The minister always breakfasted with his wife and children and des Lupeaulx, without the presence of servants.  The morning meal affords the only moment of privacy which public men can snatch from the current of overwhelming business.  Yet in spite of the precautions they take to keep this hour for private intimacies and affections, a good many great and little people manage to infringe upon it.  Business itself will, as at this moment, thrust itself in the way of their scanty comfort.

“I thought Rabourdin was a man above all ordinary petty manoeuvres,” began the minister; “and yet here, not ten minutes after La Billardiere’s death, he sends me this note by La Briere,—­it is like a stage missive.  Look,” said his Excellency, giving des Lupeaulx a paper which he was twirling in his fingers.

Too noble in mind to think for a moment of the shameful meaning La Billardiere’s death might lend to his letter, Rabourdin had not withdrawn it from La Briere’s hands after the news reached him.  Des Lupeaulx read as follows:—­

“Monseigneur,—­If twenty-three years of irreproachable services may claim a favor, I entreat your Excellency to grant me an audience this very day.  My honor is involved in the matter of which I desire to speak.”

“Poor man!” said des Lupeaulx, in a tone of compassion which confirmed the minister in his error.  “We are alone; I advise you to see him now.  You have a meeting of the Council when the Chamber rises; moreover, your Excellency has to reply to-day to the opposition; this is really the only hour when you can receive him.”

Des Lupeaulx rose, called the servant, said a few words, and returned to his seat.  “I have told them to bring him in at dessert,” he said.

Like all other ministers under the Restoration, this particular minister was a man without youth.  The charter granted by Louis XVIII. had the defect of tying the hands of the kings by compelling them to deliver the destinies of the nation into the control of the middle-aged men of the Chamber and the septuagenarians of the peerage; it robbed them of the right to lay hands on a man of statesmanlike talent wherever they could find him, no matter how young he was or how poverty-stricken his condition might be.  Napoleon alone was able to employ young men as he chose, without being restrained by any consideration.  After the overthrow of that mighty will, vigor deserted power.  Now the period when effeminacy succeeds to vigor presents a contrast that is far more dangerous in France than in other countries.  As a general thing, ministers who were old before they entered office have proved second or third rate, while those who were taken young have been an honor to European monarchies and to the republics whose affairs they have directed.  The world still rings with the struggle between Pitt and Napoleon, two men who conducted the politics of their respective countries at an age when Henri de