a friend communicated to him at the Opera while a
waltz-tune was being played!

And thinking to himself:

"_From the Opera to the Opera!_ That, moreover, is the history of my
ministry--and that of the Granet administration, probably!"

The portress at Rue Boursault led him to Denis Ramel's apartment. Lying
on his bed with a kindly smile on his face, the old journalist seemed
as if asleep. The cold majesty of death gave a look of power to his
face. One might almost believe at times, from the scintillating light
placed near his bony brow, that its rigid muscles moved.

Denis Ramel! the sure guide of his youth and his counsellor through
life! He recalled his entry on public life, his arrival in Paris, the
first articles brought into the old editorial rooms of the _Nation
Francaise_! If for a moment he had been one of the heads of the State,
it was due to the man stretched out before him now!

He gently stooped over the corpse and pressed a farewell kiss on the
dead man's brow.

As he turned round, he saw a man whom he had not at first seen and who
had risen.

The man was very pale and greeted him with a timid air.

Vaudrey recognized Garnier, the man whom he had seen previously at
Ramel's, a cough-racked, patient, dying man.

The consumptive had nevertheless outlived the old man.

"It is good of you to have come, monsieur," said the workman. "He loved
you dearly."

"He died suddenly then?"

"Yes, and quite alone, while reading a book. He was found thus. They
thought he was sleeping. It is all over, he is to be buried to-morrow.
Will you come, monsieur?--I did not know who you were when--you know--I
said--In fact, it is kind--let us say no more about it--I beg your
pardon--There will be a vast gathering at Denis Ramel's funeral, if
there are present only a quarter of those whom he has obliged."

Vaudrey was heartbroken the next day. Behind Ramel's coffin, not a
person followed. Himself, Garnier, and one or two old women from the
house on Rue Boursault, who did not go all the way to the cemetery of
Saint-Ouen because it was too far, were all that were present. At the
grave Sulpice Vaudrey stood alone with the grave-digger and the workman
Garnier. They buried Ramel in a newly-opened part close to the foot of a
railway embankment.

For years Ramel had been forgotten, had even forgotten himself, he had
let ambitious men pass beyond him, ingrates succeed and selfish men get
to the top! He no longer existed! And