Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  Dutocq [consequentially]. “My dear fellow, I am in a position to rouse the whole division against Rabourdin. You know how devoted Fleury is to him? Well, I can make Fleury despise him.”

  Bixiou. “Despised by Fleury!”

  Dutocq. “Not a soul will stand by Rabourdin; the clerks will go in a body and complain of him to the minister, — not only in our division, but in all the divisions — ”

  Bixiou. “Forward, march! infantry, cavalry, artillery, and marines of the guard! You rave, my good fellow! And I, what part am I to take in the business?”

  Dutocq. “You are to make a cutting caricature, — sharp enough to kill a man.”

  Bixiou. “How much will you pay for it?”

  Dutocq. “A hundred francs.”

  Bixiou [to himself]. “Then there is something in it.”

  Dutocq [continuing]. “You must represent Rabourdin dressed as a butcher (make it a good likeness), find analogies between a kitchen and a bureau, put a skewer in his hand, draw portraits of the principal clerks and stick their heads on fowls, put them in a monstrous coop labelled ‘Civil Service executions’; make him cutting the throat of one, and supposed to take the others in turn. You can have geese and ducks with heads like ours, — you understand! Baudoyer, for instance, he’ll make an excellent turkey-buzzard.”

  Bixiou. “Ris d’aboyeur d’oie!” [He has watched Dutocq carefully for some time.] “Did you think of that yourself?”

  Dutocq. “Yes, I myself.”

  Bixiou [to himself]. “Do evil feelings bring men to the same result as talents?” [Aloud] “Well, I’ll do it” [Dutocq makes a motion of delight] “ — when” [full stop] “ — I know where I am and what I can rely on. If you don’t succeed I shall lose my place, and I must make a living. You are a curious kind of innocent still, my dear colleague.”

  Dutocq. “Well, you needn’t make the lithograph till success is proved.”

  Bixiou. “Why don’t you come out and tell me the whole truth?”

  Dutocq. “I must first see how the land lays in the bureau; we will talk about it later” [goes off].

  Bixiou [alone in the corridor]. “That fish, for he’s more a fish than a bird, that Dutocq has a good idea in his head — I’m sure I don’t know where he stole it. If Baudoyer should succeed La Billardiere it would be fun, more than fun — profit!” [Returns to the office.] “Gentlemen, I announce glorious changes; papa La Billardiere is dead, really dead, — no nonsense, word of honor! Godard is off on business for our excellent chief Baudoyer, successor presumptive to the deceased.” [Minard, Desroys, and Colleville raise their heads in amazement; they all lay down their pens, and Colleville blows his nose.] “Every one of us is to be promoted! Colleville will be under-head-clerk at the very least. Minard may have my place as chief clerk — why not? he is quite as dull as I am. Hey, Minard, if you should get twenty-five hundred francs a-year your little wife would be uncommonly pleased, and you could buy yourself a pair of boots now and then.”

  Colleville. “But you don’t get twenty-five hundred francs.”

  Bixiou. “Monsieur Dutocq gets that in Rabourdin’s office; why shouldn’t I get it this year? Monsieur Baudoyer gets it.”

  Colleville. “Only through the influence of Monsieur Saillard. No other chief clerk gets that in any of the divisions.”

  Paulmier. “Bah! Hasn’t Monsieur Cochin three thousand? He succeeded Monsieur Vavasseur, who served ten years under the Empire at four thousand. His salary was dropped to three when the King first returned; then to two thousand five hundred before Vavasseur died. But Monsieur Cochin, who succeeded him, had influence enough to get the salary put back to three thousand.”

  Colleville. “Monsieur Cochin signs E. A. L. Cochin (he is named Emile-Adolphe-Lucian), which, when anagrammed, gives Cochineal. Now observe, he’s a partner in a druggist’s business in the rue des Lombards, the Maison Matifat, which made its fortune by that identical colonial product.”

  Baudoyer [entering]. “Monsieur Chazelle, I see, is not here; you will be good enough to say I asked for him, gentlemen.”

  Bixiou [who had hastily stuck a hat on Chazelle’s chair when he heard Baudoyer’s step]. “Excuse me, Monsieur, but Chazelle has gone to the Rabourdins’ to make an inquiry.”

  Chazelle [entering with his hat on his head, and not seeing Baudoyer]. “La Billardiere is done for, gentlemen! Rabourdin is head of the division and Master of petitions; he hasn’t stolen /his/ promotion, that’s very certain.”

  Baudoyer [to Chazelle]. “You found that appointment in your second hat, I presume” [points to the hat on the chair]. “This is the third time within a month that you have come after nine o’clock. If you continue the practice you will get on — elsewhere.” [To Bixiou, who is reading the newspaper.] “My dear Monsieur Bixiou, do pray leave the newspapers to these gentlemen who are going to breakfast, and come into my office for your orders for the day. I don’t know what Monsieur Rabourdin wants with Gabriel; he keeps him to do his private errands, I believe. I’ve rung three times and can’t get him.” [Baudoyer and Bixiou retire into the private office.]

  Chazelle. “Damned unlucky!”

  Paulmier [delighted to annoy Chazelle]. “Why didn’t you look about when you came into the room? You might have seen the elephant, and the hat too; they are big enough to be visible.”

  Chazelle [dismally]. “Disgusting business! I don’t see why we should be treated like 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, gentlemen! no politics!”

  Bixiou. “Fleury is right. Serving the State in these days is no longer serving a prince who knew how to punish and reward. The State now is /everybody/. Everybod
y of course cares for nobody. Serve everybody, and you serve nobody. Nobody is interested in nobody; the government clerk lives between two negations. The world has neither pity nor respect, neither heart nor head; everybody forgets to-morrow the service of yesterday. Now each one of you may be, like Monsieur Baudoyer, an administrative genius, a Chateaubriand of reports, a Bossouet of circulars, the Canalis of memorials, the gifted son of diplomatic despatches; but I tell you there is a fatal law which interferes with all administrative genius, — I mean the law of promotion by average. This average is based on the statistics of promotion and the statistics of mortality combined. It is very certain that on entering whichever section of the Civil Service you please at the age of eighteen, you can’t get eighteen hundred francs a year till you reach the age of thirty. Now there’s no free and independent career in which, in the course of twelve years, a young man who has gone through the grammar-school, been vaccinated, is exempt from military service, and possesses all his faculties (I don’t mean transcendent ones) can’t amass a capital of forty-five thousand francs in centimes, which represents a permanent income equal to our salaries, which are, after all, precarious. In twelve years a grocer can earn enough to give him ten thousand francs a year; a painter can daub a mile of canvas and be decorated with the Legion of honor, or pose as a neglected genius. A literary man becomes professor of something or other, or a journalist at a hundred francs for a thousand lines; he writes ‘feuilletons,’ or he gets into Saint-Pelagie for a brilliant article that offends the Jesuits, — which of course is an immense benefit to him and makes him a politician at once. Even a lazy man, who does nothing but make debts, has time to marry a widow who pays them; a priest finds time to become a bishop ‘in partibus.’ A sober, intelligent young fellow, who begins with a small capital as a money-changer, soon buys a share in a broker’s business; and, to go even lower, a petty clerk becomes a notary, a rag-picker lays by two or three thousand francs a year, and the poorest workmen often become manufacturers; whereas, in the rotatory movement of this present civilization, which mistakes perpetual division and redivision for progress, an unhappy civil service clerk, like Chazelle for instance, is forced to dine for twenty-two sous a meal, struggles with his tailor and bootmaker, gets into debt, and is an absolute nothing; worse than that, he becomes an idiot! Come, gentlemen, now’s the time to make a stand! Let us all give in our resignations! Fleury, Chazelle, fling yourselves into other employments and become the great men you really are.”

  Chazelle [calmed down by Bixiou’s allocution]. “No, I thank you” [general laughter].

  Bixiou. “You are wrong; in your situation I should try to get ahead of the general-secretary.”

  Chazelle [uneasily]. “What has he to do with me?”

  Bixiou. “You’ll find out; do you suppose Baudoyer will overlook what happened just now?”

  Fleury. “Another piece of Bixiou’s spite! You’ve a queer fellow to deal with in there. Now, Monsieur Rabourdin, — there’s a man for you! He put work on my table to-day that you couldn’t get through within this office in three days; well, he expects me to have it done by four o’clock to-day. But he is not always at my heels to hinder me from talking to my friends.”

  Baudoyer [appearing at the door]. “Gentlemen, you will admit that if you have the legal right to find fault with the chamber and the administration you must at least do so elsewhere than in this office.” [To Fleury.] “What are you doing here, monsieur?”

  Fleury [insolently]. “I came to tell these gentlemen that there was to be a general turn-out. Du Bruel is sent for to the ministry, and Dutocq also. Everybody is asking who will be appointed.”

  Baudoyer [retiring]. “It is not your affair, sir; go back to your own office, and do not disturb mine.”

  Fleury [in the doorway]. “It would be a shameful injustice if Rabourdin lost the place; I swear I’d leave the service. Did you find that anagram, papa Colleville?”

  Colleville. “Yes, here it is.”

  Fleury [leaning over Colleville’s desk]. “Capital! famous! This is just what will happen if the administration continues to play the hypocrite.” [He makes a sign to the clerks that Baudoyer is listening.] “If the government would frankly state its intentions without concealments of any kind, the liberals would know what they had to deal with. An administration which sets its best friends against itself, such men as those of the ‘Debats,’ Chateaubriand, and Royer-Collard, is only to be pitied!”

  Colleville [after consulting his colleagues]. “Come, Fleury, you’re a good fellow, but don’t talk politics here; you don’t know what harm you may do us.”

  Fleury [dryly]. “Well, adieu, gentlemen; I have my work to do by four o’clock.”

  While this idle talk had been going on, des Lupeaulx was closeted in his office with du Bruel, where, a little later, Dutocq joined them. Des Lupeaulx had heard from his valet of La Billardiere’s death, and wishing to please the two ministers, he wanted an obituary article to appear in the evening papers.

  “Good morning, my dear du Bruel,” said the semi-minister to the head-clerk as he entered, and not inviting him to sit down. “You have heard the news? La Billardiere is dead. The ministers were both present when he received the last sacraments. The worthy man strongly recommended Rabourdin, saying he should die with less regret if he could know that his successor were the man who had so constantly done his work. Death is a torture which makes a man confess everything. The minister agreed the more readily because his intention and that of the Council was to reward Monsieur Rabourdin’s numerous services. In fact, the Council of State needs his experience. They say that young La Billardiere is to leave the division of his father and go to the Commission of Seals; that’s just the same as if the King had made him a present of a hundred thousand francs, — the place can always be sold. But I know the news will delight your division, which will thus get rid of him. Du Bruel, we must get ten or a dozen lines about the worthy late director into the papers; his Excellency will glance them over, — he reads the papers. Do you know the particulars of old La Billardiere’s life?”

  Du Bruel made a sign in the negative.

  “No?” continued des Lupeaulx. “Well then; he was mixed up in the affairs of La Vendee, and he was one of the confidants of the late King. Like Monsieur le Comte de Fontaine he always refused to hold communication with the First Consul. He was a bit of a ‘chouan’; born in Brittany of a parliamentary family, and ennobled by Louis XVIII. How old was he? never mind about that; just say his loyalty was untarnished, his religion enlightened, — the poor old fellow hated churches and never set foot in one, but you had better make him out a ‘pious vassal.’ Bring in, gracefully, that he sang the song of Simeon at the accession of Charles X. The Comte d’Artois thought very highly of La Billardiere, for he co-operated in the unfortunate affair of Quiberon and took the whole responsibility on himself. You know about that, don’t you? La Billardiere defended the King in a printed pamphlet in reply to an impudent history of the Revolution written by a journalist; you can allude to his loyalty and devotion. But be very careful what you say; weigh your words, so that the other newspapers can’t laugh at us; and bring me the article when you’ve written it. Were you at Rabourdin’s yesterday?”

  “Yes, monseigneur,” said du Bruel, “Ah! beg pardon.”

  “No harm done,” answered des Lupeaulx, laughing.

  “Madame Rabourdin looked delightfully handsome,” added du Bruel. “There are not two women like her in Paris. Some are as clever as she, but there’s not one so gracefully witty. Many women may even be handsomer, but it would be hard to find one with such variety of beauty. Madame Rabourdin is far superior to Madame Colleville,” said the vaudevillist, remembering des Lupeaulx’s former affair. “Flavie owes what she is to the men about her, whereas Madame Rabourdin is all things in herself. It is wonderful too what she knows; you can’t tell secrets in Latin before /her/. If I had such a wife, I know I should succeed in everything.”

  “You have more mind
than an author ought to have,” returned des Lupeaulx, with a conceited air. Then he turned round and perceived Dutocq. “Ah, good-morning, Dutocq,” he said. “I sent for you to lend me your Charlet — if you have the whole complete. Madame la comtesse knows nothing of Charlet.”

  Du Bruel retired.

  “Why do you come in without being summoned?” said des Lupeaulx, harshly, when he and Dutocq were left alone. “Is the State in danger that you must come here at ten o’clock in the morning, just as I am going to breakfast with his Excellency?”

  “Perhaps it is, monsieur,” said Dutocq, dryly. “If I had had the honor to see you earlier, you would probably have not been so willing to support Monsieur Rabourdin, after reading his opinion of you.”

  Dutocq opened his coat, took a paper from the left-hand breast-pocket and laid it on des Lupeaulx’s desk, pointing to a marked passage. Then he went to the door and slipped the bolt, fearing interruption. While he was thus employed, the secretary-general read the opening sentence of the article, which was as follows:

  “Monsieur des Lupeaulx. A government degrades itself by openly

  employing such a man, whose real vocation is for police diplomacy.

  He is fitted to deal with the political filibusters of other

  cabinets, and it would be a pity therefore to employ him on our

  internal detective police. He is above a common spy, for he is

  able to understand a plan; he could skilfully carry through a dark

  piece of work and cover his retreat safely.”

  Des Lupeaulx was succinctly analyzed in five or six such paragraphs, — the essence, in fact, of the biographical portrait which we gave at the beginning of this history. As he read the words the secretary felt that a man stronger than himself sat in judgment on him; and he at once resolved to examine the memorandum, which evidently reached far and high, without allowing Dutocq to know his secret thoughts. He therefore showed a calm, grave face when the spy returned to him. Des Lupeaulx, like lawyers, magistrates, diplomatists, and all whose work obliges them to pry into the human heart, was past being surprised at anything. Hardened in treachery and in all the tricks and wiles of hatred, he could take a stab in the back and not let his face tell of it.