your wife, who blushes; you stroke your beard a few times; and, as you
express no thanks, the two lovers divine your acceptance of the
compensation.

A sudden change in the ministry takes place. A husband, who is
Councillor of State, trembles for fear of being wiped from the roll,
when the night before he had been made director-general; all the
ministers are opposed to him and he has turned Constitutionalist.
Foreseeing his disgrace he has betaken himself to Auteuil, in search
of consolation from an old friend who quotes Horace and Tibullus to
him. On returning home he sees the table laid as if to receive the
most influential men of the assembly.

"In truth, madame," he says with acrimony as he enters his wife's
room, where she is finishing her toilette, "you seem to have lost your
habitual tact. This is a nice time to be giving dinner parties! Twenty
persons will soon learn--"

"That you are director-general!" she cries, showing him a royal
despatch.

He is thunderstruck. He takes the letter, he turns it now one way, now
another; he opens it. He sits down and spreads it out.

"I well know," he says, "that justice would be rendered me under
whatever ministers I served."

"Yes, my dear! But M. Villeplaine has answered for you with his life,
and his eminence the Cardinal de ----- of whom he is the--"