His Excellency the Minister | Page 8

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 ?stheticism between the acts.
All members of the different r��gimes 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 rou��s 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 coryph��es, 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 Op��ra. 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 coup��, 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 a report of his marriage, his dwelling minutely described, and a pen portrait of that Adrienne, who was the passion of his life.
"After all," continued Molina, "Madame Vaudrey must get used to it. The Op��ra! Why, it is a part of politics! The key of many a situation is to be found in the greenroom!"
The financier laughed merrily, a laugh that had the ring of the Turcarets' jingling crowns.
He went on to explain to his Excellency all the little mysteries of the greenroom, as a man quite at home in this little Parisian province, and lightly, by a word, a gesture even, he gave the minister