is poor mother had put five francs
in his pocket in case it became absolutely necessary that he should play
cards; but she enjoined him to take nothing, to remain standing, and
to be very careful not to knock over a lamp or the bric-a-brac from an
etagere. His dress was all of the strictest black. His fair face, his
eyes, of a fine shade of green with golden reflections, were in keeping
with a handsome head of auburn hair. The poor lad looked furtively at
Madame Rabourdin, whispering to himself, "How beautiful!" and was likely
to dream of that fairy when he went to bed.

Rabourdin had noted a vocation for his work in the lad, and as he
himself took the whole service seriously, he felt a lively interest in
him. He guessed the poverty of his mother's home, kept together on a
widow's pension of seven hundred francs a year--for the education of
the son, who was just out of college, had absorbed all her savings. He
therefore treated the youth almost paternally; often endeavoured to
get him some fee from the Council, or paid it from his own pocket. He
overwhelmed Sebastien with work, trained him, and allowed him to do the
work of du Bruel's place, for which that vaudevillist, otherwise known
as Cursy, paid him three hundred francs out of his salary. In the minds
of Madame de la Roche and her son, Rabourdin was at once a great man, a
tyrant, and an angel. On him all the poor fellow's hopes of getting an
appointment depended, and the lad's devotion to his chief was boundless.
He dined once a fortnight in the rue Duphot; but always at a family
dinner, invited by Rabourdin himself; Madame asked him to evening
parties only when she wanted partners.

At that moment Rabourdin was scolding poor Sebastien, the only human
being who was in the secret of his immense labors. The youth copied and
recopied the famous "statement," written on a hundred and fifty
folio sheets, besides the corroborative documents, and the summing up
(contained in one page), with the estimates bracketed, the captions in a
running hand, and the sub-titles in a round one. Full of enthusiasm, in
spite of his merely mechanical participation in the great idea, the lad
of twenty would rewrite whole pages for a single blot, and made it his
glory to touch up the writing, regarding it as the element of a noble
undertaking. Sebastien had that afternoon committed the great imprudence
of carrying into the general office, for the purpose of copying, a paper
which contained