have pushed their way,--one has married a young woman who made a false
step; another, the natural daughter of a minister; this one shouldered
the responsibility of another's fault; that one, full of talent, risks
his health in doing, with the perseverance of a mole, prodigies of
work which the man of influence feels incapable of doing for himself,
though he takes the credit. Everything is known in a government
office. The incapable man has a wife with a clear head, who has pushed
him along and got him nominated for deputy; if he has not talent
enough for an office, he cabals in the Chamber. The wife of another
has a statesman at her feet. A third is the hidden informant of a
powerful journalist. Often the disgusted and hopeless supernumerary
sends in his resignation. About three fourths of his class leave the
government employ without ever obtaining an appointment, and their
number is winnowed down to either those young men who are foolish or
obstinate enough to say to themselves, "I have been here three years,
and I must end sooner or later by getting a place," or to those who
are conscious of a vocation for the work. Undoubtedly the position of
supernumerary in a government office is precisely what the novitiate
is in a religious order,--a trial. It is a rough trial. The State
discovers how many of them can bear hunger, thirst, and penury without
breaking down, how many can toil without revolting against it; it
learns which temperaments can bear up under the horrible experience
--or if you like, the disease--of government official life. From this
point of view the apprenticeship of the supernumerary, instead of
being an infamous device of the government to obtain labor gratis,
becomes a useful institution.

The young man with whom Rabourdin was talking was a poor supernumerary
named Sebastien de la Roche, who had picked his way on the points of
his toes, without incurring the least splash upon his boots, from the