very carefully trimmed, caused him a feeling of pleasure,
and he joyfully exclaimed:

"Eh! _pardieu!_ why, here is Ramel!"

He immediately extended both hands in warm greeting to this man of sixty
years, wearing a white cravat twisted round his neck, like a neckerchief
in the old-fashioned style, and whose black waistcoat with its standing
collar of ancient pattern was conspicuous amid the open waistcoats of
the fashionably-dressed young men who had been very eagerly surrounding
the minister for the last few moments.

"Good day, Ramel!--How delighted I am to see you!"--

"And I also," said Ramel in a friendly and affectionate tone, while his
face, that seemed severe, but was only good-natured and masculine,
suddenly beamed. "It is not a little on your account that I came here."

"Really?"

"Really. I was anxious to shake hands with you. It is so long since I
saw you. How much has happened since then!"

"Ah! Ramel, who the devil would have said that I should be minister when
I took you my first article for the _Nation Francaise_!" said Vaudrey.
"Bah! who is not a minister?" said Ramel. "You are. Remember what
Napoleon said to Bourrienne as he entered the Tuileries: 'Here we are,
Bourrienne! now we must stay here!'"

"That is exactly what Granet said to me when he told me of the new
combination."

"Granet expressed in that more of an after-thought than your old Ramel."

"My best friend," said Sulpice with emotion, grasping this man's hands
in his.

"It is so much more meritorious on your part to tell me that," said
Ramel, "seeing that now you do not lack friendships."

"You are still a pessimist, Ramel?"

"I--A wild optimist, seeing that I believe everything and everybody! But
I must necessarily believe in the stupidity of my fellows, and upon this
point I am hardly mistaken."

"But what brings you to Madame Marsy's, you who are a perfect savage?"

"Tamed!--Because, I repeat to you, I knew that you were coming and that
Monsieur de Rosas was to speak on the subject of savages, and these
please me. If I had been rich or if I only had enough to live on, I
should have passed my life in travelling. And in the end, I shall have
lived between Montmartre and Batignolles: a tortoise dreaming that he is
a swallow--"

"Ramel, my dear fellow," said the minister, "would you wish me to give
you a mission where you could go and study whatever seemed good to you?"

"With my rheumatism? Thanks, your Excellency!" said