When all the guests were gone, Rabourdin came into his wife’s room, and after asking for her strict attention, he explained his plan and made her see that it did not cut down the revenue but on the contrary increased it; he showed her in what ways the public funds were employed, and how the State could increase tenfold the circulation of money by putting its own, in the proportion of a third, or a quarter, into the expenditures which would be sustained by private or local interests.  He finally proved to her plainly that his plan was not mere theory, but a system teeming with methods of execution.  Celestine, brightly enthusiastic, sprang into her husband’s arms and sat upon his knee in the chimney-corner.

“At last I find the husband of my dreams!” she cried.  “My ignorance of your real merit has saved you from des Lupeaulx’s claws.  I calumniated you to him gloriously and in good faith.”

The man wept with joy.  His day of triumph had come at last.  Having labored for many years to satisfy his wife, he found himself a great man in the eyes of his sole public.

“To one who knows how good you are, how tender, how equable in anger, how loving, you are tenfold greater still.  But,” she added, “a man of genius is always more or less a child; and you are a child, a dearly beloved child,” she said, caressing him.  Then she drew that invitation from that particular spot where women put what they sacredly hide, and showed it to him.

“Here is what I wanted,” she said; “Des Lupeaulx has put me face to face with the minister, and were he a man of iron, his Excellency shall be made for a time to bend the knee to me.”

The next day Celestine began her preparations for entrance into the inner circle of the ministry.  It was her day of triumph, her own!  Never courtesan took such pains with herself as this honest woman bestowed upon her person.  No dressmaker was ever so tormented as hers.  Madame Rabourdin forgot nothing.  She went herself to the stable where she hired carriages, and chose a coupe that was neither old, nor bourgeois, nor showy.  Her footman, like the footmen of great houses, had the dress and appearance of a master.  About ten on the evening of the eventful Tuesday, she left home in a charming full mourning attire.  Her hair was dressed with jet grapes of exquisite workmanship, —­an ornament costing three thousand francs, made by Fossin for an Englishwoman who had left Paris before it was finished.  The leaves were of stamped iron-work, as light as the vine-leaves themselves, and the artist had not forgotten the graceful tendrils, which twined in the wearer’s curls just as, in nature, they catch upon the branches.  The bracelets, necklace, and earrings were all what is called Berlin iron-work; but these delicate arabesques were made in Vienna, and seemed to have been fashioned by the fairies who, the stories tell us, are condemned by a jealous Carabosse to collect the eyes of ants, or weave a fabric so