“What?” said his wife, quivering with sudden anxiety.
“My memorandum on the officials is known in all the offices; and I have not been able to see the minister.”
Celestine’s eyes were opened to a sudden vision in which the devil, in one of his infernal flashes, showed her the meaning of her last conversation with des Lupeaulx.
“If I had behaved like a low woman,” she thought, “we should have had the place.”
She looked at Rabourdin with grief in her heart. A sad silence fell between them, and dinner was eaten in the midst of gloomy meditations.
“And it is my Wednesday,” she said at last.
“All is not lost, dear Celestine,” said Rabourdin, laying a kiss on his wife’s forehead; “perhaps to-morrow I shall be able to see the minister and explain everything. Sebastien sat up all last night to finish the writing; the papers are copied and collated; I shall place them on the minister’s desk and beg him to read them through. La Briere will help me. A man is never condemned without a hearing.”
“I am curious to see if Monsieur des Lupeaulx will come here to-night.”
“He? Of course he will come,” said Rabourdin; “there’s something of the tiger in him; he likes to lick the blood of the wounds he has given.”
“My poor husband,” said his wife, taking his hand, “I don’t see how it is that a man who could conceive so noble a reform did not also see that it ought not to be communicated to a single person. It is one of those ideas that a man should keep in his own mind, for he alone can apply them. A statesman must do in our political sphere as Napoleon did in his; he stooped, twisted, crawled. Yes, Bonaparte crawled! To be made commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy he married Barrere’s mistress. You should have waited, got yourself elected deputy, followed the politics of a party, sometimes down in the depths, at other times on the crest of the wave, and you should have taken, like Monsieur de Villele, the Italian motto ‘Col tempo,’ in other words, ‘All things are given to him who knows how to wait.’ That great orator worked for seven years to get into power; he began in 1814 by protesting against the Charter when he was the same age that you are now. Here’s your fault; you have allowed yourself to be kept subordinate, when you were born to rule.”