--If there is a list balloted for, and there certainly will
be, Thibaudier will head the list. If they had maintained the _scrutin
d'arrondissement_, he would have been capable of passing muster, all the
same!"

"Against me?"

"Against you. Thibaudier is very popular!--And as firm as a rock!--He
thinks you moderate, too moderate, as everybody else does!"

"He?--He was a member of the Plebiscite Committee under the Empire!"

"Exactly! He is an extreme Republican, just as he was an extreme
Bonapartist. Oh! Thibaudier is a man, there is no concession with him.
Never! He is always the same. He will beat you. Moreover, in Isere, they
want a homogeneous representation--"

"Again!" said Vaudrey, who felt that he was pursued by this word.

After all, what did Thibaudier matter to him, or the deputation, the
election or politics? Denis Ramel had sounded its depths in his grave in
the cemetery of Saint-Ouen.

"Let us drop Thibaudier. By the way," said Jeliotte, "I saw your wife at
Grenoble."

Vaudrey grew pale.

He again repeated: "Ah!"

"She is greatly changed. She doesn't leave the house of her uncle, the
doctor, nor does she receive any one."

"Is she sick, then?"

"Yes, slightly."

"And you are separated, then?"

"No," replied Sulpice.

Jeliotte smiled.

"Ah! joker, I understand!--Your wife was too strict!--Bless me, a
provincial! Bah! that will come right! And if it doesn't, why, you will
be free, that's all! But, say, then, if you are not re-elected, you will
rejoin her at Grenoble. Oh! your clients will return to you. You are
highly esteemed as an advocate, but as a minister, I ought to say--"

"I shall be re-elected," said Vaudrey, in a decisive tone, so as to cut
short Jeliotte's interminable phrases.

He was exceedingly unnerved. This man's stupidity would exasperate him.
He would never come across any but subjects of irritation or
disheartenment. He felt inclined to seek a quarrel with some one. He
would have liked to wrench Marianne's wrist with his fingers.

As he entered the hall leading to the assembly, he unwittingly stumbled
against a gentleman who was walking rapidly and without saluting him,
although he thought that he recognized him.

"Yet I know him!"

He had not gone three steps before he perfectly recalled this eternal
lobbyist, always bending before him and clinging to the armchairs of the
antechambers, like an oyster to a rock, and whom the messengers,
accustomed to his solici