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Never courtesan took such pains with herself as this honest woman bestowed upon her person. No dressmaker was ever so tormented as hers. Madame Rabourdin forgot nothing. She went herself to the stable where she hired carriages, and chose a coupe that was neither old, nor bourgeois, nor showy. Her footman, like the footmen of great houses, had the dress and appearance of a master.
'Appoint Rabourdin, a faithful servant, and public opinion is with you " "Hi, hi!" laughed Finot. "So, there's no need to be uneasy," said des Lupeaulx. "I have arranged it all to-night; the Grand Almoner must yield." "I would rather have had less hope, and you to dinner," whispered Celestine, looking at him with a vexed air which might very well pass for an expression of wounded love.
"Celestine, the more that man des Lupeaulx feels he is foolishly caught in a trap, the more bitter he will be against me." "What if I get him dismissed altogether?" Rabourdin looked at his wife in amazement. "I am thinking only of your advancement; it was high time, my poor husband," continued Celestine. "But you are mistaking the dog for the game," she added, after a pause.
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."
Towards the close of the year 1830 Monsieur Rabourdin did some business on hand which required him to visit the old ministry, where the bureaus had all been in great commotion, owing to a general removal of officials, from the highest to the lowest. This revolution bore heaviest, in point of fact, upon the lackeys, who are not fond of seeing new faces.
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.
Another evil, brought about by modern customs, which Rabourdin counted among the causes of this secret demoralization, was the fact that there is no real subordination in the administration in Paris; complete equality reigns between the head of an important division and the humblest copying-clerk; one is as powerful as the other in an arena outside of which each lords it in his own way.
Eight years of fruitless expectation made Madame Rabourdin at last understand that the paternal protector of her husband must have died, and that his will, if it ever existed, was lost or destroyed.
"Poor La Billardiere is dying," remarked his Excellency the minister; "that place falls to Rabourdin, one of our most able men, and to whom our predecessors did not behave well, though one of them actually owed his position in the prefecture of police under the Empire to a certain great personage who was interested in Rabourdin.
What do I want better than to be the wife of Mohammed?" She began to laugh; and Rabourdin laughed too, for the soapsuds were clinging to Celestine's lips, and her voice had the tones of the purest and most steadfast affection. "Go and dress, dear child; and above all, don't say a word of this to des Lupeaulx. Swear you will not. That is the only punishment that I impose " "/Impose/!" she cried.
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