f Antoine, the oldest attendant in the
ministry. He had brought his two nephews, Laurent and Gabriel, from
Echelles in Savoie,--one to serve the heads of the bureaus, the other
the director himself. All three came to open the offices and clean them,
between seven and eight o'clock in the morning; at which time they read
the newspapers and talked civil service politics from their point of
view with the servants of other divisions, exchanging the bureaucratic
gossip. In common with servants of modern houses who know their masters'
private affairs thoroughly, they lived at the ministry like spiders at
the centre of a web, where they felt the slightest jar of the fabric.

On a Thursday evening, the day after the ministerial reception and
Madame Rabourdin's evening party, just as Antoine was trimming his beard
and his nephews were assisting him in the antechamber of the division on
the upper floor, they were surprised by the unexpected arrival of one of
the clerks.

"That's Monsieur Dutocq," said Antoine. "I know him by that pickpocket
step of his. He is always moving round on the sly, that man. He is on
your back before you know it. Yesterday, contrary to his usual ways, he
outstayed the last man in the office; such a thing hasn't happened three
times since he has been at the ministry."

Here follows the portrait of Monsieur Dutocq, order-clerk in the
Rabourdin bureau: Thirty-eight years old, oblong face and bilious skin,
grizzled hair always cut close, low forehead, heavy eyebrows meeting
together, a crooked nose and pinched lips; tall, the right shoulder
slightly higher than the left; brown coat, black waistcoat, silk cravat,
yellowish trousers, black woollen stockings, and shoes with
flapping bows; thus you behold him. Idle and incapable, he hated
Rabourdin,--naturally enough, for Rabourdin had no vice to flatter, and
no bad or weak side on which Dutocq could make himself useful. Far too
noble to injure a clerk, the chief was also too clear-sighted to be
deceived by any make-believe. Dutocq kept his place therefore solely
through Rabourdin's generosity, and was very certain that he could
never be promoted if the latter succeeded La Billardiere. Though he knew
himself incapable of important work, Dutocq was well aware that in
a government office incapacity was no hindrance to advancement; La
Billardiere's own appointment over the head of so capable a man as
Rabourdin had been a striking and fatal example of this. Wicked