"Assuredly," she thought, as she left the minister, "those who despair are idiots!" In fact, it seemed that chance, as her fingers had cast mouthfuls of bread to the hungry bills, had thrown Vaudrey to her in place of Rosas. A minister! that young man who smiled on her just now in the alleys of the Bois and drew near her with trembling breath was a minister. A minister as popular as Vaudrey was a power, and since Marianne, weary of seeking love, was pursuing an actuality quite as difficult to obtain--riches, Sulpice unquestionably was not to be despised. "As a last resource, one might find worse," thought Marianne, as she entered her home. She had not, moreover, hesitated long. She was not in the mood for prolonged anger. She was at an age when prompt decisions must be made on every occasion that life, with its harsh spurs, proposed a problem or furnished an opportunity. On the way between the Lake and Rue de Navarin, Marianne had formed her plan. Since she had to reply to Vaudrey, she would write him. She felt an ardent desire to avenge herself for Rosas's treatment, as if he ought to suffer therefor, as if he were about to know that Sulpice loved her. Had she found the duke awaiting her, as she entered the house, she would have been quite capable of lashing his face with a whip, while making the lying confession: "Ah! you here? It is too late! I love Monsieur Vaudrey." She would, moreover, never know any but gloomy feelings arising from her poverty in that house. The thought suggested itself to her of at once inviting Vaudrey to call on her. But surrounded by the vulgar appointments of that poor, almost bare, studio, concealing her poverty under worn-out hangings, indifferent studies, old, yellowed casts covered with dust--to receive Vaudrey there would be to confess her terribly straitened condition, her necessities, her eagerness, all that repels and freezes love. In glancing around her uncle's studio, she scrutinized everything with an expression of hatred. It smacked of dirty poverty, bourgeois ugliness. She would never dare to ask Vaudrey to sit upon that divan, which was littered with old, torn books and tobacco grains, and which, when one sat upon it, discharged a cloud of dust whose atoms danced in the sunlight. "What are you looking at?" asked Kayser, as he followed his niece's glances about the room. "You seem to be making an inspection." "Precisely. And I am thinking that your studio would not fetch a very high figure at Drouot's auction mart." "Lofty and moral creations don't sell in times like these," gravely replied the old dauber. "For myself, I am not a painter of obscene subjects and lewd photography." Marianne shrugged her shoulders and went out, coughing involuntarily. Old Kayser passed his time steeped in the odors of nicotine. "I am lost, if Vaudrey comes here," she said to herself.