At every moment, carriages brought to the ministry men of grave mien, decorated with the red ribbon, who entered wearing expressions suitable to the occasion and inscribed their names in silence on the register, passing the pen from one to another just as the aspergillus is passed along in church.  Everybody stood aside on noticing Vaudrey.  It seemed to him that they instinctively divined that Collard being out of the way it was he who must be the man of the hour, the necessary man, the President of the Council marked out in advance, the chief of the coming ministry.

“Poor Collard!” thought Sulpice, as he inscribed his name on the register.  “One will never be able to say:  the Collard Administration.  But it would be glorious if one day history said:  the Vaudrey Administration.”

He re-entered the Hotel Beauvau, inflated with the idea.  In the antechamber, there were more office-seekers than were usually in attendance.  One of them, on seeing Vaudrey, rose and ran to him and said quickly to Sulpice, who did not stop: 

“Ah!  Monsieur le Ministre—­What a misfortune—­Monsieur Collard—­If there were no eminent men like Your Excellency to replace him!—­”

Vaudrey bowed without replying.

“What is the name of that gentleman?” said he as soon as he entered his cabinet, to the usher who followed him.  “I always find him, but I cannot recognize him.”

“He!  Monsieur le Ministre?  Why, that is, Monsieur Eugene!”

“Ah! very good!  That is right!  The eternal Monsieur Eugene!”

Just then Warcolier opened the door, looking more morose than sad, and holding a letter that he crushed in his hand, while at the same time he greeted Vaudrey with a number of long phrases concerning the dreadful, unexpected, sudden, unlooked-for, crushing death—­he did not select his epithets, but allowed them to flow as from an overrunning cask—­the dramatic decease of Collard—­of Nantes—.  From time to time, Warcolier, while speaking, cast an involuntary, angry glance at the paper that he twisted in his fingers, so much so that Vaudrey, feeling puzzled, at last asked him what the letter was.

“Don’t speak to me about it—­” said the fat man.  “An imbecile!”

“What imbecile?”

“An imbecile whom I received with some little courtesy the other morning—­I who, nevertheless, go to so much trouble to make myself agreeable.”

“And that is no sinecure!—­Well, the imbecile in question?”

“Left furious, no doubt, because of the reception accorded him—­and to me, me, the Under-Secretary of State, this is the letter that he writes, that he dares to write!  Here, Monsieur le Ministre, listen!  Was ever such stupidity seen? ’Monsieur le Secretaire d’Etat, you have under your orders a very badly trained Undersecretary of State, who will make you many enemies, I warn you.  As you are his direct superior, I permit myself to notify you of his conduct,’ etc., etc.  You laugh?” said Warcolier, seeing that a smile was spreading over Vaudrey’s blond-bearded face.