And thinking to himself:
"From the Opéra to the Opéra! That, moreover, is the history of my ministry—and that of the Granet administration, probably!"
The portress at Rue Boursault led him to Denis Ramel's apartment. Lying on his bed with a kindly smile on his face, the old journalist seemed as if asleep. The cold majesty of death gave a look of power to his face. One might almost believe at times, from the scintillating light placed near his bony brow, that its rigid muscles moved.
Denis Ramel! the sure guide of his youth and his counsellor through life! He recalled his entry on public life, his arrival in Paris, the first articles brought into the old editorial rooms of the Nation Française! If for a moment he had been one of the heads of the State, it was due to the man stretched out before him now!
He gently stooped over the corpse and pressed a farewell kiss on the dead man's brow.
As he turned round, he saw a man whom he had not at first seen and who had risen.
The man was very pale and greeted him with a timid air.
Vaudrey recognized Garnier, the man whom he had seen previously at Ramel's, a cough-racked, patient, dying man.
The consumptive had nevertheless outlived the old man.
"It is good of you to have come, monsieur," said the workman. "He loved you dearly."