“So much the more attractive!”

“That is true, as fresh as a peach!”

She endeavored to atone by a gracious, very sincere modesty, for the enviable position in which chance had suddenly placed her.  It was said of her that she accepted a compliment as timidly as a boarding-school miss receives a prize.  They forgave her for retaining her rosy cheeks because of her white and exquisitely shaped hands.  She was not considered to be “trop de Grenoble.”  Witty people called her the pretty Dauphinoise, and the flatterers the little Dauphine.

In short, her success was great!  So said the chroniclers; the entrance of a fashionable woman into a salon being daily compared with that of an actress on the stage.

It was especially because Vaudrey appeared to be so happy, that his young wife was so contented.  She felt none of the vainglory of power.  Generally alone in the vast, deserted apartments of the ministry, with all their commonplace, luxurious appointments, she more than once regretted the home in the Chaussee-d’Antin, where they enjoyed—­but too rarely—­a renewal of the cherished solitude of the first months of their union, the familiar chats of the Grenoble days, the prolonged conversations, exchanges of thoughts, hopes and reminiscences—­already! only recollections,—­and she sometimes said to Sulpice, who was feverishly excited and glowed with delight at having reached the summit of power: 

“Do you know what this place suggests to me?  Why, living in a hotel!”

“And you are right,” Vaudrey gaily answered; “we are at a hotel, but it is the hotel in which the will of France lodges!”

“You understand, my dear, that if you are happy—­”

“Very happy! it is only now that I can show what I am made of.  You shall see, Adrienne, you shall see what I will do and become within a year.”

Within a year!

IV

Guy de Lissac occupied a small summer-house forming a residence situated at the end of a court on Rue D’Aumale.  He had given carte-blanche for the arrangement of this bachelor’s nest,—­a nest in which sitting-hens without eggs succeeded each other rapidly,—­to one of those upholsterers who installed, in regulation style, the knickknacks so much in vogue, and who sell at very high prices to Bourse operators and courtesans the spurious Clodions and imitation Boulles that they pick up by chance at auction sales.

Lissac, who had sufficient taste to discover artistic nuggets in the gutters of Paris, had found it very convenient to wake up one fine morning in a little mansion crowded with Japanese bric-a-brac, Chinese satin draperies, tapestries, Renaissance chests and terra-cotta figures writhing upon their sculptured bases.  The upholsterer had taste, Lissac had money.  The knickknacks were genuine.  There was a coquettish attractiveness about the abode that made itself evident in every detail.