counted on through some appointment, long expected and long sought.
How many troubles are to be allayed! how many entreaties and pledges
given to the ministerial divinities! how many visits of self-interest
paid! At last, thanks to her boldness, Madame Rabourdin heard the hour
strike when she was to have twenty thousand francs a year instead of
eight thousand.

"And I shall have managed well," she said to herself. "I have had to
make a little outlay; but these are times when hidden merit is
overlooked, whereas if a man keeps himself well in sight before the
world, cultivates social relations and extends them, he succeeds.
After all, ministers and their friends interest themselves only in the
people they see; but Rabourdin knows nothing of the world! If I had
not cajoled those three deputies they might have wanted La
Billardiere's place themselves; whereas, now that I have invited them
here, they will be ashamed to do so and will become our supporters
instead of rivals. I have rather played the coquette, but--it is
delightful that the first nonsense with which one fools a man
sufficed."

The day on which a serious and unlooked-for struggle about this
appointment began, after a ministerial dinner which preceded one of
those receptions which ministers regard as public, des Lupeaulx was
standing beside the fireplace near the minister's wife. While taking
his coffee he once more included Madame Rabourdin among the seven or
eight really superior women in Paris. Several times already he had
staked Madame Rabourdin very much as Corporal Trim staked his cap.

"Don't say that too often, my dear friend, or you will injure her,"
said the minister's wife, half-laughing.