Bureaucracy
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Title: Bureaucracy
Author: Honoré de Balzac
Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #1343]
Most recently updated: October 29, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1343
Credits: Produced by John Bickers, Bonnie Sala, and Dagny, and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUREAUCRACY ***
BUREAUCRACY
By Honore De Balzac
Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To the Comtesse Seraphina San Severino, with the respectful
homage of sincere and deep admiration
De Balzac
BUREAUCRACY
CHAPTER I. THE RABOURDIN HOUSEHOLD
In Paris, where men of thought and study bear a certain likeness to one
another, living as they do in a common centre, you must have met with
several resembling Monsieur Rabourdin, whose acquaintance we are about
to make at a moment when he is head of a bureau in one of our most
important ministries. At this period he was forty years old, with gray
hair of so pleasing a shade that women might at a pinch fall in love
with it for it softened a somewhat melancholy countenance, blue eyes
full of fire, a skin that was still fair, though rather ruddy and
touched here and there with strong red marks; a forehead and nose a la
Louis XV., a serious mouth, a tall figure, thin, or perhaps wasted, like
that of a man just recovering from illness, and finally, a bearing that
was midway between the indolence of a mere idler and the thoughtfulness
of a busy man. If this portrait serves to depict his character, a sketch
of this man’s dress will bring it still further into relief. Rabourdin
wore habitually a blue surcoat, a white cravat, a waistcoat crossed a la
Robespierre, black trousers without straps, gray silk stockings and low
shoes. Well-shaved, and with his stomach warmed by a cup of coffee, he
left home at eight in the morning with the regularity of clock-work,
always passing along the same streets on his way to the ministry: so
neat was he, so formal, so starched that he might have been taken for an
Englishman on the road to his embassy.
From these general signs you will readily discern a family man,
harassed by vexations in his own household, worried by annoyances at the
ministry, yet philosopher enough to take life as he found it; an honest
man, loving his country and serving it, not concealing from himself the
obstacles in the way of those who seek to do right; prudent, because he
knew men; exquisitely courteous with women, of whom he asked nothing,--a
man full of acquirements, affable with his inferiors, holding his equals
at great distance, and dignified towards his superiors. At the epoch of
which we write, you would have noticed in him the coldly resigned air of
one who has buried the illusions of his youth and renounced every secret
ambition; you would have recognized a discouraged, but not disgusted
man, one who still clings to his first projects,--more perhaps to
employ his faculties than in the hope of a doubtful success. He was not
decorated with any order, and always accused himself of weakness
for having worn that of the Fleur-de-lis in the early days of the
Restoration.
The life of this man was marked by certain mysterious peculiarities.
He had never known his father; his mother, a woman to whom luxury was
everything, always elegantly dressed, always on pleasure bent, whose
beauty seemed to him miraculous and whom he very seldom saw, left
him little at her death; but she had given him that too common and
incomplete education which produces so much ambition and so little
ability. A few days before his mother’s death, when he was just sixteen,
he left the Lycee Napoleon to enter as supernumerary a government
office, where an unknown protector had provided him with a place.
At twenty-two years of age Rabourdin became under-head-clerk; at
twenty-five, head-clerk, or, as it was termed, head of the bureau. From
that day the hand that assisted the young man to start in life was never
felt again in his career, except as to a single circumstance; it led
him, poor and friendless, to the house of a Monsieur Leprince, formerly
an auctioneer, a widower said to be extremely rich, and father of
an only daughter. Xavier Rabourdin fell desperately in love with
Mademoiselle Celestine Leprince, then seventeen years of age, who had
all the matrimonial claims of a dowry of two hundred thousand francs.
Carefully educated by an artistic mother, who transmitted her own
talents to her daughter, this young lady was fitted to attract
distinguished men. Tall, handsome, and finely-formed, she was a good
musician, drew and painted, spoke several languages, and even knew
something of science,--a dangerous advantage, which requires a woman
to avoid carefully all appearance of pedantry. Blinded by mistaken
tenderness, the mother gave the daughter false ideas as to her probable
future; to the maternal eyes a duke or an ambassador, a marshal of
France or a minister of State, could alone give her Celestine her due
place in society. The young lady had, moreover, the manners, language,
and habits of the great world. Her dress was richer and more elegant
than was suitable for an unmarried girl; a husband could give her
nothing more than she now had, except happiness. Besides all such
indulgences, the foolish spoiling of the mother, who died a year after
the girl’s marriage, made a husband’s task all the more difficult.
What coolness and composure of mind were needed to rule such a woman!
Commonplace suitors held back in fear. Xavier Rabourdin, without parents
and without fortune other than his situation under government, was
proposed to Celestine by her father. She resisted for a long time;
not that she had any personal objection to her suitor, who was young,
handsome, and much in love, but she shrank from the plain name of Madame
Rabourdin. Monsieur Leprince assured his daughter that Xavier was of
the stock that statesmen came of. Celestine answered that a man named
Rabourdin would never be anything under the government of the Bourbons,
etc. Forced back to his intrenchments, the father made the serious
mistake of telling his daughter that her future husband was certain of
becoming Rabourdin “de something or other” before he reached the age
of admission to the Chamber. Xavier was soon to be appointed Master of
petitions, and general-secretary at his ministry. From these lower steps
of the ladder the young man would certainly rise to the higher ranks of
the administration, possessed of a fortune and a name bequeathed to him
in a certain will of which he, Monsieur Leprince, was cognizant. On this
the marriage took place.
Rabourdin and his wife believed in the mysterious protector to whom
the auctioneer alluded. Led away by such hopes and by the natural
extravagance of happy love, Monsieur and Madame Rabourdin spent nearly
one hundred thousand francs of their capital in the first five years
of married life. By the end of this time Celestine, alarmed at the
non-advancement of her husband, insisted on investing the remaining
hundred thousand francs of her dowry in landed property, which returned
only a slender income; but her future inheritance from her father would
amply repay all present privations with perfect comfort and ease of
life. When the worthy auctioneer saw his son-in-law disappointed of the
hopes they had placed on the nameless protector, he tried, for the
sake of his daughter, to repair the secret loss by risking part of his
fortune in a speculation which had favourable chances of success. But
the poor man became involved in one of the liquidations of the house of
Nucingen, and died of grief, leaving nothing behind him but a dozen fine
pictures which adorned his daughter’s salon, and a few old-fashioned
pieces of furniture, which she put in the garret.
Eight years of fruitless expectation made Madame Rabourdin at last
understand that the paternal protector of her husband must have died,
and that his will, if it ever existed, was lost or destroyed. Two years
before her father’s death the place of chief of division, which became
vacant, was given, over her husband’s head, to a certain Monsieur de la
Billardiere, related to a deputy of the Right who was made minister in
1823. It was enough to drive Rabourdin out of the service; but how could
he give up his salary of eight thousand francs and perquisites, when
they constituted three fourths of his income and his household was
accustomed to spend them? Besides, if he had patience for a few more
years he would then be entitled to a pension. What a fall was this for
a woman whose high expectations at the opening of her life were more or
less warranted, and one who was admitted on all sides to be a superior
woman.
Madame Rabourdin had justified the expectations formed of Mademoiselle
Leprince; she possessed the elements of that apparent superiority which
pleases the world; her liberal education enabled her to speak to every
one in his or her own language; her talents were real; she showed an
independent and elevated mind; her conversation charmed as much by its
variety and ease as by the oddness and originality of her ideas. Such
qualities, useful and appropriate in a sovereign or an ambassadress,
were of little service to a household compelled to jog in the common
round. Those who have the gift of speaking well desire an audience;
they like to talk, even if they sometimes weary others. To satisfy the
requirements of her mind Madame Rabourdin took a weekly reception-day
and went a great deal into society to obtain the consideration her
self-love was accustomed to enjoy. Those who know Parisian life will
readily understand how a woman of her temperament suffered, and was
martyrized at heart by the scantiness of her pecuniary means. No matter
what foolish declarations people make about money, they one and all, if
they live in Paris, must grovel before accounts, do homage to figures,
and kiss the forked hoof of the golden calf. What a problem was hers!
twelve thousand francs a year to defray the costs of a household
consisting of father, mother, two children, a chambermaid and cook,
living on the second floor of a house in the rue Duphot, in an apartment
costing two thousand francs a year. Deduct the dress and the carriage of
Madame before you estimate the gross expenses of the family, for dress
precedes everything; then see what remains for the education of the
children (a girl of eight and a boy of nine, whose maintenance must
cost at least two thousand francs besides) and you will find that Madame
Rabourdin could barely afford to give her husband thirty francs a month.
That is the position of half the husbands in Paris, under penalty of
being thought monsters.
Thus it was that this woman who believed herself destined to shine in
the world was condemned to use her mind and her faculties in a sordid
struggle, fighting hand to hand with an account-book. Already, terrible
sacrifice of pride! she had dismissed her man-servant, not long after
the death of her father. Most women grow weary of this daily struggle;
they complain but they usually end by giving up to fate and taking what
comes to them; Celestine’s ambition, far from lessening, only increased
through difficulties, and led her, when she found she could not conquer
them, to sweep them aside. To her mind this complicated tangle of the
affairs of life was a Gordian knot impossible to untie and which
genius ought to cut. Far from accepting the pettiness of middle-class
existence, she was angry at the delay which kept the great things of
life from her grasp,--blaming fate as deceptive. Celestine sincerely
believed herself a superior woman. Perhaps she was right; perhaps she
would have been great under great circumstances; perhaps she was not in
her right place. Let us remember there are as many varieties of woman as
there are of man, all of which society fashions to meet its needs. Now
in the social order, as in Nature’s order, there are more young shoots
than there are trees, more spawn than full-grown fish, and many great
capacities (Athanase Granson, for instance) which die withered for want
of moisture, like seeds on stony ground. There are, unquestionably,
household women, accomplished women, ornamental women, women who are
exclusively wives, or mothers, or sweethearts, women purely spiritual
or purely material; just as there are soldiers, artists, artisans,
mathematicians, poets, merchants, men who understand money, or
agriculture, or government, and nothing else. Besides all this, the
eccentricity of events leads to endless cross-purposes; many are called
and few are chosen is the law of earth as of heaven. Madame Rabourdin
conceived herself fully capable of directing a statesman, inspiring an
artist, helping an inventor and pushing his interests, or of devoting
her powers to the financial politics of a Nucingen, and playing a
brilliant part in the great world. Perhaps she was only endeavouring to
excuse to her own mind a hatred for the laundry lists and the duty of
overlooking the housekeeping bills, together with the petty economies
and cares of a small establishment. She was superior only in those
things where it gave her pleasure to be so. Feeling as keenly as she
did the thorns of a position which can only be likened to that of
Saint-Laurence on his grid-iron, is it any wonder that she sometimes
cried out? So, in her paroxysms of thwarted ambition, in the moments
when her wounded vanity gave her terrible shooting pains, Celestine
turned upon Xavier Rabourdin. Was it not her husband’s duty to give her
a suitable position in the world? If she were a man she would have had
the energy to make a rapid fortune for the sake of rendering an adored
wife happy! She reproached him for being too honest a man. In the mouth
of some women this accusation is a charge of imbecility. She sketched
out for him certain brilliant plans in which she took no account of the
hindrances imposed by men and things; then, like all women under the
influence of vehement feeling, she became in thought as Machiavellian
as Gondreville, and more unprincipled than Maxime de Trailles. At such
times Celestine’s mind took a wide range, and she imagined herself at
the summit of her ideas.
When these fine visions first began Rabourdin, who saw the practical
side, was cool. Celestine, much grieved, thought her husband
narrow-minded, timid, unsympathetic; and she acquired, insensibly, a
wholly false opinion of the companion of her life. In the first place,
she often extinguished him by the brilliancy of her arguments. Her ideas
came to her in flashes, and she sometimes stopped him short when he
began an explanation, because she did not choose to lose the slightest
sparkle of her own mind. From the earliest days of their marriage
Celestine, feeling herself beloved and admired by her husband, treated
him without ceremony; she put herself above conjugal laws and the
rules of private courtesy by expecting love to pardon all her little
wrong-doings; and, as she never in any way corrected herself, she was
always in the ascendant. In such a situation the man holds to the wife
very much the position of a child to a teacher when the latter cannot or
will not recognize that the mind he has ruled in childhood is becoming
mature. Like Madame de Stael, who exclaimed in a room full of people,
addressing, as we may say, a greater man than herself, “Do you know you
have really said something very profound!” Madame Rabourdin said of
her husband: “He certainly has a good deal of sense at times.” Her
disparaging opinion of him gradually appeared in her behavior through
almost imperceptible motions. Her attitude and manners expressed a want
of respect. Without being aware of it she injured her husband in the
eyes of others; for in all countries society, before making up its mind
about a man, listens for what his wife thinks of him, and obtains from
her what the Genevese term “pre-advice.”
When Rabourdin became aware of the mistakes which love had led him to
commit it was too late,--the groove had been cut; he suffered and
was silent. Like other men in whom sentiments and ideas are of equal
strength, whose souls are noble and their brains well balanced, he was
the defender of his wife before the tribunal of his own judgment; he
told himself that nature doomed her to a disappointed life through his
fault; HIS; she was like a thoroughbred English horse, a racer harnessed
to a cart full of stones; she it was who suffered; and he blamed
himself. His wife, by dint of constant repetition, had inoculated him
with her own belief in herself. Ideas are contagious in a household; the
ninth thermidor, like so many other portentous events, was the result
of female influence. Thus, goaded by Celestine’s ambition, Rabourdin had
long considered the means of satisfying it, though he hid his hopes, so
as to spare her the tortures of uncertainty. The man was firmly resolved
to make his way in the administration by bringing a strong light to bear
upon it. He intended to bring about one of those revolutions which send
a man to the head of either one party or another in society; but being
incapable of so doing in his own interests, he merely pondered useful
thoughts and dreamed of triumphs won for his country by noble means. His
ideas were both generous and ambitious; few officials have not
conceived the like; but among officials as among artists there are more
miscarriages than births; which is tantamount to Buffon’s saying that
“Genius is patience.”
Placed in a position where he could study French administration and
observe its mechanism, Rabourdin worked in the circle where his thought
revolved, which, we may remark parenthetically, is the secret of much
human accomplishment; and his labor culminated finally in the invention
of a new system for the Civil Service of government. Knowing the people
with whom he had to do, he maintained the machine as it then worked, so
it still works and will continue to work; for everybody fears to remodel
it, though no one, according to Rabourdin, ought to be unwilling to
simplify it. In his opinion, the problem to be resolved lay in a better
use of the same forces. His plan, in its simplest form, was to revise
taxation and lower it in a way that should not diminish the revenues of
the State, and to obtain, from a budget equal to the budgets which now
excite such rabid discussion, results that should be two-fold greater
than the present results. Long practical experience had taught Rabourdin
that perfection is brought about in all things by changes in the
direction of simplicity. To economize is to simplify. To simplify
means to suppress unnecessary machinery; removals naturally follow.
His system, therefore, depended on the weeding out of officials and the
establishment of a new order of administrative offices. No doubt the
hatred which all reformers incur takes its rise here. Removals required
by this perfecting process, always ill-understood, threaten the
well-being of those on whom a change in their condition is thus forced.
What rendered Rabourdin really great was that he was able to restrain
the enthusiasm that possesses all reformers, and to patiently seek out a
slow evolving medium for all changes so as to avoid shocks, leaving time
and experience to prove the excellence of each reform. The grandeur of
the result anticipated might make us doubt its possibility if we lose
sight of this essential point in our rapid analysis of his system. It
is, therefore, not unimportant to show through his self-communings,
however incomplete they might be, the point of view from which he looked
at the administrative horizon. This tale, which is evolved from the very
heart of the Civil Service, may also serve to show some of the evils of
our present social customs.
Xavier Rabourdin, deeply impressed by the trials and poverty which he
witnessed in the lives of the government clerks, endeavored to ascertain
the cause of their growing deterioration. He found it in those petty
partial revolutions, the eddies, as it were, of the storm of 1789,
which the historians of great social movements neglect to inquire into,
although as a matter of fact it is they which have made our manners and
customs what they are now.
Formerly, under the monarchy, the bureaucratic armies did not exist.
The clerks, few in number, were under the orders of a prime minister who
communicated with the sovereign; thus they directly served the king. The
superiors of these zealous servants were simply called head-clerks. In
those branches of administration which the king did not himself direct,
such for instance as the “fermes” (the public domains throughout
the country on which a revenue was levied), the clerks were to their
superior what the clerks of a business-house are to their employer; they
learned a science which would one day advance them to prosperity. Thus,
all points of the circumference were fastened to the centre and derived
their life from it. The result was devotion and confidence. Since 1789
the State, call it the Nation if you like, has replaced the sovereign.
Instead of looking directly to the chief magistrate of this nation,
the clerks have become, in spite of our fine patriotic ideas, the
subsidiaries of the government; their superiors are blown about by the
winds of a power called “the administration,” and do not know from
day to day where they may be on the morrow. As the routine of public
business must go on, a certain number of indispensable clerks are kept
in their places, though they hold these places on sufferance, anxious as
they are to retain them. Bureaucracy, a gigantic power set in motion by
dwarfs, was generated in this way. Though Napoleon, by subordinating
all things and all men to his will, retarded for a time the influence of
bureaucracy (that ponderous curtain hung between the service to be
done and the man who orders it), it was permanently organized under
the constitutional government, which was, inevitably, the friend of
all mediocrities, the lover of authentic documents and accounts, and as
meddlesome as an old tradeswoman. Delighted to see the various ministers
constantly struggling against the four hundred petty minds of the
Elected of the Chamber, with their ten or a dozen ambitious and
dishonest leaders, the Civil Service officials hastened to make
themselves essential to the warfare by adding their quota of assistance
under the form of written action; they created a power of inertia and
named it “Report.” Let us explain the Report.
When the kings of France took to themselves ministers, which first
happened under Louis XV., they made them render reports on all important
questions, instead of holding, as formerly, grand councils of state with
the nobles. Under the constitutional government, the ministers of the
various departments were insensibly led by their bureaus to imitate this
practice of kings. Their time being taken up in defending themselves
before the two Chambers and the court, they let themselves be guided by
the leading-strings of the Report. Nothing important was ever brought
before the government that a minister did not say, even when the case
was urgent, “I have called for a report.” The Report thus became, both
as to the matter concerned and for the minister himself, the same as
a report to the Chamber of Deputies on a question of laws,--namely, a
disquisition in which the reasons for and against are stated with more
or less partiality. No real result is attained; the minister, like
the Chamber, is fully as well prepared before as after the report is
rendered. A determination, in whatever matter, is reached in an instant.
Do what we will, the moment comes when the decision must be made. The
greater the array of reasons for and against, the less sound will be
the judgment. The finest things of which France can boast have been
accomplished without reports and where decisions were prompt and
spontaneous. The dominant law of a statesman is to apply precise formula
to all cases, after the manner of judges and physicians.
Rabourdin, who said to himself: “A minister should have decision, should
know public affairs, and direct their course,” saw “Report” rampant
throughout France, from the colonel to the marshal, from the commissary
of police to the king, from the prefects to the ministers of state,
from the Chamber to the courts. After 1818 everything was discussed,
compared, and weighed, either in speech or writing; public business
took a literary form. France went to ruin in spite of this array of
documents; dissertations stood in place of action; a million of reports
were written every year; bureaucracy was enthroned! Records, statistics,
documents, failing which France would have been ruined, circumlocution,
without which there could be no advance, increased, multiplied, and grew
majestic. From that day forth bureaucracy used to its own profit the
mistrust that stands between receipts and expenditures; it degraded the
administration for the benefit of the administrators; in short, it
spun those lilliputian threads which have chained France to Parisian
centralization,--as if from 1500 to 1800 France had undertaken nothing
for want of thirty thousand government clerks! In fastening upon public
offices, like a mistletoe on a pear-tree, these officials indemnified
themselves amply, and in the following manner.
The ministers, compelled to obey the princes or the Chambers who impose
upon them the distribution of the public moneys, and forced to retain
the workers in office, proceeded to diminish salaries and increase the
number of those workers, thinking that if more persons were employed by
government the stronger the government would be. And yet the contrary
law is an axiom written on the universe; there is no vigor except where
there are few active principles. Events proved in July, 1830, the error
of the materialism of the Restoration. To plant a government in the
hearts of a nation it is necessary to bind INTERESTS to it, not MEN. The
government-clerks being led to detest the administrations which lessened
both their salaries and their importance, treated them as a courtesan
treats an aged lover, and gave them mere work for money; a state of
things which would have seemed as intolerable to the administration as
to the clerks, had the two parties dared to feel each other’s pulse,
or had the higher salaries not succeeded in stifling the voices of the
lower. Thus wholly and solely occupied in retaining his place, drawing
his pay, and securing his pension, the government official thought
everything permissible that conduced to these results. This state
of things led to servility on the part of the clerks and to endless
intrigues within the various departments, where the humbler clerks
struggled vainly against degenerate members of the aristocracy, who
sought positions in the government bureaus for their ruined sons.
Superior men could scarcely bring themselves to tread these tortuous
ways, to stoop, to cringe, and creep through the mire of these cloacas,
where the presence of a fine mind only alarmed the other denizens. The
ambitious man of genius grows old in obtaining his triple crown; he does
not follow in the steps of Sixtus the Fifth merely to become head of
a bureau. No one comes or stays in the government offices but idlers,
incapables, or fools. Thus the mediocrity of French administration has
slowly come about. Bureaucracy, made up entirely of petty minds, stands
as an obstacle to the prosperity of the nation; delays for seven years,
by its machinery, the project of a canal which would have stimulated
the production of a province; is afraid of everything, prolongs
procrastination, and perpetuates the abuses which in turn perpetuate and
consolidate itself. Bureaucracy holds all things and the administration
itself in leading strings; it stifles men of talent who are bold enough
to be independent of it or to enlighten it on its own follies. About the
time of which we write the pension list had just been issued, and on it
Rabourdin saw the name of an underling in office rated for a larger sum
than the old colonels, maimed and wounded for their country. In that
fact lies the whole history of bureaucracy.
Another evil, brought about by modern customs, which Rabourdin counted
among the causes of this secret demoralization, was the fact that
there is no real subordination in the administration in Paris; complete
equality reigns between the head of an important division and the
humblest copying-clerk; one is as powerful as the other in an arena
outside of which each lords it in his own way. Education, equally
distributed through the masses, brings the son of a porter into a
government office to decide the fate of some man of merit or some landed
proprietor whose door-bell his father may have answered. The last comer
is therefore on equal terms with the oldest veteran in the service. A
wealthy supernumerary splashes his superior as he drives his tilbury
to Longchamps and points with his whip to the poor father of a family,
remarking to the pretty woman at his side, “That’s my chief.” The
Liberals call this state of things Progress; Rabourdin thought it
Anarchy at the heart of power. He saw how it resulted in restless
intrigues, like those of a harem between eunuchs and women and imbecile
sultans, or the petty troubles of nuns full of underhand vexations,
or college tyrannies, or diplomatic manoeuvrings fit to terrify an
ambassador, all put in motion to obtain a fee or an increase in salary;
it was like the hopping of fleas harnessed to pasteboard cars, the
spitefulness of slaves, often visited on the minister himself. With all
this were the really useful men, the workers, victims of such parasites;
men sincerely devoted to their country, who stood vigorously out from
the background of the other incapables, yet who were often forced to
succumb through unworthy trickery.
All the higher offices were gained through parliamentary influence,
royalty had nothing to do now with them, and the subordinate clerks
became, after a time, merely the running-gear of the machine; the
most important considerations with them being to keep the wheels well
greased. This fatal conviction entering some of the best minds smothered
many statements conscientiously written on the secret evils of the
national government; lowered the courage of many hearts, and corrupted
sterling honesty, weary of injustice and won to indifference by
deteriorating annoyances. A clerk in the employ of the Rothchilds
corresponds with all England; another, in a government office, may
communicate with all the prefects; but where the one learns the way to
make his fortune, the other loses time and health and life to no
avail. An undermining evil lies here. Certainly a nation does not seem
threatened with immediate dissolution because an able clerk is sent away
and a middling sort of man replaces him. Unfortunately for the welfare
of nations individual men never seem essential to their existence. But
in the long run when the belittling process is fully carried out nations
will disappear. Every one who seeks instruction on this point can look
at Venice, Madrid, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Rome; all places which were
formerly resplendent with mighty powers and are now destroyed by the
infiltrating littleness which gradually attained the highest eminence.
When the day of struggle came, all was found rotten, the State succumbed
to a weak attack. To worship the fool who succeeds, and not to grieve
over the fall of an able man is the result of our melancholy education,
of our manners and customs which drive men of intellect into disgust,
and genius to despair.
What a difficult undertaking is the rehabilitation of the Civil Service
while the liberal cries aloud in his newspapers that the salaries of
clerks are a standing theft, calls the items of the budget a cluster of
leeches, and every year demands why the nation should be saddled with
a thousand millions of taxes. In Monsieur Rabourdin’s eyes the clerk in
relation to the budget was very much what the gambler is to the
game; that which he wins he puts back again. All remuneration implies
something furnished. To pay a man a thousand francs a year and demand
his whole time was surely to organize theft and poverty. A galley-slave
costs nearly as much, and does less. But to expect a man whom the State
remunerated with twelve thousand francs a year to devote himself to
his country was a profitable contract for both sides, fit to allure all
capacities.
These reflections had led Rabourdin to desire the recasting of the
clerical official staff. To employ fewer man, to double or treble
salaries, and do away with pensions, to choose only young clerks (as did
Napoleon, Louis XIV., Richelieu, and Ximenes), but to keep them long and
train them for the higher offices and greatest honors, these were the
chief features of a reform which if carried out would be as beneficial
to the State as to the clerks themselves. It is difficult to recount in
detail, chapter by chapter, a plan which embraced the whole budget and
continued down through the minutest details of administration in order
to keep the whole synthetical; but perhaps a slight sketch of the
principal reforms will suffice for those who understand such matters, as
well as for those who are wholly ignorant of the administrative system.
Though the historian’s position is rather hazardous in reproducing
a plan which may be thought the politics of a chimney-corner, it is,
nevertheless, necessary to sketch it so as to explain the author of
it by his own work. Were the recital of his efforts to be omitted, the
reader would not believe the narrator’s word if he merely declared the
talent and the courage of this official.
Rabourdin’s plan divided the government into three ministries, or
departments. He thought that if the France of former days possessed
brains strong enough to comprehend in one system both foreign and
domestic affairs, the France of to-day was not likely to be without its
Mazarin, its Suger, its Sully, its de Choiseul, or its Colbert to
direct even vast administrative departments. Besides, constitutionally
speaking, three ministries will agree better than seven; and, in the
restricted number there is less chance for mistaken choice; moreover,
it might be that the kingdom would some day escape from those perpetual
ministerial oscillations which interfered with all plans of foreign
policy and prevented all ameliorations of home rule. In Austria, where
many diverse united nations present so many conflicting interests to
be conciliated and carried forward under one crown, two statesmen alone
bear the burden of public affairs and are not overwhelmed by it. Was
France less prolific of political capacities than Germany? The rather
silly game of what are called “constitutional institutions” carried
beyond bounds has ended, as everybody knows, in requiring a great many
offices to satisfy the multifarious ambition of the middle classes. It
seemed to Rabourdin, in the first place, natural to unite the ministry
of war with the ministry of the navy. To his thinking the navy was
one of the current expenses of the war department, like the artillery,
cavalry, infantry, and commissariat. Surely it was an absurdity to
give separate administrations to admirals and marshals when both were
employed to one end, namely, the defense of the nation, the overthrow of
an enemy, and the security of the national possessions. The ministry
of the interior ought in like manner to combine the departments of
commerce, police, and finances, or it belied its own name. To the
ministry of foreign affairs belonged the administration of justice, the
household of the king, and all that concerned arts, sciences, and belles
lettres. All patronage ought to flow directly from the sovereign. Such
ministries necessitated the supremacy of a council. Each required
the work of two hundred officials, and no more, in its central
administration offices, where Rabourdin proposed that they should live,
as in former days under the monarchy. Taking the sum of twelve thousand
francs a year for each official as an average, he estimated seven
millions as the cost of the whole body of such officials, which actually
stood at twenty in the budget.
By thus reducing the ministers to three heads he suppressed departments
which had come to be useless, together with the enormous costs of their
maintenance in Paris. He proved that an arrondissement could be managed
by ten men; a prefecture by a dozen at the most; which reduced the
entire civil service force throughout France to five thousand men,
exclusive of the departments of war and justice. Under this plan the
clerks of the court were charged with the system of loans, and the
ministry of the interior with that of registration and the management
of domains. Thus Rabourdin united in one centre all divisions that were
allied in nature. The mortgage system, inheritance, and registration did
not pass outside of their own sphere of action and only required three
additional clerks in the justice courts and three in the royal courts.
The steady application of this principle brought Rabourdin to reforms
in the finance system. He merged the collection of revenue into
one channel, taxing consumption in bulk instead of taxing property.
According to his ideas, consumption was the sole thing properly taxable
in times of peace. Land-taxes should always be held in reserve in case
of war; for then only could the State justly demand sacrifices from
the soil, which was in danger; but in times of peace it was a serious
political fault to burden it beyond a certain limit; otherwise it could
never be depended on in great emergencies. Thus a loan should be put on
the market when the country was tranquil, for at such times it could be
placed at par, instead of at fifty per cent loss as in bad times; in war
times resort should be had to a land-tax.
“The invasion of 1814 and 1815,” Rabourdin would say to his friends,
“founded in France and practically explained an institution which
neither Law nor Napoleon had been able to establish,--I mean Credit.”
Unfortunately, Xavier considered the true principles of this admirable
machine of civil service very little understood at the period when
he began his labor of reform in 1820. His scheme levied a toll on
the consumption by means of direct taxation and suppressed the whole
machinery of indirect taxation. The levying of the taxes was simplified
by a single classification of a great number of articles. This did away
with the more harassing customs at the gates of the cities, and obtained
the largest revenues from the remainder, by lessening the enormous
expense of collecting them. To lighten the burden of taxation is not, in
matters of finance, to diminish the taxes, but to assess them better; if
lightened, you increase the volume of business by giving it freer play;
the individual pays less and the State receives more. This reform, which
may seem immense, rests on very simple machinery. Rabourdin regarded
the tax on personal property as the most trustworthy representative of
general consumption. Individual fortunes are usually revealed in France
by rentals, by the number of servants, horses, carriages, and luxuries,
the costs of which are all to the interest of the public treasury.
Houses and what they contain vary comparatively but little, and are not
liable to disappear. After pointing out the means of making a tax-list
on personal property which should be more impartial than the existing
list, Rabourdin assessed the sums to be brought into the treasury by
indirect taxation as so much per cent on each individual share. A tax
is a levy of money on things or persons under disguises that are more or
less specious. These disguises, excellent when the object is to extort
money, become ridiculous in the present day, when the class on which the
taxes weigh the heaviest knows why the State imposes them and by what
machinery they are given back. In fact the budget is not a strong-box to
hold what is put into it, but a watering-pot; the more it takes in and
the more it pours out the better for the prosperity of the country.
Therefore, supposing there are six millions of tax-payers in easy
circumstances (Rabourdin proved their existence, including the rich) is
it not better to make them pay a duty on the consumption of wine, which
would not be more offensive than that on doors and windows and would
return a hundred millions, rather than harass them by taxing the thing
itself. By this system of taxation, each individual tax-payer pays less
in reality, while the State receives more, and consumers profit by a
vast reduction in the price of things which the State releases from its
perpetual and harassing interference. Rabourdin’s scheme retained a tax
on the cultivation of vineyards, so as to protect that industry from the
too great abundance of its own products. Then, to reach the consumption
of the poorer tax-payers, the licences of retail dealers were taxed
according to the population of the neighborhoods in which they lived.
In this way, the State would receive without cost or vexatious
hindrances an enormous revenue under three forms; namely, a duty on
wine, on the cultivation of vineyards, and on licenses, where now
an irritating array of taxes existed as a burden on itself and its
officials. Taxation was thus imposed upon the rich without overburdening
the poor. To give another example. Suppose a share assessed to each
person of one or two francs for the consumption of salt and you obtain
ten or a dozen millions; the modern “gabelle” disappears, the poor
breathe freer, agriculture is relieved, the State receives as much,
and no tax-payer complains. All persons, whether they belong to the
industrial classes or to the capitalists, will see at once the benefits
of a tax so assessed when they discover how commerce increases, and life
is ameliorated in the country districts. In short, the State will see
from year to year the number of her well-to-do tax-payers increasing. By
doing away with the machinery of indirect taxation, which is very costly
(a State, as it were, within a State), both the public finances and the
individual tax-payer are greatly benefited, not to speak of the saving
in costs of collecting.
The whole subject is indeed less a question of finance than a question
of government. The State should possess nothing of its own, neither
forests, nor mines, nor public works. That it should be the owner of
domains was, in Rabourdin’s opinion, an administrative contradiction.
The State cannot turn its possessions to profit and it deprives itself
of taxes; it thus loses two forms of production. As to the manufactories
of the government, they are just as unreasonable in the sphere of
industry. The State obtains products at a higher cost than those
of commerce, produces them more slowly, and loses its tax upon the
industry, the maintenance of which it, in turn, reduces. Can it be
thought a proper method of governing a country to manufacture instead
of promoting manufactures? to possess property instead of creating
more possessions and more diverse ones? In Rabourdin’s system the State
exacted no money security; he allowed only mortgage securities; and for
this reason: Either the State holds the security in specie, and that
embarrasses business and the movement of money; or it invests it at
a higher rate than the State itself pays, and that is a contemptible
robbery; or else it loses on the transaction, and that is folly;
moreover, if it is obliged at any time to dispose of a mass of these
securities it gives rises in certain cases to terrible bankruptcy.
The territorial tax did not entirely disappear in Rabourdin’s plan,--he
kept a minute portion of it as a point of departure in case of war;
but the productions of the soil were freed, and industry, finding raw
material at a low price, could compete with foreign nations without the
deceptive help of customs. The rich carried on the administration of the
provinces without compensation except that of receiving a peerage under
certain conditions. Magistrates, learned bodies, officers of the lower
grades found their services honorably rewarded; no man employed by the
government failed to obtain great consideration through the value and
extent of his labors and the excellence of his salary; every one was
able to provide for his own future and France was delivered from the
cancer of pensions. As a result Rabourdin’s scheme exhibited only
seven hundred millions of expenditures and twelve hundred millions of
receipts. A saving of five hundred millions annually had far more virtue
than the accumulation of a sinking fund whose dangers were plainly to
be seen. In that fund the State, according to Rabourdin, became
a stockholder, just as it persisted in being a land-holder and a
manufacturer. To bring about these reforms without too roughly jarring
the existing state of things or incurring a Saint-Bartholomew of
clerks, Rabourdin considered that an evolution of twenty years would be
required.
Such were the thoughts maturing in Rabourdin’s mind ever since his
promised place had been given to Monsieur de la Billardiere, a man of
sheer incapacity. This plan, so vast apparently yet so simple in point
of fact, which did away with so many large staffs and so many little
offices all equally useless, required for its presentation to the public
mind close calculations, precise statistics, and self-evident proof.
Rabourdin had long studied the budget under its double-aspect of ways
and means and of expenditure. Many a night he had lain awake unknown to
his wife. But so far he had only dared to conceive the plan and fit it
prospectively to the administrative skeleton; all of which counted for
nothing,--he must gain the ear of a minister capable of appreciating
his ideas. Rabourdin’s success depended on the tranquil condition of
political affairs, which up to this time were still unsettled. He had
not considered the government as permanently secure until three
hundred deputies at least had the courage to form a compact majority
systematically ministerial. An administration founded on that basis had
come into power since Rabourdin had finished his elaborate plan. At this
time the luxury of peace under the Bourbons had eclipsed the warlike
luxury of the days when France shone like a vast encampment, prodigal
and magnificent because it was victorious. After the Spanish campaign,
the administration seemed to enter upon an era of tranquillity in which
some good might be accomplished; and three months before the opening of
our story a new reign had begun without any apparent opposition; for the
liberalism of the Left had welcomed Charles X. with as much enthusiasm
as the Right. Even clear-sighted and suspicious persons were misled. The
moment seemed propitious for Rabourdin. What could better conduce to the
stability of the government than to propose and carry through a reform
whose beneficial results were to be so vast?
Never had Rabourdin seemed so anxious and preoccupied as he now did
in the mornings as he walked from his house to the ministry, or at
half-past four in the afternoon, when he returned. Madame Rabourdin, on
her part, disconsolate over her wasted life, weary of secretly
working to obtain a few luxuries of dress, never appeared so bitterly
discontented as now; but, like any wife who is really attached to her
husband, she considered it unworthy of a superior woman to condescend
to the shameful devices by which the wives of some officials eke out the
insufficiency of their husband’s salary. This feeling made her refuse
all intercourse with Madame Colleville, then very intimate with Francois
Keller, whose parties eclipsed those of the rue Duphot. Nevertheless,
she mistook the quietude of the political thinker and the preoccupation
of the intrepid worker for the apathetic torpor of an official broken
down by the dulness of routine, vanquished by that most hateful of all
miseries, the mediocrity that simply earns a living; and she groaned at
being married to a man without energy.
Thus it was that about this period in their lives she resolved to take
the making of her husband’s fortune on herself; to thrust him at any
cost into a higher sphere, and to hide from him the secret springs of
her machinations. She carried into all her plans the independence of
ideas which characterized her, and was proud to think that she could
rise above other women by sharing none of their petty prejudices and by
keeping herself untrammelled by the restraints which society imposes.
In her anger she resolved to fight fools with their own weapons, and to
make herself a fool if need be. She saw things coming to a crisis. The
time was favorable. Monsieur de la Billardiere, attacked by a dangerous
illness, was likely to die in a few days. If Rabourdin succeeded him,
his talents (for Celestine did vouchsafe him an administrative gift)
would be so thoroughly appreciated that the office of Master of
petitions, formerly promised, would now be given to him; she fancied she
saw him the king’s commissioner, presenting bills to the Chambers and
defending them; then indeed she could help him; she would even be, if
needful, his secretary; she would sit up all night to do the work! All
this to drive in the Bois in a pretty carriage, to equal Madame Delphine
de Nucingen, to raise her salon to the level of Madame Colleville’s, to
be invited to the great ministerial solemnities, to win listeners and
make them talk of her as “Madame Rabourdin DE something or other”
(she had not yet determined on the estate), just as they did of Madame
Firmiani, Madame d’Espard, Madame d’Aiglemont, Madame de Carigliano, and
thus efface forever the odious name of Rabourdin.
These secret schemes brought some changes into the household. Madame
Rabourdin began to walk with a firm step in the path of /debt/. She set
up a man-servant, and put him in livery of brown cloth with red pipins,
she renewed parts of her furniture, hung new papers on the walls,
adorned her salon with plants and flowers, always fresh, and crowded
it with knick-knacks that were then in vogue; then she, who had always
shown scruples as to her personal expenses, did not hesitate to put
her dress in keeping with the rank to which she aspired, the profits of
which were discounted in several of the shops where she equipped herself
for war. To make her “Wednesdays” fashionable she gave a dinner on
Fridays, the guests being expected to pay their return visit and take
a cup of tea on the following Wednesday. She chose her guests cleverly
among influential deputies or other persons of note who, sooner or
later, might advance her interests. In short, she gathered an agreeable
and befitting circle about her. People amused themselves at her house;
they said so at least, which is quite enough to attract society in
Paris. Rabourdin was so absorbed in completing his great and serious
work that he took no notice of the sudden reappearance of luxury in the
bosom of his family.
Thus the wife and the husband were besieging the same fortress, working
on parallel lines, but without each other’s knowledge.
CHAPTER II. MONSIEUR DES LUPEAULX
At the ministry to which Rabourdin belonged there flourished, as
general-secretary, a certain Monsieur Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx, one
of those men whom the tide of political events sends to the surface for
a few years, then engulfs on a stormy night, but whom we find again on a
distant shore, tossed up like the carcass of a wrecked ship which still
seems to have life in her. We ask ourselves if that derelict could ever
have held goodly merchandise or served a high emprise, co-operated
in some defence, held up the trappings of a throne, or borne away the
corpse of a monarchy. At this particular time Clement des Lupeaulx (the
“Lupeaulx” absorbed the “Chardin”) had reached his culminating period.
In the most illustrious lives as in the most obscure, in animals as in
secretary-generals, there is a zenith and there is a nadir, a period
when the fur is magnificent, the fortune dazzling. In the nomenclature
which we derive from fabulists, des Lupeaulx belonged to the species
Bertrand, and was always in search of Ratons. As he is one of the
principal actors in this drama he deserves a description, all the
more precise because the revolution of July has suppressed his office,
eminently useful as it was, to a constitutional ministry.
Moralists usually employ their weapons against obstructive
administrations. In their eyes, crime belongs to the assizes or the
police-courts; but the socially refined evils escape their ken; the
adroitness that triumphs under shield of the Code is above them or
beneath them; they have neither eye-glass nor telescope; they want good
stout horrors easily visible. With their eyes fixed on the carnivora,
they pay no attention to the reptiles; happily, they abandon to the
writers of comedy the shading and colorings of a Chardin des Lupeaulx.
Vain and egotistical, supple and proud, libertine and gourmand, grasping
from the pressure of debt, discreet as a tomb out of which nought
issues to contradict the epitaph intended for the passer’s eye, bold and
fearless when soliciting, good-natured and witty in all acceptations
of the word, a timely jester, full of tact, knowing how to compromise
others by a glance or a nudge, shrinking from no mudhole, but gracefully
leaping it, intrepid Voltairean, yet punctual at mass if a fashionable
company could be met in Saint Thomas Aquinas,--such a man as this
secretary-general resembled, in one way or another, all the mediocrities
who form the kernel of the political world. Knowing in the science of
human nature, he assumed the character of a listener, and none was ever
more attentive. Not to awaken suspicion he was flattering ad nauseum,
insinuating as a perfume, and cajoling as a woman.
Des Lupeaulx was just forty years old. His youth had long been a
vexation to him, for he felt that the making of his career depended on
his becoming a deputy. How had he reached his present position? may
be asked. By very simple means. He began by taking charge of certain
delicate missions which can be given neither to a man who respects
himself nor to a man who does not respect himself, but are confided to
grave and enigmatic individuals who can be acknowledged or disavowed
at will. His business was that of being always compromised; but his
fortunes were pushed as much by defeat as by success. He well understood
that under the Restoration, a period of continual compromises between
men, between things, between accomplished facts and other facts looking
on the horizon, it was all-important for the ruling powers to have a
household drudge. Observe in a family some old charwoman who can make
beds, sweep the floors, carry away the dirty linen, who knows where
the silver is kept, how the creditors should be pacified, what persons
should be let in and who must be kept out of the house, and such a
creature, even if she has all the vices, and is dirty, decrepit, and
toothless, or puts into the lottery and steals thirty sous a day for
her stake, and you will find the masters like her from habit, talk and
consult in her hearing upon even critical matters; she comes and goes,
suggests resources, gets on the scent of secrets, brings the rouge
or the shawl at the right moment, lets herself be scolded and pushed
downstairs, and the next morning reappears smiling with an excellent
bouillon. No matter how high a statesman may stand, he is certain
to have some household drudge, before whom he is weak, undecided,
disputations with fate, self-questioning, self-answering, and buckling
for the fight. Such a familiar is like the soft wood of savages,
which, when rubbed against the hard wood, strikes fire. Sometimes great
geniuses illumine themselves in this way. Napoleon lived with Berthier,
Richelieu with Pere Joseph; des Lupeaulx was the familiar of everybody.
He continued friends with fallen ministers and made himself their
intermediary with their successors, diffusing thus the perfume of
the last flattery and the first compliment. He well understood how
to arrange all the little matters which a statesman has no leisure to
attend to. He saw necessities as they arose; he obeyed well; he could
gloss a base act with a jest and get the whole value of it; and he chose
for the services he thus rendered those that the recipients were not
likely to forget.
Thus, when it was necessary to cross the ditch between the Empire and
the Restoration, at a time when every one was looking about for planks,
and the curs of the Empire were howling their devotion right and left,
des Lupeaulx borrowed large sums from the usurers and crossed the
frontier. Risking all to win all, he bought up Louis XVIII.’s most
pressing debts, and was the first to settle nearly three million of them
at twenty per cent--for he was lucky enough to be backed by Gobseck in
1814 and 1815. It is true that Messrs. Gobseck, Werdet, and Gigonnet
swallowed the profits, but des Lupeaulx had agreed that they should
have them; he was not playing for a stake; he challenged the bank, as it
were, knowing very well that the king was not a man to forget this debt
of honor. Des Lupeaulx was not mistaken; he was appointed Master of
petitions, Knight of the order of Saint Louis, and officer of the Legion
of honor. Once on the ladder of political success, his clever mind
looked about for the means to maintain his foothold; for in the
fortified city into which he had wormed himself, generals do not long
keep useless mouths. So to his general trade of household drudge and
go-between he added that of gratuitous consultation on the secret
maladies of power.
After discovering in the so-called superior men of the Restoration their
utter inferiority in comparison with the events which had brought them
to the front, he overcame their political mediocrity by putting into
their mouths, at a crisis, the word of command for which men of real
talent were listening. It must not be thought that this word was the
outcome of his own mind. Were it so, des Lupeaulx would have been a
man of genius, whereas he was only a man of talent. He went everywhere,
collected opinions, sounded consciences, and caught all the tones they
gave out. He gathered knowledge like a true and indefatigable political
bee. This walking Bayle dictionary did not act, however, like that
famous lexicon; he did not report all opinions without drawing his own
conclusions; he had the talent of a fly which drops plumb upon the
best bit of meat in the middle of a kitchen. In this way he came to
be regarded as an indispensable helper to statesmen. A belief in his
capacity had taken such deep root in all minds that the more ambitious
public men felt it was necessary to compromise des Lupeaulx in some way
to prevent his rising higher; they made up to him for his subordinate
public position by their secret confidence.
Nevertheless, feeling that such men were dependent on him, this gleaner
of ideas exacted certain dues. He received a salary on the staff of the
National Guard, where he held a sinecure which was paid for by the city
of Paris; he was government commissioner to a secret society; and filled
a position of superintendence in the royal household. His two official
posts which appeared on the budget were those of secretary-general to
his ministry and Master of petitions. What he now wanted was to be made
commander of the Legion of honor, gentleman of the bed-chamber, count,
and deputy. To be elected deputy it was necessary to pay taxes to the
amount of a thousand francs; and the miserable homestead of the des
Lupeaulx was rated at only five hundred. Where could he get money to
build a mansion and surround it with sufficient domain to throw dust
in the eyes of a constituency? Though he dined out every day, and was
lodged for the last nine years at the cost of the State, and driven
about in the minister’s equipage, des Lupeaulx possessed absolutely
nothing, at the time when our tale opens, but thirty thousand francs
of debt--undisputed property. A marriage might float him and pump the
waters of debt out of his bark; but a good marriage depended on his
advancement, and his advancement required that he should be a deputy.
Searching about him for the means of breaking through this vicious
circle, he could think of nothing better than some immense service to
render or some delicate intrigue to carry through for persons in power.
Alas! conspiracies were out of date; the Bourbons were apparently on
good terms with all parties; and, unfortunately, for the last few years
the government had been so thoroughly held up to the light of day by the
silly discussions of the Left, whose aim seemed to be to make government
of any kind impossible in France, that no good strokes of business could
be made. The last were tried in Spain, and what an outcry that excited!
In addition to all this, des Lupeaulx complicated matters by believing
in the friendship of his minister, to whom he had the imprudence to
express the wish to sit on the ministerial benches. The minister guessed
at the real meaning of the desire, which simply was that des Lupeaulx
wanted to strengthen a precarious position, so that he might throw off
all dependence on his chief. The harrier turned against the huntsman;
the minister gave him cuts with the whip and caresses, alternately, and
set up rivals to him. But des Lupeaulx behaved like an adroit courtier
with all competitors; he laid traps into which they fell, and then he
did prompt justice upon them. The more he felt himself in danger the
more anxious he became for an irremovable position; yet he was compelled
to play low; one moment’s indiscretion, and he might lose everything. A
pen-stroke might demolish his civilian epaulets, his place at court,
his sinecure, his two offices and their advantages; in all, six
salaries retained under fire of the law against pluralists. Sometimes he
threatened his minister as a mistress threatens her lover; telling him
he was about to marry a rich widow. At such times the minister petted
and cajoled des Lupeaulx. After one of these reconciliations he received
the formal promise of a place in the Academy of Belles-lettres on the
first vacancy. “It would pay,” he said, “the keep of a horse.” His
position, so far as it went, was a good one, and Clement Chardin des
Lupeaulx flourished in it like a tree planted in good soil. He could
satisfy his vices, his caprices, his virtues and his defects.
The following were the toils of his life. He was obliged to choose,
among five or six daily invitations, the house where he could be sure
of the best dinner. Every morning he went to his minister’s morning
reception to amuse that official and his wife, and to pet their
children. Then he worked an hour or two; that is to say, he lay back in
a comfortable chair and read the newspapers, dictated the meaning of a
letter, received visitors when the minister was not present, explained
the work in a general way, caught or shed a few drops of the holy-water
of the court, looked over the petitions with an eyeglass, or wrote his
name on the margin,--a signature which meant “I think it absurd; do
what you like about it.” Every body knew that when des Lupeaulx was
interested in any person or in any thing he attended to the matter
personally. He allowed the head-clerks to converse privately about
affairs of delicacy, but he listened to their gossip. From time to time
he went to the Tuileries to get his cue. And he always waited for the
minister’s return from the Chamber, if in session, to hear from him
what intrigue or manoeuvre he was to set about. This official sybarite
dressed, dined, and visited a dozen or fifteen salons between eight at
night and three in the morning. At the opera he talked with journalists,
for he stood high in their favor; a perpetual exchange of little
services went on between them; he poured into their ears his misleading
news and swallowed theirs; he prevented them from attacking this or that
minister on such or such a matter, on the plea that it would cause real
pain to their wives or their mistresses.
“Say that his bill is worth nothing, and prove it if you can, but do
not say that Mariette danced badly. The devil! haven’t we all played
our little plays; and which of us knows what will become of him in times
like these? You may be minister yourself to-morrow, you who are spicing
the cakes of the ‘Constitutionel’ to-day.”
Sometimes, in return, he helped editors, or got rid of obstacles to the
performances of some play; gave gratuities and good dinners at the
right moment, or promised his services to bring some affair to a happy
conclusion. Moreover, he really liked literature and the arts; he
collected autographs, obtained splendid albums gratis, and possessed
sketches, engravings, and pictures. He did a great deal of good to
artists by simply not injuring them and by furthering their wishes
on certain occasions when their self-love wanted some rather costly
gratification. Consequently, he was much liked in the world of actors
and actresses, journalists and artists. For one thing, they had the
same vices and the same indolence as himself. Men who could all say such
witty things in their cups or in company with a danseuse, how could they
help being friends? If des Lupeaulx had not been a general-secretary
he would certainly have been a journalist. Thus, in that fifteen years’
struggle in which the harlequin sabre of epigram opened a breach by
which insurrection entered the citadel, des Lupeaulx never received so
much as a scratch.
As the young fry of clerks looked at this man playing bowls in the
gardens of the ministry with the minister’s children, they cracked
their brains to guess the secret of his influence and the nature of his
services; while, on the other hand, the aristocrats in all the various
ministries looked upon him as a dangerous Mephistopheles, courted him,
and gave him back with usury the flatteries he bestowed in the higher
sphere. As difficult to decipher as a hieroglyphic inscription to the
clerks, the vocation of the secretary and his usefulness were as plain
as the rule of three to the self-interested. This lesser Prince de
Wagram of the administration, to whom the duty of gathering opinions
and ideas and making verbal reports thereon was entrusted, knew all the
secrets of parliamentary politics; dragged in the lukewarm, fetched,
carried, and buried propositions, said the Yes and the No that the
ministers dared not say for themselves. Compelled to receive the first
fire and the first blows of despair and wrath, he laughed or bemoaned
himself with the minister, as the case might be. Mysterious link by
which many interests were in some way connected with the Tuileries, and
safe as a confessor, he sometimes knew everything and sometimes nothing;
and, in addition to all these functions came that of saying for the
minister those things that a minister cannot say for himself. In short,
with his political Hephaestion the minister might dare to be himself; to
take off his wig and his false teeth, lay aside his scruples, put on
his slippers, unbutton his conscience, and give way to his trickery.
However, it was not all a bed of roses for des Lupeaulx; he flattered
and advised his master, forced to flatter in order to advise, to advise
while flattering, and disguise the advice under the flattery. All
politicians who follow this trade have bilious faces; and their constant
habit of giving affirmative nods acquiescing in what is said to them,
or seeming to do so, gives a certain peculiar turn to their heads. They
agree indifferently with whatever is said before them. Their talk is
full of “buts,” “notwithstandings,” “for myself I should,” “were I in
your place” (they often say “in your place”),--phrases, however, which
pave the way to opposition.
In person, Clement des Lupeaulx had the remains of a handsome man; five
feet six inches tall, tolerably stout, complexion flushed with good
living, powdered head, delicate spectacles, and a worn-out air; the
natural skin blond, as shown by the hand, puffy like that of an old
woman, rather too square, and with short nails--the hand of a satrap.
His foot was elegant. After five o’clock in the afternoon des Lupeaulx
was always to be seen in open-worked silk stockings, low shoes, black
trousers, cashmere waistcoat, cambric handkerchief (without perfume),
gold chain, blue coat of the shade called “king’s blue,” with brass
buttons and a string of orders. In the morning he wore creaking boots
and gray trousers, and the short close surtout coat of the politician.
His general appearance early in the day was that of a sharp lawyer
rather than that of a ministerial officer. Eyes glazed by the constant
use of spectacles made him plainer than he really was, if by chance he
took those appendages off. To real judges of character, as well as to
upright men who are at ease only with honest natures, des Lupeaulx was
intolerable. To them, his gracious manners only draped his lies; his
amiable protestations and hackneyed courtesies, new to the foolish and
ignorant, too plainly showed their texture to an observing mind. Such
minds considered him a rotten plank, on which no foot should trust
itself.
No sooner had the beautiful Madame Rabourdin decided to interfere in
her husband’s administrative advancement than she fathomed Clement des
Lupeaulx’s true character, and studied him thoughtfully to discover
whether in this thin strip of deal there were ligneous fibres strong
enough to let her lightly trip across it from the bureau to the
department, from a salary of eight thousand a year to twelve thousand.
The clever woman believed she could play her own game with this
political roue; and Monsieur des Lupeaulx was partly the cause of the
unusual expenditures which now began and were continued in the Rabourdin
household.
The rue Duphot, built up under the Empire, is remarkable for several
houses with handsome exteriors, the apartments of which are skilfully
laid out. That of the Rabourdins was particularly well arranged,--a
domestic advantage which has much to do with the nobleness of private
lives. A pretty and rather wide antechamber, lighted from the courtyard,
led to the grand salon, the windows of which looked on the street. To
the right of the salon were Rabourdin’s study and bedroom, and behind
them the dining-room, which was entered from the antechamber; to
the left was Madame’s bedroom and dressing-room, and behind them her
daughter’s little bedroom. On reception days the door of Rabourdin’s
study and that of his wife’s bedroom were thrown open. The rooms were
thus spacious enough to contain a select company, without the
absurdity which attends many middle-class entertainments, where
unusual preparations are made at the expense of the daily comfort, and
consequently give the effect of exceptional effort. The salon had
lately been rehung in gold-colored silk with carmelite touches. Madame’s
bedroom was draped in a fabric of true blue and furnished in a rococo
manner. Rabourdin’s study had inherited the late hangings of the salon,
carefully cleaned, and was adorned by the fine pictures once belonging
to Monsieur Leprince. The daughter of the late auctioneer had utilized
in her dining-room certain exquisite Turkish rugs which her father had
bought at a bargain; panelling them on the walls in ebony, the cost of
which has since become exorbitant. Elegant buffets made by Boulle, also
purchased by the auctioneer, furnished the sides of the room, at the end
of which sparkled the brass arabesques inlaid in tortoise-shell of the
first tall clock that reappeared in the nineteenth century to claim
honor for the masterpieces of the seventeenth. Flowers perfumed these
rooms so full of good taste and of exquisite things, where each detail
was a work of art well placed and well surrounded, and where Madame
Rabourdin, dressed with that natural simplicity which artists alone
attain, gave the impression of a woman accustomed to such elegancies,
though she never spoke of them, but allowed the charms of her mind
to complete the effect produced upon her guests by these delightful
surroundings. Thanks to her father, Celestine was able to make society
talk of her as soon as the rococo became fashionable.
Accustomed as des Lupeaulx was to false as well as real magnificence in
all their stages, he was, nevertheless, surprised at Madame Rabourdin’s
home. The charm it exercised over this Parisian Asmodeus can be
explained by a comparison. A traveller wearied with the rich aspects of
Italy, Brazil, or India, returns to his own land and finds on his way a
delightful little lake, like the Lac d’Orta at the foot of Monte Rosa,
with an island resting on the calm waters, bewitchingly simple; a scene
of nature and yet adorned; solitary, but well surrounded with choice
plantations and foliage and statues of fine effect. Beyond lies a vista
of shores both wild and cultivated; tumultuous grandeur towers above,
but in itself all proportions are human. The world that the traveller
has lately viewed is here in miniature, modest and pure; his soul,
refreshed, bids him remain where a charm of melody and poesy surrounds
him with harmony and awakens ideas within his mind. Such a scene
represents both life and a monastery.
A few days earlier the beautiful Madame Firmiani, one of the charming
women of the faubourg Saint-Germain who visited and liked Madame
Rabourdin, had said to des Lupeaulx (invited expressly to hear this
remark), “Why do you not call on Madame ----?” with a motion towards
Celestine; “she gives delightful parties, and her dinners, above all,
are--better than mine.”
Des Lupeaulx allowed himself to be drawn into an engagement by the
handsome Madame Rabourdin, who, for the first time, turned her eyes on
him as she spoke. He had, accordingly, gone to the rue Duphot, and
that tells the tale. Woman has but one trick, cries Figaro, but that’s
infallible. After dining once at the house of this unimportant official,
des Lupeaulx made up his mind to dine there often. Thanks to the
perfectly proper and becoming advances of the beautiful woman, whom her
rival, Madame Colleville, called the Celimene of the rue Duphot, he had
dined there every Friday for the last month, and returned of his own
accord for a cup of tea on Wednesdays.
Within a few days Madame Rabourdin, having watched him narrowly and
knowingly, believed she had found on the secretarial plank a spot where
she might safely set her foot. She was no longer doubtful of success.
Her inward joy can be realized only in the families of government
officials where for three or four years prosperity has been counted
on through some appointment, long expected and long sought. How many
troubles are to be allayed! how many entreaties and pledges given to the
ministerial divinities! how many visits of self-interest paid! At last,
thanks to her boldness, Madame Rabourdin heard the hour strike when she
was to have twenty thousand francs a year instead of eight thousand.
“And I shall have managed well,” she said to herself. “I have had
to make a little outlay; but these are times when hidden merit is
overlooked, whereas if a man keeps himself well in sight before the
world, cultivates social relations and extends them, he succeeds. After
all, ministers and their friends interest themselves only in the people
they see; but Rabourdin knows nothing of the world! If I had not cajoled
those three deputies they might have wanted La Billardiere’s place
themselves; whereas, now that I have invited them here, they will be
ashamed to do so and will become our supporters instead of rivals. I
have rather played the coquette, but--it is delightful that the first
nonsense with which one fools a man sufficed.”
The day on which a serious and unlooked-for struggle about this
appointment began, after a ministerial dinner which preceded one of
those receptions which ministers regard as public, des Lupeaulx was
standing beside the fireplace near the minister’s wife. While taking his
coffee he once more included Madame Rabourdin among the seven or eight
really superior women in Paris. Several times already he had staked
Madame Rabourdin very much as Corporal Trim staked his cap.
“Don’t say that too often, my dear friend, or you will injure her,” said
the minister’s wife, half-laughing.
Women never like to hear the praise of other women; they keep silence
themselves to lessen its effect.
“Poor La Billardiere is dying,” remarked his Excellency the minister;
“that place falls to Rabourdin, one of our most able men, and to whom
our predecessors did not behave well, though one of them actually owed
his position in the prefecture of police under the Empire to a certain
great personage who was interested in Rabourdin. But, my dear friend,
you are still young enough to be loved by a pretty woman for yourself--”
“If La Billardiere’s place is given to Rabourdin I may be believed when
I praise the superiority of his wife,” replied des Lupeaulx, piqued by
the minister’s sarcasm; “but if Madame la Comtesse would be willing to
judge for herself--”
“You want me to invite her to my next ball, don’t you? Your clever woman
will meet a knot of other women who only come here to laugh at us, and
when they hear ‘Madame Rabourdin’ announced--”
“But Madame Firmiani is announced at the Foreign Office parties?”
“Ah, but she was born a Cadignan!” said the newly created count, with a
savage look at his general-secretary, for neither he nor his wife were
noble.
The persons present thought important matters were being talked
over, and the solicitors for favors and appointments kept at a little
distance. When des Lupeaulx left the room the countess said to her
husband, “I think des Lupeaulx is in love.”
“For the first time in his life, then,” he replied, shrugging his
shoulders, as much as to inform his wife that des Lupeaulx did not
concern himself with such nonsense.
Just then the minister saw a deputy of the Right Centre enter the room,
and he left his wife abruptly to cajole an undecided vote. But the
deputy, under the blow of a sudden and unexpected disaster, wanted to
make sure of a protector and he had come to announce privately that in a
few days he should be compelled to resign. Thus forewarned, the minister
would be able to open his batteries for the new election before those of
the opposition.
The minister, or to speak correctly, des Lupeaulx had invited to dinner
on this occasion one of those irremovable officials who, as we have
said, are to be found in every ministry; an individual much embarrassed
by his own person, who, in his desire to maintain a dignified
appearance, was standing erect and rigid on his two legs, held well
together like the Greek hermae. This functionary waited near the
fireplace to thank the secretary, whose abrupt and unexpected departure
from the room disconcerted him at the moment when he was about to turn
a compliment. This official was the cashier of the ministry, the only
clerk who did not tremble when the government changed hands.
At the time of which we write, the Chamber did not meddle shabbily with
the budget, as it does in the deplorable days in which we now live; it
did not contemptibly reduce ministerial emoluments, nor save, as they
say in the kitchen, the candle-ends; on the contrary, it granted to each
minister taking charge of a public department an indemnity, called an
“outfit.” It costs, alas, as much to enter on the duties of a minister
as to retire from them; indeed, the entrance involves expenses of all
kinds which it is quite impossible to inventory. This indemnity amounted
to the pretty little sum of twenty-five thousand francs. When the
appointment of a new minister was gazetted in the “Moniteur,” and the
greater or lesser officials, clustering round the stoves or before the
fireplaces and shaking in their shoes, asked themselves: “What will he
do? will he increase the number of clerks? will he dismiss two to make
room for three?” the cashier tranquilly took out twenty-five clean
bank-bills and pinned them together with a satisfied expression on
his beadle face. The next day he mounted the private staircase and
had himself ushered into the minister’s presence by the lackeys, who
considered the money and the keeper of money, the contents and the
container, the idea and the form, as one and the same power. The cashier
caught the ministerial pair at the dawn of official delight, when the
newly appointed statesman is benign and affable. To the minister’s
inquiry as to what brings him there, he replies with the
bank-notes,--informing his Excellency that he hastens to pay him the
customary indemnity. Moreover, he explains the matter to the minister’s
wife, who never fails to draw freely upon the fund, and sometimes takes
all, for the “outfit” is looked upon as a household affair. The cashier
then proceeds to turn a compliment, and to slip in a few politic
phrases: “If his Excellency would deign to retain him; if, satisfied
with his purely mechanical services, he would,” etc. As a man who brings
twenty-five thousand francs is always a worthy official, the cashier is
sure not to leave without his confirmation to the post from which he has
seen a succession of ministers come and go during a period of, perhaps,
twenty-five years. His next step is to place himself at the orders of
Madame; he brings the monthly thirteen thousand francs whenever wanted;
he advances or delays the payment as requested, and thus manages to
obtain, as they said in the monasteries, a voice in the chapter.
Formerly book-keeper at the Treasury, when that establishment kept its
books by double entry, the Sieur Saillard was compensated for the loss
of that position by his appointment as cashier of a ministry. He was a
bulky, fat man, very strong in the matter of book-keeping, and very weak
in everything else; round as a round O, simple as how-do-you-do,--a man
who came to his office with measured steps, like those of an elephant,
and returned with the same measured tread to the place Royale, where he
lived on the ground-floor of an old mansion belonging to him. He usually
had a companion on the way in the person of Monsieur Isidore Baudoyer,
head of a bureau in Monsieur de la Billardiere’s division, consequently
one of Rabourdin’s colleagues. Baudoyer was married to Elisabeth
Saillard, the cashier’s only daughter, and had hired, very naturally,
the apartments above those of his father-in-law. No one at the ministry
had the slightest doubt that Saillard was a blockhead, but neither
had any one ever found out how far his stupidity could go; it was too
compact to be examined; it did not ring hollow; it absorbed everything
and gave nothing out. Bixiou (a clerk of whom more anon) caricatured the
cashier by drawing a head in a wig at the top of an egg, and two little
legs at the other end, with this inscription: “Born to pay out and take
in without blundering. A little less luck, and he might have been lackey
to the bank of France; a little more ambition, and he could have been
honorably discharged.”
At the moment of which we are now writing, the minister was looking
at his cashier very much as we gaze at a window or a cornice, without
supposing that either can hear us, or fathom our secret thoughts.
“I am all the more anxious that we should settle everything with the
prefect in the quietest way, because des Lupeaulx has designs upon the
place for himself,” said the minister, continuing his talk with the
deputy; “his paltry little estate is in your arrondissement; we won’t
want him as deputy.”
“He has neither years nor rentals enough to be eligible,” said the
deputy.
“That may be; but you know how it was decided for Casimir Perier as
to age; and as to worldly possessions, des Lupeaulx does possess
something,--not much, it is true, but the law does not take into account
increase, which he may very well obtain; commissions have wide margins
for the deputies of the Centre, you know, and we cannot openly oppose
the good-will that is shown to this dear friend.”
“But where would he get the money?”
“How did Manuel manage to become the owner of a house in Paris?” cried
the minister.
The cashier listened and heard, but reluctantly and against his will.
These rapid remarks, murmured as they were, struck his ear by one of
those acoustic rebounds which are very little studied. As he heard these
political confidences, however, a keen alarm took possession of his
soul. He was one of those simple-minded beings, who are shocked at
listening to anything they are not intended to hear, or entering where
they are not invited, and seeming bold when they are really timid,
inquisitive where they are truly discreet. The cashier accordingly began
to glide along the carpet and edge himself away, so that the minister
saw him at a distance when he first took notice of him. Saillard was a
ministerial henchman absolutely incapable of indiscretion; even if the
minister had known that he had overheard a secret he had only to whisper
“motus” in his ear to be sure it was perfectly safe. The cashier,
however, took advantage of an influx of office-seekers, to slip out
and get into his hackney-coach (hired by the hour for these costly
entertainments), and to return to his home in the place Royale.
CHAPTER III. THE TEREDOS NAVALIS, OTHERWISE CALLED SHIP-WORM
While old Saillard was driving across Paris his son-in-law, Isidore
Baudoyer, and his daughter, Elisabeth, Baudoyer’s wife, were playing
a virtuous game of boston with their confessor, the Abbe Gaudron,
in company with a few neighbors and a certain Martin Falleix, a
brass-founder in the fauborg Saint-Antoine, to whom Saillard had loaned
the necessary money to establish a business. This Falleix, a
respectable Auvergnat who had come to seek his fortune in Paris with his
smelting-pot on his back, had found immediate employment with the firm
of Brezac, collectors of metals and other relics from all chateaux
in the provinces. About twenty-seven years of age, and spoiled, like
others, by success, Martin Falleix had had the luck to become the active
agent of Monsieur Saillard, the sleeping-partner in the working out of
a discovery made by Falleix in smelting (patent of invention and gold
medal granted at the exposition of 1825). Madame Baudoyer, whose only
daughter was treading--to use an expression of old Saillard’s--on the
tail of her twelve years, laid claim to Falleix, a thickset, swarthy,
active young fellow, of shrewd principles, whose education she was
superintending. The said education, according to her ideas, consisted in
teaching him to play boston, to hold his cards properly, and not to let
others see his game; to shave himself regularly before he came to the
house, and to wash his hands with good cleansing soap; not to swear, to
speak her kind of French, to wear boots instead of shoes, cotton shirts
instead of sacking, and to brush up his hair instead of plastering
it flat. During the preceding week Elisabeth had finally succeeded in
persuading Falleix to give up wearing a pair of enormous flat earrings
resembling hoops.
“You go too far, Madame Baudoyer,” he said, seeing her satisfaction at
the final sacrifice; “you order me about too much. You make me clean my
teeth, which loosens them; presently you will want me to brush my nails
and curl my hair, which won’t do at all in our business; we don’t like
dandies.”
Elisabeth Baudoyer, nee Saillard, is one of those persons who escape
portraiture through their utter commonness; yet who ought to be
sketched, because they are specimens of that second-rate Parisian
bourgeoisie which occupies a place above the well-to-do artisan and
below the upper middle classes,--a tribe whose virtues are well-nigh
vices, whose defects are never kindly, but whose habits and manners,
dull and insipid though they be, are not without a certain originality.
Something pinched and puny about Elisabeth Saillard was painful to the
eye. Her figure, scarcely over four feet in height, was so thin that
the waist measured less than twenty inches. Her small features, which
clustered close about the nose, gave her face a vague resemblance to a
weasel’s snout. Though she was past thirty years old she looked scarcely
more than sixteen. Her eyes, of porcelain blue, overweighted by heavy
eyelids which fell nearly straight from the arch of the eyebrows, had
little light in them. Everything about her appearance was commonplace:
witness her flaxen hair, tending to whiteness; her flat forehead, from
which the light did not reflect; and her dull complexion, with gray,
almost leaden, tones. The lower part of the face, more triangular than
oval, ended irregularly the otherwise irregular outline of her face.
Her voice had a rather pretty range of intonation, from sharp to sweet.
Elisabeth was a perfect specimen of the second-rate little bourgeoisie
who lectures her husband behind the curtains; obtains no credit for her
virtues; is ambitious without intelligent object, and solely through the
development of her domestic selfishness. Had she lived in the country
she would have bought up adjacent land; being, as she was, connected
with the administration, she was determined to push her way. If we
relate the life of her father and mother, we shall show the sort of
woman she was by a picture of her childhood and youth.
Monsieur Saillard married the daughter of an upholsterer keeping shop
under the arcades of the Market. Limited means compelled Monsieur and
Madame Saillard at their start in life to bear constant privation. After
thirty-three years of married life, and twenty-nine years of toil in
a government office, the property of “the Saillards”--their circle
of acquaintance called them so--consisted of sixty thousand francs
entrusted to Falleix, the house in the place Royale, bought for forty
thousand in 1804, and thirty-six thousand francs given in dowry to their
daughter Elisabeth. Out of this capital about fifty thousand came
to them by the will of the widow Bidault, Madame Saillard’s mother.
Saillard’s salary from the government had always been four thousand five
hundred francs a year, and no more; his situation was a blind alley
that led nowhere, and had tempted no one to supersede him. Those ninety
thousand francs, put together sou by sou, were the fruit therefore of a
sordid economy unintelligently employed. In fact, the Saillards did
not know how better to manage their savings than to carry them, five
thousand francs at a time, to their notary, Monsieur Sorbier, Cardot’s
predecessor, and let him invest them at five per cent in first
mortgages, with the wife’s rights reserved in case the borrower was
married! In 1804 Madame Saillard obtained a government office for the
sale of stamped papers, a circumstance which brought a servant into the
household for the first time. At the time of which we write, the house,
which was worth a hundred thousand francs, brought in a rental of eight
thousand. Falleix paid seven per cent for the sixty thousand invested
in the foundry, besides an equal division of profits. The Saillards were
therefore enjoying an income of not less than seventeen thousand francs
a year. The whole ambition of the good man now centred on obtaining the
cross of the Legion and his retiring pension.
Elisabeth, the only child, had toiled steadily from infancy in a home
where the customs of life were rigid and the ideas simple. A new hat for
Saillard was a matter of deliberation; the time a coat could last was
estimated and discussed; umbrellas were carefully hung up by means of
a brass buckle. Since 1804 no repairs of any kind had been done to the
house. The Saillards kept the ground-floor in precisely the state in
which their predecessor left it. The gilding of the pier-glasses was
rubbed off; the paint on the cornices was hardly visible through the
layers of dust that time had collected. The fine large rooms still
retained certain sculptured marble mantel-pieces and ceilings, worthy
of Versailles, together with the old furniture of the widow Bidault. The
latter consisted of a curious mixture of walnut armchairs, disjointed,
and covered with tapestry; rosewood bureaus; round tables on single
pedestals, with brass railings and cracked marble tops; one superb
Boulle secretary, the value of which style had not yet been recognized;
in short, a chaos of bargains picked up by the worthy widow,--pictures
bought for the sake of the frames, china services of a composite order;
to wit, a magnificent Japanese dessert set, and all the rest porcelains
of various makes, unmatched silver plate, old glass, fine damask, and a
four-post bedstead, hung with curtains and garnished with plumes.
Amid these curious relics, Madame Saillard always sat on a sofa of
modern mahogany, near a fireplace full of ashes and without fire, on the
mantel-shelf of which stood a clock, some antique bronzes, candelabra
with paper flowers but no candles, for the careful housewife lighted the
room with a tall tallow candle always guttering down into the flat brass
candlestick which held it. Madame Saillard’s face, despite its wrinkles,
was expressive of obstinacy and severity, narrowness of ideas, an
uprightness that might be called quadrangular, a religion without piety,
straightforward, candid avarice, and the peace of a quiet conscience.
You may see in certain Flemish pictures the wives of burgomasters cut
out by nature on the same pattern and wonderfully reproduced on canvas;
but these dames wear fine robes of velvet and precious stuffs, whereas
Madame Saillard possessed no robes, only that venerable garment called
in Touraine and Picardy “cottes,” elsewhere petticoats, or skirts
pleated behind and on each side, with other skirts hanging over them.
Her bust was inclosed in what was called a “casaquin,” another obsolete
name for a short gown or jacket. She continued to wear a cap with
starched wings, and shoes with high heels. Though she was now
fifty-seven years old, and her lifetime of vigorous household work ought
now to be rewarded with well-earned repose, she was incessantly employed
in knitting her husband’s stockings and her own, and those of an uncle,
just as her countrywomen knit them, moving about the room, talking,
pacing up and down the garden, or looking round the kitchen to watch
what was going on.
The Saillard’s avarice, which was really imposed on them in the first
instance by dire necessity, was now a second nature. When the cashier
got back from the office, he laid aside his coat, and went to work in
the large garden, shut off from the courtyard by an iron railing, and
which the family reserved to itself. For years Elisabeth, the daughter,
went to market every morning with her mother, and the two did all
the work of the house. The mother cooked well, especially a duck with
turnips; but, according to Saillard, no one could equal Elisabeth in
hashing the remains of a leg of mutton with onions. “You might eat
your boots with those onions and not know it,” he remarked. As soon
as Elisabeth knew how to hold a needle, her mother had her mend the
household linen and her father’s coats. Always at work, like a servant,
she never went out alone. Though living close by the boulevard du
Temple, where Franconi, La Gaite, and l’Ambigu-Comique were within a
stone’s throw, and, further on, the Porte-Saint-Martin, Elisabeth had
never seen a comedy. When she asked to “see what it was like” (with the
Abbe Gaudron’s permission, be it understood), Monsieur Baudoyer took
her--for the glory of the thing, and to show her the finest that was to
be seen--to the Opera, where they were playing “The Chinese Laborer.”
Elisabeth thought “the comedy” as wearisome as the plague of flies, and
never wished to see another. On Sundays, after walking four times to
and fro between the place Royale and Saint-Paul’s church (for her mother
made her practise the precepts and the duties of religion), her parents
took her to the pavement in front of the Cafe Ture, where they sat on
chairs placed between a railing and the wall. The Saillards always made
haste to reach the place early so as to choose the best seats, and found
much entertainment in watching the passers-by. In those days the Cafe
Ture was the rendezvous of the fashionable society of the Marais, the
faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the circumjacent regions.
Elisabeth never wore anything but cotton gowns in summer and merino in
the winter, which she made herself. Her mother gave her twenty francs
a month for her expenses, but her father, who was very fond of her,
mitigated this rigorous treatment with a few presents. She never read
what the Abbe Gaudron, vicar of Saint-Paul’s and the family director,
called profane books. This discipline had borne fruit. Forced to employ
her feelings on some passion or other, Elisabeth became eager after
gain. Though she was not lacking in sense or perspicacity, religious
theories, and her complete ignorance of higher emotions had encircled
all her faculties with an iron hand; they were exercised solely on the
commonest things of life; spent in a few directions they were able
to concentrate themselves on a matter in hand. Repressed by religious
devotion, her natural intelligence exercised itself within the limits
marked out by cases of conscience, which form a mine of subtleties
among which self-interest selects its subterfuges. Like those saintly
personages in whom religion does not stifle ambition, Elisabeth was
capable of requiring others to do a blamable action that she might reap
the fruits; and she would have been, like them again, implacable as to
her dues and dissembling in her actions. Once offended, she watched her
adversaries with the perfidious patience of a cat, and was capable of
bringing about some cold and complete vengeance, and then laying it to
the account of God. Until her marriage the Saillards lived without other
society than that of the Abbe Gaudron, a priest from Auvergne appointed
vicar of Saint-Paul’s after the restoration of Catholic worship. Besides
this ecclesiastic, who was a friend of the late Madame Bidault, a
paternal uncle of Madame Saillard, an old paper-dealer retired from
business ever since the year II. of the Republic, and now sixty-nine
years old, came to see them on Sundays only, because on that day no
government business went on.
This little old man, with a livid face blazoned by the red nose of a
tippler and lighted by two gleaming vulture eyes, allowed his gray hair
to hang loose under a three-cornered hat, wore breeches with straps that
extended beyond the buckles, cotton stockings of mottled thread knitted
by his niece, whom he always called “the little Saillard,” stout shoes
with silver buckles, and a surtout coat of mixed colors. He looked very
much like those verger-beadle-bell-ringing-grave-digging-parish-clerks
who are taken to be caricatures until we see them performing their
various functions. On the present occasion he had come on foot to dine
with the Saillards, intending to return in the same way to the rue
Greneta, where he lived on the third floor of an old house. His business
was that of discounting commercial paper in the quartier Saint-Martin,
where he was known by the nickname of “Gigonnet,” from the nervous
convulsive movement with which he lifted his legs in walking, like a
cat. Monsieur Bidault began this business in the year II. in partnership
with a dutchman named Werbrust, a friend of Gobseck.
Some time later Saillard made the acquaintance of Monsieur and Madame
Transon, wholesale dealers in pottery, with an establishment in the rue
de Lesdiguieres, who took an interest in Elisabeth and introduced young
Isadore Baudoyer to the family with the intention of marrying her.
Gigonnet approved of the match, for he had long employed a certain
Mitral, uncle of the young man, as clerk. Monsieur and Madame Baudoyer,
father and mother of Isidore, highly respected leather-dressers in the
rue Censier, had slowly made a moderate fortune out of a small trade.
After marrying their only son, on whom they settled fifty thousand
francs, they determined to live in the country, and had lately removed
to the neighborhood of Ile-d’Adam, where after a time they were joined
by Mitral. They frequently came to Paris, however, where they kept a
corner in the house in the rue Censier which they gave to Isidore on
his marriage. The elder Baudoyers had an income of about three thousand
francs left to live upon after establishing their son.
Mitral was a being with a sinister wig, a face the color of Seine water,
lighted by a pair of Spanish-tobacco-colored eyes, cold as a well-rope,
always smelling a rat, and close-mouthed about his property. He probably
made his fortune in his own hole and corner, just as Werbrust and
Gigonnet made theirs in the quartier Saint-Martin.
Though the Saillards’ circle of acquaintance increased, neither their
ideas nor their manners and customs changed. The saint’s-days of father,
mother, daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild were carefully observed,
also the anniversaries of birth and marriage, Easter, Christmas,
New Year’s day, and Epiphany. These festivals were preceded by great
domestic sweepings and a universal clearing up of the house, which added
an element of usefulness to the ceremonies. When the festival day
came, the presents were offered with much pomp and an accompaniment of
flowers,--silk stockings or a fur cap for old Saillard; gold earrings
and articles of plate for Elisabeth or her husband, for whom, little
by little, the parents were accumulating a whole silver service; silk
petticoats for Madame Saillard, who laid the stuff by and never made it
up. The recipient of these gifts was placed in an armchair and asked
by those present for a certain length of time, “Guess what we have for
you!” Then came a splendid dinner, lasting at least five hours, to which
were invited the Abbe Gaudron, Falleix, Rabourdin, Monsieur Godard,
under-head-clerk to Monsieur Baudoyer, Monsieur Bataille, captain of
the company of the National Guard to which Saillard and his son-in-law
belonged. Monsieur Cardot, who was invariably asked, did as Rabourdin
did, namely, accepted one invitation out of six. The company sang at
dessert, shook hands and embraced with enthusiasm, wishing each other
all manner of happiness; the presents were exhibited and the opinion of
the guests asked about them. The day Saillard received his fur cap
he wore it during the dessert, to the satisfaction of all present. At
night, mere ordinary acquaintances were bidden, and dancing went on till
very late, formerly to the music of one violin, but for the last six
years Monsieur Godard, who was a great flute player, contributed
the piercing tones of a flageolet to the festivity. The cook, Madame
Baudoyer’s nurse, and old Catherine, Madame Saillard’s woman-servant,
together with the porter or his wife, stood looking on at the door of
the salon. The servants always received three francs on these occasions
to buy themselves wine or coffee.
This little circle looked upon Saillard and Baudoyer as transcendent
beings; they were government officers; they had risen by their own
merits; they worked, it was said, with the minister himself; they owed
their fortune to their talents; they were politicians. Baudoyer was
considered the more able of the two; his position as head of a bureau
presupposed labor that was more intricate and arduous than that of a
cashier. Moreover, Isidore, though the son of a leather-dresser, had had
the genius to study and to cast aside his father’s business and find a
career in politics, which had led him to a post of eminence. In short,
silent and uncommunicative as he was, he was looked upon as a deep
thinker, and perhaps, said the admiring circle, he would some day
become deputy of the eighth arrondissement. As Gigonnet listened to such
remarks as these, he pressed his already pinched lips closer together,
and threw a glance at his great-niece, Elisabeth.
In person, Isidore was a tall, stout man of thirty-seven, who perspired
freely, and whose head looked as if he had water on the brain. This
enormous head, covered with chestnut hair cropped close, was joined to
the neck by rolls of flesh which overhung the collar of his coat. He had
the arms of Hercules, hands worthy of Domitian, a stomach which
sobriety held within the limits of the majestic, to use a saying of
Brillaet-Savarin. His face was a good deal like that of the Emperor
Alexander. The Tartar type was in the little eyes and the flattened nose
turned slightly up, in the frigid lips and the short chin. The forehead
was low and narrow. Though his temperament was lymphatic, the devout
Isidore was under the influence of a conjugal passion which time did not
lessen.
In spite, however, of his resemblance to the handsome Russian Emperor
and the terrible Domitian, Isidore Baudoyer was nothing more than a
political office-holder, of little ability as head of his department, a
cut-and-dried routine man, who concealed the fact that he was a flabby
cipher by so ponderous a personality that no scalpel could cut deep
enough to let the operator see into him. His severe studies, in which
he had shown the patience and sagacity of an ox, and his square head,
deceived his parents, who firmly believed him an extraordinary man.
Pedantic and hypercritical, meddlesome and fault-finding, he was a
terror to the clerks under him, whom he worried in their work,
enforcing the rules rigorously, and arriving himself with such terrible
punctuality that not one of them dared to be a moment late. Baudoyer
wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, a chamois waistcoat, gray trousers
and cravats of various colors. His feet were large and ill-shod. From
the chain of his watch depended an enormous bunch of old trinkets, among
which in 1824 he still wore “American beads,” which were very much the
fashion in the year VII.
In the bosom of this family, bound together by the force of religious
ties, by the inflexibility of its customs, by one solitary emotion, that
of avarice, a passion which was now as it were its compass, Elisabeth
was forced to commune with herself, instead of imparting her ideas to
those around her, for she felt herself without equals in mind who could
comprehend her. Though facts compelled her to judge her husband, her
religious duty led her to keep up as best she could a favorable opinion
of him; she showed him marked respect; honored him as the father of her
child, her husband, the temporal power, as the vicar of Saint-Paul’s
told her. She would have thought it a mortal sin to make a single
gesture, or give a single glance, or say a single word which would
reveal to others her real opinion of the imbecile Baudoyer. She even
professed to obey passively all his wishes. But her ears were receptive
of many things; she thought them over, weighed and compared them in the
solitude of her mind, and judged so soberly of men and events that at
the time when our history begins she was the hidden oracle of the two
functionaries, her husband and father, who had, unconsciously, come
to do nothing whatever without consulting her. Old Saillard would say,
innocently, “Isn’t she clever, that Elisabeth of mine?” But Baudoyer,
too great a fool not to be puffed up by the false reputation the
quartier Saint-Antoine bestowed upon him, denied his wife’s cleverness
all the while that he was making use of it.
Elisabeth had long felt sure that her uncle Bidault, otherwise called
Gigonnet, was rich and handled vast sums of money. Enlightened by
self-interest, she had come to understand Monsieur des Lupeaulx far
better than the minister understood him. Finding herself married to
a fool, she never allowed herself to think that life might have gone
better with her, she only imagined the possibility of better things
without expecting or wishing to attain them. All her best affections
found their vocation in her love for her daughter, to whom she spared
the pains and privations she had borne in her own childhood; she
believed that in this affection she had her full share in the world of
feeling. Solely for her daughter’s sake she had persuaded her father to
take the important step of going into partnership with Falleix. Falleix
had been brought to the Saillard’s house by old Bidault, who lent
him money on his merchandise. Falleix thought his old countryman
extortionate, and complained to the Saillards that Gigonnet demanded
eighteen per cent from an Auvergnat. Madame Saillard ventured to
remonstrate with her uncle.
“It is just because he is an Auvergnat that I take only eighteen per
cent,” said Gigonnet, when she spoke of him.
Falleix, who had made a discovery at the age of twenty-eight, and
communicated it to Saillard, seemed to carry his heart in his hand (an
expression of old Saillard’s), and also seemed likely to make a great
fortune. Elisabeth determined to husband him for her daughter and train
him herself, having, as she calculated, seven years to do it in. Martin
Falleix felt and showed the deepest respect for Madame Baudoyer, whose
superior qualities he was able to recognize. If he were fated to make
millions he would always belong to her family, where he had found a
home. The little Baudoyer girl was already trained to bring him his tea
and to take his hat.
On the evening of which we write, Monsieur Saillard, returning from the
ministry, found a game of boston in full blast; Elisabeth was advising
Falleix how to play; Madame Saillard was knitting in the chimney-corner
and overlooking the cards of the vicar; Monsieur Baudoyer, motionless as
a mile-stone, was employing his mental capacity in calculating how the
cards were placed, and sat opposite to Mitral, who had come up from
Ile-d’Adam for the Christmas holidays. No one moved as the cashier
entered, and for some minutes he walked up and down the room, his fat
face contracted with unaccustomed thought.
“He is always so when he dines at the ministry,” remarked Madame
Saillard; “happily, it is only twice a year, or he’d die of it. Saillard
was never made to be in the government--Well, now, I do hope, Saillard,”
she continued in a loud tone, “that you are not going to keep on those
silk breeches and that handsome coat. Go and take them off; don’t wear
them at home, my man.”
“Your father has something on his mind,” said Baudoyer to his wife, when
the cashier was in his bedroom, undressing without any fire.
“Perhaps Monsieur de la Billardiere is dead,” said Elisabeth, simply;
“and as he is anxious you should have the place, it worries him.”
“Can I be useful in any way?” said the vicar of Saint-Paul’s; “if
so, pray use my services. I have the honor to be known to Madame la
Dauphine. These are days when public offices should be given only to
faithful men, whose religious principles are not to be shaken.”
“Dear me!” said Falleix, “do men of merit need protectors and influence
to get places in the government service? I am glad I am an iron-master;
my customers know where to find a good article--”
“Monsieur,” interrupted Baudoyer, “the government is the government;
never attack it in this house.”
“You speak like the ‘Constitutionel,’” said the vicar.
“The ‘Constitutionel’ never says anything different from that,” replied
Baudoyer, who never read it.
The cashier believed his son-in-law to be as superior in talent
to Rabourdin as God was greater than Saint-Crepin, to use his
own expression; but the good man coveted this appointment in a
straightforward, honest way. Influenced by the feeling which leads all
officials to seek promotion,--a violent, unreflecting, almost brutal
passion,--he desired success, just as he desired the cross of the Legion
of honor, without doing anything against his conscience to obtain it,
and solely, as he believed, on the strength of his son-in-law’s merits.
To his thinking, a man who had patiently spent twenty-five years in a
government office behind an iron railing had sacrificed himself to his
country and deserved the cross. But all that he dreamed of doing to
promote his son-in-law’s appointment in La Billardiere’s place was to
say a word to his Excellency’s wife when he took her the month’s salary.
“Well, Saillard, you look as if you had lost all your friends! Do speak;
do, pray, tell us something,” cried his wife when he came back into the
room.
Saillard, after making a little sign to his daughter, turned on his heel
to keep himself from talking politics before strangers. When Monsieur
Mitral and the vicar had departed, Saillard rolled back the card-table
and sat down in an armchair in the attitude he always assumed when about
to tell some office-gossip,--a series of movements which answered the
purpose of the three knocks given at the Theatre-Francais. After binding
his wife, daughter, and son-in-law to the deepest secrecy,--for,
however petty the gossip, their places, as he thought, depended on their
discretion,--he related the incomprehensible enigma of the resignation
of a deputy, the very legitimate desire of the general-secretary to get
elected to the place, and the secret opposition of the minister to this
wish of a man who was one of his firmest supporters and most zealous
workers. This, of course, brought down an avalanche of suppositions,
flooded with the sapient arguments of the two officials, who sent back
and forth to each other a wearisome flood of nonsense. Elisabeth quietly
asked three questions:--
“If Monsieur des Lupeaulx is on our side, will Monsieur Baudoyer be
appointed in Monsieur de la Billardiere’s place?”
“Heavens! I should think so,” cried the cashier.
“My uncle Bidault and Monsieur Gobseck helped in him 1814,” thought she.
“Is he in debt?” she asked, aloud.
“Yes,” cried the cashier with a hissing and prolonged sound on the last
letter; “his salary was attached, but some of the higher powers released
it by a bill at sight.”
“Where is the des Lupeaulx estate?”
“Why, don’t you know? in the part of the country where your grandfather
and your great-uncle Bidault belong, in the arrondissement of the deputy
who wants to resign.”
When her colossus of a husband had gone to bed, Elisabeth leaned over
him, and though he always treated her remarks as women’s nonsense, she
said, “Perhaps you will really get Monsieur de la Billardiere’s place.”
“There you go with your imaginations!” said Baudoyer; “leave Monsieur
Gaudron to speak to the Dauphine and don’t meddle with politics.”
At eleven o’clock, when all were asleep in the place Royale, Monsieur
des Lupeaulx was leaving the Opera for the rue Duphot. This particular
Wednesday was one of Madame Rabourdin’s most brilliant evenings. Many of
her customary guests came in from the theatres and swelled the company
already assembled, among whom were several celebrities, such as: Canalis
the poet, Schinner the painter, Dr. Bianchon, Lucien de Rubempre, Octave
de Camps, the Comte de Granville, the Vicomte de Fontaine, du Bruel the
vaudevillist, Andoche Finot the journalist, Derville, one of the best
heads in the law courts, the Comte du Chatelet, deputy, du Tillet,
banker, and several elegant young men, such as Paul de Manerville and
the Vicomte de Portenduere. Celestine was pouring out tea when the
general-secretary entered. Her dress that evening was very becoming;
she wore a black velvet robe without ornament of any kind, a black gauze
scarf, her hair smoothly bound about her head and raised in a heavy
braided mass, with long curls a l’Anglaise falling on either side of her
face. The charms which particularly distinguished this woman were the
Italian ease of her artistic nature, her ready comprehension, and the
grace with which she welcomed and promoted the least appearance of a
wish on the part of others. Nature had given her an elegant, slender
figure, which could sway lightly at a word, black eyes of oriental
shape, able, like those of the Chinese women, to see out of their
corners. She well knew how to manage a soft, insinuating voice, which
threw a tender charm into every word, even such as she merely chanced
to utter; her feet were like those we see in portraits where the painter
boldly lies and flatters his sitter in the only way which does not
compromise anatomy. Her complexion, a little yellow by day, like that
of most brunettes, was dazzling at night under the wax candles, which
brought out the brilliancy of her black hair and eyes. Her slender and
well-defined outlines reminded an artist of the Venus of the Middle Ages
rendered by Jean Goujon, the illustrious sculptor of Diane de Poitiers.
Des Lupeaulx stopped in the doorway, and leaned against the woodwork.
This ferret of ideas did not deny himself the pleasure of spying upon
sentiment, and this woman interested him more than any of the others to
whom he had attached himself. Des Lupeaulx had reached an age when men
assert pretensions in regard to women. The first white hairs lead to
the latest passions, all the more violent because they are astride of
vanishing powers and dawning weakness. The age of forty is the age
of folly,--an age when man wants to be loved for himself; whereas at
twenty-five life is so full that he has no wants. At twenty-five he
overflows with vigor and wastes it with impunity, but at forty he learns
that to use it in that way is to abuse it. The thoughts that came into
des Lupeaulx’s mind at this moment were melancholy ones. The nerves of
the old beau relaxed; the agreeable smile, which served as a mask and
made the character of his countenance, faded; the real man appeared, and
he was horrible. Rabourdin caught sight of him and thought, “What has
happened to him? can he be disgraced in any way?” The general-secretary
was, however, only thinking how the pretty Madame Colleville, whose
intentions were exactly those of Madame Rabourdin, had summarily
abandoned him when it suited her to do so. Rabourdin caught the sham
statesman’s eyes fixed on his wife, and he recorded the look in his
memory. He was too keen an observer not to understand des Lupeaulx to
the bottom, and he deeply despised him; but, as with most busy men,
his feelings and sentiments seldom came to the surface. Absorption in a
beloved work is practically equivalent to the cleverest dissimulation,
and thus it was that the opinions and ideas of Rabourdin were a sealed
book to des Lupeaulx. The former was sorry to see the man in his house,
but he was never willing to oppose his wife’s wishes. At this particular
moment, while he talked confidentially with a supernumerary of his
office who was destined, later, to play an unconscious part in a
political intrigue resulting from the death of La Billardiere, he
watched, though half-abstractedly, his wife and des Lupeaulx.
Here we must explain, as much for foreigners as for our own
grandchildren, what a supernumerary in a government office in Paris
means.
The supernumerary is to the administration what a choir-boy is to a
church, what the company’s child is to the regiment, what the figurante
is to a theatre; something artless, naive, innocent, a being blinded by
illusions. Without illusions what would become of any of us? They give
strength to bear the res angusta domi of arts and the beginnings of all
science by inspiring us with faith. Illusion is illimitable faith. Now
the supernumerary has faith in the administration; he never thinks
it cold, cruel, and hard, as it really is. There are two kinds of
supernumeraries, or hangers-on,--one poor, the other rich. The poor one
is rich in hope and wants a place, the rich one is poor in spirit and
wants nothing. A wealthy family is not so foolish as to put its able
men into the administration. It confides an unfledged scion to some
head-clerk, or gives him in charge of a directory who initiates him into
what Bilboquet, that profound philosopher, called the high comedy of
government; he is spared all the horrors of drudgery and is finally
appointed to some important office. The rich supernumerary never alarms
the other clerks; they know he does not endanger their interests, for he
seeks only the highest posts in the administration. About the period of
which we write many families were saying to themselves: “What can we do
with our sons?” The army no longer offered a chance for fortune. Special
careers, such as civil and military engineering, the navy, mining, and
the professorial chair were all fenced about by strict regulations or
to be obtained only by competition; whereas in the civil service
the revolving wheel which turned clerks into prefects, sub-prefects,
assessors, and collectors, like the figures in a magic lantern, was
subjected to no such rules and entailed no drudgery. Through this easy
gap emerged into life the rich supernumeraries who drove their tilburys,
dressed well, and wore moustachios, all of them as impudent as parvenus.
Journalists were apt to persecute the tribe, who were cousins, nephews,
brothers, or other relatives of some minister, some deputy, or an
influential peer. The humbler clerks regarded them as a means of
influence.
The poor supernumerary, on the other hand, who is the only real worker,
is almost always the son of some former clerk’s widow, who lives on a
meagre pension and sacrifices herself to support her son until he can
get a place as copying-clerk, and then dies leaving him no nearer the
head of his department than writer of deeds, order-clerks, or, possibly,
under-head-clerk. Living always in some locality where rents are low,
this humble supernumerary starts early from home. For him the Eastern
question relates only to the morning skies. To go on foot and not get
muddied, to save his clothes, and allow for the time he may lose in
standing under shelter during a shower, are the preoccupations of
his mind. The street pavements, the flaggings of the quays and the
boulevards, when first laid down, were a boon to him. If, for some
extraordinary reason, you happen to be in the streets of Paris at
half-past seven or eight o’clock of a winter’s morning, and see through
piercing cold or fog or rain a timid, pale young man loom up, cigarless,
take notice of his pockets. You will be sure to see the outline of
a roll which his mother has given him to stay his stomach between
breakfast and dinner. The guilelessness of the supernumerary does not
last long. A youth enlightened by gleams by Parisian life soon measures
the frightful distance that separates him from the head-clerkship, a
distance which no mathematician, neither Archimedes, nor Leibnitz, nor
Laplace has ever reckoned, the distance that exists between 0 and the
figure 1. He begins to perceive the impossibilities of his career; he
hears talk of favoritism; he discovers the intrigues of officials: he
sees the questionable means by which his superiors have pushed their
way,--one has married a young woman who made a false step; another, the
natural daughter of a minister; this one shouldered the responsibility
of another’s fault; that one, full of talent, risks his health in doing,
with the perseverance of a mole, prodigies of work which the man of
influence feels incapable of doing for himself, though he takes the
credit. Everything is known in a government office. The incapable man
has a wife with a clear head, who has pushed him along and got him
nominated for deputy; if he has not talent enough for an office, he
cabals in the Chamber. The wife of another has a statesman at her feet.
A third is the hidden informant of a powerful journalist. Often the
disgusted and hopeless supernumerary sends in his resignation. About
three fourths of his class leave the government employ without ever
obtaining an appointment, and their number is winnowed down to
either those young men who are foolish or obstinate enough to say to
themselves, “I have been here three years, and I must end sooner or
later by getting a place,” or to those who are conscious of a vocation
for the work. Undoubtedly the position of supernumerary in a government
office is precisely what the novitiate is in a religious order,--a
trial. It is a rough trial. The State discovers how many of them can
bear hunger, thirst, and penury without breaking down, how many can toil
without revolting against it; it learns which temperaments can bear
up under the horrible experience--or if you like, the disease--of
government official life. From this point of view the apprenticeship of
the supernumerary, instead of being an infamous device of the government
to obtain labor gratis, becomes a useful institution.
The young man with whom Rabourdin was talking was a poor supernumerary
named Sebastien de la Roche, who had picked his way on the points of his
toes, without incurring the least splash upon his boots, from the rue du
Roi-Dore in the Marais. He talked of his mamma, and dared not raise his
eyes to Madame Rabourdin, whose house appeared to him as gorgeous as
the Louvre. He was careful to show his gloves, well cleaned with
india-rubber, as little as he could. His poor mother had put five francs
in his pocket in case it became absolutely necessary that he should play
cards; but she enjoined him to take nothing, to remain standing, and
to be very careful not to knock over a lamp or the bric-a-brac from an
etagere. His dress was all of the strictest black. His fair face, his
eyes, of a fine shade of green with golden reflections, were in keeping
with a handsome head of auburn hair. The poor lad looked furtively at
Madame Rabourdin, whispering to himself, “How beautiful!” and was likely
to dream of that fairy when he went to bed.
Rabourdin had noted a vocation for his work in the lad, and as he
himself took the whole service seriously, he felt a lively interest in
him. He guessed the poverty of his mother’s home, kept together on a
widow’s pension of seven hundred francs a year--for the education of
the son, who was just out of college, had absorbed all her savings. He
therefore treated the youth almost paternally; often endeavoured to
get him some fee from the Council, or paid it from his own pocket. He
overwhelmed Sebastien with work, trained him, and allowed him to do the
work of du Bruel’s place, for which that vaudevillist, otherwise known
as Cursy, paid him three hundred francs out of his salary. In the minds
of Madame de la Roche and her son, Rabourdin was at once a great man, a
tyrant, and an angel. On him all the poor fellow’s hopes of getting an
appointment depended, and the lad’s devotion to his chief was boundless.
He dined once a fortnight in the rue Duphot; but always at a family
dinner, invited by Rabourdin himself; Madame asked him to evening
parties only when she wanted partners.
At that moment Rabourdin was scolding poor Sebastien, the only human
being who was in the secret of his immense labors. The youth copied and
recopied the famous “statement,” written on a hundred and fifty
folio sheets, besides the corroborative documents, and the summing up
(contained in one page), with the estimates bracketed, the captions in a
running hand, and the sub-titles in a round one. Full of enthusiasm, in
spite of his merely mechanical participation in the great idea, the lad
of twenty would rewrite whole pages for a single blot, and made it his
glory to touch up the writing, regarding it as the element of a noble
undertaking. Sebastien had that afternoon committed the great imprudence
of carrying into the general office, for the purpose of copying, a paper
which contained the most dangerous facts to make known prematurely,
namely, a memorandum relating to the officials in the central offices
of all ministries, with facts concerning their fortunes, actual and
prospective, together with the individual enterprises of each outside of
his government employment.
All government clerks in Paris who are not endowed, like Rabourdin, with
patriotic ambition or other marked capacity, usually add the profits
of some industry to the salary of their office, in order to eke out a
living. A number do as Monsieur Saillard did,--put their money into a
business carried on by others, and spend their evenings in keeping
the books of their associates. Many clerks are married to milliners,
licensed tobacco dealers, women who have charge of the public lotteries
or reading-rooms. Some, like the husband of Madame Colleville,
Celestine’s rival, play in the orchestra of a theatre; others like du
Bruel, write vaudeville, comic operas, melodramas, or act as prompters
behind the scenes. We may mention among them Messrs. Planard, Sewrin,
etc. Pigault-Lebrun, Piis, Duvicquet, in their day, were in government
employ. Monsieur Scribe’s head-librarian was a clerk in the Treasury.
Besides such information as this, Rabourdin’s memorandum contained an
inquiry into the moral and physical capacities and faculties necessary
in those who were to examine the intelligence, aptitude for labor,
and sound health of the applicants for government service,--three
indispensable qualities in men who are to bear the burden of public
affairs and should do their business well and quickly. But this careful
study, the result of ten years’ observation and experience, and of a
long acquaintance with men and things obtained by intercourse with the
various functionaries in the different ministries, would assuredly have,
to those who did not see its purport and connection, an air of treachery
and police espial. If a single page of these papers were to fall under
the eye of those concerned, Monsieur Rabourdin was lost. Sebastien,
who admired his chief without reservation, and who was, as yet, wholly
ignorant of the evils of bureaucracy, had the follies of guilelessness
as well as its grace. Blamed on a former occasion for carrying away
these papers, he now bravely acknowledged his fault to its fullest
extent; he related how he had put away both the memorandum and the copy
carefully in a box in the office where no one would ever find them.
Tears rolled from his eyes as he realized the greatness of his offence.
“Come, come!” said Rabourdin, kindly. “Don’t be so imprudent again, but
never mind now. Go to the office very early tomorrow morning; here is
the key of a small safe which is in my roller secretary; it shuts with
a combination lock. You can open it with the word ‘sky’; put the
memorandum and your copy into it and shut it carefully.”
This proof of confidence dried the poor fellow’s tears. Rabourdin
advised him to take a cup of tea and some cakes.
“Mamma forbids me to drink tea, on account of my chest,” said Sebastien.
“Well, then, my dear child,” said the imposing Madame Rabourdin, who
wished to appear gracious, “here are some sandwiches and cream; come and
sit by me.”
She made Sebastien sit down beside her, and the lad’s heart rose in
his throat as he felt the robe of this divinity brush the sleeve of
his coat. Just then the beautiful woman caught sight of Monsieur des
Lupeaulx standing in the doorway. She smiled, and not waiting till he
came to her, she went to him.
“Why do you stay there as if you were sulking?” she asked.
“I am not sulking,” he returned; “I came to announce some good news,
but the thought has overtaken me that it will only add to your severity
towards me. I fancy myself six months hence almost a stranger to you.
Yes, you are too clever, and I too experienced,--too blase, if you
like,--for either of us to deceive the other. Your end is attained
without its costing you more than a few smiles and gracious words.”
“Deceive each other! what can you mean?” she cried, in a hurt tone.
“Yes; Monsieur de la Billardiere is dying, and from what the minister
told me this evening I judge that your husband will be appointed in his
place.”
He thereupon related what he called his scene at the ministry and the
jealousy of the countess, repeating her remarks about the invitation he
had asked her to send to Madame Rabourdin.
“Monsieur des Lupeaulx,” said Madame Rabourdin, with dignity, “permit me
to tell you that my husband is the oldest head-clerk as well as the most
capable man in the division; also that the appointment of La Billardiere
over his head made much talk in the service, and that my husband has
stayed on for the last year expecting this promotion, for which he has
really no competitor and no rival.”
“That is true.”
“Well, then,” she resumed, smiling and showing her handsome teeth,
“how can you suppose that the friendship I feel for you is marred by a
thought of self-interest? Why should you think me capable of that?”
Des Lupeaulx made a gesture of admiring denial.
“Ah!” she continued, “the heart of woman will always remain a secret
for even the cleverest of men. Yes, I welcomed you to my house with the
greatest pleasure; and there was, I admit, a motive of self-interest
behind my pleasure--”
“Ah!”
“You have a career before you,” she whispered in his ear, “a future
without limit; you will be deputy, minister!” (What happiness for an
ambitious man when such things as these are warbled in his ear by the
sweet voice of a pretty woman!) “Oh, yes! I know you better than you
know yourself. Rabourdin is a man who could be of immense service to
you in such a career; he could do the steady work while you were in
the Chamber. Just as you dream of the ministry, so I dream of seeing
Rabourdin in the Council of State, and general director. It is therefore
my object to draw together two men who can never injure, but, on the
contrary, must greatly help each other. Isn’t that a woman’s mission?
If you are friends, you will both rise the faster, and it is surely
high time that each of you made hay. I have burned my ships,” she added,
smiling. “But you are not as frank with me as I have been with you.”
“You would not listen to me if I were,” he replied, with a melancholy
air, in spite of the deep inward satisfaction her remarks gave him.
“What would such future promotions avail me, if you dismiss me now?”
“Before I listen to you,” she replied, with naive Parisian liveliness,
“we must be able to understand each other.”
And she left the old fop to go and speak with Madame de Chessel, a
countess from the provinces, who seemed about to take leave.
“That is a very extraordinary woman,” said des Lupeaulx to himself. “I
don’t know my own self when I am with her.”
Accordingly, this man of no principle, who six years earlier had kept
a ballet-girl, and who now, thanks to his position, made himself a
seraglio with the pretty wives of the under-clerks, and lived in the
world of journalists and actresses, became devotedly attentive all the
evening to Celestine, and was the last to leave the house.
“At last!” thought Madame Rabourdin, as she undressed that night, “we
have the place! Twelve thousand francs a year and perquisites, beside
the rents of our farms at Grajeux,--nearly twenty thousand francs a
year. It is not affluence, but at least it isn’t poverty.”
CHAPTER IV. THREE-QUARTER LENGTH PORTRAITS OF CERTAIN GOVERNMENT
OFFICIALS
If it were possible for literature to use the microscope of the
Leuwenhoeks, the Malpighis, and the Raspails (an attempt once made
by Hoffman, of Berlin), and if we could magnify and then picture the
teredos navalis, in other words, those ship-worms which brought Holland
within an inch of collapsing by honey-combing her dykes, we might have
been able to give a more distinct idea of Messieurs Gigonnet, Baudoyer,
Saillard, Gaudron, Falleix, Transon, Godard and company, borers and
burrowers, who proved their undermining power in the thirtieth year of
this century.
But now it is time to show another set of teredos, who burrowed and
swarmed in the government offices where the principal scenes of our
present study took place.
In Paris nearly all these government bureaus resemble each other. Into
whatever ministry you penetrate to ask some slight favor, or to get
redress for a trifling wrong, you will find the same dark corridors,
ill-lighted stairways, doors with oval panes of glass like eyes, as at
the theatre. In the first room as you enter you will find the office
servant; in the second, the under-clerks; the private office of the
second head-clerk is to the right or left, and further on is that of
the head of the bureau. As to the important personage called, under the
Empire, head of division, then, under the Restoration, director, and now
by the former name, head or chief of division, he lives either above or
below the offices of his three or four different bureaus.
Speaking in the administrative sense, a bureau consists of a
man-servant, several supernumeraries (who do the work gratis for a
certain number of years), various copying clerks, writers of bills and
deeds, order clerks, principal clerks, second or under head-clerk,
and head-clerk, otherwise called head or chief of the bureau. These
denominational titles vary under some administrations; for instance, the
order-clerks are sometimes called auditors, or again, book-keepers.
Paved like the corridor, and hung with a shabby paper, the first room,
where the servant is stationed, is furnished with a stove, a large black
table with inkstand, pens, and paper, and benches, but no mats on which
to wipe the public feet. The clerk’s office beyond is a large room,
tolerably well lighted, but seldom floored with wood. Wooden floors and
fireplaces are commonly kept sacred to heads of bureaus and divisions;
and so are closets, wardrobes, mahogany tables, sofas and armchairs
covered with red or green morocco, silk curtains, and other articles of
administrative luxury. The clerk’s office contents itself with a stove,
the pipe of which goes into the chimney, if there be a chimney. The wall
paper is plain and all of one color, usually green or brown. The tables
are of black wood. The private characteristics of the several clerks
often crop out in their method of settling themselves at their
desks,--the chilly one has a wooden footstool under his feet; the man
with a bilious temperament has a metal mat; the lymphatic being who
dreads draughts constructs a fortification of boxes on a screen. The
door of the under-head-clerk’s office always stands open so that he may
keep an eye to some extent on his subordinates.
Perhaps an exact description of Monsieur de la Billardiere’s division
will suffice to give foreigners and provincials an idea of the internal
manners and customs of a government office; the chief features of
which are probably much the same in the civil service of all European
governments.
In the first place, picture to yourself the man who is thus described in
the Yearly Register:--
“Chief of Division.--Monsieur la baron Flamet de la Billardiere
(Athanase-Jean-Francois-Michel) formerly provost-marshal of
the department of the Correze, gentleman in ordinary of the
bed-chamber, president of the college of the department of the
Dordogne, officer of the Legion of honor, knight of Saint Louis
and of the foreign orders of Christ, Isabella, Saint Wladimir,
etc., member of the Academy of Gers, and other learned bodies,
vice-president of the Society of Belles-lettres, member of the
Association of Saint-Joseph and of the Society of Prisons, one of
the mayors of Paris, etc.”
The person who requires so much typographic space was at this time
occupying an area five feet six in length by thirty-six inches in
width in a bed, his head adorned with a cotton night-cap tied on by
flame-colored ribbons; attended by Despleins, the King’s surgeon, and
young doctor Bianchon, flanked by two old female relatives, surrounded
by phials of all kinds, bandages, appliances, and various mortuary
instruments, and watched over by the curate of Saint-Roch, who was
advising him to think of his salvation.
La Billardiere’s division occupied the upper floor of a magnificent
mansion, in which the vast official ocean of a ministry was contained.
A wide landing separated its two bureaus, the doors of which were duly
labelled. The private offices and antechambers of the heads of the two
bureaus, Monsieur Rabourdin and Monsieur Baudoyer, were below on
the second floor, and beyond that of Monsieur Rabourdin were the
antechamber, salon, and two offices of Monsieur de la Billardiere.
On the first floor, divided in two by an entresol, were the living
rooms and office of Monsieur Ernest de la Briere, an occult and powerful
personage who must be described in a few words, for he well deserves
the parenthesis. This young man held, during the whole time that this
particular administration lasted, the position of private secretary
to the minister. His apartment was connected by a secret door with the
private office of his Excellency. A private secretary is to the minister
himself what des Lupeaulx was to the ministry at large. The same
difference existed between young La Briere and des Lupeaulx that there
is between an aide-de-camp and a chief of staff. This ministerial
apprentice decamps when his protector leaves office, returning sometimes
when he returns. If the minister enjoys the royal favor when he falls,
or still has parliamentary hopes, he takes his secretary with him into
retirement only to bring him back on his return; otherwise he puts him
to grass in some of the various administrative pastures,--for instance,
in the Court of Exchequer, that wayside refuge where private secretaries
wait for the storm to blow over. The young man is not precisely a
government official; he is a political character, however; and sometimes
his politics are limited to those of one man. When we think of the
number of letters it is the private secretary’s fate to open and read,
besides all his other avocations, it is very evident that under a
monarchical government his services would be well paid for. A drudge
of this kind costs ten or twenty thousand francs a year; and he enjoys,
moreover, the opera-boxes, the social invitations, and the carriages of
the minister. The Emperor of Russia would be thankful to be able to pay
fifty thousand a year to one of these amiable constitutional poodles,
so gentle, so nicely curled, so caressing, so docile, always spick and
span,--careful watch-dogs besides, and faithful to a degree! But
the private secretary is a product of the representative government
hot-house; he is propagated and developed there, and there only. Under
a monarchy you will find none but courtiers and vassals, whereas under a
constitutional government you may be flattered, served, and adulated by
free men. In France ministers are better off than kings or women; they
have some one who thoroughly understands them. Perhaps, indeed, the
private secretary is to be pitied as much as women and white paper. They
are nonentities who are made to bear all things. They are allowed no
talents except hidden ones, which must be employed in the service of
their ministers. A public show of talent would ruin them. The
private secretary is therefore an intimate friend in the gift of
government--However, let us return to the bureaus.
Three men-servants lived in peace in the Billardiere division, to wit: a
footman for the two bureaus, another for the service of the two chiefs,
and a third for the director of the division himself. All three were
lodged, warmed, and clothed by the State, and wore the well-known livery
of the State, blue coat with red pipings for undress, and broad red,
white, and blue braid for great occasions. La Billardiere’s man had the
air of a gentleman-usher, an innovation which gave an aspect of dignity
to the division.
Pillars of the ministry, experts in all manners and customs
bureaucratic, well-warmed and clothed at the State’s expense, growing
rich by reason of their few wants, these lackeys saw completely through
the government officials, collectively and individually. They had
no better way of amusing their idle hours than by observing these
personages and studying their peculiarities. They knew how far to trust
the clerks with loans of money, doing their various commissions with
absolute discretion; they pawned and took out of pawn, bought up bills
when due, and lent money without interest, albeit no clerk ever borrowed
of them without returning a “gratification.” These servants without a
master received a salary of nine hundred francs a year; new years’ gifts
and “gratifications” brought their emoluments to twelve hundred francs,
and they made almost as much money by serving breakfasts to the clerks
at the office.
The elder of these men, who was also the richest, waited upon the main
body of the clerks. He was sixty years of age, with white hair cropped
short like a brush; stout, thickset, and apoplectic about the neck, with
a vulgar pimpled face, gray eyes, and a mouth like a furnace door;
such was the profile portrait of Antoine, the oldest attendant in the
ministry. He had brought his two nephews, Laurent and Gabriel, from
Echelles in Savoie,--one to serve the heads of the bureaus, the other
the director himself. All three came to open the offices and clean them,
between seven and eight o’clock in the morning; at which time they read
the newspapers and talked civil service politics from their point of
view with the servants of other divisions, exchanging the bureaucratic
gossip. In common with servants of modern houses who know their masters’
private affairs thoroughly, they lived at the ministry like spiders at
the centre of a web, where they felt the slightest jar of the fabric.
On a Thursday evening, the day after the ministerial reception and
Madame Rabourdin’s evening party, just as Antoine was trimming his beard
and his nephews were assisting him in the antechamber of the division on
the upper floor, they were surprised by the unexpected arrival of one of
the clerks.
“That’s Monsieur Dutocq,” said Antoine. “I know him by that pickpocket
step of his. He is always moving round on the sly, that man. He is on
your back before you know it. Yesterday, contrary to his usual ways, he
outstayed the last man in the office; such a thing hasn’t happened three
times since he has been at the ministry.”
Here follows the portrait of Monsieur Dutocq, order-clerk in the
Rabourdin bureau: Thirty-eight years old, oblong face and bilious skin,
grizzled hair always cut close, low forehead, heavy eyebrows meeting
together, a crooked nose and pinched lips; tall, the right shoulder
slightly higher than the left; brown coat, black waistcoat, silk cravat,
yellowish trousers, black woollen stockings, and shoes with
flapping bows; thus you behold him. Idle and incapable, he hated
Rabourdin,--naturally enough, for Rabourdin had no vice to flatter, and
no bad or weak side on which Dutocq could make himself useful. Far too
noble to injure a clerk, the chief was also too clear-sighted to be
deceived by any make-believe. Dutocq kept his place therefore solely
through Rabourdin’s generosity, and was very certain that he could
never be promoted if the latter succeeded La Billardiere. Though he knew
himself incapable of important work, Dutocq was well aware that in
a government office incapacity was no hindrance to advancement; La
Billardiere’s own appointment over the head of so capable a man as
Rabourdin had been a striking and fatal example of this. Wickedness
combined with self-interest works with a power equivalent to that
of intellect; evilly disposed and wholly self-interested, Dutocq had
endeavoured to strengthen his position by becoming a spy in all the
offices. After 1816 he assumed a marked religious tone, foreseeing
the favor which the fools of those days would bestow on those they
indiscriminately called Jesuits. Belonging to that fraternity in spirit,
though not admitted to its rites, Dutocq went from bureau to bureau,
sounded consciences by recounting immoral jests, and then reported and
paraphrased results to des Lupeaulx; the latter thus learned all the
trivial events of the ministry, and often surprised the minister by his
consummate knowledge of what was going on. He tolerated Dutocq under the
idea that circumstances might some day make him useful, were it only
to get him or some distinguished friend of his out of a scrape by a
disgraceful marriage. The two understood each other well. Dutocq had
succeeded Monsieur Poiret the elder, who had retired in 1814, and now
lived in the pension Vanquer in the Latin quarter. Dutocq himself
lived in a pension in the rue de Beaune, and spent his evenings in the
Palais-Royal, sometimes going to the theatre, thanks to du Bruel, who
gave him an author’s ticket about once a week. And now, a word on du
Bruel.
Though Sebastien did his work at the office for the small compensation
we have mentioned, du Bruel was in the habit of coming there to
advertise the fact that he was the under-head-clerk and to draw
his salary. His real work was that of dramatic critic to a leading
ministerial journal, in which he also wrote articles inspired by
the ministers,--a very well understood, clearly defined, and quite
unassailable position. Du Bruel was not lacking in those diplomatic
little tricks which go so far to conciliate general good-will. He sent
Madame Rabourdin an opera-box for a first representation, took her
there in a carriage and brought her back,--an attention which evidently
pleased her. Rabourdin, who was never exacting with his subordinates
allowed du Bruel to go off to rehearsals, come to the office at his
own hours, and work at his vaudevilles when there. Monsieur le Duc de
Chaulieu, the minister, knew that du Bruel was writing a novel which was
to be dedicated to himself. Dressed with the careless ease of a theatre
man, du Bruel wore, in the morning, trousers strapped under his feet,
shoes with gaiters, a waistcoat evidently vamped over, an olive surtout,
and a black cravat. At night he played the gentleman in elegant clothes.
He lived, for good reasons, in the same house as Florine, an actress for
whom he wrote plays. Du Bruel, or to give him his pen name, Cursy, was
working just now at a piece in five acts for the Francais. Sebastien
was devoted to the author,--who occasionally gave him tickets to the
pit,--and applauded his pieces at the parts which du Bruel told him were
of doubtful interest, with all the faith and enthusiasm of his years. In
fact, the youth looked upon the playwright as a great author, and it was
to Sebastien that du Bruel said, the day after a first representation
of a vaudeville produced, like all vaudevilles, by three collaborators,
“The audience preferred the scenes written by two.”
“Why don’t you write alone?” asked Sebastien naively.
There were good reasons why du Bruel did not write alone. He was the
third of an author. A dramatic writer, as few people know, is made up
of three individuals; first, the man with brains who invents the subject
and maps out the structure, or scenario, of the vaudeville; second, the
plodder, who works the piece into shape; and third, the toucher-up, who
sets the songs to music, arranges the chorus and concerted pieces and
fits them into their right place, and finally writes the puffs and
advertisements. Du Bruel was a plodder; at the office he read the newest
books, extracted their wit, and laid it by for use in his dialogues. He
was liked by his collaborators on account of his carefulness; the man
with brains, sure of being understood, could cross his arms and feel
that his ideas would be well rendered. The clerks in the office liked
their companion well enough to attend a first performance of his plays
in a body and applaud them, for he really deserved the title of a
good fellow. His hand went readily to his pocket; ices and punch were
bestowed without prodding, and he loaned fifty francs without asking
them back. He owned a country-house at Aulnay, laid by his money, and
had, besides the four thousand five hundred francs of his salary under
government, twelve hundred francs pension from the civil list, and
eight hundred from the three hundred thousand francs fund voted by the
Chambers for encouragement of the Arts. Add to these diverse emoluments
nine thousand francs earned by his quarters, thirds, and halves of plays
in three different theatres, and you will readily understand that such
a man must be physically round, fat, and comfortable, with the face of
a worthy capitalist. As to morals, he was the lover and the beloved
of Tullia and felt himself preferred in heart to the brilliant Duc de
Rhetore, the lover in chief.
Dutocq had seen with great uneasiness what he called the liaison of des
Lupeaulx with Madame Rabourdin, and his silent wrath on the subject
was accumulating. He had too prying an eye not to have guessed that
Rabourdin was engaged in some great work outside of his official labors,
and he was provoked to feel that he knew nothing about it, whereas
that little Sebastien was, wholly or in part, in the secret. Dutocq was
intimate with Godard, under-head-clerk to Baudoyer, and the high esteem
in which Dutocq held Baudoyer was the original cause of his acquaintance
with Godard; not that Dutocq was sincere even in this; but by praising
Baudoyer and saying nothing of Rabourdin he satisfied his hatred after
the fashion of little minds.
Joseph Godard, a cousin of Mitral on the mother’s side, made pretension
to the hand of Mademoiselle Baudoyer, not perceiving that her mother was
laying siege to Falliex as a son-in-law. He brought little gifts to the
young lady, artificial flowers, bonbons on New-Year’s day and pretty
boxes for her birthday. Twenty-six years of age, a worker working
without purpose, steady as a girl, monotonous and apathetic, holding
cafes, cigars, and horsemanship in detestation, going to bed regularly
at ten o’clock and rising at seven, gifted with some social talents,
such as playing quadrille music on the flute, which first brought him
into favor with the Saillards and the Baudoyers. He was moreover a fifer
in the National Guard,--to escape his turn of sitting up all night in a
barrack-room. Godard was devoted more especially to natural history. He
made collections of shells and minerals, knew how to stuff birds, kept
a mass of curiosities bought for nothing in his bedroom; took
possession of phials and empty perfume bottles for his specimens; pinned
butterflies and beetles under glass, hung Chinese parasols on the
walls, together with dried fishskins. He lived with his sister, an
artificial-flower maker, in the due de Richelieu. Though much admired
by mammas this model young man was looked down upon by his sister’s
shop-girls, who had tried to inveigle him. Slim and lean, of medium
height, with dark circles round his eyes, Joseph Godard took little care
of his person; his clothes were ill-cut, his trousers bagged, he wore
white stockings at all seasons of the year, a hat with a narrow brim and
laced shoes. He was always complaining of his digestion. His principal
vice was a mania for proposing rural parties during the summer
season, excursions to Montmorency, picnics on the grass, and visits to
creameries on the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse. For the last six months
Dutocq had taken to visiting Mademoiselle Godard from time to time, with
certain views of his own, hoping to discover in her establishment some
female treasure.
Thus Baudoyer had a pair of henchmen in Dutocq and Godard. Monsieur
Saillard, too innocent to judge rightly of Dutocq, was in the habit of
paying him frequent little visits at the office. Young La Billardiere,
the director’s son, placed as supernumerary with Baudoyer, made another
member of the clique. The clever heads in the offices laughed much at
this alliance of incapables. Bixiou named Baudoyer, Godard, and Dutocq
a “Trinity without the Spirit,” and little La Billardiere the “Pascal
Lamb.”
“You are early this morning,” said Antoine to Dutocq, laughing.
“So are you, Antoine,” answered Dutocq; “you see, the newspapers do come
earlier than you let us have them at the office.”
“They did to-day, by chance,” replied Antoine, not disconcerted; “they
never come two days together at the same hour.”
The two nephews looked at each other as if to say, in admiration of
their uncle, “What cheek he has!”
“Though I make two sous by all his breakfasts,” muttered Antoine, as he
heard Monsieur Dutocq close the office door, “I’d give them up to get
that man out of our division.”
“Ah, Monsieur Sebastien, you are not the first here to-day,” said
Antoine, a quarter of an hour later, to the supernumerary.
“Who is here?” asked the poor lad, turning pale.
“Monsieur Dutocq,” answered Laurent.
Virgin natures have, beyond all others, the inexplicable gift of
second-sight, the reason of which lies perhaps in the purity of their
nervous systems, which are, as it were, brand-new. Sebastien had long
guessed Dutocq’s hatred to his revered Rabourdin. So that when Laurent
uttered his name a dreadful presentiment took possession of the lad’s
mind, and crying out, “I feared it!” he flew like an arrow into the
corridor.
“There is going to be a row in the division,” said Antoine, shaking his
white head as he put on his livery. “It is very certain that Monsieur le
baron is off to his account. Yes, Madame Gruget, the nurse, told me he
couldn’t live through the day. What a stir there’ll be! oh! won’t there!
Go along, you fellows, and see if the stoves are drawing properly.
Heavens and earth! our world is coming down about our ears.”
“That poor young one,” said Laurent, “had a sort of sunstroke when he
heard that Jesuit of a Dutocq had got here before him.”
“I have told him a dozen times,--for after all one ought to tell the
truth to an honest clerk, and what I call an honest clerk is one like
that little fellow who gives us ‘recta’ his ten francs on New-Year’s
day,--I have said to him again and again: The more you work the more
they’ll make you work, and they won’t promote you. He doesn’t listen to
me; he tires himself out staying here till five o’clock, an hour after
all the others have gone. Folly! he’ll never get on that way! The proof
is that not a word has been said about giving him an appointment, though
he has been here two years. It’s a shame! it makes my blood boil.”
“Monsieur Rabourdin is very fond of Monsieur Sebastien,” said Laurent.
“But Monsieur Rabourdin isn’t a minister,” retorted Antoine; “it will
be a hot day when that happens, and the hens will have teeth; he is
too--but mum! When I think that I carry salaries to those humbugs who
stay away and do as they please, while that poor little La Roche works
himself to death, I ask myself if God ever thinks of the civil service.
And what do they give you, these pets of Monsieur le marechal and
Monsieur le duc? ‘Thank you, my dear Antoine, thank you,’ with a
gracious nod! Pack of sluggards! go to work, or you’ll bring another
revolution about your ears. Didn’t see such goings-on under Monsieur
Robert Lindet. I know, for I served my apprenticeship under Robert
Lindet. The clerks had to work in his day! You ought to have seen how
they scratched paper here till midnight; why, the stoves went out
and nobody noticed it. It was all because the guillotine was there!
now-a-days they only mark ‘em when they come in late!”
“Uncle Antoine,” said Gabriel, “as you are so talkative this morning,
just tell us what you think a clerk really ought to be.”
“A government clerk,” replied Antoine, gravely, “is a man who sits in a
government office and writes. But there, there, what am I talking about?
Without the clerks, where should we be, I’d like to know? Go along
and look after your stoves and mind you never say harm of a government
clerk, you fellows. Gabriel, the stove in the large office draws like
the devil; you must turn the damper.”
Antoine stationed himself at a corner of the landing whence he could see
all the officials as they entered the porte-cochere; he knew every one
at the ministry, and watched their behavior, observing narrowly the
contrasts in their dress and appearance.
The first to arrive after Sebastien was a clerk of deeds in Rabourdin’s
office named Phellion, a respectable family-man. To the influence of his
chief he owed a half-scholarship for each of his two sons in the College
Henri IV.; while his daughter was being educated gratis at a boarding
school where his wife gave music lessons and he himself a course of
history and one of geography in the evenings. He was about forty-five
years of age, sergeant-major of his company in the National Guard, very
compassionate in feeling and words, but wholly unable to give away
a penny. Proud of his post, however, and satisfied with his lot, he
applied himself faithfully to serve the government, believed he was
useful to his country, and boasted of his indifference to politics,
knowing none but those of the men in power. Monsieur Rabourdin pleased
him highly whenever he asked him to stay half an hour longer to finish
a piece of work. On such occasions he would say, when he reached home,
“Public affairs detained me; when a man belongs to the government he is
no longer master of himself.” He compiled books of questions and answers
on various studies for the use of young ladies in boarding-schools.
These little “solid treatises,” as he called them, were sold at
the University library under the name of “Historical and Geographic
Catechisms.” Feeling himself in duty bound to offer a copy of each
volume, bound in red morocco, to Monsieur Rabourdin, he always came in
full dress to present them,--breeches and silk stockings, and shoes
with gold buckles. Monsieur Phellion received his friends on Thursday
evenings, on which occasions the company played bouillote, at five sous
a game, and were regaled with cakes and beer. He had never yet dared
to invite Monsieur Rabourdin to honor him with his presence, though he
would have regarded such an event as the most distinguished of his life.
He said if he could leave one of his sons following in the steps of
Monsieur Rabourdin he should die the happiest father in the world.
One of his greatest pleasures was to explore the environs of Paris,
which he did with a map. He knew every inch of Arcueil, Bievre,
Fontenay-aux-Roses, and Aulnay, so famous as the resort of great
writers, and hoped in time to know the whole western side of the country
around Paris. He intended to put his eldest son into a government office
and his second into the Ecole Polytechnique. He often said to the elder,
“When you have the honor to be a government clerk”; though he suspected
him of a preference for the exact sciences and did his best to repress
it, mentally resolved to abandon the lad to his own devices if he
persisted. When Rabourdin sent for him to come down and receive
instructions about some particular piece of work, Phellion gave all his
mind to it,--listening to every word the chief said, as a dilettante
listens to an air at the Opera. Silent in the office, with his feet in
the air resting on a wooden desk, and never moving them, he studied his
task conscientiously. His official letters were written with the utmost
gravity, and transmitted the commands of the minister in solemn phrases.
Monsieur Phellion’s face was that of a pensive ram, with little color
and pitted by the small-pox; the lips were thick and the lower one
pendent; the eyes light-blue, and his figure above the common height.
Neat and clean as a master of history and geography in a young ladies’
school ought to be, he wore fine linen, a pleated shirt-frill, a black
cashmere waistcoat, left open and showing a pair of braces embroidered
by his daughter, a diamond in the bosom of his shirt, a black coat,
and blue trousers. In winter he added a nut-colored box-coat with
three capes, and carried a loaded stick, necessitated, he said, by the
profound solitude of the quarter in which he lived. He had given up
taking snuff, and referred to this reform as a striking example of the
empire a man could exercise over himself. Monsieur Phellion came slowly
up the stairs, for he was afraid of asthma, having what he called an
“adipose chest.” He saluted Antoine with dignity.
The next to follow was a copying-clerk, who presented a strange contrast
to the virtuous Phellion. Vimeux was a young man of twenty-five, with
a salary of fifteen hundred francs, well-made and graceful, with a
romantic face, and eyes, hair, beard, and eyebrows as black as jet, fine
teeth, charming hands, and wearing a moustache so carefully trimmed
that he seemed to have made it the business and occupation of his life.
Vimeux had such aptitude for work that he despatched it much quicker
than any of the other clerks. “He has a gift, that young man!” Phellion
said of him when he saw him cross his legs and have nothing to do for
the rest of the day, having got through his appointed task; “and see
what a little dandy he is!” Vimeux breakfasted on a roll and a glass
of water, dined for twenty sous at Katcomb’s, and lodged in a furnished
room, for which he paid twelve francs a month. His happiness, his sole
pleasure in life, was dress. He ruined himself in miraculous waistcoats,
in trousers that were tight, half-tight, pleated, or embroidered; in
superfine boots, well-made coats which outlined his elegant figure; in
bewitching collars, spotless gloves, and immaculate hats. A ring with a
coat of arms adorned his hand, outside his glove, from which dangled a
handsome cane; with these accessories he endeavoured to assume the air
and manner of a wealthy young man. After the office closed he appeared
in the great walk of the Tuileries, with a tooth-pick in his mouth, as
though he were a millionaire who had just dined. Always on the
lookout for a woman,--an Englishwoman, a foreigner of some kind, or
a widow,--who might fall in love with him, he practised the art of
twirling his cane and of flinging the sort of glance which Bixiou told
him was American. He smiled to show his fine teeth; he wore no socks
under his boots, but he had his hair curled every day. Vimeux was
prepared, in accordance with fixed principles, to marry a hunch-back
with six thousand a year, or a woman of forty-five at eight thousand, or
an Englishwoman for half that sum. Phellion, who delighted in his
neat hand-writing, and was full of compassion for the fellow, read him
lectures on the duty of giving lessons in penmanship,--an honorable
career, he said, which would ameliorate existence and even render
it agreeable; he promised him a situation in a young ladies’
boarding-school. But Vimeux’s head was so full of his own idea that
no human being could prevent him from having faith in his star. He
continued to lay himself out, like a salmon at a fishmonger’s, in spite
of his empty stomach and the fact that he had fruitlessly exhibited his
enormous moustache and his fine clothes for over three years. As he owed
Antoine more than thirty francs for his breakfasts, he lowered his eyes
every time he passed him; and yet he never failed at midday to ask the
man to buy him a roll.
After trying to get a few reasonable ideas into this foolish head,
Rabourdin had finally given up the attempt as hopeless. Adolphe (his
family name was Adolphe) had lately economized on dinners and lived
entirely on bread and water, to buy a pair of spurs and a riding-whip.
Jokes at the expense of this starving Amadis were made only in the
spirit of mischievous fun which creates vaudevilles, for he was really a
kind-hearted fellow and a good comrade, who harmed no one but himself.
A standing joke in the two bureaus was the question whether he wore
corsets, and bets depended on it. Vimeux was originally appointed to
Baudoyer’s bureau, but he manoeuvred to get himself transferred to
Rabourdin’s, on account of Baudoyer’s extreme severity in relation to
what were called “the English,”--a name given by the government clerks
to their creditors. “English day” means the day on which the government
offices are thrown open to the public. Certain then of finding their
delinquent debtors, the creditors swarm in and torment them, asking
when they intend to pay, and threatening to attach their salaries. The
implacable Baudoyer compelled the clerks to remain at their desks and
endure this torture. “It was their place not to make debts,” he said;
and he considered his severity as a duty which he owed to the public
weal. Rabourdin, on the contrary, protected the clerks against their
creditors, and turned the latter away, saying that the government
bureaus were open for public business, not private. Much ridicule
pursued Vimeux in both bureaus when the clank of his spurs resounded in
the corridors and on the staircases. The wag of the ministry, Bixiou,
sent round a paper, headed by a caricature of his victim on a pasteboard
horse, asking for subscriptions to buy him a live charger. Monsieur
Baudoyer was down for a bale of hay taken from his own forage allowance,
and each of the clerks wrote his little epigram; Vimeux himself,
good-natured fellow that he was, subscribed under the name of “Miss
Fairfax.”
Handsome clerks of the Vimeux style have their salaries on which to
live, and their good looks by which to make their fortune. Devoted to
masked balls during the carnival, they seek their luck there, though it
often escapes them. Many end the weary round by marrying milliners, or
old women,--sometimes, however, young ones who are charmed with their
handsome persons, and with whom they set up a romance illustrated with
stupid love letters, which, nevertheless, seem to answer their purpose.
Bixiou (pronounce it Bisiou) was a draughtsman, who ridiculed Dutocq
as readily as he did Rabourdin, whom he nicknamed “the virtuous woman.”
Without doubt the cleverest man in the division or even in the ministry
(but clever after the fashion of a monkey, without aim or sequence),
Bixiou was so essentially useful to Baudoyer and Godard that they upheld
and protected him in spite of his misconduct; for he did their work when
they were incapable of doing it for themselves. Bixiou wanted either
Godard’s or du Bruel’s place as under-head-clerk, but his conduct
interfered with his promotion. Sometimes he sneered at the public
service; this was usually after he had made some happy hit, such as the
publication of portraits in the famous Fualdes case (for which he drew
faces hap-hazard), or his sketch of the debate on the Castaing affair.
At other times, when possessed with a desire to get on, he really
applied himself to work, though he would soon leave off to write a
vaudeville, which was never finished. A thorough egoist, a spendthrift
and a miser in one,--that is to say, spending his money solely on
himself,--sharp, aggressive, and indiscreet, he did mischief for
mischief’s sake; above all, he attacked the weak, respected nothing and
believed in nothing, neither in France, nor in God, nor in art, nor
in the Greeks, nor in the Turks, nor in the monarchy,--insulting and
disparaging everything that he could not comprehend. He was the first
to paint a black cap on Charles X.’s head on the five-franc coins. He
mimicked Dr. Gall when lecturing, till he made the most starched of
diplomatists burst their buttons. Famous for his practical jokes, he
varied them with such elaborate care that he always obtained a victim.
His great secret in this was the power of guessing the inmost wishes of
others; he knew the way to many a castle in the air, to the dreams about
which a man may be fooled because he wants to be; and he made such men
sit to him for hours.
Thus it happened that this close observer, who could display unrivalled
tact in developing a joke or driving home a sarcasm, was unable to use
the same power to make men further his fortunes and promote him. The
person he most liked to annoy was young La Billardiere, his nightmare,
his detestation, whom he was nevertheless constantly wheedling so as
the better to torment him on his weakest side. He wrote him love letters
signed “Comtesse de M----” or “Marquise de B--“; took him to the Opera
on gala days and presented him to some grisette under the clock, after
calling everybody’s attention to the young fool. He allied himself with
Dutocq (whom he regarded as a solemn juggler) in his hatred to Rabourdin
and his praise of Baudoyer, and did his best to support him. Jean-Jaques
Bixiou was the grandson of a Parisian grocer. His father, who died
a colonel, left him to the care of his grandmother, who married her
head-clerk, named Descoings, after the death of her first husband, and
died in 1822. Finding himself without prospects on leaving college, he
attempted painting, but in spite of his intimacy with Joseph Bridau,
his life-long friend, he abandoned art to take up caricature, vignette
designing, and drawing for books, which twenty years later went by the
name of “illustration.” The influence of the Ducs de Maufrigneuse and
de Rhetore, whom he knew in the society of actresses, procured him his
employment under government in 1819. On good terms with des Lupeaulx,
with whom in society he stood on an equality, and intimate with du
Bruel, he was a living proof of Rabourdin’s theory as to the steady
deterioration of the administrative hierarchy in Paris through the
personal importance which a government official may acquire outside of
a government office. Short in stature but well-formed, with a delicate
face remarkable for its vague likeness to Napoleon’s, thin lips, a
straight chin, chestnut whiskers, twenty-seven years old, fair-skinned,
with a piercing voice and sparkling eye,--such was Bixiou; a man, all
sense and all wit, who abandoned himself to a mad pursuit of pleasure of
every description, which threw him into a constant round of dissipation.
Hunter of grisettes, smoker, jester, diner-out and frequenter of
supper-parties, always tuned to the highest pitch, shining equally in
the greenroom and at the balls given among the grisettes of the Allee
des Veuves, he was just as surprisingly entertaining at table as at a
picnic, as gay and lively at midnight on the streets as in the morning
when he jumped out of bed, and yet at heart gloomy and melancholy, like
most of the great comic players.
Launched into the world of actors and actresses, writers, artists, and
certain women of uncertain means, he lived well, went to the theatre
without paying, gambled at Frascati, and often won. Artist by nature and
really profound, though by flashes only, he swayed to and fro in life
like a swing, without thinking or caring of a time when the cord would
break. The liveliness of his wit and the prodigal flow of his ideas
made him acceptable to all persons who took pleasure in the lights of
intellect; but none of his friends liked him. Incapable of checking a
witty saying, he would scarify his two neighbors before a dinner was
half over. In spite of his skin-deep gayety, a secret dissatisfaction
with his social position could be detected in his speech; he aspired
to something better, but the fatal demon hiding in his wit hindered
him from acquiring the gravity which imposes on fools. He lived on the
second floor of a house in the rue de Ponthieu, where he had three rooms
delivered over to the untidiness of a bachelor’s establishment, in fact,
a regular bivouac. He often talked of leaving France and seeking his
fortune in America. No wizard could foretell the future of this
young man in whom all talents were incomplete; who was incapable of
perseverance, intoxicated with pleasure, and who acted on the belief
that the world ended on the morrow.
In the matter of dress Bixiou had the merit of never being ridiculous;
he was perhaps the only official of the ministry whose dress did not
lead outsiders to say, “That man is a government clerk!” He wore elegant
boots with black trousers strapped under them, a fancy waistcoat,
a becoming blue coat, collars that were the never-ending gift of
grisettes, one of Bandoni’s hats, and a pair of dark-colored kid gloves.
His walk and bearing, cavalier and simple both, were not without grace.
He knew all this, and when des Lupeaulx summoned him for a piece
of impertinence said and done about Monsieur de la Billardiere and
threatened him with dismissal, Bixiou replied, “You will take me back
because my clothes do credit to the ministry”; and des Lupeaulx,
unable to keep from laughing, let the matter pass. The most harmless of
Bixiou’s jokes perpetrated among the clerks was the one he played off
upon Godard, presenting him with a butterfly just brought from China,
which the worthy man keeps in his collection and exhibits to this day,
blissfully unconscious that it is only painted paper. Bixiou had the
patience to work up the little masterpiece for the sole purpose of
hoaxing his superior.
The devil always puts a martyr near a Bixiou. Baudoyer’s bureau held the
martyr, a poor copying-clerk twenty-two years of age, with a salary of
fifteen hundred francs, named Auguste-Jean-Francois Minard. Minard had
married for love the daughter of a porter, an artificial-flower maker
employed by Mademoiselle Godard. Zelie Lorrain, a pupil, in the first
place, of the Conservatoire, then by turns a danseuse, a singer, and an
actress, had thought of doing as so many of the working-women do;
but the fear of consequences kept her from vice. She was floating
undecidedly along, when Minard appeared upon the scene with a definite
proposal of marriage. Zelie earned five hundred francs a year, Minard
had fifteen hundred. Believing that they could live on two thousand,
they married without settlements, and started with the utmost economy.
They went to live, like dove-turtles, near the barriere de Courcelles,
in a little apartment at three hundred francs a year, with white cotton
curtains to the windows, a Scotch paper costing fifteen sous a roll on
the walls, brick floors well polished, walnut furniture in the parlor,
and a tiny kitchen that was very clean. Zelie nursed her children
herself when they came, cooked, made her flowers, and kept the
house. There was something very touching in this happy and laborious
mediocrity. Feeling that Minard truly loved her, Zelie loved him. Love
begets love,--it is the abyssus abyssum of the Bible. The poor man
left his bed in the morning before his wife was up, that he might fetch
provisions. He carried the flowers she had finished, on his way to the
bureau, and bought her materials on his way back; then, while waiting
for dinner, he stamped out her leaves, trimmed the twigs, or rubbed
her colors. Small, slim, and wiry, with crisp red hair, eyes of a light
yellow, a skin of dazzling fairness, though blotched with red, the man
had a sturdy courage that made no show. He knew the science of writing
quite as well as Vimeux. At the office he kept in the background,
doing his allotted task with the collected air of a man who thinks and
suffers. His white eyelashes and lack of eyebrows induced the relentless
Bixiou to name him “the white rabbit.” Minard--the Rabourdin of a
lower sphere--was filled with the desire of placing his Zelie in better
circumstances, and his mind searched the ocean of the wants of luxury in
hopes of finding an idea, of making some discovery or some improvement
which would bring him a rapid fortune. His apparent dulness was really
caused by the continual tension of his mind; he went over the history
of Cephalic Oils and the Paste of Sultans, lucifer matches and
portable gas, jointed sockets for hydrostatic lamps,--in short, all the
infinitely little inventions of material civilization which pay so well.
He bore Bixiou’s jests as a busy man bears the buzzing of an insect; he
was not even annoyed by them. In spite of his cleverness, Bixiou never
perceived the profound contempt which Minard felt for him. Minard never
dreamed of quarrelling, however,--regarding it as a loss of time. After
a while his composure tired out his tormentor. He always breakfasted
with his wife, and ate nothing at the office. Once a month he took Zelie
to the theatre, with tickets bestowed by du Bruel or Bixiou; for Bixiou
was capable of anything, even of doing a kindness. Monsieur and Madame
Minard paid their visits in person on New-Year’s day. Those who saw
them often asked how it was that a woman could keep her husband in good
clothes, wear a Leghorn bonnet with flowers, embroidered muslin dresses,
silk mantles, prunella boots, handsome fichus, a Chinese parasol,
and drive home in a hackney-coach, and yet be virtuous; while Madame
Colleville and other “ladies” of her kind could scarcely make ends meet,
though they had double Madame Minard’s means.
In the two bureaus were two clerks so devoted to each other that their
friendship became the butt of all the rest. He of the bureau Baudoyer,
named Colleville, was chief-clerk, and would have been head of the
bureau long before if the Restoration had never happened. His wife was
as clever in her way as Madame Rabourdin in hers. Colleville, who was
son of a first violin at the opera, fell in love with the daughter of a
celebrated danseuse. Flavie Minoret, one of those capable and charming
Parisian women who know how to make their husbands happy and yet
preserve their own liberty, made the Colleville home a rendezvous for
all our best artists and orators. Colleville’s humble position under
government was forgotten there. Flavie’s conduct gave such food for
gossip, however, that Madame Rabourdin had declined all her invitations.
The friend in Rabourdin’s bureau to whom Colleville was so attached was
named Thuillier. All who knew one knew the other. Thuillier, called “the
handsome Thuillier,” an ex-Lothario, led as idle a life as Colleville
led a busy one. Colleville, government official in the mornings and
first clarionet at the Opera-Comique at night, worked hard to maintain
his family, though he was not without influential friends. He was looked
upon as a very shrewd man,--all the more, perhaps, because he hid his
ambitions under a show of indifference. Apparently content with his lot
and liking work, he found every one, even the chiefs, ready to protect
his brave career. During the last few weeks Madame Colleville had made
an evident change in the household, and seemed to be taking to piety.
This gave rise to a vague report in the bureaus that she thought of
securing some more powerful influence than that of Francois Keller, the
famous orator, who had been one of her chief adorers, but who, so far,
had failed to obtain a better place for her husband. Flavie had, about
this time--and it was one of her mistakes--turned for help to des
Lupeaulx.
Colleville had a passion for reading the horoscopes of famous men in
the anagram of their names. He passed whole months in decomposing
and recomposing words and fitting them to new meanings. “Un Corse la
finira,” found within the words, “Revolution Francaise”; “Eh, c’est
large nez,” in “Charles Genest,” an abbe at the court of Louis XIV.,
whose huge nose is recorded by Saint-Simon as the delight of the Duc de
Bourgogne (the exigencies of this last anagram required the substitution
of a z for an s),--were a never-ending marvel to Colleville. Raising
the anagram to the height of a science, he declared that the destiny of
every man was written in the words or phrase given by the transposition
of the letters of his names and titles; and his patriotism struggled
hard to suppress the fact--signal evidence for his theory--that in
Horatio Nelson, “honor est a Nilo.” Ever since the accession of Charles
X., he had bestowed much thought on the king’s anagram. Thuillier, who
was fond of making puns, declared that an anagram was nothing more than
a pun on letters. The sight of Colleville, a man of real feeling, bound
almost indissolubly to Thuillier, the model of an egoist, presented a
difficult problem to the mind of an observer. The clerks in the offices
explained it by saying, “Thuillier is rich, and the Colleville household
costly.” This friendship, however, consolidated by time, was based on
feelings and on facts which naturally explained it; an account of which
may be found elsewhere (see “Les Petits Bourgeois”). We may remark in
passing that though Madame Colleville was well known in the bureaus, the
existence of Madame Thuillier was almost unknown there. Colleville,
an active man, burdened with a family of children, was fat, round, and
jolly, whereas Thuillier, “the beau of the Empire” without apparent
anxieties and always at leisure, was slender and thin, with a livid face
and a melancholy air. “We never know,” said Rabourdin, speaking of the
two men, “whether our friendships are born of likeness or of contrast.”
Unlike these Siamese twins, two other clerks, Chazelle and Paulmier,
were forever squabbling. One smoked, the other took snuff, and the
merits of their respective use of tobacco were the origin of ceaseless
disputes. Chazelle’s home, which was tyrannized over by a wife,
furnished a subject of endless ridicule to Paulmier; whereas Paulmier,
a bachelor, often half-starved like Vimeux, with ragged clothes and
half-concealed penury was a fruitful source of ridicule to Chazelle.
Both were beginning to show a protuberant stomach; Chazelle’s, which was
round and projecting, had the impertinence, so Bixiou said, to enter the
room first; Paulmier’s corporation spread to right and left. A favorite
amusement with Bixiou was to measure them quarterly. The two clerks, by
dint of quarrelling over the details of their lives, and washing much of
their dirty linen at the office, had obtained the disrepute which they
merited. “Do you take me for a Chazelle?” was a frequent saying that
served to end many an annoying discussion.
Monsieur Poiret junior, called “junior” to distinguish him from his
brother Monsieur Poiret senior (now living in the Maison Vanquer, where
Poiret junior sometimes dined, intending to end his days in the same
retreat), had spent thirty years in the Civil Service. Nature herself is
not so fixed and unvarying in her evolutions as was Poiret junior in all
the acts of his daily life; he always laid his things in precisely the
same place, put his pen in the same rack, sat down in his seat at the
same hour, warmed himself at the stove at the same moment of the day.
His sole vanity consisted in wearing an infallible watch, timed daily at
the Hotel de Ville as he passed it on his way to the office. From six
to eight o’clock in the morning he kept the books of a large shop in the
rue Saint-Antoine, and from six to eight o’clock in the evening those
of the Maison Camusot, in the rue des Bourdonnais. He thus earned three
thousand francs a year, counting his salary from the government. In a
few months his term of service would be up, when he would retire on a
pension; he therefore showed the utmost indifference to the political
intrigues of the bureaus. Like his elder brother, to whom retirement
from active service had proved a fatal blow, he would probably grow an
old man when he could no longer come from his home to the ministry, sit
in the same chair and copy a certain number of pages. Poiret’s eyes were
dim, his glance weak and lifeless, his skin discolored and wrinkled,
gray in tone and speckled with bluish dots; his nose flat, his lips
drawn inward to the mouth, where a few defective teeth still lingered.
His gray hair, flattened to the head by the pressure of his hat, gave
him the look of an ecclesiastic,--a resemblance he would scarcely have
liked, for he hated priests and clergy, though he could give no reasons
for his anti-religious views. This antipathy, however, did not prevent
him from being extremely attached to whatever administration happened to
be in power. He never buttoned his old green coat, even on the coldest
days, and he always wore shoes with ties, and black trousers.
No human life was ever lived so thoroughly by rule. Poiret kept all
his receipted bills, even the most trifling, and all his account-books,
wrapped in old shirts and put away according to their respective years
from the time of his entrance at the ministry. Rough copies of his
letters were dated and put away in a box, ticketed “My Correspondence.”
He dined at the same restaurant (the Sucking Calf in the place du
Chatelet), and sat in the same place, which the waiters kept for him. He
never gave five minutes more time to the shop in the rue Saint Antoine
than justly belonged to it, and at half-past eight precisely he reached
the Cafe David, where he breakfasted and remained till eleven. There
he listened to political discussions, his arms crossed on his cane, his
chin in his right hand, never saying a word. The dame du comptoir, the
only woman to whom he ever spoke with pleasure, was the sole confidant
of the little events of his life, for his seat was close to her counter.
He played dominoes, the only game he was capable of understanding. When
his partners did not happen to be present, he usually went to sleep
with his back against the wainscot, holding a newspaper in his hand, the
wooden file resting on the marble of his table. He was interested in the
buildings going up in Paris, and spent his Sundays in walking about to
examine them. He was often heard to say, “I saw the Louvre emerge from
its rubbish; I saw the birth of the place du Chatelet, the quai aux
Fleurs and the Markets.” He and his brother, both born at Troyes, were
sent in youth to serve their apprenticeship in a government office.
Their mother made herself notorious by misconduct, and the two brothers
had the grief of hearing of her death in the hospital at Troyes,
although they had frequently sent money for her support. This event led
them both not only to abjure marriage, but to feel a horror of children;
ill at ease with them, they feared them as others fear madmen, and
watched them with haggard eyes.
Since the day when he first came to Paris Poiret junior had never gone
outside the city. He began at that time to keep a journal of his life,
in which he noted down all the striking events of his day. Du Bruel
told him that Lord Byron did the same thing. This likeness filled
Poiret junior with delight, and led him to buy the works of Lord Byron,
translated by Chastopalli, of which he did not understand a word. At the
office he was often seen in a melancholy attitude, as though absorbed in
thought, when in fact he was thinking of nothing at all. He did not know
a single person in the house where he lived, and always carried the keys
of his apartment about with him. On New-Year’s day he went round and
left his own cards on all the clerks of the division. Bixiou took it
into his head on one of the hottest of dog-days to put a layer of lard
under the lining of a certain old hat which Poiret junior (he was, by
the bye, fifty-two years old) had worn for the last nine years. Bixiou,
who had never seen any other hat on Poiret’s head, dreamed of it
and declared he tasted it in his food; he therefore resolved, in the
interests of his digestion, to relieve the bureau of the sight of that
amorphous old hat. Poiret junior left the office regularly at four
o’clock. As he walked along, the sun’s rays reflected from the
pavements and walls produced a tropical heat; he felt that his head was
inundated,--he, who never perspired! Feeling that he was ill, or on the
point of being so, instead of going as usual to the Sucking Calf he went
home, drew out from his desk the journal of his life, and recorded the
fact in the following manner:--
“To-day, July 3, 1823, overtaken by extraordinary perspiration, a
sign, perhaps, of the sweating-sickness, a malady which prevails
in Champagne. I am about to consult Doctor Haudry. The disease
first appeared as I reached the highest part of the quai des
Ecoles.”
Suddenly, having taken off his hat, he became aware that the mysterious
sweat had some cause independent of his own person. He wiped his face,
examined the hat, and could find nothing, for he did not venture to take
out the lining. All this he noted in his journal:--
“Carried my hat to the Sieur Tournan, hat-maker in the rue
Saint-Martin, for the reason that I suspect some unknown cause for
this perspiration, which, in that case, might not be perspiration,
but, possibly, the effect of something lately added, or formerly
done, to my hat.”
Monsieur Tournan at once informed his customer of the presence of a
greasy substance, obtained by the trying-out of the fat of a pig or sow.
The next day Poiret appeared at the office with another hat, lent by
Monsieur Tournan while a new one was making; but he did not sleep that
night until he had added the following sentence to the preceding entries
in his journal: “It is asserted that my hat contained lard, the fat of a
pig.”
This inexplicable fact occupied the intellect of Poiret junior for the
space of two weeks; and he never knew how the phenomenon was produced.
The clerks told him tales of showers of frogs, and other dog-day
wonders, also the startling fact that an imprint of the head of Napoleon
had been found in the root of a young elm, with other eccentricities
of natural history. Vimeux informed him that one day his hat--his,
Vimeux’s--had stained his forehead black, and that hat-makers were in
the habit of using drugs. After that Poiret paid many visits to Monsieur
Tournan to inquire into his methods of manufacture.
In the Rabourdin bureau was a clerk who played the man of courage
and audacity, professed the opinions of the Left centre, and rebelled
against the tyrannies of Baudoyer as exercised upon what he called the
unhappy slaves of that office. His name was Fleury. He boldly subscribed
to an opposition newspaper, wore a gray hat with a broad brim, red bands
on his blue trousers, a blue waistcoat with gilt buttons, and a
surtout coat crossed over the breast like that of a quartermaster of
gendarmerie. Though unyielding in his opinions, he continued to be
employed in the service, all the while predicting a fatal end to a
government which persisted in upholding religion. He openly avowed his
sympathy for Napoleon, now that the death of that great man put an end
to the laws enacted against “the partisans of the usurper.” Fleury,
ex-captain of a regiment of the line under the Emperor, a tall, dark,
handsome fellow, was now, in addition to his civil-service post,
box-keeper at the Cirque-Olympique. Bixiou never ventured on tormenting
Fleury, for the rough trooper, who was a good shot and clever at
fencing, seemed quite capable of extreme brutality if provoked. An
ardent subscriber to “Victoires et Conquetes,” Fleury nevertheless
refused to pay his subscription, though he kept and read the copies,
alleging that they exceeded the number proposed in the prospectus. He
adored Monsieur Rabourdin, who had saved him from dismissal, and was
even heard to say that if any misfortune happened to the chief through
anybody’s fault he would kill that person. Dutocq meanly courted Fleury
because he feared him. Fleury, crippled with debt, played many a trick
on his creditors. Expert in legal matters, he never signed a promissory
note; and had prudently attached his own salary under the names of
fictitious creditors, so that he was able to draw nearly the whole of it
himself. He played ecarte, was the life of evening parties, tossed off
glasses of champagne without wetting his lips, and knew all the songs of
Beranger by heart. He was proud of his full, sonorous voice. His three
great admirations were Napoleon, Bolivar, and Beranger. Foy, Lafitte,
and Casimir Delavigne he only esteemed. Fleury, as you will have guessed
already, was a Southerner, destined, no doubt, to become the responsible
editor of a liberal journal.
Desroys, the mysterious clerk of the division, consorted with no one,
talked little, and hid his private life so carefully that no one knew
where he lived, nor who were his protectors, nor what were his means of
subsistence. Looking about them for the causes of this reserve, some
of his colleagues thought him a “carbonaro,” others an Orleanist; there
were others again who doubted whether to call him a spy or a man of
solid merit. Desroys was, however, simple and solely the son of a
“Conventionel,” who did not vote the king’s death. Cold and prudent by
temperament, he had judged the world and ended by relying on no one but
himself. Republican in secret, an admirer of Paul-Louis Courier and a
friend of Michael Chrestien, he looked to time and public intelligence
to bring about the triumph of his opinions from end to end of Europe.
He dreamed of a new Germany and a new Italy. His heart swelled with that
dull, collective love which we must call humanitarianism, the eldest son
of deceased philanthropy, and which is to the divine catholic charity
what system is to art, or reasoning to deed. This conscientious puritan
of freedom, this apostle of an impossible equality, regretted keenly
that his poverty forced him to serve the government, and he made various
efforts to find a place elsewhere. Tall, lean, lanky, and solemn in
appearance, like a man who expects to be called some day to lay down his
life for a cause, he lived on a page of Volney, studied Saint-Just, and
employed himself on a vindication of Robespierre, whom he regarded as
the successor of Jesus Christ.
The last of the individuals belonging to these bureaus who merits
a sketch here is the little La Billardiere. Having, to his great
misfortune, lost his mother, and being under the protection of the
minister, safe therefore from the tyrannies of Baudoyer, and received
in all the ministerial salons, he was nevertheless detested by every one
because of his impertinence and conceit. The two chiefs were polite
to him, but the clerks held him at arm’s length and prevented all
companionship by means of the extreme and grotesque politeness which
they bestowed upon him. A pretty youth of twenty-two, tall and slender,
with the manners of an Englishman, a dandy in dress, curled and
perfumed, gloved and booted in the latest fashion, and twirling an
eyeglass, Benjamin de la Billardiere thought himself a charming fellow
and possessed all the vices of the world with none of its graces. He
was now looking forward impatiently to the death of his father, that
he might succeed to the title of baron. His cards were printed “le
Chevalier de la Billardiere” and on the wall of his office hung, in a
frame, his coat of arms (sable, two swords in saltire, on a chief azure
three mullets argent; with the motto; “Toujours fidele”). Possessed
with a mania for talking heraldry, he once asked the young Vicomte de
Portenduere why his arms were charged in a certain way, and drew down
upon himself the happy answer, “I did not make them.” He talked of his
devotion to the monarchy and the attentions the Dauphine paid him. He
stood very well with des Lupeaulx, whom he thought his friend, and they
often breakfasted together. Bixiou posed as his mentor, and hoped to rid
the division and France of the young fool by tempting him to excesses,
and openly avowed that intention.
Such were the principal figures of La Billardiere’s division of the
ministry, where also were other clerks of less account, who resembled
more or less those that are represented here. It is difficult even for
an observer to decide from the aspect of these strange personalities
whether the goose-quill tribe were becoming idiots from the effects of
their employment or whether they entered the service because they were
natural born fools. Possibly the making of them lies at the door of
Nature and of the government both. Nature, to a civil-service clerk is,
in fact, the sphere of the offic
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