United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Who is your gentleman, child?" "M. Baudoyer, the mayor of your arrondissement, a man as stupid as the late Crevel; Crevel once financed Gaudissart, you know, and a few days ago he died and left me nothing, not so much as a pot of pomatum. That made me say just now that this age of ours is something sickening." "What did he die of?" "Of his wife. If he had stayed with me, he would be living now.
"But," said des Lupeaulx, frightened at such kindness, and also by so apparently fantastic an arrangement. "What do you want of me?" "La Billardiere's place for Baudoyer," said Gigonnet, quickly. "That's a small matter, though it will be next to impossible for me to do it," said des Lupeaulx. "I have just tied my hands." "Bite the cords with your teeth," said Gigonnet.
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.
For the last six months Dutocq had taken to visiting Mademoiselle Godard from time to time, with certain views of his own, hoping to discover in her establishment some female treasure. Thus Baudoyer had a pair of henchmen in Dutocq and Godard. Monsieur Saillard, too innocent to judge rightly of Dutocq, was in the habit of paying him frequent little visits at the office.
"All Paris will read that," cried Baudoyer, whose eyes were still riveted on the paper. "Your eulogy costs us four thousand eight hundred francs, son-in-law!" exclaimed Madame Saillard. "You have adorned the house of God," said the Abbe Gaudron. "We might have got salvation without doing that," she returned.
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.
The principal entrance of the house was in the Place Baudoyer; it was tolerably large, surrounded by gardens, inclosed in the Rue Saint-Jean by the shops of toolmakers, which protected it from prying looks, and was walled in by a triple rampart of stone, noise, and verdure, like an embalmed mummy in its triple coffin.
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.
You see, the King, the Dauphin and the Dauphine, the clergy, and lastly the court, all want Baudoyer; the minister wants Rabourdin." Bixiou. "Good!" Dutocq. "To ease the matter off, the minister, who sees he must give way, wants to strangle the difficulty. We must find some good reason for getting rid of Rabourdin.
Self-interest stifles all compassion, as it does in children, but the government service adds hypocrisy to boot. The clerks of the bureau Baudoyer arrived at eight o'clock in the morning, whereas those of the bureau Rabourdin seldom appeared till nine, a circumstance which did not prevent the work in the latter office from being more rapidly dispatched than that of the former.
Word Of The Day