ng to keep on those
silk breeches and that handsome coat. Go and take them off; don't wear
them at home, my man."

"Your father has something on his mind," said Baudoyer to his wife, when
the cashier was in his bedroom, undressing without any fire.

"Perhaps Monsieur de la Billardiere is dead," said Elisabeth, simply;
"and as he is anxious you should have the place, it worries him."

"Can I be useful in any way?" said the vicar of Saint-Paul's; "if
so, pray use my services. I have the honor to be known to Madame la
Dauphine. These are days when public offices should be given only to
faithful men, whose religious principles are not to be shaken."

"Dear me!" said Falleix, "do men of merit need protectors and influence
to get places in the government service? I am glad I am an iron-master;
my customers know where to find a good article--"

"Monsieur," interrupted Baudoyer, "the government is the government;
never attack it in this house."

"You speak like the 'Constitutionel,'" said the vicar.

"The 'Constitutionel' never says anything different from that," replied
Baudoyer, who never read it.

The cashier believed his son-in-law to be as superior in talent
to Rabourdin as God was greater than Saint-Crepin, to use his
own expression; but the good man coveted this appointment in a
straightforward, honest way. Influenced by the feeling which leads all
officials to seek promotion,--a violent, unreflecting, almost brutal
passion,--he desired success, just as he desired the cross of the Legion
of honor, without doing anything against his conscience to obtain it,
and solely, as he believed, on the strength of his son-in-law's merits.
To his thinking, a man who had patiently spent twenty-five years in a
government office behind an iron railing had sacrificed himself to his
country and deserved the cross. But all that he dreamed of doing to
promote his son-in-law's appointment in La Billardiere's place was to
say a word to his Excellency's wife when he took her the month's salary.

"Well, Saillard, you look as if you had lost all your friends! Do speak;
do, pray, tell us something," cried his wife when he came back into the
room.

Saillard, after making a little sign to his daughter, turned on his heel
to keep himself from talking politics before strangers. When Monsieur
Mitral and the vicar had departed, Saillard rolled back the card-table
and sat down in an armchair in the attitude he always assumed when about
to te