“Ah!  I don’t know about that.  The matter would have to be rather more studied, and the turn the case might take more certain, if I had anything to do with it.”

“So, for the present,” remarked the minister, “the whole thing amounts to an application of Basile’s famous theory about calumny:  ’good to set a-going, because some of it will always stick.’”

“Calumny!” exclaimed Vinet, “that remains to be seen.  Perhaps a good round of gossip is all that can be made of it.  Monsieur de Trailles, here, knows better than I do the state of things down there.  He can tell you that the disappearance of the father immediately after the recognition had a bad effect upon people’s minds; and every one in Arcis has a vague impression of secret plotting in this affair of the election.  You don’t know, my dear minister, all that can be made in the provinces of a judicial affair when adroitly manipulated,—­cooked, as I may say.  In my long and laborious career at the bar I saw plenty of that kind of miracle.  But a parliamentary debate is another thing.  In that there’s no need of proof; one can kill one’s man with probabilities and assertions, if hotly maintained.”

“But, to come to the point,” said Rastignac, “how do you think the affair ought to be managed?”

“In the first place,” replied Vinet, “I should leave the Beauvisage people to pay all costs of whatever kind, inasmuch as they propose to do so.”

“Do I oppose that?” said the minister.  “Have I the right or the means to do so?”

“The affair,” continued Vinet, “should be placed in the hands of some capable and wily solicitor, like Desroches, for example, Monsieur de Trailles’ lawyer.  He’ll know how to put flesh on the bones of a case you justly consider rather thin.”

“Well, it is certainly not my place to say to Monsieur de Trailles or any other man, ’I forbid you to employ whom you will as your solicitor.’”

“Then we need some pleader who can talk in a moving way about that sacred thing the Family, and put himself into a state of indignation about these surreptitious and furtive ways of entering its honored enclosure.”

“Desroches can point out some such person to you.  The government cannot prevent a man from saying what he pleases.”

“But,” interposed Maxime, who was forced out of his passive role by the minister’s coldness, “is not preventing all the help we are to expect in this affair from the government?”

“You don’t expect us, I hope, to take this matter upon ourselves?”

“No, of course not; but we have certainly supposed that you would take some interest in the matter.”

“But how?—­in what way?”

“Well, as Monsieur le procureur said just now, by giving a hint to the subsidized newspapers, by stirring up your friends to spread the news, by using a certain influence which power always exerts on the minds of magistrates.”