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He had written to his notary at Grenoble, and this old friend had replied that the farms of Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, mortgaged and cut up one after another, now represented only a ridiculous value, but that after all, Vaudrey had nothing to be concerned about, seeing that Madame Vaudrey's fortune was intact. Adrienne's fortune!
At the end of the second act, however, Lissac suddenly caught sight of Vaudrey's smiling countenance beside Granet's waxed moustaches in the manager's box. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "there is Vaudrey!" Madame Marsy, however, had already caught sight of him.
There were some whom the clerks saluted in a familiar way, as if they were old acquaintances: intrepid office-seekers, unmoved by any changes in ministerial combinations. Such entered Vaudrey's cabinet in a deliberate, familiar manner, and as if feeling at home. Sulpice had once heard one of them greet an usher by his first name: "Good-morning, Gustave."
He wished to know Vaudrey's opinion as to the one-man ballet. Sulpice smiled. "Thanks!" he said. "We have just been dealing with that. I prefer truffles, they are more savory." Through the flowers, Adrienne could see her husband who was seated opposite to her beside Madame Gerson.
The friendly keeper, having gotten a peep at the ex-Police Prefect's letter of pardon, needed but the clincher argument of the gold in order to aid de Vaudrey's escape. A rope over the wall, and even a plank across the moat, were mysteriously provided. Already the East was showing the ghostly light of the first faint streaks of dawn.
Granet was tired of being only the minister of to-morrow, he wished to have his day. He had just affirmed his policy, he asserted that the whole country, weary of Vaudrey's compromises, demanded a more homogeneous ministry. Homogeneity! Nothing could be said against such a word. Granet favored the policy of homogeneity. This vocable comprehended his entire programme.
Dark details she could now explain. Vaudrey's falsehoods were suddenly manifested. "He lied! Ah! how he had lied!" She recalled his anxiety to hide the journals from her, his oft-repeated suggestions, his precautions, the increasing number of his night-sessions that made him pale. Pale from debauchery! And she pitied him!
"And is this all?" the minister exclaimed almost involuntarily. "What!" answered Granet, "you seem hard to please!" Amongst all these girls, there had been manifested an expression of mingled curiosity, coquetry and banter on Vaudrey's appearance in their midst. His presence in the manager's box had been noticed and his coming to the greenroom expected. Every one had hurried thither.
In the recess during one of the years following his election to the Assembly, he married Mademoiselle Gérard. Doctor Reboux, her guardian, charmed to give his ward to a man with a future like Vaudrey's, had not hesitated long about consenting to the marriage.
The session of the Chamber was to furnish him the most cruel deception. Granet had most skilfully prepared his plan of attack. Vaudrey's ministry was threatened on all sides by lines of approach laid out without Sulpice's knowledge. Granet had promised, here and there, new situations, or had undertaken to confirm the old.
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