"No! your Excellency," Ramel answered, as a kindly smile played beneath his white moustaches. "To oblige me?--To help me?" "No--Why, I am an egotist, my dear Vaudrey. Truly, that would make me too jealous. Take Navarrot," he added, as he pointed to a fashionable man, elegantly cravatted, carrying his head high, who had just greeted Vaudrey, using the same phrase eight times: "My dear minister--your Excellency--my minister--" "Navarrot?" "He appears to be very much attached to you!" "You are very wicked, Ramel. He holds to the office and not to the man. He is not the friend of the minister, but of ministers. He is one of the ordinary touters of the ministry. He applauds everything that their Excellencies choose to say." "Oh! I know those touters," said the old journalist. "When a minister is in power, they cheer him to the echo; when he is down, they belabor him." Vaudrey looked at him and laughingly said: "Begone, journalist!" "But at any rate,"--and here he extended his hand to Ramel,--"you will see me this evening?" "Certainly." "And you still live at--?" "Rue Boursault, Boulevard des Batignolles." "Till then, my dear Ramel! If occasion require, you will not refuse to give me your advice?" "Nor my devotion. But without office, remember without office," said Ramel, still smiling. Vaudrey took great delight in chatting with his old friend, but for a moment he had been seized with an eager desire to find amid the increasing crowd that thronged the salons, the pretty girl who had appeared to him like a statue of Desire, whetted desire, but even in her charms somewhat unwholesome, yet disturbing and appetizing. He had come to Sabine Marsy's only by chance and as if to display in public the joy of his triumph, just as a newly decorated man willingly accepts invitations in order to show off his new ribbon, but he now felt happy for having done so. He had promised himself only to put himself in evidence and then disappear with Adrienne to the enjoyment of their usual chats, to taste that intimacy that was so dear to him, but which, since his establishment on Place Beauvau, had vanished.