"I have had to make a little outlay; but these are times when hidden merit is overlooked, whereas if a man keeps himself well in sight before the world, cultivates social relations and extends them, he succeeds.

After all, ministers and their friends interest themselves only in the people they see; but Rabourdin knows nothing of the world! If I had not cajoled those three deputies they might have wanted La Billardiere's place themselves; whereas, now that I have invited them here, they will be ashamed to do so and will become our supporters instead of rivals.

I have rather played the coquette, but--it is delightful that the first nonsense with which one fools a man sufficed." The day on which a serious and unlooked-for struggle about this appointment began, after a ministerial dinner which preceded one of those receptions which ministers regard as public, des Lupeaulx was standing beside the fireplace near the minister's wife.

While taking his coffee he once more included Madame Rabourdin among the seven or eight really superior women in Paris.

Several times already he had staked Madame Rabourdin very much as Corporal Trim staked his cap.
"Don't say that too often, my dear friend, or you will injure her," said the minister's wife, half-laughing.
Women never like to hear the praise of other women; they keep silence themselves to lessen its effect.
"Poor La Billardiere is dying," remarked his Excellency the minister; "that place falls to Rabourdin, one of our most able men, and to whom our predecessors did not behave well, though one of them actually owed his position in the prefecture of police under the Empire to a certain great personage who was interested in Rabourdin.