The White House (Novels of Paul de Kock Volume XII)

Copyright 1904 by G. Barrie & Sons
AN UNLOOKED-FOR INTRUDER
As Cornélie was about to draw the curtains aside, she stopped, fell back a step or two, turned pale and said: ... It seems to me that I hear someone breathing.
THE JEFFERSON PRESS BOSTON NEW YORK
Copyrighted, 1903-1904, by G. B. & Sons.
It was mid-July in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-five. The clock on the Treasury building had just struck four, and the clerks, hastily closing the drawers of their desks, replacing documents in their respective boxes and pens on their racks, lost no time in taking their hats and laying aside the work of the State, to give all their attention to private business or pleasure.
Amid the multitude of persons of all ages who thronged the long corridors, a gentleman of some twenty-seven or twenty-eight years, after arranging his knives, his pencils and his eraser much more methodically than young men are accustomed to do, and after carefully brushing his hat and coat, placed under his arm a large green portfolio, which at a little distance might have been mistaken for that of the head of a department, and assuming an affable, smiling expression, he joined the crowd that was hurrying toward the door, saluting to right and left those of his colleagues who, as they passed him, said:
Bonjour, Robineau!
Monsieur Robineau—we know his name now—when he was a hundred yards or more from the department, suddenly adopted an altogether different demeanor; he seemed to swell up in his coat, raised his head and ostentatiously quickened his pace; the amiable smile was replaced by a busy, preoccupied air; he held the great portfolio more closely to his side and glanced with a patronizing expression at the persons who passed him. His manner was no longer that of a simple clerk at fifteen hundred francs; it was that of a chief of bureau at least.
However, despite his haughty bearing, Robineau bent his steps toward a modest restaurant, where a dinner was served for thirty-two sous, which he considered delicious, because his means did not allow him to procure a better one. Herein, at all events, Robineau displayed great prudence; to be able to content oneself with what one has, is the best way to be happy; and since we hear the rich complain every day, the poor must needs appear to be satisfied.