He recalled his own meeting as a successful man with Pichereau the beaten one, on these very boards and almost in the same place, and in order to avoid having to endure the friendly ironical hand-shake that Pichereau was approaching him to give--the hand-shake formerly given to Pichereau--he quickly hid himself behind a wing, receiving as he did so, a blow, accompanied with a: _Pardon, monsieur_, from a workman who was pushing along a piece of scenery, and a: _What a clumsy fellow!_ from a little danseuse, the tip of whose pink slipper he had unwittingly grazed with his heel. He turned to the danseuse to apologize, when he perceived a young girl, all in pink, whose blue eyes looked frightened and her cheeks reddened when she recognized Vaudrey. It was Marie Launay, whom he had seen in the greenroom the previous year, who had not yet scored a _success_, while he was _retired_. "Oh! I did not recognize you," she said. "I beg your pardon, Monsieur le Ministre!" He wished to make some reply; but this title used by the young girl, ignorant of the political change, grated on his heart like the scratching of a nail and he saw on the other side of the stage, reaching the house by the communicating door, Lucien Granet, surrounded by his staff, and followed by the eternal cortege of powerful ones, among whom Warcolier was talking loudly, and Molina the Tumbler was recognizable by his enormous paunch and loud laugh. "Perhaps Madame Marsy has asked that this Granet be presented to her," thought Vaudrey as he mockingly recalled how Guy de Lissac ran after him there in order to conduct him to the fashionable woman's box. How long it was since then! Sabine Marsy was dethroned. And he!-- He felt a friendly tap on the shoulder as he was moving away, and turning around he saw Warcolier who, having seen him in the distance, doubtless came to him to enjoy the simple pleasure of treating him patronizingly, he who had so long called him _Monsieur le Ministre_. "Well, my dear Vaudrey, what is the news?" said Warcolier, bearing his head high and smiling with a silly, but an aggressively benign expression, with the superior tone of satisfied fools. "Nothing!" said Sulpice. "I think Verdi's music is superb!" "Oh! a little Wagnerian," Warcolier replied, repeating what he had heard. "But what of politics?" "Ah! politics concerns you now!" "Well! why," Warcolier replied, "that goes on well. There is a little relaxation! a ministry more--more--" "More homogeneous!" said Vaudrey, in a slightly mocking tone. "Exactly. And, after all, the duty of every good citizen is to defend the government under which we live." Ah! assuredly, Vaudrey considered that his former Secretary of State, now become the vassal of Granet, displayed a rather ridiculous assurance. He smiled as if he would have laughed in his face and turned his back upon him.