“Ah!  Monsieur Gaudron, that sentence is worth more than the monstrance; I don’t regret the four thousand eight hundred—­ Besides, Baudoyer, my lad, you’ll pay them, won’t you?  Have you written it all down?”

“I shall make you repeat it, father, morning and evening,” said Madame Saillard.  “Yes, that’s a good speech.  How lucky you are, Monsieur Gaudron, to know so much.  That’s what it is to be brought up in a seminary; they learn there how to speak to God and his saints.”

“He is as good as he is learned,” said Baudoyer, pressing the priest’s hand.  “Did you write that article?” he added, pointing to the newspaper.

“No, it was written by the secretary of his Eminence, a young abbe who is under obligations to me, and who takes an interest in Monsieur Colleville; he was educated at my expense.”

“A good deed is always rewarded,” said Baudoyer.

While these four personages were sitting down to their game of boston, Elisabeth and her uncle Mitral reached the cafe Themis, with much discourse as they drove along about a matter which Elisabeth’s keen perceptions told her was the most powerful lever that could be used to force the minister’s hand in the affair of her husband’s appointment.  Uncle Mitral, a former sheriff’s officer, crafty, clever at sharp practice, and full of expedients and judicial precautions, believed the honor of his family to be involved in the appointment of his nephew.  His avarice had long led him to estimate the contents of old Gigonnet’s strong-box, for he knew very well they would go in the end to benefit his nephew Baudoyer; and it was therefore important that the latter should obtain a position which would be in keeping with the combined fortunes of the Saillards and the old Gigonnet, which would finally devolve on the Baudoyer’s little daughter; and what an heiress she would be with an income of a hundred thousand francs! to what social position might she not aspire with that fortune?  He adopted all the ideas of his niece Elisabeth and thoroughly understood them.  He had helped in sending off Falleix expeditiously, explaining to him the advantage of taking post horses.  After which, while eating his dinner, he reflected that it be as well to give a twist of his own to the clever plan invented by Elisabeth.

When they reached the Cafe Themis he told his niece that he alone could manage Gigonnet in the matter they both had in view, and he made her wait in the hackney-coach and bide her time to come forward at the right moment.  Elisabeth saw through the window-panes the two faces of Gobseck and Gigonnet (her uncle Bidault), which stood out in relief against the yellow wood-work of the old cafe, like two cameo heads, cold and impassible, in the rigid attitude that their gravity gave them.  The two Parisian misers were surrounded by a number of other old faces, on which “thirty per cent discount” was written in circular wrinkles that started from the nose and turned round the glacial cheek-bones.  These remarkable physiognomies brightened up on seeing Mitral, and their eyes gleamed with tigerish curiosity.