Bureaucracy Part 15

"All the ministries, the whole service is treated in the same way," said des Lupeaulx.

"Happily," she said, "you alone possess this doc.u.ment. I cannot explain it, even to myself."

"The man who stole it is not such a fool as to let me have it without keeping a copy for himself; he is too great a liar to admit it, and too clever in his business to give it up. I did not even ask him for it."

"Who is he?"

"Your chief clerk."

"Dutocq! People are always punished through their kindnesses! But," she added, "he is only a dog who wants a bone."

"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."

"Not at all; it is monarchical and religious, for the Grand Almoner is concerned in it. Baudoyer himself must appoint Colleville in return for ecclesiastical a.s.sistance."

"What shall you do?"

"What will you bid me do?" he said, with charming grace, holding out his hand.

Celestine no longer thought him ugly, nor old, nor white and chilling as a h.o.a.r-frost, nor indeed anything that was odious and offensive, but she did not give him her hand. At night, in her salon, she would have let him take it a hundred times, but here, alone and in the morning, the action seemed too like a promise that might lead her far.

"And they say that statesmen have no hearts!" she cried enthusiastically, trying to hide the harshness of her refusal under the grace of her words. "The thought used to terrify me," she added, a.s.suming an innocent, ingenuous air.

"What a calumny!" cried des Lupeaulx. "Only this week one of the stiffest of diplomatists, a man who has been in the service ever since he came to manhood, has married the daughter of an actress, and has introduced her at the most iron-bound court in Europe as to quarterings of n.o.bility."

"You will continue to support us?"

"I am to draw up your husband's appointment--But no cheating, remember."

She gave him her hand to kiss, and tapped him on the cheek as she did so. "You are mine!" she said.

Des Lupeaulx admired the expression.

[That night, at the Opera, the old c.o.xcomb related the incident as follows: "A woman who did not want to tell a man she would be his,--an acknowledgment a well-bred woman never allows herself to make,--changed the words into 'You are mine.' Don't you think the evasion charming?"]

"But you must be my ally," he answered. "Now listen, your husband has spoken to the minister of a plan for the reform of the administration; the paper I have shown you is a part of that plan. I want to know what it is. Find out, and tell me to-night."

"I will," she answered, wholly unaware of the important nature of the errand which brought des Lupeaulx to the house that morning.

"Madame, the hair-dresser."

"At last!" thought Celestine. "I don't see how I should have got out of it if he had delayed much longer."

"You do not know to what lengths my devotion can go," said des Lupeaulx, rising. "You shall be invited to the first select party given by his Excellency's wife."

"Ah, you are an angel!" she cried. "And I see now how much you love me; you love me intelligently."

"To-night, dear child," he said, "I shall find out at the Opera what journalists are conspiring for Baudoyer, and we will measure swords together."

"Yes, but you must dine with us, will you not? I have taken pains to get the things you like best--"

"All that is so like love," said des Lupeaulx to himself as he went downstairs, "that I am willing to be deceived in that way for a long time. Well, if she IS tricking me I shall know it. I'll set the cleverest of all traps before the appointment is fairly signed, and I'll read her heart. Ah! my little cats, I know you! for, after all, women are just what we men are. Twenty-eight years old, virtuous, and living here in the rue Duphot!--a rare piece of luck and worth cultivating,"

thought the elderly b.u.t.terfly as he fluttered down the staircase.

"Good heavens! that man, without his gla.s.ses, must look funny enough in a dressing-gown!" thought Celestine, "but the harpoon is in his back and he'll tow me where I want to go; I am sure now of that invitation. He has played his part in my comedy."

When, at five o'clock in the afternoon, Rabourdin came home to dress for dinner, his wife presided at his toilet and presently laid before him the fatal memorandum which, like the slipper in the Arabian Nights, the luckless man was fated to meet at every turn.

"Who gave you that?" he asked, thunderstruck.

"Monsieur des Lupeaulx."

"So he has been here!" cried Rabourdin, with a look which would certainly have made a guilty woman turn pale, but which Celestine received with unruffled brow and a laughing eye.

"And he is coming back to dinner," she said. "Why that startled air?"

"My dear," replied Rabourdin, "I have mortally offended des Lupeaulx; such men never forgive, and yet he fawns upon me! Do you think I don't see why?"

"The man seems to me," she said, "to have good taste; you can't expect me to blame him. I really don't know anything more flattering to a woman than to please a worn-out palate. After--"

"A truce to nonsense, Celestine. Spare a much-tried man. I cannot get an audience of the minister, and my honor is at stake."

"Good heavens, no! Dutocq can have the promise of a good place as soon as you are named head of the division."

"Ah! I see what you are about, dear child," said Rabourdin; "but the game you are playing is just as dishonorable as the real thing that is going on around us. A lie is a lie, and an honest woman--"

"Let me use the weapons employed against us."

"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. "In a few days des Lupeaulx will have accomplished all that I want of him. While you are trying to speak to the minister, and before you can even see him on business, I shall have seen him and spoken with him. You are worn out in trying to bring that plan of your brain to birth,--a plan which you have been hiding from me; but you will find that in three months your wife has accomplished more than you have done in six years. Come, tell me this fine scheme of yours."

Rabourdin, continuing to shave, cautioned his wife not to say a word about his work, and after a.s.suring her that to confide a single idea to des Lupeaulx would be to put the cat near the milk-jug, he began an explanation of his labors.

"Why didn't you tell me this before, Rabourdin?" said Celestine, cutting her husband short at his fifth sentence. "You might have saved yourself a world of trouble. I can understand that a man should be blinded by an idea for a moment, but to nurse it up for six or seven years, that's a thing I cannot comprehend! You want to reduce the budget,--a vulgar and commonplace idea! The budget ought, on the contrary, to reach two hundred millions. Then, indeed, France would be great. If you want a new system let it be one of loans, as Monsieur de Nucingen keeps saying. The poorest of all treasuries is the one with a surplus that it never uses; the mission of a minister of finance is to fling gold out of the windows. It will come back to him through the cellars; and you, you want to h.o.a.rd it! The thing to do is to increase the offices and all government employments, instead of reducing them! So far from lessening the public debt, you ought to increase the creditors. If the Bourbons want to reign in peace, let them seek creditors in the towns and villages, and place their loans there; above all, they ought not to let foreigners draw interest away from France; some day an alien nation might ask us for the capital. Whereas if capital and interest are held only in France, neither France nor credit can perish. That's what saved England. Your plan is the tradesman's plan. An ambitious public man should produce some bold scheme,--he should make himself another Law, without Law's fatal ill-luck; he ought to exhibit the power of credit, and show that we should reduce, not princ.i.p.al, but interest, as they do in England."

"Come, come, Celestine," said Rabourdin; "mix up ideas as much as you please, and make fun of them,--I'm accustomed to that; but don't criticise a work of which you know nothing as yet."