At the moment of which we are now writing, the minister was looking at his cashier very much as we gaze at a window or a cornice, without supposing that either can hear us, or fathom our secret thoughts.

“I am all the more anxious that we should settle everything with the prefect in the quietest way, because des Lupeaulx has designs upon the place for himself,” said the minister, continuing his talk with the deputy; “his paltry little estate is in your arrondissement; we won’t want him as deputy.”

“He has neither years nor rentals enough to be eligible,” said the deputy.

“That may be; but you know how it was decided for Casimir Perier as to age; and as to worldly possessions, des Lupeaulx does possess something,—­not much, it is true, but the law does not take into account increase, which he may very well obtain; commissions have wide margins for the deputies of the Centre, you know, and we cannot openly oppose the good-will that is shown to this dear friend.”

“But where would he get the money?”

“How did Manuel manage to become the owner of a house in Paris?” cried the minister.

The cashier listened and heard, but reluctantly and against his will.  These rapid remarks, murmured as they were, struck his ear by one of those acoustic rebounds which are very little studied.  As he heard these political confidences, however, a keen alarm took possession of his soul.  He was one of those simple-minded beings, who are shocked at listening to anything they are not intended to hear, or entering where they are not invited, and seeming bold when they are really timid, inquisitive where they are truly discreet.  The cashier accordingly began to glide along the carpet and edge himself away, so that the minister saw him at a distance when he first took notice of him.  Saillard was a ministerial henchman absolutely incapable of indiscretion; even if the minister had known that he had overheard a secret he had only to whisper “motus” in his ear to be sure it was perfectly safe.  The cashier, however, took advantage of an influx of office-seekers, to slip out and get into his hackney-coach (hired by the hour for these costly entertainments), and to return to his home in the place Royale.

CHAPTER III

The teredos navalis, otherwise called ship-Worm

While old Saillard was driving across Paris his son-in-law, Isidore Baudoyer, and his daughter, Elisabeth, Baudoyer’s wife, were playing a virtuous game of boston with their confessor, the Abbe Gaudron, in company with a few neighbors and a certain Martin Falleix, a brass-founder in the fauborg Saint-Antoine, to whom Saillard had loaned the necessary money to establish a business.  This Falleix, a respectable Auvergnat who had come to seek his fortune in Paris with his smelting-pot on his back, had found immediate employment with the