Bureaucracy, Honoré de Balzac [best classic books to read .txt] 📗

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.

"Will she ever appreciate me?" he said to himself. "She does not even understand that she is the sole incentive of my whole work. How wrong-headed, and yet how excellent a mind!--If I had not married I might now have been high in office and rich. I could have saved half my salary; my savings well-invested would have given me to-day ten thousand francs a year outside of my office, and I might then have become, through a good marriage--Yes, that is all true," he exclaimed, interrupting himself, "but I have Celestine and my two children." The man flung himself back on his happiness. To the best of married lives there come moments of regret. He entered the salon and looked around him. "There are not two women in Paris who understand making life pleasant as she does. To keep such a home as this on twelve thousand francs a year!" he thought, looking at the flower-stands bright with bloom, and thinking of the social enjoyments that were about to gratify his vanity. "She was made to be the wife of a minister. When I think of his Excellency's wife, and how little she helps him! the good woman is a comfortable middle-class dowdy, and when she goes to the palace or into society--" He pinched his lips together. Very busy men are apt to have very ignorant notions about household matters, and you can make them believe that a hundred thousand francs afford little or that twelve thousand afford all.

Though impatiently expected, and in spite of the flattering dishes prepared for the palate of the gourmet-emeritus, des Lupeaulx did not come to dinner; in fact he came in very late, about midnight, an hour when company dwindles and conversations become intimate and confidential. Andoche Finot, the journalist, was one of the few remaining guests.

"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." "Finot, my dear and witty friend, you can render a great service to our gracious queen by letting loose a few dogs upon the men we were talking of. You have against you," he said to Rabourdin, lowering his voice so as to be heard only by the three persons whom he addressed, "a set of usurers and priests--money and the church. The article in the liberal journal was instituted by an old money-lender to whom the paper was under obligations; but the young fellow who wrote it cares nothing about it. The paper is about to change hands, and in three days more will be on our side. The royalist opposition,--for we have, thanks to Monsieur de Chateaubriand, a royalist opposition, that is to say, royalists who have gone over to the liberals,--however, there's no need to discuss political matters now,--these assassins of Charles X. have promised me to support your appointment at the price of our acquiescence in one of their amendments. All my batteries are manned. If they threaten us with Baudoyer we shall say to the clerical phalanx, 'Such and such a paper and such and such men will attack your measures and the whole press will be against you' (for even the ministerial journals which I influence will be deaf and dumb, won't they, Finot?). '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.

"This must win my pardon," he returned, giving her an invitation to the ministry for the following Tuesday.

Celestine opened the letter, and a flush of pleasure came into her face. No enjoyment can be compared to that of gratified vanity.

"You know what the countess's Tuesdays are," said des Lupeaulx, with a confidential air. "To the usual ministerial parties they are what the 'Petit-Chateau' is to a court ball. You will be at the heart of power! You will see there the Comtesse Feraud, who is still in favor notwithstanding Louis XVIII.'s death, Delphine de Nucingen, Madame de Listomere, the Marquise d'Espard, and your dear Firmiani; I have had her invited to give you her support in case the other women attempt to black-ball you. I long to see you in the midst of them."

Celestine threw up her head like a thoroughbred before the race, and re-read the invitation just as Baudoyer and Saillard had re-read the articles about themselves in the newspapers, without being able to quaff enough of it.

"/There/ first, and /next/ at the Tuileries," she said to des Lupeaulx, who was startled by the words and by the attitude of the speaker, so expressive were they of ambition and security.

"Can it be that I am only a stepping-stone?" he asked himself. He rose, and went into Madame Rabourdin's bedroom, where she followed him, understanding from a motion of his head that he wished to speak to her privately.

"Well, your husband's plan," he said; "what of it?"

"Bah! the useless nonsense of an honest man!" she replied. "He wants to suppress fifteen thousand offices and do the work with five or six thousand. You never heard of such nonsense; I will let you read the whole document when copied; it is written in perfect good faith. His analysis of the officials was prompted only by his honesty and rectitude,--poor dear man!"

Des Lupeaulx was all the more reassured by the genuine laugh which accompanied these jesting and contemptuous words, because he was a judge of lying and knew that Celestine spoke in good faith.

"But still, what is at the bottom of it all?" he asked.

"Well, he wants to do away with the land-tax and substitute taxes on consumption."

"Why it is over a year since Francois Keller and Nucingen proposed some such plan, and the minister himself is thinking of a reduction of the land-tax."

"There!" exclaimed Celestine, "I told him there was nothing new in his scheme."

"No; but he is on the same ground with the best financier of the epoch,--the Napoleon of finance. Something may come of it. Your husband must surely have some special ideas in his method of putting the scheme into practice."

"No, it is all commonplace," she said, with a disdainful curl of her lip. "Just think of governing France with five or six thousand offices, when what is really needed is that everybody in France should be personally enlisted in the support of the government."

Des Lupeaulx seemed satisfied that Rabourdin, to whom in his own mind he had granted remarkable talents, was really a man of mediocrity.

"Are you quite sure of the appointment? You don't want a bit of feminine advice?" she said.

"You women are greater adepts than we in refined treachery," he said, nodding.

"Well, then, say /Baudoyer/ to the court and clergy, to divert suspicion and put them to sleep, and then, at the last moment, write /Rabourdin/."

"There are some women who say /yes/ as long as they need a man, and /no/ when he has played his part," returned des Lupeaulx, significantly.

"I know they do," she answered, laughing; "but they are very foolish, for in politics everything recommences. Such proceedings may do with fools, but you are a man of sense. In my opinion the greatest folly any one can commit is to quarrel with a clever man."

"You are mistaken," said des Lupeaulx, "for such a man pardons. The real danger is with the petty spiteful natures who have nothing to do but study revenge,--I spend my life among them."

When all the guests were gone, Rabourdin came into his wife's room, and after asking for her strict attention, he explained his plan and made her see that it did not cut down the revenue but on the contrary increased it; he showed her in what ways the public funds were employed, and how the State could increase tenfold the circulation of money by putting its own, in the proportion of a third, or a quarter, into the expenditures which would be sustained by private or local interests. He finally proved to her plainly that his plan was not mere theory, but a system teeming with methods of execution. Celestine, brightly enthusiastic, sprang into her husband's arms and sat upon his knee in the chimney-corner.

"At last I find the husband of my dreams!" she cried. "My ignorance of your real merit has saved you from des Lupeaulx's claws. I calumniated you to him gloriously and in good faith."

The man wept with joy. His day of triumph had come at last. Having labored for many years to satisfy his wife, he found himself a great man in the eyes of his sole public.

"To one who knows how good you are, how tender, how equable in anger, how loving, you are tenfold greater still. But," she added, "a man of genius is always more or less a child; and you are a child, a dearly beloved child," she said, caressing him. Then she drew that invitation from that particular spot where women put what they sacredly hide, and showed it to him.

"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! 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. About ten on the evening of the eventful Tuesday, she left home in a charming