their point of view with the servants of other divisions, exchanging
the bureaucratic gossip. In common with servants of modern houses who
know their masters' private affairs thoroughly, they lived at the
ministry like spiders at the centre of a web, where they felt the
slightest jar of the fabric.

On a Thursday evening, the day after the ministerial reception and
Madame Rabourdin's evening party, just as Antoine was trimming his
beard and his nephews were assisting him in the antechamber of the
division on the upper floor, they were surprised by the unexpected
arrival of one of the clerks.

"That's Monsieur Dutocq," said Antoine. "I know him by that pickpocket
step of his. He is always moving round on the sly, that man. He is on
your back before you know it. Yesterday, contrary to his usual ways,
he outstayed the last man in the office; such a thing hasn't happened
three times since he has been at the ministry."

Here follows the portrait of Monsieur Dutocq, order-clerk in the
Rabourdin bureau: Thirty-eight years old, oblong face and bilious
skin, grizzled hair always cut close, low forehead, heavy eyebrows
meeting together, a crooked nose and pinched lips; tall, the right
shoulder slightly higher than the left; brown coat, black waistcoat,
silk cravat, yellowish trousers, black woollen stockings, and shoes
with flapping bows; thus you behold him. Idle and incapable, he hated
Rabourdin,--naturally enough, for Rabourdin had no vice to flatter,
and no bad or weak side on which Dutocq could make himself useful. Far
too noble to injure a clerk, the chief was also too clear-sighted to
be deceived by any make-believe. Dutocq kept his place therefore
solely through Rabourdin's generosity, and was very certain that he