“Almost,” said Marianne coldly.

Sulpice was intoxicated with joy, realizing that he had before him all the necessary time in which to free himself from his embarrassment, when Marianne should have returned him his first acceptance for one hundred thousand francs against a new one for one hundred and forty thousand.  He breathed again.  From the twenty-sixth of April to the first of December, he had nearly seven months in which to free himself.  He repeated the calculation that he had formerly made when he said:  “I have ample time!”

He reentered the Hotel Beauvau in a cheerful mood, Adrienne was delighted.  She feared to see him return nervous and dejected.

“Then you will be brilliant presently at Madame Gerson’s.”

“Stop! that’s so.  It is this evening in fact!—­”

He had forgotten it.

Marianne, too, was not free.  She was going, she said, to Auteuil for that bill of exchange.  Vaudrey did not therefore, regret the soiree.  His going to Madame Gerson’s was now a matter of indifference to him.

“As for me, I am so happy, oh! so happy!” said Adrienne, clapping her little hands like a child.

In undressing, Vaudrey fortunately found this document which he had folded in four and left in his waistcoat pocket: 

“On the first of June next, I will pay to the order of Monsieur
Adolphe Gochard of No. 9, Rue Albouy, the sum of One Hundred
Thousand Francs, value received in cash.

“SULPICE VAUDREY,
“Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin, 37.”

He turned pale on reading it.  If Adrienne had seen it!—­

He burned the paper at a candle.

“I am imprudent,” he said to himself.  “Poor Adrienne!  I should not like to cause her any distress.”

She was overjoyed as she made the journey in the ministerial carriage from Place Beauvau to the Gersons’ mansion.  At last she had a rapid, stolen moment in which she could recover the old-time joy of happy solitude, full of the exquisite agitation of former days.

“Do you recall the time when you took me away like this, on the evening of our marriage?” she whispered to him, as the carriage was driven off at a gallop.

He took her hands and pressed them.

“You still love me, don’t you, Sulpice?—­You believe too, that I love you more than all the world?”

“Yes, I believe it!”

“You would kill me if I deceived you?—­I, ah, if you deceived me, I do not know what I should do.—­Although I think that you are here, that I hold you, that I love you, you may still belong to another woman—­”

“Again! you have already said that.  Are you mad?” said Sulpice.  “See! we have reached our destination.”

Madame Gerson had brilliantly illuminated her house in Rue de Boulogne with lights, filled it with flowers, and spread carpets everywhere to receive the President of the Council.  The house was too small to accommodate the guests, who were about to be stifled therein.  She packed them into her dining-room.  For the soiree which was to follow, she had sounded the roll-call of her friends.  She was bent on founding a new salon, on showing Madame Marsy that she was not alone to be the rival of Madame Evan.