She rambled about those deserted rooms that on every
side reminded her of some sweet delight, here it was a kiss of chaste
and eternal love, there a smile. Ah! how easy life would have been there
all alone, happy for ever!

The Ministry! Power! Popularity! Fame! Authority! What were they worth?

Is all that worth one of the blessed hours in this little dwelling,
where the cup of bliss would have been full if the wife could have heard
the clear laugh or the faint cry of a child?

Poor Sulpice! how he was exhausting himself now in an overwhelming task!
He was giving his health and life to politics, while here he only
experienced peace, consoling caresses and the quieting of every
excitement. On the study-table there still remained some pens and some
books that were formerly in constant use.

Adrienne went away with reddened eyes from these pilgrimages, as it
were, to her former happiness. She returned to her carriage and
moistened her cambric pocket handkerchief with her warm breath, in order
to wipe her eyes so that Sulpice might not see that she had been
weeping. Then when her well-known carriage passed before the shops in
the Faubourg Saint-Honore, the wives of mercers or booksellers,
dressmakers, young girls, all of whom enviously shook their heads, said
to each other:

"The minister's wife!--Ah! she has had a glorious dream!--She is
happy!"

III

Marianne was contented. Not that her ambition was completely satisfied,
but after all, Sulpice in place of Rosas was worth having. Though a
minister was only a passing celebrity, he was a personage. From the
depths of the bog in which she lately rolled, she would never have dared
to hope for so speedy a revenge.

Speedy, assuredly, but perhaps not sufficient. Her eager hunger
increased with her success. Since Vaudrey was hers, she sought some
means of bringing about some adventure that would give her fortune. What
could be asked or exacted from Sulpice? She recalled the traditions of
fantastic bargains, of extensive furnishings. She would find them. She
had but to desire, since he had abandoned himself, bound hand and foot,
like a child.

She knew him now, all his candor, all his weakness, for, in the presence
of this blase woman, weary of love, Vaudrey permitted himself to confide
his thoughts with unreserved freedom, opening his heart and disclosing
himself with a clean breast in this duel with a woman:--a duel of
self-interest which he mistook for pas