Sulpice hastened to announce this news to Adrienne, although it would not become official until after Collard's funeral obsequies. He returned almost triumphantly to the Hôtel Beauvau. Only one thought, a sombre image, clouded his joy: it was not the memory of Collard, but the sad image of the man whom he had met at Ramel's, and who, when the Officiel should speak, should make the announcement, would shrug his shoulders and say ironically:
"Well! and what then?"
He had scarcely whispered these words to Adrienne: "President of the Council! I am President of the Council!" when, without being astonished at the faint, almost indifferent smile that escaped the young wife, he suddenly thought that he was under obligation to make a personal visit to the Ministry of Justice where Collard was lying dead.
He ordered himself to be driven quickly to Place Vendôme.
At every moment, carriages brought to the ministry men of grave mien, decorated with the red ribbon, who entered wearing expressions suitable to the occasion and inscribed their names in silence on the register, passing the pen from one to another just as the aspergillus is passed along in church. Everybody stood aside on noticing Vaudrey. It seemed to him that they instinctively divined that Collard being out of the way it was he who must be the man of the hour, the necessary man, the President of the Council marked out in advance, the chief of the coming ministry.
"Poor Collard!" thought Sulpice, as he inscribed his name on the register. "One will never be able to say: the Collard Administration. But it would be glorious if one day history said: the Vaudrey Administration."
He re-entered the Hôtel Beauvau, inflated with the idea. In the antechamber, there were more office-seekers than were usually in attendance. One of them, on seeing Vaudrey, rose and ran to him and said quickly to Sulpice, who did not stop:
"Ah! Monsieur le Ministre—What a misfortune—Monsieur Collard—If there were no eminent men like Your Excellency to replace him!—"
Vaudrey bowed without replying.
"What is the name of that gentleman?" said he as soon as he entered his cabinet, to the usher who followed him. "I always find him, but I cannot recognize him."