Too noble to distress Sebastien uselessly by blaming him for a
misfortune now beyond remedy, Rabourdin said no more. Antoine came.
Rabourdin asked if any clerk had remained at the office after four
o'clock the previous evening. The man replied that Monsieur Dutocq had
worked there later than Monsieur de la Roche, who was usually the last
to leave. Rabourdin dismissed him with a nod, and resumed the thread
of his reflections.

"Twice I have prevented his dismissal," he said to himself, "and this
is my reward."

This morning was to Rabourdin like the solemn hour in which great
commanders decide upon a battle and weigh all chances. Knowing the
spirit of official life better than any one, he well knew that it
would never pardon, any more than a school or the galleys or the army
pardon, what looked like espionage or tale-bearing. A man capable of
informing against his comrades is disgraced, dishonored, despised; the
ministers in such a case would disavow their own agents. Nothing was
left to an official so placed but to send in his resignation and leave
Paris; his honor is permanently stained; explanations are of no avail;
no one will either ask for them or listen to them. A minister may well
do the same thing and be thought a great man, able to choose the right
instruments; but a mere subordinate will be judged as a spy, no matter
what may be his motives. While justly measuring the folly of such
judgment, Rabourdin knew that it was all-powerful; and he knew, too,
that he was crushed. More surprised than overwhelmed, he now sought
for the best course to follow under the circumstances; and with such
thoughts in his mind he was necessarily aloof from the excitement
caused in the division by the death of Monsieur de la Billardiere; in
fact he did not hear of it until young La Briere, who was able to