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At this moment a scene was taking place between the minister and des Lupeaulx which decided Rabourdin's fate. The general-secretary had gone to see the minister in his private study before the breakfast-hour, to make sure that La Briere was not within hearing. "Your Excellency is not treating me frankly "
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.
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.
Forced back to his intrenchments, the father made the serious mistake of telling his daughter that her future husband was certain of becoming Rabourdin "de something or other" before he reached the age of admission to the Chamber. Xavier was soon to be appointed Master of petitions, and general-secretary at his ministry.
"Do you know what the other side offer me, poor devil of a general-secretary?" "What?" "I owe thirty-thousand and odd miserable francs, you will despise me because it isn't more, but here, I grant you, I am significant. Well, Baudoyer's uncle has bought up my debts, and is, doubtless, ready to give me a receipt for them if Baudoyer is appointed." "But all that is monstrous."
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." Bixiou. "You are wrong; in your situation I should try to get ahead of the general-secretary." Bixiou. "You'll find out; do you suppose Baudoyer will overlook what happened just now?" Fleury.
The sub-prefect of Ville-aux-Fayes, Monsieur des Lupeaulx, nephew of the general-secretary of one of the most important ministries in Paris, was the prospective husband of Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin, the mayor's youngest daughter, whose dowry, like that of her elder sister, was two hundred thousand francs, not to speak of "expectations."
The general-secretary was certainly the last man Madame Rabourdin expected to see, and so, when she heard his boots creaking in the ante-chamber, she exclaimed, impatiently, "The hair-dresser already!" an exclamation as little agreeable to des Lupeaulx as the sight of des Lupeaulx was agreeable to her.
Men who could all say such witty things in their cups or in company with a danseuse, how could they help being friends? If des Lupeaulx had not been a general-secretary he would certainly have been a journalist. Thus, in that fifteen years' struggle in which the harlequin sabre of epigram opened a breach by which insurrection entered the citadel, des Lupeaulx never received so much as a scratch.
"Then I won't swear anything." "Come, come, Celestine, I said in jest a really serious thing." "To-night," she said, "I mean your general-secretary to know whom I am really intending to attack; he has given me the means." "Attack whom?" "The minister," she answered, drawing himself up. "We are to be invited to his wife's private parties."
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