able of the
Accounts of the Sittings of the Senate_, his name shone brilliantly,
with the following as his record: "CREPEAU, of L'Ain, Life
Senator--Apologizes for his absence--8 January--. Apologizes for his
absence--20 February--. Member of a commission--_Journal Officiel_, p.
1441. Apologizes for not being able to take part in the labors of the
commission--4 March--. Apologizes for his absence--20 March--. Asks for
leave of absence--5 April--." Such were his services during the ordinary
work of that year. Monsieur Crepeau--of L'Ain--had earned the right to
take a rest.

"He eats very heartily," said Lissac. "His appetite is better than his
eloquence."

Next to Crepeau was another legislator, Henri de Prangins, a publicist,
an old, wrinkled, stooping, dissatisfied grumbler.

"Ah! that is Monsieur de Prangins," said Adrienne, "I have heard much
about him."

"He is a typical character," Lissac said, with a smile. "You know
Granet, _the gentleman who will become a minister_; well, Prangins is
the gentleman who would be a minister, but who never will be! Moreover,
he is five hundred times more remarkable than a hundred others who have
been in office ten times, for what reason cannot be said."

For nearly half a century Prangins, the old political wheel-horse, had
plotted and jockeyed in politics, set up and overthrown ministries,
piled up review articles on newspaper articles, contradiction on
contradiction, page on page, spoiled cartloads of paper in his vocation
of daily or fortnightly howler, and withal he was applauded, rich and
popular, famous and surrounded by flatterers, knife-and-fork companions,
without friends but not wanting clients, as he had made and spoiled
reputations, ministers, governments, and although he well knew the
vanity and nothingness of power, he aspired to secure that vain booty,
oft alleging, with bitter enviousness of authority and impatient of
tyranny, that to enjoy popularity uninterruptedly was not worth a
quarter of an hour of power, approaching with greedy eagerness the
desired lot, yet seeing it inevitably, eternally, relentlessly escape
and recede from him, plucked from his grasp as it were, like a shred of
flesh from the jaw of a Molossian. And now, in his unquenchable lust of
power, amid the monuments of combination and deception he had created,
this man was weary, disgusted and irritated,--believing himself
vanquished and smothering the anger of defeat in the luxurious isolatio