“Granet is then homogeneous?” said Sulpice, with a forced laugh, as he sat on the ministerial bench while Lucien Granet was speaking from the tribune, his right hand thrust into his frock-coat.

The bon mot uttered by the President of the Council, although spoken loudly enough, did not enliven any one, neither his colleagues who felt themselves threatened nor his usual claqueurs who felt themselves vanquished.  Navarrot, the ministerial claqueur, was already applauding Granet most enthusiastically. Monsieur le Ministre felt himself about to become an ex-minister.  He vaguely felt as if he were in the vacuum of an air-pump.

The order of the day of distrust, smoothed over by Granet with the formulas of perfidious politeness—­castor-oil in orange-juice, as Sulpice himself called it, trying to pluck up courage and wit in the face of misfortune,—­that order of the day that the Vaudrey Cabinet would not accept, was adopted by a considerable majority:  one hundred and twenty-two votes.

For Sulpice, it was a crushing defeat.

“One hundred and twenty-two deputies,” he said, still speaking in a loud voice in the corridors, “to whom I have refused the appointment of some mayor or the removal of some rural guard!”

Warcolier, ever dignified, remarked in his usual style, that this manner of defending himself probably lacked some of that nobility which becomes a defeat bravely endured.

Vaudrey had only one course open, to send in his resignation.  He was beaten, thoroughly beaten.  He returned to the Hotel Beauvau and after preparing his letter he took it himself to the President at the Elysee.

The President accepted it without betraying any feeling, as an employe at the registry office receives any deed of declaration.  Two or three commonplace expressions of regret, a diplomatic shake of the hand, expressive of official sympathy, that was all.  Vaudrey returned to the ministry and ordered his servants to prepare everything for leaving the ministerial mansion.

“When is that to be, Monsieur le Ministre?”

“To-morrow,” answered Vaudrey, to whom the title seemed ironical and grated on his nerves.

He caused himself to be announced to Adrienne.

Adrienne, weary looking, was seated before a small desk writing, and beneath her fair hair, her face still looked as white as that of a corpse.

“There is some news,” Vaudrey said to her abruptly.  “I am no longer minister!”

“Ah!” she said.

Not a tremor, not a word of consolation.  Three days previously, she would have leaped to his neck and said:  “How happy we shall be!  I have you back; I have found you again!  What joy!”

Again, she would have tried to console him had he been suffering.

Now, she remained passive, frozen, indifferent to that news.

“We shall leave the Hotel Beauvau!” said Sulpice.