“I wish, however, to tell Guy to expect me!—­Where?  Rue Cuvier?  He would not go there!—­No, at his house!”

On the way she found the means.

Vaudrey evidently was at liberty for the day and, master of his time, he would not leave her.  This he repeated at every turn of the wheel.  She ordered the driver to take her to The Louvre.

“I have purchases to make!”

Sulpice could not accompany her, so he waited for her at the entrance on Place du Palais-Royal, nestled in a corner of the carriage, the blinds of which were lowered in order that he might not be seen.  He felt very cold.

Marianne slowly crossed between the stalls on the ground floor, hardly looking at the counters bearing the Japanese goods, the gloves and the artificial flowers.  She ascended a winding iron stairway draped with tapestries, her tiny feet sinking into the moquette that covered the steps, and entered a noiseless salon where men and women were silently sitting before three tables, writing or reading, just as in the drawing-room of a hotel.  At a large round table, old ladies and young girls sat looking at the pictures in Illustration, the caricatures in the Journal Amusant, and the sketches in La Vie Parisienne.  Others, at the second table, were reading the daily papers, some of which were rolled about their holders like a flag around its staff, or the Revue des Deux Mondes.  Further on, at a red-covered table furnished with leather-bound blotters and round, glass inkstands in which the ink danced with a purple reflection, people were writing, seated on chairs covered in worn, garnet-colored velvet, with mahogany frames.  This gloomy apartment was brightened by broad-leaved green plants, and was lighted from the roof by means of a flat skylight.

Marianne walked direct to the table on which the paper was symmetrically arranged in a stationery rack, and quickly seating herself, she laid her muff down, half-raised her little veil, and beat a tattoo with her tiny hand on the little black leather blotter before her, then taking off her gloves, she took at random some sheets of paper and some envelopes bearing the address of the establishment on the corners.  As she looked around for a pen, Marianne could not refrain from smiling, she thought of that poor Sulpice down there, waiting in the carriage and probably shivering in the draughts issuing from the disjointed doors.  And he a minister!

“Such is adultery in Paris!” she said to herself, happy to make him suffer.

She did not hurry.  She was amused by her surroundings.  A uniformed man promenaded the salon, watching the stationery in the cases and replacing it as it was used.  If required, he sold stamps to any one present.  A letter-box was attached near the tall chimney, bearing the hours of collection.

Beside Marianne, elbow to elbow, and before her, were principally women, some writing with feverish haste, others hesitatingly, and amongst them were two girls opposite her, who as they finished their letters chuckled in a low tone and passed them one to the other, say-to each other, as they chewed their plaid penholders: