“A minister!” said Adrienne, now overcome with delight.

Vaudrey had risen and, a little uneasy, was mechanically searching for something, still holding his napkin in his hand.

“My hat,” he said.  “My overcoat.  A carriage.”

Adrienne, with her hands clasped in a sort of childish admiration, looked at him as if he had become suddenly transformed.  All his being, in fact, expressed complete satisfaction.  He embraced Adrienne almost frantically, kissed her again and again, and left her, then descended the staircase with the speed of a lover hastening to a rendezvous.

This political honeymoon was still at its height at the moment when the delighted Vaudrey, seeing everything rosy-hued, was satisfying his astonished curiosity in the greenroom of the ballet.  He entered office, animated by all the good purposes inspired by absolute faith.  It seemed to him that he was about to save the world, to regenerate the government, and to destroy abuses.

“It is very difficult to become a minister,” he said, smiling, “but nothing is easier than to be a great minister.  It only demands a determination to do good!”

“And the power to do it,” replied his friend Granet, somewhat ironically.

What! power?  Nothing was more simple, since Vaudrey held the reins of power!—­If others wrecked the hopes of their friends, it was because they had not dared, because they had not the will!

They would now see what he would do himself!  Not to-morrow either, nor in a month—­but at once.

He entered the ministry boldly, like a good-natured despot, determined to reform, study and rearrange everything; and a victim to the feverish and glorious zeal of a neophyte, he was a little surprised to encounter, at the very outset, the obstinate resistance of routine, ignorance, and the unyielding mechanism of that vast machine, more eternal than empires:  Ad-min-is-tra-tion.

Bah! he would have satisfaction!  Patience would overcome all.  After all, time is on one’s side.

“Time?  Already!” replied Granet, who was a perpetual scoffer.

Adrienne, overwhelmed with surprise, enjoyed the reflections from the golden aurora of power that so sweetly tinted Sulpice’s life.  She shared her husband’s triumphs without haughtiness, and now, however she might love her domestic life, it was incumbent upon her to pass more of her time in society than formerly, to show herself, as Sulpice said, and, surrounded by the success and flattery she enjoyed, she felt that that obligation was only an added joy, whose contentment she reflected on her husband.

When she entered a salon, she was greeted with a flattering murmur of admiration and good-natured curiosity.  The women looked at her and the men surrounded her.

“Madame Vaudrey?”

“The minister’s wife!”

“Charming!”

“Quite young!”

“Somewhat provincial!”