To-day it would, perhaps, be useless; for a fragment of my work relating to the administration, stolen and misused, has gone the rounds of the offices and is misinterpreted by hatred; in consequence, I find myself compelled to resign, under the tacit condemnation of my superiors.
Your Excellency may have thought, on the morning when I first sought to speak with you, that my purpose was to ask for my promotion, when, in fact, I was thinking only of the glory and usefulness of your ministry and of the public good.

It is all-important, I think, to correct that impression.
Then followed the usual epistolary formulas.
It was half-past seven in the morning when the man consummated the sacrifice of his ideas; he burned everything, the toil of years.
Fatigued by the pressure of thought, overcome by mental suffering, he fell asleep with his head on the back of his armchair.

He was wakened by a curious sensation, and found his hands covered with his wife's tears and saw her kneeling before him.

Celestine had read the resignation.

She could measure the depth of his fall.