"I will speak to you presently, Monsieur le Préfet."
"Good! Monsieur le Ministre!"
In spite of the foot-soldier and the Parisian guard on duty at the door of the palace, all that now seemed to Vaudrey to lack official solemnity, and resembled rather a temporary and melancholy occupation.
"Bah! And if I should never set my foot in this place again," he thought, as he remembered Granet's interpellation, "what would it matter to me?"
He was informed first at the Council and then at the Chamber, that Granet would not introduce his question until the next day. Vaudrey had the desired time to prepare himself. In the Budget Committee, where he met Granet, the minister of to-morrow asked him an inopportune question concerning the expenses of the administration. Vaudrey was angered and felt inclined to treat it as a personal question. It now only remained for his adversaries to begin to suspect him! To appear so was even now too much. Sulpice took Granet up promptly, the latter assured him that "his colleague and friend, the President of the Council," had entirely misconstrued the meaning of his words.
"Well and good!" said Vaudrey.
He was not sorry that the interpellation was not to take place at once. Before to-morrow, he would have placed his batteries. And then he would think of quieting Adrienne, of regaining her, perhaps. On returning to the ministry, he caused some inquiries to be made as to whether Madame were not sick. Madame had gone out. She had gone out as if she were making a pilgrimage to a cemetery, to the apartment in Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, whereon might have been written: Here lies. It was like the tomb of her happiness.
She would not see Sulpice again. In the evening, however, she consented to speak to him.
Her poor, gentle face was extremely pale, and as if distorted by some violent pain.
"You will find some excuse," she said, "for announcing that I am ill. I am leaving for Grenoble. I have written to my uncle, the Doctor expects me, and all that now remains to me is a place in his house."