-already two weeks!--had
wandered about Paris like a damned soul when he did not attend the
Chamber, where he experienced the discomforts and the weakness of a
fallen man. Weary, disgusted and melancholy, Vaudrey took his seat in
the theatre to kill an evening.

There was what was called in the language of a Paris editor, a _swell
house_. In front of the stage there was literally a shower of diamonds
and the boxes were gaily adorned. The _fauteuils_ were occupied by
Parisian glories and foreign celebrities. Not a stall in the
amphitheatre without its _celebrity_. Chance had placed in this
All-Paris gathering, Madame Sabine Marsy and Madame Gerson, the two
friends who detested each other. The pretty little Madame Gerson
occupied and filled with her prattle, the box of the Prefect of
Police--No. 30, in which Monsieur Jouvenet showed his churchwarden's
profile. She was talking aloud about her salon, her receptions, her
acquaintances. She was eclipsing Madame Marsy with her triumphs. At the
back of the box, Monsieur Gerson was sleeping, overcome by fatigue.
Madame Gerson laughed on observing Sulpice in the orchestra-stalls.

"See! there is Monsieur Vaudrey! He still looks a little _beaten!_" she
said.

And she told her friends, crowded in the box, leaning over her and
looking at the pretty, plump bosom of this little, well-made brunette,
how Vaudrey was to dine at her house on the very evening when he fell
from power.

"Of course, he did not come!" she said. "I remember what Madame Marsy
advised me, one day,--she has passed through that in her time: one
should think of the invitations to dinner before dismissing a ministry!
Oh! it is tiresome; think of it!--One invites the Secretary of the
President of the Council to dinner. He is named on the card. He comes.
It is all over; he is no longer Secretary of the President, the
President of the Council is no longer President, there is no longer a
President, perhaps not even a Council; one should be certain of one's
titles and rank before accepting an invitation to dinner!"

She laughed heartily and loud, and Madame Marsy, who was half dethroned,
fanned herself nervously in her box, or levelled her glass at some one
in the audience, affecting a little disdainful manner toward her fair
neighbor. A friendship turned to acid.

Vaudrey, looking fatigued and abstracted, sat in his stall during the
entr'acte. He looked unconsciously about the theatre and still felt
surprised at