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