“Then you do not understand, Monsieur le President?”

Vaudrey drew himself up with a sudden movement that was frequent with him.  He struck the table on which his open portfolio rested, and said: 

“I understand that Granet wants that portfolio!  Well, be it so!  I set little store by it, but he does not have it yet!”

“That is something like it!  It is worthy of a brave man to show a resolute front to his enemies!  It is in battle that talent is retempered, as formerly in the Styx were tempered—­”

“I know,” said Sulpice.

Warcolier’s intelligent smile was not understood by the minister.

Sulpice, who was in despair over his shattered domestic joys, had no wish to enter on a struggle except to bring about a reaction on himself.  To hold his own against Granet, was to divert his own present sadness.

“All right,” he said to Warcolier.  “Let Granet interpellate us when he pleases—­In eight days, to-morrow, yes, to-day even, I am ready!”

“Interpellate us!” thought Warcolier.  “You should say, interpellate you.”

He had already got out of the scrape himself.

Vaudrey debated with himself as to whether he would try to see Adrienne.  No?  What should he say to her?  It would be better to let a little time shed its balm upon the wound.  Then, too, if he wished to bar the way to Granet, he had not too much time before him.  The shrewd person should act promptly.

“I shall see him on the Budget Committee!” thought Vaudrey.

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!”