"It is done! Read!"
Adrienne turned pale.
Collard notified his "colleague" that the ministerial combination of which he was the head had succeeded. The President awaited at the Élysée the arrival of the new ministers. He tendered Vaudrey the portfolio of the Interior.
"A minister!" said Adrienne, now overcome with delight.
Vaudrey had risen and, a little uneasy, was mechanically searching for something, still holding his napkin in his hand.
"My hat," he said. "My overcoat. A carriage."
Adrienne, with her hands clasped in a sort of childish admiration, looked at him as if he had become suddenly transformed. All his being, in fact, expressed complete satisfaction. He embraced Adrienne almost frantically, kissed her again and again, and left her, then descended the staircase with the speed of a lover hastening to a rendezvous.
This political honeymoon was still at its height at the moment when the delighted Vaudrey, seeing everything rosy-hued, was satisfying his astonished curiosity in the greenroom of the ballet. He entered office, animated by all the good purposes inspired by absolute faith. It seemed to him that he was about to save the world, to regenerate the government, and to destroy abuses.
"It is very difficult to become a minister," he said, smiling, "but nothing is easier than to be a great minister. It only demands a determination to do good!"
"And the power to do it," replied his friend Granet, somewhat ironically.