“Dear Xavier, don’t be vexed,” she said.  “To-night, after the people are gone, we will study your plan; you shall speak at your ease,—­I will listen just as long as you wish me to.  Isn’t that nice of me?  What do I want better than to be the wife of Mohammed?”

She began to laugh; and Rabourdin laughed too, for the soapsuds were clinging to Celestine’s lips, and her voice had the tones of the purest and most steadfast affection.

“Go and dress, dear child; and above all, don’t say a word of this to des Lupeaulx.  Swear you will not.  That is the only punishment that I impose—­”

“Impose!” she cried.  “Then I won’t swear anything.”

“Come, come, Celestine, I said in jest a really serious thing.”

“To-night,” she said, “I mean your general-secretary to know whom I am really intending to attack; he has given me the means.”

“Attack whom?”

“The minister,” she answered, drawing himself up.  “We are to be invited to his wife’s private parties.”

In spite of his Celestine’s loving caresses, Rabourdin, as he finished dressing, could not prevent certain painful thoughts from clouding his brow.

“Will she ever appreciate me?” he said to himself.  “She does not even understand that she is the sole incentive of my whole work.  How wrong-headed, and yet how excellent a mind!—­If I had not married I might now have been high in office and rich.  I could have saved half my salary; my savings well-invested would have given me to-day ten thousand francs a year outside of my office, and I might then have become, through a good marriage—­ Yes, that is all true,” he exclaimed, interrupting himself, “but I have Celestine and my two children.”  The man flung himself back on his happiness.  To the best of married lives there come moments of regret.  He entered the salon and looked around him.  “There are not two women in Paris who understand making life pleasant as she does.  To keep such a home as this on twelve thousand francs a year!” he thought, looking at the flower-stands bright with bloom, and thinking of the social enjoyments that were about to gratify his vanity.  “She was made to be the wife of a minister.  When I think of his Excellency’s wife, and how little she helps him! the good woman is a comfortable middle-class dowdy, and when she goes to the palace or into society—­” He pinched his lips together.  Very busy men are apt to have very ignorant notions about household matters, and you can make them believe that a hundred thousand francs afford little or that twelve thousand afford all.

Though impatiently expected, and in spite of the flattering dishes prepared for the palate of the gourmet-emeritus, des Lupeaulx did not come to dinner; in fact he came in very late, about midnight, an hour when company dwindles and conversations become intimate and confidential.  Andoche Finot, the journalist, was one of the few remaining guests.