“It is quite useless for me to come early; others always arrive before me,” said Jenkins to himself as he saw the file in which his brougham took its place; but, certain of not having to wait, with head carried high, and an air of tranquil authority, he ascended that official flight of steps which is mounted every day by so many trembling ambitions, so many anxieties on hesitating feet.

From the very antechamber, lofty and resonant like a church, which, although calorifers burned night and day, possessed two great wood-fires that filled it with a radiant life, the luxury of this interior reached you by warm and heady puffs.  It suggested at once a hot-house and a Turkish bath.  A great deal of heat and yet brightness; white wainscoting, white marbles, immense windows, nothing stifling or shut in, and yet a uniform atmosphere meet for the surrounding of some rare existence, refined and nervous.  Jenkins always expanded in this factitious sun of wealth; he greeted with a “good-morning, my lads,” the powdered porter, with his wide golden scarf, the footmen in knee-breeches and livery of gold and blue, all standing to do him honour; lightly drew his finger across the bars of the large cages of monkeys full of sharp cries and capers, and, whistling under his breath, stepped quickly up the staircase of shining marble laid with a carpet as thick as the turf of a lawn, which led to the apartments of the duke.  Although six months had passed since his first visit to Mora House, the good doctor was not yet become insensible to the quite physical impression of gaiety, of frivolity, which he received from this dwelling.

Although you were in the abode of the first official of the Empire there was nothing here suggestive of the work of government or its boxes of dusty old papers.  The duke had only consented to accept his high dignitaries as Minister of State and President of the Council upon the condition that he should not quit his private mansion; he only went to his office for an hour or two daily, the time necessary to give the indispensable signatures, and held his receptions in his bed-chamber.  At this moment, notwithstanding the earliness of the hour, the hall was crowded.  You saw there grave, anxious faces, provincial prefects with shaven lips, and administrative whiskers, slightly less arrogant in this antechamber than yonder in their prefectures, magistrates of austere air, sober in gesture, deputies important of manner, big-wigs of the financial world, rich and boorish manufacturers, among whom stood out here and there the slender, ambitious figure of some substitute of a prefectorial councillor, in the garb of one seeking a favour, dress-coat and white tie; and all, standing, sitting in groups or solitary, sought silently to penetrate with their gaze that high door closed upon their destiny, by which they would issue forth directly triumphant or with cast-down head.  Jenkins passed through the crowd rapidly, and every one followed with an envious eye this newcomer whom the doorkeeper, with his official chain, correct and icy in his demeanour, seated at a table beside the door, greeted with a little smile at once respectful and familiar.