rder, and locked them at once into the desk as
Rabourdin had directed. The mornings are dark in these offices towards
the end of December, sometimes indeed the lamps are lit till after ten
o'clock; consequently Sebastien did not happen to notice the pressure
of the copying-machine upon the paper. But when, about half-past nine
o'clock, Rabourdin looked at his memorandum he saw at once the effects
of the copying process, and all the more readily because he was then
considering whether these autographic presses could not be made to do
the work of copying clerks.

"Did any one get to the office before you?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Sebastien,--"Monsieur Dutocq."

"Ah! well, he was punctual. Send Antoine to me."

Too noble to distress Sebastien uselessly by blaming him for a
misfortune now beyond remedy, Rabourdin said no more. Antoine came.
Rabourdin asked if any clerk had remained at the office after four
o'clock the previous evening. The man replied that Monsieur Dutocq had
worked there later than Monsieur de la Roche, who was usually the last
to leave. Rabourdin dismissed him with a nod, and resumed the thread of
his reflections.

"Twice I have prevented his dismissal," he said to himself, "and this is
my reward."

This morning was to Rabourdin like the solemn hour in which great
commanders decide upon a battle and weigh all chances. Knowing the
spirit of official life better than any one, he well knew that it would
never pardon, any more than a school or the galleys or the army pardon,
what looked like espionage or tale-bearing. A man capable of informing
against his comrades is disgraced, dishonored, despised; the ministers
in such a case would disavow their own agents. Nothing was left to an
official so placed but to send in his resignation and leave Paris; his
honor is permanently stained; explanations are of no avail; no one will
either ask for them or listen to them. A minister may well do the same
thing and be thought a great man, able to choose the right instruments;
but a mere subordinate will be judged as a spy, no matter what may
be his motives. While justly measuring the folly of such judgment,
Rabourdin knew that it was all-powerful; and he knew, too, that he was
crushed. More surprised than overwhelmed, he now sought for the best
course to follow under the circumstances; and with such thoughts in his
mind he was necessarily aloof from the excitement caused in the division
by the death of Monsieur d