CHAPTER III

THE TEREDOS NAVALIS, OTHERWISE CALLED SHIP-WORM

While old Saillard was driving across Paris his son-in-law, Isidore

Baudoyer, and his daughter, Elisabeth, Baudoyer's wife, were playing a

virtuous game of boston with their confessor, the Abbe Gaudron, in

company with a few neighbors and a certain Martin Falleix, a brass-

founder in the fauborg Saint-Antoine, to whom Saillard had loaned the

necessary money to establish a business. This Falleix, a respectable

Auvergnat who had come to seek his fortune in Paris with his smelting-

pot on his back, had found immediate employment with the firm of

Brezac, collectors of metals and other relics from all chateaux in the

provinces. About twenty-seven years of age, and spoiled, like others,

by success, Martin Falleix had had the luck to become the active agent

of Monsieur Saillard, the sleeping-partner in the working out of a

discovery made by Falleix in smelting (patent of invention and gold

medal granted at the exposition of 1825). Madame Baudoyer, whose only

daughter was treading--to use an expression of old Saillard's--on the

tail of her twelve years, laid claim to Falleix, a thickset, swarthy,

active young fellow, of shrewd principles, whose education she was

superintending. The said education, according to her ideas, consisted

in teaching him to play boston, to hold his cards properly, and not to

let others see his game; to shave himself regularly before he came to

the house, and to wash his hands with good cleansing soap; not to

swear, to speak her kind of French, to wear boots instead of shoes,

cotton shirts instead of sacking, and to brush up his hair instead of

plastering it flat. During the preceding week Elisabeth had finally

succeeded in persuading Falleix to give up wearing a pair of enormous

flat earrings resembling hoops.

"You go too far, Madame Baudoyer," he said, seeing her satisfaction at

the final sacrifice; "you order me about too much. You make me clean

my teeth, which loosens them; presently you will want me to brush my

nails and curl my hair, which won't do at all in our business; we

don't like dandies."

Elisabeth Baudoyer, nee Saillard, is one of those persons who escape

portraiture through their utter commonness; yet who ought to be

sketched, because they are specimens of that second-rate Parisian

bourgeoisie which occupies a place above the well-to-do artisan and

below the upper middle classes,--a tribe whose virtues are well-nigh

vices, whose defects are never kindly, but whose habits and manners,

dull and insipid though they be, are not without a certain

originality. Something pinched and puny about Elisabeth Saillard was

painful to the eye. Her figure, scarcely over four feet in height, was

so thin that the waist measured less than twenty inches. Her small

features, which clustered close about the nose, gave her face a vague

resemblance to a weasel's snout. Though she was past thirty years old

she looked scarcely more than sixteen. Her eyes, of porcelain blue,

overweighted by heavy eyelids which fell nearly straight from the arch

of the eyebrows, had little light in them. Everything about her

appearance was commonplace: witness her flaxen hair, tending to

whiteness; her flat forehead, from which the light did not reflect;

and her dull complexion, with gray, almost leaden, tones. The lower

part of the face, more triangular than oval, ended irregularly the

otherwise irregular outline of her face. Her voice had a rather pretty

range of intonation, from sharp to sweet. Elisabeth was a perfect

specimen of the second-rate little bourgeoisie who lectures her

husband behind the curtains; obtains no credit for her virtues; is

ambitious without intelligent object, and solely through the

development of her domestic selfishness. Had she lived in the country

she would have bought up adjacent land; being, as she was, connected

with the administration, she was determined to push her way. If we

relate the life of her father and mother, we shall show the sort of

woman she was by a picture of her childhood and youth.

Monsieur Saillard married the daughter of an upholsterer keeping shop

under the arcades of the Market. Limited means compelled Monsieur and

Madame Saillard at their start in life to bear constant privation.

After thirty-three years of married life, and twenty-nine years of

toil in a government office, the property of "the Saillards"--their

circle of acquaintance called them so--consisted of sixty thousand

francs entrusted to Falleix, the house in the place Royale, bought for

forty thousand in 1804, and thirty-six thousand francs given in dowry

to their daughter Elisabeth. Out of this capital about fifty thousand

came to them by the will of the widow Bidault, Madame Saillard's

mother. Saillard's salary from the government had always been four

thousand five hundred francs a year, and no more; his situation was a

blind alley that led nowhere, and had tempted no one to supersede him.

Those ninety thousand francs, put together sou by sou, were the fruit

therefore of a sordid economy unintelligently employed. In fact, the

Saillards did not know how better to manage their savings than to

carry them, five thousand francs at a time, to their notary, Monsieur

Sorbier, Cardot's predecessor, and let him invest them at five per

cent in first mortgages, with the wife's rights reserved in case the

borrower was married! In 1804 Madame Saillard obtained a government

office for the sale of stamped papers, a circumstance which brought a

servant into the household for the first time. At the time of which we

write, the house, which was worth a hundred thousand francs, brought

in a rental of eight thousand. Falleix paid seven per cent for the

sixty thousand invested in the foundry, besides an equal division of

profits. The Saillards were therefore enjoying an income of not less

than seventeen thousand francs a year. The whole ambition of the good

man now centred on obtaining the cross of the Legion and his retiring

pension.

Elisabeth, the only child, had toiled steadily from infancy in a home

where the customs of life were rigid and the ideas simple. A new hat

for Saillard was a matter of deliberation; the time a coat could last

was estimated and discussed; umbrellas were carefully hung up by means

of a brass buckle. Since 1804 no repairs of any kind had been done to

the house. The Saillards kept the ground-floor in precisely the state

in which their predecessor left it. The gilding of the pier-glasses

was rubbed off; the paint on the cornices was hardly visible through

the layers of dust that time had collected. The fine large rooms still

retained certain sculptured marble mantel-pieces and ceilings, worthy

of Versailles, together with the old furniture of the widow Bidault.

The latter consisted of a curious mixture of walnut armchairs,

disjointed, and covered with tapestry; rosewood bureaus; round tables

on single pedestals, with brass railings and cracked marble tops; one

superb Boulle secretary, the value of which style had not yet been

recognized; in short, a chaos of bargains picked up by the worthy

widow,--pictures bought for the sake of the frames, china services of

a composite order; to wit, a magnificent Japanese dessert set, and all

the rest porcelains of various makes, unmatched silver plate, old

glass, fine damask, and a four-post bedstead, hung with curtains and

garnished with plumes.

Amid these curious relics, Madame Saillard always sat on a sofa of

modern mahogany, near a fireplace full of ashes and without fire, on

the mantel-shelf of which stood a clock, some antique bronzes,

candelabra with paper flowers but no candles, for the careful

housewife lighted the room with a tall tallow candle always guttering

down into the flat brass candlestick which held it. Madame Saillard's

face, despite its wrinkles, was expressive of obstinacy and severity,

narrowness of ideas, an uprightness that might be called quadrangular,

a religion without piety, straightforward, candid avarice, and the

peace of a quiet conscience. You may see in certain Flemish pictures

the wives of burgomasters cut out by nature on the same pattern and

wonderfully reproduced on canvas; but these dames wear fine robes of

velvet and precious stuffs, whereas Madame Saillard possessed no

robes, only that venerable garment called in Touraine and Picardy

"cottes," elsewhere petticoats, or skirts pleated behind and on each

side, with other skirts hanging over them. Her bust was inclosed in

what was called a "casaquin," another obsolete name for a short gown

or jacket. She continued to wear a cap with starched wings, and shoes

with high heels. Though she was now fifty-seven years old, and her

lifetime of vigorous household work ought now to be rewarded with

well-earned repose, she was incessantly employed in knitting her

husband's stockings and her own, and those of an uncle, just as her

countrywomen knit them, moving about the room, talking, pacing up and

down the garden, or looking round the kitchen to watch what was going

on.

The Saillard's avarice, which was really imposed on them in the first

instance by dire necessity, was now a second nature. When the cashier

got back from the office, he laid aside his coat, and went to work in

the large garden, shut off from the courtyard by an iron railing, and

which the family reserved to itself. For years Elisabeth, the

daughter, went to market every morning with her mother, and the two

did all the work of the house. The mother cooked well, especially a

duck with turnips; but, according to Saillard, no one could equal

Elisabeth in hashing the remains of a leg of mutton with onions. "You

might eat your boots with those onions and not know it," he remarked.

As soon as Elisabeth knew how to hold a needle, her mother had her

mend the household linen and her father's coats. Always at work, like

a servant, she never went out alone. Though living close by the

boulevard du Temple, where Franconi, La Gaite, and l'Ambigu-Comique

were within a stone's throw, and, further on, the Porte-Saint-Martin,

Elisabeth had never seen a comedy. When she asked to "see what it was

like" (with the Abbe Gaudron's permission, be it understood), Monsieur

Baudoyer took her--for the glory of the thing, and to show her the

finest that was to be seen--to the Opera, where they were playing "The

Chinese Laborer." Elisabeth thought "the comedy" as wearisome as the

plague of flies, and never wished to see another. On Sundays, after

walking four times to and fro between the place Royale and Saint-

Paul's church (for her mother made her practise the precepts and the

duties of religion), her parents took her to the pavement in front of

the Cafe Ture, where they sat on chairs placed between a railing and

the wall. The Saillards always made haste to reach the place early so

as to choose the best seats, and found much entertainment in watching

the passers-by. In those days the Cafe Ture was the rendezvous of the

fashionable society of the Marais, the faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the

circumjacent regions.

Elisabeth never wore anything but cotton gowns in summer and merino in

the winter, which she made herself. Her mother gave her twenty francs

a month for her expenses, but her father, who was very fond of her,

mitigated this rigorous treatment with a few presents. She never read

what the Abbe Gaudron, vicar of Saint-Paul's and the family director,

called profane books. This discipline had borne fruit. Forced to

employ her feelings on some passion or other, Elisabeth became eager

after gain. Though she was not lacking in sense or perspicacity,

religious theories, and her complete ignorance of higher emotions had

encircled all her faculties with an iron hand; they were exercised

solely on the commonest things of life; spent in a few directions they

were able to concentrate themselves on a matter in hand. Repressed by

religious devotion, her natural intelligence exercised itself within

the limits marked out by cases of conscience, which form a mine of

subtleties among which self-interest selects its subterfuges. Like

those saintly personages in whom religion does not stifle ambition,

Elisabeth was capable of requiring others to do a blamable action that

she might reap the fruits; and she would have been, like them again,

implacable as to her dues and dissembling in her actions. Once

offended, she watched her adversaries with the perfidious patience of

a cat, and was capable of bringing about some cold and complete

vengeance, and then laying it to the account of God. Until her

marriage the Saillards lived without other society than that of the

Abbe Gaudron, a priest from Auvergne appointed vicar of Saint-Paul's

after the restoration of Catholic worship. Besides this ecclesiastic,

who was a friend of the late Madame Bidault, a paternal uncle of

Madame Saillard, an old paper-dealer retired from business ever since

the year II. of the Republic, and now sixty-nine years old, came to

see them on Sundays only, because on that day no government business

went on.

This little old man, with a livid face blazoned by the red nose of a

tippler and lighted by two gleaming vulture eyes, allowed his gray

hair to hang loose under a three-cornered hat, wore breeches with

straps that extended beyond the buckles, cotton stockings of mottled

thread knitted by his niece, whom he always called "the little

Saillard," stout shoes with silver buckles, and a surtout coat of

mixed colors. He looked very much like those verger-beadle-bell-

ringing-grave-digging-parish-clerks who are taken to be caricatures

until we see them performing their various functions. On the present

occasion he had come on foot to dine with the Saillards, intending to

return in the same way to the rue Greneta, where he lived on the third

floor of an old house. His business was that of discounting commercial

paper in the quartier Saint-Martin, where he was known by the nickname

of "Gigonnet," from the nervous convulsive movement with which he

lifted his legs in walking, like a cat. Monsieur Bidault began this

business in the year II. in partnership with a dutchman named

Werbrust, a friend of Gobseck.

Some time later Saillard made the acquaintance of Monsieur and Madame

Transon, wholesale dealers in pottery, with an establishment in the

rue de Lesdiguieres, who took an interest in Elisabeth and introduced

young Isadore Baudoyer to the family with the intention of marrying

her. Gigonnet approved of the match, for he had long employed a

certain Mitral, uncle of the young man, as clerk. Monsieur and Madame

Baudoyer, father and mother of Isidore, highly respected leather-

dressers in the rue Censier, had slowly made a moderate fortune out of

a small trade. After marrying their only son, on whom they settled

fifty thousand francs, they determined to live in the country, and had

lately removed to the neighborhood of Ile-d'Adam, where after a time

they were joined by Mitral. They frequently came to Paris, however,

where they kept a corner in the house in the rue Censier which they

gave to Isidore on his marriage. The elder Baudoyers had an income of

about three thousand francs left to live upon after establishing their

son.

Mitral was a being with a sinister wig, a face the color of Seine

water, lighted by a pair of Spanish-tobacco-colored eyes, cold as a

well-rope, always smelling a rat, and close-mouthed about his

property. He probably made his fortune in his own hole and corner,

just as Werbrust and Gigonnet made theirs in the quartier Saint-

Martin.

Though the Saillards' circle of acquaintance increased, neither their

ideas nor their manners and customs changed. The saint's-days of

father, mother, daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild were carefully

observed, also the anniversaries of birth and marriage, Easter,

Christmas, New Year's day, and Epiphany. These festivals were preceded

by great domestic sweepings and a universal clearing up of the house,

which added an element of usefulness to the ceremonies. When the

festival day came, the presents were offered with much pomp and an

accompaniment of flowers,--silk stockings or a fur cap for old

Saillard; gold earrings and articles of plate for Elisabeth or her

husband, for whom, little by little, the parents were accumulating a

whole silver service; silk petticoats for Madame Saillard, who laid

the stuff by and never made it up. The recipient of these gifts was

placed in an armchair and asked by those present for a certain length

of time, "Guess what we have for you!" Then came a splendid dinner,

lasting at least five hours, to which were invited the Abbe Gaudron,

Falleix, Rabourdin, Monsieur Godard, under-head-clerk to Monsieur

Baudoyer, Monsieur Bataille, captain of the company of the National

Guard to which Saillard and his son-in-law belonged. Monsieur Cardot,

who was invariably asked, did as Rabourdin did, namely, accepted one

invitation out of six. The company sang at dessert, shook hands and

embraced with enthusiasm, wishing each other all manner of happiness;

the presents were exhibited and the opinion of the guests asked about

them. The day Saillard received his fur cap he wore it during the

dessert, to the satisfaction of all present. At night, mere ordinary

acquaintances were bidden, and dancing went on till very late,

formerly to the music of one violin, but for the last six years

Monsieur Godard, who was a great flute player, contributed the

piercing tones of a flageolet to the festivity. The cook, Madame

Baudoyer's nurse, and old Catherine, Madame Saillard's woman-servant,

together with the porter or his wife, stood looking on at the door of

the salon. The servants always received three francs on these

occasions to buy themselves wine or coffee.

This little circle looked upon Saillard and Baudoyer as transcendent

beings; they were government officers; they had risen by their own

merits; they worked, it was said, with the minister himself; they owed

their fortune to their talents; they were politicians. Baudoyer was

considered the more able of the two; his position as head of a bureau

presupposed labor that was more intricate and arduous than that of a

cashier. Moreover, Isidore, though the son of a leather-dresser, had

had the genius to study and to cast aside his father's business and

find a career in politics, which had led him to a post of eminence. In

short, silent and uncommunicative as he was, he was looked upon as a

deep thinker, and perhaps, said the admiring circle, he would some day

become deputy of the eighth arrondissement. As Gigonnet listened to

such remarks as these, he pressed his already pinched lips closer

together, and threw a glance at his great-niece, Elisabeth.

In person, Isidore was a tall, stout man of thirty-seven, who

perspired freely, and whose head looked as if he had water on the

brain. This enormous head, covered with chestnut hair cropped close,

was joined to the neck by rolls of flesh which overhung the collar of

his coat. He had the arms of Hercules, hands worthy of Domitian, a

stomach which sobriety held within the limits of the majestic, to use

a saying of Brillaet-Savarin. His face was a good deal like that of

the Emperor Alexander. The Tartar type was in the little eyes and the

flattened nose turned slightly up, in the frigid lips and the short

chin. The forehead was low and narrow. Though his temperament was

lymphatic, the devout Isidore was under the influence of a conjugal

passion which time did not lessen.

In spite, however, of his resemblance to the handsome Russian Emperor

and the terrible Domitian, Isidore Baudoyer was nothing more than a

political office-holder, of little ability as head of his department,

a cut-and-dried routine man, who concealed the fact that he was a

flabby cipher by so ponderous a personality that no scalpel could cut

deep enough to let the operator see into him. His severe studies, in

which he had shown the patience and sagacity of an ox, and his square

head, deceived his parents, who firmly believed him an extraordinary

man. Pedantic and hypercritical, meddlesome and fault-finding, he was

a terror to the clerks under him, whom he worried in their work,

enforcing the rules rigorously, and arriving himself with such

terrible punctuality that not one of them dared to be a moment late.

Baudoyer wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, a chamois waistcoat, gray

trousers and cravats of various colors. His feet were large and

ill-shod. From the chain of his watch depended an enormous bunch of

old trinkets, among which in 1824 he still wore "American beads,"

which were very much the fashion in the year VII.

In the bosom of this family, bound together by the force of religious

ties, by the inflexibility of its customs, by one solitary emotion,

that of avarice, a passion which was now as it were its compass,

Elisabeth was forced to commune with herself, instead of imparting her

ideas to those around her, for she felt herself without equals in mind

who could comprehend her. Though facts compelled her to judge her

husband, her religious duty led her to keep up as best she could a

favorable opinion of him; she showed him marked respect; honored him

as the father of her child, her husband, the temporal power, as the

vicar of Saint-Paul's told her. She would have thought it a mortal sin

to make a single gesture, or give a single glance, or say a single

word which would reveal to others her real opinion of the imbecile

Baudoyer. She even professed to obey passively all his wishes. But her

ears were receptive of many things; she thought them over, weighed and

compared them in the solitude of her mind, and judged so soberly of

men and events that at the time when our history begins she was the

hidden oracle of the two functionaries, her husband and father, who

had, unconsciously, come to do nothing whatever without consulting

her. Old Saillard would say, innocently, "Isn't she clever, that

Elisabeth of mine?" But Baudoyer, too great a fool not to be puffed up

by the false reputation the quartier Saint-Antoine bestowed upon him,

denied his wife's cleverness all the while that he was making use of

it.

Elisabeth had long felt sure that her uncle Bidault, otherwise called

Gigonnet, was rich and handled vast sums of money. Enlightened by

self-interest, she had come to understand Monsieur des Lupeaulx far

better than the minister understood him. Finding herself married to a

fool, she never allowed herself to think that life might have gone

better with her, she only imagined the possibility of better things

without expecting or wishing to attain them. All her best affections

found their vocation in her love for her daughter, to whom she spared

the pains and privations she had borne in her own childhood; she

believed that in this affection she had her full share in the world of

feeling. Solely for her daughter's sake she had persuaded her father

to take the important step of going into partnership with Falleix.

Falleix had been brought to the Saillard's house by old Bidault, who

lent him money on his merchandise. Falleix thought his old countryman

extortionate, and complained to the Saillards that Gigonnet demanded

eighteen per cent from an Auvergnat. Madame Saillard ventured to

remonstrate with her uncle.

"It is just because he is an Auvergnat that I take only eighteen per

cent," said Gigonnet, when she spoke of him.

Falleix, who had made a discovery at the age of twenty-eight, and

communicated it to Saillard, seemed to carry his heart in his hand (an

expression of old Saillard's), and also seemed likely to make a great

fortune. Elisabeth determined to husband him for her daughter and

train him herself, having, as she calculated, seven years to do it in.

Martin Falleix felt and showed the deepest respect for Madame

Baudoyer, whose superior qualities he was able to recognize. If he

were fated to make millions he would always belong to her family,

where he had found a home. The little Baudoyer girl was already

trained to bring him his tea and to take his hat.

On the evening of which we write, Monsieur Saillard, returning from

the ministry, found a game of boston in full blast; Elisabeth was

advising Falleix how to play; Madame Saillard was knitting in the

chimney-corner and overlooking the cards of the vicar; Monsieur

Baudoyer, motionless as a mile-stone, was employing his mental

capacity in calculating how the cards were placed, and sat opposite to

Mitral, who had come up from Ile-d'Adam for the Christmas holidays. No

one moved as the cashier entered, and for some minutes he walked up

and down the room, his fat face contracted with unaccustomed thought.

"He is always so when he dines at the ministry," remarked Madame

Saillard; "happily, it is only twice a year, or he'd die of it.

Saillard was never made to be in the government-- Well, now, I do

hope, Saillard," she continued in a loud tone, "that you are not going

to keep on those silk breeches and that handsome coat. Go and take

them off; don't wear them at home, my man."

"Your father has something on his mind," said Baudoyer to his wife,

when the cashier was in his bedroom, undressing without any fire.

"Perhaps Monsieur de la Billardiere is dead," said Elisabeth, simply;

"and as he is anxious you should have the place, it worries him."

"Can I be useful in any way?" said the vicar of Saint-Paul's; "if so,

pray use my services. I have the honor to be known to Madame la

Dauphine. These are days when public offices should be given only to

faithful men, whose religious principles are not to be shaken."

"Dear me!" said Falleix, "do men of merit need protectors and

influence to get places in the government service? I am glad I am an

iron-master; my customers know where to find a good article--"

"Monsieur," interrupted Baudoyer, "the government is the government;

never attack it in this house."

"You speak like the 'Constitutionel,'" said the vicar.

"The 'Constitutionel' never says anything different from that,"

replied Baudoyer, who never read it.

The cashier believed his son-in-law to be as superior in talent to

Rabourdin as God was greater than Saint-Crepin, to use his own

expression; but the good man coveted this appointment in a

straightforward, honest way. Influenced by the feeling which leads all

officials to seek promotion,--a violent, unreflecting, almost brutal

passion,--he desired success, just as he desired the cross of the

Legion of honor, without doing anything against his conscience to

obtain it, and solely, as he believed, on the strength of his son-in-

law's merits. To his thinking, a man who had patiently spent twenty-

five years in a government office behind an iron railing had

sacrificed himself to his country and deserved the cross. But all that

he dreamed of doing to promote his son-in-law's appointment in La

Billardiere's place was to say a word to his Excellency's wife when he

took her the month's salary.

"Well, Saillard, you look as if you had lost all your friends! Do

speak; do, pray, tell us something," cried his wife when he came back

into the room.

Saillard, after making a little sign to his daughter, turned on his

heel to keep himself from talking politics before strangers. When

Monsieur Mitral and the vicar had departed, Saillard rolled back the

card-table and sat down in an armchair in the attitude he always

assumed when about to tell some office-gossip,--a series of movements

which answered the purpose of the three knocks given at the Theatre-

Francais. After binding his wife, daughter, and son-in-law to the

deepest secrecy,--for, however petty the gossip, their places, as he

thought, depended on their discretion,--he related the

incomprehensible enigma of the resignation of a deputy, the very

legitimate desire of the general-secretary to get elected to the

place, and the secret opposition of the minister to this wish of a man

who was one of his firmest supporters and most zealous workers. This,

of course, brought down an avalanche of suppositions, flooded with the

sapient arguments of the two officials, who sent back and forth to

each other a wearisome flood of nonsense. Elisabeth quietly asked

three questions:--

"If Monsieur des Lupeaulx is on our side, will Monsieur Baudoyer be

appointed in Monsieur de la Billardiere's place?"

"Heavens! I should think so," cried the cashier.

"My uncle Bidault and Monsieur Gobseck helped in him 1814," thought

she. "Is he in debt?" she asked, aloud.

"Yes," cried the cashier with a hissing and prolonged sound on the

last letter; "his salary was attached, but some of the higher powers

released it by a bill at sight."

"Where is the des Lupeaulx estate?"

"Why, don't you know? in the part of the country where your

grandfather and your great-uncle Bidault belong, in the arrondissement

of the deputy who wants to resign."

When her colossus of a husband had gone to bed, Elisabeth leaned over

him, and though he always treated her remarks as women's nonsense, she

said, "Perhaps you will really get Monsieur de la Billardiere's

place."

"There you go with your imaginations!" said Baudoyer; "leave Monsieur

Gaudron to speak to the Dauphine and don't meddle with politics."

At eleven o'clock, when all were asleep in the place Royale, Monsieur

des Lupeaulx was leaving the Opera for the rue Duphot. This particular

Wednesday was one of Madame Rabourdin's most brilliant evenings. Many

of her customary guests came in from the theatres and swelled the

company already assembled, among whom were several celebrities, such

as: Canalis the poet, Schinner the painter, Dr. Bianchon, Lucien de

Rubempre, Octave de Camps, the Comte de Granville, the Vicomte de

Fontaine, du Bruel the vaudevillist, Andoche Finot the journalist,

Derville, one of the best heads in the law courts, the Comte du

Chatelet, deputy, du Tillet, banker, and several elegant young men,

such as Paul de Manerville and the Vicomte de Portenduere. Celestine

was pouring out tea when the general-secretary entered. Her dress that

evening was very becoming; she wore a black velvet robe without

ornament of any kind, a black gauze scarf, her hair smoothly bound

about her head and raised in a heavy braided mass, with long curls a

l'Anglaise falling on either side of her face. The charms which

particularly distinguished this woman were the Italian ease of her

artistic nature, her ready comprehension, and the grace with which she

welcomed and promoted the least appearance of a wish on the part of

others. Nature had given her an elegant, slender figure, which could

sway lightly at a word, black eyes of oriental shape, able, like those

of the Chinese women, to see out of their corners. She well knew how

to manage a soft, insinuating voice, which threw a tender charm into

every word, even such as she merely chanced to utter; her feet were

like those we see in portraits where the painter boldly lies and

flatters his sitter in the only way which does not compromise anatomy.

Her complexion, a little yellow by day, like that of most brunettes,

was dazzling at night under the wax candles, which brought out the

brilliancy of her black hair and eyes. Her slender and well-defined

outlines reminded an artist of the Venus of the Middle Ages rendered

by Jean Goujon, the illustrious sculptor of Diane de Poitiers.

Des Lupeaulx stopped in the doorway, and leaned against the woodwork.

This ferret of ideas did not deny himself the pleasure of spying upon

sentiment, and this woman interested him more than any of the others

to whom he had attached himself. Des Lupeaulx had reached an age when

men assert pretensions in regard to women. The first white hairs lead

to the latest passions, all the more violent because they are astride

of vanishing powers and dawning weakness. The age of forty is the age

of folly,--an age when man wants to be loved for himself; whereas at

twenty-five life is so full that he has no wants. At twenty-five he

overflows with vigor and wastes it with impunity, but at forty he

learns that to use it in that way is to abuse it. The thoughts that

came into des Lupeaulx's mind at this moment were melancholy ones. The

nerves of the old beau relaxed; the agreeable smile, which served as a

mask and made the character of his countenance, faded; the real man

appeared, and he was horrible. Rabourdin caught sight of him and

thought, "What has happened to him? can he be disgraced in any way?"

The general-secretary was, however, only thinking how the pretty

Madame Colleville, whose intentions were exactly those of Madame

Rabourdin, had summarily abandoned him when it suited her to do so.

Rabourdin caught the sham statesman's eyes fixed on his wife, and he

recorded the look in his memory. He was too keen an observer not to

understand des Lupeaulx to the bottom, and he deeply despised him;

but, as with most busy men, his feelings and sentiments seldom came to

the surface. Absorption in a beloved work is practically equivalent to

the cleverest dissimulation, and thus it was that the opinions and

ideas of Rabourdin were a sealed book to des Lupeaulx. The former was

sorry to see the man in his house, but he was never willing to oppose

his wife's wishes. At this particular moment, while he talked

confidentially with a supernumerary of his office who was destined,

later, to play an unconscious part in a political intrigue resulting

from the death of La Billardiere, he watched, though half-

abstractedly, his wife and des Lupeaulx.

Here we must explain, as much for foreigners as for our own

grandchildren, what a supernumerary in a government office in Paris

means.

The supernumerary is to the administration what a choir-boy is to a

church, what the company's child is to the regiment, what the

figurante is to a theatre; something artless, naive, innocent, a being

blinded by illusions. Without illusions what would become of any of

us? They give strength to bear the res angusta domi of arts and the

beginnings of all science by inspiring us with faith. Illusion is

illimitable faith. Now the supernumerary has faith in the

administration; he never thinks it cold, cruel, and hard, as it really

is. There are two kinds of supernumeraries, or hangers-on,--one poor,

the other rich. The poor one is rich in hope and wants a place, the

rich one is poor in spirit and wants nothing. A wealthy family is not

so foolish as to put its able men into the administration. It confides

an unfledged scion to some head-clerk, or gives him in charge of a

directory who initiates him into what Bilboquet, that profound

philosopher, called the high comedy of government; he is spared all

the horrors of drudgery and is finally appointed to some important

office. The rich supernumerary never alarms the other clerks; they

know he does not endanger their interests, for he seeks only the

highest posts in the administration. About the period of which we

write many families were saying to themselves: "What can we do with

our sons?" The army no longer offered a chance for fortune. Special

careers, such as civil and military engineering, the navy, mining, and

the professorial chair were all fenced about by strict regulations or

to be obtained only by competition; whereas in the civil service the

revolving wheel which turned clerks into prefects, sub-prefects,

assessors, and collectors, like the figures in a magic lantern, was

subjected to no such rules and entailed no drudgery. Through this easy

gap emerged into life the rich supernumeraries who drove their

tilburys, dressed well, and wore moustachios, all of them as impudent

as parvenus. Journalists were apt to persecute the tribe, who were

cousins, nephews, brothers, or other relatives of some minister, some

deputy, or an influential peer. The humbler clerks regarded them as a

means of influence.

The poor supernumerary, on the other hand, who is the only real

worker, is almost always the son of some former clerk's widow, who

lives on a meagre pension and sacrifices herself to support her son

until he can get a place as copying-clerk, and then dies leaving him

no nearer the head of his department than writer of deeds, order-

clerks, or, possibly, under-head-clerk. Living always in some locality

where rents are low, this humble supernumerary starts early from home.

For him the Eastern question relates only to the morning skies. To go

on foot and not get muddied, to save his clothes, and allow for the

time he may lose in standing under shelter during a shower, are the

preoccupations of his mind. The street pavements, the flaggings of the

quays and the boulevards, when first laid down, were a boon to him.

If, for some extraordinary reason, you happen to be in the streets of

Paris at half-past seven or eight o'clock of a winter's morning, and

see through piercing cold or fog or rain a timid, pale young man loom

up, cigarless, take notice of his pockets. You will be sure to see the

outline of a roll which his mother has given him to stay his stomach

between breakfast and dinner. The guilelessness of the supernumerary

does not last long. A youth enlightened by gleams by Parisian life

soon measures the frightful distance that separates him from the head-

clerkship, a distance which no mathematician, neither Archimedes, nor

Leibnitz, nor Laplace has ever reckoned, the distance that exists

between 0 and the figure 1. He begins to perceive the impossibilities

of his career; he hears talk of favoritism; he discovers the intrigues

of officials: he sees the questionable means by which his superiors

have pushed their way,--one has married a young woman who made a false

step; another, the natural daughter of a minister; this one shouldered

the responsibility of another's fault; that one, full of talent, risks

his health in doing, with the perseverance of a mole, prodigies of

work which the man of influence feels incapable of doing for himself,

though he takes the credit. Everything is known in a government

office. The incapable man has a wife with a clear head, who has pushed

him along and got him nominated for deputy; if he has not talent

enough for an office, he cabals in the Chamber. The wife of another

has a statesman at her feet. A third is the hidden informant of a

powerful journalist. Often the disgusted and hopeless supernumerary

sends in his resignation. About three fourths of his class leave the

government employ without ever obtaining an appointment, and their

number is winnowed down to either those young men who are foolish or

obstinate enough to say to themselves, "I have been here three years,

and I must end sooner or later by getting a place," or to those who

are conscious of a vocation for the work. Undoubtedly the position of

supernumerary in a government office is precisely what the novitiate

is in a religious order,--a trial. It is a rough trial. The State

discovers how many of them can bear hunger, thirst, and penury without

breaking down, how many can toil without revolting against it; it

learns which temperaments can bear up under the horrible experience--

or if you like, the disease--of government official life. From this

point of view the apprenticeship of the supernumerary, instead of

being an infamous device of the government to obtain labor gratis,

becomes a useful institution.

The young man with whom Rabourdin was talking was a poor supernumerary

named Sebastien de la Roche, who had picked his way on the points of

his toes, without incurring the least splash upon his boots, from the

rue du Roi-Dore in the Marais. He talked of his mamma, and dared not

raise his eyes to Madame Rabourdin, whose house appeared to him as

gorgeous as the Louvre. He was careful to show his gloves, well

cleaned with india-rubber, as little as he could. His poor mother had

put five francs in his pocket in case it became absolutely necessary

that he should play cards; but she enjoined him to take nothing, to

remain standing, and to be very careful not to knock over a lamp or

the bric-a-brac from an etagere. His dress was all of the strictest

black. His fair face, his eyes, of a fine shade of green with golden

reflections, were in keeping with a handsome head of auburn hair. The

poor lad looked furtively at Madame Rabourdin, whispering to himself,

"How beautiful!" and was likely to dream of that fairy when he went to

bed.

Rabourdin had noted a vocation for his work in the lad, and as he

himself took the whole service seriously, he felt a lively interest in

him. He guessed the poverty of his mother's home, kept together on a

widow's pension of seven hundred francs a year--for the education of

the son, who was just out of college, had absorbed all her savings. He

therefore treated the youth almost paternally; often endeavoured to

get him some fee from the Council, or paid it from his own pocket. He

overwhelmed Sebastien with work, trained him, and allowed him to do

the work of du Bruel's place, for which that vaudevillist, otherwise

known as Cursy, paid him three hundred francs out of his salary. In

the minds of Madame de la Roche and her son, Rabourdin was at once a

great man, a tyrant, and an angel. On him all the poor fellow's hopes

of getting an appointment depended, and the lad's devotion to his

chief was boundless. He dined once a fortnight in the rue Duphot; but

always at a family dinner, invited by Rabourdin himself; Madame asked

him to evening parties only when she wanted partners.

At that moment Rabourdin was scolding poor Sebastien, the only human

being who was in the secret of his immense labors. The youth copied

and recopied the famous "statement," written on a hundred and fifty

folio sheets, besides the corroborative documents, and the summing up

(contained in one page), with the estimates bracketed, the captions in

a running hand, and the sub-titles in a round one. Full of enthusiasm,

in spite of his merely mechanical participation in the great idea, the

lad of twenty would rewrite whole pages for a single blot, and made it

his glory to touch up the writing, regarding it as the element of a

noble undertaking. Sebastien had that afternoon committed the great

imprudence of carrying into the general office, for the purpose of

copying, a paper which contained the most dangerous facts to make

known prematurely, namely, a memorandum relating to the officials in

the central offices of all ministries, with facts concerning their

fortunes, actual and prospective, together with the individual

enterprises of each outside of his government employment.

All government clerks in Paris who are not endowed, like Rabourdin,

with patriotic ambition or other marked capacity, usually add the

profits of some industry to the salary of their office, in order to

eke out a living. A number do as Monsieur Saillard did,--put their

money into a business carried on by others, and spend their evenings

in keeping the books of their associates. Many clerks are married to

milliners, licensed tobacco dealers, women who have charge of the

public lotteries or reading-rooms. Some, like the husband of Madame

Colleville, Celestine's rival, play in the orchestra of a theatre;

others like du Bruel, write vaudeville, comic operas, melodramas, or

act as prompters behind the scenes. We may mention among them Messrs.

Planard, Sewrin, etc. Pigault-Lebrun, Piis, Duvicquet, in their day,

were in government employ. Monsieur Scribe's head-librarian was a

clerk in the Treasury.

Besides such information as this, Rabourdin's memorandum contained an

inquiry into the moral and physical capacities and faculties necessary

in those who were to examine the intelligence, aptitude for labor, and

sound health of the applicants for government service,--three

indispensable qualities in men who are to bear the burden of public

affairs and should do their business well and quickly. But this

careful study, the result of ten years' observation and experience,

and of a long acquaintance with men and things obtained by intercourse

with the various functionaries in the different ministries, would

assuredly have, to those who did not see its purport and connection,

an air of treachery and police espial. If a single page of these

papers were to fall under the eye of those concerned, Monsieur

Rabourdin was lost. Sebastien, who admired his chief without

reservation, and who was, as yet, wholly ignorant of the evils of

bureaucracy, had the follies of guilelessness as well as its grace.

Blamed on a former occasion for carrying away these papers, he now

bravely acknowledged his fault to its fullest extent; he related how

he had put away both the memorandum and the copy carefully in a box in

the office where no one would ever find them. Tears rolled from his

eyes as he realized the greatness of his offence.

"Come, come!" said Rabourdin, kindly. "Don't be so imprudent again,

but never mind now. Go to the office very early tomorrow morning; here

is the key of a small safe which is in my roller secretary; it shuts

with a combination lock. You can open it with the word 'sky'; put the

memorandum and your copy into it and shut it carefully."

This proof of confidence dried the poor fellow's tears. Rabourdin

advised him to take a cup of tea and some cakes.

"Mamma forbids me to drink tea, on account of my chest," said

Sebastien.

"Well, then, my dear child," said the imposing Madame Rabourdin, who

wished to appear gracious, "here are some sandwiches and cream; come

and sit by me."

She made Sebastien sit down beside her, and the lad's heart rose in

his throat as he felt the robe of this divinity brush the sleeve of

his coat. Just then the beautiful woman caught sight of Monsieur des

Lupeaulx standing in the doorway. She smiled, and not waiting till he

came to her, she went to him.

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

"I am not sulking," he returned; "I came to announce some good news,

but the thought has overtaken me that it will only add to your

severity towards me. I fancy myself six months hence almost a stranger

to you. Yes, you are too clever, and I too experienced,--too blase, if

you like,--for either of us to deceive the other. Your end is attained

without its costing you more than a few smiles and gracious words."

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

"Yes; Monsieur de la Billardiere is dying, and from what the minister

told me this evening I judge that your husband will be appointed in

his place."

He thereupon related what he called his scene at the ministry and the

jealousy of the countess, repeating her remarks about the invitation

he had asked her to send to Madame Rabourdin.

"Monsieur des Lupeaulx," said Madame Rabourdin, with dignity, "permit

me to tell you that my husband is the oldest head-clerk as well as the

most capable man in the division; also that the appointment of La

Billardiere over his head made much talk in the service, and that my

husband has stayed on for the last year expecting this promotion, for

which he has really no competitor and no rival."

"That is true."

"Well, then," she resumed, smiling and showing her handsome teeth,

"how can you suppose that the friendship I feel for you is marred by a

thought of self-interest? Why should you think me capable of that?"

Des Lupeaulx made a gesture of admiring denial.

"Ah!" she continued, "the heart of woman will always remain a secret

for even the cleverest of men. Yes, I welcomed you to my house with

the greatest pleasure; and there was, I admit, a motive of self-

interest behind my pleasure--"

"Ah!"

"You have a career before you," she whispered in his ear, "a future

without limit; you will be deputy, minister!" (What happiness for an

ambitious man when such things as these are warbled in his ear by the

sweet voice of a pretty woman!) "Oh, yes! I know you better than you

know yourself. Rabourdin is a man who could be of immense service to

you in such a career; he could do the steady work while you were in

the Chamber. Just as you dream of the ministry, so I dream of seeing

Rabourdin in the Council of State, and general director. It is

therefore my object to draw together two men who can never injure,

but, on the contrary, must greatly help each other. Isn't that a

woman's mission? If you are friends, you will both rise the faster,

and it is surely high time that each of you made hay. I have burned my

ships," she added, smiling. "But you are not as frank with me as I

have been with you."

"You would not listen to me if I were," he replied, with a melancholy

air, in spite of the deep inward satisfaction her remarks gave him.

"What would such future promotions avail me, if you dismiss me now?"

"Before I listen to you," she replied, with naive Parisian liveliness,

"we must be able to understand each other."

And she left the old fop to go and speak with Madame de Chessel, a

countess from the provinces, who seemed about to take leave.

"That is a very extraordinary woman," said des Lupeaulx to himself. "I

don't know my own self when I am with her."

Accordingly, this man of no principle, who six years earlier had kept

a ballet-girl, and who now, thanks to his position, made himself a

seraglio with the pretty wives of the under-clerks, and lived in the

world of journalists and actresses, became devotedly attentive all the

evening to Celestine, and was the last to leave the house.

"At last!" thought Madame Rabourdin, as she undressed that night, "we

have the place! Twelve thousand francs a year and perquisites, beside

the rents of our farms at Grajeux,--nearly twenty thousand francs a

year. It is not affluence, but at least it isn't poverty."