He twirled his moustache, looking at her askance: “People do not know of what I am capable,” he said. “They will learn it, perhaps, some day.”

She replied, philosophically: “Who lives long enough will see it.”

The morning on which the Chambers reassembled the young wife, still in bed, was giving a thousand recommendations to her husband, who was dressing himself in order to lunch with M. Laroche-Mathieu, and receive his instructions prior to the sitting for the next day’s political leader in the Vie Francaise , this leader being meant to be a kind of semiofficial declaration of the real objects of the Cabinet.

Madeleine was saying: “Above all, do not forget to ask him whether General Belloncle is to be sent to Oran, as has been reported. That would mean a great deal.”

George replied irritably: “But I know just as well as you what I have to do. Spare me your preaching.”

She answered quietly: “My dear, you always forget half the commissions I entrust you with for the minister.”

He growled: “He worries me to death, that minister of yours. He is a nincompoop.”

She remarked quietly: “He is no more my minister than he is yours. He is more useful to you than to me.”

He turned half round towards her, saying, sneeringly: “I beg your pardon, but he does not pay court to me.”

She observed slowly: “Nor to me either; but he is making our fortune.”

He was silent for a few moments, and then resumed: “If I had to make a choice among your admirers, I should still prefer that old fossil De Vaudrec. What has become of him, I have not seen him for a week?”