“Navarrot?”

“He appears to be very much attached to you!”

“You are very wicked, Ramel.  He holds to the office and not to the man.  He is not the friend of the minister, but of ministers.  He is one of the ordinary touters of the ministry.  He applauds everything that their Excellencies choose to say.”

“Oh!  I know those touters,” said the old journalist.  “When a minister is in power, they cheer him to the echo; when he is down, they belabor him.”

Vaudrey looked at him and laughingly said:  “Begone, journalist!”

“But at any rate,”—­and here he extended his hand to Ramel,—­“you will see me this evening?”

“Certainly.”

“And you still live at—?”

“Rue Boursault, Boulevard des Batignolles.”

“Till then, my dear Ramel!  If occasion require, you will not refuse to give me your advice?”

“Nor my devotion.  But without office, remember without office,” said Ramel, still smiling.

Vaudrey took great delight in chatting with his old friend, but for a moment he had been seized with an eager desire to find amid the increasing crowd that thronged the salons, the pretty girl who had appeared to him like a statue of Desire, whetted desire, but even in her charms somewhat unwholesome, yet disturbing and appetizing.

He had come to Sabine Marsy’s only by chance and as if to display in public the joy of his triumph, just as a newly decorated man willingly accepts invitations in order to show off his new ribbon, but he now felt happy for having done so.  He had promised himself only to put himself in evidence and then disappear with Adrienne to the enjoyment of their usual chats, to taste that intimacy that was so dear to him, but which, since his establishment on Place Beauvau, had vanished.

He habitually disliked such receptions as that in which he now took part, those soirees as fatiguing as those crowds where one packs six hundred persons in salons capable of holding only sixty:  commonplace receptions, where the master of the house is as happy when he refuses invitations as a theatre-manager when his play is the rage; where one is stifled, crushed, and where one can only reach the salon after a pugilistic encounter, and where the capture of a glass of syrup entails an assault, and the securing of an overcoat demands a battle.  He held in horror those salons where there is no conversation, where no one is acquainted, where, because of the hubbub of the crowd or the stifling silence attending a concert, one cannot exchange either ideas or phrases, not even a furtive handshake, because of the packing and crushing of the guests.  It was a miracle that he had just been able to exchange a few words with Mademoiselle Kayser and Ramel.  The vulgarity of the place had at once impressed him,—­the more so because he was the object of attraction for all those crowded faces.