“We shall be at Magny’s in three minutes. I have the minister’s brougham.”
As they had matters to discuss, they asked for a private room at the restaurant.
After the sole and the pré-salé, Labarthe attacked his subject bluntly:
“Listen to me carefully, Lespardat. You will see my chief to-morrow, your nomination will be proposed by the procureur-général of Nantes on Thursday, and on Monday submitted for the signature of the Emperor. It is arranged that it shall be given to him unexpectedly, at the moment when he will be busy with Alfred Maury in fixing the site of Alesia. When he is studying the topography of the Gauls in the time of Cæsar, the Emperor signs everything they want him to. But understand clearly what is expected from you. You must win the favour of Madame la préfète. You must win from her the ultimate favour. It is only by this consummation that the magistracy will be avenged.”
Lespardat swallowed and listened, pleased and smiling in his ingenuous self-conceit.
“But,” said he, “what notion has budded in Delarbre’s head? I thought he was a puritan.”
Labarthe, raising his knife, stopped him.
“First of all, my friend, I beg that you will not compromise my chief, who must remain ignorant of all that’s going on here. But since you have brought in Delarbre’s name, I will tell you that his puritanism is a jansenist puritanism. He is a great-nephew of Deacon Pâris. His maternal great-uncle was that M. Carré de Montgeron who defended the fanatics of Saint-Médard’s Cloister[K] before the Parliament. Now the jansenists love to practise their austerities in nooks and crannies; they have a taste for diplomatic and canonical blackguardism. It is the effect of their perfect purity. And then they read the Bible. The Old Testament is full of stories of the same kind as yours, my dear Lespardat.”
[K] In 1730 miracles were claimed by the jansenists to have been worked in the cemetery of St. Médard, Paris, at the grave of François de Pâris, a young jansenist deacon. The spot became a place of pilgrimage, and was visited by thousands of jansenist fanatics.
Lespardat was not listening. He was floating in a sea of naïve delight. He was asking himself: “What will father say? What will mother say?” thinking of his parents, grocers of large ambitions and little wealth at Agen. And he vaguely associated his budding fortune with the glory of Mirabeau, his favourite hero. Since his college days he had dreamt of a destiny rich with women and feats of oratory.