In their home on Chaussée d'Antin, he usually abandoned himself freely to lively and cheerful conversation, to allow his wife to find in him, the man of forty years, the fiancé, the young husband of former days. But here, before these exclusive domestics, the familiars of the ministry, planted around the table like so many inspectors, rather than servants, he dared not manifest himself. He scarcely spoke. He felt that he was watched and listened to. The valet who passed him the dishes watched over Monsieur le Ministre. He imagined that his attendants in their silent reflections compared the present minister with those that had gone before him. On one occasion, one of the domestics replied to a remark made by Adrienne: "Monsieur Pichereau, who preceded Monsieur le Ministre, and Monsieur le Comte d'Harville, who preceded Monsieur Pichereau, considered my service very proper, madame."
Adrienne accepted as well as she could the necessities of her new position. Since that was power, let power rule! She was resigned to those wastes whose luxury was apparent, since the political fortunes of her husband cast her there, like a prisoner, in that huge, commonplace, ministerial mansion, wherein none of the joys of home or of that Parisian apartment that she had furnished with such refined taste were left her. She felt half lost in those vast, cold salons of that ancient Hôtel Beauvau,—cold in spite of their stoves, and which partook at one and the same time of the provisional domicile and the furnished apartment,—with its defaced gilded panels, and here and there a crack in the ceiling, and those vulgar ornaments, those wearisome imitation Chardins with their cracked colors and those old-fashioned pictures of Roqueplan, giving to everything at once one date, a bygone style. With what a truly melancholy smile Adrienne greeted the friends who came to see her on her reception day, when they remarked to her: "Why, you are in a palace!"
"Yes, but I much prefer my accustomed furniture and my own house."
Sulpice, free at last from that Council and the morning receptions, as he alighted from his carriage, caused Madame to be informed that he had returned.
Adrienne, who was looking pretty in a tight-fitting, black velvet gown, approached him with a smile and was suddenly overcome with sadness on seeing him absorbed in thought. She dared not question him, but being somewhat anxious, she, nevertheless, inquired the cause of his frowning expression.
"You have your bad look, my good Sulpice," she smilingly said.
He then quickly explained the Warcolier business.
"Is that all? Bah!" she said, "you will have many other such annoyances."
She was smiling graciously.
"That is politics!—And then you like it—At least, confine your likes to that, Sulpice," she said, drawing near to Vaudrey.