bonnaire, the respected Minister of War.
The General did not hear them, for he was deaf and occupied himself in
composing verses for the Baroness Bildermann. Hippolyte Ceres offered
an indistinct opposition to everything the Prime Minister proposed. In
a word, he was a madman. One faculty alone escaped the ruin of his
intellect: he retained his Parliamentary sense, his consciousness of
the temper of majorities, his thorough knowledge of groups, and his
certainty of the direction in which affairs were moving.

VIII. FURTHER CONSEQUENCES

The session ended calmly, and the Ministry saw no dangerous signs
upon the benches where the majority sat. It was visible, however, from
certain articles in the Moderate journals, that the demands of the
Jewish and Christian financiers were increasing daily, that the
patriotism of the banks required a civilizing expedition to Nigritia,
and that the steel trusts, eager in the defence of our coasts and
colonies, were crying out for armoured cruisers and still more armoured
cruisers. Rumours of war began to be heard. Such rumours sprang up every
year as regularly as the trade winds; serious people paid no heed
to them and the government usually let them die away from their own
weakness unless they grew stronger and spread. For in that case the
country would be alarmed. The financiers only wanted colonial wars and
the people did not want any wars at all. It loved to see its government
proud and even insolent, but at the least suspicion that a European war
was brewing, its violent emotion would quickly have reached the House.
Paul Visire was not uneasy. The European situation was in his view
completely reassuring. He was only irritated by the maniacal silence of
his Minister of Foreign Affairs. That gnome went to the Cabinet meetings
with a portfolio bigger than himself stuffed full of papers, said
nothing, refused to answer all questions, even those asked him by the
respected President of the Republic, and, exhausted by his obstinate
labours, took a few moments' sleep in his arm-chair in which nothing
but the top of his little black head was to be seen above the green
tablecloth.

In the mean time Hippolyte Ceres became a strong man again. In company
with his colleague Lapersonne he formed numerous intimacies with ladies
of the theatre. They were both to be seen at night entering fashionable
restaurants in the company of ladies whom they over-topped by their
lofty stature and their