When Jansoulet issued from the legislative assembly, reconducted to his carriage by his grateful colleague, it was about six o’clock.  The splendid weather—­a beautiful sunset over the Seine, which lay stretching away like molten gold on the Trocadero side—­was a temptation to a walk for this robust plebeian, on whom it was imposed by the conventions that he should ride in a carriage and wear gloves, but who escaped such encumbrances as often as he possibly could.  He dismissed his servants, and, with his portfolio under his arm, set forth across the Pont de la Concorde.

Since the first of May he had not experienced such a sense of well-being.  With rolling gait, hat a little to the back of his head, in the position in which he had seen it worn by overworked politicians harassed by pressure of business, allowing all the laborious fever of their brain to evaporate in the coolness of the air, as a factory discharges its steam into the gutter at the end of a day’s work, he moved forward among other figures like his own, evidently coming too from that colonnaded temple which faces the Madeleine above the fountains of the Place.  As they passed, people turned to look after them, saying, “Those are deputies.”  And Jansoulet felt the delight of a child, a plebeian joy, compounded of ignorance and naive vanity.

“Ask for the Messenger, evening edition.”

The words came from a newspaper kiosk at the corner of the bridge, full at that hour of fresh printed sheets in heaps, which two women were quickly folding, and which smelt of the damp press—­late news, the success of the day or its scandal.

Nearly all the deputies bought a copy as they passed, and glanced over it quickly in the hope of finding their name.  Jansoulet, for his part, feared to see his in it and did not stop.  Then suddenly he reflected:  “Must not a public man be above these weaknesses?  I am strong enough now to read everything.”  He retraced his steps and took a newspaper like his colleagues.  He opened it, very calmly, right at the place usually occupied by Moessard’s articles.  As it happened, there was one.  Still the same title:  “Chinoiseries,” and an M. for signature.

“Ah! ah!” said the public man, firm and cold as marble, with a fine smile of disdain.  Mora’s lesson still rung in his ears, and, had he forgotten it, the air from Norma which was being slowly played in little ironical notes not far off would have sufficed to recall it to him.  Only, after all calculations have been made amid the fleeting happenings of our existence, there is always the unforeseen to be reckoned with; and that is how it came that the poor Nabob suddenly felt a wave of blood blind him, a cry of rage strangle itself in the sudden contraction of his throat.  This time his mother, his old Frances, had been dragged into the infamous joke of the “Bateau de fleurs.”  How well he aimed his blows, this Moessard, how well he knew the really sensitive spots in that heart, so frankly exposed!