Madame Bouchard looked embarrassed, and bent yet more closely to Clorinde to escape the eyes of M. d'Escorailles, which she felt were fixed on her. 'Well,' continued the head of department, 'how do you think the fat man received my request? He glared at me in his offensive way for a full minute, and then he bluntly refused to make the appointment. When I pressed the matter, he said to me with a smile: "Monsieur Bouchard, don't press your request; you distress me. There are very grave reasons why I cannot accede to it." I couldn't get him to say another word. He saw, however, that I was very much put out, and so he begged me to remember him kindly to my wife.' That very evening, as it happened, Madame Bouchard had had a rather lively passage of arms with M. d'Escorailles on the subject of this same Georges Duchesne. 'Oh well!' she now deemed it advisable to say in a rather petulant voice, 'Monsieur Duchesne will have to wait. I don't know that we need trouble ourselves about him.' But her husband seemed quite determined. 'No, no,' he returned; 'he deserves to be assistant head clerk, and he shall be! My credit is involved. Oh, I really can't stand injustice!' He grew so excited that some of the others had to soothe him. Clorinde, who appeared somewhat absent-minded, was in reality trying to hear the conversation between M. Kahn and M. La Rouquette, who had ensconced themselves at the foot of her bed. The former was explaining the state of his affairs. His great undertaking of a railway line between Niort and Angers was in a very critical position. The shares had at first been sold on the Bourse at a premium of eighty francs, before a single stroke of work had been done. Relying upon his much-talked-of English company, M. Kahn had indulged in the most reckless speculation, and now the whole business was on the verge of bankruptcy, and must collapse unless he could at once obtain some powerful support. 'Some time ago,' he said, 'Marsy offered to bring about a sale of the concern to the Western Company. For myself I'm quite ready to enter into negotiations. We should only want to get an Act passed.' Clorinde heard this, and thereupon quietly beckoned to the two men, who drew near and began a long conversation with her. Marsy, said the young woman, bore no spite. She would speak to him on the subject, and would offer him the million francs for which he had asked, the previous year, as his price for supporting the grant. His position as President of the Corps Législatif would make it an easy matter for him to get the necessary Act passed. 'Marsy's the only man who's of any good in matters of this kind,' she added with a smile. 'If you try to manage without him, you always have to call him in later on to patch up the broken pieces.'