n
of his wealth. He was neither officially influential nor liked. Feared
he was, probably, and envied because of his good fortune, recognized,
too, as a _force_, but only as acting in the whirlwind of his ideas and
struggling in the emptiness of his dreams. After having immolated
everything, youth, family, friendship, love, to this chimera: power, he
found himself old, worn-out, broken by his combats, face to face with
the folly of his hopes and the worthlessness of his will. Never had his
nervous hand been able to grasp in its transition, the fragment of
morocco of a portfolio and now that his parchment-like fingers were old
and feeble, they would never cling to that shred of power! And now this
Prangins avenged himself for the contempt or the injustice of his
colleagues and the folly of circumstances, by criticism, defiance,
mockery, denial and by loudly expressing his opinion:

"The defect of every government is that it will try to play new airs on
an old violin! Your violin is cracked, Monsieur Vaudrey! I do not
reproach you for that, you did not make it!"

Vaudrey laughed at the sally, but Warcolier felt that he was choking.
How could the minister allow his policy to be thus attacked at table?
Ah! how Warcolier would have clinched the argument of this Prangins.

Madame Gerson was delighted. The dinner was served sumptuously and went
off without a hitch. The _maitre d'hotel_ directed the service
admirably. The soiree that was to follow it would be magnificent. The
journals would most certainly report it. Gerson had invited one reporter
in spite of his dislike of journalists. Ah! those gossipers and foolish
fellows, they never forgot to describe the toilettes worn by "the pretty
Madame Gerson" at _first nights_, at the Elysee or at Charity Bazaars.
Occasionally, her husband pretended to be angered by the successes of
his wife:

"Those journalists! Just imagine, those journalists! They speak about my
wife just as they would about an actress! 'The lovely Madame Gerson wore
a gown of _crepe de Chine_!' The lovely Madame Gerson! What has my
wife's beauty or her toilette to do with them?"

In truth, however, he felt flattered. He was only sincerely annoyed
when people respected the devilish wall of private life, the cement of
which he would have stripped off himself, in order to show his wife's
beauty. To be quoted in the paper, why! that is _chic_.

Adrienne felt a little stunned by the noise of the conversation wh