Des Lupeaulx allowed himself to be drawn into an engagement by the handsome Madame Rabourdin, who, for the first time, turned her eyes on him as she spoke.  He had, accordingly, gone to the rue Duphot, and that tells the tale.  Woman has but one trick, cries Figaro, but that’s infallible.  After dining once at the house of this unimportant official, des Lupeaulx made up his mind to dine there often.  Thanks to the perfectly proper and becoming advances of the beautiful woman, whom her rival, Madame Colleville, called the Celimene of the rue Duphot, he had dined there every Friday for the last month, and returned of his own accord for a cup of tea on Wednesdays.

Within a few days Madame Rabourdin, having watched him narrowly and knowingly, believed she had found on the secretarial plank a spot where she might safely set her foot.  She was no longer doubtful of success.  Her inward joy can be realized only in the families of government officials where for three or four years prosperity has been counted on through some appointment, long expected and long sought.  How many troubles are to be allayed! how many entreaties and pledges given to the ministerial divinities! how many visits of self-interest paid!  At last, thanks to her boldness, Madame Rabourdin heard the hour strike when she was to have twenty thousand francs a year instead of eight thousand.

“And I shall have managed well,” she said to herself.  “I have had to make a little outlay; but these are times when hidden merit is overlooked, whereas if a man keeps himself well in sight before the world, cultivates social relations and extends them, he succeeds.  After all, ministers and their friends interest themselves only in the people they see; but Rabourdin knows nothing of the world!  If I had not cajoled those three deputies they might have wanted La Billardiere’s place themselves; whereas, now that I have invited them here, they will be ashamed to do so and will become our supporters instead of rivals.  I have rather played the coquette, but—­it is delightful that the first nonsense with which one fools a man sufficed.”

The day on which a serious and unlooked-for struggle about this appointment began, after a ministerial dinner which preceded one of those receptions which ministers regard as public, des Lupeaulx was standing beside the fireplace near the minister’s wife.  While taking his coffee he once more included Madame Rabourdin among the seven or eight really superior women in Paris.  Several times already he had staked Madame Rabourdin very much as Corporal Trim staked his cap.

“Don’t say that too often, my dear friend, or you will injure her,” said the minister’s wife, half-laughing.

Women never like to hear the praise of other women; they keep silence themselves to lessen its effect.

“Poor La Billardiere is dying,” remarked his Excellency the minister; “that place falls to Rabourdin, one of our most able men, and to whom our predecessors did not behave well, though one of them actually owed his position in the prefecture of police under the Empire to a certain great personage who was interested in Rabourdin.  But, my dear friend, you are still young enough to be loved by a pretty woman for yourself—­”