slaves because the government gives us four francs and
sixty-five centimes a day."

Fleury [entering]. "Down with Baudoyer! hurrah for Rabourdin!--that's
the cry in the division."

Chazelle [getting more and more angry]. "Baudoyer can turn off me if
he likes, I sha'n't care. In Paris there are a thousand ways of earning
five francs a day; why, I could earn that at the Palais de Justice,
copying briefs for the lawyers."

Paulmier [still prodding him]. "It is very easy to say that; but a
government place is a government place, and that plucky Colleville, who
works like a galley-slave outside of this office, and who could earn,
if he lost his appointment, more than his salary, prefers to keep his
place. Who the devil is fool enough to give up his expectations?"

Chazelle [continuing his philippic]. "You may not be, but I am! We have
no chances at all. Time was when nothing was more encouraging than a
civil-service career. So many men were in the army that there were not
enough for the government work; the maimed and the halt and the sick
ones, like Paulmier, and the near-sighted ones, all had their chance of
a rapid promotion. But now, ever since the Chamber invented what they
called special training, and the rules and regulations for civil-service
examiners, we are worse off than common soldiers. The poorest places
are at the mercy of a thousand mischances because we are now ruled by a
thousand sovereigns."

Bixiou [returning]. "Are you crazy, Chazelle? Where do you find a
thousand sovereigns?--not in your pocket, are they?"

Chazelle. "Count them up. There are four hundred over there at the end
of the pont de la Concorde (so called because it leads to the scene
of perpetual discord between the Right and Left of the Chamber); three
hundred more at the end of the rue de Tournon. The court, which ought to
count for the other three hundred, has seven hundred parts less power
to get a man appointed to a place under government than the Emperor
Napoleon had."

Fleury. "All of which signifies that in a country where there are three
powers you may bet a thousand to one that a government clerk who has no
influence but his own merits to advance him will remain in obscurity."

Bixiou [looking alternately at Chazelle and Fleury]. "My sons, you have
yet to learn that in these days the worst state of life is the state of
belonging to the State."

Fleury. "Because it has a constitutional government."

Colleville. "Gentlemen