cunning
balance between all parties, a species of Republican Jesuit and Liberal
mushroom of uncertain character, such as spring up by hundreds on the
popular dunghill of universal suffrage. His village machiavelism caused
him to be reckoned able among his colleagues, among all the adventurers
and abortions who are made deputies. He was sufficiently well-dressed,
correct, familiar, and amiable to succeed. He had his successes in
society, in the mixed, perturbed, and somewhat rough society of the high
functionaries of the day. It was said everywhere of him: "Laroche will
be a minister," and he believed more firmly than anyone else that he
would be. He was one of the chief shareholders in Daddy Walter's paper,
and his colleague and partner in many financial schemes.

Du Roy backed him up with confidence and with vague hopes as to the
future. He was, besides, only continuing the work begun by Forestier, to
whom Laroche-Mathieu had promised the Cross of the Legion of Honor when
the day of triumph should come. The decoration would adorn the breast of
Madeleine's second husband, that was all. Nothing was changed in the
main.

It was seen so well that nothing was changed that Du Roy's comrades
organized a joke against him, at which he was beginning to grow angry.
They no longer called him anything but Forestier. As soon as he entered
the office some one would call out: "I say, Forestier."

He would pretend not to hear, and would look for the letters in his
pigeon-holes. The voice would resume in louder tones, "Hi! Forestier."
Some stifled laughs would be heard, and as Du Roy was entering the
manager's room, the comrade who had called out would stop him, saying:
"Oh, I beg your pardon, it is you I want to speak to. It is stupid, but
I am always mixing you up with poor Charles. It is because your articles
are so infernally like his. Everyone is taken in by them."

Du Roy would not answer, but he was inwardly furious, and a sullen wrath
sprang up in him against the dead man. Daddy Walter himself had
declared, when astonishment was expressed at the flagrant similarity in
style and inspiration between the leaders of the new political editor
and his predecessor: "Yes, it is Forestier, but a fuller, stronger, more
manly Forestier."

Another time Du Roy, opening by chance the cupboard in which the cup and
balls were kept, had found all those of his predecessor with crape round
the handles, and his own, the one he had made use of w