of it. Monsieur de Trailles,
here, knows better than I do the state of things down there. He can
tell you that the disappearance of the father immediately after the
recognition had a bad effect upon people's minds; and every one in
Arcis has a vague impression of secret plotting in this affair of the
election. You don't know, my dear minister, all that can be made in the
provinces of a judicial affair when adroitly manipulated,--cooked, as I
may say. In my long and laborious career at the bar I saw plenty of that
kind of miracle. But a parliamentary debate is another thing. In that
there's no need of proof; one can kill one's man with probabilities and
assertions, if hotly maintained."

"But, to come to the point," said Rastignac, "how do you think the
affair ought to be managed?"

"In the first place," replied Vinet, "I should leave the Beauvisage
people to pay all costs of whatever kind, inasmuch as they propose to do
so."

"Do I oppose that?" said the minister. "Have I the right or the means to
do so?"

"The affair," continued Vinet, "should be placed in the hands of some
capable and wily solicitor, like Desroches, for example, Monsieur de
Trailles' lawyer. He'll know how to put flesh on the bones of a case you
justly consider rather thin."

"Well, it is certainly not my place to say to Monsieur de Trailles
or any other man, 'I forbid you to employ whom you will as your
solicitor.'"

"Then we need some pleader who can talk in a moving way about that
sacred thing the Family, and put himself into a state of indignation
about these surreptitious and furtive ways of entering its honored
enclosure."

"Desroches can point out some such person to you. The government cannot
prevent a man from saying what he pleases."

"But," interposed Maxime, who was forced out of his passive role by the
minister's coldness, "is _not preventing_ all the help we are to expect
in this affair from the government?"

"You don't expect us, I hope, to take this matter upon ourselves?"

"No, of course not; but we have certainly supposed that you would take
some interest in the matter."

"But how?--in what way?"

"Well, as Monsieur le procureur said just now, by giving a hint to the
subsidized newspapers, by stirring up your friends to spread the news,
by using a certain influence which power always exerts on the minds of
magistrates."

"Thank you, no!" replied Rastignac. "When you want the government for
an accomplice, my dear Ma