About this time, my poor mother, who was always in fear of my losing my place, and who, I must confess, was quite justified in her fears, had a fresh instance of deceived hopes to bring before my notice. My compatriot, Auguste Lafarge, the stylish lawyer's clerk who had momentarily revolutionised the whole town of Villers-Cotterets, and who had been obliged to sell his business to pay his debts, because he could not find a rich wife to save the situation, had flung himself into literature for want of other means of livelihood, and had just died after two or three years' struggle against horrible poverty. It was in vain I said to my mother that Lafarge never had the making of a dramatic poet in him; in vain I told her he had never struggled, but, on the contrary, had given in without a fight; in vain I urged that Lafarge never possessed a fraction of my energy and perseverance; the material fact was that he had suffered hunger and misery and had died in consequence of his privations. Another fact that ought to have set her fears to rest only gave her fresh anxiety. Betz had been promoted. The reader will recollect that Betz was the nice lad who had been my second in the duel with M. B. He had been made chief clerk at a salary of 2400 francs, and his post as order clerk at 2000 francs was given to Ernest, who, in his turn, left his place of 1800 francs vacant. As I had attended to my office work with a regularity that not even my worst enemy could have found fault with, and as, although they may have been unjust towards me, they were not really ill-intentioned, they could hardly refuse to give me Ernest's place, which I asked of Oudard as though it were my due. My request was acceded to, but they changed me from the Secretarial Department to the Relieving Offices. The _Bureau des secours_ was really a branch of the Secretariat, but it was looked upon as a subordinate department. I should most of all have regretted leaving Lassagne, but a change had been made some time before in the arrangement of the offices, and a room had been given him to himself, in consideration of his position as deputy head-clerk. So it came about that I was quite as near him in the Relief Office as I had been under the new arrangements at the Secretariat. I gained two things by this change: first, an increase of salary; secondly, a greater freedom of action; since, having to obtain information concerning the unfortunate people who asked for help, I spent whole days in going about from one end of Paris to the other. I should have been well pleased, as compensation for the two advantages thus gained, to have given up my portfolio making, but there was no way out of this. In spite of my increase of salary, and the greater freedom I gained, my mother looked upon this change in my position as in the nature of a disgrace. She was not deceived; and, if she had been, M. Deviolaine would have taken care to put her right on this head.