"At last!" thought Madame Rabourdin, as she undressed that night, "we
have the place! Twelve thousand francs a year and perquisites, beside
the rents of our farms at Grajeux,--nearly twenty thousand francs a
year. It is not affluence, but at least it isn't poverty."



CHAPTER IV

THREE-QUARTER LENGTH PORTRAITS OF CERTAIN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS

If it were possible for literature to use the microscope of the
Leuwenhoeks, the Malpighis, and the Raspails (an attempt once made by
Hoffman, of Berlin), and if we could magnify and then picture the
teredos navalis, in other words, those ship-worms which brought
Holland within an inch of collapsing by honey-combing her dykes, we
might have been able to give a more distinct idea of Messieurs
Gigonnet, Baudoyer, Saillard, Gaudron, Falleix, Transon, Godard and
company, borers and burrowers, who proved their undermining power in
the thirtieth year of this century.

But now it is time to show another set of teredos, who burrowed and
swarmed in the government offices where the principal scenes of our
present study took place.

In Paris nearly all these government bureaus resemble each other. Into
whatever ministry you penetrate to ask some slight favor, or to get
redress for a trifling wrong, you will find the same dark corridors,
ill-lighted stairways, doors with oval panes of glass like eyes, as at