and caresses, alternately, and set up rivals to him.  But des Lupeaulx behaved like an adroit courtier with all competitors; he laid traps into which they fell, and then he did prompt justice upon them.  The more he felt himself in danger the more anxious he became for an irremovable position; yet he was compelled to play low; one moment’s indiscretion, and he might lose everything.  A pen-stroke might demolish his civilian epaulets, his place at court, his sinecure, his two offices and their advantages; in all, six salaries retained under fire of the law against pluralists.  Sometimes he threatened his minister as a mistress threatens her lover; telling him he was about to marry a rich widow.  At such times the minister petted and cajoled des Lupeaulx.  After one of these reconciliations he received the formal promise of a place in the Academy of Belles-lettres on the first vacancy.  “It would pay,” he said, “the keep of a horse.”  His position, so far as it went, was a good one, and Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx flourished in it like a tree planted in good soil.  He could satisfy his vices, his caprices, his virtues and his defects.

The following were the toils of his life.  He was obliged to choose, among five or six daily invitations, the house where he could be sure of the best dinner.  Every morning he went to his minister’s morning reception to amuse that official and his wife, and to pet their children.  Then he worked an hour or two; that is to say, he lay back in a comfortable chair and read the newspapers, dictated the meaning of a letter, received visitors when the minister was not present, explained the work in a general way, caught or shed a few drops of the holy-water of the court, looked over the petitions with an eyeglass, or wrote his name on the margin,—­a signature which meant “I think it absurd; do what you like about it.”  Every body knew that when des Lupeaulx was interested in any person or in any thing he attended to the matter personally.  He allowed the head-clerks to converse privately about affairs of delicacy, but he listened to their gossip.  From time to time he went to the Tuileries to get his cue.  And he always waited for the minister’s return from the Chamber, if in session, to hear from him what intrigue or manoeuvre he was to set about.  This official sybarite dressed, dined, and visited a dozen or fifteen salons between eight at night and three in the morning.  At the opera he talked with journalists, for he stood high in their favor; a perpetual exchange of little services went on between them; he poured into their ears his misleading news and swallowed theirs; he prevented them from attacking this or that minister on such or such a matter, on the plea that it would cause real pain to their wives or their mistresses.

“Say that his bill is worth nothing, and prove it if you can, but do not say that Mariette danced badly.  The devil! haven’t we all played our little plays; and which of us knows what will become of him in times like these?  You may be minister yourself to-morrow, you who are spicing the cakes of the ‘Constitutionel’ to-day.”