My debts!  Celestine embraced her husband a thousand times in the single kiss with which she thanked him for that generous word.

“We shall still have a hundred thousand francs to put into business.  Before the month is out I shall find some favorable opening.  If luck gave a Martin Falleix to a Saillard, why should we despair?  Wait breakfast for me.  I am going now to the ministry, but I shall come back with my neck free of the yoke.”

Celestine clasped her husband in her arms with a force men do not possess, even in their passionate moments; for women are stronger through emotion than men through power.  She wept and laughed and sobbed in turns.

When Rabourdin left the house at eight o’clock, the porter gave him the satirical cards suggested by Bixiou.  Nevertheless, he went to the ministry, where he found Sebastien waiting near the door to entreat him not to enter any of the bureaus, because an infamous caricature of him was making the round of the offices.

“If you wish to soften the pain of my downfall,” he said to the lad, “bring me that drawing; I am now taking my resignation to Ernest de la Briere myself, that it may not be altered or distorted while passing through the routine channels.  I have my own reasons for wishing to see that caricature.”

When Rabourdin came back to the courtyard, after making sure that his letter would go straight into the minister’s hands, he found Sebastien in tears, with a copy of the lithograph, which the lad reluctantly handed over to him.

“It is very clever,” said Rabourdin, showing a serene brow to his companion, though the crown of thorns was on it all the same.

He entered the bureaus with a calm air, and went at once into Baudoyer’s section to ask him to come to the office of the head of the division and receive instructions as to the business which that incapable being was henceforth to direct.

“Tell Monsieur Baudoyer that there must be no delay,” he added, in the hearing of all the clerks; “my resignation is already in the minister’s hands, and I do not wish to stay here longer than is necessary.”

Seeing Bixiou, Rabourdin went straight up to him, showed him the lithograph, and said, to the great astonishment of all present,—­

“Was I not right in saying you were an artist?  Still, it is a pity you directed the point of your pencil against a man who cannot be judged in this way, nor indeed by the bureaus at all;—­but everything is laughed at in France, even God.”

Then he took Baudoyer into the office of the late La Billardiere.  At the door he found Phellion and Sebastien, the only two who, under his great disaster, dared to remain openly faithful to the fallen man.  Rabourdin noticed that Phellion’s eyes were moist, and he could not refrain from wringing his hand.

“Monsieur,” said the good man, “if we can serve you in any way, make use of us.”

Monsieur Rabourdin shut himself up in the late chief’s office with Monsieur Baudoyer, and Phellion helped him to show the new incumbent all the administrative difficulties of his new position.  At each separate affair which Rabourdin carefully explained, Baudoyer’s little eyes grew big as saucers.