In the two bureaus were two clerks so devoted to each other that their friendship became the butt of all the rest. He of the bureau Baudoyer, named Colleville, was chief-clerk, and would have been head of the bureau long before if the Restoration had never happened. His wife was as clever in her way as Madame Rabourdin in hers. Colleville, who was son of a first violin at the opera, fell in love with the daughter of a celebrated danseuse. Flavie Minoret, one of those capable and charming Parisian women who know how to make their husbands happy and yet preserve their own liberty, made the Colleville home a rendezvous for all our best artists and orators. Colleville's humble position under government was forgotten there. Flavie's conduct gave such food for gossip, however, that Madame Rabourdin had declined all her invitations. The friend in Rabourdin's bureau to whom Colleville was so attached was named Thuillier. All who knew one knew the other. Thuillier, called "the handsome Thuillier," an ex-Lothario, led as idle a life as Colleville led a busy one. Colleville, government official in the mornings and first clarionet at the Opera-Comique at night, worked hard to maintain his family, though he was not without influential friends. He was looked upon as a very shrewd man,—all the more, perhaps, because he hid his ambitions under a show of indifference. Apparently content with his lot and liking work, he found every one, even the chiefs, ready to protect his brave career. During the last few weeks Madame Colleville had made an evident change in the household, and seemed to be taking to piety. This gave rise to a vague report in the bureaus that she thought of securing some more powerful influence than that of Francois Keller, the famous orator, who had been one of her chief adorers, but who, so far, had failed to obtain a better place for her husband. Flavie had, about this time—and it was one of her mistakes—turned for help to des Lupeaulx.

Colleville had a passion for reading the horoscopes of famous men in the anagram of their names. He passed whole months in decomposing and recomposing words and fitting them to new meanings. "Un Corse la finira," found within the words, "Revolution Francaise"; "Eh, c'est large nez," in "Charles Genest," an abbe at the court of Louis XIV., whose huge nose is recorded by Saint-Simon as the delight of the Duc de Bourgogne (the exigencies of this last anagram required the substitution of a z for an s),—were a never-ending marvel to Colleville. Raising the anagram to the height of a science, he declared that the destiny of every man was written in the words or phrase given by the transposition of the letters of his names and titles; and his patriotism struggled hard to suppress the fact—signal evidence for his theory—that in Horatio Nelson, "honor est a Nilo." Ever since the accession of Charles X., he had bestowed much thought on the king's anagram. Thuillier, who was fond of making puns, declared that an anagram was nothing more than a pun on letters. The sight of Colleville, a man of real feeling, bound almost indissolubly to Thuillier, the model of an egoist, presented a difficult problem to the mind of an observer. The clerks in the offices explained it by saying, "Thuillier is rich, and the Colleville household costly." This friendship, however, consolidated by time, was based on feelings and on facts which naturally explained it; an account of which may be found elsewhere (see "Les Petits Bourgeois"). We may remark in passing that though Madame Colleville was well known in the bureaus, the existence of Madame Thuillier was almost unknown there. Colleville, an active man, burdened with a family of children, was fat, round, and jolly, whereas Thuillier, "the beau of the Empire" without apparent anxieties and always at leisure, was slender and thin, with a livid face and a melancholy air. "We never know," said Rabourdin, speaking of the two men, "whether our friendships are born of likeness or of contrast."

Unlike these Siamese twins, two other clerks, Chazelle and Paulmier, were forever squabbling. One smoked, the other took snuff, and the merits of their respective use of tobacco were the origin of ceaseless disputes. Chazelle's home, which was tyrannized over by a wife, furnished a subject of endless ridicule to Paulmier; whereas Paulmier, a bachelor, often half-starved like Vimeux, with ragged clothes and half-concealed penury was a fruitful source of ridicule to Chazelle. Both were beginning to show a protuberant stomach; Chazelle's, which was round and projecting, had the impertinence, so Bixiou said, to enter the room first; Paulmier's corporation spread to right and left. A favorite amusement with Bixiou was to measure them quarterly. The two clerks, by dint of quarrelling over the details of their lives, and washing much of their dirty linen at the office, had obtained the disrepute which they merited. "Do you take me for a Chazelle?" was a frequent saying that served to end many an annoying discussion.

Monsieur Poiret junior, called "junior" to distinguish him from his brother Monsieur Poiret senior (now living in the Maison Vanquer, where Poiret junior sometimes dined, intending to end his days in the same retreat), had spent thirty years in the Civil Service. Nature herself is not so fixed and unvarying in her evolutions as was Poiret junior in all the acts of his daily life; he always laid his things in precisely the same place, put his pen in the same rack, sat down in his seat at the same hour, warmed himself at the stove at the same moment of the day. His sole vanity consisted in wearing an infallible watch, timed daily at the Hotel de Ville as he passed it on his way to the office. From six to eight o'clock in the morning he kept the books of a large shop in the rue Saint-Antoine, and from six to eight o'clock in the evening those of the Maison Camusot, in the rue des Bourdonnais. He thus earned three thousand francs a year, counting his salary from the government. In a few months his term of service would be up, when he would retire on a pension; he therefore showed the utmost indifference to the political intrigues of the bureaus. Like his elder brother, to whom retirement from active service had proved a fatal blow, he would probably grow an old man when he could no longer come from his home to the ministry, sit in the same chair and copy a certain number of pages. Poiret's eyes were dim, his glance weak and lifeless, his skin discolored and wrinkled, gray in tone and speckled with bluish dots; his nose flat, his lips drawn inward to the mouth, where a few defective teeth still lingered. His gray hair, flattened to the head by the pressure of his hat, gave him the look of an ecclesiastic,—a resemblance he would scarcely have liked, for he hated priests and clergy, though he could give no reasons for his anti-religious views. This antipathy, however, did not prevent him from being extremely attached to whatever administration happened to be in power. He never buttoned his old green coat, even on the coldest days, and he always wore shoes with ties, and black trousers.

No human life was ever lived so thoroughly by rule. Poiret kept all his receipted bills, even the most trifling, and all his account-books, wrapped in old shirts and put away according to their respective years from the time of his entrance at the ministry. Rough copies of his letters were dated and put away in a box, ticketed "My Correspondence." He dined at the same restaurant (the Sucking Calf in the place du Chatelet), and sat in the same place, which the waiters kept for him. He never gave five minutes more time to the shop in the rue Saint Antoine than justly belonged to it, and at half-past eight precisely he reached the Cafe David, where he breakfasted and remained till eleven. There he listened to political discussions, his arms crossed on his cane, his chin in his right hand, never saying a word. The dame du comptoir, the only woman to whom he ever spoke with pleasure, was the sole confidant of the little events of his life, for his seat was close to her counter. He played dominoes, the only game he was capable of understanding. When his partners did not happen to be present, he usually went to sleep with his back against the wainscot, holding a newspaper in his hand, the wooden file resting on the marble of his table. He was interested in the buildings going up in Paris, and spent his Sundays in walking about to examine them. He was often heard to say, "I saw the Louvre emerge from its rubbish; I saw the birth of the place du Chatelet, the quai aux Fleurs and the Markets." He and his brother, both born at Troyes, were sent in youth to serve their apprenticeship in a government office. Their mother made herself notorious by misconduct, and the two brothers had the grief of hearing of her death in the hospital at Troyes, although they had frequently sent money for her support. This event led them both not only to abjure marriage, but to feel a horror of children; ill at ease with them, they feared them as others fear madmen, and watched them with haggard eyes.

Since the day when he first came to Paris Poiret junior had never gone outside the city. He began at that time to keep a journal of his life, in which he noted down all the striking events of his day. Du Bruel told him that Lord Byron did the same thing. This likeness filled Poiret junior with delight, and led him to buy the works of Lord Byron, translated by Chastopalli, of which he did not understand a word. At the office he was often seen in a melancholy attitude, as though absorbed in thought, when in fact he was thinking of nothing at all. He did not know a single person in the house where he lived, and always carried the keys of his apartment about with him. On New-Year's day he went round and left his own cards on all the clerks of the division. Bixiou took it into his head on one of the hottest of dog-days to put a layer of lard under the lining of a certain old hat which Poiret junior (he was, by the bye, fifty-two years old) had worn for the last nine years. Bixiou, who had never seen any other hat on Poiret's head, dreamed of it and declared he tasted it in his food; he therefore resolved, in the interests of his digestion, to relieve the bureau of the sight of that amorphous old hat. Poiret junior left the office regularly at four o'clock. As he walked along, the sun's rays reflected from the pavements and walls produced a tropical heat; he felt that his head was inundated,—he, who never perspired! Feeling that he was ill, or on the point of being so, instead of going as usual to the Sucking Calf he went home, drew out from his desk the journal of his life, and recorded the fact in the following manner:—

"To-day, July 3, 1823, overtaken by extraordinary perspiration, a sign, perhaps, of the sweating-sickness, a malady which prevails in Champagne. I am about to consult Doctor Haudry. The disease first appeared as I reached the highest part of the quai des Ecoles."

Suddenly, having taken off his hat, he became aware that the mysterious sweat had some cause independent of his own person. He wiped his face, examined the hat, and could find nothing, for he did not venture to take out the lining. All this he noted in his journal:—

"Carried my hat to the Sieur Tournan, hat-maker in the rue Saint-Martin, for the reason that I suspect some unknown cause for this perspiration, which, in that case, might not be perspiration, but, possibly, the effect of something lately added, or formerly done, to my hat."

Monsieur Tournan at once informed his customer of the presence of a greasy substance, obtained by the trying-out of the fat of a pig or sow. The next day Poiret appeared at the office with another hat, lent by Monsieur Tournan while a new one was making; but he did not sleep that night until he had added the following sentence to the preceding entries in his journal: "It is asserted that my hat contained lard, the fat of a pig."

This inexplicable fact occupied the intellect of Poiret junior for the space of two weeks; and he never knew how the phenomenon was produced. The clerks told him tales of showers of frogs, and other dog-day wonders, also the startling fact that an imprint of the head of Napoleon had been found in the root of a young elm, with other eccentricities of natural history. Vimeux informed him that one day his hat—his, Vimeux's—had stained his forehead black, and that hat-makers were in the habit of using drugs. After that Poiret paid many visits to Monsieur Tournan to inquire into his methods of manufacture.

In the Rabourdin bureau was a clerk who played the man of courage and audacity, professed the opinions of the Left centre, and rebelled against the tyrannies of Baudoyer as exercised upon what he called the unhappy slaves of that office. His name was Fleury. He boldly subscribed to an opposition newspaper, wore a gray hat with a broad brim, red bands on his blue trousers, a blue waistcoat with gilt buttons, and a surtout coat crossed over the breast like that of a quartermaster of gendarmerie. Though unyielding in his opinions, he continued to be employed in the service, all the while predicting a fatal end to a government which persisted in upholding religion. He openly avowed his sympathy for Napoleon, now that the death of that great man put an end to the laws enacted against "the partisans of the usurper." Fleury, ex-captain of a regiment of the line under the Emperor, a tall, dark, handsome fellow, was now, in addition to his civil-service post, box-keeper at the Cirque-Olympique. Bixiou never ventured on tormenting Fleury, for the rough trooper, who was a good shot and clever at fencing, seemed quite capable of extreme brutality if provoked. An ardent subscriber to "Victoires et Conquetes," Fleury nevertheless refused to pay his subscription, though he kept and read the copies, alleging that they exceeded the number proposed in the prospectus. He adored Monsieur Rabourdin, who had saved him from dismissal, and was even heard to say that if any misfortune happened to the chief through anybody's fault he would kill that person. Dutocq meanly courted Fleury because he feared him. Fleury, crippled with debt, played many a trick on his creditors. Expert in legal matters, he never signed a promissory note; and had prudently attached his own salary under the names of fictitious creditors, so that he was able to draw nearly the whole of it himself. He played ecarte, was the life of evening parties, tossed off glasses of champagne without wetting his lips, and knew all the songs of Beranger by heart. He was proud of his full, sonorous voice. His three great admirations were Napoleon, Bolivar, and Beranger. Foy, Lafitte, and Casimir Delavigne he only esteemed. Fleury, as you will have guessed already, was a Southerner, destined, no doubt, to become the responsible editor of a liberal journal.

Desroys, the mysterious clerk of the division, consorted with no one, talked little, and hid his private life so carefully that no one knew where he lived, nor who were his protectors, nor what were his means of subsistence. Looking about them for the causes of this reserve, some of his colleagues thought him a "carbonaro," others an Orleanist; there were others again who doubted whether to call him a spy or a man of solid merit. Desroys was, however, simple and solely the son of a "Conventionel," who did not vote the king's death. Cold and prudent by temperament, he had judged the world and ended by relying on no one but himself. Republican in secret, an admirer of Paul-Louis Courier and a friend of Michael Chrestien, he looked to time and public intelligence to bring about the triumph of his opinions from end to end of Europe. He dreamed of a new Germany and a new Italy. His heart swelled with that dull, collective love which we must call humanitarianism, the eldest son of deceased philanthropy, and which is to the divine catholic charity what system is to art, or reasoning to deed. This conscientious puritan of freedom, this apostle of an impossible equality, regretted keenly that his poverty forced him to serve the government, and he made various efforts to find a place elsewhere. Tall, lean, lanky, and solemn in appearance, like a man who expects to be called some day to lay down his life for a cause, he lived on a page of Volney, studied Saint-Just, and employed himself on a vindication of Robespierre, whom he regarded as the successor of Jesus Christ.

The last of the individuals belonging to these bureaus who merits a sketch here is the little La Billardiere. Having, to his great misfortune, lost his mother, and being under the protection of the minister, safe therefore from the tyrannies of Baudoyer, and received in all the ministerial salons, he was nevertheless detested by every one because of his impertinence and conceit. The two chiefs were polite to him, but the clerks held him at arm's length and prevented all companionship by means of the extreme and grotesque politeness which they bestowed upon him. A pretty youth of twenty-two, tall and slender, with the manners of an Englishman, a dandy in dress, curled and perfumed, gloved and booted in the latest fashion, and twirling an eyeglass, Benjamin de la Billardiere thought himself a charming fellow and possessed all the vices of the world with none of its graces. He was now looking forward impatiently to the death of his father, that he might succeed to the title of baron. His cards were printed "le Chevalier de la Billardiere" and on the wall of his office hung, in a frame, his coat of arms (sable, two swords in saltire, on a chief azure three mullets argent; with the motto; "Toujours fidele"). Possessed with a mania for talking heraldry, he once asked the young Vicomte de Portenduere why his arms were charged in a certain way, and drew down upon himself the happy answer, "I did not make them." He talked of his devotion to the monarchy and the attentions the Dauphine paid him. He stood very well with des Lupeaulx, whom he thought his friend, and they often breakfasted together. Bixiou posed as his mentor, and hoped to rid the division and France of the young fool by tempting him to excesses, and openly avowed that intention.

Such were the principal figures of La Billardiere's division of the ministry, where also were other clerks of less account, who resembled more or less those that are represented here. It is difficult even for an observer to decide from the aspect of these strange personalities whether the goose-quill tribe were becoming idiots from the effects of their employment or whether they entered the service because they were natural born fools. Possibly the making of them lies at the door of Nature and of the government both. Nature, to a civil-service clerk is, in fact, the sphere of the office; his horizon is bounded on all sides by green boxes; to him, atmospheric changes are the air of the corridors, the masculine exhalations contained in rooms without ventilators, the odor of paper, pens, and ink; the soil he treads is a tiled pavement or a wooden floor, strewn with a curious litter and moistened by the attendant's watering-pot; his sky is the ceiling toward which he yawns; his element is dust. Several distinguished doctors have remonstrated against the influence of this second nature, both savage and civilized, on the moral being vegetating in those dreadful pens called bureaus, where the sun seldom penetrates, where thoughts are tied down to occupations like that of horses who turn a crank and who, poor beasts, yawn distressingly and die quickly. Rabourdin was, therefore, fully justified in seeking to reform their present condition, by lessening their numbers and giving to each a larger salary and far heavier work. Men are neither wearied nor bored when doing great things. Under the present system government loses fully four hours out of the nine which the clerks owe to the service,—hours wasted, as we shall see, in conversations, in gossip, in disputes, and, above all, in underhand intriguing. The reader must have haunted the bureaus of the ministerial departments before he can realize how much their petty and belittling life resembles that of seminaries. Wherever men live collectively this likeness is obvious; in regiments, in law-courts, you will find the elements of the school on a smaller or larger scale. The government clerks, forced to be together for nine hours of the day, looked upon their office as a sort of class-room where they had tasks to perform, where the head of the bureau was no other than a schoolmaster, and where the gratuities bestowed took the place of prizes given out to proteges,—a place, moreover, where they teased and hated each other, and yet felt a certain comradeship, colder than that of a regiment, which itself is less hearty than that of seminaries. As a man advances in life he grows more selfish; egoism develops, and relaxes all the secondary bonds of affection. A government office is, in short, a microcosm of society, with its oddities and hatreds, its envy and its cupidity, its determination to push on, no matter who goes under, its frivolous gossip which gives so many wounds, and its perpetual spying.



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].

Poiret. "Everybody says that man is clever, but as for me, I can never understand a word he says" [goes on copying]. "I listen and listen; I hear words, but I never get at any meaning; he talks about the environs of Paris when he discusses the human heart and" [lays down his pen and goes to the stove] "declares he backs the devil's game when it is a question of Russia and Boulogne; now what is there so clever in that, I'd like to know? We must first admit that the devil plays any game at all, and then find out what game; possibly dominoes" [blows his nose].

Fleury [interrupting]. "Pere Poiret is blowing his nose; it must be eleven o'clock."

Du Bruel. "So it is! Goodness! I'm off to the secretary; he wants to read the obituary."

Poiret. "What was I saying?"

Thuillier. "Dominoes,—perhaps the devil plays dominoes." [Sebastien enters to gather up the different papers and circulars for signature.]

Vimeux. "Ah! there you are, my fine young man. Your days of hardship are nearly over; you'll get a post. Monsieur Rabourdin will be appointed. Weren't you at Madame Rabourdin's last night? Lucky fellow! they say that really superb women go there."

Sebastien. "Do they? I didn't know."

Fleury. "Are you blind?"

Sebastien. "I don't like to look at what I ought not to see."

Phellion [delighted]. "Well said, young man!"

Vimeux. "The devil! well, you looked at Madame Rabourdin enough, any how; a charming woman."

Fleury. "Pooh! thin as a rail. I saw her in the Tuileries, and I much prefer Percilliee, the ballet-mistress, Castaing's victim."

Phellion. "What has an actress to do with the wife of a government official?"

Dutocq. "They both play comedy."

Fleury [looking askance at Dutocq]. "The physical has nothing to do with the moral, and if you mean—"

Dutocq. "I mean nothing."

Fleury. "Do you all want to know which of us will really be made head of this bureau?"

All. "Yes, tell us."

Fleury. "Colleville."

Thuillier. "Why?"

Fleury. "Because Madame Colleville has taken the shortest way to it—through the sacristy."

Thuillier. "I am too much Colleville's friend not to beg you, Monsieur Fleury, to speak respectfully of his wife."

Phellion. "A defenceless woman should never be made the subject of conversation here—"

Vimeux. "All the more because the charming Madame Colleville won't invite Fleury to her house. He backbites her in revenge."

Fleury. "She may not receive me on the same footing that she does Thuillier, but I go there—"

Thuillier. "When? how?—under her windows?"

Though Fleury was dreaded as a bully in all the offices, he received Thuillier's speech in silence. This meekness, which surprised the other clerks, was owing to a certain note for two hundred francs, of doubtful value, which Thuillier agreed to pass over to his sister. After this skirmish dead silence prevailed. They all wrote steadily from one to three o'clock. Du Bruel did not return.

About half-past three the usual preparations for departure, the brushing of hats, the changing of coats, went on in all the ministerial offices. That precious thirty minutes thus employed served to shorten by just so much the day's labor. At this hour the over-heated rooms cool off; the peculiar odor that hangs about the bureaus evaporates; silence is restored. By four o'clock none but a few clerks who do their duty conscientiously remain. A minister may know who are the real workers under him if he will take the trouble to walk through the divisions after four o'clock,—a species of prying, however, that no one of his dignity would condescend to.

The various heads of divisions and bureaus usually encountered each other in the courtyards at this hour and exchanged opinions on the events of the day. On this occasion they departed by twos and threes, most of them agreeing in favor of Rabourdin; while the old stagers, like Monsieur Clergeot, shook their heads and said, "Habent sua sidera lites." Saillard and Baudoyer were politely avoided, for nobody knew what to say to them about La Billardiere's death, it being fully understood that Baudoyer wanted the place, though it was certainly not due to him.

When Saillard and his son-in-law had gone a certain distance from the ministry the former broke silence and said: "Things look badly for you, my poor Baudoyer."

"I can't understand," replied the other, "what Elisabeth was dreaming of when she sent Godard in such a hurry to get a passport for Falleix; Godard tells me she hired a post-chaise by the advice of my uncle Mitral, and that Falleix has already started for his own part of the country."

"Some matter connected with our business," suggested Saillard.

"Our most pressing business just now is to look after Monsieur La Billardiere's place," returned Baudoyer, crossly.

They were just then near the entrance of the Palais-Royal on the rue Saint-Honore. Dutocq came up, bowing, and joined them.

"Monsieur," he said to Baudoyer, "if I can be useful to you in any way under the circumstances in which you find yourself, pray command me, for I am not less devoted to your interests than Monsieur Godard."

"Such an assurance is at least consoling," replied Baudoyer; "it makes me aware that I have the confidence of honest men."

"If you would kindly employ your influence to get me placed in your division, taking Bixiou as head of the bureau and me as under-head-clerk, you will secure the future of two men who are ready to do anything for your advancement."

"Are you making fun of us, monsieur?" asked Saillard, staring at him stupidly.

"Far be it from me to do that," said Dutocq. "I have just come from the printing-office of the ministerial journal (where I carried from the general-secretary an obituary notice of Monsieur de la Billardiere), and I there read an article which will appear to-night about you, which has given me the highest opinion of your character and talents. If it is necessary to crush Rabourdin, I'm in a position to give him the final blow; please to remember that."

Dutocq disappeared.

"May I be shot if I understand a single word of it," said Saillard, looking at Baudoyer, whose little eyes were expressive of stupid bewilderment. "I must buy the newspaper to-night."

When the two reached home and entered the salon on the ground-floor, they found a large fire lighted, and Madame Saillard, Elisabeth, Monsieur Gaudron and the curate of Saint-Paul's sitting by it. The curate turned at once to Monsieur Baudoyer, to whom Elisabeth made a sign which he failed to understand.

"Monsieur," said the curate, "I have lost no time in coming in person to thank you for the magnificent gift with which you have adorned my poor church. I dared not run in debt to buy that beautiful monstrance, worthy of a cathedral. You, who are one of our most pious and faithful parishioners, must have keenly felt the bareness of the high altar. I am on my way to see Monseigneur the coadjutor, and he will, I am sure, send you his own thanks later."

"I have done nothing as yet—" began Baudoyer.

"Monsieur le cure," interposed his wife, cutting him short. "I see I am forced to betray the whole secret. Monsieur Baudoyer hopes to complete the gift by sending you a dais for the coming Fete-Dieu. But the purchase must depend on the state of our finances, and our finances depend on my husband's promotion."

"God will reward those who honor him," said Monsieur Gaudron, preparing, with the curate, to take leave.

"But will you not," said Saillard to the two ecclesiastics, "do us the honor to take pot luck with us?"

"You can stay, my dear vicar," said the curate to Gaudron; "you know I am engaged to dine with the curate of Saint-Roch, who, by the bye, is to bury Monsieur de la Billardiere to-morrow."

"Monsieur le cure de Saint-Roch might say a word for us," began Baudoyer. His wife pulled the skirt of his coat violently.

"Do hold your tongue, Baudoyer," she said, leading him aside and whispering in his ear. "You have given a monstrance to the church, that cost five thousand francs. I'll explain it all later."

The miserly Baudoyer make a sulky grimace, and continued gloomy and cross for the rest of the day.

"What did you busy yourself about Falleix's passport for? Why do you meddle in other people's affairs?" he presently asked her.

"I must say, I think Falleix's affairs are as much ours as his," returned Elisabeth, dryly, glancing at her husband to make him notice Monsieur Gaudron, before whom he ought to be silent.