The news delighted her, and as she thought of her husband, she said to herself, “Lucien will be pleased to hear that Guitrel has been made bishop.” CHAPTER XXI “Ask M. Guitrel to come in,” said Loyer. Seated at his desk, the Minister was hardly visible behind the heaps of paper piled upon it; he was a little spectacled old man, with a grey moustache, watery eyes, and a sniff--a cynical, cantankerous old fellow, but an honest man who, in spite of the power and honour that had fallen to his lot, still had the appearance and manner of a professor of the law. He took off his spectacles and wiped them, for he was curious to see the Abbé, the candidate to the episcopal dignity, who had been backed by so many brilliant society women. Madame de Gromance, the pretty provincial, had been the first to call upon him at the end of December. She had told him, without beating about the bush, that he must appoint the Abbé Guitrel to the see of Tourcoing. The old Minister, who still loved the perfume that clings to a pretty woman, had kept the little hand of Madame de Gromance for a long time between his, stroking with his thumb the bare space between the glove and the sleeve where over the blue veins the skin is softest. He had not gone further, however, because he was getting old, and everything was an effort to him, and also he was afraid of appearing ridiculous in her eyes, for he still had his share of vanity. His words alone savoured of impropriety, and, according to his invariable custom, he inquired for Madame de Gromance’s “old Royalist,” as he familiarly called her husband. His eyes had become tearful behind their bluish glasses, and his face had creased itself into a thousand little wrinkles at the excellence of the jest. The idea that the “old Royalist” was a wronged husband filled the Minister of Justice and Public Worship with what really was inordinate glee. As he thought of it, he looked at Madame de Gromance with more curiosity, interest, and pleasure than was perhaps in the case justifiable, but from the ruins of his amorous nature he was building a series of mental amusements, the most intense of which was to gloat over the misfortune of M. de Gromance in the very presence of its voluptuous cause. During the six months in which he had been Minister of the Interior in a former Radical Cabinet, he had received from Worms-Clavelin private and confidential notes, telling him all about the Gromance ménage, so that he knew all there was to know about Clotilde’s lovers, and delighted in the knowledge that they were numerous. He had received the beautiful petitioner with every kindness, promising to look into M. Guitrel’s case, but committing himself no further, for he was a good Republican, and did not believe in subordinating affairs of state to a woman’s caprice.