profoundly illogical
reasoner--Society. Government levies a conscription on the young
intelligence of the kingdom at the age of seventeen or eighteen,
a conscription of precocious brain-work before it is sent up to be
submitted to a process of selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds
in much the same way. To this process the Government brings professional
appraisers of talent, men who can assay brains as experts assay gold
at the Mint. Five hundred such heads, set afire with hope, are sent up
annually by the most progressive portion of the population; and of these
the Government takes one-third, puts them in sacks called the Ecoles,
and shakes them up together for three years. Though every one of these
young plants represents vast productive power, they are made, as one
may say, into cashiers. They receive appointments; the rank and file
of engineers is made up of them; they are employed as captains of
artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade to which they may not aspire.
Finally, when these men, the pick of the youth of the nation, fattened
on mathematics and stuffed with knowledge, have attained the age of
fifty years, they have their reward, and receive as the price of their
services the third-floor lodging, the wife and family, and all the
comforts that sweeten life for mediocrity. If from among this race of
dupes there should escape some five or six men of genius who climb the
highest heights, is it not miraculous?

This is an exact statement of the relations between Talent and Probity
on the one hand and Government and Society on the other, in an age that
considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatory explanation
a recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable; but preceded by this
summing up of the situation, it will perhaps receive some thoughtful
attention from minds capable of recognizing the real plague-spots of
our civilization, a civilization which since 1815 as been moved by the
spirit of gain rather than by principles of honor.

About five o'clock, on a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier of one of
the largest banks in Paris was still at his desk, working by the light
of a lamp that had been lit for some time. In accordance with the use
and wont of commerce, the counting-house was in the darkest corner of
the low-ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the very
end of a passage lighted only by borrowed lights. The office doors
along this corridor, each with its label, g