an again as soon as the morning commenced. He felt a kind of
infantile joy in being thus perturbed and haunted. It seemed to him that
this emotion made him feel younger. Formerly, on awakening, the dream of
the night had followed him like some intoxication.

Formerly! but "formerly" he was not the important man, the distinguished
personage of to-day.--He had not the charge of power as some others have
the charge of souls. A minister has something else to do than to be
under the sway of a vision. Sulpice dressed hurriedly, went down to his
office, where a huge log-fire flamed behind an antique screen. He sat
down in front of his large mahogany bureau, covered with papers, and on
which was lying a huge black portfolio stuffed with documents bearing
this title in stamped letters: _Monsieur le Ministre de l'Interieur_. In
the centre of the bureau had been placed a leather portfolio filled with
sheets of paper bearing the title: _Documents to be signed by Monsieur
le Ministre_. Beside this were spread out various reports, bearing upon
one corner of the sheet a printed headline: _Office of the Prefect of
Police_ and _Director-General of the Press_.

Vaudrey settled down in his chair with the profound satisfaction of a
man who has not grown weary of an acquired possession. This huge salon
with its blackened pictures, cold marbles, and large, severe-looking
bookcases, presented a sober bourgeois harmony that pleased him. It was
like the salon of a well-to-do notary, with its tall windows overlooking
the courtyard, already full of the shadows of importunate callers and
favor seekers whom the secretary-general received in a room adjoining
the ministerial cabinet. The minister inhaled once more the atmosphere
of his new domicile before settling down to work. Every morning it was
his custom to read the reports of the Director of the Press and of the
Prefect of Police before all else.

He took up the report of the Prefect. Nothing serious. A slight accident
on the Vincennes line near the fortifications of Paris. A train
derailed. A few injured. In the Passage de l'Opera, the previous
evening, the early speech of the Minister of the Interior upon general
policy, and that of the Finance Minister, who was to reply to the rumor,
falsely or prematurely announcing the conversion of the five per cents,
had caused an upward movement in value. All was satisfactory, all was
quiet. The new minister enjoyed public confidence. Perfect.

Sulpi