“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.