His Excellency the Minister

The third act of L'Africaine had just come to a close.

The minister, on leaving the manager's box, said smilingly, like a man glad to be rid of the cares of State: "Let us go to the greenroom, Granet, shall we?"

"Let us go to the greenroom, as your Excellency proposes!"

They were obliged to cross the immense stage where the stage carpenters were busy with the stage accessories as sailors with the equipment of a vessel; and men in evening dress, with white ties, looked natty without their greatcoats, and with opera hats on their heads were going to and fro, picking their way amongst the ropes and other impedimenta which littered the stage, on their way to the greenroom of the ballet.

They had come here from all parts of the house, from the stalls and boxes; most of them humming as they went the air from Nélusko's ballad, walking lightly as habitués through the species of antechamber which separates the body of the house from the stage.

A servant wearing a white cravat, was seated at a table writing down upon a sheet of paper the names of those who came in. One side of this sheet bore a headline reading: Messieurs, and the other Médecin, in two columns. From time to time this man would get up from his chair to bow respectfully to some official personage whom he recognized.

"Have you seen Monsieur Vaudrey come in yet, Louis?" asked a still young man with a monocle in his eye, who seemed quite at home behind the scenes.

"His Excellency is in the manager's box, monsieur!" answered the servant civilly.

"Thank you, Louis!"

And as the visitor turned to go up the narrow stairway leading to the greenroom, the servant wrote down in the running-hand of a clerk, upon the printed sheet: Monsieur Guy de Lissac.

Upon the stage, Vaudrey, the Minister whom Lissac had been inquiring for, stood arm in arm with his companion Granet, looking in astonishment at the vast machinery of the opera, operated by this army of workmen, whom he did not know. He was quite astonished at the sight, as he had never beheld its like. His astonishment was so evident and artless that Granet, his friend and colleague in the Chamber of Deputies, could not help smiling at it from under his carefully waxed moustaches.

"I consider all this much more wonderful than the opera itself," observed his Excellency. The floor and wings were like great yellow spots, and the whole immense stage resembled a great, sandy desert. Vaudrey raised his head to gaze at the symmetrical arrangement of the chandeliers, as bright as rows of gas-jets, amongst the hangings of the friezes. A huge canvas at the back represented a sunlit Indian landscape, and in the enormous space between the lowered curtain and the scenery, some black spots seemed as if dancing, strange silhouettes of the visitors in their dress clothes, standing out clearly against the yellow background like the shadows of Chinese figures.

"It is very amusing; but let us see the greenroom," said the minister. "You are familiar with the greenroom, Granet?"

"I am a Parisian," returned the deputy, without too great an emphasis; but the ironical smile which accompanied his words made Vaudrey understand that his colleague looked upon his Excellency as fresh from the province and still smacking of its manners.

Sulpice hesitatingly crossed the stage in the midst of a hubbub like that of a man-of-war getting ready for action, caused by the methodical destruction and removal of the scenery comprising the huge ship used in L'Africaine by a swarm of workmen in blue vests, yelling and shoving quickly before them, or carrying away sections of masts and parts of ladders, hurrying out of sight by way of trap-doors and man-holes, this carcass of a work of art; this spectacle of a great swarm of human ants, running hither and thither, pulling and tugging at this immense piece of stage decoration, in the vast frame capable of holding at one and the same time, a cathedral and a factory, was rather awe-inspiring to the statesman, who stopped short to look at it, while the tails of his coat brushed against the fallen curtain.

From both sides of the stage, from the stage-boxes, opera-glasses were turned upon him here and there and a murmur like a breeze came wafted towards him.

"It is the new Minister of the Interior!"

"Nonsense! Monsieur Vaudrey?"

"Monsieur Vaudrey."

Vaudrey proudly drew himself up under the battery of opera-glasses levelled at him, while Granet, smiling, said to the master of the chorus who, dressed in a black coat, stood near him:

"It can be easily seen that this is his first visit here!"

Oh! yes, truly, it was the first time that the new minister had set his foot in the wings of the Opéra! He relished it with all the curiosity of a youth and the gusto of a collegian. How fortunate that he had not brought Madame Vaudrey, who was slightly indisposed. This rapid survey of a world unknown to him, had the flavor of an escapade. There was a little spice in this amusing adventure.

Behind the canvas in the rear, some musicians, costumed as Brahmins, with spectacles on their noses, the better to decipher their score, fingered their brass instruments with a weary air, rocking them like infants in swaddling clothes. Actors in the garb of Indians, with painted cheeks, and legs encased in chocolate-colored bandages, were yawning, weary and flabby, and stretching themselves while awaiting the time for them to present themselves upon the stage. Others, dressed like soldiers, were sleeping on the wooden benches against the walls, their mouths open, their helmets drawn down over their noses like visors. Others, their pikes serving them for canes, had taken off their headgear and placed it at their feet, the better to rest their heads against the wall, where they leaned with their eyes shut.

Little girls, all of them thin, and in short skirts, were already pirouetting, and humming airs. Older girls stood about with their legs crossed, or, half-stooping, displayed their bosoms while retying the laces of their pink shoes. Others, wearing a kind of Siamese headdress with ornaments of gold, were laughing and clashing together their little silver cymbals. Awkward fellows with false beards, dressed like high priests in robes of yellow, striped with red, elbowed past and jostled against the girls quite unceremoniously. An usher, dressed à la Fran?aise, and wearing a chain around his neck, paced, grave and melancholy, amongst these shameless young girls.

The greenroom at the end of the stage was entered through a large vestibule hung with curtains of grayish velvet shot with violet, and at the top of the steps where some men in dress-clothes were talking to ballet-girls, Vaudrey could see in the great salon beyond, blazing with light, groups of half-nude women surrounded by men, resembling, in their black clothes, beetles crawling about roses, the whole company reflected in a flood of light, in an immense mirror that covered one end of the room. Little by little, Vaudrey could make out above the paintings representing ancient dances, and the portraits by Camargo or Noverre, a confusion of gaudy skirts, pink legs, white shoulders, with the ubiquitous black coats sprinkled about here and there amongst these bright colors like large blots of ink upon ball-dresses.

Sulpice had often heard the greenroom of the ballet spoken about, and he was at once completely disillusioned. The glaring, brutal light ruthlessly exposed the worn and faded hangings; and the pretty girls in their full, short, gauzy petticoats, with their bare arms, smiling and twisting about, their satin-shod feet resting upon gray velvet footstools, seemed to him, as they occupied the slanting floor, to move in a cloud of dust, and to be robbed of all naturalness and freshness.

"And is this all?" the minister exclaimed almost involuntarily.

"What!" answered Granet, "you seem hard to please!"

Amongst all these girls, there had been manifested an expression of mingled curiosity, coquetry and banter on Vaudrey's appearance in their midst. His presence in the manager's box had been noticed and his coming to the greenroom expected. Every one had hurried thither. Sulpice was pointed out. He was the cynosure of all eyes. On the divans beneath the mirror, some young, well-dressed, bald men, surrounded-perhaps by chance-by laughing ballet-girls, now half-concealed themselves behind the voluminous skirts of the girls about them, and bent their heads, thus rendering their baldness more visible, just as a woman buries her nose in her bouquet to avoid recognizing an acquaintance.

Vaudrey, observing this ruse, smiled a slight, sarcastic smile. He recognized behind the shielding petticoats, some of his prefects, those from the environs of Paris, come from Versailles and Chartres, or from some sub-prefectures, and gallantly administering the affairs of France from the heart of the greenroom. Amiable functionaries of the Ministry of Fine Arts also came here to study ?stheticism between the acts.

All members of the different régimes seemed to be fraternizing in ironical promiscuousness here, and Vaudrey in a whisper drew Granet's attention to this. Old beaux of the time of the Empire, with dyed and waxed moustaches, with dyed or grizzled hair flattened on their temples, their flabby cheeks cut across by stiff collars as jelly is cut by a knife, were hobnobbing, fat and lean, with young fops of the Republic, who with their sharp eyes, wide-open nostrils, their cheeks covered with brown or flaxen down, their hair carefully brushed, or already bald, seemed quite surprised to find themselves in such a place, and chattered and cackled among themselves like beardless conscripts, perverted and immoral but with some scruples still remaining and less cunning than these well-dressed old roués standing firmly at their posts like veterans.

"The licentiates and the pensioners," whispered Vaudrey.

"You have a quickness of sight quite Parisian, your Excellency," returned Granet.

"There are Parisians in the Provinces, my dear Granet," replied Sulpice with a heightened complexion, his blood flowing more rapidly than usual, due to emotions at once novel and gay.

"Ah! your Excellency," exclaimed a fat, animated man with hair and whiskers of quite snowy whiteness, and smiling as he spoke, "what in the world brought you here?"

He approached Vaudrey, bowing but not at all obsequiously, with the air of good humor due to a combination of wealth and embonpoint. Fat and rich, in perfect health, and carrying his sixty years with the lightness of forty, Molina-Molina the "Tumbler" as he was nicknamed-spent his afternoons on the Bourse and his evenings in the greenroom of the ballet.

He had a small interest in the theatre, but a large one in the coryphées, in a paternal way, his white hair giving him the right to be respected and his crowns the right to respect nothing. Beginning life very low down, and now enjoying a lofty position, the fat Molina haunted the Bourse and the greenroom of the Opéra. He glutted himself with all the earliest delicacies of the season, like a man who when young, has not always had enough to satisfy hunger.

Pictures that were famous, women of fashion, statues of marble and fair flesh, he must have them all. He collected, without any taste whatever, costly paintings, rare objects; he bought without love, girls who were not wholly mercenary. At a pinch he found them, taking pleasure in parading in his coupé, around the lake or at the races, some recruit in vice, and in watching the crowd that at once eagerly surrounded her, simply because she had been the mistress of the fat Molina. He had in his youth at Marseilles, in the Jewish quarter of the town, sold old clothes to the Piedmontese and sailors in port. Now it was his delight to behold the Parisians of the Boulevard or the clubs buy as sentimental rags the cast-off garments of his passion.

"You in the greenroom of the ballet, your Excellency?" continued the financier. "Ah! upon my word, I shall tell Madame Vaudrey."

Sulpice smiled, the mere name of his wife sounded strange to his ears in a place like this. It seemed to him that in speaking of her, she was being dragged into a strange circle, and one which did not belong to her. He had felt the same only a few days before upon his entrance into the cabinet, on seeing a report of his marriage, his dwelling minutely described, and a pen portrait of that Adrienne, who was the passion of his life.

"After all," continued Molina, "Madame Vaudrey must get used to it. The Opéra! Why, it is a part of politics! The key of many a situation is to be found in the greenroom!"

The financier laughed merrily, a laugh that had the ring of the Turcarets' jingling crowns.

He went on to explain to his Excellency all the little mysteries of the greenroom, as a man quite at home in this little Parisian province, and lightly, by a word, a gesture even, he gave the minister a rapid biography of the young girls who were laughing, jesting, romping there before them; flitting hither and thither lightly across the boards, barely touching them with the tips of their pink satin-shod feet.

Sulpice was surprised at everything he saw. He did not even take the pains to conceal his surprise. Evidently it was his first visit behind the scenes.

"Ah! your Excellency," said Molina, delighted with his r?le of cicerone, "it is necessary to be at home here! You should come here often! Nothing in the world can be more amusing. Here behind the scenes is a world by itself. One can see pretty little lasses springing up like asparagus. One sees running hither and thither a tall, thin child who nods to you saucily and crunches nuts like a squirrel. One takes a three months' journey, and passes a season at Vichy or at Dieppe, and when one returns, presto! see the transformation. The butterfly has burst forth from its cocoon. No longer a little girl, but a woman. Those saucy eyes of old now look at you with an expression which disturbs your heart. One might have offered, six months before, two sous' worth of chestnuts to the child; now, however, nothing less than a coupé will satisfy the woman. It used to jump on your knee at that time, now every one is throwing his arms around its pretty neck. Thus from generation to generation, one assists at the mobilization of a whole army of recruits, who first try their weapons here, pass from here into the regiment of veterans, build themselves a hospital in cut-stone out of their savings, and some of them mount very high through the tips of their toes if they are not suddenly attacked by the malady of the knee."

"Malady of the knee?" inquired Vaudrey.

"A phrase not to be found in the Dictionary of Political Economy by Maurice Block. It is a way of saying that ill-luck has overtaken one. A very interesting condition, this malady of the knee! It often not only shortens the leg but the career!"

"Is this malady a frequent one at the Opéra?"

"Ah! your Excellency, how can it be helped? There are so many slips in this pirouetting business! It is as risky as politics!"

Fat Molina shouted with laughter at this clumsy jest, and placing a binocle upon his huge nose, which was cleft down the middle like that of a hunting-hound, he exclaimed suddenly, turning towards the door as he spoke:

"Eh! Marie Launay? What is she holding in her hand?"

Light, nimble and graceful in her costume of a Hindoo dancing girl, a young girl of sixteen or seventeen summers, already betraying her womanhood in the ardent glances half-hidden in the depths of her large, deep-blue eyes, tripped into the greenroom, humming an air and holding in her hand a long sheet of paper.

She shook, as if embarrassed by it, the broad necklace of large imitation pearls that danced on her fine neck and fell on her undeveloped bosom; and looking in search of some one among the crowd of girls, cried out from a distance to a plump little brunette who was talking and laughing within a circle of dress-coats at the other end of the room:

"Eh! Anna, you have not subscribed yet!"

The brunette, freeing herself unceremoniously enough from her living madrigals, came running lightly up to Marie Launay, who held out towards her an aluminum pencil-case and the sheet of paper.

"What the devil is that?" asked Molina.

"Let us go and see," said Granet.

"Would it not be an indiscretion on our part?" asked Vaudrey, half seriously.

The financier, however, was by this time at the side of the two pretty girls, and asked the blonde what the paper contained, the names on which her companion was spelling out.

Marie Launay, a lovely girl with little ringlets of fair hair curling low down upon her forehead, smiled like a pretty, innocent and still timid child, under the luring glances of the fat man, and glancing with an expression of virgin innocence at Sulpice and Granet, who were standing beside him, replied:

"That-Oh! that is the subscription we are getting up for Mademoiselle Legrand."

"Oh! that is so," said Molina. "You mean to make her a present of a statuette?"

"On her taking her leave of us. Yes, every one has subscribed to it-even the boxholders. Do you see?"

Marie Launay quickly snatched the paper from her friend; on it were several names, some written in ink, others in pencil, the whole presenting the peculiar appearance of schoolboys' pot-hooks or the graceful lines traced by crawling flies, while the fantastic spelling offered a strange medley. Molina burst out laughing, his ever-present laugh that sounded like the shaking of a money-bag,-when he ran his eye over the list and found accompanying the names of ballet-dancers and members of the chorus, the distinguished particles of some habitués.

"Look! your Excellency-It is stupendous! Here: Amélie Dunois, 2 francs. Jeanne Garnot, 5 francs. Bel-Enfant-Charles-, 1 fr., 50 centimes. Warnier I., 2 francs. Warnier II., 2 francs. Gigonnet, 4 francs. Baron Humann, 100 francs. The baron!-the former prefect! Humann writing his name down here with Bel-Enfant and Gigonnet. Humann inscribing above his signature-I vill supscribe von hundertfranc! If one were to see it in a newspaper, one would not believe it! If only a reporter were here now! For a choice Paris echo what a rare one it would be!"

Granet examined little Marie Launay with sly glances, toying with his black moustache the while, and the other young girl Anna, very much confused at the coarse laughter of Molina the "Tumbler," kept turning around in her slender fingers the aluminum pencil-case and looking at Marie as much as to say:

"You know I can never muster up courage to write down my name before all these people!"

"Lend me your pencil, my child," Molina said to her.

She held it out towards him timidly.

"Where the baron has led the way, Molina the Tumbler may certainly follow!" said the financier.

He turned the screw of the pencil-case to extend the lead, and placing one of his huge feet upon a divan to steady himself, wrote rapidly with the paper on his knee, as a man used to scribbling notes at the Bourse:

"Solomon Molina, 500 francs."

"Ah! monsieur," exclaimed Marie Launay upon reading it, "that is handsome, that is! It is kind, very kind! If everybody were as generous as you, we could give a statue of Terpsichore in gold to Mademoiselle Legrand."

"If you should ever want one of Carpeaux's groups for yourself, my child," said Molina, "you may go to the studio in a cab to look at it, and fetch it away with you in-your own coupé."

The girl grew as red as a cherry under her powder, even her graceful, childish shoulders turned pink, enhancing her blonde and childlike beauty.

Vaudrey was conscious of a strange and subtle charm in this intoxicating circle,-a charm full of temptations which made him secretly uneasy. There passed before his eyes visions of other days, he beheld the phantoms of gay dresses, the apparitions of spring landscapes, he felt the breezes of youth, laden with the scents of the upspringing grass, the lilacs at Meudon, the violets of Ville-d'Avray, the souvenirs of the escapades of his student days. Their short, full skirts reminded him of white frocks that whisked gayly around the hazel-trees long ago, those ballet-girls bore a striking resemblance to the pink and white grisettes that he had flirted with when he was twenty.

He extended his hand in turn towards the sheet of paper to which Molina had just signed his name, saying to Marie Launay as he did so:

"Let me have it, if you please, mademoiselle."

Granet began to laugh.

"Ah! ah!" he cried, "you are really going to write down under Monsieur Gigonnet's signature the name of the Minister of the Interior?"

"Oh! bless me!" said Vaudrey, laughing, "that is true! You will believe it or not as you please, but I quite forgot that I was a minister."

"It was the same with me when I was decorated," said Molina. "I would not receive my great-coat from box-openers because I saw the morsel of red ribbon hanging on it, and I was sure the garment was not mine. But one grows used to it after a while! Now," and his laugh with the hundred-sou piece ring grew louder than ever, "I am really quite surprised not to find the rosette of red ribbon sticking to my flannel waistcoats."

Vaudrey left Marie Launay, greatly to her surprise, and listened to Molina's chronicles of the ballet.

Ah! if his Excellency had but the time, he would have seen the funniest things. For instance, there was amongst the dancers a marble cutter, who during the day sold and cut his gravestones and came here at night to grin and caper in the ballet. He was on the scent of every funeral from the Opéra; he would get orders for tombstones between two dances at the rehearsals. One day Molina had been present at one of these. It seems incredible, but there was a bank clerk in a gray coat, a three-cornered hat upon his head and a brass buckler on his arm, who sacrificed to Venus in the interval between his two occupations, dancing with the coryphées; a dancer by night and a receiver of money by day. A girl was rehearsing beside him, in black bands and skirt. Then Molina, astonished, inquired who she might be. He was told that it was a girl in mourning, whose mother had just died. The Opéra is a fine stage upon which to behold the ironies and contrasts of life.

The financier might have related to Sulpice Vaudrey a description of a journey to Timbuctoo and have found him less amused and less interested than now. It was a world new and strange to him, attractive, and as exciting as acid to this man, still young, whose success had been achieved by unstinted labors, and who knew Paris only by what he had learned of it years ago, when a law student: the pit of the Comédie Fran?aise, the Luxembourg galleries and those of the Louvre, the Public Libraries, the Hall of Archives, the balls in the Latin Quarter, the holidays and the foyer of the Opéra once or twice on the occasion of a masked ball. And, besides that?-Nothing. That was all.

The great man from Grenoble arrived in Paris with his appetite whetted for the life of the city, and now he was here, suddenly plunged into the greenroom of the ballet, and all eyes were turned towards him, almost frightened as he was, on catching a glimpse of his own image reflected in the huge mirror glittering under the numerous lights, in the heart of this strange salon and surrounded by half-clad dancing girls. Then, too, everybody was looking at him, quizzing him, shrinking from him through timidity or running after him through interest. The new Minister of State! The chief of all the personnel of prefects, under-prefects, and secretaries-general represented there, lolling on these velvet divans in this vulgar greenroom.

All the glances, all the whisperings of the women, the frowns of his enemies, the cringing attitudes of dandified hangers-on, were making Vaudrey feel very uncomfortable, when to his great relief he suddenly observed coming towards him, peering hither and thither through his monocle, evidently in search of some one, Guy de Lissac, who immediately on catching sight of Vaudrey came towards him, greeting him with evident cordiality, tinged, however, with a proper reserve.

Sulpice was not long in breaking through this reserve. He hurried up to Guy, and seizing him by the hand, cried gayly:

"Do you know that I have been expecting this visit! You are the only one of my friends who has not yet congratulated me!"

"You know, my dear Minister," returned Guy in the same tone, "that it is really not such a great piece of luck to be made Minister that every one of your friends should be expected to fall upon your neck, crying bravo! You have mounted up to the capitol, but after all, the capitol is not such a very cheerful place, that I should illuminate à giorno. I am happy, however, if you are. I congratulate you, if you wash your hands of it, and that is all."

"You and my old friend Ramel," answered Sulpice, "are the two most original men that I know."

"With this difference however, Ramel is a Puritan, an ancient, a man of marble, and I am a boulevardier and a skeptic. He is a man of bronze-your Ramel! And your friend Lissac of simili-bronze! The proof of it is that I have been seeking you for half the evening to ask you to do me a favor."

"What favor, my dear fellow?" cried Vaudrey, his face lighting up with joy. "Anything in the world to please you."

"I was in Madame Marsy's box,-you do not know Madame Marsy? She is a great admirer of yours and makes a point to applaud you in the Chamber. She has prayed for your advent. She saw you in the manager's box a while ago, and she has asked me to present you to her, or rather, to present her to you, for I presume for your Excellency the ceremony is modified."

"Madame Marsy!" said Vaudrey. "Is she not an artist's widow? Her salon is a political centre, is it not?"

"Exactly. A recent salon opened in opposition to that of Madame Evan. An Athenian Republic! You do not object to that?"

"On the contrary! A republic cannot be founded without the aid of women."

"Ah!" cried Lissac, laughing. "Politics and honors have not changed you, I see."

"Changed me? With the exception that I have twenty years over my head, and alas! not so much hair as I had then upon it, I am the same as I was in 1860."

"H?tel Racine! Rue Racine!" said Lissac. "In those days, I dreamed of being Musset, I a gourmand, and what have I become? A spectator, a trifler, a Parisian, a rolling stone.-Nothing. And you who dreamed of being a second Barnave, Vergniaud or Barbaroux, your dream is realized."

"Realized!" said Vaudrey.

He made an effort to shake his head deprecatingly as if his vanity were not flattered by those honeyed words of his friend; but his glance displayed such sincere delight and so strong a desire to be effusive and in evidence, that he could not repress a smile upon hearing from the companion of his youth, such a confirmation of his triumph. They are our most severe critics, these friends of our youth, they who have listened to the stammering of our hopes and dreams of the future. And when at length we have conquered the future, these are often the very ones to rob us of it! Lissac, however, was not one of these envious ones.

"Let us go to Madame Marsy's box, my dear Guy," said Sulpice. "The more so because if she at all resembles her portrait at the last Salon, she must be lovely indeed."

He left the greenroom, leaning on the arm of Lissac, after throwing a glance backward, however, at the girls whirling about there, and where in the presence of their stiff, ancient superiors, the young sub-prefects still hid their faces behind their opera hats. Granet with Molina went to take leave of Vaudrey, leaving little Marie Launay smiling artlessly because the financier, the Tumbler, had said to her, in drawing down her eyelids with his coarse finger: "Will you close your periwinkles-you kid?"

"Your Excellency," the banker had said, cajoling his Excellency with his meaning glance, "I am always at your orders you know."

"To-morrow, at the Prisons' Commission, Monsieur le Ministre," said Granet. And amid salutations on every side Vaudrey withdrew, smiling and good-humored as usual.

In order to reach the box, Vaudrey had to cross the stage. The new scene was set. Buddhist temples with their grotesque shapes and huge statues stood out against a background of vivid blue sky, and on the canvas beyond, great pink flowers glowed amid refreshing verdure. Over all fell a soft fairy-like light from an electric lamp, casting on the floor a fantastic gleam, soft and clear as the rays of the moon. Sulpice smiled as he passed beneath this flood of light and saw his shadow projected before him as upon the glassy waters of a lake. It seemed to him that this sudden illumination, a sort of fantastic apotheosis as it were, was like the fairy-like aureole that attended his progress.

At the very moment of leaving the greenroom, Sulpice had jostled accidentally against a man of very grave aspect wearing a black coat closely buttoned. He was almost bald save for some long, thin, gray locks that hung about his huge ears, his cheeks had a hectic color and his skull was yellow. He entered this salon in a hesitating, inquisitive way, with wide-open eyes and a gourmand's movement of the nostrils, and gazed about the room, warm with lights and heavy with perfume.

Sulpice glanced at him carelessly and recognized him as the man whom he himself had superseded on Place Beauvau-a Puritan, a Huguenot, a widower, the father of five or six daughters, and as solemn and proper in his ordinary demeanor as a Sunday-school tract. Sulpice could not refrain from crying out merrily: "Bless me! Monsieur Pichereau!"

The other shook his butter-colored skull as if he had suddenly received a stinging blow on it with a switch, and his red face became crimson-hued at the sight of Sulpice, his successor in office, standing before him, politely holding out to him his two gloved hands.

Guy de Lissac was no longer laughing.

Their two Excellencies found themselves face to face at the foot of the greenroom staircase, in the midst of a crowd of brahmins, dancers, negresses, and female supernumeraries; two Excellencies meeting there; one smiling, the other grimacing beneath the glance of this curious, shrewd little world.

"Ah! I have caught you, my dear colleague," cried Sulpice, very much amused at Pichereau's embarrassed air, his coat buttoned close like a Quaker's and his little eyes blinking behind his spectacles, and looking as sheepish as a sacristan caught napping.

"Me?" stammered Pichereau. "Me? But my dear Minister, it's you-yes, you whom I came expressly to seek!"

"Here?" said Vaudrey.

"Yes, here!"

"Really?"

"I had something to say to you-I-yes, I wanted-"

The unlucky Pichereau mechanically pulled and jerked at his waistcoat, then assuming a dignified, grave air, he whistled and hesitated, and finally stammered:

"I wished to speak with you-yes-to consult with you upon a matter of grave importance-concerning Protestant communities."

Sulpice could not restrain his laughter.

Pichereau, with his look of a Calvinistic preacher, was throwing from behind his spectacles glowing looks in the direction where Marie Launay stood listening to and laughing at the badinage of Molina. Some newspaper reporters, scenting a handy paragraph, came sauntering up to overhear some fragment of the conversation between the minister of yesterday and him of to-day.

Guy de Lissac stood carelessly by, secretly very much amused at Pichereau, who did not move, but rubbing his hands nervously together was trying to appear at ease, yet by his sour smile at his successor allowing it to be plainly seen how gladly he would have strangled Vaudrey.

"My dear colleague," said Sulpice, gayly, "we will talk elsewhere about your communities. This is hardly the place. Non est hic locus! Good-bye!"

"Good-bye, your Excellency," replied Pichereau with forced politeness.

Vaudrey drew Lissac away, saying with a suppressed laugh:

"Oh! oh! the Quaker! He has laid down his portfolio, but he has kept the key to the greenroom, it seems."

"It would appear," replied Guy, "that the door leading into the greenroom may open to scenes of consolation for fallen greatness. The blue eyes of Marie Launay always serve as a sparadrap to a fallen minister!"

"Was the fat Molina right? To lose the votes of the majority is perhaps the malady of the knee of ministers," said Vaudrey merrily.

He laughed again, very much amused at the irritable, peevish yet cringing attitude of Pichereau, the Genevan doctrinaire, who sought consolation in the greenroom of the ballet, whilst his five or six daughters sat at home, probably reading some chaste English romance, or practising sacred music within the range of the green spectacles of their governess.

"But!" said he gayly, "to fall from power is nothing, provided one falls into the arms of ballet-girls."

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Part First Chapter I

Molina burst out laughing ... when he ran his eye over the list and found accompanying the names of ballet-dancers and members of the chorus, the distinguished particles of some habitués.

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