Going on, he passed before the Elysee.

A sergent de ville who was slowly pacing up and down in front of an empty sentry-box, his two hands ensconced in the sleeves of his coat, the hood of which he had turned up, cast a sidelong glance at him, almost suspiciously, as if wondering what a prowler could want to do there, at such an hour.

“He does not know whom he has looked at,” he said.  “And yesterday, only yesterday, he would have saluted me subserviently!”

The windows of the Elysee facing the street were still lighted up and Vaudrey thought that shadows were moving behind the white curtains.

“The President has not yet retired!  He has probably received Granet!  And Warcolier!—­Warcolier!”

Before the large door opening on Faubourg Saint-Honore, four lamps were burning over the head of a Parisian guard on duty, with his musket on his shoulder, the light shining on the leather of his shako.  Some weary-looking guardians of the peace were chatting together.  At the end of the court before the perron, a small, red carpet was laid upon the steps and in front of the marquee faint lights gleamed.  Vaudrey recalled that joyous morning when he entered there, arriving and descending from his carriage with his portfolio under his arm.

He hurried his steps and found himself on Place Beauvau.  His glance was attracted by the grille, the hotel, the grand court at the end of the avenue.  Sulpice experienced a feeling of sudden anger as he passed in front of the Ministry of the Interior whose high grille, now closed, he had many times passed through, leaning back in his coupe.  He pictured himself entering there, where he would never again return except as a place-seeker like those eternal beggars who blocked its antechambers.  He still heard the cry of the lackey when the coachman crushed the sand of the courtyard under the wheels of the carriage:  “Monsieur le Ministre’s carriage!”—­He went upstairs, the lackeys saluted him, the coupe rolled off toward the Bois.

Now, here in that vulgar mansion another was displaying himself, seated on the same seats, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same bed and giving his orders to the same servants.  He experienced a strange sensation, as of a theft, of some undue influence, of suffering an ejectment by a stranger from some personal property, and this Granet, the man sent there as he had been, by a vote, seemed to him to be a smart fellow, a filibuster and an intruder.

“How one becomes accustomed to thinking one’s self at home everywhere!” thought Vaudrey.

He partially forgot the keen wound given to his self-love by the time that he found himself close to Parc Monceau approaching Rue Prony.  In Marianne’s windows the lights were shining.  To see that woman and hold her again in his arms, overjoyed, that happiness would console him for all his mortifications.  Marianne’s love was worth a hundred times more than the delights of power.