The sound of the bell, suddenly ringing out its clear note in the silence, caused him to start. The dining-room door was opened by a servant, who handed a letter to Vaudrey, bearing on one corner of the envelope the word: _Urgent_. Sulpice recognized the writing. It was from Collard of Nantes. Adrienne saw her husband's cheek flush as he read this letter, which Sulpice promptly handed her, while his eyes sparkled with delight. "It is done! Read!" Adrienne turned pale. Collard notified his "colleague" that the ministerial combination of which he was the head had succeeded. The President awaited at the Elysee the arrival of the new ministers. He tendered Vaudrey the portfolio of the Interior. "A minister!" said Adrienne, now overcome with delight. Vaudrey had risen and, a little uneasy, was mechanically searching for something, still holding his napkin in his hand. "My hat," he said. "My overcoat. A carriage." Adrienne, with her hands clasped in a sort of childish admiration, looked at him as if he had become suddenly transformed. All his being, in fact, expressed complete satisfaction. He embraced Adrienne almost frantically, kissed her again and again, and left her, then descended the staircase with the speed of a lover hastening to a rendezvous. This political honeymoon was still at its height at the moment when the delighted Vaudrey, seeing everything rosy-hued, was satisfying his astonished curiosity in the greenroom of the ballet. He entered office, animated by all the good purposes inspired by absolute faith. It seemed to him that he was about to save the world, to regenerate the government, and to destroy abuses. "It is very difficult to become a minister," he said, smiling, "but nothing is easier than to be a great minister. It only demands a determination to do good!" "And the power to do it," replied his friend Granet, somewhat ironically. What! power? Nothing was more simple, since Vaudrey held the reins of power!--If others wrecked the hopes of their friends, it was because they had not dared, because they had not the will! They would now see what he would do himself! Not to-morrow either, nor in a month--but at once. He entered the ministry boldly, like a good-natured despot, determined to reform, study and rearrange everything; and a victim to the feverish and glorious zeal of a neophyte, he was a little surprised to encounter, at the very outset, the obstinate resistance of routine, ignorance, and the unyielding mechanism of that vast machine, more eternal than empires: Ad-min-is-tra-tion. Bah! he would have satisfaction! Patience would overcome all. After all, time is on one's side. "Time? Already!" replied Granet, who was a perpetual scoffer.