“Is he in the bank this morning?”
“Yes, madame.”
She passed within. She gave her card.
“I require to see him alone,” she said to the officials who received her.
“It will be impossible,” they answered her. “M. Vanderlin sees no one except by appointment.”
“Try,” she urged on them. “Take my card. Say that I come on an urgent matter.”
“It is impossible, madame,” they reiterated. “He never receives anyone without previous arrangement, often weeks in advance. At this moment the Minister of Foreign Affairs is with him.”
“Gaulois? Oh, I know him well! Show me to a private room, and when M. Gaulois comes out, bring him to me.”
The officials were moved by the beauty and grace of the suppliant, and consented to let her wait in a small apartment warmed as all the building was by hot air, and looking on an inner court where a fountain played.
The time that she waited was not more than twenty minutes, but it seemed to her to be hours. At last the minister was ushered into her presence; an agreeable, sagacious, unscrupulous man of the south of France, who had begun life as an advocate in the town of Dax.