when to keep in the background, was busying
himself on the quiet, it is said, with an extensive transaction with
some copper mines in Morocco.

Madeleine's drawing-room had been an influential center, in which
several members of the Cabinet met every week. The President of the
Council had even dined twice at her house, and the wives of the
statesmen who had formerly hesitated to cross her threshold now boasted
of being her friends, and paid her more visits than were returned by
her. The Minister for Foreign Affairs reigned almost as a master in the
household. He called at all hours, bringing dispatches, news, items of
information, which he dictated either to the husband or the wife, as if
they had been his secretaries.

When Du Roy, after the minister's departure, found himself alone with
Madeleine, he would break out in a menacing tone with bitter
insinuations against the goings-on of this commonplace parvenu.

But she would shrug her shoulders contemptuously, repeating: "Do as much
as he has done yourself. Become a minister, and you can have your own
way. Till then, hold your tongue."

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
semi-official 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