"A virtuous woman! Does he know how to love as well as the others?" she murmured, as she thought of Vaudrey whom she would never see again, and whom she no longer loved. "See! I am a widow now, and a widow who will never love anyone, and who will never marry again." VIII Alone in Paris now, a body without a soul, distracted, and the prey of ennui, with sad and bitter regret for his wasted life, repeating to himself that Adrienne, far away from him, would never forgive, and was doubtless, at this moment, saying and saying again to herself in her solitude at Grenoble, that these politicians, at least, owed her divorce, Vaudrey, not knowing what to do after a weary day of troubled rest, mechanically entered the Opera House to distract his eyes if not his mind. They were rendering _Aida_ that evening, and a debutante had been announced as a star. Sulpice Vaudrey, since Adrienne's departure,--already two weeks!--had wandered about Paris like a damned soul when he did not attend the Chamber, where he experienced the discomforts and the weakness of a fallen man. Weary, disgusted and melancholy, Vaudrey took his seat in the theatre to kill an evening. There was what was called in the language of a Paris editor, a _swell house_. In front of the stage there was literally a shower of diamonds and the boxes were gaily adorned. The _fauteuils_ were occupied by Parisian glories and foreign celebrities. Not a stall in the amphitheatre without its _celebrity_. Chance had placed in this All-Paris gathering, Madame Sabine Marsy and Madame Gerson, the two friends who detested each other. The pretty little Madame Gerson occupied and filled with her prattle, the box of the Prefect of Police--No. 30, in which Monsieur Jouvenet showed his churchwarden's profile. She was talking aloud about her salon, her receptions, her acquaintances. She was eclipsing Madame Marsy with her triumphs. At the back of the box, Monsieur Gerson was sleeping, overcome by fatigue. Madame Gerson laughed on observing Sulpice in the orchestra-stalls. "See! there is Monsieur Vaudrey! He still looks a little _beaten!_" she said. And she told her friends, crowded in the box, leaning over her and looking at the pretty, plump bosom of this little, well-made brunette, how Vaudrey was to dine at her house on the very evening when he fell from power. "Of course, he did not come!" she said. "I remember what Madame Marsy advised me, one day,--she has passed through that in her time: one should think of the invitations to dinner before dismissing a ministry! Oh! it is tiresome; think of it!--One invites the Secretary of the President of the Council to dinner. He is named on the card. He comes. It is all over; he is no longer Secretary of the President, the President of the Council is no longer President, there is no longer a President, perhaps not even a Council; one should be certain of one's titles and rank before accepting an invitation to dinner!"