She instinctively drew back.

“You remember,” she said coldly, “that one day when we were speaking about divorce, I told you that there was a very simple way of divorce?  It was never to see each other again, never, to be nothing more to each other from the day on which confidence should die?—­You have deceived me, it is done.  I am a stranger to you!  If I were a mother, I should have duties to fulfil.  I would not have failed therein.  I would have endured everything for a son!—­Nothing is left to me.  I have not even the joy of caressing a child that would have consoled me.  I am your widow while you yet live.  Well, be it so.  You have willed it, there, then, is divorce!”

For the third time since Adrienne had learned everything, he tried to stammer the word pardon.  He felt it was useless.  This sensitive being had withdrawn within herself and wrapped herself, as with a cloak, in all her outraged chastity.  He could only humiliate himself without softening her.  All Adrienne’s deceived trustfulness and insulted love strengthened her in her determination never to forgive.

She would go.

Vaudrey in despair returned to his study, where the books that had been sent from the ministry were piled upon the carpet in all the confusion attending an entry into occupation.  The servant at once brought him his lamp and handed him a package of cards in envelopes,—­cards of condolence as for a death—­and a large card, saying:  “That gentleman is here!”

“Molina!” said Vaudrey, becoming very pale.  “Show him in!”

The fat Salomon entered puffing and smiling, and spread himself out on an armchair as he said to the former minister: 

“Well, how goes it?—­Not too badly crushed, eh?—­Bah! what is it after all to quit office?—­Only a means for returning to it, sometimes!”

“All the same,” he said with his cackling laugh that sounded like the jingling of a money-bag, “there are too many changes of ministers!  They change them like shirts!  It puts me out.  I get used to one Excellency and he is put aside!  So it is settled, henceforth I will not say Excellency save to the usher or an office-boy!”

He accompanied his clumsy jests with a loud laugh, then, changing his tone: 

“Come, that is not all.  I came to speak of business to you.”

He looked Vaudrey full in the face with his piercing glance, took from his pocketbook a printed sheet and said in a precise tone: 

“Here is an opportunity where your title of former minister will serve you better than that of minister.  So much is being said of Algeria, its mines and its fibre.  Well, read that!”

Vaudrey took the paper.  It was the prospectus, very skilfully drawn, of a company established to introduce gas into Algeria, almost as far as the Sahara.  They promised the subscribers wonders and miracles:  acres upon acres of land as a bonus.  There was a fortune to be made.  Meantime, they would issue six thousand shares of five hundred francs.  It was three millions they were asking from the public.  A mere trifle.