ment. He well understood how
to arrange all the little matters which a statesman has no leisure to
attend to. He saw necessities as they arose; he obeyed well; he could
gloss a base act with a jest and get the whole value of it; and he chose
for the services he thus rendered those that the recipients were not
likely to forget.

Thus, when it was necessary to cross the ditch between the Empire and
the Restoration, at a time when every one was looking about for planks,
and the curs of the Empire were howling their devotion right and left,
des Lupeaulx borrowed large sums from the usurers and crossed the
frontier. Risking all to win all, he bought up Louis XVIII.'s most
pressing debts, and was the first to settle nearly three million of them
at twenty per cent--for he was lucky enough to be backed by Gobseck in
1814 and 1815. It is true that Messrs. Gobseck, Werdet, and Gigonnet
swallowed the profits, but des Lupeaulx had agreed that they should
have them; he was not playing for a stake; he challenged the bank, as it
were, knowing very well that the king was not a man to forget this debt
of honor. Des Lupeaulx was not mistaken; he was appointed Master of
petitions, Knight of the order of Saint Louis, and officer of the Legion
of honor. Once on the ladder of political success, his clever mind
looked about for the means to maintain his foothold; for in the
fortified city into which he had wormed himself, generals do not long
keep useless mouths. So to his general trade of household drudge and
go-between he added that of gratuitous consultation on the secret
maladies of power.

After discovering in the so-called superior men of the Restoration their
utter inferiority in comparison with the events which had brought them
to the front, he overcame their political mediocrity by putting into
their mouths, at a crisis, the word of command for which men of real
talent were listening. It must not be thought that this word was the
outcome of his own mind. Were it so, des Lupeaulx would have been a
man of genius, whereas he was only a man of talent. He went everywhere,
collected opinions, sounded consciences, and caught all the tones they
gave out. He gathered knowledge like a true and indefatigable political
bee. This walking Bayle dictionary did not act, however, like that
famous lexicon; he did not report all opinions without drawing his own
conclusions; he had the talent of a fly which drops plumb upon the
best bit of meat in the