Paul Visire welcomed him smiling.

"You are welcome, my dear father. I was going to write to you. . . . Yes, to
tell you of your nomination to the rank of officer of the Legion of Honour. I

signed the patent this morning."
M. Blampignon thanked his son-in-law warmly and threw the anonymous letter

into the fire.
He returned to his provincial house and found his daughter fretting and

agitated.
"Well! I saw your husband. He is a delightful fellow. But then, you don't

understand how to deal with him."
About this time Hippolyte Ceres learned through a little scandalous newspaper

(it is always through the newspapers that ministers are informed of the
affairs of State) that the Prime Minister dined every evening with

Mademoiselle Lysiane of the Folies Dramatiques, whose charm seemed to have
made a great impression on him. Thenceforth Ceres took a gloomy joy in

watching his wife. She came in every evening to dine or dress with an air of
agreeable fatigue and the serenity that comes from enjoyment.

Thinking that she knew nothing, he sent her anonymous communications. She read
them at the table before him and remained still listless and smiling.

He then persuaded himself that she gave no heed to these vague reports, and
that in order to disturb her it would be necessary to enable her to verify her

lover's infidelity and treason for herself. There were at the Ministry a
number of trustworthy agents charged with secret inquiries regarding the

national defence. They were then employed in watching the spies of a
neighbouring and hostile Power who had succeeded in entering the Postal and

Telegraphic service. M. Ceres ordered them to suspend their work for the
present and to inquire where, when, and how, the Minister of the Interior saw

Mademoiselle Lysiane. The agents performed their missions faithfully" target="_blank" title="ad.忠实地；诚恳地">faithfully and told
the minister that they had several times seen the Prime Minister with a woman,

but that she was not Mademoiselle Lysiane. Hippolyte Ceres asked them nothing
further. He was right; the loves of Paul Visire and Lysiane were but an alibi

invented by Paul Visire himself, with Eveline's approval, for his fame was
rather inconvenient to her, and she sighed for secrecy and mystery.

They were not shadowed by the agents of the Ministry of Commerce alone. They
were also followed by those of the Prefect of Police, and even by those of the

Minister of the Interior, who disputed with each other the honour of
protecting their chief. Then there were the emissaries of several royalist,

imperialist, and clerical organisations, those of eight or ten blackmailers,
several amateur detectives, a multitude of reporters, and a crowd of

photographers, who all made their appearance wherever these two took refuge in
their perambulating love affairs, at big hotels, small hotels, town houses,

country houses, private apartments, villas, museums, palaces, hovels. They
kept watch in the streets, from neighbouring houses, trees, walls,

stair-cases, landings, roofs, adjoining rooms, and even chimneys. The Minister
and his friend saw with alarm all round their bed room, gimlets boring through

doors and shutters, and drills making holes in the walls. A photograph of
Madame Ceres in night attire buttoning her boots was the utmost that had been

obtained.
Paul Visire grew impatient and irritable, and often lost his good humour and

agreeableness. He came to the cabinet meetings in a rage and he, too, poured
invectives upon General Debonnaire--a brave man under fire but a lax

disciplinarian--and launched his sarcasms at against the venerable admiral
Vivier des Murenes whose ships went to the bottom without any apparent reason.

Fortune Lapersonne listened open-eyed, and grumbled scoffingly between his
teeth:

"He is not satisfied with robbing Hippolyte Ceres of his wife, but he must go
and rob him of his catchwords too."

These storms were made known by the indiscretion of some ministers and by the
complaints of the two old warriors, who declared their intention of flinging

their portfolios at the beggar's head, but who did nothing of the sort. These
outbursts, far from injuring the lucky Prime Minister, had an excellent effect

on Parliament and public opinion, who looked on them as signs of a keen
solicitude for the welfare of the national army and navy. The Prime Minister

was the recipient of general approbation.
To the congratulations of the various groups and of notable personages, he

replied with simple firmness: "Those are my principles!" and he had seven or
eight Socialists put in prison.

The session ended, and Paul Visire, very exhausted, went to take the waters.
Hippolyte Ceres refused to leave his Ministry, where the trade union of

telephone girls was in tumultuous agitation. He opposed it with an unheard of
violence, for he had now become a woman-hater. On Sundays he went into the

suburbs to fish along with his colleague Lapersonne, wearing the tall hat that
never left him since he had become a Minister. And both of them, forgetting

the fish,, complained of the inconstancy of women and mingled their griefs.
Hippolyte still loved Eveline and he still suffered. However, hope had slipped

into his heart. She was now separated from her ]over, and, thinking to win her
back, he directed all his efforts to that end. He put forth all his skill,

showed himself sincere, adaptable, affectionate, devoted, even discreet; his
heart taught him the delicacies of feeling. He said charming and touching

things to the faithless one, and, to soften her, he told her all that he had
suffered.

Crossing the band of his trousers upon his stomach.
"See," said he, "how thin I have got."

He promised her everything he thought could gratify a woman, country parties,
hats, jewels.

Sometimes he thought she would take pity on him.
She no longer displayed an insolently happy countenance. Being separated from

Paul, her sadness had an air of gentleness. But the moment he made a gesture
to recover her she turned away fiercely and gloomily, girt with her fault as

if with a golden girdle.
He did not give up, making himself humble, suppliant, lamentable.

One day he went to Lapersonne and said to him with tears in his eyes:
"Will you speak to her?"

Lapersonne excused himself, thinking that his intervention would be useless,
but he gave some advice to his friend.

"Make her think that you don't care about her, that you love another, and she
will come back to you."

Hippolyte, adopting this method, inserted in the newspapers that he was always
to be found in the company of Mademoiselle Guinaud of the Opera. He came home

late or did not come home at all, assumed in Eveline's presence an appearance
of inward joy impossible to restrain, took out of his pocket, at dinner, a

letter on scented paper which he pretended to read with delight, and his lips
seemed as in a dream to kiss invisible lips. Nothing happened. Eveline did not

even notice the change. Insensible to all around her, she only came out of her
lethargy to ask for some louis from her husband, and if he did not give them

she threw him a look of contempt, ready to upbraid him with the shame which
she poured upon him in the sight of the whole world. Since she had loved she

spent a great deal on dress. She needed money, and she had only her husband to
secure it for her; she was so far faithful to him.

He lost patience, became furious, and threatened her with his revolver. He
said one day before her to Madame Clarence:

"I congratulate you, Madame; you have brought up your daughter to be a wanton
hussy."

"Take me away, Mamma," exclaimed Eveline. "I will get a divorce!"
He loved her more ardently than ever. In his jealous rage, suspecting her, not

without probability, of sending and receiving letters, he swore that he would
intercept them, re-established a censorship over the post, threw private

correspondence into confusion, delayed stock-exchange quotations, prevented
assignations, brought about bankruptcies, thwarted passions, and caused

suicides. The independent press gave utterance to the complaints of the public
and indignantly supported them. To justify these arbitrary measures, the

ministerial journals spoke darkly of plots and public dangers, and promoted a
belief in a monarchical conspiracy. The less well-informed sheets gave more

precise information, told of the seizure of fifty thousand guns, and the
landing of Prince Crucho. Feeling grew throughout the country, and the

republican organs called for the immediate meeting of Parliament. Paul Visire
returned to Paris, summoned his colleagues, held an important Cabinet Council,

and proclaimed through his agencies that a plot had been actually formed
against the national representation, but that the Prime Minister held the

threads of it in his hand, and that a judicialinquiry was about to be opened.
He immediately ordered the arrest of thirty Socialists, and whilst the entire

country was acclaiming him as its saviour, baffling the watchfulness of his
six hundred detectives, he secretly took Eveline to a little house near the

Northern railway station, where they remained until night. After their
departure, the maid of their hotel, as she was putting their room in order,

saw seven little crosses traced by a hairpin on the wall at the head of the
bed.

That is all that Hippolyte Ceres obtained as a reward of his efforts.
IX. THE FINAL CONSEQUENCES

Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.
Deputies began to envy the Prime Minister his golden key. For a year his

domination over the beauteous Madame Ceres had been known to the whole
universe. The provinces, whither news and fashions only arrive after a

complete revolution of the earth round the sun, were at last informed of the
illegitimate loves of the Cabinet. The provinces preserve an austere morality;