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Updated: June 1, 2025
He wanted a little piece, only one piece! A sub-prefecture of the third class! He had already been informed at the Élysée that Granet was to be his successor. Parbleu! he expected it! But the realization of his fears annoyed him. And who would Granet keep for his Secretary of State? Warcolier, yes Warcolier, with the promise of giving him the first vacant portfolio.
A free-liver, he could not realize that hungry people should ever think of better food. Everything was good; everything was right; everything was beautiful. Of an admirably tranquil disposition, he felt neither anger nor envy. Thinking himself superior to every one else, Warcolier never made comparisons, he did not even prefer himself: he worshipped himself.
"My dear minister, it is about the appointment of an Under Secretary of State for the Interior. Well! I have come to urge the claims of my friend, our colleague Warcolier." While speaking, Granet, who was seated near the bureau of the minister, with his hat on his knee, was watching Vaudrey through his eyeglass; he saw that his lips twitched slightly as he hesitated before replying.
And that very name which was formerly read at the foot of professions of faith: Appeal to Honest People. The Revolution overwhelms us! is now found at the foot of proclamations wherein this devil of a Warcolier exclaims: Appeal to Good Citizens. Reaction now threatens us!
"Well, my dear Vaudrey, what is the news?" said Warcolier, bearing his head high and smiling with a silly, but an aggressively benign expression, with the superior tone of satisfied fools. "Nothing!" said Sulpice. "I think Verdi's music is superb!" "Oh! a little Wagnerian," Warcolier replied, repeating what he had heard. "But what of politics?" "Ah! politics concerns you now!"
But surely if Granet were the rising sun, Vaudrey was himself abandoning his character of the setting sun. He was not setting, he was falling. A sovereign contempt for this man entered Warcolier's lofty soul, Warcolier the friend of success. "Then you do not understand, Monsieur le Président?" Vaudrey drew himself up with a sudden movement that was frequent with him.
At Paris or at Brives-la-Gaillarde? At a ball at the Hôtel Beauvau or in some provincial sub-prefecture? Just before, he had heard Warcolier utter this epic expression: "If I were minister, I would give fireworks. They are warlike and inoffensive at the same time!"
"One hundred and twenty-two deputies," he said, still speaking in a loud voice in the corridors, "to whom I have refused the appointment of some mayor or the removal of some rural guard!" Warcolier, ever dignified, remarked in his usual style, that this manner of defending himself probably lacked some of that nobility which becomes a defeat bravely endured.
Why, you will have against you the bureaux, those sacrosanct bureaux that have governed this country since bureaucracy has existed, and they will cram more than one Warcolier down your throat, I warn you." "Yes, if I allow it," said Vaudrey haughtily. "Eh! my poor friend, you have already allowed it," said the veteran.
"I read very little," now replied Crépeau to Warcolier "I do not much care for pure literature we politicians, we need substantial reading that will teach us to think." "I believe you! " murmured this Parisian Guy, still smoking and listening. "Go to school, my good man!" The conversation thus intermingled and confused, horrified and irritated this blasé by its gravity and selfishness.
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