th which one fools a man sufficed."

The day on which a serious and unlooked-for struggle about this
appointment began, after a ministerial dinner which preceded one of
those receptions which ministers regard as public, des Lupeaulx was
standing beside the fireplace near the minister's wife. While taking his
coffee he once more included Madame Rabourdin among the seven or eight
really superior women in Paris. Several times already he had staked
Madame Rabourdin very much as Corporal Trim staked his cap.

"Don't say that too often, my dear friend, or you will injure her," said
the minister's wife, half-laughing.

Women never like to hear the praise of other women; they keep silence
themselves to lessen its effect.

"Poor La Billardiere is dying," remarked his Excellency the minister;
"that place falls to Rabourdin, one of our most able men, and to whom
our predecessors did not behave well, though one of them actually owed
his position in the prefecture of police under the Empire to a certain
great personage who was interested in Rabourdin. But, my dear friend,
you are still young enough to be loved by a pretty woman for yourself--"

"If La Billardiere's place is given to Rabourdin I may be believed when
I praise the superiority of his wife," replied des Lupeaulx, piqued by
the minister's sarcasm; "but if Madame la Comtesse would be willing to
judge for herself--"

"You want me to invite her to my next ball, don't you? Your clever woman
will meet a knot of other women who only come here to laugh at us, and
when they hear 'Madame Rabourdin' announced--"

"But Madame Firmiani is announced at the Foreign Office parties?"

"Ah, but she was born a Cadignan!" said the newly created count, with a
savage look at his general-secretary, for neither he nor his wife were
noble.

The persons present thought important matters were being talked
over, and the solicitors for favors and appointments kept at a little
distance. When des Lupeaulx left the room the countess said to her
husband, "I think des Lupeaulx is in love."

"For the first time in his life, then," he replied, shrugging his
shoulders, as much as to inform his wife that des Lupeaulx did not
concern himself with such nonsense.

Just then the minister saw a deputy of the Right Centre enter the room,
and he left his wife abruptly to cajole an undecided vote. But the
deputy, under the blow of a sudden and unexpected disaster, wanted to
make sure of a protector and