day.  Those who saw them often asked how it was that a woman could keep her husband in good clothes, wear a Leghorn bonnet with flowers, embroidered muslin dresses, silk mantles, prunella boots, handsome fichus, a Chinese parasol, and drive home in a hackney-coach, and yet be virtuous; while Madame Colleville and other “ladies” of her kind could scarcely make ends meet, though they had double Madame Minard’s means.

In the two bureaus were two clerks so devoted to each other that their friendship became the butt of all the rest.  He of the bureau Baudoyer, named Colleville, was chief-clerk, and would have been head of the bureau long before if the Restoration had never happened.  His wife was as clever in her way as Madame Rabourdin in hers.  Colleville, who was son of a first violin at the opera, fell in love with the daughter of a celebrated danseuse.  Flavie Minoret, one of those capable and charming Parisian women who know how to make their husbands happy and yet preserve their own liberty, made the Colleville home a rendezvous for all our best artists and orators.  Colleville’s humble position under government was forgotten there.  Flavie’s conduct gave such food for gossip, however, that Madame Rabourdin had declined all her invitations.  The friend in Rabourdin’s bureau to whom Colleville was so attached was named Thuillier.  All who knew one knew the other.  Thuillier, called “the handsome Thuillier,” an ex-Lothario, led as idle a life as Colleville led a busy one.  Colleville, government official in the mornings and first clarionet at the Opera-Comique at night, worked hard to maintain his family, though he was not without influential friends.  He was looked upon as a very shrewd man,—­all the more, perhaps, because he hid his ambitions under a show of indifference.  Apparently content with his lot and liking work, he found every one, even the chiefs, ready to protect his brave career.  During the last few weeks Madame Colleville had made an evident change in the household, and seemed to be taking to piety.  This gave rise to a vague report in the bureaus that she thought of securing some more powerful influence than that of Francois Keller, the famous orator, who had been one of her chief adorers, but who, so far, had failed to obtain a better place for her husband.  Flavie had, about this time —­and it was one of her mistakes—­turned for help to des Lupeaulx.

Colleville had a passion for reading the horoscopes of famous men in the anagram of their names.  He passed whole months in decomposing and recomposing words and fitting them to new meanings.  “Un Corse la finira,” found within the words, “Revolution Francaise”; “Eh, c’est large nez,” in “Charles Genest,” an abbe at the court of Louis XIV., whose huge nose is recorded by Saint-Simon as the delight of the Duc de Bourgogne (the exigencies of this last anagram required the substitution of a z for an s),—­were a never-ending marvel to Colleville.  Raising the anagram to the height