“I’ll make sure of Rabourdin’s support by forgiving him now, – I’ll get even with him later. If he hasn’t this place for the time being I should have to give up a woman who is capable of becoming a most precious instrument in the pursuit of high political fortune. She understands everything; shrinks from nothing, from no idea whatever! – and besides, I can’t know before his Excellency what new scheme of administration Rabourdin has invented. No, my dear des Lupeaulx, the thing in hand is to win all now for your Celestine. You may make as many faces as you please, Madame la comtesse, but you will invite Madame Rabourdin to your next select party.”
Des Lupeaulx was one of those men who to satisfy a passion are quite able to put away revenge in some dark corner of their minds. His course was taken; he was resolved to get Rabourdin appointed.
“I will prove to you, my dear fellow, that I deserve a good place in your galley,” thought he as he seated himself in his study and began to unfold a newspaper.
He knew so well what the ministerial organ would contain that he rarely took the trouble to read it, but on this occasion he did open it to look at the article on La Billardiere, recollecting with amusement the dilemma in which du Bruel had put him by bringing him the night before Bixiou’s amendments to the obituary. He was laughing to himself as he reread the biography of the late Comte da Fontaine, dead a few months earlier, which he had hastily substituted for that of La Billardiere, when his eyes were dazzled by the name of Baudoyer. He read with fury the article which pledged the minister, and then he rang violently for Dutocq, to send him at once to the editor. But what was his astonishment on reading the reply of the opposition paper! The situation was evidently serious. He knew the game, and he saw that the man who was shuffling his cards for him was a Greek of the first order. To dictate in this way through two opposing newspapers in one evening, and to begin the fight by forestalling the intentions of the minister was a daring game! He recognized the pen of a liberal editor, and resolved to question him that night at the opera. Dutocq appeared.
“Read that,” said des Lupeaulx, handing him over the two journals, and continuing to run his eye over others to see if Baudoyer had pulled any further wires. “Go to the office and ask who has dared to thus compromise the minister.”
“It was not Monsieur Baudoyer himself,” answered Dutocq, “for he never left the ministry yesterday. I need not go and inquire; for when I took your article to the newspaper office I met a young abbe who brought in a letter from the Grand Almoner, before which you yourself would have had to bow.”
“Dutocq, you have a grudge against Monsieur Rabourdin, and it isn’t right; for he has twice saved you from being turned out. However, we are not masters of our own feelings; we sometimes hate our benefactors. Only, remember this; if you show the slightest treachery to Rabourdin, without my permission, it will be your ruin. As to that newspaper, let the Grand Almoner subscribe as largely as we do, if he wants its services. Here we are at the end of the year; the matter of subscriptions will come up for discussion, and I shall have something to say on that head. As to La Billardiere’s place, there is only one way to settle the matter; and that is to appoint Rabourdin this very day.”
“Gentlemen,” said Dutocq, returning to the clerks’ office and addressing his colleagues. “I don’t know if Bixiou has the art of looking into futurity, but if you have not read the ministerial journal I advise you to study the article about Baudoyer; then, as Monsieur Fleury takes the opposition sheet, you can see the reply. Monsieur Rabourdin certainly has talent, but a man who in these days gives a six-thousand-franc monstrance to the Church has a devilish deal more talent than he.”
Bixiou [entering]. “What say you, gentlemen, to the First Epistle to the Corinthians in our pious ministerial journal, and the reply Epistle to the Ministers in the opposition sheet? How does Monsieur Rabourdin feel now, du Bruel?”
Du Bruel [rushing in]. “I don’t know.” [He drags Bixiou back into his cabinet, and says in a low voice] “My good fellow, your way of helping people is like that of the hangman who jumps upon a victim’s shoulders to break his neck. You got me into a scrape with des Lupeaulx, which my folly in ever trusting you richly deserved. A fine thing indeed, that article on La Billardiere. I sha’n’t forget the trick! Why, the very first sentence was as good as telling the King he was superannuated and it was time for him to die. And as to that Quiberon bit, it said plainly that the King was a – What a fool I was!”
Bixiou [laughing]. “Bless my heart! are you getting angry? Can’t a fellow joke any more?”
Du Bruel. “Joke! joke indeed. When you want to be made head-clerk somebody shall joke with you, my dear fellow.”
Bixiou [in a bullying tone]. “Angry, are we?”
Du Bruel. “Yes!”
Bixiou [dryly]. “So much the worse for you.”
Du Bruel [uneasy]. “You wouldn’t pardon such a thing yourself, I know.”
Bixiou [in a wheedling tone]. “To a friend? indeed I would.” [They hear Fleury’s voice.] “There’s Fleury cursing Baudoyer. Hey, how well the thing has been managed! Baudoyer will get the appointment.” [Confidentially] “After all, so much the better. Du Bruel, just keep your eye on the consequences. Rabourdin would be a mean-spirited creature to stay under Baudoyer; he will send in his registration, and that will give us two places. You can be head of the bureau and take me for under-head-clerk. We will make vaudevilles together, and I’ll fag at your work in the office.”
Du Bruel [smiling]. “Dear me, I never thought of that. Poor Rabourdin! I shall be sorry for him, though.”
Bixiou. “That shows how much you love him!” [Changing his tone] “Ah, well, I don’t pity him any longer. He’s rich; his wife gives parties and doesn’t ask me, – me, who go everywhere! Well, good-bye, my dear fellow, good-bye, and don’t owe me a grudge!” [He goes out through the clerks’ office.] “Adieu, gentlemen; didn’t I tell you yesterday that a man who has nothing but virtues and talents will always be poor, even though he has a pretty wife?”
Henry. “You are so rich, you!”
Bixiou. “Not bad, my Cincinnatus! But you’ll give me that dinner at the Rocher de Cancale.”
Poiret. “It is absolutely impossible for me to understand Monsieur Bixiou.”
Phellion [with an elegaic air]. “Monsieur Rabourdin so seldom reads the newspapers that it might perhaps be serviceable to deprive ourselves momentarily by taking them in to him.” [Fleury hands over his paper, Vimeux the office sheet, and Phellion departs with them.]
At that moment des Lupeaulx, coming leisurely downstairs to breakfast with the minister, was asking himself whether, before playing a trump card for the husband, it might not be prudent to probe the wife’s heart and make sure of a reward for his devotion. He was feeling about for the small amount of heart that he possessed, when, at a turn of the staircase, he encountered his lawyer, who said to him, smiling, “Just a word, Monseigneur,” in the tone of familiarity assumed by men who know they are indispensable.
“What is it, my dear Desroches?” exclaimed the politician. “Has anything happened?”
“I have come to tell you that all your notes and debts have been brought up by Gobseck and Gigonnet, under the name of a certain Samanon.”
“Men whom I helped to make their millions!”
“Listen,” whispered the lawyer. “Gigonnet (really named Bidault) is the uncle of Saillard, your cashier; and Saillard is father-in-law to a certain Baudoyer, who thinks he has a right to the vacant place in your ministry. Don’t you think I have done right to come and tell you?”
“Thank you,” said des Lupeaulx, nodding to the lawyer with a shrewd look.
“One stroke of your pen will buy them off,” said Desroches, leaving him.
“What an immense sacrifice!” muttered des Lupeaulx. “It would be impossible to explain it to a woman,” thought he. “Is Celestine worth more than the clearing off of my debts? – that is the question. I’ll go and see her this morning.”
So the beautiful Madame Rabourdin was to be, within an hour, the arbiter of her husband’s fate, and no power on earth could warn her of the importance of her replies, or give her the least hint to guard her conduct and compose her voice. Moreover, in addition to her mischances, she believed herself certain of success, never dreaming that Rabourdin was undermined in all directions by the secret sapping of the mollusks.
“Well, Monseigneur,” said des Lupeaulx, entering the little salon where they breakfasted, “have you seen the articles on Baudoyer?”
“For God’s sake, my dear friend,” replied the minister, “don’t talk of those appointments just now; let me have an hour’s peace! They cracked my ears last night with that monstrance. The only way to save Rabourdin is to bring his appointment before the Council, unless I submit to having my hand forced. It is enough to disgust a man with the public service. I must purchase the right to keep that excellent Rabourdin by promoting a certain Colleville!”
“Why not make over the management of this pretty little comedy to me, and rid yourself of the worry of it? I’ll amuse you every morning with an account of the game of chess I should play with the Grand Almoner,” said des Lupeaulx.
“Very good,” said the minister, “settle it with the head examiner. But you know perfectly well that nothing is more likely to strike the king’s mind than just those reasons the opposition journal has chosen to put forth. Good heavens! fancy managing a ministry with such men as Baudoyer under me!”
“An imbecile bigot,” said des Lupeaulx, “and as utterly incapable as – ”
“ – as La Billardiere,” added the minister.
“But La Billardiere had the manners of a gentleman-in-ordinary,” replied des Lupeaulx. “Madame,” he continued, addressing the countess, “it is now an absolute necessity to invite Madame Rabourdin to your next private party. I must assure you she is the intimate friend of Madame de Camps; they were at the Opera together last night. I first met her at the hotel Firmiani. Besides, you will see that she is not of a kind to compromise a salon.”
“Invite Madame Rabourdin, my dear,” said the minister, “and pray let us talk of something else.”
CHAPTER VII. SCENES FROM DOMESTIC LIFE
Parisian households are literally eaten up with the desire to be in keeping with the luxury that surrounds them on all sides, and few there are who have the wisdom to let their external situation conform to their internal revenue. But this vice may perhaps denote a truly French patriotism, which seeks to maintain the supremacy of the nation in the matter of dress. France reigns through clothes over the whole of Europe; and every one must feel the importance of retaining a commercial sceptre that makes fashion in France what the navy is to England. This patriotic ardor which leads a nation to sacrifice everything to appearances – to the “paroistre,” as d’Aubigne said in the days of Henri IV. – is the cause of those vast secret labors which employ the whole of a Parisian woman’s morning, when she wishes, as Madame Rabourdin wished, to keep up on twelve thousand francs a year the style that many a family with thirty thousand does not indulge in. Consequently, every Friday, – the day of her dinner parties, – Madame Rabourdin helped the chambermaid to do the rooms; for the cook went early to market, and the man-servant was cleaning the silver, folding the napkins, and polishing the glasses. The ill-advised individual who might happen, through an oversight of the porter, to enter Madame Rabourdin’s establishment about eleven o’clock in the morning would have found her in the midst of a disorder the reverse of picturesque, wrapped in a dressing-gown, her hair ill-dressed, and her feet in old slippers, attending to the lamps, arranging the flowers, or cooking in haste an extremely unpoetic breakfast. The visitor to whom the mysteries of Parisian life were unknown would certainly have learned for the rest of his life not to set foot in these greenrooms at the wrong moment; a woman caught in her matin mysteries would ever after point him out as a man capable of the blackest crimes; or she would talk of his stupidity and indiscretion in a manner to ruin him. The true Parisian woman, indulgent to all curiosity that she can put to profit, is implacable to that which makes her lose her prestige. Such a domiciliary invasion may be called, not only (as they say in police reports) an attack on privacy, but a burglary, a robbery of all that is most precious, namely, CREDIT. A woman is quite willing to let herself be surprised half-dressed, with her hair about her shoulders. If her hair is all her own she scores one; but she will never allow herself to be seen “doing” her own rooms, or she loses her pariostre, – that precious /seeming-to-be/!
Madame Rabourdin was in full tide of preparation for her Friday dinner, standing in the midst of provisions the cook had just fished from the vast ocean of the markets, when Monsieur des Lupeaulx made his way stealthily in. The general-secretary was certainly the last man Madame Rabourdin expected to see, and so, when she heard his boots creaking in the ante-chamber, she exclaimed, impatiently, “The hair-dresser already!” – an exclamation as little agreeable to des Lupeaulx as the sight of des Lupeaulx was agreeable to her. She immediately escaped into her bedroom, where chaos reigned; a jumble of furniture to be put out of sight, with other heterogeneous articles of more or rather less elegance, – a domestic carnival, in short. The bold des Lupeaulx followed the handsome figure, so piquant did she seem to him in her dishabille. There is something indescribably alluring to the eye in a portion of flesh seen through an hiatus in the undergarment, more attractive far than when it rises gracefully above the circular curve of the velvet bodice, to the vanishing line of the prettiest swan’s-neck that ever lover kissed before a ball. When the eye dwells on a woman in full dress making exhibition of her magnificent white shoulders, do we not fancy that we see the elegant dessert of a grand dinner? But the glance that glides through the disarray of muslins rumpled in sleep enjoys, as it were, a feast of stolen fruit glowing between the leaves on a garden wall.
“Stop! wait!” cried the pretty Parisian, bolting the door of the disordered room.
She rang for Therese, called for her daughter, the cook, and the man-servant, wishing she possessed the whistle of the machinist at the Opera. Her call, however, answered the same purpose. In a moment, another phenomenon! the salon assumed a piquant morning look, quite in keeping with the becoming toilet hastily got together by the fugitive; we say it to her glory, for she was evidently a clever woman, in this at least.
“You!” she said, coming forward, “at this hour? What has happened?”
“Very serious things,” answered des Lupeaulx. “You and I must understand each other now.”
Celestine looked at the man behind his glasses, and understood the matter.
“My principle vice,” she said, “is oddity. For instance, I do not mix up affections with politics; let us talk politics, – business, if you will, – the rest can come later. However, it is not really oddity nor a whim that forbids me to mingle ill-assorted colors and put together things that have no affinity, and compels me to avoid discords; it is my natural instinct as an artist. We women have politics of our own.”
Already the tones of her voice and the charm of her manners were producing their effect on the secretary and metamorphosing his roughness into sentimental courtesy; she had recalled him to his obligations as a lover. A clever pretty woman makes an atmosphere about her in which the nerves relax and the feelings soften.
“You are ignorant of what is happening,” said des Lupeaulx, harshly, for he still thought it best to make a show of harshness. “Read that.”
He gave the two newspapers to the graceful woman, having drawn a line in red ink round each of the famous articles.
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed, “but this is dreadful! Who is this Baudoyer?”
“A donkey,” answered des Lupeaulx; “but, as you see, he uses means, – he gives monstrances; he succeeds, thanks to some clever hand that pulls the wires.”
The thought of her debts crossed Madame Rabourdin’s mind and blurred her sight, as if two lightning flashes had blinded her eyes at the same moment; her ears hummed under the pressure of the blood that began to beat in her arteries; she remained for a moment quite bewildered, gazing at a window which she did not see.
“But are you faithful to us?” she said at last, with a winning glance at des Lupeaulx, as if to attach him to her.
“That is as it may be,” he replied, answering her glance with an interrogative look which made the poor woman blush.
“If you demand caution-money you may lose all,” she said, laughing; “I thought you more magnanimous than you are. And you, you thought me less a person than I am, – a sort of school-girl.”
“You have misunderstood me,” he said, with a covert smile; “I meant that I could not assist a man who plays against me just as l’Etourdi played against Mascarille.”
“What can you mean?”
“This will prove to you whether I am magnanimous or not.”
He gave Madame Rabourdin the memorandum stolen by Dutocq, pointing out to her the passage in which her husband had so ably analyzed him.
“Read that.”
Celestine recognized the handwriting, read the paper, and turned pale under the blow.
“All the ministries, the whole service is treated in the same way,” said des Lupeaulx.
“Happily,” she said, “you alone possess this document. 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 assistance.”
“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 hoar-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, assuming 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 nobility.”
“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 coxcomb 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 butterfly as he fluttered down the staircase.
“Good heavens! that man, without his glasses, 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 assuring 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 hoard 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 principal, 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.”
“Do I need,” she asked, “to know a scheme the essence of which is to govern France with a civil service of six thousand men instead of twenty thousand? My dear friend, even allowing it were the plan of a man of genius, a king of France who attempted to carry it out would get himself dethroned. You can keep down a feudal aristocracy by levelling a few heads, but you can’t subdue a hydra with thousands. And is it with the present ministers – between ourselves, a wretched crew – that you expect to carry out your reform? No, no; change the monetary system if you will, but do not meddle with men, with little men; they cry out too much, whereas gold is dumb.”
“But, Celestine, if you will talk, and put wit before argument, we shall never understand each other.”
“Understand! I understand what that paper, in which you have analyzed the capacities of the men in office, will lead to,” she replied, paying no attention to what her husband said. “Good heavens! you have sharpened the axe to cut off your own head. Holy Virgin! why didn’t you consult me? I could have at least prevented you from committing anything to writing, or, at any rate, if you insisted on putting it to paper, I would have written it down myself, and it should never have left this house. Good God! to think that he never told me! That’s what men are! capable of sleeping with the wife of their bosom for seven years, and keeping a secret from her! Hiding their thoughts from a poor woman for seven years! – doubting her devotion!”
“But,” cried Rabourdin, provoked, “for eleven years and more I have been unable to discuss anything with you because you insist on cutting me short and substituting your ideas for mine. You know nothing at all about my scheme.”
“Nothing! I know all.”
“Then tell it to me!” cried Rabourdin, angry for the first time since his marriage.
“There! it is half-past six o’clock; finish shaving and dress at once,” she cried hastily, after the fashion of women when pressed on a point they are not ready to talk of. “I must go; we’ll adjourn the discussion, for I don’t want to be nervous on a reception-day. Good heavens! the poor soul!” she thought, as she left the room, “it /is/ hard to be in labor for seven years and bring forth a dead child! And not trust his wife!”
She went back into the room.
“If you had listened to me you would never had interceded to keep your chief clerk; he stole that abominable paper, and has, no doubt, kept a fac-simile of it. Adieu, man of genius!”
Then she noticed the almost tragic expression of her husband’s grief; she felt she had gone too far, and ran to him, seized him just as he was, all lathered with soap-suds, and kissed him tenderly.
“Dear Xavier, don’t be vexed,” she said. “To-night, after the people are gone, we will study your plan; you shall speak at your ease, – I will listen just as long as you wish me to. Isn’t that nice of me? 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. “Then I won’t swear anything.”
“Come, come, Celestine, I said in jest a really serious thing.”
“To-night,” she said, “I mean your general-secretary to know whom I am really intending to attack; he has given me the means.”
“Attack whom?”
“The minister,” she answered, drawing himself up. “We are to be invited to his wife’s private parties.”
In spite of his Celestine’s loving caresses, Rabourdin, as he finished dressing, could not prevent certain painful thoughts from clouding his brow.