or
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. H