The supernumerary is to the administration what a choir-boy is to a
church, what the company's child is to the regiment, what the
figurante is to a theatre; something artless, naive, innocent, a being
blinded by illusions. Without illusions what would become of any of
us? They give strength to bear the res angusta domi of arts and the
beginnings of all science by inspiring us with faith. Illusion is
illimitable faith. Now the supernumerary has faith in the
administration; he never thinks it cold, cruel, and hard, as it really
is. There are two kinds of supernumeraries, or hangers-on,--one poor,
the other rich. The poor one is rich in hope and wants a place, the
rich one is poor in spirit and wants nothing. A wealthy family is not
so foolish as to put its able men into the administration. It confides
an unfledged scion to some head-clerk, or gives him in charge of a
directory who initiates him into what Bilboquet, that profound
philosopher, called the high comedy of government; he is spared all
the horrors of drudgery and is finally appointed to some important
office. The rich supernumerary never alarms the other clerks; they
know he does not endanger their interests, for he seeks only the
highest posts in the administration. About the period of which we
write many families were saying to themselves: "What can we do with
our sons?" The army no longer offered a chance for fortune. Special
careers, such as civil and military engineering, the navy, mining, and
the professorial chair were all fenced about by strict regulations or
to be obtained only by competition; whereas in the civil service the
revolving wheel which turned clerks into prefects, sub-prefects,
assessors, and collectors, like the figures in a magic lantern, was
subjected to no such rules and entailed no drudgery. Through this easy
gap emerged into life the rich supernumeraries who drove their
tilburys, dressed well, and wore moustachios, all of them as impudent