To the congratulations of the various groups and of notable personages, he replied with simple firmness:  “Those are my principles!” and he had seven or eight Socialists put in prison.

The session ended, and Paul Visire, very exhausted, went to take the waters.  Hippolyte Ceres refused to leave his Ministry, where the trade union of telephone girls was in tumultuous agitation.  He opposed it with an unheard of violence, for he had now become a woman-hater.  On Sundays he went into the suburbs to fish along with his colleague Lapersonne, wearing the tall hat that never left him since he had become a Minister.  And both of them, forgetting the fish, complained of the inconstancy of women and mingled their griefs.

Hippolyte still loved Eveline and he still suffered.  However, hope had slipped into his heart.  She was now separated from her lover, and, thinking to win her back, he directed all his efforts to that end.  He put forth all his skill, showed himself sincere, adaptable, affectionate, devoted, even discreet; his heart taught him the delicacies of feeling.  He said charming and touching things to the faithless one, and, to soften her, he told her all that he had suffered.

Crossing the band of his trousers upon his stomach.

“See,” said he, “how thin I have got.”

He promised her everything he thought could gratify a woman, country parties, hats, jewels.

Sometimes he thought she would take pity on him.

She no longer displayed an insolently happy countenance.  Being separated from Paul, her sadness had an air of gentleness.  But the moment he made a gesture to recover her she turned away fiercely and gloomily, girt with her fault as if with a golden girdle.

He did not give up, making himself humble, suppliant, lamentable.

One day he went to Lapersonne and said to him with tears in his eyes: 

“Will you speak to her?”

Lapersonne excused himself, thinking that his intervention would be useless, but he gave some advice to his friend.

“Make her think that you don’t care about her, that you love another, and she will come back to you.”

Hippolyte, adopting this method, inserted in the newspapers that he was always to be found in the company of Mademoiselle Guinaud of the Opera.  He came home late or did not come home at all, assumed in Eveline’s presence an appearance of inward joy impossible to restrain, took out of his pocket, at dinner, a letter on scented paper which he pretended to read with delight, and his lips seemed as in a dream to kiss invisible lips.  Nothing happened.  Eveline did not even notice the change.  Insensible to all around her, she only came out of her lethargy to ask for some louis from her husband, and if he did not give them she threw him a look of contempt, ready to upbraid him with the shame which she poured upon him in the sight of the whole world.  Since she had loved she spent a great deal on dress.  She needed money, and she had only her husband to secure it for her; she was so far faithful to him.