ions of Comte Maxime about this
election. I knew very well I should have a battle to fight! Come
and dine somewhere and we will get out our batteries. You are to be
_procureur-du-roi_ at Mantes, and I am to be prefect; but we must _seem_
to have nothing to do with the election, for don't you see, we are
between the hammer and the anvil. Simon is the candidate of a party
which wants to overturn the present ministry and may succeed; but for
men as intelligent as you and I there is but one course to take."

"What is that?"

"To serve those who make and unmake ministers. A letter was shown to
me from one of those personages who represent the stable and immovable
thought of the State."

Before going farther, it is necessary to explain who this Unknown person
was, and what his purpose was in coming to Champagne.

XII. THE SALON OF MADAME D'ESPARD

About two months before the nomination of Simon Giguet, at eleven
o'clock one evening, in a mansion of the faubourg Saint-Honore belonging
to the Marquise d'Espard, while tea was being served the Chevalier
d'Espard, brother-in-law to the marquise, put down his tea-cup, and,
looking round the circle, remarked:--

"Maxime was very melancholy to-night,--didn't you think so?"

"Yes," replied Rastignac, "but his sadness is easily accounted for. He
is forty-eight years old; at that age a man makes no new friends, and
now that we have buried de Marsay, Maxime has lost the only man capable
of understanding him, of being useful to him, and of using him."

"He probably has pressing debts. Couldn't you put him in the way of
paying them?" said the marquise to Rastignac.

At this period Rastignac was, for the second time, in the ministry; he
had just been made count almost against his will. His father-in-law, the
Baron de Nucingen, was peer of France, his younger brother a bishop,
the Comte de Roche-Hugon, his brother-in-law, was an ambassador, and he
himself was thought to be indispensable in all future combinations of
the ministry.

"You always forget, my dear marquise," replied Rastignac, "that our
government exchanges its silver for gold only; it pays no heed to men."

"Is Maxime a man who would blow out his brains?" inquired the banker du
Tillet.

"Ha! you wish I were; we should be quits then," said Comte Maxime de
Trailles, whom everybody supposed to have left the house.

The count rose suddenly, like an apparition, from the depths of an
arm-chair placed exactly behin