Never had Rabourdin seemed so anxious and preoccupied as he now did in the mornings as he walked from his house to the ministry, or at half-past four in the afternoon, when he returned.  Madame Rabourdin, on her part, disconsolate over her wasted life, weary of secretly working to obtain a few luxuries of dress, never appeared so bitterly discontented as now; but, like any wife who is really attached to her husband, she considered it unworthy of a superior woman to condescend to the shameful devices by which the wives of some officials eke out the insufficiency of their husband’s salary.  This feeling made her refuse all intercourse with Madame Colleville, then very intimate with Francois Keller, whose parties eclipsed those of the rue Duphot.  Nevertheless, she mistook the quietude of the political thinker and the preoccupation of the intrepid worker for the apathetic torpor of an official broken down by the dulness of routine, vanquished by that most hateful of all miseries, the mediocrity that simply earns a living; and she groaned at being married to a man without energy.

Thus it was that about this period in their lives she resolved to take the making of her husband’s fortune on herself; to thrust him at any cost into a higher sphere, and to hide from him the secret springs of her machinations.  She carried into all her plans the independence of ideas which characterized her, and was proud to think that she could rise above other women by sharing none of their petty prejudices and by keeping herself untrammelled by the restraints which society imposes.  In her anger she resolved to fight fools with their own weapons, and to make herself a fool if need be.  She saw things coming to a crisis.  The time was favorable.  Monsieur de la Billardiere, attacked by a dangerous illness, was likely to die in a few days.  If Rabourdin succeeded him, his talents (for Celestine did vouchsafe him an administrative gift) would be so thoroughly appreciated that the office of Master of petitions, formerly promised, would now be given to him; she fancied she saw him the king’s commissioner, presenting bills to the Chambers and defending them; then indeed she could help him; she would even be, if needful, his secretary; she would sit up all night to do the work!  All this to drive in the Bois in a pretty carriage, to equal Madame Delphine de Nucingen, to raise her salon to the level of Madame Colleville’s, to be invited to the great ministerial solemnities, to win listeners and make them talk of her as “Madame Rabourdin de something or other” (she had not yet determined on the estate), just as they did of Madame Firmiani, Madame d’Espard, Madame d’Aiglemont, Madame de Carigliano, and thus efface forever the odious name of Rabourdin.