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 office; his horizon is bounded on all
sides by green boxes; to him, atmospheric changes are the air of
the corridors, the masculine exhalations contained in rooms without
ventilators, the odor of paper, pens, and ink; the soil he treads is
a tiled pavement or a wooden floor, strewn with a curious litter and
moistened by the attendant’s watering-pot; his sky is the ceiling toward
which he yawns; his element is dust. Several distinguished doctors have
remonstrated against the influence of this second nature, both savage
and civilized, on the moral being vegetating in those dreadful pens
called bureaus, where the sun seldom penetrates, where thoughts are tied
down to occupations like that of horses who turn a crank and who, poor
beasts, yawn distressingly and die quickly. Rabourdin was, therefore,
fully justified in seeking to reform their present condition, by
lessening their numbers and giving to each a larger salary and far
heavier work. Men are neither wearied nor bored when doing great things.
Under the present system government loses fully four hours out of the
nine which the clerks owe to the service,--hours wasted, as we shall
see, in conversations, in gossip, in disputes, and, above all, in
underhand intriguing. The reader must have haunted the bureaus of the
ministerial departments before he can realize how much their petty
and belittling life resembles that of seminaries. Wherever men live
collectively this likeness is obvious; in regiments, in law-courts, you
will find the elements of the school on a smaller or larger scale. The
government clerks, forced to be together for nine hours of the day,
looked upon their office as a sort of class-room where they had tasks to
perform, where the head of the bureau was no other than a schoolmaster,
and where the gratuities bestowed took the place of prizes given out to
proteges,--a place, moreover, where they teased and hated each other,
and yet felt a certain comradeship, colder than that of a regiment,
which itself is less hearty than that of seminaries. As a man advances
in life he grows more selfish; egoism develops, and relaxes all the
secondary bonds of affection. A government office is, in short, a
microcosm of society, with its oddities and hatreds, its envy and its
cupidity, its determination to push on, no matter who goes under, its
frivolous gossip which gives so many wounds, and its perpetual spying.