She had risen from her chair, staggering and stammering: 'Oh, all that money! all that money!' And, choking with invincible emotion at the thought of those millions which were about to fall upon them, she hung upon his neck and wept. It was with joy undoubtedly, with happiness at seeing him at last worthily rewarded for his intelligence and labour; but with pain also, a pain of which she could not have told the exact cause, but in which there was a commingling of shame and fear. He began to make fun of her, and they once more affected cheerfulness; yet a feeling of uneasiness remained within them, a secret dissatisfaction with themselves, unconfessed remorse at being forced into this soiling complicity. 'After all, he is right,' repeated Madame Caroline; 'everybody does it. Such is life.' The board meeting was held in the new room in the sumptuous building of the Rue de Londres. Here, there was no damp reception-room to which the pale reflections from a neighbouring garden imparted a greenish hue, but a vast apartment, lighted by four windows, overlooking the street, an apartment with a lofty ceiling and majestic walls, decorated with large paintings and streaming with gold. The chairman's arm-chair was a veritable throne, dominating the other arm-chairs, which, superb and grave, were ranged as if for a meeting of Cabinet Ministers around an immense table, covered with red velvet. And, above the monumental white marble chimney-piece, where trunks of trees blazed in winter time, there stood a bust of the Pope,[24] a shrewd amiable face which seemed to be smiling maliciously at the idea of finding itself in such a place.