On Count Martin’s yellowed face two or three wrinkles appeared.  He was smiling.

“The decree,” continued Loyer, “will be published tomorrow.  I accompanied myself the clerk who took it to the printer.  It was surer.  In Grevy’s time, and Grevy was not an idiot, decrees were intercepted in the journey from the Elysee to the Quai Voltaire.”

And Loyer threw himself on a chair.  There, enjoying the view of Madame Martin, he continued: 

“People will not say, as they did in the time of my poor friend Gambetta, that the republic is lacking in women.  You will give us fine festivals, Madame, in the salons of the Ministry.”

Marguerite, looking at herself in the mirror, with her necklace and earrings, was singing the jewel song.

“We shall have to compose the declaration,” said Count Martin.  “I have thought of it.  For my department I have found, I think, a fine formula.”

Loyer shrugged his shoulders.

“My dear Martin, we have nothing essential to change in the declaration of the preceding Cabinet; the situation is unchanged.”

He struck his forehead with his hand.

“Oh, I had forgotten.  We have made your friend, old Lariviere, Minister of War, without consulting him.  I have to warn him.”

He thought he could find him in the boulevard cafe, where military men go.  But Count Martin knew the General was in the theatre.

“I must find him,” said Loyer.

Bowing to Therese, he said: 

“You permit me, Countess, to take your husband?”

They had just gone out when Jacques Dechartre and Paul Vence came into the box.

“I congratulate you, Madame,” said Paul Vence.

But she turned toward Dechartre: 

“I hope you have not come to congratulate me, too.”

Paul Vence asked her if she would move into the apartments of the Ministry.

“Oh, no,” she replied.

“At least, Madame,” said Paul Vence, “you will go to the balls at the Elysees, and we shall admire the art with which you retain your mysterious charm.”

“Changes in cabinets,” said Madame Martin, “inspire you, Monsieur Vence, with very frivolous reflections.”

“Madame,” continued Paul Vence, “I shall not say like Renan, my beloved master:  ‘What does Sirius care?’ because somebody would reply with reason ‘What does little Earth care for big Sirius?’ But I am always surprised when people who are adult, and even old, let themselves be deluded by the illusion of power, as if hunger, love, and death, all the ignoble or sublime necessities of life, did not exercise on men an empire too sovereign to leave them anything other than power written on paper and an empire of words.  And, what is still more marvellous, people imagine they have other chiefs of state and other ministers than their miseries, their desires, and their imbecility.  He was a wise man who said:  ’Let us give to men irony and pity as witnesses and judges.’”