“Come—­come—­have done with it!  Oh! the big boy!—­You will leave nothing for another time!”

He left the house, his head was swimming, and he was permeated with strong odors.  He flung to the coachman an address half-way to the ministry.

“Place de la Madeleine.”

He shut his eyes to picture Marianne.

As soon as she was alone, her lips curled as a smile of satisfied vanity played over them.  She began by reading the lines that he had so hastily written:  I guarantee to Monsieur Adolphe Gochard a bill of exchange at three months, if he agrees to advance that amount to Mademoiselle Dujarrier who will hand it to Mademoiselle Marianne Kayser.

“Well! the Dujarrier was right,” she said; “a woman’s scheming works easier than a sinapism.”

Then, after a slight toss of the head and still smiling, she opened one of the drawers of the small Inaltia cabinet and slipped into it the satin paper to which the minister had affixed his signature and which she had carefully folded four times.  She considered that autograph worth a thousand times more gold than the few pieces that remained scattered about the drawer, like so many waifs of luxury.  Then, slowly returning to her armchair, she sank into it, clasping her two hands behind her head and gazing at the ceiling, her thoughts wandered in dreams—­a crowd of little ambitious thoughts passed through her brain like drifting clouds across the sky—­and while with the top of her foot she again beat her nervous march on the hem of her petticoat, her lips, the lips whose fever had been taken away by Vaudrey, still preserved the strange turn of the corners that indicated the unsatiated person who sees, however, his opportunity arrive.

She was as fully mistress of herself as Vaudrey was embarrassed and unbalanced.  He seemed to hear voices laughing and singing within him and his brain was inflamed with joy.  Before him opened the immense prospects of his dreams.  Glorious as it was to be all-powerful, it was better to be loved.  Everything whirled about within his brain, he thought he still heard Denis Ramel talking to him, and in a twinkling, Marianne’s smiling face appeared, and with a kiss she interrupted the old journalist’s sallies, and Sulpice saw her, too, as it were half-fainting, through the window of her fiacre, like a pastel half-hidden beneath the glass.

He was delighted to walk about for a moment when the carriage had set him down on the asphalted space that surrounds the Madeleine.  The walk was beneficial.  He raised his head instinctively, expanded his lungs with the air, and threw out his chest.  He thought that people looked at him attentively.  Some passers-by turned round to see him.  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.  Public matters now fastened their collar on him, there were signatures to be subscribed, reports to be read, telegrams, routine work; in a word, vulgar professional duties were to be resumed.  He did not at once go to his cabinet.  Warcolier, the Under Secretary of State, received and despatched ordinary matters.