“Eh! my poor friend, you have already allowed it,” said the veteran.

He had risen, Vaudrey had taken his hat, and he said to the minister, leaning on his arm, with gentle familiarity, as he led him to the door: 

“Power is like a kite, but there is always some rascal who holds the thread.”

“Come, come,” said Vaudrey, “you are a pessimist!”

“I confess that Schopenhauer is not unpleasant to me—­sometimes.”

Thereupon they separated, after a cordial grasp of the hand, and Denis Ramel resumed his pipe and his seat at the window corner, while the minister carried away from this interview, as if he had not already been in the habit of a frank interchange of opinions, an agreeable though perhaps anxious impression.

He felt the need of mentally digesting this conversation:  the idea of going back, on this beautiful February day, to his official apartments did not enter his mind.  He was overcome by a springtime hunger.

“To the Bois!  Around the Lake!” he said to the coachman, as he re-entered his carriage.

The air was as balmy as on an afternoon in May.  Vaudrey lowered the carriage window to breathe freely.  This exterior boulevard that he rolled along was full of merry pedestrians.  One would have thought it was a Sunday afternoon.  Old people, sitting on benches, were enjoying the early sun.

Sulpice looked at them, his brain busy with Ramel’s warnings.  He had just called him a pessimist, but inwardly he acknowledged that the old stager, who had remained a philosopher, spoke the truth.  Woman!  Why had Ramel spoken to him of woman?

This half-disquieting thought speedily left Sulpice, attracted as he was by the joyous movement, the delight of the eyes which presented itself to his view.

In thus journeying to the Bois, he felt a delightful emotion of solitude and forgetfulness.  He gradually recovered his self-possession and became himself once more.  He drew his breath more freely in that long avenue where, at this hour of the day, few persons passed.  There was no petition to listen to, no salutation to acknowledge.

Ah! how easy it would be to be happy, to sweetly enjoy the Paris that fascinated him instead of burning away his life!  Just now, at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe, he had seen people dressed in blouses, sleeping like Andalusian beggars before the walls of the Alhambra.  Little they cared for the fever of success!  Perhaps they were wise.

An almost complete solitude reigned over the Bois.  Vaudrey saw, as he glanced between the copsewood, now growing green, only a few isolated pedestrians, some English governesses in charge of scampering children, the dark green uniform of a guard or the blue blouse of a man who trimmed the trees.

The coachman drove slowly and Sulpice, enjoying the intoxication of this early sun, lowered the shade and breathed the keen air while he repeated to himself that peaceful joy was within the reach of everybody at Paris.