He found it necessary now to force an interest in the struggle which a few months before would have found him eagerly panting to enter on. The honeymoon of his love of power had passed. He had too keenly felt, one after another, the discouragements of the office that he sought in order to do good, to reform, to act, in the pursuit of which he found himself, from the first moment, clashing with routine, old-fashioned ideas, petty ambitions, the general welfare, all the brood of selfish interests. It had been his to dream a sort of Chimera bearing the country toward Progress on outstretched wings: he found himself entangled in the musty mechanism of a worn-out and rancid-smelling engine, that dragged the State as a broken-winded horse might have done. Then, little by little, weariness and disgust had penetrated the heart of this visionary who desired to live, to assert himself in putting an end to so many abuses, and whom his colleagues, his chiefs of division, his chief of service, the chief of the State himself cautiously advised: "Make no innovations! Let things go! That has gone on so for so long! What is the use of changing? It will still do very well!"
Ah! it was to throw off the shackles and to try the impossible! Vaudrey found himself hemmed in between his dearest hopes and the most disheartening realities. He was asked for offices, not reforms. The men charged with the fate of the country were not straggling after progress, they were looking after their own interests, their landed and shopkeeping interests. He felt nauseated by all this. He held those deputies in contempt who besieged his cabinet and filled his antechamber in order to beg, claim and demand. All of them sought something, and they were almost strangled by the solicitations of their own constituents. They appeared to Sulpice to be rather the commissionaires of universal suffrage than the servants. This abasement before the manipulators of the votes made Vaudrey indignant. He felt that France was becoming by degrees a vast market for favors, a nation in which everyone asked office from those who to keep their own promised everything, and the thought filled him with terror. The ministers, wedded to their positions, became the mere servants of the deputies, while the latter obeyed the orders of their constituents. All was kept within a vast network of office-seeking and trafficking. And with it all, a hatred of genuine talent, bitter selfishness and the crushing narrowness of ideas!
Vaudrey recalled a story that had been told him, how during the Empire, the Emperor, terrified, feeling himself isolated, asked and searched for a man, and how a certain little bell in the Tuileries was especially provided to warn the chamberlains of the entry into the château of a new face, of the visit of a stranger, in order that the camarilla, warned by the particular ring, would have time to place themselves on their guard, and to send the newcomer to the right about if he might become an aid to the master and a danger to the servants. Well! Sulpice did not hear that invisible and secret bell, but he guessed its presence, he divined its presence around him, warning the interested, always ready to chase away the stranger; he felt that its secret thread was everywhere thrown around the powerful, the mighty of four days or a quarter of a century and that, so long as influence existed in the world, there would be courtiers and that these courtiers, eager for a crumb, would prevent the stranger, that is to say, truth, from reaching the light, fearing that this stranger might play the part of the lion and chase the flies away from the honeycomb.
Thus, how much nausea and contempt he felt for that transient power which in spite of himself was rendered useless! A power that placed him at the mercy of the bawling of a colleague or an enemy, and even at the mercy of that all-powerful master so readily dissatisfied: everybody. He had seen, at too close quarters, the vile intrigues, the depressing chafferings, the grinding of that political kitchen in which so many people,—this Warcolier with his voluble rhetoric, this Granet with his conceited smile of superiority,—were hungering to hold the handle of the saucepan. He recalled a remark that Denis Ramel had often repeated to him: "What is the use of putting one's self out in order to bask in the sunshine? The best are in the shade."
He was seized with lawful indignation against his own ambitions, against the lack of energy that prevented him from sweeping away all obstacles,—men, and routine,—and he recalled with afflicting bitterness his entry on public life, in the blaze of divine light, and his dreams, his poor noble dreams! "A great minister! I will be a great minister!"
"Ah! yes, indeed! one is a minister, that is all! And that is enough! It is often too much! We shall see indeed what he will do, that Granet who ought to do so much!"
Vaudrey laughed nervously.
"What he will do? Nothing! Nothing! Still nothing! That is very easy! To do anything, one should be a great man and not a politician captivated with the idea of reaching the summit of power. Ah! parbleu! to be a great man! 'That is the question.'"
He grew very excited over the proud rebellion of his old faith and shattered hopes against the negative success he had obtained. Besides, there was no reason for giving up the struggle. There was a council to be held at the Élysée. He went there, but at this moment of disgust, disgust of everything and himself, this palace like all the rest, seemed to him to be gloomy and mean. An usher in black coat and white cravat, wearing a chain around his neck, wandered up and down the antechamber, according to custom, his shoes covered with the dust from the carpet trodden upon by so many people, either applicants or functionaries. The gaslight burning in broad day as in the offices in London was reflected on the cold walls that shone like marble. Doors ornamented with gilt nails and round, ivory knobs and without locks, were noiselessly swinging to and fro. Wearied office-seekers with tired countenances were spread out upon the garnet-colored velvet chairs, which were like those of a middle-class, furnished house.
From time to time, the tiresome silence was broken by the sound of near or distant electric bells. Vaudrey, who arrived before his colleagues, studiously contemplated the surroundings ironically. An estafette, a gendarme, arrived with a telegram; the usher signed a receipt for it. That was all the life that animated this silent palace. A man with a military air, tall, handsome and in tightly-buttoned frock-coat, passed and saluted the President of the Council; then, Jouvenet, the Prefect of Police, looking like a notary's senior clerk, his abundant black hair plastered on his head, a large, black portfolio under his arm, approached the minister and bowed. Vaudrey, having Lissac in mind, returned his salutation coldly.