Then he thought that he must forget, and invent some tale for Adrienne.  Again he opened his eyes and trembled in spite of himself, as he saw, on both sides of the cab, workmen slowly trudging along the sidewalks with their hands in their pockets, their noses red, a wretched worn-out silk scarf about their necks and swinging on their arms the supply of food for the day, or again with their fingers numb with the cold, holding some journal in their hands in which they read as they marched along, the speech of “Monsieur le Ministre de l’Interieur,” that magnificent speech not made during the night session as Sulpice had told Adrienne, but the day before yesterday, in broad day, when the majority, faithfully grouped about him, had applauded this phrase:  I, whose hours are consecrated to the amelioration of the lot of the poor and who can say with the poet,—­I shall be pardoned for this feeling of vanity:

“What I steal from my nights, I add to my days!”

Sulpice heard again the applause that he received.  He saw those devoted hands reached out to him as he descended from the tribune; he again experienced a feeling of pride, and yet he felt dissatisfied with himself now that he saw the other hands, the servile hands of the applauders, hidden by the red, cold hands of a mason who held this speech between his horny fingers.

Sulpice returned to the ministry, shaking himself as if to induce forgetfulness, busy, weary, and still,—­eternally,—­as if immovably fixed in an antechamber of Place Beauvau, he found the inevitable place-hunters, the hornets of ministries.

Vaudrey caused these urgent people, as well as some others, to be received by Warcolier, who asked nothing better than to make tools, to sow the seed of his clientage.  Guy de Lissac and Ramel had simultaneously called Vaudrey’s attention to the eagerness which Warcolier manifested in toying with popularity.

“He is not wholly devoted to you, is this gentleman who prefers every government!” said Guy.

“He will undermine you quietly!” added Ramel.

“I am satisfied of that.  But I am not disturbed:  I have the majority.  Oh! faithful and compact.”

“Woman often changes,” muttered Ramel.

Guy was troubled about Vaudrey for another reason.  He vaguely suspected that Sulpice was neglecting Adrienne.  Political business, doubtless.  Vaudrey unquestionably loved his wife, who adored him and was herself adorable.  But he manifestly neglected her.

Lissac found them one day smilingly discussing a question that was greatly occupying the journalists:  divorce.  Apropos of a trifle, of a suit for separation that Adrienne had just read in the Gazette Tribunaux.  It referred to an adulterous husband, a pottery dealer in Rue Paradis, Monsieur Vauthier, the lover of a singer at a rather notorious cafe-concert, named Lea Thibault.  The wife had demanded a separation.  Adrienne had just read the pleadings.