rring wisdom. He admired Rabourdin, though stabbed
to his vitals by what he said of him. The breakfast-hour suddenly cut
short his meditation.

"His Excellency is waiting for you to come down," announced the
minister's footman.

The minister always breakfasted with his wife and children and des
Lupeaulx, without the presence of servants. The morning meal affords the
only moment of privacy which public men can snatch from the current of
overwhelming business. Yet in spite of the precautions they take to keep
this hour for private intimacies and affections, a good many great and
little people manage to infringe upon it. Business itself will, as at
this moment, thrust itself in the way of their scanty comfort.

"I thought Rabourdin was a man above all ordinary petty manoeuvres,"
began the minister; "and yet here, not ten minutes after La
Billardiere's death, he sends me this note by La Briere,--it is like a
stage missive. Look," said his Excellency, giving des Lupeaulx a paper
which he was twirling in his fingers.

Too noble in mind to think for a moment of the shameful meaning
La Billardiere's death might lend to his letter, Rabourdin had not
withdrawn it from La Briere's hands after the news reached him. Des
Lupeaulx read as follows:--

"Monseigneur,--If twenty-three years of irreproachable services
may claim a favor, I entreat your Excellency to grant me an
audience this very day. My honor is involved in the matter of
which I desire to speak."

"Poor man!" said des Lupeaulx, in a tone of compassion which confirmed
the minister in his error. "We are alone; I advise you to see him now.
You have a meeting of the Council when the Chamber rises; moreover, your
Excellency has to reply to-day to the opposition; this is really the
only hour when you can receive him."

Des Lupeaulx rose, called the servant, said a few words, and returned to
his seat. "I have told them to bring him in at dessert," he said.

Like all other ministers under the Restoration, this particular minister
was a man without youth. The charter granted by Louis XVIII. had the
defect of tying the hands of the kings by compelling them to deliver the
destinies of the nation into the control of the middle-aged men of the
Chamber and the septuagenarians of the peerage; it robbed them of the
right to lay hands on a man of statesmanlike talent wherever they
could find him, no matter how young he was or how poverty-stricken his
condition might be. N