Milk-white reflections seemed to play on her shoulders and Sulpice never forgot those ardent visions that followed him, clung to him, thrust themselves before his gaze and into his recollections, never leaving him, either at the Chamber, the Council Board or even when he was with Adrienne.—­The young woman, seeing his absorption, hesitated to disturb his thoughts, political as they were, no doubt, while he mused upon his hours of voluptuous enjoyment, forever recalling the youthful roundness of her shoulders, and the inflections of her body, the ivory-like curve of her neck, whose white nape rested upon him, and her curls escaped from the superb arrangement of her hair, held in its place at the top by a comb thrust into this fair mass like a claw plunged into flesh.

Vaudrey must have had an active and prompt intelligence at times to forget suddenly these passionate images, when he unexpectedly found himself compelled to ascend the tribune during a discussion or to express his opinion clearly at the Ministerial Council.  He increased his power, finding, perhaps, a new excitement, a new spur in the love that renewed his youth.  He had never been seen more active and more stirring in the Chamber, though he was somewhat nervous.  He determined to put himself in evidence at the Ministry and to prove to the phrase-monger Warcolier that he knew how to act.  The President of the Council, Monsieur Collard—­of Nantes—­said several times to Sulpice: 

“Too much zeal, my dear minister.  A politician ought to be cooler.”

“I shall be cooler with age!” Sulpice replied with a laugh.

From time to time he went to seek advice from Ramel, as he had promised.  The little shopkeepers and laundresses of Rue Boursault hardly suspected when they saw a coupe stop at the door of the old journalist, that a minister alighted from it.

Sulpice felt amid the bustle of his life, amid the spurring and over-excited events of his existence, the need of talking with his old friend.  Besides, Rue Boursault was on the way to Rue Prony.  As Marianne was frequently not at home, Sulpice would spend the time before her return in chatting with Ramel.

“Well!  Ramel, are you satisfied with me?”

“How could I be otherwise?  You are an honest man and faithful and devoted to your ideas.  I am not afraid of you, but I am of those by whom you are surrounded.”

“Warcolier?”

“Warcolier and many others, of those important fellows who ask me—­when they deign to speak to me—­with an insignificant air of superiority and almost of pity, the idiots:  ’Well! you are no longer doing anything!  When will you do something?’ As if I had not done too much already, seeing that I have made them!”

Denis Ramel smiled superciliously and the minister looked with a sort of respect at this vanguard warrior, this laborer of the early morn who had never received his recompense or even claimed it.