She closed her eyes, for this suppliant voice doubtless caused her a new grief, but neither gesture nor word escaped her. She was like a walking automaton. Even her eyes expressed neither reproach nor anger, they seemed dim. There was something of death in her aspect. After a few moments, she said: "I hope that my resolve will not work any prejudice to your political position. In that direction I will still do my duty to the full extent of my strength. But people will not trouble themselves to inquire whether I am at Grenoble or Paris. They trouble themselves very little about me." By a gesture, he sought to retain her. She had already entered her room, and Vaudrey felt that between this woman and him there stood something like a wall. He had now only to love Marianne. To love Marianne, ah! yes, the unhappy man, he still loved her. When he thought of Marianne, it was more in wrath, when he thought of Adrienne, it was more in pity; but, certainly, his wife's determination to leave Paris caused him less emotion than the thought that his mistress was to wed Rosas. That very evening he went to Marianne's. They told him that Madame was at the theatre. Where? With whom? Neither Jean nor Justine knew. Vaudrey despised himself for jealously questioning the servants who, when together, would burst with laughter in speaking of him. "Oh! miserable fool!" he said to himself. "There was only one woman who loved you:--Adrienne!" Nevertheless, he recalled Marianne in the hours of past love, and the recollection of her kisses and sobs still made his flesh creep. The tawny tints that played in her hair as it strayed unfastened over the pillow, the endearing caresses of her bare arms, he wished to see and feel again. He calculated in his ferocious egotism that Adrienne's wrath would afford him more complete liberty for a time, and that he would have Marianne more to himself, if she were willing. He had written to Mademoiselle Kayser, but his letter had remained unanswered. He thought that he would go to Mademoiselle Vanda's house the next day, after the Chamber was up. Very late, he added, since the sitting would be prolonged. Long and decisive, as the fate of his ministry was at stake. Granet's interpellation did not make him unusually uneasy. He had acquainted himself in the morning with a resume of the journals. Public opinion seemed favorable to the Vaudrey ministry, _except in the case of some insufferable radical organs, and with which he need not in anyway concern himself_, read the report. Vaudrey did not remember that it was in almost these very terms that the daily resume of the press expressed itself on the eve of Pichereau's fall, to the Minister of the Interior, in speaking of Pichereau's cabinet. "I shall have a majority of sixty votes," he said to himself. "Everything will be carried--save honor!" He thought of Adrienne as he thus wished.