Paul Visire formed a temporary ministry intended to reassure public feeling which had taken alarm, and Hippolyte Ceres was invited to hold office in it.
The new ministry, belonging to all the groups in the majority, represented the most diverse and contrary opinions, but they were all moderate and convinced conservatives.* The Minister of Foreign Affairs was retained from the former cabinet.

He was a little dark man called Crombile, who worked fourteen hours a day with the conviction that he dealt with tremendous questions.

He refused to see even his own diplomatic agents, and was terribly uneasy, though he did not disturb anybody else, for the want of foresight of peoples is infinite and that of governments is just as great.
* As this ministry exercised considerable influence upon the destinies of the country and of the world, we think it well to give its composition: Minister of the Interior and Prime Minister, Paul Visire; Minister of Justice, Pierre Bouc; Foreign Affairs, Victor Crombile; Finance, Terrasson; Education, Labillette; Commerce, Posts and Telegraphs, Hippolyte Ceres; Agriculture, Aulac; Public Works, Lapersonne; War, General Debonnaire; Admiralty, Admiral Vivier des Murenes.
The office of Public Works was given to a Socialist, Fortune Lapersonne.
It was then a political custom and one of the most solemn, most severe, most rigorous, and if I may dare say so, the most terrible and cruel of all political customs, to include a member of the Socialist party in each ministry intended to oppose Socialism, so that the enemies of wealth and property should suffer the shame of being attacked by one of their own party, and so that they could not unite against these forces without turning to some one who might possibly attack themselves in the future.

Nothing but a profound ignorance of the human heart would permit the belief that it was difficult to find a Socialist to occupy these functions.

Citizen Fortune Lapersonne entered the Visire cabinet of his own free will and without any constraint; and he found those who approved of his action even among his former friends, so great was the fascination that power exercised over the Penguins! General Debonnaire went to the War Office.