They were rendering Aida that evening, and a debutante had been announced as a star.

Sulpice Vaudrey, since Adrienne’s departure,—­already two weeks!—­had wandered about Paris like a damned soul when he did not attend the Chamber, where he experienced the discomforts and the weakness of a fallen man.  Weary, disgusted and melancholy, Vaudrey took his seat in the theatre to kill an evening.

There was what was called in the language of a Paris editor, a swell house.  In front of the stage there was literally a shower of diamonds and the boxes were gaily adorned.  The fauteuils were occupied by Parisian glories and foreign celebrities.  Not a stall in the amphitheatre without its celebrity.  Chance had placed in this All-Paris gathering, Madame Sabine Marsy and Madame Gerson, the two friends who detested each other.  The pretty little Madame Gerson occupied and filled with her prattle, the box of the Prefect of Police—­No. 30, in which Monsieur Jouvenet showed his churchwarden’s profile.  She was talking aloud about her salon, her receptions, her acquaintances.  She was eclipsing Madame Marsy with her triumphs.  At the back of the box, Monsieur Gerson was sleeping, overcome by fatigue.  Madame Gerson laughed on observing Sulpice in the orchestra-stalls.

“See! there is Monsieur Vaudrey!  He still looks a little beaten!” she said.

And she told her friends, crowded in the box, leaning over her and looking at the pretty, plump bosom of this little, well-made brunette, how Vaudrey was to dine at her house on the very evening when he fell from power.

“Of course, he did not come!” she said.  “I remember what Madame Marsy advised me, one day,—­she has passed through that in her time:  one should think of the invitations to dinner before dismissing a ministry!  Oh! it is tiresome; think of it!—­One invites the Secretary of the President of the Council to dinner.  He is named on the card.  He comes.  It is all over; he is no longer Secretary of the President, the President of the Council is no longer President, there is no longer a President, perhaps not even a Council; one should be certain of one’s titles and rank before accepting an invitation to dinner!”

She laughed heartily and loud, and Madame Marsy, who was half dethroned, fanned herself nervously in her box, or levelled her glass at some one in the audience, affecting a little disdainful manner toward her fair neighbor.  A friendship turned to acid.

Vaudrey, looking fatigued and abstracted, sat in his stall during the entr’acte.  He looked unconsciously about the theatre and still felt surprised at not receiving salutations and bows, as formerly.  He felt that he was becoming a waif.  Bah! he consoled himself with the thought that the human race is thus constructed:  everything is in success, he gets most who offers most.  Why then trouble about it?

His eyes followed the movement of his glass and one after another he saw Madame Marsy, Jouvenet, Madame Gerson, so many living and exceedingly taunting recollections, when suddenly Sulpice trembled, shaken by a keener and almost angry feeling as his glance was directed to a box against the dark-red of which two faces were boldly outlined:  those of Rosas and Marianne.