Pere Joseph; des Lupeaulx was the familiar of everybody. He continued
friends with fallen ministers and made himself their intermediary with
their successors, diffusing thus the perfume of the last flattery and
the first compliment. He well understood how to arrange all the little
matters which a statesman has no leisure to attend to. He saw
necessities as they arose; he obeyed well; he could gloss a base act
with a jest and get the whole value of it; and he chose for the
services he thus rendered those that the recipients were not likely to
forget.

Thus, when it was necessary to cross the ditch between the Empire and
the Restoration, at a time when every one was looking about for
planks, and the curs of the Empire were howling their devotion right
and left, des Lupeaulx borrowed large sums from the usurers and
crossed the frontier. Risking all to win all, he bought up Louis
XVIII.'s most pressing debts, and was the first to settle nearly three
million of them at twenty per cent--for he was lucky enough to be
backed by Gobseck in 1814 and 1815. It is true that Messrs. Gobseck,
Werdet, and Gigonnet swallowed the profits, but des Lupeaulx had
agreed that they should have them; he was not playing for a stake; he
challenged the bank, as it were, knowing very well that the king was
not a man to forget this debt of honor. Des Lupeaulx was not mistaken;
he was appointed Master of petitions, Knight of the order of Saint
Louis, and officer of the Legion of honor. Once on the ladder of
political success, his clever mind looked about for the means to
maintain his foothold; for in the fortified city into which he had
wormed himself, generals do not long keep useless mouths. So to his
general trade of household drudge and go-between he added that of
gratuitous consultation on the secret maladies of power.