“Bah! they have all forgotten as I have, myself,” said Ramel, with a shake of his head and smiling pleasantly.

Vaudrey felt intense pleasure in meeting, in the midst of this crowd of indifferent or admiring persons, the man who had formerly seen him arrive in Paris, and with whom he had corresponded from the heart of his province, as with a kinsman.  There was, in fact, between them, a relationship of mind and soul that united this veteran of the press with this young statesman.

The ideal sought was the same, but the temperaments were different.  Ramel, although he had known them, had for a long time avoided those excitements of struggle and power that inflamed Vaudrey’s blood.

“It was a glorious day when my pulse became regulated,” he said.  “Experience brought me the needed tonic.”

Denis Ramel was a wise man.  He took life as he found it, without enthusiasm as without bitterness.  He was not wealthy.  More than sixty years old, he found himself, after a life of hard, rough and continuous struggle, as badly off as when he started out on his career, full of burning hopes.  He had passed his life honorably as a journalist—­a journalist of the good old times, of the school of thought, not of news-tellers,—­he had loyally and conscientiously exercised a profession in which he took pleasure; he had read much, written much, consumed much midnight oil, touched upon everything; put his fingers into every kind of pie without soiling them, and after having valiantly turned the heavy millstone of daily labor incessantly renewed for forty years, he had reached the end of his journey, the brink of the grave, almost penniless, after having skirted Fortune and seen Opportunity float toward him her perfumed and intoxicating locks more than a hundred times.  Bent, weary, almost forgotten, and unknown and misunderstood by the new generation, that styled this enthusiasm, more eager, moreover, than that of juvenile faith, “old”—­he saw the newcomers rise as he might have beheld the descent of La Courtille.

“It amuses me.”

Ramel had, in the course of his career as a publicist, as a dealer in fame, assisted without taking part therein, in the formation of syndicates, allotments of shares and financial intrigues; and putting his shoulder to the wheel of enterprises that appeared to him to be solid, while seeking to strike out those which appeared to be doubtful, he had created millionaires without asking a cent from them, just as he had made ministers without accepting even a thread of ribbon at their hands.

This infatuating craft of a maker of men pleased him.  All those pioneers in the great human comedy, he had seen on their entrance, hesitating and crying to him for assistance.  This statesman, swelling out with his importance in the tribune, had received the benefit of his correction of his earlier harangues.  He had encouraged, during his competition for the Prix de Rome, this member of the Institute who to-day represented