Sulpice looked at his young wife with a fondness that almost inspired him with remorse.  In her look there was so complete an expression of her love.  Then her affection was so deep, and her calm like the face of a motionless lake was so manifest, and she loved him so deeply, so intelligently.  And how trustful, too!

He was impelled now to beg her don her cloak and to have a fur robe put into the coupe and set out now, when the sun was gradually showing itself, like two lovers bound for a country party.  At the same time he felt a desperate longing to be alone, to abandon himself to his new idea and to the image that beset him.  He felt that he was leaving Adrienne for Marianne.

He did not hold to the suggestion, in fact, he repeated that it would be better if he were alone.  As there would be no session of the Chamber for a whole week, he would go out with Adrienne the next day.  The coachman could drive them a long distance, even to Saint-Cloud or Ville-d’Avray.  They would breakfast together all alone, unknown, in the woods.

“Truly?” said Adrienne.

“Truly!  I feel the necessity of avoiding so many demonstrations in my honor.”

Sulpice laughed.

“I am stifled by them,” he said, as he kissed Adrienne, whose face was pink with delight at the thought of that unrestrained escapade.

“How you blush!” said Sulpice, ingenuously.  “What is the matter with you?”

“With me?  Nothing.”

She looked at him anxiously.

“You think my complexion too ruddy!  I have not the Parisian tint.  Only remain a minister for some time, and that will vanish.  There is no dispraise in that.”

She again offered her brow to him.

He left her, happy to feel himself free.

At last!  For an entire day he was released from the ordinary routine of his life; from the wrangling of the assembly, the hubbub of the corridors, the gossip of the lobbies, interruptions, interrupted conversations, from all that excitement that he delighted in, but which at times left him crushed and feverish at the close of the day.  He became once more master of his thoughts, of his meditation.  He belonged to himself.  It was almost impossible to recover his self-mastery in the stormy arena into which he was thrust, happy to be there, and where his distended nostrils inhaled, as it were, the fumes of sulphur.

At times, amid the whirlwind of politics, he suffered from a yearning for rest, a sick longing for home quiet, a desire to be free, to go between the acts, as it were, to vegetate in some corner of the earth and to resume in very truth an altogether different life from the exasperating, irritating life that he led in Paris, always, so to speak, under the lash; or, still better, to change the form of his activity, to travel, to feed his eyes on new images, the fresh verdure, or the varied scenes of unknown cities.