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 rol