He continued to traverse the salons, always returning instinctively toward the door at which Adrienne stood, with pale face and wandering look, and scarcely hearing, poor woman, the unfamiliar names that the usher uttered at equal intervals, like a speaking machine. "Monsieur Durosoi!--Monsieur and Madame Brechet!--Monsieur the Minister of Public Works!--Monsieur the Prefect of the Aube!--Monsieur the Count de Grigny!--Monsieur Henri de Prangins!--Monsieur the General d'Herbecourt!--Monsieur the Doctor Vilandry!--Monsieur and Madame Tochard!" She had vowed that she would be strong, and allow nothing to be seen of the despair that was wringing her heart. She compelled herself to smile. In nightmares and hours of feverish unrest, she had suffered the same vague, morbid feeling that she now experienced. All that passed about her seemed to be unreal. These white-cravatted men, these gaily-dressed women, the file of guests saluting her at the same spot in the salon, with the same expression of assumed respect and trite politeness, appeared to her but a succession of phantoms. Neither a name nor an association did she attach to those countenances that beamed on her with an official smile or gravely assumed a correct seriousness. She felt weary, overwhelmed and heavy-headed at the sight of this continued procession of strangers on whom it was incumbent that she should smile and to whom she must bow out of politeness, in virtue of that duty of state which she wished to fulfil to the last degree, poor soul! The distant music of Fahrbach's polkas or Strauss's waltzes seemed like an added accompaniment that mocked the sadness of her unwholesome dream. "And yet, in all that crowd of women who salute her, there are some who are jealous of her! Many envy her!" thought Guy, who was looking on. Adrienne did not look at Vaudrey. She was afraid that if her eyes met her husband's fixed on her own, she would lose her sang-froid and suddenly burst into sobs, there before the guests. That would have been ridiculous. This blonde, so feebly gentle, isolated herself, therefore, with surprising determination and seemed to see nothing save her own thought, the unique thought: "Be strong. You shall weep at your ease when you are alone, far away from these people, far away from this crowd, alone with yourself, entirely alone, entirely alone!" Vaudrey was very pale, but carried away, in spite of himself, by the joy which he felt in receiving all the illustrious and powerful men of the state, foreign ambassadors, the Presidents of the Senate and the Chamber, the ministers, his colleagues, deputies, wealthy financiers, renowned publicists, in fact, everything that counts and has a name in Paris,--this minister, happy to see the crowd running to him, at his house, bowing, paying homage to him, for a moment forgot the crushing events of that day, the sudden thunderbolt falling on him and perhaps, as he had said, crushing his hearthstone.