"Good heavens! that man, without his glasses, must look funny enough in a dressing-gown!" thought Celestine, "but the harpoon is in his back and he'll tow me where I want to go; I am sure now of that invitation. He has played his part in my comedy."When, at five o'clock in the afternoon, Rabourdin came home to dress for dinner, his wife presided at his toilet and presently laid before him the fatal memorandum which, like the slipper in the Arabian Nights, the luckless man was fated to meet at every turn.
"Who gave you that?" he asked, thunderstruck.
"Monsieur des Lupeaulx."
"So he has been here!" cried Rabourdin, with a look which would certainly have made a guilty woman turn pale, but which Celestine received with unruffled brow and a laughing eye.
"And he is coming back to dinner," she said. "Why that startled air?""My dear," replied Rabourdin, "I have mortally offended des Lupeaulx;such men never forgive, and yet he fawns upon me! Do you think I don't see why?""The man seems to me," she said, "to have good taste; you can't expect me to blame him. I really don't know anything more flattering to a woman than to please a worn-out palate. After--""A truce to nonsense, Celestine. Spare a much-tried man. I cannot get an audience of the minister, and my honor is at stake.""Good heavens, no! Dutocq can have the promise of a good place as soon as you are named head of the division.""Ah! I see what you are about, dear child," said Rabourdin; "but the game you are playing is just as dishonorable as the real thing that is going on around us. A lie is a lie, and an honest woman--""Let me use the weapons employed against us.""Celestine, the more that man des Lupeaulx feels he is foolishly caught in a trap, the more bitter he will be against me.""What if I get him dismissed altogether?"
Rabourdin looked at his wife in amazement.
"I am thinking only of your advancement; it was high time, my poor husband," continued Celestine. "But you are mistaking the dog for the game," she added, after a pause. "In a few days des Lupeaulx will have accomplished all that I want of him. While you are trying to speak to the minister, and before you can even see him on business, I shall have seen him and spoken with him. You are worn out in trying to bring that plan of your brain to birth,--a plan which you have been hiding from me; but you will find that in three months your wife has accomplished more than you have done in six years. Come, tell me this fine scheme of yours."Rabourdin, continuing to shave, cautioned his wife not to say a word about his work, and after assuring her that to confide a single idea to des Lupeaulx would be to put the cat near the milk-jug, he began an explanation of his labors.
"Why didn't you tell me this before, Rabourdin?" said Celestine, cutting her husband short at his fifth sentence. "You might have saved yourself a world of trouble. I can understand that a man should be blinded by an idea for a moment, but to nurse it up for six or seven years, that's a thing I cannot comprehend! You want to reduce the budget,--a vulgar and commonplace idea! The budget ought, on the contrary, to reach two hundred millions. Then, indeed, France would be great. If you want a new system let it be one of loans, as Monsieur de Nucingen keeps saying. The poorest of all treasuries is the one with a surplus that it never uses; the mission of a minister of finance is to fling gold out of the windows. It will come back to him through the cellars; and you, you want to hoard it! The thing to do is to increase the offices and all government employments, instead of reducing them!
So far from lessening the public debt, you ought to increase the creditors. If the Bourbons want to reign in peace, let them seek creditors in the towns and villages, and place their loans there;above all, they ought not to let foreigners draw interest away from France; some day an alien nation might ask us for the capital. Whereas if capital and interest are held only in France, neither France nor credit can perish. That's what saved England. Your plan is the tradesman's plan. An ambitious public man should produce some bold scheme,--he should make himself another Law, without Law's fatal ill-luck; he ought to exhibit the power of credit, and show that we should reduce, not principal, but interest, as they do in England.""Come, come, Celestine," said Rabourdin; "mix up ideas as much as you please, and make fun of them,--I'm accustomed to that; but don't criticise a work of which you know nothing as yet.""Do I need," she asked, "to know a scheme the essence of which is to govern France with a civil service of six thousand men instead of twenty thousand? My dear friend, even allowing it were the plan of a man of genius, a king of France who attempted to carry it out would get himself dethroned. You can keep down a feudal aristocracy by levelling a few heads, but you can't subdue a hydra with thousands.
