"She is greatly changed. She doesn't leave the house of her uncle, the
doctor, nor does she receive any one."
"Is she sick, then?"
"Yes, slightly."
"And you are separated, then?"
"No," replied Sulpice.
Jéliotte smiled.
"Ah! joker, I understand!--Your wife was too strict!--Bless me, a
provincial! Bah! that will come right! And if it doesn't, why, you will
be free, that's all! But, say, then, if you are not re-elected, you will
rejoin her at Grenoble. Oh! your clients will return to you. You are
highly esteemed as an advocate, but as a minister, I ought to say--"
"I shall be re-elected," said Vaudrey, in a decisive tone, so as to cut
short Jéliotte's interminable phrases.
He was exceedingly unnerved. This man's stupidity would exasperate him.
He would never come across any but subjects of irritation or
disheartenment. He felt inclined to seek a quarrel with some one. He
would have liked to wrench Marianne's wrist with his fingers.
As he entered the hall leading to the assembly, he unwittingly stumbled
against a gentleman who was walking rapidly and without saluting him,
although he thought that he recognized him.
"Yet I know him!"
He had not gone three steps before he perfectly recalled this eternal
lobbyist, always bending before him and clinging to the armchairs of the
antechambers, like an oyster to a rock, and whom the messengers,
accustomed to his soliciting, bowing and scraping for years past, called
_Monsieur Eugène_--out of courtesy.
It was too much! And, in truth, this strange fellow's impoliteness was
ill-timed.
Sulpice suddenly turned round, approached Renaudin, and said to him
sharply:
"You bowed more obsequiously to me a short time since, monsieur! It
seems to me that you were in the ministerial antechambers every
morning!"
He expected a haughty reply from Renaudin, and that this man would have
compensated him for the others.
_Monsieur Eugène_ smiled as he answered:
"Why, I am still there, monsieur!"
Vaudrey looked at him with a stupefied air, then in an outburst of
anger, as if he conveyed in the reply that he hurled at this
contemptible fellow, all the projects of his future revenge upon the
fools, the knaves, the dull valets and the ungrateful horde, he said,
boldly:
"Well, you will salute me again, for I shall return there."
He turned on his heels away from this worthless fellow, and entered the
Chamber.
He heard an outburst of bravos; a perfect tempest of enthusiasm reached
him. He looked on and bit his lips.
Lucien Granet was in the tribune, and the majority were applauding him.