t than of the Adrienne that
he had outraged; while the wife questioned with herself if it were
really she coming and going, automatically trying on her ball costume,
abandoning her head to the hair-dresser, feeling that in two hours she
would be condemned to smile on the minister's guests, the senators and
the deputies and play the part of a spectre, marching in the land of
dreams, in a nightmare that choked her, fastened on her throat and heart
and prompted her to cry and weep, all her poor nerves intensely strained
and sick, subdued by the energy of a tortured person, imposing on
herself the task of not appearing to suffer and--a still more atrocious
thing--of not even suffering in reality and waiting, yes, waiting to
sob.

In the evening, everything blazed on the facade of the ministry. The
rows of gas-jets suggested that a public fete was being held in the
Hotel Beauvau. The naming capital letters R.F. were boldly outlined
against the dark sky, the three colors of the flags looked bright in the
ruddy light of the gas. Carriages rolled over the sanded courtyard,
giving up at the carpeted entrance to the hotel the invited guests
dressed in correct style, the women wrapped in ample cloaks with gold
fringe or trimmed with fur, and all poured into the antechamber,
brushing against the _Gardes de Paris_ in white breeches, with grounded
arms, forming a row and standing out like Caryatides against the
shining, large leaved green flowers on which their white helmets shone
by the light of the lustres. In the dressing-room, the clothing was
piled up, tied together in haste; the antechamber was quickly crossed,
the women in passing casting rapid glances at the immense mirrors; a
servant asked the names of the guests and repeated them to an usher,
whose loud voice penetrated these salons that for many years had heard
so many different names, of all parties, under all regimes, and
proclaimed them in the usual commonplace manner, while murdering the
most celebrated of them. Upon the threshold of the salon, filled with
fashionable people and flooded with intense light, stood the minister,
who had been receiving, greeting, bowing, ever since the opening of the
soiree, to those who arrived, some of whom he did not know; crowding
behind him, correctly dressed, stood his secretaries, the members of his
cabinet appropriating their shares of the greetings extended to the
Excellency, and at his side stood Madame Vaudrey, pale and smiling