stinies, aye, even the very fate of the
fatherland.

And this Sulpice, overjoyed to expand at his ease in the delights of
power, sitting there in his accustomed chair,--a chair which now seemed
to be really his own--enjoying a sort of physical satisfaction ever new,
inhaling power like the fumes of a nargileh, forgot himself, however,
and suddenly felt himself recalled to the urgent reality when his
colleague, the Minister of War, a spare man with a grizzled moustache,
dropped an infrequent remark in which, in the laconic speech of a
soldier, could be comprehended some cause of anxiety or of hope. Sulpice
listened then, more moved than he was willing to have it appear,
trying, in his turn, to hide all his artistic and patriotic anxieties
under that firm exterior which his colleague of the Department of
Foreign Affairs wore, a dull-eyed, listless face, and cheeks that might
be made of pasteboard.

The business of the Council was of little importance that morning. The
Keeper of the Seals, Monsieur Collard--of Nantes--a fat, puffing,
apoplectic man with somewhat glassy, round eyes, proposed to the
President, who listened attentively but without replying, some reform to
which Vaudrey was perfectly indifferent. He did not even hear his
colleague's dull speech, the latter lost himself in useless
considerations, while the Minister of War looked at him, as if his eyes,
loaded with grapeshot said, in military fashion: "_Sacrebleu!_ get
done!"

Vaudrey looked out of the window at the dark horizon of the winter sky
and the gray tints of the leafless trees, and watched the little birds
that chased one another among the branches. His thoughts were far, very
far away from the table where the sober silence was broken by the
interminable phrases of the Minister of Justice, whose words suggested
the constant flow of an open spigot.

The vision of a female form at the end of the garden appeared to him, a
form that, notwithstanding the cold, was clothed in the soft blue gown
that Marianne wore yesterday at Sabine's. He seemed to catch that
fleeting smile, the exact expression of which he sought to recall, that
peculiar glance, cunning and enticing, that exquisite outline of a
perfect Parisian woman. How charming she was! And how sweet that name,
Marianne!

Let us see indeed, what in reality could such a woman be! Terrible,
perhaps, but certainly irresistible!

Not for years had Vaudrey felt such an anxiety or allowed himself to be