The Lesser Bourgeoisie | Page 7

often heard Colleville, her brother's intimate friend, a government
employee like himself, say, jesting on this climacteric of bureaucrats,
"We shall all come to it, ourselves," not to appreciate the danger her
brother was running. The change from activity to leisure is, in truth, the
critical period for government employees of all kinds.
Those of them who know not how to substitute, or perhaps cannot
substitute other occupations for the work to which they have been
accustomed, change in a singular manner; some die outright; others
take to fishing, the vacancy of that amusement resembling that of their
late employment under government; others, who are smarter men,
dabble in stocks, lose their savings, and are thankful to obtain a place in
some enterprise that is likely to succeed, after a first disaster and
liquidation, in the hands of an abler management. The late clerk then
rubs his hands, now empty, and says to himself, "I always did foresee
the success of the business." But nearly all these retired bureaucrats
have to fight against their former habits.
"Some," Colleville used to say, "are victims to a sort of 'spleen' peculiar
to the government clerk; they die of a checked circulation; a

red-tapeworm is in their vitals. That little Poiret couldn't see the
well-known white carton without changing color at the beloved sight;
he used to turn from green to yellow."
Mademoiselle Thuillier was considered the moving spirit of her
brother's household; she was not without decision and force of
character, as the following history will show. This superiority over
those who immediately surrounded her enabled her to judge her brother,
although she adored him. After witnessing the failure of the hopes she
had set upon her idol, she had too much real maternity in her feeling for
him to let herself be mistaken as to his social value.
Thuillier and his sister were children of the head porter at the ministry
of finance. Jerome had escaped, thanks to his near- sightedness, all
drafts and conscriptions. The father's ambition was to make his son a
government clerk. At the beginning of this century the army presented
too many posts not to leave various vacancies in the government
offices. A deficiency of minor officials enabled old Pere Thuillier to
hoist his son upon the lowest step of the bureaucratic hierarchy. The
old man died in 1814, leaving Jerome on the point of becoming
sub-director, but with no other fortune than that prospect. The worthy
Thuillier and his wife (who died in 1810) had retired from active
service in 1806, with a pension as their only means of support; having
spent what property they had in giving Jerome the education required
in these days, and in supporting both him and his sister.
The influence of the Restoration on the bureaucracy is well known.
From the forty and one suppressed departments a crowd of honorable
employees returned to Paris with nothing to do, and clamorous for
places inferior to those they had lately occupied. To these acquired
rights were added those of exiled families ruined by the Revolution.
Pressed between the two floods, Jerome thought himself lucky not to
have been dismissed under some frivolous pretext. He trembled until
the day when, becoming by mere chance sub-director, he saw himself
secure of a retiring pension. This cursory view of matters will serve to
explain Monsieur Thuillier's very limited scope and knowledge. He had
learned the Latin, mathematics, history, and geography that are taught

in schools, but he never got beyond what is called the second class; his
father having preferred to take advantage of a sudden opportunity to
place him at the ministry. So, while the young Thuillier was making his
first records on the Grand-Livre, he ought to have been studying his
rhetoric and philosophy.
While grinding the ministerial machine, he had no leisure to cultivate
letters, still less the arts; but he acquired a routine knowledge of his
business, and when he had an opportunity to rise, under the Empire, to
the sphere of superior employees, he assumed a superficial air of
competence which concealed the son of a porter, though none of it
rubbed into his mind. His ignorance, however, taught him to keep
silence, and silence served him well. He accustomed himself to practise,
under the imperial regime, a passive obedience which pleased his
superiors; and it was to this quality that he owed at a later period his
promotion to the rank of sub-director. His routine habits then became
great experience; his manners and his silence concealed his lack of
education, and his absolute nullity was a recommendation, for a cipher
was needed. The government was afraid of displeasing both parties in
the Chamber by selecting a man from either side; it therefore got out of
the difficulty by resorting to the