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The devil always puts a martyr near a Bixiou. Baudoyer's bureau held the martyr, a poor copying-clerk twenty-two years of age, with a salary of fifteen hundred francs, named Auguste-Jean-Francois Minard. Minard had married for love the daughter of a porter, an artificial-flower maker employed by Mademoiselle Godard.
"We have done a good work this day. 'The Death of Hercules' reminded me of 'The Death of Hector, by the late Luce de Lancival; the work we have just accepted sparkles with sublime verses." "Yes," said Minard, "the versification has taste; there are some really fine lines in it, and I admit to you that I think this sort of literature rather above the anagrams of Master Colleville."
"Messieurs," said Minard, "I see that this is a business interview; I shall therefore take leave of you." As soon as Minard had left the room, la Peyrade pulled out his pocket-book.
"Oh!" replied Minard, "Colleville's anagrams are mere witticisms, which have nothing in common with the sterner accents of Melpomene." "And yet," said Minard, "I can assure you he attaches the greatest importance to that rubbish, and apropos to his anagrams, as, indeed, about many other things, he is not a little puffed up.
"Ah ca!" cried Madame Phellion, "can't you stop coming yourself to an explanation of what you mean, and get there?" "Your son," said Minard, cautious this time in measuring the joy he was about to bestow, fearing another fainting-fit of happiness, "has just made a very important scientific discovery."
It was somewhat remarkable that the gravest member of the party, aided by Rabourdin, was the person who finally warmed up the atmosphere. The Abbe Gondrin, a man of a most refined and cultivated mind, had, like every pure and well-ordered soul, a fund of gentle gaiety which he was well able to communicate, and liveliness was beginning to dawn upon the party when Minard entered the room.
The bell had been rung by Minard with magisterial force, and with such an accent that the whole household was alarmed, and came running in. "It is nothing, it is nothing," said Phellion to the servants, sending them away. But almost at the same moment, seeing his wife, who now entered the room, he resumed his habitual solemnity.
He was thinking at that moment of selling his license and "going into another line," as he said. He thought of being chairman of a railway company, of becoming a responsible person and an administrator, and finally of marrying Mlle. Minard, daughter of the richest mayor in Paris.
"Ah ca!" said Minard, "then you don't know the original cause of the intimacy between Madame la Comtesse de Godollo and the Thuilliers?" "She is a tenant in their house; she occupies the entresol beneath their apartment." "True, but there's something more than that in it.
Seeing that Felix shook his head with a look of incredulity, Minard hastened to say: "Yes, yes, the commander is quite right. Last night there was a hitch about signing the contract, and it was not signed. You were not there, by the bye, and your absence was much remarked upon." "We were invited," said Phellion, "and up to the last moment we hesitated whether to go or not.
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