s of the
Ministry.

"Oh, no," she replied.

"At least, Madame," said Paul Vence, "you will go to the balls at
the Elysees, and we shall admire the art with which you retain your
mysterious charm."

"Changes in cabinets," said Madame Martin, "inspire you, Monsieur Vence,
with very frivolous reflections."

"Madame," continued Paul Vence, "I shall not say like Renan, my beloved
master: 'What does Sirius care?' because somebody would reply with
reason 'What does little Earth care for big Sirius?' But I am always
surprised when people who are adult, and even old, let themselves be
deluded by the illusion of power, as if hunger, love, and death, all
the ignoble or sublime necessities of life, did not exercise on men an
empire too sovereign to leave them anything other than power written on
paper and an empire of words. And, what is still more marvellous, people
imagine they have other chiefs of state and other ministers than their
miseries, their desires, and their imbecility. He was a wise man who
said: 'Let us give to men irony and pity as witnesses and judges.'"

"But, Monsieur Vence," said Madame Martin, laughingly, "you are the man
who wrote that. I read it."

The two Ministers looked vainly in the theatre and in the corridors for
the General. On the advice of the ushers, they went behind the scenes.

Two ballet-dancers were standing sadly, with a foot on the bar placed
against the wall. Here and there men in evening dress and women in gauze
formed groups almost silent.

Loyer and Martin-Belleme, when they entered, took off their hats. They
saw, in the rear of the hall, Lariviere with a pretty girl whose pink
tunic, held by a gold belt, was open at the hips.

She held in her hand a gilt pasteboard cup. When they were near her,
they heard her say to the General:

"You are old, to be sure, but I think you do as much as he does."

And she was pointing disdainfully to a grinning young man, with a
gardenia in his button-hole, who stood near them.

Loyer motioned to the General that he wished to speak to him, and,
pushing him against the bar, said:

"I have the pleasure to announce to you that you have been appointed
Minister of War."

Lariviere, distrustful, said nothing. That badly dressed man with long
hair, who, under his dusty coat, resembled a clown, inspired so little
confidence in him that he suspected a snare, perhaps a bad joke.

"Monsieur Loyer is Keeper of the Seals," said Count Martin.

"Gener