"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 _a 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." "_Hotel 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.