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The news told about in the offices the night before, just as the clerks were dispersing, agitated all minds, and for the first half-hour after arrival in the morning they stood around the stoves and talked it over. But earlier than that, Dutocq, as we have seen, had rushed to des Lupeaulx on receiving his note, and found him dressing.
But when Lucien heard Mlle. des Touches' voice blending with Conti's, his hopes fled. "Conti sings too well," he told des Lupeaulx; and he went back to Mme. de Bargeton, who carried him off to Mme. d'Espard in another room. "Well, will you not interest yourself in him?" asked Mme. de Bargeton. The Marquise spoke with an air half kindly, half insolent.
"I now know all," said des Lupeaulx, when he was comfortably seated on a sofa at the corner of the fireplace, a cup of tea in his hand and Madame Rabourdin standing before him with a plate of sandwiches and some slices of cake very appropriately called "leaden cake."
But when Lucien heard Mlle. des Touches' voice blending with Conti's, his hopes fled. "Conti sings too well," he told des Lupeaulx; and he went back to Mme. de Bargeton, who carried him off to Mme. d'Espard in another room. "Well, will you not interest yourself in him?" asked Mme. de Bargeton. The Marquise spoke with an air half kindly, half insolent.
Moreover, the clerks, one and all, from the least to the greatest, are acquiring opinions of their own; they will soon be no longer the hands of a brain, the scribes of governmental thought; the Opposition even now tends towards giving them a right to judge the government and to talk and vote against it." Des Lupeaulx. "Of course bureaucracy has its defects.
"Here is what I wanted," she said; "Des Lupeaulx has put me face to face with the minister, and were he a man of iron, his Excellency shall be made for a time to bend the knee to me." The next day Celestine began her preparations for entrance into the inner circle of the ministry. It was her day of triumph, her own!
Her eyes, suffused with the light of hope, and sparkling with intelligence, justified her claims to the superiority which des Lupeaulx, proud and happy on this occasion, asserted for her. With the minister himself she took the pretty air of sauciness which women may properly allow themselves with men, even when they are grand dukes.
Du Bruel, we must get ten or a dozen lines about the worthy late director into the papers; his Excellency will glance them over, he reads the papers. Do you know the particulars of old La Billardiere's life?" Du Bruel made a sign in the negative. "No?" continued des Lupeaulx. "Well then; he was mixed up in the affairs of La Vendee, and he was one of the confidants of the late King.
"I will wait on His Majesty for his commands with regard to the last steps in the matter, which will lie with the Keeper of the Seals, as two reprieves will need signing." "You have been wise to take the initiative," said des Lupeaulx, shaking hands with the Comte de Granville.
Just then the minister's valet approached des Lupeaulx in a mysterious manner, and told him that his own servant wished him to deliver to him at once a letter of the utmost importance. The general-secretary went up to a lamp and read a note thus worded: Contrary to my custom, I am waiting in your ante-chamber to see you; you have not a moment to lose if you wish to come to terms with
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