripts, perverted and
immoral but with some scruples still remaining and less cunning than
these well-dressed old roués standing firmly at their posts like veterans.
"The licentiates and the pensioners," whispered Vaudrey.
"You have a quickness of sight quite Parisian, your Excellency,"
returned Granet.
"There are Parisians in the Provinces, my dear Granet," replied Sulpice
with a heightened complexion, his blood flowing more rapidly than
usual, due to emotions at once novel and gay.
"Ah! your Excellency," exclaimed a fat, animated man with hair and
whiskers of quite snowy whiteness, and smiling as he spoke, "what in
the world brought you here?"
He approached Vaudrey, bowing but not at all obsequiously, with the
air of good humor due to a combination of wealth and embonpoint. Fat
and rich, in perfect health, and carrying his sixty years with the
lightness of forty, Molina--Molina the "Tumbler" as he was
nicknamed--spent his afternoons on the Bourse and his evenings in the
greenroom of the ballet.
He had a small interest in the theatre, but a large one in the coryphées,
in a paternal way, his white hair giving him the right to be respected
and his crowns the right to respect nothing. Beginning life very low
down, and now enjoying a lofty position, the fat Molina haunted the
Bourse and the greenroom of the Opéra. He glutted himself with all the
earliest delicacies of the season, like a man who when young, has not
always had enough to satisfy hunger.
Pictures that were famous, women of fashion, statues of marble and fair
flesh, he must have them all. He collected, without any taste whatever,
costly paintings, rare objects; he bought without love, girls who were
not wholly mercenary. At a pinch he found them, taking pleasure in

parading in his coupé, around the lake or at the races, some recruit in
vice, and in watching the crowd that at once eagerly surrounded her,
simply because she had been the mistress of the fat Molina. He had in
his youth at Marseilles, in the Jewish quarter of the town, sold old
clothes to the Piedmontese and sailors in port. Now it was his delight to
behold the Parisians of the Boulevard or the clubs buy as sentimental
rags the cast-off garments of his passion.
"You in the greenroom of the ballet, your Excellency?" continued the
financier. "Ah! upon my word, I shall tell Madame Vaudrey."
Sulpice smiled, the mere name of his wife sounded strange to his ears
in a place like this. It seemed to him that in speaking of her, she was
being dragged into a strange circle, and one which did not belong to her.
He had felt the same only a few days before upon his entrance into the
cabinet, on seeing