[Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac]@TWC D-Link bookBureaucracy CHAPTER VI 32/55
It gives us pleasure to make known this fact, which proves how powerless the declamations of liberals have been on the mind of the Parisian bourgeoisie.
The upper ranks of that body have at all times been royalist and they prove it when occasion offers." "The price was five thousand francs," said the Abbe Gaudron; "but as the payment was in cash, the court jeweller reduced the amount." "Representing one of the oldest bourgeois families in Paris!" Saillard was saying to himself; "there it is printed,--in the official paper, too!" "Dear Monsieur Gaudron," said Madame Baudoyer, "please help my father to compose a little speech that he could slip into the countess's ear when he takes her the monthly stipend,--a single sentence that would cover all! I must leave you.
I am obliged to go out with my uncle Mitral. Would you believe it? I was unable to find my uncle Bidault at home this afternoon.
Oh, what a dog-kennel he lives in! But Monsieur Mitral, who knows his ways, says he does all his business between eight o'clock in the morning and midday, and that after that hour he can be found only at a certain cafe called the Cafe Themis,--a singular name." "Is justice done there ?" said the abbe, laughing. "Do you ask why he goes to a cafe at the corner of the rue Dauphine and the quai des Augustins? They say he plays dominoes there every night with his friend Monsieur Gobseck.
I don't wish to go to such a place alone; my uncle Mitral will take me there and bring me back." At this instant Mitral showed his yellow face, surmounted by a wig which looked as though it might be made of hay, and made a sign to his niece to come at once, and not keep a carriage waiting at two francs an hour. Madame Baudoyer rose and went away without giving any explanation to her husband or father. "Heaven has given you in that woman," said Monsieur Gaudron to Baudoyer when Elisabeth had disappeared, "a perfect treasure of prudence and virtue, a model of wisdom, a Christian who gives sure signs of possessing the Divine spirit.
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