and consolidate itself. Bureaucracy holds all things and the
administration itself in leading strings; it stifles men of talent who
are bold enough to be independent of it or to enlighten it on its own
follies. About the time of which we write the pension list had just
been issued, and on it Rabourdin saw the name of an underling in
office rated for a larger sum than the old colonels, maimed and
wounded for their country. In that fact lies the whole history of
bureaucracy.

Another evil, brought about by modern customs, which Rabourdin counted
among the causes of this secret demoralization, was the fact that
there is no real subordination in the administration in Paris;
complete equality reigns between the head of an important division and
the humblest copying-clerk; one is as powerful as the other in an
arena outside of which each lords it in his own way. Education,
equally distributed through the masses, brings the son of a porter
into a government office to decide the fate of some man of merit or
some landed proprietor whose door-bell his father may have answered.
The last comer is therefore on equal terms with the oldest veteran in
the service. A wealthy supernumerary splashes his superior as he
drives his tilbury to Longchamps and points with his whip to the poor
father of a family, remarking to the pretty woman at his side, "That's
my chief." The Liberals call this state of things Progress; Rabourdin
thought it Anarchy at the heart of power. He saw how it resulted in
restless intrigues, like those of a harem between eunuchs and women
and imbecile sultans, or the petty troubles of nuns full of underhand
vexations, or college tyrannies, or diplomatic manoeuvrings fit to
terrify an ambassador, all put in motion to obtain a fee or an
increase in salary; it was like the hopping of fleas harnessed to
pasteboard cars, the spitefulness of slaves, often visited on the