Senator Crépeau sat further away. He was a fat manufacturer, who talked about alimentary products and politics. In the Analytical Table of the Accounts of the Sittings of the Senate, his name shone brilliantly, with the following as his record: "CRÉPEAU, of L'Ain, Life Senator—Apologizes for his absence—8 January—. Apologizes for his absence—20 February—. Member of a commission—Journal Officiel, p. 1441. Apologizes for not being able to take part in the labors of the commission—4 March—. Apologizes for his absence—20 March—. Asks for leave of absence—5 April—." Such were his services during the ordinary work of that year. Monsieur Crépeau—of L'Ain—had earned the right to take a rest.
"He eats very heartily," said Lissac. "His appetite is better than his eloquence."
Next to Crépeau was another legislator, Henri de Prangins, a publicist, an old, wrinkled, stooping, dissatisfied grumbler.
"Ah! that is Monsieur de Prangins," said Adrienne, "I have heard much about him."
"He is a typical character," Lissac said, with a smile. "You know Granet, the gentleman who will become a minister; well, Prangins is the gentleman who would be a minister, but who never will be! Moreover, he is five hundred times more remarkable than a hundred others who have been in office ten times, for what reason cannot be said."
For nearly half a century Prangins, the old political wheel-horse, had plotted and jockeyed in politics, set up and overthrown ministries, piled up review articles on newspaper articles, contradiction on contradiction, page on page, spoiled cartloads of paper in his vocation of daily or fortnightly howler, and withal he was applauded, rich and popular, famous and surrounded by flatterers, knife-and-fork companions, without friends but not wanting clients, as he had made and spoiled reputations, ministers, governments, and although he well knew the vanity and nothingness of power, he aspired to secure that vain booty, oft alleging, with bitter enviousness of authority and impatient of tyranny, that to enjoy popularity uninterruptedly was not worth a quarter of an hour of power, approaching with greedy eagerness the desired lot, yet seeing it inevitably, eternally, relentlessly escape and recede from him, plucked from his grasp as it were, like a shred of flesh from the jaw of a Molossian. And now, in his unquenchable lust of power, amid the monuments of combination and deception he had created, this man was weary, disgusted and irritated,—believing himself vanquished and smothering the anger of defeat in the luxurious isolation of his wealth. He was neither officially influential nor liked. Feared he was, probably, and envied because of his good fortune, recognized, too, as a force, but only as acting in the whirlwind of his ideas and struggling in the emptiness of his dreams. After having immolated everything, youth, family, friendship, love, to this chimera: power, he found himself old, worn-out, broken by his combats, face to face with the folly of his hopes and the worthlessness of his will. Never had his nervous hand been able to grasp in its transition, the fragment of morocco of a portfolio and now that his parchment-like fingers were old and feeble, they would never cling to that shred of power! And now this Prangins avenged himself for the contempt or the injustice of his colleagues and the folly of circumstances, by criticism, defiance, mockery, denial and by loudly expressing his opinion:
"The defect of every government is that it will try to play new airs on an old violin! Your violin is cracked, Monsieur Vaudrey! I do not reproach you for that, you did not make it!"
Vaudrey laughed at the sally, but Warcolier felt that he was choking. How could the minister allow his policy to be thus attacked at table? Ah! how Warcolier would have clinched the argument of this Prangins.
Madame Gerson was delighted. The dinner was served sumptuously and went off without a hitch. The maître d'hôtel directed the service admirably. The soirée that was to follow it would be magnificent. The journals would most certainly report it. Gerson had invited one reporter in spite of his dislike of journalists. Ah! those gossipers and foolish fellows, they never forgot to describe the toilettes worn by "the pretty Madame Gerson" at first nights, at the Élysée or at Charity Bazaars. Occasionally, her husband pretended to be angered by the successes of his wife:
"Those journalists! Just imagine, those journalists! They speak about my wife just as they would about an actress! 'The lovely Madame Gerson wore a gown of crêpe de Chine!' The lovely Madame Gerson! What has my wife's beauty or her toilette to do with them?"