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He caused himself to be announced to Adrienne. Adrienne, weary looking, was seated before a small desk writing, and beneath her fair hair, her face still looked as white as that of a corpse. "There is some news," Vaudrey said to her abruptly. "I am no longer minister!" "Ah!" she said. Not a tremor, not a word of consolation.
"Picard, valet to the Chevalier de Vaudrey." The Marquis immediately gave orders that he be admitted, and a sharp, wiry-looking fellow, wearing the de Vaudrey livery, stood before the gay party. "Most excellent Marquis and most beautiful ladies," he said to the general mirth as he curtsied low and executed a neat pas seul, "my master the Chevalier is very late, but he will surely appear."
Vaudrey could rule without fear, without excitement and give all his spare time to that woman whose piercing glance, wandering smile, palpitating nostrils, dishevelled, fair hair, kisses, fondness, cries, and tones pursued him everywhere. Marianne, how he loved her! From day to day, how his love of her increased like a madman's!
Vaudrey noted every detail of this living statuette of a Parisian woman: between a little veil knotted behind her head and the lace ruching of her cloak, light, golden curls fell on her neck, and in that frame of light, this elegant woman, this silhouette standing out in full relief against the sky and the horizon line of the water, with a pencil of rays gilding her fair locks, seemed more exquisite and more the "woman" to Sulpice than in the décolleté of a ball costume.
Such a man, more-ever, must be treated prudently, as he can make himself useful. Never had Jouvenet spoken to her of Vaudrey, he was too politic in matters of state. But as a man who knows that everything in this world is transient, he skilfully maintained his place in the ranks, considering that a Prefect of Police might not be at all unlikely to succeed a President of the Council.
She added, prattling in soft, linnet-like tones, that Madame Hertzfield's salon was losing its prestige. Only sub-prefects were created there. But Sabine's salon was the antechamber to the prefectures! "And if you knew how charming Monsieur Vaudrey is a delightful conversationalist he has dined excellently he was twice served with an entrée!"
"Ah! how much better I like my home!" thought Madame Vaudrey. Sabine and Madame Gerson, with the wives of the ministers, those of the chiefs of departments, and the regular visitors, were the most assiduous in their attentions to Adrienne, whom they considered decidedly provincial.
On that side, the game was too fine to be compromised. She could with impunity accept the position of mistress of Vaudrey, but with José she must appear to preserve, as it were, an aureole of modesty, of virginal charms, that she did not possess.
Under this Greco-Parisian disguise it was easy for everyone to discover the true names and to see behind the masks the faces intended. At the very moment that Lissac called to ask the minister for an explanation of the acts of the Prefect Jouvenet, Madame Vaudrey was opening a copy of a journal in which these names travestied by some Hellenist of the boulevard were underlined in red pencil.
All that is necessary is to succeed, and on my word you know Monsieur de Rosas well?" "No," stammered Vaudrey, before whose mind the duke's blond face appeared. "You heard him the other evening!" "I mean that I have never spoken to him. Well! what of Monsieur de Rosas?" "Monsieur de Rosas loved me. Oh!" she said, interrupting a gesture made by Vaudrey, "wait. He said that he loved me. He is rich.
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