sooner or later, might advance her interests. In short, she gathered
an agreeable and befitting circle about her. People amused themselves
at her house; they said so at least, which is quite enough to attract
society in Paris. Rabourdin was so absorbed in completing his great
and serious work that he took no notice of the sudden reappearance of
luxury in the bosom of his family.

Thus the wife and the husband were besieging the same fortress,
working on parallel lines, but without each other's knowledge.



CHAPTER II

MONSIEUR DES LUPEAULX

At the ministry to which Rabourdin belonged there flourished, as
general-secretary, a certain Monsieur Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx,
one of those men whom the tide of political events sends to the
surface for a few years, then engulfs on a stormy night, but whom we
find again on a distant shore, tossed up like the carcass of a wrecked
ship which still seems to have life in her. We ask ourselves if that
derelict could ever have held goodly merchandise or served a high
emprize, co-operated in some defence, held up the trappings of a
throne, or borne away the corpse of a monarchy. At this particular
time Clement des Lupeaulx (the "Lupeaulx" absorbed the "Chardin") had
reached his culminating period. In the most illustrious lives as in
the most obscure, in animals as in secretary-generals, there is a
zenith and there is a nadir, a period when the fur is magnificent, the
fortune dazzling. In the nomenclature which we derive from fabulists,