“Yes, it is so odd!—­Your correspondent is evidently ignorant that there are only Under-Secretaries of State in the administration!—­unless this innocent is but simply an insolent fellow.”

“If I thought that!” said Warcolier, enraged.  “No, but it is true,” he said with astonishing candor, a complete overflowing of his satisfied egotism, “there are a lot of people who ask for everything and are good for nothing!—­Malcontents!—­I should like to know why they are malcontents!—­What are they dreaming about, then?  What do they want?  I am asking myself ever since I came into office:  What is it they want?  Doesn’t the present government carry out the will of the majority?—­It is just like those journalists with their nagging articles!—­They squall and mock!  What they print is disgusting!  Granted that we have demanded liberty, but that does not mean license!”

While Warcolier, entirely concerned about himself, with erect head and oratorical gesture, spoke as if in the presence of two thousand hearers, Sulpice Vaudrey again recalled, still sad and sick, the dark and sunken cheeks and the colorless ears, the poor projecting ears of the consumptive Garnier with whom he had come in contact at Ramel’s.

He was anxious to be with Adrienne again, and above all, with Marianne.  What would his mistress say to him when she knew of his reaching the presidency of the Council?

Adrienne had certainly received the news with little pleasure.

“If you are happy!”—­was all she said, with a sigh.

It was the very expression she had used at the moment when, on the formation of the “Collard Cabinet,” he had gone to her and cried out:  “I am a minister!”

Adrienne was impassive.

In truth, Sulpice was beginning to think that she was too indifferent to the serious affairs of life.  The delightful joys of intimacy, now, moreover, discounted, ought not to make a woman forget the public successes of her husband.  Instinctively comparing this gentle, slender blonde, resigned and pensive, with Marianne, with her tawny locks and passionate nature, whom he adored more intensely each day, Vaudrey thought that a man in his position, with his ambition and merit, would have been more powerfully aided, aye, even doubled in power and success by a creature as strongly intelligent, as energetic and as fertile in resource as Mademoiselle Kayser.

He still had before him a peculiar smile of indefinable superiority expressed by his mistress when Adrienne and Marianne chanced to meet one evening at the theatre, which made him feel that his mistress was watching and analyzing his wife.  The next day, Marianne with exquisite grace, but keen as a poisoned dart, said to him: 

“Do you know, my dear, Madame Vaudrey is charming?”

He felt himself blush at these words hurled at him point-blank, then his cheeks grew cold.  Never, till that moment, had Mademoiselle Kayser mentioned Adrienne’s name.