Sometimes it seemed to Vaudrey that he had not lived at all, and this was the fear and desire of his life: to live that Parisian life which flattered all his instincts and awoke and reanimated all his dreams. But yesterday it had appeared to him when he met this young woman who raised her eyes to him, half-veiled by her long eyelashes, that a stage-curtain had been raised, disclosing dazzling fairy scenery, and since then that scenery had been always before him. It banished, during his drive, all peace, and while the coupe threaded its way along the Faubourg Saint-Honore toward the Arc-de-Triomphe, the minister who, but two hours before, had been plunged in state affairs, settled himself down in a corner of the carriage, his legs swaddled in a robe and his feet resting on a foot-warmer, looking at, but without observing the cold figures that walked rapidly past him, the houses lighted up by the sun's rays, and the dry pavements, and he thought of those strange eyes and those black butterflies, which seemed to him to flutter over that fair hair like swallows over a field of ripe wheat. It pleased him to think of that woman. It was an entirely changed preoccupation, a relaxation. A curious, strangely agreeable sensation: his imagination thus playing truant, and wandering toward that vision, renewed his youth. He experienced therein the perplexities that troubled him at twenty. Love in the heart means fewer white hairs on the brow. And then, indeed, he would never, perhaps, see Mademoiselle Kayser again! He would, however, do everything to see her again at the coming soiree at the ministry, an invitation--Suddenly his thoughts abruptly turned to Ramel, whom he also wished to invite and meet again. He loved him so dearly. It was he who formerly, in the journalistic days, and at the time of the battles fought in the _Nation Francaise_, had called Denis "a conscience in a dress-coat." Therefore, since he had an afternoon to spare, he would call on Ramel. He was determined to show him that he would never preserve the dignity of a minister with him. "Rue Boursault, Batignolles," he said to the coachman, lowering one of the windows; "after that, only to the Bois!" The coachman drove the coupe toward the right, reaching the outer boulevards by way of Monceau Park. Vaudrey was delighted. He was going to talk open-heartedly to an old friend. Ah, Ramel! he was bent on remaining in the background, on being nothing and loving his friends only when they were in defeat, as Jeliotte had said. Well, Vaudrey would take him as his adviser. This devil of a Ramel, this savage fellow should govern the state in spite of himself.