Read Ebook: Bureaucracy by Balzac Honor De Wormeley Katharine Prescott Translator

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"If La Billardiere's place is given to Rabourdin I may be believed when I praise the superiority of his wife," replied des Lupeaulx, piqued by the minister's sarcasm; "but if Madame la Comtesse would be willing to judge for herself--"

"You want me to invite her to my next ball, don't you? Your clever woman will meet a knot of other women who only come here to laugh at us, and when they hear 'Madame Rabourdin' announced--"

"But Madame Firmiani is announced at the Foreign Office parties?"

"Ah, but she was born a Cadignan!" said the newly created count, with a savage look at his general-secretary, for neither he nor his wife were noble.

The persons present thought important matters were being talked over, and the solicitors for favors and appointments kept at a little distance. When des Lupeaulx left the room the countess said to her husband, "I think des Lupeaulx is in love."

"For the first time in his life, then," he replied, shrugging his shoulders, as much as to inform his wife that des Lupeaulx did not concern himself with such nonsense.

Just then the minister saw a deputy of the Right Centre enter the room, and he left his wife abruptly to cajole an undecided vote. But the deputy, under the blow of a sudden and unexpected disaster, wanted to make sure of a protector and he had come to announce privately that in a few days he should be compelled to resign. Thus forewarned, the minister would be able to open his batteries for the new election before those of the opposition.

The minister, or to speak correctly, des Lupeaulx had invited to dinner on this occasion one of those irremovable officials who, as we have said, are to be found in every ministry; an individual much embarrassed by his own person, who, in his desire to maintain a dignified appearance, was standing erect and rigid on his two legs, held well together like the Greek hermae. This functionary waited near the fireplace to thank the secretary, whose abrupt and unexpected departure from the room disconcerted him at the moment when he was about to turn a compliment. This official was the cashier of the ministry, the only clerk who did not tremble when the government changed hands.

At the time of which we write, the Chamber did not meddle shabbily with the budget, as it does in the deplorable days in which we now live; it did not contemptibly reduce ministerial emoluments, nor save, as they say in the kitchen, the candle-ends; on the contrary, it granted to each minister taking charge of a public department an indemnity, called an "outfit." It costs, alas, as much to enter on the duties of a minister as to retire from them; indeed, the entrance involves expenses of all kinds which it is quite impossible to inventory. This indemnity amounted to the pretty little sum of twenty-five thousand francs. When the appointment of a new minister was gazetted in the "Moniteur," and the greater or lesser officials, clustering round the stoves or before the fireplaces and shaking in their shoes, asked themselves: "What will he do? will he increase the number of clerks? will he dismiss two to make room for three?" the cashier tranquilly took out twenty-five clean bank-bills and pinned them together with a satisfied expression on his beadle face. The next day he mounted the private staircase and had himself ushered into the minister's presence by the lackeys, who considered the money and the keeper of money, the contents and the container, the idea and the form, as one and the same power. The cashier caught the ministerial pair at the dawn of official delight, when the newly appointed statesman is benign and affable. To the minister's inquiry as to what brings him there, he replies with the bank-notes,--informing his Excellency that he hastens to pay him the customary indemnity. Moreover, he explains the matter to the minister's wife, who never fails to draw freely upon the fund, and sometimes takes all, for the "outfit" is looked upon as a household affair. The cashier then proceeds to turn a compliment, and to slip in a few politic phrases: "If his Excellency would deign to retain him; if, satisfied with his purely mechanical services, he would," etc. As a man who brings twenty-five thousand francs is always a worthy official, the cashier is sure not to leave without his confirmation to the post from which he has seen a succession of ministers come and go during a period of, perhaps, twenty-five years. His next step is to place himself at the orders of Madame; he brings the monthly thirteen thousand francs whenever wanted; he advances or delays the payment as requested, and thus manages to obtain, as they said in the monasteries, a voice in the chapter.

Formerly book-keeper at the Treasury, when that establishment kept its books by double entry, the Sieur Saillard was compensated for the loss of that position by his appointment as cashier of a ministry. He was a bulky, fat man, very strong in the matter of book-keeping, and very weak in everything else; round as a round O, simple as how-do-you-do,--a man who came to his office with measured steps, like those of an elephant, and returned with the same measured tread to the place Royale, where he lived on the ground-floor of an old mansion belonging to him. He usually had a companion on the way in the person of Monsieur Isidore Baudoyer, head of a bureau in Monsieur de la Billardiere's division, consequently one of Rabourdin's colleagues. Baudoyer was married to Elisabeth Saillard, the cashier's only daughter, and had hired, very naturally, the apartments above those of his father-in-law. No one at the ministry had the slightest doubt that Saillard was a blockhead, but neither had any one ever found out how far his stupidity could go; it was too compact to be examined; it did not ring hollow; it absorbed everything and gave nothing out. Bixiou caricatured the cashier by drawing a head in a wig at the top of an egg, and two little legs at the other end, with this inscription: "Born to pay out and take in without blundering. A little less luck, and he might have been lackey to the bank of France; a little more ambition, and he could have been honorably discharged."

At the moment of which we are now writing, the minister was looking at his cashier very much as we gaze at a window or a cornice, without supposing that either can hear us, or fathom our secret thoughts.

"I am all the more anxious that we should settle everything with the prefect in the quietest way, because des Lupeaulx has designs upon the place for himself," said the minister, continuing his talk with the deputy; "his paltry little estate is in your arrondissement; we won't want him as deputy."

"He has neither years nor rentals enough to be eligible," said the deputy.

"That may be; but you know how it was decided for Casimir Perier as to age; and as to worldly possessions, des Lupeaulx does possess something,--not much, it is true, but the law does not take into account increase, which he may very well obtain; commissions have wide margins for the deputies of the Centre, you know, and we cannot openly oppose the good-will that is shown to this dear friend."

"But where would he get the money?"

"How did Manuel manage to become the owner of a house in Paris?" cried the minister.

The cashier listened and heard, but reluctantly and against his will. These rapid remarks, murmured as they were, struck his ear by one of those acoustic rebounds which are very little studied. As he heard these political confidences, however, a keen alarm took possession of his soul. He was one of those simple-minded beings, who are shocked at listening to anything they are not intended to hear, or entering where they are not invited, and seeming bold when they are really timid, inquisitive where they are truly discreet. The cashier accordingly began to glide along the carpet and edge himself away, so that the minister saw him at a distance when he first took notice of him. Saillard was a ministerial henchman absolutely incapable of indiscretion; even if the minister had known that he had overheard a secret he had only to whisper "motus" in his ear to be sure it was perfectly safe. The cashier, however, took advantage of an influx of office-seekers, to slip out and get into his hackney-coach , and to return to his home in the place Royale.

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 . 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" , 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 , 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.

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 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 , 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."

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