h which he had surrounded him;
the ingenious cleverness he had employed to nobly compel him to share
his opulence without permitting it to make him blush, increased their
friendship. Jacquet continued faithful to Desmarets in spite of his
wealth.

Jacquet, a nobly upright man, a toiler, austere in his morals, had
slowly made his way in that particular ministry which develops both
honesty and knavery at the same time. A clerk in the ministry of Foreign
Affairs, he had charge of the most delicate division of its archives.
Jacquet in that office was like a glow-worm, casting his light upon
those secret correspondences, deciphering and classifying despatches.
Ranking higher than a mere _bourgeois_, his position at the ministry was
superior to that of the other subalterns. He lived obscurely, glad
to feel that such obscurity sheltered him from reverses and
disappointments, and was satisfied to humbly pay in the lowest coin
his debt to the country. Thanks to Jules, his position had been much
ameliorated by a worthy marriage. An unrecognized patriot, a minister in
actual fact, he contented himself with groaning in his chimney-corner at
the course of the government. In his own home, Jacquet was an easy-going
king,--an umbrella-man, as they say, who hired a carriage for his
wife which he never entered himself. In short, to end this sketch of a
philosopher unknown to himself, he had never suspected and never in
all his life would suspect the advantages he might have drawn from
his position,--that of having for his intimate friend a broker, and of
knowing every morning all the secrets of the State. This man, sublime
after the manner of that nameless soldier who died in saving Napoleon by
a "qui vive," lived at the ministry.

In ten minutes Jules was in his friend's office. Jacquet gave him a
chair, laid aside methodically his green silk eye-shade, rubbed his
hands, picked up his snuff-box, rose, stretched himself till his
shoulder-blades cracked, swelled out his chest, and said:--

"What brings you here, Monsieur Desmarets? What do you want with me?"

"Jacquet, I want you to decipher a secret,--a secret of life and death."

"It doesn't concern politics?"

"If it did, I shouldn't come to you for information," said Jules.
"No, it is a family matter, about which I require you to be absolutely
silent."

"Claude-Joseph Jacquet, dumb by profession. Don't you know me by this
time?" he said, laughing. "Discretion is my lot."

Ju