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 s