In vain did Adrienne smile and seek to divert him from the thoughts that besieged him—­she was herself in a melancholy mood, without knowing why, and her endeavors were but wasted; if he abandoned the train of his reflections, it was merely to express a thought in rapid tones, and he seemed momentarily to shake off his torpor; he replied to his wife’s forced smile by a mechanical grimace, and immediately relapsed into his nervously silent state.

In the hours of anxious struggle, she had often seen him thus, hence she was not alarmed.  If she had been in her own home, instead of occupying this strange mansion, she would have rushed to him, and seated on his knees, taken his burning head between her little hands and said:  “Come now! what ails you? what is the matter?  Tell me everything so that, child as I may be, I may comfort my big boy.”

But there, still in the presence of those people, always in full view, she dared not.  She carefully and anxiously watched Sulpice’s mortified countenance.  Since his entry on his ministerial functions, this was the first occasion, probably, that he had been so preoccupied.

“There is something the matter with you, is there not, my dear?”

“No—­nothing—­Besides—­”

The minister’s glance was a sufficient conclusion to his remark.  Moreover, how could he, even if he had some trouble to confide, make it known before the ever watchful lackeys?  Before these impassive attendants, who, though apparently obsequious, might in reality be hostile, and who looked at them with cold glances?  What a distance separated them from the old-time intimacies, the cherished interchange of thought interrupted by piquant kisses and laughter, just like a young husband and wife!

In truth, Adrienne had not thought of it:  Sulpice could not talk.

“You will serve the coffee at once,” she said.

She made haste in order that she might take refuge in her own apartment to be alone with her husband.  He, however, as if he shunned this tete-a-tete, eager as he was for solitude, quickly attributed his unpleasant humor to neuralgia or headache.  Too much work or too close application of mind.

“At the Ministerial Council perhaps?” remarked Adrienne inquiringly.

“Yes, at the Council,—­I must take a little fresh air—­I will take a round in the Bois—­The day is dry—­That will do me good!”

“Will you take me?” she said gayly.

“If you wish,” he replied.  Then, in an almost embarrassed tone, he added: 

“Perhaps it will be better for me to go alone—­I have to think—­to work—­There is no sitting at the Chamber to-day; and the day is entirely at my own disposal.”

“Just as you please,” Adrienne replied, looking at Sulpice with a tender and submissive glance.  “It would, however, have been so delightful and beneficial to have gone to the Bois together on such a bright day!  But you and your affairs before everything, you are right; take an airing, be off, come, breathe—­I shall be glad to see you return smiling cheerfully as in the sweet days.”