Jacques loved her; he loved her with a delicious mingling of passion and tenderness, of learned experience and curious ingenuity.  He was nervous, irritable, anxious.  But the uncertainty of his humor made his gayety more charming.  That artistic gayety, bursting out suddenly like a flame, caressed love without offending it.  And the playful wit of her lover made Therese marvel.  She never could have imagined the infallible taste which he exercised naturally in joyful caprice and in familiar fantasy.  At first he had displayed only the monotony of passionate ardor.  That alone had captured her.  But since then she had discovered in him a gay mind, well stored and diverse, as well as the gift of agreeable flattery.

“To assemble a homogeneous ministry,” exclaimed Garain, “is easily said.  Yet one must be guided by the tendencies of the various factions of the Chamber.”

He was uneasy.  He saw himself surrounded by as many snares as those which he had laid.  Even his collaborators became hostile to him.

Count Martin wished the new ministry to satisfy the aspirations of the new men.

“Your list is formed of personalities essentially different in origin and in tendency,” he said.  “Yet the most important fact in the political history of recent years is the possibility, I should say the necessity, to introduce unity of views in the government of the republic.  These are ideas which you, my dear Garin, have expressed with rare eloquence.”

M. Berthier-d’Eyzelles kept silence.

Senator Loyer rolled crumbs with his fingers.  He had been formerly a frequenter of beer-halls, and while moulding crumbs or cutting corks he found ideas.  He raised his red face.  And, looking at Garain with wrinkled eyes wherein red fire sparkled, he said: 

“I said it, and nobody would believe it.  The annihilation of the monarchical Right was for the chiefs of the Republican party an irreparable misfortune.  We governed formerly against it.  The real support of a government is the Opposition.  The Empire governed against the Orleanists and against us; MacMahon governed against the Republicans.  More fortunate, we governed against the Right.  The Right—­what a magnificent Opposition it was!  It threatened, was candid, powerless, great, honest, unpopular!  We should have nursed it.  We did not know how to do that.  And then, of course, everything wears out.  Yet it is always necessary to govern against something.  There are to-day only Socialists to give us the support which the Right lent us fifteen years ago with so constant a generosity.  But they are too weak.  We should reenforce them, make of them a political party.  To do this at the present hour is the first duty of a State minister.”

Garain, who was not cynical, made no answer.

“Garain, do you not yet know,” asked Count Martin, “whether with the Premiership you are to take the Seals or the Interior?”

Garain replied that his decision would depend on the choice which some one else would make.  The presence of that personage in the Cabinet was necessary, and he hesitated between two portfolios.  Garain sacrificed his personal convenience to superior interests.