des Lupeaulx belonged to the species Bertrand, and was always in
search of Ratons. As he is one of the principal actors in this drama
he deserves a description, all the more precise because the revolution
of July has suppressed his office, eminently useful as it was, to a
constitutional ministry.

Moralists usually employ their weapons against obstructive
administrations. In their eyes, crime belongs to the assizes or the
police-courts; but the socially refined evils escape their ken; the
adroitness that triumphs under shield of the Code is above them or
beneath them; they have neither eye-glass nor telescope; they want
good stout horrors easily visible. With their eyes fixed on the
carnivora, they pay no attention to the reptiles; happily, they
abandon to the writers of comedy the shading and colorings of a
Chardin des Lupeaulx. Vain and egotistical, supple and proud,
libertine and gourmand, grasping from the pressure of debt, discreet
as a tomb out of which nought issues to contradict the epitaph
intended for the passer's eye, bold and fearless when soliciting,
good-natured and witty in all acceptations of the word, a timely
jester, full of tact, knowing how to compromise others by a glance or
a nudge, shrinking from no mudhole, but gracefully leaping it,
intrepid Voltairean, yet punctual at mass if a fashionable company
could be met in Saint Thomas Aquinas,--such a man as this
secretary-general resembled, in one way or another, all the
mediocrities who form the kernel of the political world. Knowing in
the science of human nature, he assumed the character of a listener,
and none was ever more attentive. Not to awaken suspicion he was
flattering ad nauseum, insinuating as a perfume, and cajoling as a
woman.