“But the binder and the stitcher down below,” returned Cerizet, “they begin work very early in the morning—­Well, anyhow, we must study the matter,” he added, in the tone of a man whose plans are not yet decided.  “I’ll go to the mayor’s office of your arrondissement, and get Olympe’s register of birth, and put up the banns.  The marriage must take place a week from Saturday.”

“How he goes it, the rascal!” cried the admiring Madame Cardinal, pushing her formidable son-in-law by the shoulder.

As he went downstairs Cerizet was surprised to see, through one of the small round windows, an old man, evidently du Portail, walking in the garden with a very important member of the government, Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon.  He stopped in the courtyard when he reached it, as if to examine the old house, built in the reign of Louis XIV., the yellow walls of which, though of freestone, were bent like the elderly beggar they contained.  Then he looked at the workshops, and counted the workmen.  The house was otherwise as silent as a cloister.  Being observed himself, Cerizet departed, thinking over in his mind the various difficulties that might arise in extracting the sum hidden beneath the dying man.

“Carry off all that gold at night?” he said to himself; “why, those porters will be on the watch, and twenty persons might see us!  It is hard work to carry even twenty-five thousand francs of gold on one’s person.”

Societies have two goals of perfection; the first is a state of civilization in which morality equally infused and pervasive does not admit even the idea of crime; the Jesuits reached that point, formerly presented by the primitive Church.  The second is the state of another civilization in which the supervision of citizens over one another makes crime impossible.  The end which modern society has placed before itself is the latter; namely, that in which a crime presents such difficulties that a man must abandon all reasoning in order to commit it.  In fact, iniquities which the law cannot reach are not left actually unpunished, for social judgment is even more severe than that of courts.  If a man like Minoret, the post-master at Nemours [see “Ursule Mirouet”] suppresses a will and no one witnesses the act, the crime is traced home to him by the watchfulness of virtue as surely as a robbery is followed up by the detective police.  No wrong-doing passes actually unperceived; and wherever a lesion in rectitude takes place the scar remains.  Things can be no more made to disappear than men; so carefully, in Paris especially, are articles and objects ticketed and numbered, houses watched, streets observed, places spied upon.  To live at ease, crime must have a sanction like that of the Bourse; like that conceded by Cerizet’s clients; who never complained of his usury, and, indeed, would have been troubled in mind if their flayer were not in his den of a Tuesday.

“Well, my dear monsieur,” said Madame Perrache, the porter’s wife, as he passed her lodge, “how do you find him, that friend of God, that poor man?”