Kitabı oxu: «Bureaucracy»

CHAPTER I. THE RABOURDIN HOUSEHOLD

In Paris, where men of thought and study bear a certain likeness to one another, living as they do in a common centre, you must have met with several resembling Monsieur Rabourdin, whose acquaintance we are about to make at a moment when he is head of a bureau in one of our most important ministries. At this period he was forty years old, with gray hair of so pleasing a shade that women might at a pinch fall in love with it for it softened a somewhat melancholy countenance, blue eyes full of fire, a skin that was still fair, though rather ruddy and touched here and there with strong red marks; a forehead and nose a la Louis XV., a serious mouth, a tall figure, thin, or perhaps wasted, like that of a man just recovering from illness, and finally, a bearing that was midway between the indolence of a mere idler and the thoughtfulness of a busy man. If this portrait serves to depict his character, a sketch of this man’s dress will bring it still further into relief. Rabourdin wore habitually a blue surcoat, a white cravat, a waistcoat crossed a la Robespierre, black trousers without straps, gray silk stockings and low shoes. Well-shaved, and with his stomach warmed by a cup of coffee, he left home at eight in the morning with the regularity of clock-work, always passing along the same streets on his way to the ministry: so neat was he, so formal, so starched that he might have been taken for an Englishman on the road to his embassy.

From these general signs you will readily discern a family man, harassed by vexations in his own household, worried by annoyances at the ministry, yet philosopher enough to take life as he found it; an honest man, loving his country and serving it, not concealing from himself the obstacles in the way of those who seek to do right; prudent, because he knew men; exquisitely courteous with women, of whom he asked nothing, – a man full of acquirements, affable with his inferiors, holding his equals at great distance, and dignified towards his superiors. At the epoch of which we write, you would have noticed in him the coldly resigned air of one who has buried the illusions of his youth and renounced every secret ambition; you would have recognized a discouraged, but not disgusted man, one who still clings to his first projects, – more perhaps to employ his faculties than in the hope of a doubtful success. He was not decorated with any order, and always accused himself of weakness for having worn that of the Fleur-de-lis in the early days of the Restoration.

The life of this man was marked by certain mysterious peculiarities. He had never known his father; his mother, a woman to whom luxury was everything, always elegantly dressed, always on pleasure bent, whose beauty seemed to him miraculous and whom he very seldom saw, left him little at her death; but she had given him that too common and incomplete education which produces so much ambition and so little ability. A few days before his mother’s death, when he was just sixteen, he left the Lycee Napoleon to enter as supernumerary a government office, where an unknown protector had provided him with a place. At twenty-two years of age Rabourdin became under-head-clerk; at twenty-five, head-clerk, or, as it was termed, head of the bureau. From that day the hand that assisted the young man to start in life was never felt again in his career, except as to a single circumstance; it led him, poor and friendless, to the house of a Monsieur Leprince, formerly an auctioneer, a widower said to be extremely rich, and father of an only daughter. Xavier Rabourdin fell desperately in love with Mademoiselle Celestine Leprince, then seventeen years of age, who had all the matrimonial claims of a dowry of two hundred thousand francs. Carefully educated by an artistic mother, who transmitted her own talents to her daughter, this young lady was fitted to attract distinguished men. Tall, handsome, and finely-formed, she was a good musician, drew and painted, spoke several languages, and even knew something of science, – a dangerous advantage, which requires a woman to avoid carefully all appearance of pedantry. Blinded by mistaken tenderness, the mother gave the daughter false ideas as to her probable future; to the maternal eyes a duke or an ambassador, a marshal of France or a minister of State, could alone give her Celestine her due place in society. The young lady had, moreover, the manners, language, and habits of the great world. Her dress was richer and more elegant than was suitable for an unmarried girl; a husband could give her nothing more than she now had, except happiness. Besides all such indulgences, the foolish spoiling of the mother, who died a year after the girl’s marriage, made a husband’s task all the more difficult. What coolness and composure of mind were needed to rule such a woman! Commonplace suitors held back in fear. Xavier Rabourdin, without parents and without fortune other than his situation under government, was proposed to Celestine by her father. She resisted for a long time; not that she had any personal objection to her suitor, who was young, handsome, and much in love, but she shrank from the plain name of Madame Rabourdin. Monsieur Leprince assured his daughter that Xavier was of the stock that statesmen came of. Celestine answered that a man named Rabourdin would never be anything under the government of the Bourbons, etc. Forced back to his intrenchments, the father made the serious mistake of telling his daughter that her future husband was certain of becoming Rabourdin “de something or other” before he reached the age of admission to the Chamber. Xavier was soon to be appointed Master of petitions, and general-secretary at his ministry. From these lower steps of the ladder the young man would certainly rise to the higher ranks of the administration, possessed of a fortune and a name bequeathed to him in a certain will of which he, Monsieur Leprince, was cognizant. On this the marriage took place.

Rabourdin and his wife believed in the mysterious protector to whom the auctioneer alluded. Led away by such hopes and by the natural extravagance of happy love, Monsieur and Madame Rabourdin spent nearly one hundred thousand francs of their capital in the first five years of married life. By the end of this time Celestine, alarmed at the non-advancement of her husband, insisted on investing the remaining hundred thousand francs of her dowry in landed property, which returned only a slender income; but her future inheritance from her father would amply repay all present privations with perfect comfort and ease of life. When the worthy auctioneer saw his son-in-law disappointed of the hopes they had placed on the nameless protector, he tried, for the sake of his daughter, to repair the secret loss by risking part of his fortune in a speculation which had favourable chances of success. But the poor man became involved in one of the liquidations of the house of Nucingen, and died of grief, leaving nothing behind him but a dozen fine pictures which adorned his daughter’s salon, and a few old-fashioned pieces of furniture, which she put in the garret.

Eight years of fruitless expectation made Madame Rabourdin at last understand that the paternal protector of her husband must have died, and that his will, if it ever existed, was lost or destroyed. Two years before her father’s death the place of chief of division, which became vacant, was given, over her husband’s head, to a certain Monsieur de la Billardiere, related to a deputy of the Right who was made minister in 1823. It was enough to drive Rabourdin out of the service; but how could he give up his salary of eight thousand francs and perquisites, when they constituted three fourths of his income and his household was accustomed to spend them? Besides, if he had patience for a few more years he would then be entitled to a pension. What a fall was this for a woman whose high expectations at the opening of her life were more or less warranted, and one who was admitted on all sides to be a superior woman.

Madame Rabourdin had justified the expectations formed of Mademoiselle Leprince; she possessed the elements of that apparent superiority which pleases the world; her liberal education enabled her to speak to every one in his or her own language; her talents were real; she showed an independent and elevated mind; her conversation charmed as much by its variety and ease as by the oddness and originality of her ideas. Such qualities, useful and appropriate in a sovereign or an ambassadress, were of little service to a household compelled to jog in the common round. Those who have the gift of speaking well desire an audience; they like to talk, even if they sometimes weary others. To satisfy the requirements of her mind Madame Rabourdin took a weekly reception-day and went a great deal into society to obtain the consideration her self-love was accustomed to enjoy. Those who know Parisian life will readily understand how a woman of her temperament suffered, and was martyrized at heart by the scantiness of her pecuniary means. No matter what foolish declarations people make about money, they one and all, if they live in Paris, must grovel before accounts, do homage to figures, and kiss the forked hoof of the golden calf. What a problem was hers! twelve thousand francs a year to defray the costs of a household consisting of father, mother, two children, a chambermaid and cook, living on the second floor of a house in the rue Duphot, in an apartment costing two thousand francs a year. Deduct the dress and the carriage of Madame before you estimate the gross expenses of the family, for dress precedes everything; then see what remains for the education of the children (a girl of eight and a boy of nine, whose maintenance must cost at least two thousand francs besides) and you will find that Madame Rabourdin could barely afford to give her husband thirty francs a month. That is the position of half the husbands in Paris, under penalty of being thought monsters.

Thus it was that this woman who believed herself destined to shine in the world was condemned to use her mind and her faculties in a sordid struggle, fighting hand to hand with an account-book. Already, terrible sacrifice of pride! she had dismissed her man-servant, not long after the death of her father. Most women grow weary of this daily struggle; they complain but they usually end by giving up to fate and taking what comes to them; Celestine’s ambition, far from lessening, only increased through difficulties, and led her, when she found she could not conquer them, to sweep them aside. To her mind this complicated tangle of the affairs of life was a Gordian knot impossible to untie and which genius ought to cut. Far from accepting the pettiness of middle-class existence, she was angry at the delay which kept the great things of life from her grasp, – blaming fate as deceptive. Celestine sincerely believed herself a superior woman. Perhaps she was right; perhaps she would have been great under great circumstances; perhaps she was not in her right place. Let us remember there are as many varieties of woman as there are of man, all of which society fashions to meet its needs. Now in the social order, as in Nature’s order, there are more young shoots than there are trees, more spawn than full-grown fish, and many great capacities (Athanase Granson, for instance) which die withered for want of moisture, like seeds on stony ground. There are, unquestionably, household women, accomplished women, ornamental women, women who are exclusively wives, or mothers, or sweethearts, women purely spiritual or purely material; just as there are soldiers, artists, artisans, mathematicians, poets, merchants, men who understand money, or agriculture, or government, and nothing else. Besides all this, the eccentricity of events leads to endless cross-purposes; many are called and few are chosen is the law of earth as of heaven. Madame Rabourdin conceived herself fully capable of directing a statesman, inspiring an artist, helping an inventor and pushing his interests, or of devoting her powers to the financial politics of a Nucingen, and playing a brilliant part in the great world. Perhaps she was only endeavouring to excuse to her own mind a hatred for the laundry lists and the duty of overlooking the housekeeping bills, together with the petty economies and cares of a small establishment. She was superior only in those things where it gave her pleasure to be so. Feeling as keenly as she did the thorns of a position which can only be likened to that of Saint-Laurence on his grid-iron, is it any wonder that she sometimes cried out? So, in her paroxysms of thwarted ambition, in the moments when her wounded vanity gave her terrible shooting pains, Celestine turned upon Xavier Rabourdin. Was it not her husband’s duty to give her a suitable position in the world? If she were a man she would have had the energy to make a rapid fortune for the sake of rendering an adored wife happy! She reproached him for being too honest a man. In the mouth of some women this accusation is a charge of imbecility. She sketched out for him certain brilliant plans in which she took no account of the hindrances imposed by men and things; then, like all women under the influence of vehement feeling, she became in thought as Machiavellian as Gondreville, and more unprincipled than Maxime de Trailles. At such times Celestine’s mind took a wide range, and she imagined herself at the summit of her ideas.

When these fine visions first began Rabourdin, who saw the practical side, was cool. Celestine, much grieved, thought her husband narrow-minded, timid, unsympathetic; and she acquired, insensibly, a wholly false opinion of the companion of her life. In the first place, she often extinguished him by the brilliancy of her arguments. Her ideas came to her in flashes, and she sometimes stopped him short when he began an explanation, because she did not choose to lose the slightest sparkle of her own mind. From the earliest days of their marriage Celestine, feeling herself beloved and admired by her husband, treated him without ceremony; she put herself above conjugal laws and the rules of private courtesy by expecting love to pardon all her little wrong-doings; and, as she never in any way corrected herself, she was always in the ascendant. In such a situation the man holds to the wife very much the position of a child to a teacher when the latter cannot or will not recognize that the mind he has ruled in childhood is becoming mature. Like Madame de Stael, who exclaimed in a room full of people, addressing, as we may say, a greater man than herself, “Do you know you have really said something very profound!” Madame Rabourdin said of her husband: “He certainly has a good deal of sense at times.” Her disparaging opinion of him gradually appeared in her behavior through almost imperceptible motions. Her attitude and manners expressed a want of respect. Without being aware of it she injured her husband in the eyes of others; for in all countries society, before making up its mind about a man, listens for what his wife thinks of him, and obtains from her what the Genevese term “pre-advice.”

When Rabourdin became aware of the mistakes which love had led him to commit it was too late, – the groove had been cut; he suffered and was silent. Like other men in whom sentiments and ideas are of equal strength, whose souls are noble and their brains well balanced, he was the defender of his wife before the tribunal of his own judgment; he told himself that nature doomed her to a disappointed life through his fault; HIS; she was like a thoroughbred English horse, a racer harnessed to a cart full of stones; she it was who suffered; and he blamed himself. His wife, by dint of constant repetition, had inoculated him with her own belief in herself. Ideas are contagious in a household; the ninth thermidor, like so many other portentous events, was the result of female influence. Thus, goaded by Celestine’s ambition, Rabourdin had long considered the means of satisfying it, though he hid his hopes, so as to spare her the tortures of uncertainty. The man was firmly resolved to make his way in the administration by bringing a strong light to bear upon it. He intended to bring about one of those revolutions which send a man to the head of either one party or another in society; but being incapable of so doing in his own interests, he merely pondered useful thoughts and dreamed of triumphs won for his country by noble means. His ideas were both generous and ambitious; few officials have not conceived the like; but among officials as among artists there are more miscarriages than births; which is tantamount to Buffon’s saying that “Genius is patience.”

Placed in a position where he could study French administration and observe its mechanism, Rabourdin worked in the circle where his thought revolved, which, we may remark parenthetically, is the secret of much human accomplishment; and his labor culminated finally in the invention of a new system for the Civil Service of government. Knowing the people with whom he had to do, he maintained the machine as it then worked, so it still works and will continue to work; for everybody fears to remodel it, though no one, according to Rabourdin, ought to be unwilling to simplify it. In his opinion, the problem to be resolved lay in a better use of the same forces. His plan, in its simplest form, was to revise taxation and lower it in a way that should not diminish the revenues of the State, and to obtain, from a budget equal to the budgets which now excite such rabid discussion, results that should be two-fold greater than the present results. Long practical experience had taught Rabourdin that perfection is brought about in all things by changes in the direction of simplicity. To economize is to simplify. To simplify means to suppress unnecessary machinery; removals naturally follow. His system, therefore, depended on the weeding out of officials and the establishment of a new order of administrative offices. No doubt the hatred which all reformers incur takes its rise here. Removals required by this perfecting process, always ill-understood, threaten the well-being of those on whom a change in their condition is thus forced. What rendered Rabourdin really great was that he was able to restrain the enthusiasm that possesses all reformers, and to patiently seek out a slow evolving medium for all changes so as to avoid shocks, leaving time and experience to prove the excellence of each reform. The grandeur of the result anticipated might make us doubt its possibility if we lose sight of this essential point in our rapid analysis of his system. It is, therefore, not unimportant to show through his self-communings, however incomplete they might be, the point of view from which he looked at the administrative horizon. This tale, which is evolved from the very heart of the Civil Service, may also serve to show some of the evils of our present social customs.

Xavier Rabourdin, deeply impressed by the trials and poverty which he witnessed in the lives of the government clerks, endeavored to ascertain the cause of their growing deterioration. He found it in those petty partial revolutions, the eddies, as it were, of the storm of 1789, which the historians of great social movements neglect to inquire into, although as a matter of fact it is they which have made our manners and customs what they are now.

Formerly, under the monarchy, the bureaucratic armies did not exist. The clerks, few in number, were under the orders of a prime minister who communicated with the sovereign; thus they directly served the king. The superiors of these zealous servants were simply called head-clerks. In those branches of administration which the king did not himself direct, such for instance as the “fermes” (the public domains throughout the country on which a revenue was levied), the clerks were to their superior what the clerks of a business-house are to their employer; they learned a science which would one day advance them to prosperity. Thus, all points of the circumference were fastened to the centre and derived their life from it. The result was devotion and confidence. Since 1789 the State, call it the Nation if you like, has replaced the sovereign. Instead of looking directly to the chief magistrate of this nation, the clerks have become, in spite of our fine patriotic ideas, the subsidiaries of the government; their superiors are blown about by the winds of a power called “the administration,” and do not know from day to day where they may be on the morrow. As the routine of public business must go on, a certain number of indispensable clerks are kept in their places, though they hold these places on sufferance, anxious as they are to retain them. Bureaucracy, a gigantic power set in motion by dwarfs, was generated in this way. Though Napoleon, by subordinating all things and all men to his will, retarded for a time the influence of bureaucracy (that ponderous curtain hung between the service to be done and the man who orders it), it was permanently organized under the constitutional government, which was, inevitably, the friend of all mediocrities, the lover of authentic documents and accounts, and as meddlesome as an old tradeswoman. Delighted to see the various ministers constantly struggling against the four hundred petty minds of the Elected of the Chamber, with their ten or a dozen ambitious and dishonest leaders, the Civil Service officials hastened to make themselves essential to the warfare by adding their quota of assistance under the form of written action; they created a power of inertia and named it “Report.” Let us explain the Report.

When the kings of France took to themselves ministers, which first happened under Louis XV., they made them render reports on all important questions, instead of holding, as formerly, grand councils of state with the nobles. Under the constitutional government, the ministers of the various departments were insensibly led by their bureaus to imitate this practice of kings. Their time being taken up in defending themselves before the two Chambers and the court, they let themselves be guided by the leading-strings of the Report. Nothing important was ever brought before the government that a minister did not say, even when the case was urgent, “I have called for a report.” The Report thus became, both as to the matter concerned and for the minister himself, the same as a report to the Chamber of Deputies on a question of laws, – namely, a disquisition in which the reasons for and against are stated with more or less partiality. No real result is attained; the minister, like the Chamber, is fully as well prepared before as after the report is rendered. A determination, in whatever matter, is reached in an instant. Do what we will, the moment comes when the decision must be made. The greater the array of reasons for and against, the less sound will be the judgment. The finest things of which France can boast have been accomplished without reports and where decisions were prompt and spontaneous. The dominant law of a statesman is to apply precise formula to all cases, after the manner of judges and physicians.

Rabourdin, who said to himself: “A minister should have decision, should know public affairs, and direct their course,” saw “Report” rampant throughout France, from the colonel to the marshal, from the commissary of police to the king, from the prefects to the ministers of state, from the Chamber to the courts. After 1818 everything was discussed, compared, and weighed, either in speech or writing; public business took a literary form. France went to ruin in spite of this array of documents; dissertations stood in place of action; a million of reports were written every year; bureaucracy was enthroned! Records, statistics, documents, failing which France would have been ruined, circumlocution, without which there could be no advance, increased, multiplied, and grew majestic. From that day forth bureaucracy used to its own profit the mistrust that stands between receipts and expenditures; it degraded the administration for the benefit of the administrators; in short, it spun those lilliputian threads which have chained France to Parisian centralization, – as if from 1500 to 1800 France had undertaken nothing for want of thirty thousand government clerks! In fastening upon public offices, like a mistletoe on a pear-tree, these officials indemnified themselves amply, and in the following manner.

The ministers, compelled to obey the princes or the Chambers who impose upon them the distribution of the public moneys, and forced to retain the workers in office, proceeded to diminish salaries and increase the number of those workers, thinking that if more persons were employed by government the stronger the government would be. And yet the contrary law is an axiom written on the universe; there is no vigor except where there are few active principles. Events proved in July, 1830, the error of the materialism of the Restoration. To plant a government in the hearts of a nation it is necessary to bind INTERESTS to it, not MEN. The government-clerks being led to detest the administrations which lessened both their salaries and their importance, treated them as a courtesan treats an aged lover, and gave them mere work for money; a state of things which would have seemed as intolerable to the administration as to the clerks, had the two parties dared to feel each other’s pulse, or had the higher salaries not succeeded in stifling the voices of the lower. Thus wholly and solely occupied in retaining his place, drawing his pay, and securing his pension, the government official thought everything permissible that conduced to these results. This state of things led to servility on the part of the clerks and to endless intrigues within the various departments, where the humbler clerks struggled vainly against degenerate members of the aristocracy, who sought positions in the government bureaus for their ruined sons.

Superior men could scarcely bring themselves to tread these tortuous ways, to stoop, to cringe, and creep through the mire of these cloacas, where the presence of a fine mind only alarmed the other denizens. The ambitious man of genius grows old in obtaining his triple crown; he does not follow in the steps of Sixtus the Fifth merely to become head of a bureau. No one comes or stays in the government offices but idlers, incapables, or fools. Thus the mediocrity of French administration has slowly come about. Bureaucracy, made up entirely of petty minds, stands as an obstacle to the prosperity of the nation; delays for seven years, by its machinery, the project of a canal which would have stimulated the production of a province; is afraid of everything, prolongs procrastination, and perpetuates the abuses which in turn perpetuate and consolidate itself. Bureaucracy holds all things and the administration itself in leading strings; it stifles men of talent who are bold enough to be independent of it or to enlighten it on its own follies. About the time of which we write the pension list had just been issued, and on it Rabourdin saw the name of an underling in office rated for a larger sum than the old colonels, maimed and wounded for their country. In that fact lies the whole history of bureaucracy.

Another evil, brought about by modern customs, which Rabourdin counted among the causes of this secret demoralization, was the fact that there is no real subordination in the administration in Paris; complete equality reigns between the head of an important division and the humblest copying-clerk; one is as powerful as the other in an arena outside of which each lords it in his own way. Education, equally distributed through the masses, brings the son of a porter into a government office to decide the fate of some man of merit or some landed proprietor whose door-bell his father may have answered. The last comer is therefore on equal terms with the oldest veteran in the service. A wealthy supernumerary splashes his superior as he drives his tilbury to Longchamps and points with his whip to the poor father of a family, remarking to the pretty woman at his side, “That’s my chief.” The Liberals call this state of things Progress; Rabourdin thought it Anarchy at the heart of power. He saw how it resulted in restless intrigues, like those of a harem between eunuchs and women and imbecile sultans, or the petty troubles of nuns full of underhand vexations, or college tyrannies, or diplomatic manoeuvrings fit to terrify an ambassador, all put in motion to obtain a fee or an increase in salary; it was like the hopping of fleas harnessed to pasteboard cars, the spitefulness of slaves, often visited on the minister himself. With all this were the really useful men, the workers, victims of such parasites; men sincerely devoted to their country, who stood vigorously out from the background of the other incapables, yet who were often forced to succumb through unworthy trickery.

All the higher offices were gained through parliamentary influence, royalty had nothing to do now with them, and the subordinate clerks became, after a time, merely the running-gear of the machine; the most important considerations with them being to keep the wheels well greased. This fatal conviction entering some of the best minds smothered many statements conscientiously written on the secret evils of the national government; lowered the courage of many hearts, and corrupted sterling honesty, weary of injustice and won to indifference by deteriorating annoyances. A clerk in the employ of the Rothchilds corresponds with all England; another, in a government office, may communicate with all the prefects; but where the one learns the way to make his fortune, the other loses time and health and life to no avail. An undermining evil lies here. Certainly a nation does not seem threatened with immediate dissolution because an able clerk is sent away and a middling sort of man replaces him. Unfortunately for the welfare of nations individual men never seem essential to their existence. But in the long run when the belittling process is fully carried out nations will disappear. Every one who seeks instruction on this point can look at Venice, Madrid, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Rome; all places which were formerly resplendent with mighty powers and are now destroyed by the infiltrating littleness which gradually attained the highest eminence. When the day of struggle came, all was found rotten, the State succumbed to a weak attack. To worship the fool who succeeds, and not to grieve over the fall of an able man is the result of our melancholy education, of our manners and customs which drive men of intellect into disgust, and genius to despair.

What a difficult undertaking is the rehabilitation of the Civil Service while the liberal cries aloud in his newspapers that the salaries of clerks are a standing theft, calls the items of the budget a cluster of leeches, and every year demands why the nation should be saddled with a thousand millions of taxes. In Monsieur Rabourdin’s eyes the clerk in relation to the budget was very much what the gambler is to the game; that which he wins he puts back again. All remuneration implies something furnished. To pay a man a thousand francs a year and demand his whole time was surely to organize theft and poverty. A galley-slave costs nearly as much, and does less. But to expect a man whom the State remunerated with twelve thousand francs a year to devote himself to his country was a profitable contract for both sides, fit to allure all capacities.

These reflections had led Rabourdin to desire the recasting of the clerical official staff. To employ fewer man, to double or treble salaries, and do away with pensions, to choose only young clerks (as did Napoleon, Louis XIV., Richelieu, and Ximenes), but to keep them long and train them for the higher offices and greatest honors, these were the chief features of a reform which if carried out would be as beneficial to the State as to the clerks themselves. It is difficult to recount in detail, chapter by chapter, a plan which embraced the whole budget and continued down through the minutest details of administration in order to keep the whole synthetical; but perhaps a slight sketch of the principal reforms will suffice for those who understand such matters, as well as for those who are wholly ignorant of the administrative system. Though the historian’s position is rather hazardous in reproducing a plan which may be thought the politics of a chimney-corner, it is, nevertheless, necessary to sketch it so as to explain the author of it by his own work. Were the recital of his efforts to be omitted, the reader would not believe the narrator’s word if he merely declared the talent and the courage of this official.

Rabourdin’s plan divided the government into three ministries, or departments. He thought that if the France of former days possessed brains strong enough to comprehend in one system both foreign and domestic affairs, the France of to-day was not likely to be without its Mazarin, its Suger, its Sully, its de Choiseul, or its Colbert to direct even vast administrative departments. Besides, constitutionally speaking, three ministries will agree better than seven; and, in the restricted number there is less chance for mistaken choice; moreover, it might be that the kingdom would some day escape from those perpetual ministerial oscillations which interfered with all plans of foreign policy and prevented all ameliorations of home rule. In Austria, where many diverse united nations present so many conflicting interests to be conciliated and carried forward under one crown, two statesmen alone bear the burden of public affairs and are not overwhelmed by it. Was France less prolific of political capacities than Germany? The rather silly game of what are called “constitutional institutions” carried beyond bounds has ended, as everybody knows, in requiring a great many offices to satisfy the multifarious ambition of the middle classes. It seemed to Rabourdin, in the first place, natural to unite the ministry of war with the ministry of the navy. To his thinking the navy was one of the current expenses of the war department, like the artillery, cavalry, infantry, and commissariat. Surely it was an absurdity to give separate administrations to admirals and marshals when both were employed to one end, namely, the defense of the nation, the overthrow of an enemy, and the security of the national possessions. The ministry of the interior ought in like manner to combine the departments of commerce, police, and finances, or it belied its own name. To the ministry of foreign affairs belonged the administration of justice, the household of the king, and all that concerned arts, sciences, and belles lettres. All patronage ought to flow directly from the sovereign. Such ministries necessitated the supremacy of a council. Each required the work of two hundred officials, and no more, in its central administration offices, where Rabourdin proposed that they should live, as in former days under the monarchy. Taking the sum of twelve thousand francs a year for each official as an average, he estimated seven millions as the cost of the whole body of such officials, which actually stood at twenty in the budget.

By thus reducing the ministers to three heads he suppressed departments which had come to be useless, together with the enormous costs of their maintenance in Paris. He proved that an arrondissement could be managed by ten men; a prefecture by a dozen at the most; which reduced the entire civil service force throughout France to five thousand men, exclusive of the departments of war and justice. Under this plan the clerks of the court were charged with the system of loans, and the ministry of the interior with that of registration and the management of domains. Thus Rabourdin united in one centre all divisions that were allied in nature. The mortgage system, inheritance, and registration did not pass outside of their own sphere of action and only required three additional clerks in the justice courts and three in the royal courts. The steady application of this principle brought Rabourdin to reforms in the finance system. He merged the collection of revenue into one channel, taxing consumption in bulk instead of taxing property. According to his ideas, consumption was the sole thing properly taxable in times of peace. Land-taxes should always be held in reserve in case of war; for then only could the State justly demand sacrifices from the soil, which was in danger; but in times of peace it was a serious political fault to burden it beyond a certain limit; otherwise it could never be depended on in great emergencies. Thus a loan should be put on the market when the country was tranquil, for at such times it could be placed at par, instead of at fifty per cent loss as in bad times; in war times resort should be had to a land-tax.

“The invasion of 1814 and 1815,” Rabourdin would say to his friends, “founded in France and practically explained an institution which neither Law nor Napoleon had been able to establish, – I mean Credit.”

Unfortunately, Xavier considered the true principles of this admirable machine of civil service very little understood at the period when he began his labor of reform in 1820. His scheme levied a toll on the consumption by means of direct taxation and suppressed the whole machinery of indirect taxation. The levying of the taxes was simplified by a single classification of a great number of articles. This did away with the more harassing customs at the gates of the cities, and obtained the largest revenues from the remainder, by lessening the enormous expense of collecting them. To lighten the burden of taxation is not, in matters of finance, to diminish the taxes, but to assess them better; if lightened, you increase the volume of business by giving it freer play; the individual pays less and the State receives more. This reform, which may seem immense, rests on very simple machinery. Rabourdin regarded the tax on personal property as the most trustworthy representative of general consumption. Individual fortunes are usually revealed in France by rentals, by the number of servants, horses, carriages, and luxuries, the costs of which are all to the interest of the public treasury. Houses and what they contain vary comparatively but little, and are not liable to disappear. After pointing out the means of making a tax-list on personal property which should be more impartial than the existing list, Rabourdin assessed the sums to be brought into the treasury by indirect taxation as so much per cent on each individual share. A tax is a levy of money on things or persons under disguises that are more or less specious. These disguises, excellent when the object is to extort money, become ridiculous in the present day, when the class on which the taxes weigh the heaviest knows why the State imposes them and by what machinery they are given back. In fact the budget is not a strong-box to hold what is put into it, but a watering-pot; the more it takes in and the more it pours out the better for the prosperity of the country. Therefore, supposing there are six millions of tax-payers in easy circumstances (Rabourdin proved their existence, including the rich) is it not better to make them pay a duty on the consumption of wine, which would not be more offensive than that on doors and windows and would return a hundred millions, rather than harass them by taxing the thing itself. By this system of taxation, each individual tax-payer pays less in reality, while the State receives more, and consumers profit by a vast reduction in the price of things which the State releases from its perpetual and harassing interference. Rabourdin’s scheme retained a tax on the cultivation of vineyards, so as to protect that industry from the too great abundance of its own products. Then, to reach the consumption of the poorer tax-payers, the licences of retail dealers were taxed according to the population of the neighborhoods in which they lived.

In this way, the State would receive without cost or vexatious hindrances an enormous revenue under three forms; namely, a duty on wine, on the cultivation of vineyards, and on licenses, where now an irritating array of taxes existed as a burden on itself and its officials. Taxation was thus imposed upon the rich without overburdening the poor. To give another example. Suppose a share assessed to each person of one or two francs for the consumption of salt and you obtain ten or a dozen millions; the modern “gabelle” disappears, the poor breathe freer, agriculture is relieved, the State receives as much, and no tax-payer complains. All persons, whether they belong to the industrial classes or to the capitalists, will see at once the benefits of a tax so assessed when they discover how commerce increases, and life is ameliorated in the country districts. In short, the State will see from year to year the number of her well-to-do tax-payers increasing. By doing away with the machinery of indirect taxation, which is very costly (a State, as it were, within a State), both the public finances and the individual tax-payer are greatly benefited, not to speak of the saving in costs of collecting.

The whole subject is indeed less a question of finance than a question of government. The State should possess nothing of its own, neither forests, nor mines, nor public works. That it should be the owner of domains was, in Rabourdin’s opinion, an administrative contradiction. The State cannot turn its possessions to profit and it deprives itself of taxes; it thus loses two forms of production. As to the manufactories of the government, they are just as unreasonable in the sphere of industry. The State obtains products at a higher cost than those of commerce, produces them more slowly, and loses its tax upon the industry, the maintenance of which it, in turn, reduces. Can it be thought a proper method of governing a country to manufacture instead of promoting manufactures? to possess property instead of creating more possessions and more diverse ones? In Rabourdin’s system the State exacted no money security; he allowed only mortgage securities; and for this reason: Either the State holds the security in specie, and that embarrasses business and the movement of money; or it invests it at a higher rate than the State itself pays, and that is a contemptible robbery; or else it loses on the transaction, and that is folly; moreover, if it is obliged at any time to dispose of a mass of these securities it gives rises in certain cases to terrible bankruptcy.

The territorial tax did not entirely disappear in Rabourdin’s plan, – he kept a minute portion of it as a point of departure in case of war; but the productions of the soil were freed, and industry, finding raw material at a low price, could compete with foreign nations without the deceptive help of customs. The rich carried on the administration of the provinces without compensation except that of receiving a peerage under certain conditions. Magistrates, learned bodies, officers of the lower grades found their services honorably rewarded; no man employed by the government failed to obtain great consideration through the value and extent of his labors and the excellence of his salary; every one was able to provide for his own future and France was delivered from the cancer of pensions. As a result Rabourdin’s scheme exhibited only seven hundred millions of expenditures and twelve hundred millions of receipts. A saving of five hundred millions annually had far more virtue than the accumulation of a sinking fund whose dangers were plainly to be seen. In that fund the State, according to Rabourdin, became a stockholder, just as it persisted in being a land-holder and a manufacturer. To bring about these reforms without too roughly jarring the existing state of things or incurring a Saint-Bartholomew of clerks, Rabourdin considered that an evolution of twenty years would be required.

Such were the thoughts maturing in Rabourdin’s mind ever since his promised place had been given to Monsieur de la Billardiere, a man of sheer incapacity. This plan, so vast apparently yet so simple in point of fact, which did away with so many large staffs and so many little offices all equally useless, required for its presentation to the public mind close calculations, precise statistics, and self-evident proof. Rabourdin had long studied the budget under its double-aspect of ways and means and of expenditure. Many a night he had lain awake unknown to his wife. But so far he had only dared to conceive the plan and fit it prospectively to the administrative skeleton; all of which counted for nothing, – he must gain the ear of a minister capable of appreciating his ideas. Rabourdin’s success depended on the tranquil condition of political affairs, which up to this time were still unsettled. He had not considered the government as permanently secure until three hundred deputies at least had the courage to form a compact majority systematically ministerial. An administration founded on that basis had come into power since Rabourdin had finished his elaborate plan. At this time the luxury of peace under the Bourbons had eclipsed the warlike luxury of the days when France shone like a vast encampment, prodigal and magnificent because it was victorious. After the Spanish campaign, the administration seemed to enter upon an era of tranquillity in which some good might be accomplished; and three months before the opening of our story a new reign had begun without any apparent opposition; for the liberalism of the Left had welcomed Charles X. with as much enthusiasm as the Right. Even clear-sighted and suspicious persons were misled. The moment seemed propitious for Rabourdin. What could better conduce to the stability of the government than to propose and carry through a reform whose beneficial results were to be so vast?

Never had Rabourdin seemed so anxious and preoccupied as he now did in the mornings as he walked from his house to the ministry, or at half-past four in the afternoon, when he returned. Madame Rabourdin, on her part, disconsolate over her wasted life, weary of secretly working to obtain a few luxuries of dress, never appeared so bitterly discontented as now; but, like any wife who is really attached to her husband, she considered it unworthy of a superior woman to condescend to the shameful devices by which the wives of some officials eke out the insufficiency of their husband’s salary. This feeling made her refuse all intercourse with Madame Colleville, then very intimate with Francois Keller, whose parties eclipsed those of the rue Duphot. Nevertheless, she mistook the quietude of the political thinker and the preoccupation of the intrepid worker for the apathetic torpor of an official broken down by the dulness of routine, vanquished by that most hateful of all miseries, the mediocrity that simply earns a living; and she groaned at being married to a man without energy.

Thus it was that about this period in their lives she resolved to take the making of her husband’s fortune on herself; to thrust him at any cost into a higher sphere, and to hide from him the secret springs of her machinations. She carried into all her plans the independence of ideas which characterized her, and was proud to think that she could rise above other women by sharing none of their petty prejudices and by keeping herself untrammelled by the restraints which society imposes. In her anger she resolved to fight fools with their own weapons, and to make herself a fool if need be. She saw things coming to a crisis. The time was favorable. Monsieur de la Billardiere, attacked by a dangerous illness, was likely to die in a few days. If Rabourdin succeeded him, his talents (for Celestine did vouchsafe him an administrative gift) would be so thoroughly appreciated that the office of Master of petitions, formerly promised, would now be given to him; she fancied she saw him the king’s commissioner, presenting bills to the Chambers and defending them; then indeed she could help him; she would even be, if needful, his secretary; she would sit up all night to do the work! All this to drive in the Bois in a pretty carriage, to equal Madame Delphine de Nucingen, to raise her salon to the level of Madame Colleville’s, to be invited to the great ministerial solemnities, to win listeners and make them talk of her as “Madame Rabourdin DE something or other” (she had not yet determined on the estate), just as they did of Madame Firmiani, Madame d’Espard, Madame d’Aiglemont, Madame de Carigliano, and thus efface forever the odious name of Rabourdin.

These secret schemes brought some changes into the household. Madame Rabourdin began to walk with a firm step in the path of /debt/. She set up a man-servant, and put him in livery of brown cloth with red pipins, she renewed parts of her furniture, hung new papers on the walls, adorned her salon with plants and flowers, always fresh, and crowded it with knick-knacks that were then in vogue; then she, who had always shown scruples as to her personal expenses, did not hesitate to put her dress in keeping with the rank to which she aspired, the profits of which were discounted in several of the shops where she equipped herself for war. To make her “Wednesdays” fashionable she gave a dinner on Fridays, the guests being expected to pay their return visit and take a cup of tea on the following Wednesday. She chose her guests cleverly among influential deputies or other persons of note who, sooner or later, might advance her interests. In short, she gathered an agreeable and befitting circle about her. People amused themselves at her house; they said so at least, which is quite enough to attract society in Paris. Rabourdin was so absorbed in completing his great and serious work that he took no notice of the sudden reappearance of luxury in the bosom of his family.

Thus the wife and the husband were besieging the same fortress, working on parallel lines, but without each other’s knowledge.

CHAPTER II. MONSIEUR DES LUPEAULX

At the ministry to which Rabourdin belonged there flourished, as general-secretary, a certain Monsieur Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx, one of those men whom the tide of political events sends to the surface for a few years, then engulfs on a stormy night, but whom we find again on a distant shore, tossed up like the carcass of a wrecked ship which still seems to have life in her. We ask ourselves if that derelict could ever have held goodly merchandise or served a high emprise, co-operated in some defence, held up the trappings of a throne, or borne away the corpse of a monarchy. At this particular time Clement des Lupeaulx (the “Lupeaulx” absorbed the “Chardin”) had reached his culminating period. In the most illustrious lives as in the most obscure, in animals as in secretary-generals, there is a zenith and there is a nadir, a period when the fur is magnificent, the fortune dazzling. In the nomenclature which we derive from fabulists, des Lupeaulx belonged to the species Bertrand, and was always in search of Ratons. As he is one of the principal actors in this drama he deserves a description, all the more precise because the revolution of July has suppressed his office, eminently useful as it was, to a constitutional ministry.

Moralists usually employ their weapons against obstructive administrations. In their eyes, crime belongs to the assizes or the police-courts; but the socially refined evils escape their ken; the adroitness that triumphs under shield of the Code is above them or beneath them; they have neither eye-glass nor telescope; they want good stout horrors easily visible. With their eyes fixed on the carnivora, they pay no attention to the reptiles; happily, they abandon to the writers of comedy the shading and colorings of a Chardin des Lupeaulx. Vain and egotistical, supple and proud, libertine and gourmand, grasping from the pressure of debt, discreet as a tomb out of which nought issues to contradict the epitaph intended for the passer’s eye, bold and fearless when soliciting, good-natured and witty in all acceptations of the word, a timely jester, full of tact, knowing how to compromise others by a glance or a nudge, shrinking from no mudhole, but gracefully leaping it, intrepid Voltairean, yet punctual at mass if a fashionable company could be met in Saint Thomas Aquinas, – such a man as this secretary-general resembled, in one way or another, all the mediocrities who form the kernel of the political world. Knowing in the science of human nature, he assumed the character of a listener, and none was ever more attentive. Not to awaken suspicion he was flattering ad nauseum, insinuating as a perfume, and cajoling as a woman.

Des Lupeaulx was just forty years old. His youth had long been a vexation to him, for he felt that the making of his career depended on his becoming a deputy. How had he reached his present position? may be asked. By very simple means. He began by taking charge of certain delicate missions which can be given neither to a man who respects himself nor to a man who does not respect himself, but are confided to grave and enigmatic individuals who can be acknowledged or disavowed at will. His business was that of being always compromised; but his fortunes were pushed as much by defeat as by success. He well understood that under the Restoration, a period of continual compromises between men, between things, between accomplished facts and other facts looking on the horizon, it was all-important for the ruling powers to have a household drudge. Observe in a family some old charwoman who can make beds, sweep the floors, carry away the dirty linen, who knows where the silver is kept, how the creditors should be pacified, what persons should be let in and who must be kept out of the house, and such a creature, even if she has all the vices, and is dirty, decrepit, and toothless, or puts into the lottery and steals thirty sous a day for her stake, and you will find the masters like her from habit, talk and consult in her hearing upon even critical matters; she comes and goes, suggests resources, gets on the scent of secrets, brings the rouge or the shawl at the right moment, lets herself be scolded and pushed downstairs, and the next morning reappears smiling with an excellent bouillon. No matter how high a statesman may stand, he is certain to have some household drudge, before whom he is weak, undecided, disputations with fate, self-questioning, self-answering, and buckling for the fight. Such a familiar is like the soft wood of savages, which, when rubbed against the hard wood, strikes fire. Sometimes great geniuses illumine themselves in this way. Napoleon lived with Berthier, Richelieu with Pere Joseph; des Lupeaulx was the familiar of everybody. He continued friends with fallen ministers and made himself their intermediary with their successors, diffusing thus the perfume of the last flattery and the first compliment. He well understood how to arrange all the little matters which a statesman has no leisure to attend to. He saw necessities as they arose; he obeyed well; he could gloss a base act with a jest and get the whole value of it; and he chose for the services he thus rendered those that the recipients were not likely to forget.

Thus, when it was necessary to cross the ditch between the Empire and the Restoration, at a time when every one was looking about for planks, and the curs of the Empire were howling their devotion right and left, des Lupeaulx borrowed large sums from the usurers and crossed the frontier. Risking all to win all, he bought up Louis XVIII.‘s most pressing debts, and was the first to settle nearly three million of them at twenty per cent – for he was lucky enough to be backed by Gobseck in 1814 and 1815. It is true that Messrs. Gobseck, Werdet, and Gigonnet swallowed the profits, but des Lupeaulx had agreed that they should have them; he was not playing for a stake; he challenged the bank, as it were, knowing very well that the king was not a man to forget this debt of honor. Des Lupeaulx was not mistaken; he was appointed Master of petitions, Knight of the order of Saint Louis, and officer of the Legion of honor. Once on the ladder of political success, his clever mind looked about for the means to maintain his foothold; for in the fortified city into which he had wormed himself, generals do not long keep useless mouths. So to his general trade of household drudge and go-between he added that of gratuitous consultation on the secret maladies of power.

After discovering in the so-called superior men of the Restoration their utter inferiority in comparison with the events which had brought them to the front, he overcame their political mediocrity by putting into their mouths, at a crisis, the word of command for which men of real talent were listening. It must not be thought that this word was the outcome of his own mind. Were it so, des Lupeaulx would have been a man of genius, whereas he was only a man of talent. He went everywhere, collected opinions, sounded consciences, and caught all the tones they gave out. He gathered knowledge like a true and indefatigable political bee. This walking Bayle dictionary did not act, however, like that famous lexicon; he did not report all opinions without drawing his own conclusions; he had the talent of a fly which drops plumb upon the best bit of meat in the middle of a kitchen. In this way he came to be regarded as an indispensable helper to statesmen. A belief in his capacity had taken such deep root in all minds that the more ambitious public men felt it was necessary to compromise des Lupeaulx in some way to prevent his rising higher; they made up to him for his subordinate public position by their secret confidence.

Nevertheless, feeling that such men were dependent on him, this gleaner of ideas exacted certain dues. He received a salary on the staff of the National Guard, where he held a sinecure which was paid for by the city of Paris; he was government commissioner to a secret society; and filled a position of superintendence in the royal household. His two official posts which appeared on the budget were those of secretary-general to his ministry and Master of petitions. What he now wanted was to be made commander of the Legion of honor, gentleman of the bed-chamber, count, and deputy. To be elected deputy it was necessary to pay taxes to the amount of a thousand francs; and the miserable homestead of the des Lupeaulx was rated at only five hundred. Where could he get money to build a mansion and surround it with sufficient domain to throw dust in the eyes of a constituency? Though he dined out every day, and was lodged for the last nine years at the cost of the State, and driven about in the minister’s equipage, des Lupeaulx possessed absolutely nothing, at the time when our tale opens, but thirty thousand francs of debt – undisputed property. A marriage might float him and pump the waters of debt out of his bark; but a good marriage depended on his advancement, and his advancement required that he should be a deputy. Searching about him for the means of breaking through this vicious circle, he could think of nothing better than some immense service to render or some delicate intrigue to carry through for persons in power. Alas! conspiracies were out of date; the Bourbons were apparently on good terms with all parties; and, unfortunately, for the last few years the government had been so thoroughly held up to the light of day by the silly discussions of the Left, whose aim seemed to be to make government of any kind impossible in France, that no good strokes of business could be made. The last were tried in Spain, and what an outcry that excited!

In addition to all this, des Lupeaulx complicated matters by believing in the friendship of his minister, to whom he had the imprudence to express the wish to sit on the ministerial benches. The minister guessed at the real meaning of the desire, which simply was that des Lupeaulx wanted to strengthen a precarious position, so that he might throw off all dependence on his chief. The harrier turned against the huntsman; the minister gave him cuts with the whip and caresses, alternately, and set up rivals to him. But des Lupeaulx behaved like an adroit courtier with all competitors; he laid traps into which they fell, and then he did prompt justice upon them. The more he felt himself in danger the more anxious he became for an irremovable position; yet he was compelled to play low; one moment’s indiscretion, and he might lose everything. A pen-stroke might demolish his civilian epaulets, his place at court, his sinecure, his two offices and their advantages; in all, six salaries retained under fire of the law against pluralists. Sometimes he threatened his minister as a mistress threatens her lover; telling him he was about to marry a rich widow. At such times the minister petted and cajoled des Lupeaulx. After one of these reconciliations he received the formal promise of a place in the Academy of Belles-lettres on the first vacancy. “It would pay,” he said, “the keep of a horse.” His position, so far as it went, was a good one, and Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx flourished in it like a tree planted in good soil. He could satisfy his vices, his caprices, his virtues and his defects.

CHAPTER III. THE TEREDOS NAVALIS, OTHERWISE CALLED SHIP-WORM

While old Saillard was driving across Paris his son-in-law, Isidore Baudoyer, and his daughter, Elisabeth, Baudoyer’s wife, were playing a virtuous game of boston with their confessor, the Abbe Gaudron, in company with a few neighbors and a certain Martin Falleix, a brass-founder in the fauborg Saint-Antoine, to whom Saillard had loaned the necessary money to establish a business. This Falleix, a respectable Auvergnat who had come to seek his fortune in Paris with his smelting-pot on his back, had found immediate employment with the firm of Brezac, collectors of metals and other relics from all chateaux in the provinces. About twenty-seven years of age, and spoiled, like others, by success, Martin Falleix had had the luck to become the active agent of Monsieur Saillard, the sleeping-partner in the working out of a discovery made by Falleix in smelting (patent of invention and gold medal granted at the exposition of 1825). Madame Baudoyer, whose only daughter was treading – to use an expression of old Saillard’s – on the tail of her twelve years, laid claim to Falleix, a thickset, swarthy, active young fellow, of shrewd principles, whose education she was superintending. The said education, according to her ideas, consisted in teaching him to play boston, to hold his cards properly, and not to let others see his game; to shave himself regularly before he came to the house, and to wash his hands with good cleansing soap; not to swear, to speak her kind of French, to wear boots instead of shoes, cotton shirts instead of sacking, and to brush up his hair instead of plastering it flat. During the preceding week Elisabeth had finally succeeded in persuading Falleix to give up wearing a pair of enormous flat earrings resembling hoops.

“You go too far, Madame Baudoyer,” he said, seeing her satisfaction at the final sacrifice; “you order me about too much. You make me clean my teeth, which loosens them; presently you will want me to brush my nails and curl my hair, which won’t do at all in our business; we don’t like dandies.”

Elisabeth Baudoyer, nee Saillard, is one of those persons who escape portraiture through their utter commonness; yet who ought to be sketched, because they are specimens of that second-rate Parisian bourgeoisie which occupies a place above the well-to-do artisan and below the upper middle classes, – a tribe whose virtues are well-nigh vices, whose defects are never kindly, but whose habits and manners, dull and insipid though they be, are not without a certain originality. Something pinched and puny about Elisabeth Saillard was painful to the eye. Her figure, scarcely over four feet in height, was so thin that the waist measured less than twenty inches. Her small features, which clustered close about the nose, gave her face a vague resemblance to a weasel’s snout. Though she was past thirty years old she looked scarcely more than sixteen. Her eyes, of porcelain blue, overweighted by heavy eyelids which fell nearly straight from the arch of the eyebrows, had little light in them. Everything about her appearance was commonplace: witness her flaxen hair, tending to whiteness; her flat forehead, from which the light did not reflect; and her dull complexion, with gray, almost leaden, tones. The lower part of the face, more triangular than oval, ended irregularly the otherwise irregular outline of her face. Her voice had a rather pretty range of intonation, from sharp to sweet. Elisabeth was a perfect specimen of the second-rate little bourgeoisie who lectures her husband behind the curtains; obtains no credit for her virtues; is ambitious without intelligent object, and solely through the development of her domestic selfishness. Had she lived in the country she would have bought up adjacent land; being, as she was, connected with the administration, she was determined to push her way. If we relate the life of her father and mother, we shall show the sort of woman she was by a picture of her childhood and youth.

Monsieur Saillard married the daughter of an upholsterer keeping shop under the arcades of the Market. Limited means compelled Monsieur and Madame Saillard at their start in life to bear constant privation. After thirty-three years of married life, and twenty-nine years of toil in a government office, the property of “the Saillards” – their circle of acquaintance called them so – consisted of sixty thousand francs entrusted to Falleix, the house in the place Royale, bought for forty thousand in 1804, and thirty-six thousand francs given in dowry to their daughter Elisabeth. Out of this capital about fifty thousand came to them by the will of the widow Bidault, Madame Saillard’s mother. Saillard’s salary from the government had always been four thousand five hundred francs a year, and no more; his situation was a blind alley that led nowhere, and had tempted no one to supersede him. Those ninety thousand francs, put together sou by sou, were the fruit therefore of a sordid economy unintelligently employed. In fact, the Saillards did not know how better to manage their savings than to carry them, five thousand francs at a time, to their notary, Monsieur Sorbier, Cardot’s predecessor, and let him invest them at five per cent in first mortgages, with the wife’s rights reserved in case the borrower was married! In 1804 Madame Saillard obtained a government office for the sale of stamped papers, a circumstance which brought a servant into the household for the first time. At the time of which we write, the house, which was worth a hundred thousand francs, brought in a rental of eight thousand. Falleix paid seven per cent for the sixty thousand invested in the foundry, besides an equal division of profits. The Saillards were therefore enjoying an income of not less than seventeen thousand francs a year. The whole ambition of the good man now centred on obtaining the cross of the Legion and his retiring pension.

Elisabeth, the only child, had toiled steadily from infancy in a home where the customs of life were rigid and the ideas simple. A new hat for Saillard was a matter of deliberation; the time a coat could last was estimated and discussed; umbrellas were carefully hung up by means of a brass buckle. Since 1804 no repairs of any kind had been done to the house. The Saillards kept the ground-floor in precisely the state in which their predecessor left it. The gilding of the pier-glasses was rubbed off; the paint on the cornices was hardly visible through the layers of dust that time had collected. The fine large rooms still retained certain sculptured marble mantel-pieces and ceilings, worthy of Versailles, together with the old furniture of the widow Bidault. The latter consisted of a curious mixture of walnut armchairs, disjointed, and covered with tapestry; rosewood bureaus; round tables on single pedestals, with brass railings and cracked marble tops; one superb Boulle secretary, the value of which style had not yet been recognized; in short, a chaos of bargains picked up by the worthy widow, – pictures bought for the sake of the frames, china services of a composite order; to wit, a magnificent Japanese dessert set, and all the rest porcelains of various makes, unmatched silver plate, old glass, fine damask, and a four-post bedstead, hung with curtains and garnished with plumes.

Amid these curious relics, Madame Saillard always sat on a sofa of modern mahogany, near a fireplace full of ashes and without fire, on the mantel-shelf of which stood a clock, some antique bronzes, candelabra with paper flowers but no candles, for the careful housewife lighted the room with a tall tallow candle always guttering down into the flat brass candlestick which held it. Madame Saillard’s face, despite its wrinkles, was expressive of obstinacy and severity, narrowness of ideas, an uprightness that might be called quadrangular, a religion without piety, straightforward, candid avarice, and the peace of a quiet conscience. You may see in certain Flemish pictures the wives of burgomasters cut out by nature on the same pattern and wonderfully reproduced on canvas; but these dames wear fine robes of velvet and precious stuffs, whereas Madame Saillard possessed no robes, only that venerable garment called in Touraine and Picardy “cottes,” elsewhere petticoats, or skirts pleated behind and on each side, with other skirts hanging over them. Her bust was inclosed in what was called a “casaquin,” another obsolete name for a short gown or jacket. She continued to wear a cap with starched wings, and shoes with high heels. Though she was now fifty-seven years old, and her lifetime of vigorous household work ought now to be rewarded with well-earned repose, she was incessantly employed in knitting her husband’s stockings and her own, and those of an uncle, just as her countrywomen knit them, moving about the room, talking, pacing up and down the garden, or looking round the kitchen to watch what was going on.

The Saillard’s avarice, which was really imposed on them in the first instance by dire necessity, was now a second nature. When the cashier got back from the office, he laid aside his coat, and went to work in the large garden, shut off from the courtyard by an iron railing, and which the family reserved to itself. For years Elisabeth, the daughter, went to market every morning with her mother, and the two did all the work of the house. The mother cooked well, especially a duck with turnips; but, according to Saillard, no one could equal Elisabeth in hashing the remains of a leg of mutton with onions. “You might eat your boots with those onions and not know it,” he remarked. As soon as Elisabeth knew how to hold a needle, her mother had her mend the household linen and her father’s coats. Always at work, like a servant, she never went out alone. Though living close by the boulevard du Temple, where Franconi, La Gaite, and l’Ambigu-Comique were within a stone’s throw, and, further on, the Porte-Saint-Martin, Elisabeth had never seen a comedy. When she asked to “see what it was like” (with the Abbe Gaudron’s permission, be it understood), Monsieur Baudoyer took her – for the glory of the thing, and to show her the finest that was to be seen – to the Opera, where they were playing “The Chinese Laborer.” Elisabeth thought “the comedy” as wearisome as the plague of flies, and never wished to see another. On Sundays, after walking four times to and fro between the place Royale and Saint-Paul’s church (for her mother made her practise the precepts and the duties of religion), her parents took her to the pavement in front of the Cafe Ture, where they sat on chairs placed between a railing and the wall. The Saillards always made haste to reach the place early so as to choose the best seats, and found much entertainment in watching the passers-by. In those days the Cafe Ture was the rendezvous of the fashionable society of the Marais, the faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the circumjacent regions.

Elisabeth never wore anything but cotton gowns in summer and merino in the winter, which she made herself. Her mother gave her twenty francs a month for her expenses, but her father, who was very fond of her, mitigated this rigorous treatment with a few presents. She never read what the Abbe Gaudron, vicar of Saint-Paul’s and the family director, called profane books. This discipline had borne fruit. Forced to employ her feelings on some passion or other, Elisabeth became eager after gain. Though she was not lacking in sense or perspicacity, religious theories, and her complete ignorance of higher emotions had encircled all her faculties with an iron hand; they were exercised solely on the commonest things of life; spent in a few directions they were able to concentrate themselves on a matter in hand. Repressed by religious devotion, her natural intelligence exercised itself within the limits marked out by cases of conscience, which form a mine of subtleties among which self-interest selects its subterfuges. Like those saintly personages in whom religion does not stifle ambition, Elisabeth was capable of requiring others to do a blamable action that she might reap the fruits; and she would have been, like them again, implacable as to her dues and dissembling in her actions. Once offended, she watched her adversaries with the perfidious patience of a cat, and was capable of bringing about some cold and complete vengeance, and then laying it to the account of God. Until her marriage the Saillards lived without other society than that of the Abbe Gaudron, a priest from Auvergne appointed vicar of Saint-Paul’s after the restoration of Catholic worship. Besides this ecclesiastic, who was a friend of the late Madame Bidault, a paternal uncle of Madame Saillard, an old paper-dealer retired from business ever since the year II. of the Republic, and now sixty-nine years old, came to see them on Sundays only, because on that day no government business went on.

This little old man, with a livid face blazoned by the red nose of a tippler and lighted by two gleaming vulture eyes, allowed his gray hair to hang loose under a three-cornered hat, wore breeches with straps that extended beyond the buckles, cotton stockings of mottled thread knitted by his niece, whom he always called “the little Saillard,” stout shoes with silver buckles, and a surtout coat of mixed colors. He looked very much like those verger-beadle-bell-ringing-grave-digging-parish-clerks who are taken to be caricatures until we see them performing their various functions. On the present occasion he had come on foot to dine with the Saillards, intending to return in the same way to the rue Greneta, where he lived on the third floor of an old house. His business was that of discounting commercial paper in the quartier Saint-Martin, where he was known by the nickname of “Gigonnet,” from the nervous convulsive movement with which he lifted his legs in walking, like a cat. Monsieur Bidault began this business in the year II. in partnership with a dutchman named Werbrust, a friend of Gobseck.

Some time later Saillard made the acquaintance of Monsieur and Madame Transon, wholesale dealers in pottery, with an establishment in the rue de Lesdiguieres, who took an interest in Elisabeth and introduced young Isadore Baudoyer to the family with the intention of marrying her. Gigonnet approved of the match, for he had long employed a certain Mitral, uncle of the young man, as clerk. Monsieur and Madame Baudoyer, father and mother of Isidore, highly respected leather-dressers in the rue Censier, had slowly made a moderate fortune out of a small trade. After marrying their only son, on whom they settled fifty thousand francs, they determined to live in the country, and had lately removed to the neighborhood of Ile-d’Adam, where after a time they were joined by Mitral. They frequently came to Paris, however, where they kept a corner in the house in the rue Censier which they gave to Isidore on his marriage. The elder Baudoyers had an income of about three thousand francs left to live upon after establishing their son.

Mitral was a being with a sinister wig, a face the color of Seine water, lighted by a pair of Spanish-tobacco-colored eyes, cold as a well-rope, always smelling a rat, and close-mouthed about his property. He probably made his fortune in his own hole and corner, just as Werbrust and Gigonnet made theirs in the quartier Saint-Martin.

Though the Saillards’ circle of acquaintance increased, neither their ideas nor their manners and customs changed. The saint’s-days of father, mother, daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild were carefully observed, also the anniversaries of birth and marriage, Easter, Christmas, New Year’s day, and Epiphany. These festivals were preceded by great domestic sweepings and a universal clearing up of the house, which added an element of usefulness to the ceremonies. When the festival day came, the presents were offered with much pomp and an accompaniment of flowers, – silk stockings or a fur cap for old Saillard; gold earrings and articles of plate for Elisabeth or her husband, for whom, little by little, the parents were accumulating a whole silver service; silk petticoats for Madame Saillard, who laid the stuff by and never made it up. The recipient of these gifts was placed in an armchair and asked by those present for a certain length of time, “Guess what we have for you!” Then came a splendid dinner, lasting at least five hours, to which were invited the Abbe Gaudron, Falleix, Rabourdin, Monsieur Godard, under-head-clerk to Monsieur Baudoyer, Monsieur Bataille, captain of the company of the National Guard to which Saillard and his son-in-law belonged. Monsieur Cardot, who was invariably asked, did as Rabourdin did, namely, accepted one invitation out of six. The company sang at dessert, shook hands and embraced with enthusiasm, wishing each other all manner of happiness; the presents were exhibited and the opinion of the guests asked about them. The day Saillard received his fur cap he wore it during the dessert, to the satisfaction of all present. At night, mere ordinary acquaintances were bidden, and dancing went on till very late, formerly to the music of one violin, but for the last six years Monsieur Godard, who was a great flute player, contributed the piercing tones of a flageolet to the festivity. The cook, Madame Baudoyer’s nurse, and old Catherine, Madame Saillard’s woman-servant, together with the porter or his wife, stood looking on at the door of the salon. The servants always received three francs on these occasions to buy themselves wine or coffee.

This little circle looked upon Saillard and Baudoyer as transcendent beings; they were government officers; they had risen by their own merits; they worked, it was said, with the minister himself; they owed their fortune to their talents; they were politicians. Baudoyer was considered the more able of the two; his position as head of a bureau presupposed labor that was more intricate and arduous than that of a cashier. Moreover, Isidore, though the son of a leather-dresser, had had the genius to study and to cast aside his father’s business and find a career in politics, which had led him to a post of eminence. In short, silent and uncommunicative as he was, he was looked upon as a deep thinker, and perhaps, said the admiring circle, he would some day become deputy of the eighth arrondissement. As Gigonnet listened to such remarks as these, he pressed his already pinched lips closer together, and threw a glance at his great-niece, Elisabeth.

In person, Isidore was a tall, stout man of thirty-seven, who perspired freely, and whose head looked as if he had water on the brain. This enormous head, covered with chestnut hair cropped close, was joined to the neck by rolls of flesh which overhung the collar of his coat. He had the arms of Hercules, hands worthy of Domitian, a stomach which sobriety held within the limits of the majestic, to use a saying of Brillaet-Savarin. His face was a good deal like that of the Emperor Alexander. The Tartar type was in the little eyes and the flattened nose turned slightly up, in the frigid lips and the short chin. The forehead was low and narrow. Though his temperament was lymphatic, the devout Isidore was under the influence of a conjugal passion which time did not lessen.

In spite, however, of his resemblance to the handsome Russian Emperor and the terrible Domitian, Isidore Baudoyer was nothing more than a political office-holder, of little ability as head of his department, a cut-and-dried routine man, who concealed the fact that he was a flabby cipher by so ponderous a personality that no scalpel could cut deep enough to let the operator see into him. His severe studies, in which he had shown the patience and sagacity of an ox, and his square head, deceived his parents, who firmly believed him an extraordinary man. Pedantic and hypercritical, meddlesome and fault-finding, he was a terror to the clerks under him, whom he worried in their work, enforcing the rules rigorously, and arriving himself with such terrible punctuality that not one of them dared to be a moment late. Baudoyer wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, a chamois waistcoat, gray trousers and cravats of various colors. His feet were large and ill-shod. From the chain of his watch depended an enormous bunch of old trinkets, among which in 1824 he still wore “American beads,” which were very much the fashion in the year VII.

In the bosom of this family, bound together by the force of religious ties, by the inflexibility of its customs, by one solitary emotion, that of avarice, a passion which was now as it were its compass, Elisabeth was forced to commune with herself, instead of imparting her ideas to those around her, for she felt herself without equals in mind who could comprehend her. Though facts compelled her to judge her husband, her religious duty led her to keep up as best she could a favorable opinion of him; she showed him marked respect; honored him as the father of her child, her husband, the temporal power, as the vicar of Saint-Paul’s told her. She would have thought it a mortal sin to make a single gesture, or give a single glance, or say a single word which would reveal to others her real opinion of the imbecile Baudoyer. She even professed to obey passively all his wishes. But her ears were receptive of many things; she thought them over, weighed and compared them in the solitude of her mind, and judged so soberly of men and events that at the time when our history begins she was the hidden oracle of the two functionaries, her husband and father, who had, unconsciously, come to do nothing whatever without consulting her. Old Saillard would say, innocently, “Isn’t she clever, that Elisabeth of mine?” But Baudoyer, too great a fool not to be puffed up by the false reputation the quartier Saint-Antoine bestowed upon him, denied his wife’s cleverness all the while that he was making use of it.

Elisabeth had long felt sure that her uncle Bidault, otherwise called Gigonnet, was rich and handled vast sums of money. Enlightened by self-interest, she had come to understand Monsieur des Lupeaulx far better than the minister understood him. Finding herself married to a fool, she never allowed herself to think that life might have gone better with her, she only imagined the possibility of better things without expecting or wishing to attain them. All her best affections found their vocation in her love for her daughter, to whom she spared the pains and privations she had borne in her own childhood; she believed that in this affection she had her full share in the world of feeling. Solely for her daughter’s sake she had persuaded her father to take the important step of going into partnership with Falleix. Falleix had been brought to the Saillard’s house by old Bidault, who lent him money on his merchandise. Falleix thought his old countryman extortionate, and complained to the Saillards that Gigonnet demanded eighteen per cent from an Auvergnat. Madame Saillard ventured to remonstrate with her uncle.

“It is just because he is an Auvergnat that I take only eighteen per cent,” said Gigonnet, when she spoke of him.

Falleix, who had made a discovery at the age of twenty-eight, and communicated it to Saillard, seemed to carry his heart in his hand (an expression of old Saillard’s), and also seemed likely to make a great fortune. Elisabeth determined to husband him for her daughter and train him herself, having, as she calculated, seven years to do it in. Martin Falleix felt and showed the deepest respect for Madame Baudoyer, whose superior qualities he was able to recognize. If he were fated to make millions he would always belong to her family, where he had found a home. The little Baudoyer girl was already trained to bring him his tea and to take his hat.

On the evening of which we write, Monsieur Saillard, returning from the ministry, found a game of boston in full blast; Elisabeth was advising Falleix how to play; Madame Saillard was knitting in the chimney-corner and overlooking the cards of the vicar; Monsieur Baudoyer, motionless as a mile-stone, was employing his mental capacity in calculating how the cards were placed, and sat opposite to Mitral, who had come up from Ile-d’Adam for the Christmas holidays. No one moved as the cashier entered, and for some minutes he walked up and down the room, his fat face contracted with unaccustomed thought.

“He is always so when he dines at the ministry,” remarked Madame Saillard; “happily, it is only twice a year, or he’d die of it. Saillard was never made to be in the government – Well, now, I do hope, Saillard,” she continued in a loud tone, “that you are not going to keep on those silk breeches and that handsome coat. Go and take them off; don’t wear them at home, my man.”

“Your father has something on his mind,” said Baudoyer to his wife, when the cashier was in his bedroom, undressing without any fire.

“Perhaps Monsieur de la Billardiere is dead,” said Elisabeth, simply; “and as he is anxious you should have the place, it worries him.”

“Can I be useful in any way?” said the vicar of Saint-Paul’s; “if so, pray use my services. I have the honor to be known to Madame la Dauphine. These are days when public offices should be given only to faithful men, whose religious principles are not to be shaken.”

“Dear me!” said Falleix, “do men of merit need protectors and influence to get places in the government service? I am glad I am an iron-master; my customers know where to find a good article – ”

“Monsieur,” interrupted Baudoyer, “the government is the government; never attack it in this house.”

“You speak like the ‘Constitutionel,’” said the vicar.

“The ‘Constitutionel’ never says anything different from that,” replied Baudoyer, who never read it.

The cashier believed his son-in-law to be as superior in talent to Rabourdin as God was greater than Saint-Crepin, to use his own expression; but the good man coveted this appointment in a straightforward, honest way. Influenced by the feeling which leads all officials to seek promotion, – a violent, unreflecting, almost brutal passion, – he desired success, just as he desired the cross of the Legion of honor, without doing anything against his conscience to obtain it, and solely, as he believed, on the strength of his son-in-law’s merits. To his thinking, a man who had patiently spent twenty-five years in a government office behind an iron railing had sacrificed himself to his country and deserved the cross. But all that he dreamed of doing to promote his son-in-law’s appointment in La Billardiere’s place was to say a word to his Excellency’s wife when he took her the month’s salary.

“Well, Saillard, you look as if you had lost all your friends! Do speak; do, pray, tell us something,” cried his wife when he came back into the room.

Saillard, after making a little sign to his daughter, turned on his heel to keep himself from talking politics before strangers. When Monsieur Mitral and the vicar had departed, Saillard rolled back the card-table and sat down in an armchair in the attitude he always assumed when about to tell some office-gossip, – a series of movements which answered the purpose of the three knocks given at the Theatre-Francais. After binding his wife, daughter, and son-in-law to the deepest secrecy, – for, however petty the gossip, their places, as he thought, depended on their discretion, – he related the incomprehensible enigma of the resignation of a deputy, the very legitimate desire of the general-secretary to get elected to the place, and the secret opposition of the minister to this wish of a man who was one of his firmest supporters and most zealous workers. This, of course, brought down an avalanche of suppositions, flooded with the sapient arguments of the two officials, who sent back and forth to each other a wearisome flood of nonsense. Elisabeth quietly asked three questions: —

“If Monsieur des Lupeaulx is on our side, will Monsieur Baudoyer be appointed in Monsieur de la Billardiere’s place?”

“Heavens! I should think so,” cried the cashier.

“My uncle Bidault and Monsieur Gobseck helped in him 1814,” thought she. “Is he in debt?” she asked, aloud.

“Yes,” cried the cashier with a hissing and prolonged sound on the last letter; “his salary was attached, but some of the higher powers released it by a bill at sight.”

“Where is the des Lupeaulx estate?”

“Why, don’t you know? in the part of the country where your grandfather and your great-uncle Bidault belong, in the arrondissement of the deputy who wants to resign.”

When her colossus of a husband had gone to bed, Elisabeth leaned over him, and though he always treated her remarks as women’s nonsense, she said, “Perhaps you will really get Monsieur de la Billardiere’s place.”

“There you go with your imaginations!” said Baudoyer; “leave Monsieur Gaudron to speak to the Dauphine and don’t meddle with politics.”

At eleven o’clock, when all were asleep in the place Royale, Monsieur des Lupeaulx was leaving the Opera for the rue Duphot. This particular Wednesday was one of Madame Rabourdin’s most brilliant evenings. Many of her customary guests came in from the theatres and swelled the company already assembled, among whom were several celebrities, such as: Canalis the poet, Schinner the painter, Dr. Bianchon, Lucien de Rubempre, Octave de Camps, the Comte de Granville, the Vicomte de Fontaine, du Bruel the vaudevillist, Andoche Finot the journalist, Derville, one of the best heads in the law courts, the Comte du Chatelet, deputy, du Tillet, banker, and several elegant young men, such as Paul de Manerville and the Vicomte de Portenduere. Celestine was pouring out tea when the general-secretary entered. Her dress that evening was very becoming; she wore a black velvet robe without ornament of any kind, a black gauze scarf, her hair smoothly bound about her head and raised in a heavy braided mass, with long curls a l’Anglaise falling on either side of her face. The charms which particularly distinguished this woman were the Italian ease of her artistic nature, her ready comprehension, and the grace with which she welcomed and promoted the least appearance of a wish on the part of others. Nature had given her an elegant, slender figure, which could sway lightly at a word, black eyes of oriental shape, able, like those of the Chinese women, to see out of their corners. She well knew how to manage a soft, insinuating voice, which threw a tender charm into every word, even such as she merely chanced to utter; her feet were like those we see in portraits where the painter boldly lies and flatters his sitter in the only way which does not compromise anatomy. Her complexion, a little yellow by day, like that of most brunettes, was dazzling at night under the wax candles, which brought out the brilliancy of her black hair and eyes. Her slender and well-defined outlines reminded an artist of the Venus of the Middle Ages rendered by Jean Goujon, the illustrious sculptor of Diane de Poitiers.

Des Lupeaulx stopped in the doorway, and leaned against the woodwork. This ferret of ideas did not deny himself the pleasure of spying upon sentiment, and this woman interested him more than any of the others to whom he had attached himself. Des Lupeaulx had reached an age when men assert pretensions in regard to women. The first white hairs lead to the latest passions, all the more violent because they are astride of vanishing powers and dawning weakness. The age of forty is the age of folly, – an age when man wants to be loved for himself; whereas at twenty-five life is so full that he has no wants. At twenty-five he overflows with vigor and wastes it with impunity, but at forty he learns that to use it in that way is to abuse it. The thoughts that came into des Lupeaulx’s mind at this moment were melancholy ones. The nerves of the old beau relaxed; the agreeable smile, which served as a mask and made the character of his countenance, faded; the real man appeared, and he was horrible. Rabourdin caught sight of him and thought, “What has happened to him? can he be disgraced in any way?” The general-secretary was, however, only thinking how the pretty Madame Colleville, whose intentions were exactly those of Madame Rabourdin, had summarily abandoned him when it suited her to do so. Rabourdin caught the sham statesman’s eyes fixed on his wife, and he recorded the look in his memory. He was too keen an observer not to understand des Lupeaulx to the bottom, and he deeply despised him; but, as with most busy men, his feelings and sentiments seldom came to the surface. Absorption in a beloved work is practically equivalent to the cleverest dissimulation, and thus it was that the opinions and ideas of Rabourdin were a sealed book to des Lupeaulx. The former was sorry to see the man in his house, but he was never willing to oppose his wife’s wishes. At this particular moment, while he talked confidentially with a supernumerary of his office who was destined, later, to play an unconscious part in a political intrigue resulting from the death of La Billardiere, he watched, though half-abstractedly, his wife and des Lupeaulx.

Here we must explain, as much for foreigners as for our own grandchildren, what a supernumerary in a government office in Paris means.

The supernumerary is to the administration what a choir-boy is to a church, what the company’s child is to the regiment, what the figurante is to a theatre; something artless, naive, innocent, a being blinded by illusions. Without illusions what would become of any of us? They give strength to bear the res angusta domi of arts and the beginnings of all science by inspiring us with faith. Illusion is illimitable faith. Now the supernumerary has faith in the administration; he never thinks it cold, cruel, and hard, as it really is. There are two kinds of supernumeraries, or hangers-on, – one poor, the other rich. The poor one is rich in hope and wants a place, the rich one is poor in spirit and wants nothing. A wealthy family is not so foolish as to put its able men into the administration. It confides an unfledged scion to some head-clerk, or gives him in charge of a directory who initiates him into what Bilboquet, that profound philosopher, called the high comedy of government; he is spared all the horrors of drudgery and is finally appointed to some important office. The rich supernumerary never alarms the other clerks; they know he does not endanger their interests, for he seeks only the highest posts in the administration. About the period of which we write many families were saying to themselves: “What can we do with our sons?” The army no longer offered a chance for fortune. Special careers, such as civil and military engineering, the navy, mining, and the professorial chair were all fenced about by strict regulations or to be obtained only by competition; whereas in the civil service the revolving wheel which turned clerks into prefects, sub-prefects, assessors, and collectors, like the figures in a magic lantern, was subjected to no such rules and entailed no drudgery. Through this easy gap emerged into life the rich supernumeraries who drove their tilburys, dressed well, and wore moustachios, all of them as impudent as parvenus. Journalists were apt to persecute the tribe, who were cousins, nephews, brothers, or other relatives of some minister, some deputy, or an influential peer. The humbler clerks regarded them as a means of influence.

The poor supernumerary, on the other hand, who is the only real worker, is almost always the son of some former clerk’s widow, who lives on a meagre pension and sacrifices herself to support her son until he can get a place as copying-clerk, and then dies leaving him no nearer the head of his department than writer of deeds, order-clerks, or, possibly, under-head-clerk. Living always in some locality where rents are low, this humble supernumerary starts early from home. For him the Eastern question relates only to the morning skies. To go on foot and not get muddied, to save his clothes, and allow for the time he may lose in standing under shelter during a shower, are the preoccupations of his mind. The street pavements, the flaggings of the quays and the boulevards, when first laid down, were a boon to him. If, for some extraordinary reason, you happen to be in the streets of Paris at half-past seven or eight o’clock of a winter’s morning, and see through piercing cold or fog or rain a timid, pale young man loom up, cigarless, take notice of his pockets. You will be sure to see the outline of a roll which his mother has given him to stay his stomach between breakfast and dinner. The guilelessness of the supernumerary does not last long. A youth enlightened by gleams by Parisian life soon measures the frightful distance that separates him from the head-clerkship, a distance which no mathematician, neither Archimedes, nor Leibnitz, nor Laplace has ever reckoned, the distance that exists between 0 and the figure 1. He begins to perceive the impossibilities of his career; he hears talk of favoritism; he discovers the intrigues of officials: he sees the questionable means by which his superiors have pushed their way, – one has married a young woman who made a false step; another, the natural daughter of a minister; this one shouldered the responsibility of another’s fault; that one, full of talent, risks his health in doing, with the perseverance of a mole, prodigies of work which the man of influence feels incapable of doing for himself, though he takes the credit. Everything is known in a government office. The incapable man has a wife with a clear head, who has pushed him along and got him nominated for deputy; if he has not talent enough for an office, he cabals in the Chamber. The wife of another has a statesman at her feet. A third is the hidden informant of a powerful journalist. Often the disgusted and hopeless supernumerary sends in his resignation. About three fourths of his class leave the government employ without ever obtaining an appointment, and their number is winnowed down to either those young men who are foolish or obstinate enough to say to themselves, “I have been here three years, and I must end sooner or later by getting a place,” or to those who are conscious of a vocation for the work. Undoubtedly the position of supernumerary in a government office is precisely what the novitiate is in a religious order, – a trial. It is a rough trial. The State discovers how many of them can bear hunger, thirst, and penury without breaking down, how many can toil without revolting against it; it learns which temperaments can bear up under the horrible experience – or if you like, the disease – of government official life. From this point of view the apprenticeship of the supernumerary, instead of being an infamous device of the government to obtain labor gratis, becomes a useful institution.

The young man with whom Rabourdin was talking was a poor supernumerary named Sebastien de la Roche, who had picked his way on the points of his toes, without incurring the least splash upon his boots, from the rue du Roi-Dore in the Marais. He talked of his mamma, and dared not raise his eyes to Madame Rabourdin, whose house appeared to him as gorgeous as the Louvre. He was careful to show his gloves, well cleaned with india-rubber, as little as he could. His poor mother had put five francs in his pocket in case it became absolutely necessary that he should play cards; but she enjoined him to take nothing, to remain standing, and to be very careful not to knock over a lamp or the bric-a-brac from an etagere. His dress was all of the strictest black. His fair face, his eyes, of a fine shade of green with golden reflections, were in keeping with a handsome head of auburn hair. The poor lad looked furtively at Madame Rabourdin, whispering to himself, “How beautiful!” and was likely to dream of that fairy when he went to bed.

Rabourdin had noted a vocation for his work in the lad, and as he himself took the whole service seriously, he felt a lively interest in him. He guessed the poverty of his mother’s home, kept together on a widow’s pension of seven hundred francs a year – for the education of the son, who was just out of college, had absorbed all her savings. He therefore treated the youth almost paternally; often endeavoured to get him some fee from the Council, or paid it from his own pocket. He overwhelmed Sebastien with work, trained him, and allowed him to do the work of du Bruel’s place, for which that vaudevillist, otherwise known as Cursy, paid him three hundred francs out of his salary. In the minds of Madame de la Roche and her son, Rabourdin was at once a great man, a tyrant, and an angel. On him all the poor fellow’s hopes of getting an appointment depended, and the lad’s devotion to his chief was boundless. He dined once a fortnight in the rue Duphot; but always at a family dinner, invited by Rabourdin himself; Madame asked him to evening parties only when she wanted partners.

At that moment Rabourdin was scolding poor Sebastien, the only human being who was in the secret of his immense labors. The youth copied and recopied the famous “statement,” written on a hundred and fifty folio sheets, besides the corroborative documents, and the summing up (contained in one page), with the estimates bracketed, the captions in a running hand, and the sub-titles in a round one. Full of enthusiasm, in spite of his merely mechanical participation in the great idea, the lad of twenty would rewrite whole pages for a single blot, and made it his glory to touch up the writing, regarding it as the element of a noble undertaking. Sebastien had that afternoon committed the great imprudence of carrying into the general office, for the purpose of copying, a paper which contained the most dangerous facts to make known prematurely, namely, a memorandum relating to the officials in the central offices of all ministries, with facts concerning their fortunes, actual and prospective, together with the individual enterprises of each outside of his government employment.

All government clerks in Paris who are not endowed, like Rabourdin, with patriotic ambition or other marked capacity, usually add the profits of some industry to the salary of their office, in order to eke out a living. A number do as Monsieur Saillard did, – put their money into a business carried on by others, and spend their evenings in keeping the books of their associates. Many clerks are married to milliners, licensed tobacco dealers, women who have charge of the public lotteries or reading-rooms. Some, like the husband of Madame Colleville, Celestine’s rival, play in the orchestra of a theatre; others like du Bruel, write vaudeville, comic operas, melodramas, or act as prompters behind the scenes. We may mention among them Messrs. Planard, Sewrin, etc. Pigault-Lebrun, Piis, Duvicquet, in their day, were in government employ. Monsieur Scribe’s head-librarian was a clerk in the Treasury.

Besides such information as this, Rabourdin’s memorandum contained an inquiry into the moral and physical capacities and faculties necessary in those who were to examine the intelligence, aptitude for labor, and sound health of the applicants for government service, – three indispensable qualities in men who are to bear the burden of public affairs and should do their business well and quickly. But this careful study, the result of ten years’ observation and experience, and of a long acquaintance with men and things obtained by intercourse with the various functionaries in the different ministries, would assuredly have, to those who did not see its purport and connection, an air of treachery and police espial. If a single page of these papers were to fall under the eye of those concerned, Monsieur Rabourdin was lost. Sebastien, who admired his chief without reservation, and who was, as yet, wholly ignorant of the evils of bureaucracy, had the follies of guilelessness as well as its grace. Blamed on a former occasion for carrying away these papers, he now bravely acknowledged his fault to its fullest extent; he related how he had put away both the memorandum and the copy carefully in a box in the office where no one would ever find them. Tears rolled from his eyes as he realized the greatness of his offence.

“Come, come!” said Rabourdin, kindly. “Don’t be so imprudent again, but never mind now. Go to the office very early tomorrow morning; here is the key of a small safe which is in my roller secretary; it shuts with a combination lock. You can open it with the word ‘sky’; put the memorandum and your copy into it and shut it carefully.”

This proof of confidence dried the poor fellow’s tears. Rabourdin advised him to take a cup of tea and some cakes.

“Mamma forbids me to drink tea, on account of my chest,” said Sebastien.

“Well, then, my dear child,” said the imposing Madame Rabourdin, who wished to appear gracious, “here are some sandwiches and cream; come and sit by me.”

She made Sebastien sit down beside her, and the lad’s heart rose in his throat as he felt the robe of this divinity brush the sleeve of his coat. Just then the beautiful woman caught sight of Monsieur des Lupeaulx standing in the doorway. She smiled, and not waiting till he came to her, she went to him.

“Why do you stay there as if you were sulking?” she asked.

“I am not sulking,” he returned; “I came to announce some good news, but the thought has overtaken me that it will only add to your severity towards me. I fancy myself six months hence almost a stranger to you. Yes, you are too clever, and I too experienced, – too blase, if you like, – for either of us to deceive the other. Your end is attained without its costing you more than a few smiles and gracious words.”

“Deceive each other! what can you mean?” she cried, in a hurt tone.

“Yes; Monsieur de la Billardiere is dying, and from what the minister told me this evening I judge that your husband will be appointed in his place.”

He thereupon related what he called his scene at the ministry and the jealousy of the countess, repeating her remarks about the invitation he had asked her to send to Madame Rabourdin.

“Monsieur des Lupeaulx,” said Madame Rabourdin, with dignity, “permit me to tell you that my husband is the oldest head-clerk as well as the most capable man in the division; also that the appointment of La Billardiere over his head made much talk in the service, and that my husband has stayed on for the last year expecting this promotion, for which he has really no competitor and no rival.”

“That is true.”

“Well, then,” she resumed, smiling and showing her handsome teeth, “how can you suppose that the friendship I feel for you is marred by a thought of self-interest? Why should you think me capable of that?”

Des Lupeaulx made a gesture of admiring denial.

“Ah!” she continued, “the heart of woman will always remain a secret for even the cleverest of men. Yes, I welcomed you to my house with the greatest pleasure; and there was, I admit, a motive of self-interest behind my pleasure – ”

“Ah!”

“You have a career before you,” she whispered in his ear, “a future without limit; you will be deputy, minister!” (What happiness for an ambitious man when such things as these are warbled in his ear by the sweet voice of a pretty woman!) “Oh, yes! I know you better than you know yourself. Rabourdin is a man who could be of immense service to you in such a career; he could do the steady work while you were in the Chamber. Just as you dream of the ministry, so I dream of seeing Rabourdin in the Council of State, and general director. It is therefore my object to draw together two men who can never injure, but, on the contrary, must greatly help each other. Isn’t that a woman’s mission? If you are friends, you will both rise the faster, and it is surely high time that each of you made hay. I have burned my ships,” she added, smiling. “But you are not as frank with me as I have been with you.”

“You would not listen to me if I were,” he replied, with a melancholy air, in spite of the deep inward satisfaction her remarks gave him. “What would such future promotions avail me, if you dismiss me now?”

“Before I listen to you,” she replied, with naive Parisian liveliness, “we must be able to understand each other.”

And she left the old fop to go and speak with Madame de Chessel, a countess from the provinces, who seemed about to take leave.

“That is a very extraordinary woman,” said des Lupeaulx to himself. “I don’t know my own self when I am with her.”

Accordingly, this man of no principle, who six years earlier had kept a ballet-girl, and who now, thanks to his position, made himself a seraglio with the pretty wives of the under-clerks, and lived in the world of journalists and actresses, became devotedly attentive all the evening to Celestine, and was the last to leave the house.

“At last!” thought Madame Rabourdin, as she undressed that night, “we have the place! Twelve thousand francs a year and perquisites, beside the rents of our farms at Grajeux, – nearly twenty thousand francs a year. It is not affluence, but at least it isn’t poverty.”

CHAPTER IV. THREE-QUARTER LENGTH PORTRAITS OF CERTAIN GOVERNMENT

OFFICIALS

If it were possible for literature to use the microscope of the Leuwenhoeks, the Malpighis, and the Raspails (an attempt once made by Hoffman, of Berlin), and if we could magnify and then picture the teredos navalis, in other words, those ship-worms which brought Holland within an inch of collapsing by honey-combing her dykes, we might have been able to give a more distinct idea of Messieurs Gigonnet, Baudoyer, Saillard, Gaudron, Falleix, Transon, Godard and company, borers and burrowers, who proved their undermining power in the thirtieth year of this century.

But now it is time to show another set of teredos, who burrowed and swarmed in the government offices where the principal scenes of our present study took place.

In Paris nearly all these government bureaus resemble each other. Into whatever ministry you penetrate to ask some slight favor, or to get redress for a trifling wrong, you will find the same dark corridors, ill-lighted stairways, doors with oval panes of glass like eyes, as at the theatre. In the first room as you enter you will find the office servant; in the second, the under-clerks; the private office of the second head-clerk is to the right or left, and further on is that of the head of the bureau. As to the important personage called, under the Empire, head of division, then, under the Restoration, director, and now by the former name, head or chief of division, he lives either above or below the offices of his three or four different bureaus.

Speaking in the administrative sense, a bureau consists of a man-servant, several supernumeraries (who do the work gratis for a certain number of years), various copying clerks, writers of bills and deeds, order clerks, principal clerks, second or under head-clerk, and head-clerk, otherwise called head or chief of the bureau. These denominational titles vary under some administrations; for instance, the order-clerks are sometimes called auditors, or again, book-keepers.

Paved like the corridor, and hung with a shabby paper, the first room, where the servant is stationed, is furnished with a stove, a large black table with inkstand, pens, and paper, and benches, but no mats on which to wipe the public feet. The clerk’s office beyond is a large room, tolerably well lighted, but seldom floored with wood. Wooden floors and fireplaces are commonly kept sacred to heads of bureaus and divisions; and so are closets, wardrobes, mahogany tables, sofas and armchairs covered with red or green morocco, silk curtains, and other articles of administrative luxury. The clerk’s office contents itself with a stove, the pipe of which goes into the chimney, if there be a chimney. The wall paper is plain and all of one color, usually green or brown. The tables are of black wood. The private characteristics of the several clerks often crop out in their method of settling themselves at their desks, – the chilly one has a wooden footstool under his feet; the man with a bilious temperament has a metal mat; the lymphatic being who dreads draughts constructs a fortification of boxes on a screen. The door of the under-head-clerk’s office always stands open so that he may keep an eye to some extent on his subordinates.

Perhaps an exact description of Monsieur de la Billardiere’s division will suffice to give foreigners and provincials an idea of the internal manners and customs of a government office; the chief features of which are probably much the same in the civil service of all European governments.

In the first place, picture to yourself the man who is thus described in the Yearly Register: —

“Chief of Division. – Monsieur la baron Flamet de la Billardiere (Athanase-Jean-Francois-Michel) formerly provost-marshal of the department of the Correze, gentleman in ordinary of the bed-chamber, president of the college of the department of the Dordogne, officer of the Legion of honor, knight of Saint Louis and of the foreign orders of Christ, Isabella, Saint Wladimir, etc., member of the Academy of Gers, and other learned bodies, vice-president of the Society of Belles-lettres, member of the Association of Saint-Joseph and of the Society of Prisons, one of the mayors of Paris, etc.”

The person who requires so much typographic space was at this time occupying an area five feet six in length by thirty-six inches in width in a bed, his head adorned with a cotton night-cap tied on by flame-colored ribbons; attended by Despleins, the King’s surgeon, and young doctor Bianchon, flanked by two old female relatives, surrounded by phials of all kinds, bandages, appliances, and various mortuary instruments, and watched over by the curate of Saint-Roch, who was advising him to think of his salvation.

La Billardiere’s division occupied the upper floor of a magnificent mansion, in which the vast official ocean of a ministry was contained. A wide landing separated its two bureaus, the doors of which were duly labelled. The private offices and antechambers of the heads of the two bureaus, Monsieur Rabourdin and Monsieur Baudoyer, were below on the second floor, and beyond that of Monsieur Rabourdin were the antechamber, salon, and two offices of Monsieur de la Billardiere.

On the first floor, divided in two by an entresol, were the living rooms and office of Monsieur Ernest de la Briere, an occult and powerful personage who must be described in a few words, for he well deserves the parenthesis. This young man held, during the whole time that this particular administration lasted, the position of private secretary to the minister. His apartment was connected by a secret door with the private office of his Excellency. A private secretary is to the minister himself what des Lupeaulx was to the ministry at large. The same difference existed between young La Briere and des Lupeaulx that there is between an aide-de-camp and a chief of staff. This ministerial apprentice decamps when his protector leaves office, returning sometimes when he returns. If the minister enjoys the royal favor when he falls, or still has parliamentary hopes, he takes his secretary with him into retirement only to bring him back on his return; otherwise he puts him to grass in some of the various administrative pastures, – for instance, in the Court of Exchequer, that wayside refuge where private secretaries wait for the storm to blow over. The young man is not precisely a government official; he is a political character, however; and sometimes his politics are limited to those of one man. When we think of the number of letters it is the private secretary’s fate to open and read, besides all his other avocations, it is very evident that under a monarchical government his services would be well paid for. A drudge of this kind costs ten or twenty thousand francs a year; and he enjoys, moreover, the opera-boxes, the social invitations, and the carriages of the minister. The Emperor of Russia would be thankful to be able to pay fifty thousand a year to one of these amiable constitutional poodles, so gentle, so nicely curled, so caressing, so docile, always spick and span, – careful watch-dogs besides, and faithful to a degree! But the private secretary is a product of the representative government hot-house; he is propagated and developed there, and there only. Under a monarchy you will find none but courtiers and vassals, whereas under a constitutional government you may be flattered, served, and adulated by free men. In France ministers are better off than kings or women; they have some one who thoroughly understands them. Perhaps, indeed, the private secretary is to be pitied as much as women and white paper. They are nonentities who are made to bear all things. They are allowed no talents except hidden ones, which must be employed in the service of their ministers. A public show of talent would ruin them. The private secretary is therefore an intimate friend in the gift of government – However, let us return to the bureaus.

Three men-servants lived in peace in the Billardiere division, to wit: a footman for the two bureaus, another for the service of the two chiefs, and a third for the director of the division himself. All three were lodged, warmed, and clothed by the State, and wore the well-known livery of the State, blue coat with red pipings for undress, and broad red, white, and blue braid for great occasions. La Billardiere’s man had the air of a gentleman-usher, an innovation which gave an aspect of dignity to the division.

Pillars of the ministry, experts in all manners and customs bureaucratic, well-warmed and clothed at the State’s expense, growing rich by reason of their few wants, these lackeys saw completely through the government officials, collectively and individually. They had no better way of amusing their idle hours than by observing these personages and studying their peculiarities. They knew how far to trust the clerks with loans of money, doing their various commissions with absolute discretion; they pawned and took out of pawn, bought up bills when due, and lent money without interest, albeit no clerk ever borrowed of them without returning a “gratification.” These servants without a master received a salary of nine hundred francs a year; new years’ gifts and “gratifications” brought their emoluments to twelve hundred francs, and they made almost as much money by serving breakfasts to the clerks at the office.

The elder of these men, who was also the richest, waited upon the main body of the clerks. He was sixty years of age, with white hair cropped short like a brush; stout, thickset, and apoplectic about the neck, with a vulgar pimpled face, gray eyes, and a mouth like a furnace door; such was the profile portrait of Antoine, the oldest attendant in the ministry. He had brought his two nephews, Laurent and Gabriel, from Echelles in Savoie, – one to serve the heads of the bureaus, the other the director himself. All three came to open the offices and clean them, between seven and eight o’clock in the morning; at which time they read the newspapers and talked civil service politics from their point of view with the servants of other divisions, exchanging the bureaucratic gossip. In common with servants of modern houses who know their masters’ private affairs thoroughly, they lived at the ministry like spiders at the centre of a web, where they felt the slightest jar of the fabric.

On a Thursday evening, the day after the ministerial reception and Madame Rabourdin’s evening party, just as Antoine was trimming his beard and his nephews were assisting him in the antechamber of the division on the upper floor, they were surprised by the unexpected arrival of one of the clerks.

“That’s Monsieur Dutocq,” said Antoine. “I know him by that pickpocket step of his. He is always moving round on the sly, that man. He is on your back before you know it. Yesterday, contrary to his usual ways, he outstayed the last man in the office; such a thing hasn’t happened three times since he has been at the ministry.”

Here follows the portrait of Monsieur Dutocq, order-clerk in the Rabourdin bureau: Thirty-eight years old, oblong face and bilious skin, grizzled hair always cut close, low forehead, heavy eyebrows meeting together, a crooked nose and pinched lips; tall, the right shoulder slightly higher than the left; brown coat, black waistcoat, silk cravat, yellowish trousers, black woollen stockings, and shoes with flapping bows; thus you behold him. Idle and incapable, he hated Rabourdin, – naturally enough, for Rabourdin had no vice to flatter, and no bad or weak side on which Dutocq could make himself useful. Far too noble to injure a clerk, the chief was also too clear-sighted to be deceived by any make-believe. Dutocq kept his place therefore solely through Rabourdin’s generosity, and was very certain that he could never be promoted if the latter succeeded La Billardiere. Though he knew himself incapable of important work, Dutocq was well aware that in a government office incapacity was no hindrance to advancement; La Billardiere’s own appointment over the head of so capable a man as Rabourdin had been a striking and fatal example of this. Wickedness combined with self-interest works with a power equivalent to that of intellect; evilly disposed and wholly self-interested, Dutocq had endeavoured to strengthen his position by becoming a spy in all the offices. After 1816 he assumed a marked religious tone, foreseeing the favor which the fools of those days would bestow on those they indiscriminately called Jesuits. Belonging to that fraternity in spirit, though not admitted to its rites, Dutocq went from bureau to bureau, sounded consciences by recounting immoral jests, and then reported and paraphrased results to des Lupeaulx; the latter thus learned all the trivial events of the ministry, and often surprised the minister by his consummate knowledge of what was going on. He tolerated Dutocq under the idea that circumstances might some day make him useful, were it only to get him or some distinguished friend of his out of a scrape by a disgraceful marriage. The two understood each other well. Dutocq had succeeded Monsieur Poiret the elder, who had retired in 1814, and now lived in the pension Vanquer in the Latin quarter. Dutocq himself lived in a pension in the rue de Beaune, and spent his evenings in the Palais-Royal, sometimes going to the theatre, thanks to du Bruel, who gave him an author’s ticket about once a week. And now, a word on du Bruel.

CHAPTER V. THE MACHINE IN MOTION

At this moment the division of Monsieur de la Billardiere was in a state of unusual excitement, resulting very naturally from the event which was about to happen; for heads of divisions do not die every day, and there is no insurance office where the chances of life and death are calculated with more sagacity than in a government bureau. Self-interest stifles all compassion, as it does in children, but the government service adds hypocrisy to boot.

The clerks of the bureau Baudoyer arrived at eight o’clock in the morning, whereas those of the bureau Rabourdin seldom appeared till nine, – a circumstance which did not prevent the work in the latter office from being more rapidly dispatched than that of the former. Dutocq had important reasons for coming early on this particular morning. The previous evening he had furtively entered the study where Sebastien was at work, and had seen him copying some papers for Rabourdin; he concealed himself until he saw Sebastien leave the premises without taking any papers away with him. Certain, therefore, of finding the rather voluminous memorandum which he had seen, together with its copy, in some corner of the study, he searched through the boxes one after another until he finally came upon the fatal list. He carried it in hot haste to an autograph-printing house, where he obtained two pressed copies of the memorandum, showing, of course, Rabourdin’s own writing. Anxious not to arouse suspicion, he had gone very early to the office and replaced both the memorandum and Sebastien’s copy in the box from which he had taken them. Sebastien, who was kept up till after midnight at Madame Rabourdin’s party, was, in spite of his desire to get to the office early, preceded by the spirit of hatred. Hatred lived in the rue Saint-Louis-Saint-Honore, whereas love and devotion lived far-off in the rue du Roi-Dore in the Marais. This slight delay was destined to affect Rabourdin’s whole career.

Sebastien opened his box eagerly, found the memorandum and his own unfinished copy all in order, and locked them at once into the desk as Rabourdin had directed. The mornings are dark in these offices towards the end of December, sometimes indeed the lamps are lit till after ten o’clock; consequently Sebastien did not happen to notice the pressure of the copying-machine upon the paper. But when, about half-past nine o’clock, Rabourdin looked at his memorandum he saw at once the effects of the copying process, and all the more readily because he was then considering whether these autographic presses could not be made to do the work of copying clerks.

“Did any one get to the office before you?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Sebastien, – “Monsieur Dutocq.”

“Ah! well, he was punctual. Send Antoine to me.”

Too noble to distress Sebastien uselessly by blaming him for a misfortune now beyond remedy, Rabourdin said no more. Antoine came. Rabourdin asked if any clerk had remained at the office after four o’clock the previous evening. The man replied that Monsieur Dutocq had worked there later than Monsieur de la Roche, who was usually the last to leave. Rabourdin dismissed him with a nod, and resumed the thread of his reflections.

“Twice I have prevented his dismissal,” he said to himself, “and this is my reward.”

This morning was to Rabourdin like the solemn hour in which great commanders decide upon a battle and weigh all chances. Knowing the spirit of official life better than any one, he well knew that it would never pardon, any more than a school or the galleys or the army pardon, what looked like espionage or tale-bearing. A man capable of informing against his comrades is disgraced, dishonored, despised; the ministers in such a case would disavow their own agents. Nothing was left to an official so placed but to send in his resignation and leave Paris; his honor is permanently stained; explanations are of no avail; no one will either ask for them or listen to them. A minister may well do the same thing and be thought a great man, able to choose the right instruments; but a mere subordinate will be judged as a spy, no matter what may be his motives. While justly measuring the folly of such judgment, Rabourdin knew that it was all-powerful; and he knew, too, that he was crushed. More surprised than overwhelmed, he now sought for the best course to follow under the circumstances; and with such thoughts in his mind he was necessarily aloof from the excitement caused in the division by the death of Monsieur de la Billardiere; in fact he did not hear of it until young La Briere, who was able to appreciate his sterling value, came to tell him. About ten o’clock, in the bureau Baudoyer, Bixiou was relating the last moments of the life of the director to Minard, Desroys, Monsieur Godard, whom he had called from his private office, and Dutocq, who had rushed in with private motives of his own. Colleville and Chazelle were absent.

Bixiou [standing with his back to the stove and holding up the sole of each boot alternately to dry at the open door]. “This morning, at half-past seven, I went to inquire after our most worthy and respectable director, knight of the order of Christ, et caetera, et caetera. Yes, gentlemen, last night he was a being with twenty et caeteras, to-day he is nothing, not even a government clerk. I asked all particulars of his nurse. She told me that this morning at five o’clock he became uneasy about the royal family. He asked for the names of all the clerks who had called to inquire after him; and then he said: ‘Fill my snuff-box, give me the newspaper, bring my spectacles, and change my ribbon of the Legion of honor, – it is very dirty.’ I suppose you know he always wore his orders in bed. He was fully conscious, retained his senses and all his usual ideas. But, presto! ten minutes later the water rose, rose, rose and flooded his chest; he knew he was dying for he felt the cysts break. At that fatal moment he gave evident proof of his powerful mind and vast intellect. Ah, we never rightly appreciated him! We used to laugh at him and call him a booby – didn’t you, Monsieur Godard?”

Godard. “I? I always rated Monsieur de la Billardiere’s talents higher than the rest of you.”

Bixiou. “You and he could understand each other!”

Godard. “He wasn’t a bad man; he never harmed any one.”

Bixiou. “To do harm you must do something, and he never did anything. If it wasn’t you who said he was a dolt, it must have been Minard.”

Minard [shrugging his shoulders]. “I!”

Bixiou. “Well, then it was you, Dutocq!” [Dutocq made a vehement gesture of denial.] “Oh! very good, then it was nobody. Every one in this office knew his intellect was herculean. Well, you were right. He ended, as I have said, like the great man that he was.”

Desroys [impatiently]. “Pray what did he do that was so great? he had the weakness to confess himself.”

Bixiou. “Yes, monsieur, he received the holy sacraments. But do you know what he did in order to receive them? He put on his uniform as gentleman-in-ordinary of the Bedchamber, with all his orders, and had himself powdered; they tied his queue (that poor queue!) with a fresh ribbon. Now I say that none but a man of remarkable character would have his queue tied with a fresh ribbon just as he was dying. There are eight of us here, and I don’t believe one among us is capable of such an act. But that’s not all; he said, – for you know all celebrated men make a dying speech; he said, – stop now, what did he say? Ah! he said, ‘I must attire myself to meet the King of Heaven, – I, who have so often dressed in my best for audience with the kings of earth.’ That’s how Monsieur de la Billardiere departed this life. He took upon himself to justify the saying of Pythagoras, ‘No man is known until he dies.’”

Colleville [rushing in]. “Gentlemen, great news!”

All. “We know it.”

Colleville. “I defy you to know it! I have been hunting for it ever since the accession of His Majesty to the thrones of France and of Navarre. Last night I succeeded! but with what labor! Madame Colleville asked me what was the matter.”

Dutocq. “Do you think we have time to bother ourselves with your intolerable anagrams when the worthy Monsieur de la Billardiere has just expired?”

Colleville. “That’s Bixiou’s nonsense! I have just come from Monsieur de la Billardiere’s; he is still living, though they expect him to die soon.” [Godard, indignant at the hoax, goes off grumbling.] “Gentlemen! you would never guess what extraordinary events are revealed by the anagram of this sacramental sentence” [he pulls out a piece of paper and reads], “Charles dix, par la grace de Dieu, roi de France et de Navarre.”

Godard [re-entering]. “Tell what it is at once, and don’t keep people waiting.”

Colleville [triumphantly unfolding the rest of the paper]. “Listen!

 
“A H. V. il cedera;
De S. C. l. d. partira;
Eh nauf errera,
Decide a Gorix.
 

“Every letter is there!” [He repeats it.] “A Henry cinq cedera (his crown of course); de Saint-Cloud partira; en nauf (that’s an old French word for skiff, vessel, felucca, corvette, anything you like) errera – ”

Dutocq. “What a tissue of absurdities! How can the King cede his crown to Henry V., who, according to your nonsense, must be his grandson, when Monseigneur le Dauphin is living. Are you prophesying the Dauphin’s death?”

Bixiou. “What’s Gorix, pray? – the name of a cat?”

Colleville [provoked]. “It is the archaeological and lapidarial abbreviation of the name of a town, my good friend; I looked it out in Malte-Brun: Goritz, in Latin Gorixia, situated in Bohemia or Hungary, or it may be Austria – ”

Bixiou. “Tyrol, the Basque provinces, or South America. Why don’t you set it all to music and play it on the clarionet?”

Godard [shrugging his shoulders and departing]. “What utter nonsense!”

Colleville. “Nonsense! nonsense indeed! It is a pity you don’t take the trouble to study fatalism, the religion of the Emperor Napoleon.”

Godard [irritated at Colleville’s tone]. “Monsieur Colleville, let me tell you that Bonaparte may perhaps be styled Emperor by historians, but it is extremely out of place to refer to him as such in a government office.”

Bixiou [laughing]. “Get an anagram out of that, my dear fellow.”

Colleville [angrily]. “Let me tell you that if Napoleon Bonaparte had studied the letters of his name on the 14th of April, 1814, he might perhaps be Emperor still.”

Bixiou. “How do you make that out?”

Colleville [solemnly]. “Napoleon Bonaparte. – No, appear not at Elba!”

Dutocq. “You’ll lose your place for talking such nonsense.”

Colleville. “If my place is taken from me, Francois Keller will make it hot for your minister.” [Dead silence.] “I’d have you to know, Master Dutocq, that all known anagrams have actually come to pass. Look here, – you, yourself, – don’t you marry, for there’s ‘coqu’ in your name.”

Bixiou [interrupting]. “And d, t, for de-testable.”

Dutocq [without seeming angry]. “I don’t care, as long as it is only in my name. Why don’t you anagrammatize, or whatever you call it, ‘Xavier Rabourdin, chef du bureau’?”

Colleville. “Bless you, so I have!”

Bixiou [mending his pen]. “And what did you make of it?”

Colleville. “It comes out as follows: D’abord reva bureaux, E-u, – (you catch the meaning? et eut – and had) E-u fin riche; which signifies that after first belonging to the administration, he gave it up and got rich elsewhere.” [Repeats.] “D’abord reva bureaux, E-u fin riche.”

Dutocq. “That IS queer!”

Bixiou. “Try Isidore Baudoyer.”

Colleville [mysteriously]. “I sha’n’t tell the other anagrams to any one but Thuillier.”

Bixiou. “I’ll bet you a breakfast that I can tell that one myself.”

Colleville. “And I’ll pay if you find it out.”

Bixiou. “Then I shall breakfast at your expense; but you won’t be angry, will you? Two such geniuses as you and I need never conflict. ‘Isidore Baudoyer’ anagrams into ‘Ris d’aboyeur d’oie.’”

Colleville [petrified with amazement]. “You stole it from me!”

Bixiou [with dignity]. “Monsieur Colleville, do me the honor to believe that I am rich enough in absurdity not to steal my neighbor’s nonsense.”

Baudoyer [entering with a bundle of papers in his hand]. “Gentlemen, I request you to shout a little louder; you bring this office into such high repute with the administration. My worthy coadjutor, Monsieur Clergeot, did me the honor just now to come and ask a question, and he heard the noise you are making” [passes into Monsieur Godard’s room].

Bixiou [in a low voice]. “The watch-dog is very tame this morning; there’ll be a change of weather before night.”

Dutocq [whispering to Bixiou]. “I have something I want to say to you.”

Bixiou [fingering Dutocq’s waistcoat]. “You’ve a pretty waistcoat, that cost you nothing; is that what you want to say?”

Dutocq. “Nothing, indeed! I never paid so dear for anything in my life. That stuff cost six francs a yard in the best shop in the rue de la Paix, – a fine dead stuff, the very thing for deep mourning.”

Bixiou. “You know about engravings and such things, my dear fellow, but you are totally ignorant of the laws of etiquette. Well, no man can be a universal genius! Silk is positively not admissible in deep mourning. Don’t you see I am wearing woollen? Monsieur Rabourdin, Monsieur Baudoyer, and the minister are all in woollen; so is the faubourg Saint-Germain. There’s no one here but Minard who doesn’t wear woollen; he’s afraid of being taken for a sheep. That’s the reason why he didn’t put on mourning for Louis XVIII.”

[During this conversation Baudoyer is sitting by the fire in Godard’s room, and the two are conversing in a low voice.]

Baudoyer. “Yes, the worthy man is dying. The two ministers are both with him. My father-in-law has been notified of the event. If you want to do me a signal service you will take a cab and go and let Madame Baudoyer know what is happening; for Monsieur Saillard can’t leave his desk, nor I my office. Put yourself at my wife’s orders; do whatever she wishes. She has, I believe, some ideas of her own, and wants to take certain steps simultaneously.” [The two functionaries go out together.]

Godard. “Monsieur Bixiou, I am obliged to leave the office for the rest of the day. You will take my place.”

Baudoyer [to Bixiou, benignly]. “Consult me, if there is any necessity.”

Bixiou. “This time, La Billardiere is really dead.”

Dutocq [in Bixiou’s ear]. “Come outside a minute.” [The two go into the corridor and gaze at each other like birds of ill-omen.]

Dutocq [whispering]. “Listen. Now is the time for us to understand each other and push our way. What would you say to your being made head of the bureau, and I under you?”

Bixiou [shrugging his shoulders]. “Come, come, don’t talk nonsense!”

Dutocq. “If Baudoyer gets La Billardiere’s place Rabourdin won’t stay on where he is. Between ourselves, Baudoyer is so incapable that if du Bruel and you don’t help him he will certainly be dismissed in a couple of months. If I know arithmetic that will give three empty places for us to fill – ”

Bixiou. “Three places right under our noses, which will certainly be given to some bloated favorite, some spy, some pious fraud, – to Colleville perhaps, whose wife has ended where all pretty women end – in piety.”

Dutocq. “No, to /you/, my dear fellow, if you will only, for once in your life, use your wits logically.” [He stopped as if to study the effect of his adverb in Bixiou’s face.] “Come, let us play fair.”

Bixiou [stolidly]. “Let me see your game.”

Dutocq. “I don’t wish to be anything more than under-head-clerk. I know myself perfectly well, and I know I haven’t the ability, like you, to be head of a bureau. Du Bruel can be director, and you the head of this bureau; he will leave you his place as soon as he has made his pile; and as for me, I shall swim with the tide comfortably, under your protection, till I can retire on a pension.”

Bixiou. “Sly dog! but how to you expect to carry out a plan which means forcing the minister’s hand and ejecting a man of talent? Between ourselves, Rabourdin is the only man capable of taking charge of the division, and I might say of the ministry. Do you know that they talk of putting in over his head that solid lump of foolishness, that cube of idiocy, Baudoyer?”

Dutocq [consequentially]. “My dear fellow, I am in a position to rouse the whole division against Rabourdin. You know how devoted Fleury is to him? Well, I can make Fleury despise him.”

Bixiou. “Despised by Fleury!”

Dutocq. “Not a soul will stand by Rabourdin; the clerks will go in a body and complain of him to the minister, – not only in our division, but in all the divisions – ”

Bixiou. “Forward, march! infantry, cavalry, artillery, and marines of the guard! You rave, my good fellow! And I, what part am I to take in the business?”

Dutocq. “You are to make a cutting caricature, – sharp enough to kill a man.”

Bixiou. “How much will you pay for it?”

Dutocq. “A hundred francs.”

Bixiou [to himself]. “Then there is something in it.”

Dutocq [continuing]. “You must represent Rabourdin dressed as a butcher (make it a good likeness), find analogies between a kitchen and a bureau, put a skewer in his hand, draw portraits of the principal clerks and stick their heads on fowls, put them in a monstrous coop labelled ‘Civil Service executions’; make him cutting the throat of one, and supposed to take the others in turn. You can have geese and ducks with heads like ours, – you understand! Baudoyer, for instance, he’ll make an excellent turkey-buzzard.”

Bixiou. “Ris d’aboyeur d’oie!” [He has watched Dutocq carefully for some time.] “Did you think of that yourself?”

Dutocq. “Yes, I myself.”

Bixiou [to himself]. “Do evil feelings bring men to the same result as talents?” [Aloud] “Well, I’ll do it” [Dutocq makes a motion of delight] “ – when” [full stop] “ – I know where I am and what I can rely on. If you don’t succeed I shall lose my place, and I must make a living. You are a curious kind of innocent still, my dear colleague.”

Dutocq. “Well, you needn’t make the lithograph till success is proved.”

Bixiou. “Why don’t you come out and tell me the whole truth?”

Dutocq. “I must first see how the land lays in the bureau; we will talk about it later” [goes off].

Bixiou [alone in the corridor]. “That fish, for he’s more a fish than a bird, that Dutocq has a good idea in his head – I’m sure I don’t know where he stole it. If Baudoyer should succeed La Billardiere it would be fun, more than fun – profit!” [Returns to the office.] “Gentlemen, I announce glorious changes; papa La Billardiere is dead, really dead, – no nonsense, word of honor! Godard is off on business for our excellent chief Baudoyer, successor presumptive to the deceased.” [Minard, Desroys, and Colleville raise their heads in amazement; they all lay down their pens, and Colleville blows his nose.] “Every one of us is to be promoted! Colleville will be under-head-clerk at the very least. Minard may have my place as chief clerk – why not? he is quite as dull as I am. Hey, Minard, if you should get twenty-five hundred francs a-year your little wife would be uncommonly pleased, and you could buy yourself a pair of boots now and then.”

Colleville. “But you don’t get twenty-five hundred francs.”

Bixiou. “Monsieur Dutocq gets that in Rabourdin’s office; why shouldn’t I get it this year? Monsieur Baudoyer gets it.”

Colleville. “Only through the influence of Monsieur Saillard. No other chief clerk gets that in any of the divisions.”

Paulmier. “Bah! Hasn’t Monsieur Cochin three thousand? He succeeded Monsieur Vavasseur, who served ten years under the Empire at four thousand. His salary was dropped to three when the King first returned; then to two thousand five hundred before Vavasseur died. But Monsieur Cochin, who succeeded him, had influence enough to get the salary put back to three thousand.”

Colleville. “Monsieur Cochin signs E. A. L. Cochin (he is named Emile-Adolphe-Lucian), which, when anagrammed, gives Cochineal. Now observe, he’s a partner in a druggist’s business in the rue des Lombards, the Maison Matifat, which made its fortune by that identical colonial product.”

Baudoyer [entering]. “Monsieur Chazelle, I see, is not here; you will be good enough to say I asked for him, gentlemen.”

Bixiou [who had hastily stuck a hat on Chazelle’s chair when he heard Baudoyer’s step]. “Excuse me, Monsieur, but Chazelle has gone to the Rabourdins’ to make an inquiry.”

Chazelle [entering with his hat on his head, and not seeing Baudoyer]. “La Billardiere is done for, gentlemen! Rabourdin is head of the division and Master of petitions; he hasn’t stolen /his/ promotion, that’s very certain.”

Baudoyer [to Chazelle]. “You found that appointment in your second hat, I presume” [points to the hat on the chair]. “This is the third time within a month that you have come after nine o’clock. If you continue the practice you will get on – elsewhere.” [To Bixiou, who is reading the newspaper.] “My dear Monsieur Bixiou, do pray leave the newspapers to these gentlemen who are going to breakfast, and come into my office for your orders for the day. I don’t know what Monsieur Rabourdin wants with Gabriel; he keeps him to do his private errands, I believe. I’ve rung three times and can’t get him.” [Baudoyer and Bixiou retire into the private office.]

Chazelle. “Damned unlucky!”

Paulmier [delighted to annoy Chazelle]. “Why didn’t you look about when you came into the room? You might have seen the elephant, and the hat too; they are big enough to be visible.”

Chazelle [dismally]. “Disgusting business! I don’t see why we should be treated like slaves because the government gives us four francs and sixty-five centimes a day.”

Fleury [entering]. “Down with Baudoyer! hurrah for Rabourdin! – that’s the cry in the division.”

Chazelle [getting more and more angry]. “Baudoyer can turn off me if he likes, I sha’n’t care. In Paris there are a thousand ways of earning five francs a day; why, I could earn that at the Palais de Justice, copying briefs for the lawyers.”

Paulmier [still prodding him]. “It is very easy to say that; but a government place is a government place, and that plucky Colleville, who works like a galley-slave outside of this office, and who could earn, if he lost his appointment, more than his salary, prefers to keep his place. Who the devil is fool enough to give up his expectations?”

Chazelle [continuing his philippic]. “You may not be, but I am! We have no chances at all. Time was when nothing was more encouraging than a civil-service career. So many men were in the army that there were not enough for the government work; the maimed and the halt and the sick ones, like Paulmier, and the near-sighted ones, all had their chance of a rapid promotion. But now, ever since the Chamber invented what they called special training, and the rules and regulations for civil-service examiners, we are worse off than common soldiers. The poorest places are at the mercy of a thousand mischances because we are now ruled by a thousand sovereigns.”

Bixiou [returning]. “Are you crazy, Chazelle? Where do you find a thousand sovereigns? – not in your pocket, are they?”

Chazelle. “Count them up. There are four hundred over there at the end of the pont de la Concorde (so called because it leads to the scene of perpetual discord between the Right and Left of the Chamber); three hundred more at the end of the rue de Tournon. The court, which ought to count for the other three hundred, has seven hundred parts less power to get a man appointed to a place under government than the Emperor Napoleon had.”

Fleury. “All of which signifies that in a country where there are three powers you may bet a thousand to one that a government clerk who has no influence but his own merits to advance him will remain in obscurity.”

Bixiou [looking alternately at Chazelle and Fleury]. “My sons, you have yet to learn that in these days the worst state of life is the state of belonging to the State.”

Fleury. “Because it has a constitutional government.”

Colleville. “Gentlemen, gentlemen! no politics!”

Bixiou. “Fleury is right. Serving the State in these days is no longer serving a prince who knew how to punish and reward. The State now is /everybody/. Everybody of course cares for nobody. Serve everybody, and you serve nobody. Nobody is interested in nobody; the government clerk lives between two negations. The world has neither pity nor respect, neither heart nor head; everybody forgets to-morrow the service of yesterday. Now each one of you may be, like Monsieur Baudoyer, an administrative genius, a Chateaubriand of reports, a Bossouet of circulars, the Canalis of memorials, the gifted son of diplomatic despatches; but I tell you there is a fatal law which interferes with all administrative genius, – I mean the law of promotion by average. This average is based on the statistics of promotion and the statistics of mortality combined. It is very certain that on entering whichever section of the Civil Service you please at the age of eighteen, you can’t get eighteen hundred francs a year till you reach the age of thirty. Now there’s no free and independent career in which, in the course of twelve years, a young man who has gone through the grammar-school, been vaccinated, is exempt from military service, and possesses all his faculties (I don’t mean transcendent ones) can’t amass a capital of forty-five thousand francs in centimes, which represents a permanent income equal to our salaries, which are, after all, precarious. In twelve years a grocer can earn enough to give him ten thousand francs a year; a painter can daub a mile of canvas and be decorated with the Legion of honor, or pose as a neglected genius. A literary man becomes professor of something or other, or a journalist at a hundred francs for a thousand lines; he writes ‘feuilletons,’ or he gets into Saint-Pelagie for a brilliant article that offends the Jesuits, – which of course is an immense benefit to him and makes him a politician at once. Even a lazy man, who does nothing but make debts, has time to marry a widow who pays them; a priest finds time to become a bishop ‘in partibus.’ A sober, intelligent young fellow, who begins with a small capital as a money-changer, soon buys a share in a broker’s business; and, to go even lower, a petty clerk becomes a notary, a rag-picker lays by two or three thousand francs a year, and the poorest workmen often become manufacturers; whereas, in the rotatory movement of this present civilization, which mistakes perpetual division and redivision for progress, an unhappy civil service clerk, like Chazelle for instance, is forced to dine for twenty-two sous a meal, struggles with his tailor and bootmaker, gets into debt, and is an absolute nothing; worse than that, he becomes an idiot! Come, gentlemen, now’s the time to make a stand! Let us all give in our resignations! Fleury, Chazelle, fling yourselves into other employments and become the great men you really are.”

Chazelle [calmed down by Bixiou’s allocution]. “No, I thank you” [general laughter].

Bixiou. “You are wrong; in your situation I should try to get ahead of the general-secretary.”

Chazelle [uneasily]. “What has he to do with me?”

Bixiou. “You’ll find out; do you suppose Baudoyer will overlook what happened just now?”

Fleury. “Another piece of Bixiou’s spite! You’ve a queer fellow to deal with in there. Now, Monsieur Rabourdin, – there’s a man for you! He put work on my table to-day that you couldn’t get through within this office in three days; well, he expects me to have it done by four o’clock to-day. But he is not always at my heels to hinder me from talking to my friends.”

Baudoyer [appearing at the door]. “Gentlemen, you will admit that if you have the legal right to find fault with the chamber and the administration you must at least do so elsewhere than in this office.” [To Fleury.] “What are you doing here, monsieur?”

Fleury [insolently]. “I came to tell these gentlemen that there was to be a general turn-out. Du Bruel is sent for to the ministry, and Dutocq also. Everybody is asking who will be appointed.”

Baudoyer [retiring]. “It is not your affair, sir; go back to your own office, and do not disturb mine.”

Fleury [in the doorway]. “It would be a shameful injustice if Rabourdin lost the place; I swear I’d leave the service. Did you find that anagram, papa Colleville?”

Colleville. “Yes, here it is.”

Fleury [leaning over Colleville’s desk]. “Capital! famous! This is just what will happen if the administration continues to play the hypocrite.” [He makes a sign to the clerks that Baudoyer is listening.] “If the government would frankly state its intentions without concealments of any kind, the liberals would know what they had to deal with. An administration which sets its best friends against itself, such men as those of the ‘Debats,’ Chateaubriand, and Royer-Collard, is only to be pitied!”

Colleville [after consulting his colleagues]. “Come, Fleury, you’re a good fellow, but don’t talk politics here; you don’t know what harm you may do us.”

Fleury [dryly]. “Well, adieu, gentlemen; I have my work to do by four o’clock.”

While this idle talk had been going on, des Lupeaulx was closeted in his office with du Bruel, where, a little later, Dutocq joined them. Des Lupeaulx had heard from his valet of La Billardiere’s death, and wishing to please the two ministers, he wanted an obituary article to appear in the evening papers.

“Good morning, my dear du Bruel,” said the semi-minister to the head-clerk as he entered, and not inviting him to sit down. “You have heard the news? La Billardiere is dead. The ministers were both present when he received the last sacraments. The worthy man strongly recommended Rabourdin, saying he should die with less regret if he could know that his successor were the man who had so constantly done his work. Death is a torture which makes a man confess everything. The minister agreed the more readily because his intention and that of the Council was to reward Monsieur Rabourdin’s numerous services. In fact, the Council of State needs his experience. They say that young La Billardiere is to leave the division of his father and go to the Commission of Seals; that’s just the same as if the King had made him a present of a hundred thousand francs, – the place can always be sold. But I know the news will delight your division, which will thus get rid of him. Du Bruel, we must get ten or a dozen lines about the worthy late director into the papers; his Excellency will glance them over, – he reads the papers. Do you know the particulars of old La Billardiere’s life?”

Du Bruel made a sign in the negative.

“No?” continued des Lupeaulx. “Well then; he was mixed up in the affairs of La Vendee, and he was one of the confidants of the late King. Like Monsieur le Comte de Fontaine he always refused to hold communication with the First Consul. He was a bit of a ‘chouan’; born in Brittany of a parliamentary family, and ennobled by Louis XVIII. How old was he? never mind about that; just say his loyalty was untarnished, his religion enlightened, – the poor old fellow hated churches and never set foot in one, but you had better make him out a ‘pious vassal.’ Bring in, gracefully, that he sang the song of Simeon at the accession of Charles X. The Comte d’Artois thought very highly of La Billardiere, for he co-operated in the unfortunate affair of Quiberon and took the whole responsibility on himself. You know about that, don’t you? La Billardiere defended the King in a printed pamphlet in reply to an impudent history of the Revolution written by a journalist; you can allude to his loyalty and devotion. But be very careful what you say; weigh your words, so that the other newspapers can’t laugh at us; and bring me the article when you’ve written it. Were you at Rabourdin’s yesterday?”

“Yes, monseigneur,” said du Bruel, “Ah! beg pardon.”

“No harm done,” answered des Lupeaulx, laughing.

“Madame Rabourdin looked delightfully handsome,” added du Bruel. “There are not two women like her in Paris. Some are as clever as she, but there’s not one so gracefully witty. Many women may even be handsomer, but it would be hard to find one with such variety of beauty. Madame Rabourdin is far superior to Madame Colleville,” said the vaudevillist, remembering des Lupeaulx’s former affair. “Flavie owes what she is to the men about her, whereas Madame Rabourdin is all things in herself. It is wonderful too what she knows; you can’t tell secrets in Latin before /her/. If I had such a wife, I know I should succeed in everything.”

“You have more mind than an author ought to have,” returned des Lupeaulx, with a conceited air. Then he turned round and perceived Dutocq. “Ah, good-morning, Dutocq,” he said. “I sent for you to lend me your Charlet – if you have the whole complete. Madame la comtesse knows nothing of Charlet.”

Du Bruel retired.

“Why do you come in without being summoned?” said des Lupeaulx, harshly, when he and Dutocq were left alone. “Is the State in danger that you must come here at ten o’clock in the morning, just as I am going to breakfast with his Excellency?”

“Perhaps it is, monsieur,” said Dutocq, dryly. “If I had had the honor to see you earlier, you would probably have not been so willing to support Monsieur Rabourdin, after reading his opinion of you.”

Dutocq opened his coat, took a paper from the left-hand breast-pocket and laid it on des Lupeaulx’s desk, pointing to a marked passage. Then he went to the door and slipped the bolt, fearing interruption. While he was thus employed, the secretary-general read the opening sentence of the article, which was as follows:

“Monsieur des Lupeaulx. A government degrades itself by openly employing such a man, whose real vocation is for police diplomacy. He is fitted to deal with the political filibusters of other cabinets, and it would be a pity therefore to employ him on our internal detective police. He is above a common spy, for he is able to understand a plan; he could skilfully carry through a dark piece of work and cover his retreat safely.”

Des Lupeaulx was succinctly analyzed in five or six such paragraphs, – the essence, in fact, of the biographical portrait which we gave at the beginning of this history. As he read the words the secretary felt that a man stronger than himself sat in judgment on him; and he at once resolved to examine the memorandum, which evidently reached far and high, without allowing Dutocq to know his secret thoughts. He therefore showed a calm, grave face when the spy returned to him. Des Lupeaulx, like lawyers, magistrates, diplomatists, and all whose work obliges them to pry into the human heart, was past being surprised at anything. Hardened in treachery and in all the tricks and wiles of hatred, he could take a stab in the back and not let his face tell of it.

“How did you get hold of this paper?”

Dutocq related his good luck; des Lupeaulx’s face as he listened expressed no approbation; and the spy ended in terror an account which began triumphantly.

“Dutocq, you have put your finger between the bark and the tree,” said the secretary, coldly. “If you don’t want to make powerful enemies I advise you to keep this paper a profound secret; it is a work of the utmost importance and already well known to me.”

So saying, des Lupeaulx dismissed Dutocq by one of those glances that are more expressive than words.

“Ha! that scoundrel of a Rabourdin has put his finger in this!” thought Dutocq, alarmed on finding himself anticipated; “he has reached the ear of the administration, while I am left out in the cold. I shouldn’t have thought it!”

To all his other motives of aversion to Rabourdin he now added the jealousy of one man to another man of the same calling, – a most powerful ingredient in hatred.

When des Lupeaulx was left alone, he dropped into a strange meditation. What power was it of which Rabourdin was the instrument? Should he, des Lupeaulx, use this singular document to destroy him, or should he keep it as a weapon to succeed with the wife? The mystery that lay behind this paper was all darkness to des Lupeaulx, who read with something akin to terror page after page, in which the men of his acquaintance were judged with unerring wisdom. He admired Rabourdin, though stabbed to his vitals by what he said of him. The breakfast-hour suddenly cut short his meditation.

“His Excellency is waiting for you to come down,” announced the minister’s footman.

The minister always breakfasted with his wife and children and des Lupeaulx, without the presence of servants. The morning meal affords the only moment of privacy which public men can snatch from the current of overwhelming business. Yet in spite of the precautions they take to keep this hour for private intimacies and affections, a good many great and little people manage to infringe upon it. Business itself will, as at this moment, thrust itself in the way of their scanty comfort.

“I thought Rabourdin was a man above all ordinary petty manoeuvres,” began the minister; “and yet here, not ten minutes after La Billardiere’s death, he sends me this note by La Briere, – it is like a stage missive. Look,” said his Excellency, giving des Lupeaulx a paper which he was twirling in his fingers.

Too noble in mind to think for a moment of the shameful meaning La Billardiere’s death might lend to his letter, Rabourdin had not withdrawn it from La Briere’s hands after the news reached him. Des Lupeaulx read as follows: —

“Monseigneur, – If twenty-three years of irreproachable services may claim a favor, I entreat your Excellency to grant me an audience this very day. My honor is involved in the matter of which I desire to speak.”

“Poor man!” said des Lupeaulx, in a tone of compassion which confirmed the minister in his error. “We are alone; I advise you to see him now. You have a meeting of the Council when the Chamber rises; moreover, your Excellency has to reply to-day to the opposition; this is really the only hour when you can receive him.”

Des Lupeaulx rose, called the servant, said a few words, and returned to his seat. “I have told them to bring him in at dessert,” he said.

Like all other ministers under the Restoration, this particular minister was a man without youth. The charter granted by Louis XVIII. had the defect of tying the hands of the kings by compelling them to deliver the destinies of the nation into the control of the middle-aged men of the Chamber and the septuagenarians of the peerage; it robbed them of the right to lay hands on a man of statesmanlike talent wherever they could find him, no matter how young he was or how poverty-stricken his condition might be. Napoleon alone was able to employ young men as he chose, without being restrained by any consideration. After the overthrow of that mighty will, vigor deserted power. Now the period when effeminacy succeeds to vigor presents a contrast that is far more dangerous in France than in other countries. As a general thing, ministers who were old before they entered office have proved second or third rate, while those who were taken young have been an honor to European monarchies and to the republics whose affairs they have directed. The world still rings with the struggle between Pitt and Napoleon, two men who conducted the politics of their respective countries at an age when Henri de Navarre, Richelieu, Mazarin, Colbert, Louvois, the Prince of Orange, the Guises, Machiavelli, in short, all the best known of our great men, coming from the ranks or born to a throne, began to rule the State. The Convention – that model of energy – was made up in a great measure of young heads; no sovereign can ever forget that it was able to put fourteen armies into the field against Europe. Its policy, fatal in the eyes of those who cling to what is called absolute power, was nevertheless dictated by strictly monarchical principles, and it behaved itself like any of the great kings.

After ten or a dozen years of parliamentary struggle, having studied the science of politics until he was worn down by it, this particular minister had come to be enthroned by his party, who considered him in the light of their business man. Happily for him he was now nearer sixty than fifty years of age; had he retained even a vestige of juvenile vigor he would quickly have quenched it. But, accustomed to back and fill, retreat and return to the charge, he was able to endure being struck at, turn and turn about, by his own party, by the opposition, by the court, by the clergy, because to all such attacks he opposed the inert force of a substance which was equally soft and consistent; thus he reaped the benefits of what was really his misfortune. Harassed by a thousand questions of government, his mind, like that of an old lawyer who has tried every species of case, no longer possessed the spring which solitary minds are able to retain, nor that power of prompt decision which distinguishes men who are early accustomed to action, and young soldiers. How could it be otherwise? He had practised sophistries and quibbled instead of judging; he had criticised effects and done nothing for causes; his head was full of plans such as a political party lays upon the shoulders of a leader, – matters of private interest brought to an orator supposed to have a future, a jumble of schemes and impractical requests. Far from coming fresh to his work, he was wearied out with marching and counter-marching, and when he finally reached the much desired height of his present position, he found himself in a thicket of thorny bushes with a thousand conflicting wills to conciliate. If the statesmen of the Restoration had been allowed to follow out their own ideas, their capacity would doubtless have been criticised; but though their wills were often forced, their age saved them from attempting the resistance which youth opposes to intrigues, both high and low, – intrigues which vanquished Richelieu, and to which, in a lower sphere, Rabourdin was to succumb.

After the rough and tumble of their first struggles in political life these men, less old than aged, have to endure the additional wear and tear of a ministry. Thus it is that their eyes begin to weaken just as they need to have the clear-sightedness of eagles; their mind is weary when its youth and fire need to be redoubled. The minister in whom Rabourdin sought to confide was in the habit of listening to men of undoubted superiority as they explained ingenious theories of government, applicable or inapplicable to the affairs of France. Such men, by whom the difficulties of national policy were never apprehended, were in the habit of attacking this minister personally whenever a parliamentary battle or a contest with the secret follies of the court took place, – on the eve of a struggle with the popular mind, or on the morrow of a diplomatic discussion which divided the Council into three separate parties. Caught in such a predicament, a statesman naturally keeps a yawn ready for the first sentence designed to show him how the public service could be better managed. At such periods not a dinner took place among bold schemers or financial and political lobbyists where the opinions of the Bourse and the Bank, the secrets of diplomacy, and the policy necessitated by the state of affairs in Europe were not canvassed and discussed. The minister has his own private councillors in des Lupeaulx and his secretary, who collected and pondered all opinions and discussions for the purpose of analyzing and controlling the various interests proclaimed and supported by so many clever men. In fact, his misfortune was that of most other ministers who have passed the prime of life; he trimmed and shuffled under all his difficulties, – with journalism, which at this period it was thought advisable to repress in an underhand way rather than fight openly; with financial as well as labor questions; with the clergy as well as with that other question of the public lands; with liberalism as with the Chamber. After manoeuvering his way to power in the course of seven years, the minister believed that he could manage all questions of administration in the same way. It is so natural to think we can maintain a position by the same methods which served us to reach it that no one ventured to blame a system invented by mediocrity to please minds of its own calibre. The Restoration, like the Polish revolution, proved to nations as to princes the true value of a Man, and what will happen if that necessary man is wanting. The last and the greatest weakness of the public men of the Restoration was their honesty, in a struggle in which their adversaries employed the resources of political dishonesty, lies, and calumnies, and let loose upon them, by all subversive means, the clamor of the unintelligent masses, able only to understand revolt.

Rabourdin told himself all these things. But he had made up his mind to win or lose, like a man weary of gambling who allows himself a last stake; ill-luck had given him as adversary in the game a sharper like des Lupeaulx. With all his sagacity, Rabourdin was better versed in matters of administration than in parliamentary optics, and he was far indeed from imagining how his confidence would be received; he little thought that the great work that filled his mind would seem to the minister nothing more than a theory, and that a man who held the position of a statesman would confound his reform with the schemes of political and self-interested talkers.

As the minister rose from table, thinking of Francois Keller, his wife detained him with the offer of a bunch of grapes, and at that moment Rabourdin was announced. Des Lupeaulx had counted on the minister’s preoccupation and his desire to get away; seeing him for the moment occupied with his wife, the general-secretary went forward to meet Rabourdin; whom he petrified with his first words, said in a low tone of voice: —

“His Excellency and I know what the subject is that occupies your mind; you have nothing to fear”; then, raising his voice, he added, “neither from Dutocq nor from any one else.”

“Don’t feel uneasy, Rabourdin,” said his Excellency, kindly, but making a movement to get away.

Rabourdin came forward respectfully, and the minister could not evade him.

“Will your Excellency permit me to see you for a moment in private?” he said, with a mysterious glance.

The minister looked at the clock and went towards the window, whither the poor man followed him.

“When may I have the honor of submitting the matter of which I spoke to your Excellency? I desire to fully explain the plan of administration to which the paper that was taken belongs – ”

“Plan of administration!” exclaimed the minister, frowning, and hurriedly interrupting him. “If you have anything of that kind to communicate you must wait for the regular day when we do business together. I ought to be at the Council now; and I have an answer to make to the Chamber on that point which the opposition raised before the session ended yesterday. Your day is Wednesday next; I could not work yesterday, for I had other things to attend to; political matters are apt to interfere with purely administrative ones.”

“I place my honor with all confidence in your Excellency’s hands,” said Rabourdin gravely, “and I entreat you to remember that you have not allowed me time to give you an immediate explanation of the stolen paper – ”

“Don’t be uneasy,” said des Lupeaulx, interposing between the minister and Rabourdin, whom he thus interrupted; “in another week you will probably be appointed – ”

The minister smiled as he thought of des Lupeaulx’s enthusiasm for Madame Rabourdin, and he glanced knowingly at his wife. Rabourdin saw the look, and tried to imagine its meaning; his attention was diverted for a moment, and his Excellency took advantage of the fact to make his escape.

“We will talk of all this, you and I,” said des Lupeaulx, with whom Rabourdin, much to his surprise, now found himself alone. “Don’t be angry with Dutocq; I’ll answer for his discretion.”

“Madame Rabourdin is charming,” said the minister’s wife, wishing to say the civil thing to the head of a bureau.

The children all gazed at Rabourdin with curiosity. The poor man had come there expecting some serious, even solemn, result, and he was like a great fish caught in the threads of a flimsy net; he struggled with himself.

“Madame la comtesse is very good,” he said.

“Shall I not have the pleasure of seeing Madame here some Wednesday?” said the countess. “Pray bring her; it will give me pleasure.”

“Madame Rabourdin herself receives on Wednesdays,” interrupted des Lupeaulx, who knew the empty civility of an invitation to the official Wednesdays; “but since you are so kind as to wish for her, you will soon give one of your private parties, and – ”

The countess rose with some irritation.

“You are the master of my ceremonies,” she said to des Lupeaulx, – ambiguous words, by which she expressed the annoyance she felt with the secretary for presuming to interfere with her private parties, to which she admitted only a select few. She left the room without bowing to Rabourdin, who remained alone with des Lupeaulx; the latter was twisting in his fingers the confidential letter to the minister which Rabourdin had intrusted to La Briere. Rabourdin recognized it.

“You have never really known me,” said des Lupeaulx. “Friday evening we will come to a full understanding. Just now I must go and receive callers; his Excellency saddles me with that burden when he has other matters to attend to. But I repeat, Rabourdin, don’t worry yourself; you have nothing to fear.”

Rabourdin walked slowly through the corridors, amazed and confounded by this singular turn of events. He had expected Dutocq to denounce him, and found he had not been mistaken; des Lupeaulx had certainly seen the document which judged him so severely, and yet des Lupeaulx was fawning on his judge! It was all incomprehensible. Men of upright minds are often at a loss to understand complicated intrigues, and Rabourdin was lost in a maze of conjecture without being able to discover the object of the game which the secretary was playing.

“Either he has not read the part about himself, or he loves my wife.”

Such were the two thoughts to which his mind arrived as he crossed the courtyard; for the glance he had intercepted the night before between des Lupeaulx and Celestine came back to his memory like a flash of lightning.

CHAPTER VI. THE WORMS AT WORK

Rabourdin’s bureau was during his absence a prey to the keenest excitement; for the relation between the head officials and the clerks in a government office is so regulated that, when a minister’s messenger summons the head of a bureau to his Excellency’s presence (above all at the latter’s breakfast hour), there is no end to the comments that are made. The fact that the present unusual summons followed so closely on the death of Monsieur de la Billardiere seemed to give special importance to the circumstance, which was made known to Monsieur Saillard, who came at once to confer with Baudoyer. Bixiou, who happened at the moment to be at work with the latter, left him to converse with his father-in-law and betook himself to the bureau Rabourdin, where the usual routine was of course interrupted.

Bixiou [entering]. “I thought I should find you at a white heat! Don’t you know what’s going on down below? The virtuous woman is done for! yes, done for, crushed! Terrible scene at the ministry!”

Dutocq [looking fixedly at him]. “Are you telling the truth?”

Bixiou. “Pray, who would regret it? Not you, certainly, for you will be made under-head-clerk and du Bruel head of the bureau. Monsieur Baudoyer gets the division.”

Fleury. “I’ll bet a hundred francs that Baudoyer will never be head of the division.”

Vimeux. “I’ll join in the bet; will you, Monsieur Poiret?”

Poiret. “I retire in January.”

Bixiou. “Is it possible? are we to lose the sight of those shoe-ties? What will the ministry be without you? Will nobody take up the bet on my side?”

Dutocq. “I can’t, for I know the facts. Monsieur Rabourdin is appointed. Monsieur de la Billardiere requested it of the two ministers on his death-bed, blaming himself for having taken the emoluments of an office of which Rabourdin did all the work; he felt remorse of conscience, and the ministers, to quiet him, promised to appoint Rabourdin unless higher powers intervened.”

Bixiou. “Gentlemen, are you all against me? seven to one, – for I know which side you’ll take, Monsieur Phellion. Well, I’ll bet a dinner costing five hundred francs at the Rocher de Cancale that Rabourdin does not get La Billardiere’s place. That will cost you only a hundred francs each, and I’m risking five hundred, – five to one against me! Do you take it up?” [Shouting into the next room.] “Du Bruel, what say you?”

Phellion [laying down his pen]. “Monsieur, may I ask on what you base that contingent proposal? – for contingent it is. But stay, I am wrong to call it a proposal; I should say contract. A wager constitutes a contract.”

Fleury. “No, no; you can only apply the word ‘contract’ to agreements that are recognized in the Code. Now the Code allows of no action for the recovery of a bet.”

Dutocq. “Proscribe a thing and you recognize it.”

Bixiou. “Good! my little man.”

Poiret. “Dear me!”

Fleury. “True! when one refuses to pay one’s debts, that’s recognizing them.”

Thuillier. “You would make famous lawyers.”

Poiret. “I am as curious as Monsieur Phellion to know what grounds Monsieur Bixiou has for – ”

Bixiou [shouting across the office]. “Du Bruel! Will you bet?”

Du Bruel [appearing at the door]. “Heavens and earth, gentlemen, I’m very busy; I have something very difficult to do; I’ve got to write an obituary notice of Monsieur de la Billardiere. I do beg you to be quiet; you can laugh and bet afterwards.”

Bixiou. “That’s true, du Bruel; the praise of an honest man is a very difficult thing to write. I’d rather any day draw a caricature of him.”

Du Bruel. “Do come and help me, Bixiou.”

Bixiou [following him]. “I’m willing; though I can do such things much better when eating.”

Du Bruel. “Well, we will go and dine together afterwards. But listen, this is what I have written” [reads] “‘The Church and the Monarchy are daily losing many of those who fought for them in Revolutionary times.’”

Bixiou. “Bad, very bad; why don’t you say, ‘Death carries on its ravages amongst the few surviving defenders of the monarchy and the old and faithful servants of the King, whose heart bleeds under these reiterated blows?’” [Du Bruel writes rapidly.] “‘Monsieur le Baron Flamet de la Billardiere died this morning of dropsy, caused by heart disease.’ You see, it is just as well to show there are hearts in government offices; and you ought to slip in a little flummery about the emotions of the Royalists during the Terror, – might be useful, hey! But stay, – no! the petty papers would be sure to say the emotions came more from the stomach than the heart. Better leave that out. What are you writing now?”

Du Bruel [reading]. “‘Issuing from an old parliamentary stock in which devotion to the throne was hereditary, as was also attachment to the faith of our fathers, Monsieur de la Billardiere – ‘”

Bixiou. “Better say Monsieur le Baron de la Billardiere.”

Du Bruel. “But he wasn’t baron in 1793.”

Bixiou. “No matter. Don’t you remember that under the Empire Fouche was telling an anecdote about the Convention, in which he had to quote Robespierre, and he said, ‘Robespierre called out to me, “Duc d’Otrante, go to the Hotel de Ville.”’ There’s a precedent for you!”

Du Bruel. “Let me just write that down; I can use it in a vaudeville. – But to go back to what we were saying. I don’t want to put ‘Monsieur le baron,’ because I am reserving his honors till the last, when they rained upon him.”

Bixiou. “Oh! very good; that’s theatrical, – the finale of the article.”

Du Bruel [continuing]. “‘In appointing Monsieur de la Billardiere gentleman-in-ordinary – ‘”

Bixiou. “Very ordinary!”

Du Bruel. “‘ – of the Bedchamber, the King rewarded not only the services rendered by the Provost, who knew how to harmonize the severity of his functions with the customary urbanity of the Bourbons, but the bravery of the Vendean hero, who never bent the knee to the imperial idol. He leaves a son, who inherits his loyalty and his talents.’”

Bixiou. “Don’t you think all that is a little too florid? I should tone down the poetry. ‘Imperial idol!’ ‘bent the knee!’ damn it, my dear fellow, writing vaudevilles has ruined your style; you can’t come down to pedestrial prose. I should say, ‘He belonged to the small number of those who.’ Simplify, simplify! the man himself was a simpleton.”

Du Bruel. “That’s vaudeville, if you like! You would make your fortune at the theatre, Bixiou.”

Bixiou. “What have you said about Quiberon?” [Reads over du Bruel’s shoulder.] “Oh, that won’t do! Here, this is what you must say: ‘He took upon himself, in a book recently published, the responsibility for all the blunders of the expedition to Quiberon, – thus proving the nature of his loyalty, which did not shrink from any sacrifice.’ That’s clever and witty, and exalts La Billardiere.”

Du Bruel. “At whose expense?”

Bixiou [solemn as a priest in a pulpit]. “Why, Hoche and Tallien, of course; don’t you read history?”

Du Bruel. “No. I subscribed to the Baudouin series, but I’ve never had time to open a volume; one can’t find matter for vaudevilles there.”

Phellion [at the door]. “We all want to know, Monsieur Bixiou, what made you think that the worthy and honorable Monsieur Rabourdin, who has so long done the work of this division for Monsieur de la Billardiere, – he, who is the senior head of all the bureaus, and whom, moreover, the minister summoned as soon as he heard of the departure of the late Monsieur de la Billardiere, – will not be appointed head of the division.”

Bixiou. “Papa Phellion, you know geography?”

Phellion [bridling up]. “I should say so!”

Bixiou. “And history?”

Phellion [affecting modesty]. “Possibly.”

Bixiou [looking fixedly at him]. “Your diamond pin is loose, it is coming out. Well, you may know all that, but you don’t know the human heart; you have gone no further in the geography and history of that organ than you have in the environs of the city of Paris.”

Poiret [to Vimeux]. “Environs of Paris? I thought they were talking of Monsieur Rabourdin.”

Bixiou. “About that bet? Does the entire bureau Rabourdin bet against me?”

All. “Yes.”

Bixiou. “Du Bruel, do you count in?”

Du Bruel. “Of course I do. We want Rabourdin to go up a step and make room for others.”

Bixiou. “Well, I accept the bet, – for this reason; you can hardly understand it, but I’ll tell it to you all the same. It would be right and just to appoint Monsieur Rabourdin” [looking full at Dutocq], “because, in that case, long and faithful service, honor, and talent would be recognized, appreciated, and properly rewarded. Such an appointment is in the best interests of the administration.” [Phellion, Poiret, and Thuillier listen stupidly, with the look of those who try to peer before them in the darkness.] “Well, it is just because the promotion would be so fitting, and because the man has such merit, and because the measure is so eminently wise and equitable that I bet Rabourdin will not be appointed. Yes, you’ll see, that appointment will slip up, just like the invasion from Boulogne, and the march to Russia, for the success of which a great genius has gathered together all the chances. It will fail as all good and just things do fail in this low world. I am only backing the devil’s game.”

Du Bruel. “Who do you think will be appointed?”

Bixiou. “The more I think about Baudoyer, the more sure I feel that he unites all the opposite qualities; therefore I think he will be the next head of this division.”

Dutocq. “But Monsieur des Lupeaulx, who sent for me to borrow my Charlet, told me positively that Monsieur Rabourdin was appointed, and that the little La Billardiere would be made Clerk of the Seals.”

Bixiou. “Appointed, indeed! The appointment can’t be made and signed under ten days. It will certainly not be known before New-Year’s day. There he goes now across the courtyard; look at him, and say if the virtuous Rabourdin looks like a man in the sunshine of favor. I should say he knows he’s dismissed.” [Fleury rushes to the window.] “Gentlemen, adieu; I’ll go and tell Monsieur Baudoyer that I hear from you that Rabourdin is appointed; it will make him furious, the pious creature! Then I’ll tell him of our wager, to cool him down, – a process we call at the theatre turning the Wheel of Fortune, don’t we, du Bruel? Why do I care who gets the place? simply because if Baudoyer does he will make me under-head-clerk” [goes out].

“I’ll make sure of Rabourdin’s support by forgiving him now, – I’ll get even with him later. If he hasn’t this place for the time being I should have to give up a woman who is capable of becoming a most precious instrument in the pursuit of high political fortune. She understands everything; shrinks from nothing, from no idea whatever! – and besides, I can’t know before his Excellency what new scheme of administration Rabourdin has invented. No, my dear des Lupeaulx, the thing in hand is to win all now for your Celestine. You may make as many faces as you please, Madame la comtesse, but you will invite Madame Rabourdin to your next select party.”

Des Lupeaulx was one of those men who to satisfy a passion are quite able to put away revenge in some dark corner of their minds. His course was taken; he was resolved to get Rabourdin appointed.

“I will prove to you, my dear fellow, that I deserve a good place in your galley,” thought he as he seated himself in his study and began to unfold a newspaper.

He knew so well what the ministerial organ would contain that he rarely took the trouble to read it, but on this occasion he did open it to look at the article on La Billardiere, recollecting with amusement the dilemma in which du Bruel had put him by bringing him the night before Bixiou’s amendments to the obituary. He was laughing to himself as he reread the biography of the late Comte da Fontaine, dead a few months earlier, which he had hastily substituted for that of La Billardiere, when his eyes were dazzled by the name of Baudoyer. He read with fury the article which pledged the minister, and then he rang violently for Dutocq, to send him at once to the editor. But what was his astonishment on reading the reply of the opposition paper! The situation was evidently serious. He knew the game, and he saw that the man who was shuffling his cards for him was a Greek of the first order. To dictate in this way through two opposing newspapers in one evening, and to begin the fight by forestalling the intentions of the minister was a daring game! He recognized the pen of a liberal editor, and resolved to question him that night at the opera. Dutocq appeared.

“Read that,” said des Lupeaulx, handing him over the two journals, and continuing to run his eye over others to see if Baudoyer had pulled any further wires. “Go to the office and ask who has dared to thus compromise the minister.”

“It was not Monsieur Baudoyer himself,” answered Dutocq, “for he never left the ministry yesterday. I need not go and inquire; for when I took your article to the newspaper office I met a young abbe who brought in a letter from the Grand Almoner, before which you yourself would have had to bow.”

“Dutocq, you have a grudge against Monsieur Rabourdin, and it isn’t right; for he has twice saved you from being turned out. However, we are not masters of our own feelings; we sometimes hate our benefactors. Only, remember this; if you show the slightest treachery to Rabourdin, without my permission, it will be your ruin. As to that newspaper, let the Grand Almoner subscribe as largely as we do, if he wants its services. Here we are at the end of the year; the matter of subscriptions will come up for discussion, and I shall have something to say on that head. As to La Billardiere’s place, there is only one way to settle the matter; and that is to appoint Rabourdin this very day.”

“Gentlemen,” said Dutocq, returning to the clerks’ office and addressing his colleagues. “I don’t know if Bixiou has the art of looking into futurity, but if you have not read the ministerial journal I advise you to study the article about Baudoyer; then, as Monsieur Fleury takes the opposition sheet, you can see the reply. Monsieur Rabourdin certainly has talent, but a man who in these days gives a six-thousand-franc monstrance to the Church has a devilish deal more talent than he.”

Bixiou [entering]. “What say you, gentlemen, to the First Epistle to the Corinthians in our pious ministerial journal, and the reply Epistle to the Ministers in the opposition sheet? How does Monsieur Rabourdin feel now, du Bruel?”

Du Bruel [rushing in]. “I don’t know.” [He drags Bixiou back into his cabinet, and says in a low voice] “My good fellow, your way of helping people is like that of the hangman who jumps upon a victim’s shoulders to break his neck. You got me into a scrape with des Lupeaulx, which my folly in ever trusting you richly deserved. A fine thing indeed, that article on La Billardiere. I sha’n’t forget the trick! Why, the very first sentence was as good as telling the King he was superannuated and it was time for him to die. And as to that Quiberon bit, it said plainly that the King was a – What a fool I was!”

Bixiou [laughing]. “Bless my heart! are you getting angry? Can’t a fellow joke any more?”

Du Bruel. “Joke! joke indeed. When you want to be made head-clerk somebody shall joke with you, my dear fellow.”

Bixiou [in a bullying tone]. “Angry, are we?”

Du Bruel. “Yes!”

Bixiou [dryly]. “So much the worse for you.”

Du Bruel [uneasy]. “You wouldn’t pardon such a thing yourself, I know.”

Bixiou [in a wheedling tone]. “To a friend? indeed I would.” [They hear Fleury’s voice.] “There’s Fleury cursing Baudoyer. Hey, how well the thing has been managed! Baudoyer will get the appointment.” [Confidentially] “After all, so much the better. Du Bruel, just keep your eye on the consequences. Rabourdin would be a mean-spirited creature to stay under Baudoyer; he will send in his registration, and that will give us two places. You can be head of the bureau and take me for under-head-clerk. We will make vaudevilles together, and I’ll fag at your work in the office.”

Du Bruel [smiling]. “Dear me, I never thought of that. Poor Rabourdin! I shall be sorry for him, though.”

Bixiou. “That shows how much you love him!” [Changing his tone] “Ah, well, I don’t pity him any longer. He’s rich; his wife gives parties and doesn’t ask me, – me, who go everywhere! Well, good-bye, my dear fellow, good-bye, and don’t owe me a grudge!” [He goes out through the clerks’ office.] “Adieu, gentlemen; didn’t I tell you yesterday that a man who has nothing but virtues and talents will always be poor, even though he has a pretty wife?”

Henry. “You are so rich, you!”

Bixiou. “Not bad, my Cincinnatus! But you’ll give me that dinner at the Rocher de Cancale.”

Poiret. “It is absolutely impossible for me to understand Monsieur Bixiou.”

Phellion [with an elegaic air]. “Monsieur Rabourdin so seldom reads the newspapers that it might perhaps be serviceable to deprive ourselves momentarily by taking them in to him.” [Fleury hands over his paper, Vimeux the office sheet, and Phellion departs with them.]

At that moment des Lupeaulx, coming leisurely downstairs to breakfast with the minister, was asking himself whether, before playing a trump card for the husband, it might not be prudent to probe the wife’s heart and make sure of a reward for his devotion. He was feeling about for the small amount of heart that he possessed, when, at a turn of the staircase, he encountered his lawyer, who said to him, smiling, “Just a word, Monseigneur,” in the tone of familiarity assumed by men who know they are indispensable.

“What is it, my dear Desroches?” exclaimed the politician. “Has anything happened?”

“I have come to tell you that all your notes and debts have been brought up by Gobseck and Gigonnet, under the name of a certain Samanon.”

“Men whom I helped to make their millions!”

“Listen,” whispered the lawyer. “Gigonnet (really named Bidault) is the uncle of Saillard, your cashier; and Saillard is father-in-law to a certain Baudoyer, who thinks he has a right to the vacant place in your ministry. Don’t you think I have done right to come and tell you?”

“Thank you,” said des Lupeaulx, nodding to the lawyer with a shrewd look.

“One stroke of your pen will buy them off,” said Desroches, leaving him.

“What an immense sacrifice!” muttered des Lupeaulx. “It would be impossible to explain it to a woman,” thought he. “Is Celestine worth more than the clearing off of my debts? – that is the question. I’ll go and see her this morning.”

So the beautiful Madame Rabourdin was to be, within an hour, the arbiter of her husband’s fate, and no power on earth could warn her of the importance of her replies, or give her the least hint to guard her conduct and compose her voice. Moreover, in addition to her mischances, she believed herself certain of success, never dreaming that Rabourdin was undermined in all directions by the secret sapping of the mollusks.

“Well, Monseigneur,” said des Lupeaulx, entering the little salon where they breakfasted, “have you seen the articles on Baudoyer?”

“For God’s sake, my dear friend,” replied the minister, “don’t talk of those appointments just now; let me have an hour’s peace! They cracked my ears last night with that monstrance. The only way to save Rabourdin is to bring his appointment before the Council, unless I submit to having my hand forced. It is enough to disgust a man with the public service. I must purchase the right to keep that excellent Rabourdin by promoting a certain Colleville!”

“Why not make over the management of this pretty little comedy to me, and rid yourself of the worry of it? I’ll amuse you every morning with an account of the game of chess I should play with the Grand Almoner,” said des Lupeaulx.

“Very good,” said the minister, “settle it with the head examiner. But you know perfectly well that nothing is more likely to strike the king’s mind than just those reasons the opposition journal has chosen to put forth. Good heavens! fancy managing a ministry with such men as Baudoyer under me!”

“An imbecile bigot,” said des Lupeaulx, “and as utterly incapable as – ”

“ – as La Billardiere,” added the minister.

“But La Billardiere had the manners of a gentleman-in-ordinary,” replied des Lupeaulx. “Madame,” he continued, addressing the countess, “it is now an absolute necessity to invite Madame Rabourdin to your next private party. I must assure you she is the intimate friend of Madame de Camps; they were at the Opera together last night. I first met her at the hotel Firmiani. Besides, you will see that she is not of a kind to compromise a salon.”

“Invite Madame Rabourdin, my dear,” said the minister, “and pray let us talk of something else.”

CHAPTER VII. SCENES FROM DOMESTIC LIFE

Parisian households are literally eaten up with the desire to be in keeping with the luxury that surrounds them on all sides, and few there are who have the wisdom to let their external situation conform to their internal revenue. But this vice may perhaps denote a truly French patriotism, which seeks to maintain the supremacy of the nation in the matter of dress. France reigns through clothes over the whole of Europe; and every one must feel the importance of retaining a commercial sceptre that makes fashion in France what the navy is to England. This patriotic ardor which leads a nation to sacrifice everything to appearances – to the “paroistre,” as d’Aubigne said in the days of Henri IV. – is the cause of those vast secret labors which employ the whole of a Parisian woman’s morning, when she wishes, as Madame Rabourdin wished, to keep up on twelve thousand francs a year the style that many a family with thirty thousand does not indulge in. Consequently, every Friday, – the day of her dinner parties, – Madame Rabourdin helped the chambermaid to do the rooms; for the cook went early to market, and the man-servant was cleaning the silver, folding the napkins, and polishing the glasses. The ill-advised individual who might happen, through an oversight of the porter, to enter Madame Rabourdin’s establishment about eleven o’clock in the morning would have found her in the midst of a disorder the reverse of picturesque, wrapped in a dressing-gown, her hair ill-dressed, and her feet in old slippers, attending to the lamps, arranging the flowers, or cooking in haste an extremely unpoetic breakfast. The visitor to whom the mysteries of Parisian life were unknown would certainly have learned for the rest of his life not to set foot in these greenrooms at the wrong moment; a woman caught in her matin mysteries would ever after point him out as a man capable of the blackest crimes; or she would talk of his stupidity and indiscretion in a manner to ruin him. The true Parisian woman, indulgent to all curiosity that she can put to profit, is implacable to that which makes her lose her prestige. Such a domiciliary invasion may be called, not only (as they say in police reports) an attack on privacy, but a burglary, a robbery of all that is most precious, namely, CREDIT. A woman is quite willing to let herself be surprised half-dressed, with her hair about her shoulders. If her hair is all her own she scores one; but she will never allow herself to be seen “doing” her own rooms, or she loses her pariostre, – that precious /seeming-to-be/!

Madame Rabourdin was in full tide of preparation for her Friday dinner, standing in the midst of provisions the cook had just fished from the vast ocean of the markets, when Monsieur des Lupeaulx made his way stealthily in. The general-secretary was certainly the last man Madame Rabourdin expected to see, and so, when she heard his boots creaking in the ante-chamber, she exclaimed, impatiently, “The hair-dresser already!” – an exclamation as little agreeable to des Lupeaulx as the sight of des Lupeaulx was agreeable to her. She immediately escaped into her bedroom, where chaos reigned; a jumble of furniture to be put out of sight, with other heterogeneous articles of more or rather less elegance, – a domestic carnival, in short. The bold des Lupeaulx followed the handsome figure, so piquant did she seem to him in her dishabille. There is something indescribably alluring to the eye in a portion of flesh seen through an hiatus in the undergarment, more attractive far than when it rises gracefully above the circular curve of the velvet bodice, to the vanishing line of the prettiest swan’s-neck that ever lover kissed before a ball. When the eye dwells on a woman in full dress making exhibition of her magnificent white shoulders, do we not fancy that we see the elegant dessert of a grand dinner? But the glance that glides through the disarray of muslins rumpled in sleep enjoys, as it were, a feast of stolen fruit glowing between the leaves on a garden wall.

“Stop! wait!” cried the pretty Parisian, bolting the door of the disordered room.

She rang for Therese, called for her daughter, the cook, and the man-servant, wishing she possessed the whistle of the machinist at the Opera. Her call, however, answered the same purpose. In a moment, another phenomenon! the salon assumed a piquant morning look, quite in keeping with the becoming toilet hastily got together by the fugitive; we say it to her glory, for she was evidently a clever woman, in this at least.

“You!” she said, coming forward, “at this hour? What has happened?”

“Very serious things,” answered des Lupeaulx. “You and I must understand each other now.”

Celestine looked at the man behind his glasses, and understood the matter.

“My principle vice,” she said, “is oddity. For instance, I do not mix up affections with politics; let us talk politics, – business, if you will, – the rest can come later. However, it is not really oddity nor a whim that forbids me to mingle ill-assorted colors and put together things that have no affinity, and compels me to avoid discords; it is my natural instinct as an artist. We women have politics of our own.”

Already the tones of her voice and the charm of her manners were producing their effect on the secretary and metamorphosing his roughness into sentimental courtesy; she had recalled him to his obligations as a lover. A clever pretty woman makes an atmosphere about her in which the nerves relax and the feelings soften.

“You are ignorant of what is happening,” said des Lupeaulx, harshly, for he still thought it best to make a show of harshness. “Read that.”

He gave the two newspapers to the graceful woman, having drawn a line in red ink round each of the famous articles.

“Good heavens!” she exclaimed, “but this is dreadful! Who is this Baudoyer?”

“A donkey,” answered des Lupeaulx; “but, as you see, he uses means, – he gives monstrances; he succeeds, thanks to some clever hand that pulls the wires.”

The thought of her debts crossed Madame Rabourdin’s mind and blurred her sight, as if two lightning flashes had blinded her eyes at the same moment; her ears hummed under the pressure of the blood that began to beat in her arteries; she remained for a moment quite bewildered, gazing at a window which she did not see.

“But are you faithful to us?” she said at last, with a winning glance at des Lupeaulx, as if to attach him to her.

“That is as it may be,” he replied, answering her glance with an interrogative look which made the poor woman blush.

“If you demand caution-money you may lose all,” she said, laughing; “I thought you more magnanimous than you are. And you, you thought me less a person than I am, – a sort of school-girl.”

“You have misunderstood me,” he said, with a covert smile; “I meant that I could not assist a man who plays against me just as l’Etourdi played against Mascarille.”

“What can you mean?”

“This will prove to you whether I am magnanimous or not.”

He gave Madame Rabourdin the memorandum stolen by Dutocq, pointing out to her the passage in which her husband had so ably analyzed him.

“Read that.”

Celestine recognized the handwriting, read the paper, and turned pale under the blow.

“All the ministries, the whole service is treated in the same way,” said des Lupeaulx.

“Happily,” she said, “you alone possess this document. I cannot explain it, even to myself.”

“The man who stole it is not such a fool as to let me have it without keeping a copy for himself; he is too great a liar to admit it, and too clever in his business to give it up. I did not even ask him for it.”

“Who is he?”

“Your chief clerk.”

“Dutocq! People are always punished through their kindnesses! But,” she added, “he is only a dog who wants a bone.”

“Do you know what the other side offer me, poor devil of a general-secretary?”

“What?”

“I owe thirty-thousand and odd miserable francs, – you will despise me because it isn’t more, but here, I grant you, I am significant. Well, Baudoyer’s uncle has bought up my debts, and is, doubtless, ready to give me a receipt for them if Baudoyer is appointed.”

“But all that is monstrous.”

“Not at all; it is monarchical and religious, for the Grand Almoner is concerned in it. Baudoyer himself must appoint Colleville in return for ecclesiastical assistance.”

“What shall you do?”

“What will you bid me do?” he said, with charming grace, holding out his hand.

Celestine no longer thought him ugly, nor old, nor white and chilling as a hoar-frost, nor indeed anything that was odious and offensive, but she did not give him her hand. At night, in her salon, she would have let him take it a hundred times, but here, alone and in the morning, the action seemed too like a promise that might lead her far.

“And they say that statesmen have no hearts!” she cried enthusiastically, trying to hide the harshness of her refusal under the grace of her words. “The thought used to terrify me,” she added, assuming an innocent, ingenuous air.

“What a calumny!” cried des Lupeaulx. “Only this week one of the stiffest of diplomatists, a man who has been in the service ever since he came to manhood, has married the daughter of an actress, and has introduced her at the most iron-bound court in Europe as to quarterings of nobility.”

“You will continue to support us?”

“I am to draw up your husband’s appointment – But no cheating, remember.”

She gave him her hand to kiss, and tapped him on the cheek as she did so. “You are mine!” she said.

Des Lupeaulx admired the expression.

[That night, at the Opera, the old coxcomb related the incident as follows: “A woman who did not want to tell a man she would be his, – an acknowledgment a well-bred woman never allows herself to make, – changed the words into ‘You are mine.’ Don’t you think the evasion charming?”]

“But you must be my ally,” he answered. “Now listen, your husband has spoken to the minister of a plan for the reform of the administration; the paper I have shown you is a part of that plan. I want to know what it is. Find out, and tell me to-night.”

“I will,” she answered, wholly unaware of the important nature of the errand which brought des Lupeaulx to the house that morning.

“Madame, the hair-dresser.”

“At last!” thought Celestine. “I don’t see how I should have got out of it if he had delayed much longer.”

“You do not know to what lengths my devotion can go,” said des Lupeaulx, rising. “You shall be invited to the first select party given by his Excellency’s wife.”

“Ah, you are an angel!” she cried. “And I see now how much you love me; you love me intelligently.”

“To-night, dear child,” he said, “I shall find out at the Opera what journalists are conspiring for Baudoyer, and we will measure swords together.”

“Yes, but you must dine with us, will you not? I have taken pains to get the things you like best – ”

“All that is so like love,” said des Lupeaulx to himself as he went downstairs, “that I am willing to be deceived in that way for a long time. Well, if she IS tricking me I shall know it. I’ll set the cleverest of all traps before the appointment is fairly signed, and I’ll read her heart. Ah! my little cats, I know you! for, after all, women are just what we men are. Twenty-eight years old, virtuous, and living here in the rue Duphot! – a rare piece of luck and worth cultivating,” thought the elderly butterfly as he fluttered down the staircase.

“Good heavens! that man, without his glasses, must look funny enough in a dressing-gown!” thought Celestine, “but the harpoon is in his back and he’ll tow me where I want to go; I am sure now of that invitation. He has played his part in my comedy.”

When, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Rabourdin came home to dress for dinner, his wife presided at his toilet and presently laid before him the fatal memorandum which, like the slipper in the Arabian Nights, the luckless man was fated to meet at every turn.

“Who gave you that?” he asked, thunderstruck.

“Monsieur des Lupeaulx.”

“So he has been here!” cried Rabourdin, with a look which would certainly have made a guilty woman turn pale, but which Celestine received with unruffled brow and a laughing eye.

“And he is coming back to dinner,” she said. “Why that startled air?”

“My dear,” replied Rabourdin, “I have mortally offended des Lupeaulx; such men never forgive, and yet he fawns upon me! Do you think I don’t see why?”

“The man seems to me,” she said, “to have good taste; you can’t expect me to blame him. I really don’t know anything more flattering to a woman than to please a worn-out palate. After – ”

“A truce to nonsense, Celestine. Spare a much-tried man. I cannot get an audience of the minister, and my honor is at stake.”

“Good heavens, no! Dutocq can have the promise of a good place as soon as you are named head of the division.”

“Ah! I see what you are about, dear child,” said Rabourdin; “but the game you are playing is just as dishonorable as the real thing that is going on around us. A lie is a lie, and an honest woman – ”

“Let me use the weapons employed against us.”

“Celestine, the more that man des Lupeaulx feels he is foolishly caught in a trap, the more bitter he will be against me.”

“What if I get him dismissed altogether?”

Rabourdin looked at his wife in amazement.

“I am thinking only of your advancement; it was high time, my poor husband,” continued Celestine. “But you are mistaking the dog for the game,” she added, after a pause. “In a few days des Lupeaulx will have accomplished all that I want of him. While you are trying to speak to the minister, and before you can even see him on business, I shall have seen him and spoken with him. You are worn out in trying to bring that plan of your brain to birth, – a plan which you have been hiding from me; but you will find that in three months your wife has accomplished more than you have done in six years. Come, tell me this fine scheme of yours.”

Rabourdin, continuing to shave, cautioned his wife not to say a word about his work, and after assuring her that to confide a single idea to des Lupeaulx would be to put the cat near the milk-jug, he began an explanation of his labors.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before, Rabourdin?” said Celestine, cutting her husband short at his fifth sentence. “You might have saved yourself a world of trouble. I can understand that a man should be blinded by an idea for a moment, but to nurse it up for six or seven years, that’s a thing I cannot comprehend! You want to reduce the budget, – a vulgar and commonplace idea! The budget ought, on the contrary, to reach two hundred millions. Then, indeed, France would be great. If you want a new system let it be one of loans, as Monsieur de Nucingen keeps saying. The poorest of all treasuries is the one with a surplus that it never uses; the mission of a minister of finance is to fling gold out of the windows. It will come back to him through the cellars; and you, you want to hoard it! The thing to do is to increase the offices and all government employments, instead of reducing them! So far from lessening the public debt, you ought to increase the creditors. If the Bourbons want to reign in peace, let them seek creditors in the towns and villages, and place their loans there; above all, they ought not to let foreigners draw interest away from France; some day an alien nation might ask us for the capital. Whereas if capital and interest are held only in France, neither France nor credit can perish. That’s what saved England. Your plan is the tradesman’s plan. An ambitious public man should produce some bold scheme, – he should make himself another Law, without Law’s fatal ill-luck; he ought to exhibit the power of credit, and show that we should reduce, not principal, but interest, as they do in England.”

“Come, come, Celestine,” said Rabourdin; “mix up ideas as much as you please, and make fun of them, – I’m accustomed to that; but don’t criticise a work of which you know nothing as yet.”

“Do I need,” she asked, “to know a scheme the essence of which is to govern France with a civil service of six thousand men instead of twenty thousand? My dear friend, even allowing it were the plan of a man of genius, a king of France who attempted to carry it out would get himself dethroned. You can keep down a feudal aristocracy by levelling a few heads, but you can’t subdue a hydra with thousands. And is it with the present ministers – between ourselves, a wretched crew – that you expect to carry out your reform? No, no; change the monetary system if you will, but do not meddle with men, with little men; they cry out too much, whereas gold is dumb.”

“But, Celestine, if you will talk, and put wit before argument, we shall never understand each other.”

“Understand! I understand what that paper, in which you have analyzed the capacities of the men in office, will lead to,” she replied, paying no attention to what her husband said. “Good heavens! you have sharpened the axe to cut off your own head. Holy Virgin! why didn’t you consult me? I could have at least prevented you from committing anything to writing, or, at any rate, if you insisted on putting it to paper, I would have written it down myself, and it should never have left this house. Good God! to think that he never told me! That’s what men are! capable of sleeping with the wife of their bosom for seven years, and keeping a secret from her! Hiding their thoughts from a poor woman for seven years! – doubting her devotion!”

“But,” cried Rabourdin, provoked, “for eleven years and more I have been unable to discuss anything with you because you insist on cutting me short and substituting your ideas for mine. You know nothing at all about my scheme.”

“Nothing! I know all.”

“Then tell it to me!” cried Rabourdin, angry for the first time since his marriage.

“There! it is half-past six o’clock; finish shaving and dress at once,” she cried hastily, after the fashion of women when pressed on a point they are not ready to talk of. “I must go; we’ll adjourn the discussion, for I don’t want to be nervous on a reception-day. Good heavens! the poor soul!” she thought, as she left the room, “it /is/ hard to be in labor for seven years and bring forth a dead child! And not trust his wife!”

She went back into the room.

“If you had listened to me you would never had interceded to keep your chief clerk; he stole that abominable paper, and has, no doubt, kept a fac-simile of it. Adieu, man of genius!”

Then she noticed the almost tragic expression of her husband’s grief; she felt she had gone too far, and ran to him, seized him just as he was, all lathered with soap-suds, and kissed him tenderly.

“Dear Xavier, don’t be vexed,” she said. “To-night, after the people are gone, we will study your plan; you shall speak at your ease, – I will listen just as long as you wish me to. Isn’t that nice of me? What do I want better than to be the wife of Mohammed?”

She began to laugh; and Rabourdin laughed too, for the soapsuds were clinging to Celestine’s lips, and her voice had the tones of the purest and most steadfast affection.

“Go and dress, dear child; and above all, don’t say a word of this to des Lupeaulx. Swear you will not. That is the only punishment that I impose – ”

“/Impose/!” she cried. “Then I won’t swear anything.”

“Come, come, Celestine, I said in jest a really serious thing.”

“To-night,” she said, “I mean your general-secretary to know whom I am really intending to attack; he has given me the means.”

“Attack whom?”

“The minister,” she answered, drawing himself up. “We are to be invited to his wife’s private parties.”

In spite of his Celestine’s loving caresses, Rabourdin, as he finished dressing, could not prevent certain painful thoughts from clouding his brow.

“I am quite sure you will think of me to-morrow,” he said, alluding to the appointment.

“There are so few high functionaries who have agreeable wives,” remarked his Excellency on re-entering the room, “that I am very well satisfied with our new acquisition.”

“Don’t you think her a little overpowering?” said des Lupeaulx with a piqued air.

The women present all exchanged expressive glances; the rivalry between the minister and his secretary amused them and instigated one of those pretty little comedies which Parisian women play so well. They excited and led on his Excellency and des Lupeaulx by a series of comments on Madame Rabourdin: one thought her too studied in manner, too eager to appear clever; another compared the graces of the middle classes with the manners of high life, while des Lupeaulx defended his pretended mistress as we all defend an enemy in society.

“Do her justice, ladies,” he said; “is it not extraordinary that the daughter of an auctioneer should appear as well as she does? See where she came from, and what she is. She will end in the Tuileries; that is what she intends, – she told me so.”

“Suppose she is the daughter of an auctioneer,” said the Comtesse Feraud, smiling, “that will not hinder her husband’s rise to power.”

“Not in these days, you mean,” said the minister’s wife, tightening her lips.

“Madame,” said his Excellency to the countess, sternly, “such sentiments and such speeches lead to revolutions; unhappily, the court and the great world do not restrain them. You would hardly believe, however, how the injudicious conduct of the aristocracy in this respect displeases certain clear-sighted personages at the palace. If I were a great lord, instead of being, as I am, a mere country gentleman who seems to be placed where he is to transact your business for you, the monarchy would not be as insecure as I now think it is. What becomes of a throne which does not bestow dignity on those who administer its government? We are far indeed from the days when a king could make men great at will, – such men as Louvois, Colbert, Richelieu, Jeannin, Villeroy, Sully, – Sully, in his origin, was no greater than I. I speak to you thus because we are here in private among ourselves. I should be very paltry indeed if I were personally offended by such speeches. After all, it is for us and not for others to make us great.”

“You are appointed, dear,” cried Celestine, pressing her husband’s hand as they drove away. “If it had not been for des Lupeaulx I should have explained your scheme to his Excellency. But I will do it next Tuesday, and it will help the further matter of making you Master of petitions.”

In the life of every woman there comes a day when she shines in all her glory; a day which gives her an unfading recollection to which she recurs with happiness all her life. As Madame Rabourdin took off one by one the ornaments of her apparel, she thought over the events of this evening, and marked the day among the triumphs and glories of her life, – all her beauties had been seen and envied, she had been praised and flattered by the minister’s wife, delighted thus to make the other women jealous of her; but, above all, her grace and vanities had shone to the profit of conjugal love. Her husband was appointed.

“Did you think I looked well to-night?” she said to him, joyously.

At the same instant Mitral, waiting at the Cafe Themis, saw the two usurers returning, but was unable to perceive the slightest indications of the result on their impassible faces.

“What of it?” he said, when they were all seated at table.

“Same as ever,” replied Gigonnet, rubbing his hands, “victory with gold.”

“True,” said Gobseck.

Mitral took a cabriolet and went straight to the Saillards and Baudoyers, who were still playing boston at a late hour. No one was present but the Abbe Gaudron. Falleix, half-dead with the fatigue of his journey, had gone to bed.

“You will be appointed, nephew,” said Mitral; “and there’s a surprise in store for you.”

“What is it?” asked Saillard.

“The cross of the Legion of honor?” cried Mitral.

“God protects those who guard his altars,” said Gaudron.

Thus the Te Deum was sung with equal joy and confidence in both camps.

CHAPTER VIII. FORWARD, MOLLUSKS!

The next day, Wednesday, Monsieur Rabourdin was to transact business with the minister, for he had filled the late La Billardiere’s place since the beginning of the latter’s illness. On such days the clerks came punctually, the servants were specially attentive, there was always a certain excitement in the offices on these signing-days, – and why, nobody ever knew. On this occasion the three servants were at their post, flattering themselves they should get a few fees; for a rumor of Rabourdin’s nomination had spread through the ministry the night before, thanks to Dutocq. Uncle Antoine and Laurent had donned their full uniform, when, at a quarter to eight, des Lupeaulx’s servant came in with a letter, which he begged Antoine to give secretly to Dutocq, saying that the general-secretary had ordered him to deliver it without fail at Monsieur Dutocq’s house by seven o’clock.

“I’m sure I don’t know how it happened,” he said, “but I overslept myself. I’ve only just waked up, and he’d play the devil’s tattoo on me if he knew the letter hadn’t gone. I know a famous secret, Antoine; but don’t say anything about it to the clerks if I tell you; promise? He would send me off if he knew I had said a single word; he told me so.”

“What’s inside the letter?” asked Antoine, eying it.

“Nothing; I looked this way – see.”

He made the letter gape open, and showed Antoine that there was nothing but blank paper to be seen.

“This is going to be a great day for you, Laurent,” went on the secretary’s man. “You are to have a new director. Economy must be the order of the day, for they are going to unite the two divisions under one director – you fellows will have to look out!”

“Yes, nine clerks are put on the retired list,” said Dutocq, who came in at the moment; “how did you hear that?”

Antoine gave him the letter, and he had no sooner opened it than he rushed headlong downstairs in the direction of the secretary’s office.

The bureaus Rabourdin and Baudoyer, after idling and gossiping since the death of Monsieur de la Billardiere, were now recovering their usual official look and the dolce far niente habits of a government office. Nevertheless, the approaching end of the year did cause rather more application among the clerks, just as porters and servants become at that season more unctuously civil. They all came punctually, for one thing; more remained after four o’clock than was usual at other times. It was not forgotten that fees and gratuities depend on the last impressions made upon the minds of masters. The news of the union of the two divisions, that of La Billardiere and that of Clergeot, under one director, had spread through the various offices. The number of the clerks to be retired was known, but all were in ignorance of the names. It was taken for granted that Poiret would not be replaced, and that would be a retrenchment. Little La Billardiere had already departed. Two new supernumeraries had made their appearance, and, alarming circumstance! they were both sons of deputies. The news told about in the offices the night before, just as the clerks were dispersing, agitated all minds, and for the first half-hour after arrival in the morning they stood around the stoves and talked it over. But earlier than that, Dutocq, as we have seen, had rushed to des Lupeaulx on receiving his note, and found him dressing. Without laying down his razor, the general-secretary cast upon his subordinate the glance of a general issuing an order.

“Are we alone?” he asked.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Very good. March on Rabourdin; forward! steady! Of course you kept a copy of that paper?”

“Yes.”

“You understand me? Inde iroe! There must be a general hue and cry raised against him. Find some way to start a clamor – ”

“I could get a man to make a caricature, but I haven’t five hundred francs to pay for it.”

“Who would make it?”

“Bixou.”

“He shall have a thousand and be under-head-clerk to Colleville, who will arrange with them; tell him so.”

“But he wouldn’t believe it on nothing more than my word.”

“Are you trying to make me compromise myself? Either do the thing or let it alone; do you hear me?”

“If Monsieur Baudoyer were director – ”

“Well, he will be. Go now, and make haste; you have no time to lose. Go down the back-stairs; I don’t want people to know you have just seen me.”

While Dutocq was returning to the clerks’ office and asking himself how he could best incite a clamor against his chief without compromising himself, Bixiou rushed to the Rabourdin office for a word of greeting. Believing that he had lost his bet the incorrigible joker thought it amusing to pretend that he had won it.

Bixiou [mimicking Phellion’s voice]. “Gentlemen, I salute you with a collective how d’ye do, and I appoint Sunday next for the dinner at the Rocher de Cancale. But a serious question presents itself. Is that dinner to include the clerks who are dismissed?”

Poiret. “And those who retire?”

Bixiou. “Not that I care, for it isn’t I who pay.” [General stupefaction.] “Baudoyer is appointed. I think I already hear him calling Laurent” [mimicking Baudoyer], “Laurent! lock up my hair-shirt, and my scourge.” [They all roar with laughter.] “Yes, yes, he laughs well who laughs last. Gentlemen, there’s a great deal in that anagram of Colleville’s. ‘Xavier Rabourdin, chef de bureau – D’abord reva bureaux, e-u fin riche.’ If I were named ‘Charles X., par la grace de Dieu roi de France et de Navarre,’ I should tremble in my shoes at the fate those letters anagrammatize.”

Thuillier. “Look here! are you making fun?”

Bixiou. “No, I am not. Rabourdin resigns in a rage at finding Baudoyer appointed director.”

Vimeux [entering.] “Nonsense, no such thing! Antoine (to whom I have just been paying forty francs that I owed him) tells me that Monsieur and Madame Rabourdin were at the minister’s private party last night and stayed till midnight. His Excellency escorted Madame Rabourdin to the staircase. It seems she was divinely dressed. In short, it is quite certain that Rabourdin is to be director. Riffe, the secretary’s copying clerk, told me he sat up all the night before to draw the papers; it is no longer a secret. Monsieur Clergeot is retired. After thirty years’ service that’s no misfortune. Monsieur Cochlin, who is rich – ”

Bixiou. “By cochineal.”

Vimeux. “Yes, cochineal; he’s a partner in the house of Matifat, rue des Lombards. Well, he is retired; so is Poiret. Neither is to be replaced. So much is certain; the rest is all conjecture. The appointment of Monsieur Rabourdin is to be announced this morning; they are afraid of intrigues.”

Bixiou. “What intrigues?”

Fleury. “Baudoyer’s, confound him! The priests uphold him; here’s another article in the liberal journal, – only half a dozen lines, but they are queer” [reads]:

“Certain persons spoke last night in the lobby of the Opera-house of the return of Monsieur de Chateaubriand to the ministry, basing their opinion on the choice made of Monsieur Rabourdin (the protege of friends of the noble viscount) to fill the office for which Monsieur Baudoyer was first selected. The clerical party is not likely to withdraw unless in deference to the great writer.

“Blackguards!”

Dutocq [entering, having heard the whole discussion]. “Blackguards! Who? Rabourdin? Then you know the news?”

Fleury [rolling his eyes savagely]. “Rabourdin a blackguard! Are you mad, Dutocq? do you want a ball in your brains to give them weight?”

Dutocq. “I said nothing against Monsieur Rabourdin; only it has just been told to me in confidence that he has written a paper denouncing all the clerks and officials, and full of facts about their lives; in short, the reason why his friends support him is because he has written this paper against the administration, in which we are all exposed – ”

Phellion [in a loud voice]. “Monsieur Rabourdin is incapable of – ”

Bixiou. “Very proper in you to say so. Tell me, Dutocq” [they whisper together and then go into the corridor].

Bixiou. “What has happened?”

Dutocq. “Do you remember what I said to you about that caricature?”

Bixiou. “Yes, what then?”

Dutocq. “Make it, and you shall be under-head-clerk with a famous fee. The fact is, my dear fellow, there’s dissension among the powers that be. The minister is pledged to Rabourdin, but if he doesn’t appoint Baudoyer he offends the priests and their party. You see, the King, the Dauphin and the Dauphine, the clergy, and lastly the court, all want Baudoyer; the minister wants Rabourdin.”

Bixiou. “Good!”

Dutocq. “To ease the matter off, the minister, who sees he must give way, wants to strangle the difficulty. We must find some good reason for getting rid of Rabourdin. Now somebody has lately unearthed a paper of his, exposing the present system of administration and wanting to reform it; and that paper is going the rounds, – at least, this is how I understand the matter. Make the drawing we talked of; in so doing you’ll play the game of all the big people, and help the minister, the court, the clergy, – in short, everybody; and you’ll get your appointment. Now do you understand me?”

Bixiou. “I don’t understand how you came to know all that; perhaps you are inventing it.”

Dutocq. “Do you want me to let you see what Rabourdin wrote about you?”

Bixiou. “Yes.”

Dutocq. “Then come home with me; for I must put the document into safe keeping.”

Bixiou. “You go first alone.” [Re-enters the bureau Rabourdin.] “What Dutocq told you is really all true, word of honor! It seems that Monsieur Rabourdin has written and sent in very unflattering descriptions of the clerks whom he wants to ‘reform.’ That’s the real reason why his secret friends wish him appointed. Well, well; we live in days when nothing astonishes me” [flings his cloak about him like Talma, and declaims]: —

“Thou who has seen the fall of grand, illustrious heads,

Why thus amazed, insensate that thou art, to find a man like Rabourdin employing such means? Baudoyer is too much of a fool to know how to use them. Accept my congratulations, gentlemen; either way you are under a most illustrious chief” [goes off].

Poiret. “I shall leave this ministry without ever comprehending a single word that gentleman utters. What does he mean with his ‘heads that fall’?”

Fleury. “‘Heads that fell?’ why, think of the four sergeants of Rochelle, Ney, Berton, Caron, the brothers Faucher, and the massacres.”

Phellion. “He asserts very flippantly things that he only guesses at.”

Fleury. “Say at once that he lies; in his mouth truth itself turns to corrosion.”

Phellion. “Your language is unparliamentary and lacks the courtesy and consideration which are due to a colleague.”

Vimeux. “It seems to me that if what he says is false, the proper name for it is calumny, defamation of character; and such a slanderer deserves the thrashing.”

Fleury [getting hot]. “If the government offices are public places, the matter ought to be taken into the police-courts.”

Phellion [wishing to avert a quarrel, tries to turn the conversation]. “Gentleman, might I ask you to keep quiet? I am writing a little treatise on moral philosophy, and I am just at the heart of it.”

Fleury [interrupting]. “What are you saying about it, Monsieur Phellion?”

Phellion [reading]. “Question. – What is the soul of man?

“Answer. – A spiritual substance which thinks and reasons.”

Thuillier. “Spiritual substance! you might as well talk about immaterial stone.”

Poiret. “Don’t interrupt; let him go on.”

Phellion [continuing]. “Quest. – Whence comes the soul?

“Ans. – From God, who created it of a nature one and indivisible; the destructibility thereof is, consequently, not conceivable, and he hath said – ”

Poiret [amazed]. “God said?”

Phellion. “Yes, monsieur; tradition authorizes the statement.”

Fleury [to Poiret]. “Come, don’t interrupt, yourself.”

Phellion [resuming]. “ – and he hath said that he created it immortal; in other words, the soul can never die.

“Quest. – What are the uses of the soul?

“Ans. – To comprehend, to will, to remember; these constitute understanding, volition, memory.

“Quest. – What are the uses of the understanding?

“Ans. – To know. It is the eye of the soul.”

Fleury. “And the soul is the eye of what?”

Phellion [continuing]. “Quest. – What ought the understanding to know?

“Ans. – Truth.

“Quest. – Why does man possess volition?

“Ans. – To love good and hate evil.

“Quest. – What is good?

“Ans. – That which makes us happy.”

Vimeux. “Heavens! do you teach that to young ladies?”

Phellion. “Yes” [continuing]. “Quest. – How many kinds of good are there?”

Fleury. “Amazingly indecorous, to say the least.”

Phellion [aggrieved]. “Oh, monsieur!” [Controlling himself.] “But here’s the answer, – that’s as far as I have got” [reads]: —

“Ans. – There are two kinds of good, – eternal good and temporal good.”

Poiret [with a look of contempt]. “And does that sell for anything?”

Phellion. “I hope it will. It requires great application of mind to carry on a system of questions and answers; that is why I ask you to be quiet and let me think, for the answers – ”

Thuillier [interrupting]. “The answers might be sold separately.”

Poiret. “Is that a pun?”

Thuillier. “No; a riddle.”

Phellion. “I am sorry I interrupted you” [he dives into his office desk]. “But” [to himself] “at any rate, I have stopped their talking about Monsieur Rabourdin.”

At this moment a scene was taking place between the minister and des Lupeaulx which decided Rabourdin’s fate. The general-secretary had gone to see the minister in his private study before the breakfast-hour, to make sure that La Briere was not within hearing.

“Your Excellency is not treating me frankly – ”

“He means a quarrel,” thought the minister; “and all because his mistress coquetted with me last night. I did not think you so juvenile, my dear friend,” he said aloud.

“Friend?” said the general-secretary, “that is what I want to find out.”

The minister looked haughtily at des Lupeaulx.

“We are alone,” continued the secretary, “and we can come to an understanding. The deputy of the arrondissement in which my estate is situated – ”

“So it is really an estate!” said the minister, laughing, to hide his surprise.

“Increased by a recent purchase of two hundred thousand francs’ worth of adjacent property,” replied des Lupeaulx, carelessly. “You knew of the deputy’s approaching resignation at least ten days ago, and you did not tell me of it. You were perhaps not bound to do so, but you knew very well that I am most anxious to take my seat in the centre. Has it occurred to you that I might fling myself back on the ‘Doctrine’? – which, let me tell you, will destroy the administration and the monarchy both if you continue to allow the party of representative government to be recruited from men of talent whom you ignore. Don’t you know that in every nation there are fifty to sixty, not more, dangerous heads, whose schemes are in proportion to their ambition? The secret of knowing how to govern is to know those heads well, and either to chop them off or buy them. I don’t know how much talent I have, but I know that I have ambition; and you are committing a serious blunder when you set aside a man who wishes you well. The anointed head dazzles for the time being, but what next? – Why, a war of words; discussions will spring up once more and grow embittered, envenomed. Then, for your own sake, I advise you not to find me at the Left Centre. In spite of your prefect’s manoeuvres (instructions for which no doubt went from here confidentially) I am secure of a majority. The time has come for you and me to understand each other. After a breeze like this people sometimes become closer friends than ever. I must be made count and receive the grand cordon of the Legion of honor as a reward for my public services. However, I care less for those things just now than I do for something else in which you are more personally concerned. You have not yet appointed Rabourdin, and I have news this morning which tends to show that most persons will be better satisfied if you appoint Baudoyer.”

“Appoint Baudoyer!” echoed the minister. “Do you know him?”

“Yes,” said des Lupeaulx; “but suppose he proves incapable, as he will, you can then get rid of him by asking those who protect him to employ him elsewhere. You will thus get back an important office to give to friends; it may come in at the right moment to facilitate some compromise.”

“But I have pledged it to Rabourdin.”

“That may be; and I don’t ask you to make the change this very day. I know the danger of saying yes and no within twenty-four hours. But postpone the appointment, and don’t sign the papers till the day after to-morrow; by that time you may find it impossible to retain Rabourdin, – in fact, in all probability, he will send you his resignation – ”

“His resignation?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He is the tool of a secret power in whose interests he has carried on a system of espionage in all the ministries, and the thing has been discovered by mere accident. He has written a paper of some kind, giving short histories of all the officials. Everybody is talking of it; the clerks are furious. For heaven’s sake, don’t transact business with him to-day; let me find some means for you to avoid it. Ask an audience of the King; I am sure you will find great satisfaction there if you concede the point about Baudoyer; and you can obtain something as an equivalent. Your position will be better than ever if you are forced later to dismiss a fool whom the court party impose upon you.”

“What has made you turn against Rabourdin?”

“Would you forgive Monsieur de Chateaubriand for writing an article against the ministry? Well, read that, and see how Rabourdin has treated me in his secret document,” said des Lupeaulx, giving the paper to the minister. “He pretends to reorganize the government from beginning to end, – no doubt in the interests of some secret society of which, as yet, we know nothing. I shall continue to be his friend for the sake of watching him; by that means I may render the government such signal service that they will have to make me count; for the peerage is the only thing I really care for. I want you fully to understand that I am not seeking office or anything else that would cause me to stand in your way; I am simply aiming for the peerage, which will enable me to marry a banker’s daughter with an income of a couple of hundred thousand francs. And so, allow me to render you a few signal services which will make the King feel that I have saved the throne. I have long said that Liberalism would never offer us a pitched battle. It has given up conspiracies, Carbonaroism, and revolts with weapons; it is now sapping and mining, and the day is coming when it will be able to say, ‘Out of that and let me in!’ Do you think I have been courting Rabourdin’s wife for my own pleasure? No, but I got much information from her. So now, let us agree on two things; first, the postponement of the appointment; second, your /sincere/ support of my election. You shall find at the end of the session that I have amply repaid you.”

For all answer, the minister took the appointment papers and placed them in des Lupeaulx’s hand.

“I will go and tell Rabourdin,” added des Lupeaulx, “that you cannot transact business with him till Saturday.”

The minister replied with an assenting gesture. The secretary despatched his man with a message to Rabourdin that the minister could not work with him until Saturday, on which day the Chamber was occupied with private bills, and his Excellency had more time at his disposal.

Just at this moment Saillard, having brought the monthly stipend, was slipping his little speech into the ear of the minister’s wife, who drew herself up and answered with dignity that she did not meddle in political matters, and besides, she had heard that Monsieur Rabourdin was already appointed. Saillard, terrified, rushed up to Baudoyer’s office, where he found Dutocq, Godard, and Bixiou in a state of exasperation difficult to describe; for they were reading the terrible paper on the administration in which they were all discussed.

Bixiou [with his finger on a paragraph]. “Here /you/ are, pere Saillard. Listen” [reads]: —

“Saillard. – The office of cashier to be suppressed in all the ministries; their accounts to be kept in future at the Treasury. Saillard is rich and does not need a pension.

“Do you want to hear about your son-in-law?” [Turns over the leaves.] “Here he is” [reads]: —

“Baudoyer. – Utterly incapable. To be thanked and dismissed. Rich; does not need a pension.

“And here’s for Godard” [reads]: —

“Godard. – Should be dismissed; pension one-third of his present salary.

“In short, here we all are. Listen to what I am” [reads]: “An artist who might be employed by the civil list, at the Opera, or the Menus-Plaisirs, or the Museum. Great deal of capacity, little self-respect, no application, – a restless spirit. Ha! I’ll give you a touch of the artist, Monsieur Rabourdin!”

Saillard. “Suppress cashiers! Why, the man’s a monster?”

Bixiou. “Let us see what he says of our mysterious Desroys.” [Turns over the pages; reads.]

“Desroys. – Dangerous; because he cannot be shaken in principles that are subversive of monarchial power. He is the son of the Conventionel, and he admires the Convention. He may become a very mischievous journalist.”

Baudoyer. “The police are not worse spies!”

Godard. “I shall go the general-secretary and lay a complaint in form; we must all resign in a body if such a man as that is put over us.”

Dutocq. “Gentlemen, listen to me; let us be prudent. If you rise at once in a body, we may all be accused of rancor and revenge. No, let the thing work, let the rumor spread quietly. When the whole ministry is aroused your remonstrances will meet with general approval.”

Bixiou. “Dutocq believes in the principles of the grand air composed by the sublime Rossini for Basilio, – which goes to show, by the bye, that the great composer was also a great politician. I shall leave my card on Monsieur Rabourdin to-morrow morning, inscribed thus: ‘Bixiou; no self-respect, no application, restless mind.’”

Godard. “A good idea, gentlemen. Let us all leave our cards to-morrow on Rabourdin inscribed in the same way.”

Dutocq [leading Bixiou apart]. “Come, you’ll agree to make that caricature now, won’t you?”

Bixiou. “I see plainly, my dear fellow, that you knew all about this affair ten days ago” [looks him in the eye]. “Am I to be under-head-clerk?”

Dutocq. “On my word of honor, yes, and a thousand-franc fee beside, just as I told you. You don’t know what a service you’ll be rendering to powerful personages.”

Bixiou. “You know them?”

Dutocq. “Yes.”

Bixiou. “Well, then I want to speak with them.”

Dutocq [dryly]. “You can make the caricature or not, and you can be under-head-clerk or not, – as you please.”

Bixiou. “At any rate, let me see that thousand francs.”

Dutocq. “You shall have them when you bring the drawing.”

Bixiou. “Forward, march! that lampoon shall go from end to end of the bureaus to-morrow morning. Let us go and torment the Rabourdins.” [Then speaking to Saillard, Godard, and Baudoyer, who were talking together in a low voice.] “We are going to stir up the neighbors.” [Goes with Dutocq into the Rabourdin bureau. Fleury, Thuillier, and Vimeux are there, talking excitedly.] “What’s the matter, gentlemen? All that I told you turns out to be true; you can go and see for yourselves the work of this infamous informer; for it is in the hands of the virtuous, honest, estimable, upright, and pious Baudoyer, who is indeed utterly incapable of doing any such thing. Your chief has got every one of you under the guillotine. Go and see; follow the crowd; money returned if you are not satisfied; execution /gratis/! The appointments are postponed. All the bureaus are in arms; Rabourdin has been informed that the minister will not work with him. Come, be off; go and see for yourselves.”

They all depart except Phellion and Poiret, who are left alone. The former loved Rabourdin too well to look for proof that might injure a man he was determined not to judge; the other had only five days more to remain in the office, and cared nothing either way. Just then Sebastien came down to collect the papers for signature. He was a good deal surprised, though he did not show it, to find the office deserted.

Phellion. “My young friend” [he rose, a rare thing], “do you know what is going on? what scandals are rife about Monsieur Rabourdin whom you love, and” [bending to whisper in Sebastien’s ear] “whom I love as much as I respect him. They say he has committed the imprudence to leave a paper containing comments on the officials lying about in the office – ” [Phellion stopped short, caught the young man in his strong arms, seeing that he turned pale and was near fainting, and placed him on a chair.] “A key, Monsieur Poiret, to put down his back; have you a key?”

Poiret. “I have the key of my domicile.”

[Old Poiret junior promptly inserted the said key between Sebastien’s shoulders, while Phellion gave him some water to drink. The poor lad no sooner opened his eyes than he began to weep. He laid his head on Phellion’s desk, and all his limbs were limp as if struck by lightning; while his sobs were so heartrending, so genuine, that for the first time in his life Poiret’s feelings were stirred by the sufferings of another.]

Phellion [speaking firmly]. “Come, come, my young friend; courage! In times of trial we must show courage. You are a man. What is the matter? What has happened to distress you so terribly?”

Sebastien [sobbing]. “It is I who have ruined Monsieur Rabourdin. I left that paper lying about when I copied it. I have killed my benefactor; I shall die myself. Such a noble man! – a man who ought to be minister!”

Poiret [blowing his nose]. “Then it is true he wrote the report.”

Sebastien [still sobbing]. “But it was to – there, I was going to tell his secrets! Ah! that wretch of a Dutocq; it was he who stole the paper.”

His tears and sobs recommenced and made so much noise that Rabourdin came up to see what was the matter. He found the young fellow almost fainting in the arms of Poiret and Phellion.

Rabourdin. “What is the matter, gentlemen?”

Sebastien [struggling to his feet, and then falling on his knees before Rabourdin]. “I have ruined you, monsieur. That memorandum, – Dutocq, the monster, he must have taken it.”

Rabourdin [calmly]. “I knew that already” [he lifts Sebastien]. “You are a child, my young friend.” [Speaks to Phellion.] “Where are the other gentlemen?”

Phellion. “They have gone into Monsieur Baudoyer’s office to see a paper which it is said – ”

Rabourdin [interrupting him]. “Enough.” [Goes out, taking Sebastien with him. Poiret and Phellion look at each other in amazement, and do not know what to say.]

Poiret [to Phellion]. “Monsieur Rabourdin – ”

Phellion [to Poiret]. “Monsieur Rabourdin – ”

Poiret. “Well, I never! Monsieur Rabourdin!”

Phellion. “But did you notice how calm and dignified he was?”

Poiret [with a sly look that was more like a grimace]. “I shouldn’t be surprised if there were something under it all.”

Phellion. “A man of honor; pure and spotless.”

Poiret. “Who is?”

Phellion. “Monsieur Poiret, you think as I think about Dutocq; surely you understand me?”

Poiret [nodding his head three times and answering with a shrewd look]. “Yes.” [The other clerks return.]

Fleury. “A great shock; I still don’t believe the thing. Monsieur Rabourdin, a king among men! If such men are spies, it is enough to disgust one with virtue. I have always put Rabourdin among Plutarch’s heroes.”

Vimeux. “It is all true.”

Poiret [reflecting that he had only five days more to stay in the office]. “But, gentlemen, what do you say about the man who stole that paper, who spied upon Rabourdin?” [Dutocq left the room.]

Fleury. “I say he is a Judas Iscariot. Who is he?”

Phellion [significantly]. “He is not here at /this moment/.”

Vimeux [enlightened]. “It is Dutocq!”

Phellion. “I have no proof of it, gentlemen. While you were gone, that young man, Monsieur de la Roche, nearly fainted here. See his tears on my desk!”

Poiret. “We held him fainting in our arms. – My key, the key of my domicile! – dear, dear! it is down his back.” [Poiret goes hastily out.]

Vimeux. “The minister refused to transact business with Rabourdin to-day; and Monsieur Saillard, to whom the secretary said a few words, came to tell Monsieur Baudoyer to apply for the cross of the Legion of honor, – there is one to be granted, you know, on New-Year’s day, to all the heads of divisions. It is quite clear what it all means. Monsieur Rabourdin is sacrificed by the very persons who employed him. Bixiou says so. We were all to be turned out, except Sebastien and Phellion.”

Du Bruel [entering]. “Well, gentlemen, is it true?”

Thuillier. “To the last word.”

Du Bruel [putting his hat on again]. “Good-bye.” [Hurries out.]

Thuillier. “He may rush as much as he pleases to his Duc de Rhetore and Duc de Maufrigneuse, but Colleville is to be our under-head-clerk, that’s certain.”

Phellion. “Du Bruel always seemed to be attached to Monsieur Rabourdin.”

Poiret [returning]. “I have had a world of trouble to get back my key. That boy is crying still, and Monsieur Rabourdin has disappeared.” [Dutocq and Bixiou enter.]

Bixiou. “Ha, gentlemen! strange things are going on in your bureau. Du Bruel! I want you.” [Looks into the adjoining room.] “Gone?”

Thuillier. “Full speed.”

Bixiou. “What about Rabourdin?”

Fleury. “Distilled, evaporated, melted! Such a man, the king of men, that he – ”

Poiret [to Dutocq]. “That little Sebastien, in his trouble, said that you, Monsieur Dutocq, had taken the paper from him ten days ago.”

Bixiou [looking at Dutocq]. “You must clear yourself of /that/, my good friend.” [All the clerks look fixedly at Dutocq.]

Dutocq. “Where’s the little viper who copied it?”

Bixiou. “Copied it? How did you know he copied it? Ha! ha! it is only the diamond that cuts the diamond.” [Dutocq leaves the room.]

Poiret. “Would you listen to me, Monsieur Bixiou? I have only five days and a half to stay in this office, and I do wish that once, only once, I might have the pleasure of understanding what you mean. Do me the honor to explain what diamonds have to do with these present circumstances.”

Bixiou. “I meant papa, – for I’m willing for once to bring my intellect down to the level of yours, – that just as the diamond alone can cut the diamond, so it is only one inquisitive man who can defeat another inquisitive man.”

Fleury. “‘Inquisitive man’ stands for ‘spy.’”

Poiret. “I don’t understand.”

Bixiou. “Very well; try again some other time.”

Monsieur Rabourdin, after taking Sebastien to his room, had gone straight to the minister; but the minister was at the Chamber of Deputies. Rabourdin went at once to the Chamber, where he wrote a note to his Excellency, who was at that moment in the tribune engaged in a hot discussion. Rabourdin waited, not in the conference hall, but in the courtyard, where, in spite of the cold, he resolved to remain and intercept his Excellency as he got into his carriage. The usher of the Chamber had told him that the minister was in the thick of a controversy raised by the nineteen members of the extreme Left, and that the session was likely to be stormy. Rabourdin walked to and for in the courtyard of the palace for five mortal hours, a prey to feverish agitation. At half-past six o’clock the session broke up, and the members filed out. The minister’s chasseur came up to find the coachman.

“Hi, Jean!” he called out to him; “Monseigneur has gone with the minister of war; they are going to see the King, and after that they dine together, and we are to fetch him at ten o’clock. There’s a Council this evening.”

Rabourdin walked slowly home, in a state of despondency not difficult to imagine. It was seven o’clock, and he had barely time to dress.

“Well, you are appointed?” cried his wife, joyously, as he entered the salon.

Rabourdin raised his head with a grievous motion of distress and answered, “I fear I shall never again set foot in the ministry.”

“What?” said his wife, quivering with sudden anxiety.

“My memorandum on the officials is known in all the offices; and I have not been able to see the minister.”

Celestine’s eyes were opened to a sudden vision in which the devil, in one of his infernal flashes, showed her the meaning of her last conversation with des Lupeaulx.

“If I had behaved like a low woman,” she thought, “we should have had the place.”

She looked at Rabourdin with grief in her heart. A sad silence fell between them, and dinner was eaten in the midst of gloomy meditations.

“And it is my Wednesday,” she said at last.

“All is not lost, dear Celestine,” said Rabourdin, laying a kiss on his wife’s forehead; “perhaps to-morrow I shall be able to see the minister and explain everything. Sebastien sat up all last night to finish the writing; the papers are copied and collated; I shall place them on the minister’s desk and beg him to read them through. La Briere will help me. A man is never condemned without a hearing.”

“I am curious to see if Monsieur des Lupeaulx will come here to-night.”

“He? Of course he will come,” said Rabourdin; “there’s something of the tiger in him; he likes to lick the blood of the wounds he has given.”

“My poor husband,” said his wife, taking his hand, “I don’t see how it is that a man who could conceive so noble a reform did not also see that it ought not to be communicated to a single person. It is one of those ideas that a man should keep in his own mind, for he alone can apply them. A statesman must do in our political sphere as Napoleon did in his; he stooped, twisted, crawled. Yes, Bonaparte crawled! To be made commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy he married Barrere’s mistress. You should have waited, got yourself elected deputy, followed the politics of a party, sometimes down in the depths, at other times on the crest of the wave, and you should have taken, like Monsieur de Villele, the Italian motto ‘Col tempo,’ in other words, ‘All things are given to him who knows how to wait.’ That great orator worked for seven years to get into power; he began in 1814 by protesting against the Charter when he was the same age that you are now. Here’s your fault; you have allowed yourself to be kept subordinate, when you were born to rule.”

The entrance of the painter Schinner imposed silence on the wife and husband, but these words made the latter thoughtful.

“Dear friend,” said the painter, grasping Rabourdin’s hand, “the support of artists is a useless thing enough, but let me say under these circumstances that we are all faithful to you. I have just read the evening papers. Baudoyer is appointed director and receives the cross of the Legion of honor – ”

“I have been longer in the department, I have served twenty-four hours,” said Rabourdin with a smile.

“I know Monsieur le Comte de Serizy, the minister of State, pretty well, and if he can help you, I will go and see him,” said Schinner.

The salon soon filled with persons who knew nothing of the government proceedings. Du Bruel did not appear. Madame Rabourdin was gayer and more graceful than ever, like the charger wounded in battle, that still finds strength to carry his master from the field.

“She is very courageous,” said a few women who knew the truth, and who were charmingly attentive to her, understanding her misfortunes.

“But she certainly did a great deal to attract des Lupeaulx,” said the Baronne du Chatelet to the Vicomtesse de Fontaine.

“Do you think – ” began the vicomtesse.

“If so,” interrupted Madame de Camps, in defence of her friend, “Monsieur Rabourdin would at least have had the cross.”

About eleven o’clock des Lupeaulx appeared; and we can only describe him by saying that his spectacles were sad and his eyes joyous; the glasses, however, obscured the glances so successfully that only a physiognomist would have seen the diabolical expression which they wore. He went up to Rabourdin and pressed the hand which the latter could not avoid giving him.

Then he approached Madame Rabourdin.

“We have much to say to each other,” he remarked as he seated himself beside the beautiful woman, who received him admirably.

“Ah!” he continued, giving her a side glance, “you are grand indeed; I find you just what I expected, glorious under defeat. Do you know that it is a very rare thing to find a superior woman who answers to the expectations formed of her. So defeat doesn’t dishearten you? You are right; we shall triumph in the end,” he whispered in her ear. “Your fate is always in your own hands, – so long, I mean, as your ally is a man who adores you. We will hold counsel together.”

“But is Baudoyer appointed?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the secretary.

“Does he get the cross?”

“Not yet; but he will have it later.”

“Amazing!”

“Ah! you don’t understand political exigencies.”

During this evening, which seemed interminable to Madame Rabourdin, another scene was occurring in the place Royale, – one of those comedies which are played in seven Parisian salons whenever there is a change of ministry. The Saillards’ salon was crowded. Monsieur and Madame Transon arrived at eight o’clock; Madame Transon kissed Madame Baudoyer, nee Saillard. Monsieur Bataille, captain of the National Guard, came with his wife and the curate of Saint Paul’s.

“Monsieur Baudoyer,” said Madame Transon. “I wish to be the first to congratulate you; they have done justice to your talents. You have indeed earned your promotion.”

“Here you are, director,” said Monsieur Transon, rubbing his hands, “and the appointment is very flattering to this neighborhood.”

“And we can truly say it came to pass without any intriguing,” said the worthy Saillard. “We are none of us political intriguers; /we/ don’t go to select parties at the ministry.”

Uncle Mitral rubbed his nose and grinned as he glanced at his niece Elisabeth, the woman whose hand had pulled the wires, who was talking with Gigonnet. Falleix, honest fellow, did not know what to make of the stupid blindness of Saillard and Baudoyer. Messieurs Dutocq, Bixiou, du Bruel, Godard, and Colleville (the latter appointed head of the bureau) entered.

“What a crew!” whispered Bixiou to du Bruel. “I could make a fine caricature of them in the shapes of fishes, – dorys, flounders, sharks, and snappers, all dancing a saraband!”

“Monsieur,” said Colleville, “I come to offer you my congratulations; or rather we congratulate ourselves in having such a man placed over us; and we desire to assure you of the zeal with which we shall co-operate in your labors. Allow me to say that this event affords a signal proof to the truth of my axiom that a man’s destiny lies in the letters of his name. I may say that I knew of this appointment and of your other honors before I heard of them, for I spend the night in anagrammatizing your name as follows:” [proudly] “Isidore C. T. Baudoyer, – Director, decorated by us (his Majesty the King, of course).”

Baudoyer bowed and remarked piously that names were given in baptism.

Monsieur and Madame Baudoyer, senior, father and mother of the new director, were there to enjoy the glory of their son and daughter-in-law. Uncle Gigonnet-Bidault, who had dined at the house, had a restless, fidgety look in his eye which frightened Bixiou.

“There’s a queer one,” said the latter to du Bruel, calling his attention to Gigonnet, “who would do in a vaudeville. I wonder if he could be bought. Such an old scarecrow is just the thing for a sign over the Two Baboons. And what a coat! I did think there was nobody but Poiret who could show the like after that after ten years’ public exposure to the inclemencies of Parisian weather.”

“Baudoyer is magnificent,” said du Bruel.

“Dazzling,” answered Bixiou.

“Gentlemen,” said Baudoyer, “let me present you to my own uncle, Monsieur Mitral, and to my great-uncle through my wife, Monsieur Bidault.”

Gigonnet and Mitral gave a glance at the three clerks so penetrating, so glittering with gleams of gold, that the two scoffers were sobered at once.

“Hein?” said Bixiou, when they were safely under the arcades in the place Royale; “did you examine those uncles? – two copies of Shylock. I’ll bet their money is lent in the market at a hundred per cent per week. They lend on pawn; and sell most that they lay hold of, coats, gold lace, cheese, men, women, and children; they are a conglomeration of Arabs, Jews, Genoese, Genevese, Greeks, Lombards, and Parisians, suckled by a wolf and born of a Turkish woman.”

“I believe you,” said Godard. “Uncle Mitral used to be a sheriff’s officer.”

“That settles it,” said du Bruel.

“I’m off to see the proof of my caricature,” said Bixiou; “but I should like to study the state of things in Rabourdin’s salon to-night. You are lucky to be able to go there, du Bruel.”

“I!” said the vaudevillist, “what should I do there? My face doesn’t lend itself to condolences. And it is very vulgar in these days to go and see people who are down.”

CHAPTER IX. THE RESIGNATION

By midnight Madame Rabourdin’s salon was deserted; only two or three guests remained with des Lupeaulx and the master and mistress of the house. When Schinner and Monsieur and Madame de Camps had likewise departed, des Lupeaulx rose with a mysterious air, stood with his back to the fireplace and looked alternately at the husband and wife.

“My friends,” he said, “nothing is really lost, for the minister and I are faithful to you. Dutocq simply chose between two powers the one he thought strongest. He has served the court and the Grand Almoner; he has betrayed me. But that is in the order of things; a politician never complains of treachery. Nevertheless, Baudoyer will be dismissed as incapable in a few months; no doubt his protectors will find him a place, – in the prefecture of police, perhaps, – for the clergy will not desert him.”

From this point des Lupeaulx went on with a long tirade about the Grand Almoner and the dangers the government ran in relying upon the church and upon the Jesuits. We need not, we think, point out to the intelligent reader that the court and the Grand Almoner, to whom the liberal journals attributed an enormous influence under the administration, had little really to do with Monsieur Baudoyer’s appointment. Such petty intrigues die in the upper sphere of great self-interests. If a few words in favor of Baudoyer were obtained by the importunity of the curate of Saint-Paul’s and the Abbe Gaudron, they would have been withdrawn immediately at a suggestion from the minister. The occult power of the Congregation of Jesus (admissible certainly as confronting the bold society of the “Doctrine,” entitled “Help yourself and heaven will help you,”) was formidable only through the imaginary force conferred on it by subordinate powers who perpetually threatened each other with its evils. The liberal scandal-mongers delighted in representing the Grand Almoner and the whole Jesuitical Chapter as political, administrative, civil, and military giants. Fear creates bugbears. At this crisis Baudoyer firmly believed in the said Chapter, little aware that the only Jesuits who had put him where he now was sat by his own fireside, and in the Cafe Themis playing dominoes.

At certain epochs in history certain powers appear, to whom all evils are attributed, though at the same time their genius is denied; they form an efficient argument in the mouth of fools. Just as Monsieur de Talleyrand was supposed to hail all events of whatever kind with a bon mot, so in these days of the Restoration the clerical party had the credit of doing and undoing everything. Unfortunately, it did and undid nothing. Its influence was not wielded by a Cardinal Richelieu or a Cardinal Mazarin; it was in the hands of a species of Cardinal de Fleury, who, timid for over five years, turned bold for one day, injudiciously bold. Later on, the “Doctrine” did more, with impunity, at Saint-Merri, than Charles X. pretended to do in July, 1830. If the section on the censorship so foolishly introduced into the new charter had been omitted, journalism also would have had its Saint-Merri. The younger Branch could have legally carried out Charles X.‘s plan.

“Remain where you are, head of a bureau under Baudoyer,” went on des Lupeaulx. “Have the nerve to do this; make yourself a true politician; put ideas and generous impulses aside; attend only to your functions; don’t say a word to your new director; don’t help him with a suggestion; and do nothing yourself without his order. In three months Baudoyer will be out of the ministry, either dismissed, or stranded on some other administrative shore. They may attach him to the king’s household. Twice in my life I have been set aside as you are, and overwhelmed by an avalanche of folly; I have quietly waited and let it pass.”

“Yes,” said Rabourdin, “but you were not calumniated; your honor was not assailed, compromised – ”

“Ha, ha, ha!” cried des Lupeaulx, interrupting him with a burst of Homeric laughter. “Why, that’s the daily bread of every remarkable man in this glorious kingdom of France! And there are but two ways to meet such calumny, – either yield to it, pack up, and go plant cabbages in the country; or else rise above it, march on, fearless, and don’t turn your head.”

“For me, there is but one way of untying the noose which treachery and the work of spies have fastened round my throat,” replied Rabourdin. “I must explain the matter at once to his Excellency, and if you are as sincerely attached to me as you say you are, you will put me face to face with him to-morrow.”

“You mean that you wish to explain to him your plan for the reform of the service?”

Rabourdin bowed.

“Well, then, trust the papers with me, – your memoranda, all the documents. I promise you that he shall sit up all night and examine them.”

“Let us go to him, then!” cried Rabourdin, eagerly; “six years’ toil certainly deserves two or three hours attention from the king’s minister, who will be forced to recognize, if he does not applaud, such perseverance.”

Compelled by Rabourdin’s tenacity to take a straightforward path, without ambush or angle where his treachery could hide itself, des Lupeaulx hesitated for a single instant, and looked at Madame Rabourdin, while he inwardly asked himself, “Which shall I permit to triumph, my hatred for him, or my fancy for her?”

“You have no confidence in my honor,” he said, after a pause. “I see that you will always be to me the author of your /secret analysis/. Adieu, madame.”

Madame Rabourdin bowed coldly. Celestine and Xavier returned at once to their own rooms without a word; both were overcome by their misfortune. The wife thought of the dreadful situation in which she stood toward her husband. The husband, resolving slowly not to remain at the ministry but to send in his resignation at once, was lost in a sea of reflections; the crisis for him meant a total change of life and the necessity of starting on a new career. All night he sat before his fire, taking no notice of Celestine, who came in several times on tiptoe, in her night-dress.

“I must go once more to the ministry, to bring away my papers, and show Baudoyer the routine of the business,” he said to himself at last. “I had better write my resignation now.”

He turned to his table and began to write, thinking over each clause of the letter, which was as follows: —

Monseigneur, – I have the honor to inclose to your Excellency my resignation. I venture to hope that you still remember hearing me say that I left my honor in your hands, and that everything, for me, depended on my being able to give you an immediate explanation.

This explanation I have vainly sought to give. To-day it would, perhaps, be useless; for a fragment of my work relating to the administration, stolen and misused, has gone the rounds of the offices and is misinterpreted by hatred; in consequence, I find myself compelled to resign, under the tacit condemnation of my superiors.

Your Excellency may have thought, on the morning when I first sought to speak with you, that my purpose was to ask for my promotion, when, in fact, I was thinking only of the glory and usefulness of your ministry and of the public good. It is all-important, I think, to correct that impression.

Then followed the usual epistolary formulas.

It was half-past seven in the morning when the man consummated the sacrifice of his ideas; he burned everything, the toil of years. Fatigued by the pressure of thought, overcome by mental suffering, he fell asleep with his head on the back of his armchair. He was wakened by a curious sensation, and found his hands covered with his wife’s tears and saw her kneeling before him. Celestine had read the resignation. She could measure the depth of his fall. They were now to be reduced to live on four thousand francs a year; and that day she had counted up her debts, – they amounted to something like thirty-two thousand francs! The most ignoble of all wretchedness had come upon them. And that noble man who had trusted her was ignorant that she had abused the fortune he had confided to her care. She was sobbing at his feet, beautiful as the Magdalen.

“My cup is full,” cried Xavier, in terror. “I am dishonored at the ministry, and dishonored – ”

The light of her pure honor flashed from Celestine’s eyes; she sprang up like a startled horse and cast a fulminating glance at Rabourdin.

“I! I!” she said, on two sublime tones. “Am I a base wife? If I were, you would have been appointed. But,” she added mournfully, “it is easier to believe that than to believe what is the truth.”

“Then what is it?” said Rabourdin.

“All in three words,” she said; “I owe thirty thousand francs.”

Rabourdin caught his wife to his heart with a gesture of almost frantic joy, and seated her on his knee.

“Take comfort, dear,” he said, in a tone of voice so adorably kind that the bitterness of her grief was changed to something inexpressibly tender. “I too have made mistakes; I have worked uselessly for my country when I thought I was being useful to her. But now I mean to take another path. If I had sold groceries we should now be millionaires. Well, let us be grocers. You are only twenty-eight, dear angel; in ten years you shall recover the luxury that you love, which we must needs renounce for a short time. I, too, dear heart, am not a base or common husband. We will sell our farm; its value has increased of late. That and the sale of our furniture will pay my debts.”

/My/ debts! Celestine embraced her husband a thousand times in the single kiss with which she thanked him for that generous word.

“We shall still have a hundred thousand francs to put into business. Before the month is out I shall find some favorable opening. If luck gave a Martin Falleix to a Saillard, why should we despair? Wait breakfast for me. I am going now to the ministry, but I shall come back with my neck free of the yoke.”

Celestine clasped her husband in her arms with a force men do not possess, even in their passionate moments; for women are stronger through emotion than men through power. She wept and laughed and sobbed in turns.

When Rabourdin left the house at eight o’clock, the porter gave him the satirical cards suggested by Bixiou. Nevertheless, he went to the ministry, where he found Sebastien waiting near the door to entreat him not to enter any of the bureaus, because an infamous caricature of him was making the round of the offices.

“If you wish to soften the pain of my downfall,” he said to the lad, “bring me that drawing; I am now taking my resignation to Ernest de la Briere myself, that it may not be altered or distorted while passing through the routine channels. I have my own reasons for wishing to see that caricature.”

When Rabourdin came back to the courtyard, after making sure that his letter would go straight into the minister’s hands, he found Sebastien in tears, with a copy of the lithograph, which the lad reluctantly handed over to him.

“It is very clever,” said Rabourdin, showing a serene brow to his companion, though the crown of thorns was on it all the same.

He entered the bureaus with a calm air, and went at once into Baudoyer’s section to ask him to come to the office of the head of the division and receive instructions as to the business which that incapable being was henceforth to direct.

“Tell Monsieur Baudoyer that there must be no delay,” he added, in the hearing of all the clerks; “my resignation is already in the minister’s hands, and I do not wish to stay here longer than is necessary.”

Seeing Bixiou, Rabourdin went straight up to him, showed him the lithograph, and said, to the great astonishment of all present, —

“Was I not right in saying you were an artist? Still, it is a pity you directed the point of your pencil against a man who cannot be judged in this way, nor indeed by the bureaus at all; – but everything is laughed at in France, even God.”

Then he took Baudoyer into the office of the late La Billardiere. At the door he found Phellion and Sebastien, the only two who, under his great disaster, dared to remain openly faithful to the fallen man. Rabourdin noticed that Phellion’s eyes were moist, and he could not refrain from wringing his hand.

“Monsieur,” said the good man, “if we can serve you in any way, make use of us.”

Monsieur Rabourdin shut himself up in the late chief’s office with Monsieur Baudoyer, and Phellion helped him to show the new incumbent all the administrative difficulties of his new position. At each separate affair which Rabourdin carefully explained, Baudoyer’s little eyes grew big as saucers.

“Farewell, monsieur,” said Rabourdin at last, with a manner that was half-solemn, half-satirical.

Sebastien meanwhile had made up a package of papers and letters belonging to his chief and had carried them away in a hackney coach. Rabourdin passed through the grand courtyard, while all the clerks were watching from the windows, and waited there a moment to see if the minister would send him any message. His Excellency was dumb. Phellion courageously escorted the fallen man to his home, expressing his feelings of respectful admiration; then he returned to the office, and took up his work, satisfied with his own conduct in rendering these funeral honors to the neglected and misjudged administrative talent.

Bixiou [seeing Phellion re-enter]. “Victrix cause diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.”

Phellion. “Yes, monsieur.”

Poiret. “What does that mean?”

Fleury. “That priests rejoice, and Monsieur Rabourdin has the respect of men of honor.”

Dutocq [annoyed]. “You didn’t say that yesterday.”

Fleury. “If you address me you’ll have my hand in your face. It is known for certain that you filched those papers from Monsieur Rabourdin.” [Dutocq leaves the office.] “Oh, yes, go and complain to your Monsieur des Lupeaulx, spy!”

Bixiou [laughing and grimacing like a monkey]. “I am curious to know how the division will get along. Monsieur Rabourdin is so remarkable a man that he must have had some special views in that work of his. Well, the minister loses a fine mind.” [Rubs his hands.]

Laurent [entering]. “Monsieur Fleury is requested to go to the secretary’s office.”

All the clerks. “Done for!”

Fleury [leaving the room]. “I don’t care; I am offered a place as responsible editor. I shall have all my time to myself to lounge the streets or do amusing work in a newspaper office.”

Bixiou. “Dutocq has already made them cut off the head of that poor Desroys.”

Colleville [entering joyously]. “Gentlemen, I am appointed head of this bureau.”

Thuillier. “Ah, my friend, if it were I myself, I couldn’t be better pleased.”

Bixiou. “His wife has managed it.” [Laughter.]

Poiret. “Will any one tell me the meaning of all that is happening here to-day?”

Bixiou. “Do you really want to know? Then listen. The antechamber of the administration is henceforth a chamber, the court is a boudoir, the best way to get in is through the cellar, and the bed is more than ever a cross-cut.”