In the mean time Hippolyte Ceres became a strong man again.  In company with his colleague Lapersonne he formed numerous intimacies with ladies of the theatre.  They were both to be seen at night entering fashionable restaurants in the company of ladies whom they over-topped by their lofty stature and their new hats, and they were soon reckoned amongst the most sympathetic frequenters of the boulevards.  Fortune Lapersonne had his own wound beneath his armour, His wife, a young milliner whom he carried off from a marquis, had gone to live with a chauffeur.  He loved her still, and could not console himself for her loss, so that very often in the private room of a restaurant, in the midst of a group of girls who laughed and ate crayfish, the two ministers exchanged a look full of their common sorrow and wiped away an unbidden tear.

Hippolyte Ceres, although wounded to the heart, did not allow himself to be beaten.  He swore that he would be avenged.

Madame Paul Visire, whose deplorable health forced her to live with her relatives in a distant province, received an anonymous letter specifying that M. Paul Visire, who had not a half-penny when he married her, was spending her dowry on a married woman, E—­ C—­, that he gave this woman thirty-thousand-franc motor-cars, and pearl necklaces costing twenty-five thousand francs, and that he was going straight to dishonour and ruin.  Madame Paul Visire read the letter, fell into hysterics, and handed it to her father.

“I am going to box your husband’s ears,” said M. Blampignon; “he is a blackguard who will land you both in the workhouse unless we look out.  He may be Prime Minister, but he won’t frighten me.”

When he stepped off the train M. Blampignon presented himself at the Ministry of the Interior, and was immediately received.  He entered the Prime Minister’s room in a fury.

“I have something to say to you, sir!” And he waved the anonymous letter.

Paul Visire welcomed him smiling.

“You are welcome, my dear father.  I was going to write to you. . . .  Yes, to tell you of your nomination to the rank of officer of the Legion of Honour.  I signed the patent this morning.”

M. Blampignon thanked his son-in-law warmly and threw the anonymous letter into the fire.

He returned to his provincial house and found his daughter fretting and agitated.

“Well!  I saw your husband.  He is a delightful fellow.  But then, you don’t understand how to deal with him.”

About this time Hippolyte Ceres learned through a little scandalous newspaper (it is always through the newspapers that ministers are informed of the affairs of State) that the Prime Minister dined every evening with Mademoiselle Lysiane of the Folies Dramatiques, whose charm seemed to have made a great impression on him.  Thenceforth Ceres took a gloomy joy in watching his wife.  She came in every evening to dine or dress with an air of agreeable fatigue and the serenity that comes from enjoyment.