“Ha! so you are the first this morning,” said the minister, making a few steps towards the colonel, and giving him his hand. “What have you come for, my dear fellow?--a railroad, a canal, a suspension bridge?”
“I have come, my good-natured minister, on private business in which you are more interested than I.”
“That is not a judicious way of urging it, for I warn you I pay little or no attention to my own business.”
“I had a visit from Maxime this morning, on his return from Arcis-sur-Aube,” said the colonel, coming to the point. “He gave me all the particulars of that election. He thinks a spoke might be put in the wheel of it. Now, if you have time to let me make a few explanations--”
The minister, who was sitting before his desk with his back to the fireplace, turned round to look at the clock.
“Look here, my dear fellow,” he said, “I’m afraid you will be long, and I have a hungry pack outside there waiting for me. I shouldn’t listen to you comfortably. Do me the favor to go and take a walk and come back at twelve o’clock to breakfast. I’ll present you to Madame de Rastignac, whom you don’t know, I think, and after breakfast we will take a few turns in the garden; then I can listen to you in peace.”
“Very good, I accept that arrangement,” said the colonel, rising.
As he crossed the waiting-room, he said,--
“Messieurs, I have not delayed you long, I hope.”
Then, after distributing a few grasps of the hand, he departed.
Three hours later, when the colonel entered the salon where he was presented to Madame de Rastignac, he found there the Baron de Nucingen, who came nearly every day to breakfast with his son-in-law before the Bourse hour, Emile Blondet of the “Debats,” Messieurs Moreau (de l’Oise), Dionis, and Camusot, three deputies madly loquacious, and two newly elected deputies whose names it is doubtful if Rastignac knew himself. Franchessini also recognized Martial de la Roche-Hugon, the minister’s brother-in-law, and the inevitable des Lupeaulx, peer of France. As for another figure, who stood talking with the minister for some time in the recess of a window, the colonel learned, after inquiring of Emile Blondet, that it was that of a former functionary of the upper police, who continued, as an amateur, to do part of his former business, going daily to each minister under all administrations with as much zeal and regularity as if he were still charged with his official duties.