“Directors of the Subsidized Theatres!”
By favor of seniority and his three failures Cadaillac arrived at the head of this delegation. Roumestan longed far more to fall with fist and foot upon the cynical impresario whose nomination had occasioned such serious embarrassment to him than to listen to the fine speech to which the ferocious insolence of his look gave the lie and to answer him with a forced compliment, half of which stuck in the big folds of his cravat:
“Greatly touched, gentlemen ... mn mn mn ... progress of art ... mn mn mn ... still better in the future....”
And the impresario as he moved off:
“Poor old Numa—he’s got a charge of lead in his wing this time!”
When these had left, the Minister and his comrades did honor to the usual breakfast; but this meal which had been so gay and full of effusion the year before was weighted down by the gloom of the chief and bad temper on the part of his intimates, who were all of them enraged with him on account of their own situations which he had already begun to compromise. This scandalous lawsuit coming just in the midst of the debate over Cadaillac would be sure to make Roumestan impossible as a member of the cabinet. That very morning at the reception in the Palace of the Élysées the Marshal had said two words about it with the laconic and brutal eloquence natural to an old cavalryman: “A dirty business!”
Without precisely having heard this speech from an august mouth, which was murmured in Numa’s ear in an alcove, the gentlemen round him saw very clearly their own fall coming behind that of their chief.
“Oh, women, women!” grunted the learned Béchut over his plate. M. de la Calmette with his thirty years of official life grew melancholy as he pondered over a retiring from office like unto Tircis, and below his breath the long-legged Lappara amused himself by frightening Rochemaure out of his wits:
“Viscount, we must look out for ourselves; we shall be decapitated before eight days are over!”
After a toast had been given by the Minister to the New Year and his dear collaborators, uttered with a shaky voice in which one heard the tears, they separated. Méjean, who stayed to the last, walked two or three times up and down beside his friend without having the courage to say a single word; then he too left. Notwithstanding his wish to keep by his side during that day a man like Méjean whose straightforward nature forced his respect like a reproach uttered by his own conscience, but at the same time sustained and reassured him, Numa could not stand in the way of Méjean’s duty, which was to run his round of visits and distribute good wishes and presents for the New Year, any more than he could prevent his chamberlain from going back to his family and unburdening himself of his sword and short-clothes.