“He shall have a thousand and be under-head-clerk to Colleville, who will arrange with them; tell him so.”
“But he wouldn’t believe it on nothing more than my word.”
“Are you trying to make me compromise myself? Either do the thing or let it alone; do you hear me?”
“If Monsieur Baudoyer were director—”
“Well, he will be. Go now, and make haste; you have no time to lose. Go down the back-stairs; I don’t want people to know you have just seen me.”
While Dutocq was returning to the clerks’ office and asking himself how he could best incite a clamor against his chief without compromising himself, Bixiou rushed to the Rabourdin office for a word of greeting. Believing that he had lost his bet the incorrigible joker thought it amusing to pretend that he had won it.
Bixiou [mimicking Phellion’s voice]. “Gentlemen, I salute you with a collective how d’ye do, and I appoint Sunday next for the dinner at the Rocher de Cancale. But a serious question presents itself. Is that dinner to include the clerks who are dismissed?”
Poiret. “And those who retire?”
Bixiou. “Not that I care, for it isn’t I who pay.” [General stupefaction.] “Baudoyer is appointed. I think I already hear him calling Laurent” [mimicking Baudoyer], “Laurent! lock up my hair-shirt, and my scourge.” [They all roar with laughter.] “Yes, yes, he laughs well who laughs last. Gentlemen, there’s a great deal in that anagram of Colleville’s. ‘Xavier Rabourdin, chef de bureau—D’abord reva bureaux, e-u fin riche.’ If I were named ‘Charles X., par la grace de Dieu roi de France et de Navarre,’ I should tremble in my shoes at the fate those letters anagrammatize.”
Thuillier. “Look here! are you making fun?”