“Pray explain.”
“No; I said to myself before I came that I would certainly not have the bad taste to seem a petitioner.”
“No, no, speak freely. Places asked in this way are never out of place,” said the minister, laughing; for there is no jest too silly to amuse a solemn man.
“Well, then, I must tell you plainly that the wife of the head of a bureau is out of place here; a director’s wife is not.”
“That point need not be considered,” said the minister, “your husband is indispensable to the administration; he is already appointed.”
“Is that a veritable fact?”
“Would you like to see the papers in my study? They are already drawn up.”
“Then,” she said, pausing in a corner where she was alone with the minister, whose eager attentions were now very marked, “let me tell you that I can make you a return.”
She was on the point of revealing her husband’s plan, when des Lupeaulx, who had glided noiselessly up to them, uttered an angry sound, which meant that he did not wish to appear to have overheard what, in fact, he had been listening to. The minister gave an ill-tempered look at the old beau, who, impatient to win his reward, had hurried, beyond all precedent, the preliminary work of the appointment. He had carried the papers to his Excellency that evening, and desired to take himself, on the morrow, the news of the appointment to her whom he was now endeavoring to exhibit as his mistress. Just then the minister’s valet approached des Lupeaulx in a mysterious manner, and told him that his own servant wished him to deliver to him at once a letter of the utmost importance.
The general-secretary went up to a lamp and read a note thus worded:—