Adrienne, on the contrary, left this great cold hotel of Place Beauvau, as if she were leaving a prison, with a comforting sense of deliverance.  A bad dream was ended.  She could lay down her official mask, weep at ease, complain at will, fly to that Dauphiny where her youth was left.  She would leave to-morrow.  Doctor Reboux awaited her in ignorance.

After having given his first orders and arranged his most important documents, Sulpice went out to walk to Marianne’s.  At first he wandered along mechanically without realizing that he was going toward the quays, almost fearing the interview with his mistress, now that he was only a defeated man.  He had nearly reached the Seine before he was aware of it.  He looked at his watch.

Eleven o’clock.

Marianne had been awaiting him for some time.

He now followed, with the slow march of persons oppressed with a sense of weariness, these deserted quays, that terrace on the bank of the river, whose balustrades permitted glimpses of the silhouettes of slender trees.  He met no one.  Upon the Place de la Concorde, still wet with the scarce dried rain of this November night, as mild as an evening in spring, permeated by a warm mist, he looked for a moment at the Palace of the Corps Legislatif, gloomy-looking and outlining its roofs against the misty sky, whose gleams fell on the horizon with a bluish tint, while upon the broad sidewalks, the jets of gas magnified the reddened reflections with their own ruddy hues.  Along the grand avenue of the Champs-Elysees there were only two immense parallel rows of gas-lamps and here and there, moving, luminous points that looked like glow-worms.  Vaudrey mechanically stopped a moment to contemplate the scene.

That did not interest him, but something within him controlled him.  He continued to walk unwittingly in the direction of Parc Monceau.  The solitude of the Champs-Elysees pleased him.  While passing before an important club with its windows lighted, he instinctively shuddered.  Through the lace-like branches of the trees, he looked at the green shades, the lustres, the unpolished sconces, with the backgrounds of red and gold hangings, and the great, gold frames, and he imagined that they were discussing the causes of his defeat and the success of Granet.

“They are speaking of me, in there!  They are talking about my fall!  He is fallen!  Fallen!  Beaten!—­They are laughing, they are making jokes!  There are some there who yesterday were asking me for places.”

He continued on his way without quickening his pace; the deserted cafe concerts, as melancholy-looking as empty stages, the wreaths of suspended pearl-like lamps illuminated during the summer months but now colorless, seemed ironical amid the clumps of bare trees as gloomy as cemetery yews, exhaling a sinister, forsaken spirit as if this solitude were full of extinct songs, defunct graces, phantoms, and last year’s mirth.  And Vaudrey felt a strangely delicious sensation even in his bitterness at this impression of solitude, as if he might have been lost, forgotten forever, in the very emptiness of this silent corner.