"and as he is anxious you should have the place, it worries him."

"Can I be useful in any way?" said the vicar of Saint-Paul's; "if so,
pray use my services. I have the honor to be known to Madame la
Dauphine. These are days when public offices should be given only to
faithful men, whose religious principles are not to be shaken."

"Dear me!" said Falleix, "do men of merit need protectors and
influence to get places in the government service? I am glad I am an
iron-master; my customers know where to find a good article--"

"Monsieur," interrupted Baudoyer, "the government is the government;
never attack it in this house."

"You speak like the 'Constitutionel,'" said the vicar.

"The 'Constitutionel' never says anything different from that,"
replied Baudoyer, who never read it.

The cashier believed his son-in-law to be as superior in talent to
Rabourdin as God was greater than Saint-Crepin, to use his own
expression; but the good man coveted this appointment in a
straightforward, honest way. Influenced by the feeling which leads all
officials to seek promotion,--a violent, unreflecting, almost brutal
passion,--he desired success, just as he desired the cross of the
Legion of honor, without doing anything against his conscience to
obtain it, and solely, as he believed, on the strength of his
son-in-law's merits. To his thinking, a man who had patiently spent
twenty-five years in a government office behind an iron railing had
sacrificed himself to his country and deserved the cross. But all that