turb
his thoughts, political as they were, no doubt, while he mused upon his
hours of voluptuous enjoyment, forever recalling the youthful roundness
of her shoulders, and the inflections of her body, the ivory-like curve
of her neck, whose white nape rested upon him, and her curls escaped
from the superb arrangement of her hair, held in its place at the top by
a comb thrust into this fair mass like a claw plunged into flesh.

Vaudrey must have had an active and prompt intelligence at times to
forget suddenly these passionate images, when he unexpectedly found
himself compelled to ascend the tribune during a discussion or to
express his opinion clearly at the Ministerial Council. He increased his
power, finding, perhaps, a new excitement, a new spur in the love that
renewed his youth. He had never been seen more active and more stirring
in the Chamber, though he was somewhat nervous. He determined to put
himself in evidence at the Ministry and to prove to the phrase-monger
Warcolier that he knew how to act. The President of the Council,
Monsieur Collard--of Nantes--said several times to Sulpice:

"Too much zeal, my dear minister. A politician ought to be cooler."

"I shall be cooler with age!" Sulpice replied with a laugh.

From time to time he went to seek advice from Ramel, as he had promised.
The little shopkeepers and laundresses of Rue Boursault hardly suspected
when they saw a coupe stop at the door of the old journalist, that a
minister alighted from it.

Sulpice felt amid the bustle of his life, amid the spurring and
over-excited events of his existence, the need of talking with his old
friend. Besides, Rue Boursault was on the way to Rue Prony. As Marianne
was frequently not at home, Sulpice would spend the time before her
return in chatting with Ramel.

"Well! Ramel, are you satisfied with me?"

"How could I be otherwise? You are an honest man and faithful and
devoted to your ideas. I am not afraid of you, but I am of those by whom
you are surrounded."

"Warcolier?"

"Warcolier and many others, of those important fellows who ask me--when
they deign to speak to me--with an insignificant air of superiority and
almost of pity, the idiots: 'Well! you are no longer doing anything!
When will you do something?' As if I had not done too much already,
seeing that I have made them!"

Denis Ramel smiled superciliously and the minister looked with a sort of
respect at this vanguard warrior, this laborer of the