Nobody regarded the Prime Minister as responsible for the scandal of his relatives, but a bad idea of his family came into existence, and the influence of the statesman was diminished.

Almost immediately he was made to feel this in a pretty sharp fashion.  One day in the House, on a simple question, Labillette, the Minister of Religion and Public Worship, who was suffering from an attack of liver, and beginning to be exasperated by the intentions and intrigues of the clergy, threatened to close the Chapel of St. Orberosia, and spoke without respect of the National Virgin.  The entire Right rose up in indignation; the Left appeared to give but a half-hearted support to the rash Minister.  The leaders of the majority did not care to attack a popular cult which brought thirty millions a year into the country.  The most moderate of the supporters of the Right, M. Bigourd, made the question the subject of a resolution and endangered the Cabinet.  Luckily, Fortune Lapersonne, the Minister of Public Works, always conscious of the obligations of power, was able in the Prime Minister’s absence to repair the awkwardness and indecorum of his colleague, the Minister of Public Worship.  He ascended the tribune and bore witness to the respect in which the Government held the heavenly Patron of the country, the consoler of so many ills which science admitted its powerlessness to relieve.

When Paul Visire, snatched at last from Eveline’s arms, appeared in the House, the administration was saved; but the Prime Minister saw himself compelled to grant important concessions to the upper classes.  He proposed in Parliament that six armoured cruisers should be laid down, and thus won the sympathies of the Steel Trust; he gave new assurances that the income tax would not be imposed, and he had eighteen Socialists arrested.

He was soon to find himself opposed by more formidable obstacles.  The Chancellor of the neighbouring Empire in an ingenious and profound speech upon the foreign relations of his sovereign, made a sly allusion to the intrigues that inspired the policy of a great country.  This reference, which was receive with smiles by the Imperial Parliament, was certain to irritate a punctilious republic.  It aroused the national susceptibility, which directed its wrath against its amorous Minister.  The Deputies seized upon a frivolous pretext to show their dissatisfaction.  A ridiculous incident, the fact that the wife of a subprefect had danced at the Moulin Rouge, forced the minister to face a vote of censure, and he was within a few votes of being defeated.  According to general opinion, Paul Visire had never been so weak, so vacillating, or so spiritless, as on that occasion.