ould not answer for your long employing
such methods of government."

"Come, are you mad? What does it all signify?" asked the minister, in
astonishment.

He appeared as if he really did not understand. It was clear that he did
not know what Guy meant.

"Don't you read the papers, then?" Lissac asked him.

"I read the reports of the Director of the Press."

"Well, if those reports have not informed you of my arrest in the heart
of the Exposition des Mirlitons, on Wednesday, they have told you
nothing!--"

"Arrested! you?"

"By the agents of Monsieur Jouvenet, your Prefect of Police, to gratify
your mistress, Mademoiselle Kayser!"

"Ah! my dear Guy!" said the minister, whose cheek became flushed in
spots. "I should be glad if you--"

He paused for a phrase to express clearly and briefly that he required
Lissac to be silent, but could not frame one. He received, as it were, a
sudden and violent blow on the head. Beyond question, he did not know a
word of all that Lissac had informed him. And yet this was the gossip of
Paris for two days! Either naming in full, or in indicating him
sufficiently clearly, the newspapers had related the adventure on their
front page. Moreover, much attention had been attracted to an article in
a journal with which Lucien Granet was intimately connected, wherein, in
well-turned but perfidious phrases, a certain Alkibiades--Lissac had
guessed that this name was applied to him--had been arrested by the
orders of the archon Sulpicios at the instance of a certain Basilea, one
of the most charming hetaires of the republic of Perikles. Under this
Greco-Parisian disguise it was easy for everyone to discover the true
names and to see behind the masks the faces intended.

At the very moment that Lissac called to ask the minister for an
explanation of the acts of the Prefect Jouvenet, Madame Vaudrey was
opening a copy of a journal in which these names travestied by some
Hellenist of the boulevard were underlined in red pencil. The article
entitled _The Mistress of an Archon_, had been specially sent to her
under a cover bearing the address in a woman's handwriting, Sabine Marsy
or Madame Gerson! Some friend. One always has such.

It was of Adrienne that Vaudrey thought while Lissac was giving vent to
his ironical, blunt complaint. Was Guy mad to speak of Marianne aloud in
this way, and in this place, a few feet away from his wife, who could
hear everything? Yes, Lissac was over-excited, fu