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Updated: June 16, 2025
He bore with him a feeling akin to remorse, and in all sincerity, for he still heard ringing in his ears, the poor consumptive's voice saying: "What is it to me, who am suffering, whether Vaudrey or Pichereau be minister?" On reaching Place Beauvau, he found a despatch requesting his immediate presence at the Élysée. At the Palace he received information that surprised him like a thunderbolt.
He recalled how, on that morning when Sulpice Vaudrey sat there for the first time, the morning following Pichereau's sudden dismissal from office, the editor of this daily press bulletin, like an automaton, mechanically and indifferently laid on the table of the minister a report wherein he said in full: "Public opinion, by the mouth of the accepted journals, has for too long a time reposed confidence in the Pichereau administration, for the ministry to be troubled about the approaching and useless interpellation announced some days ago by Monsieur Vaudrey of Isère ."
Granet, the low intriguer of the lobbies; Molina, the stock-company cut-throat and Bourse ruffian; Ramel, the melancholy and redoubtable publicist, who has made emperors without himself desiring to become one, who will die in the neighborhood of Montmartre and the Batignolles, forgotten but proud, poor, and unsullied by money, true to his ideals, among the ingrates enriched by his journal and who have reached the summit only by the influence of his authority with the public; Denis Garnier, the Parisian workman who has had an experience of the hulks as the result of imbibing too freely of sentimental prose and of lending too ready an ear to the golden speech of some tavern demagogue, who has now had enough of politics and who scarcely troubles to think what former retailer of treasonable language, what Gracchus of the sidewalk may be minister, Vaudrey or Pichereau, or even Granet: all these types are separately analyzed and vigorously generalized.
Sulpice glanced at him carelessly and recognized him as the man whom he himself had superseded on Place Beauvau a Puritan, a Huguenot, a widower, the father of five or six daughters, and as solemn and proper in his ordinary demeanor as a Sunday-school tract. Sulpice could not refrain from crying out merrily: "Bless me! Monsieur Pichereau!"
And it was to Vaudrey, the elected successor of Pichereau, that the report was handed naturally and as was due. "The compilers of these little chronicles are very optimistic," thought Sulpice. "After all, probably, it is the office that is responsible for this, as, doubtless, ministers do not like to know the truth. I will see, however, that I get it." He had, this time, a burdensome morning.
"I had something to say to you I yes, I wanted " The unlucky Pichereau mechanically pulled and jerked at his waistcoat, then assuming a dignified, grave air, he whistled and hesitated, and finally stammered: "I wished to speak with you yes to consult with you upon a matter of grave importance concerning Protestant communities." Sulpice could not restrain his laughter.
Pichereau, with his look of a Calvinistic preacher, was throwing from behind his spectacles glowing looks in the direction where Marie Launay stood listening to and laughing at the badinage of Molina. Some newspaper reporters, scenting a handy paragraph, came sauntering up to overhear some fragment of the conversation between the minister of yesterday and him of to-day.
She commented thereon, but the somewhat contemptuous smile of her domestics was her only reply and it made her feel ashamed. Vaudrey's predecessor, Monsieur Pichereau, was exacting, close-fisted. His table was meagre but there was nothing astonishing in that, Monsieur Pichereau had a delicate stomach. Well and good, but the predecessors of Monsieur Pichereau, they had given fêtes, they had!
On one occasion, one of the domestics replied to a remark made by Adrienne: "Monsieur Pichereau, who preceded Monsieur le Ministre, and Monsieur le Comte d'Harville, who preceded Monsieur Pichereau, considered my service very proper, madame." Adrienne accepted as well as she could the necessities of her new position. Since that was power, let power rule!
A little more and she would have had their names printed on the programmes for the evening. She had had a success quite unlooked for a promise from Monsieur Pichereau to be present from Pichereau, that starched Puritan, and all the newspapers had announced his intention. When suddenly stupidly a cabinet crisis had arisen at the most unexpected moment, a useless crisis.
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