She was as fully mistress of herself as Vaudrey was embarrassed and unbalanced. He seemed to hear voices laughing and singing within him and his brain was inflamed with joy. Before him opened the immense prospects of his dreams. Glorious as it was to be all-powerful, it was better to be loved. Everything whirled about within his brain, he thought he still heard Denis Ramel talking to him, and in a twinkling, Marianne's smiling face appeared, and with a kiss she interrupted the old journalist's sallies, and Sulpice saw her, too, as it were half-fainting, through the window of her fiacre, like a pastel half-hidden beneath the glass.
He was delighted to walk about for a moment when the carriage had set him down on the asphalted space that surrounds the Madeleine. The walk was beneficial. He raised his head instinctively, expanded his lungs with the air, and threw out his chest. He thought that people looked at him attentively. Some passers-by turned round to see him. He would have felt prouder to have heard them say: "That is Mademoiselle Kayser's lover!" than: "That is Monsieur Vaudrey, the minister!"
He felt a kind of annoyance on returning to Place Beauvau. He was still with Marianne. He recalled her attitudes, her smile, the tone of her voice. Public matters now fastened their collar on him, there were signatures to be subscribed, reports to be read, telegrams, routine work; in a word, vulgar professional duties were to be resumed. He did not at once go to his cabinet. Warcolier, the Under Secretary of State, received and despatched ordinary matters.
Through some strange caprice, he felt a desire to see Adrienne very soon after leaving Marianne, perhaps to know how he would feel and if "cela se voyait" as they say. There was also a feeling of remorse involved in this eagerness. He wished to satisfy himself that Adrienne was not suffering, and as formerly, to smile on her as if redoubled affection would, in his own eyes, obliterate his fault.
Adrienne was in her salon. Sulpice heard the sound of voices beyond the door. Some one was talking.
"Madame has a visitor?" he inquired of the domestic.
"Yes, Monsieur le Ministre—Monsieur de Lissac."
"What! Guy! what chance brings him here!" Sulpice thought.
He opened the door and entered, extending his hand to his friend.
"How lucky! it is very kind of you to come."