Bureaucracy

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Bureaucracy


Bixiou [standing with his back to the stove and holding up the sole
of each boot alternately to dry at the open door]. "This morning, at
half-past seven, I went to inquire after our most worthy and respectable
director, knight of the order of Christ, et caetera, et caetera. Yes,
gentlemen, last night he was a being with twenty et caeteras, to-day
he is nothing, not even a government clerk. I asked all particulars of
his nurse. She told me that this morning at five o'clock he became
uneasy about the royal family. He asked for the names of all the
clerks who had called to inquire after him; and then he said: 'Fill my
snuff-box, give me the newspaper, bring my spectacles, and change my
ribbon of the Legion of honor,--it is very dirty.' I suppose you know
he always wore his orders in bed. He was fully conscious, retained his
senses and all his usual ideas. But, presto! ten minutes later the
water rose, rose, rose and flooded his chest; he knew he was dying for
he felt the cysts break. At that fatal moment he gave evident proof of
his powerful mind and vast intellect. Ah, we never rightly appreciated
him! We used to laugh at him and call him a booby--didn't you,
Monsieur Godard?"

Godard. "I? I always rated Monsieur de la Billardiere's talents higher
than the rest of you."

Bixiou. "You and he could understand each other!"

Godard. "He wasn't a bad man; he never harmed any one."

Bixiou. "To do harm you must do something, and he never did anything.
If it wasn't you who said he was a dolt, it must have been Minard."

Minard [shrugging his shoulders]. "I!"

Bixiou. "Well, then it was you, Dutocq!" [Dutocq made a vehement
gesture of denial.] "Oh! very good, then it was nobody. Every one in
this office knew his intellect was herculean. Well, you were right. He
ended, as I have said, like the great man that he was."

Desroys [impatiently]. "Pray what did he do that was so great? he had
the weakness to confess himself."

Bixiou. "Yes, monsieur, he received the holy sacraments. But do you
know what he did in order to receive them? He put on his uniform as
gentleman-in-ordinary of the Bedchamber, with all his orders, and had
himself powdered; they tied his queue (that poor queue!) with a fresh
ribbon. Now I say that none but a man of remarkable character would
have his queue tied with a fresh ribbon just as he was dying. There
are eight of us here, and I don't believe one among us is capable of
such an act. But that's not all; he said,--for you know all celebrated
men make a dying speech; he said,--stop now, what did he say? Ah! he
said, 'I must attire myself to meet the King of Heaven,--I, who have
so often dressed in my best for audience with the kings of earth.'
That's how Monsieur de la Billardiere departed this life. He took upon
himself to justify the saying of Pythagoras, 'No man is known until he
dies.'"

Colleville [rushing in]. "Gentlemen, great news!"

All. "We know it."

Colleville. "I defy you to know it! I have been hunting for it ever
since the accession of His Majesty to the thrones of France and of
Navarre. Last night I succeeded! but with what labor! Madame
Colleville asked me what was the matter."

Dutocq. "Do you think we have time to bother ourselves with your
intolerable anagrams when the worthy Monsieur de la Billardiere has
just expired?"

Colleville. "That's Bixiou's nonsense! I have just come from Monsieur
de la Billardiere's; he is still living, though they expect him to die
soon." [Godard, indignant at the hoax, goes off grumbling.]
"Gentlemen! you would never guess what extraordinary events are
revealed by the anagram of this sacramental sentence" [he pulls out a
piece of paper and reads], "Charles dix, par la grace de Dieu, roi de
France et de Navarre."

Godard [re-entering]. "Tell what it is at once, and don't keep people
waiting."

Colleville [triumphantly unfolding the rest of the paper]. "Listen!

"A H. V. il cedera;
De S. C. l. d. partira;
Eh nauf errera,
Decide a Gorix.

"Every letter is there!" [He repeats it.] "A Henry cinq cedera (his
crown of course); de Saint-Cloud partira; en nauf (that's an old
French word for skiff, vessel, felucca, corvette, anything you like)
errera--"

Dutocq. "What a tissue of absurdities! How can the King cede his crown
to Henry V., who, according to your nonsense, must be his grandson,
when Monseigneur le Dauphin is living. Are you prophesying the
Dauphin's death?"

Bixiou. "What's Gorix, pray?--the name of a cat?"

Colleville [provoked]. "It is the archaeological and lapidarial
abbreviation of the name of a town, my good friend; I looked it out in
Malte-Brun: Goritz, in Latin Gorixia, situated in Bohemia or Hungary,
or it may be Austria--"

Bixiou. "Tyrol, the Basque provinces, or South America. Why don't you
set it all to music and play it on the clarionet?"

Godard [shrugging his shoulders and departing]. "What utter nonsense!"

Colleville. "Nonsense! nonsense indeed! It is a pity you don't take
the trouble to study fatalism, the religion of the Emperor Napoleon."

Godard [irritated at Colleville's tone]. "Monsieur Colleville, let me
tell you that Bonaparte may perhaps be styled Emperor by historians,
but it is extremely out of place to refer to him as such in a
government office."

Bixiou [laughing]. "Get an anagram out of that, my dear fellow."

Colleville [angrily]. "Let me tell you that if Napoleon Bonaparte had
studied the letters of his name on the 14th of April, 1814, he might
perhaps be Emperor still."

Bixiou. "How do you make that out?"

Colleville [solemnly]. "Napoleon Bonaparte.--No, appear not at Elba!"

Dutocq. "You'll lose your place for talking such nonsense."

Colleville. "If my place is taken from me, Francois Keller will make
it hot for your minister." [Dead silence.] "I'd have you to know,
Master Dutocq, that all known anagrams have actually come to pass.
Look here,--you, yourself,--don't you marry, for there's 'coqu' in
your name."

Bixiou [interrupting]. "And d, t, for de-testable."

Dutocq [without seeming angry]. "I don't care, as long as it is only
in my name. Why don't you anagrammatize, or whatever you call it,
'Xavier Rabourdin, chef du bureau'?"

Colleville. "Bless you, so I have!"

Bixiou [mending his pen]. "And what did you make of it?"

Colleville. "It comes out as follows: D'abord reva bureaux, E-u,--(you
catch the meaning? et eut--and had) E-u fin riche; which signifies
that after first belonging to the administration, he gave it up and
got rich elsewhere." [Repeats.] "D'abord reva bureaux, E-u fin riche."

Dutocq. "That IS queer!"

Bixiou. "Try Isidore Baudoyer."

Colleville [mysteriously]. "I sha'n't tell the other anagrams to any
one but Thuillier."

Bixiou. "I'll bet you a breakfast that I can tell that one myself."

Colleville. "And I'll pay if you find it out."

Bixiou. "Then I shall breakfast at your expense; but you won't be
angry, will you? Two such geniuses as you and I need never conflict.
'Isidore Baudoyer' anagrams into 'Ris d'aboyeur d'oie.'"

Colleville [petrified with amazement]. "You stole it from me!"

Bixiou [with dignity]. "Monsieur Colleville, do me the honor to
believe that I am rich enough in absurdity not to steal my neighbor's
nonsense."

Baudoyer [entering with a bundle of papers in his hand]. "Gentlemen, I
request you to shout a little louder; you bring this office into such
high repute with the administration. My worthy coadjutor, Monsieur
Clergeot, did me the honor just now to come and ask a question, and he
heard the noise you are making" [passes into Monsieur Godard's room].

Bixiou [in a low voice]. "The watch-dog is very tame this morning;
there'll be a change of weather before night."

Dutocq [whispering to Bixiou]. "I have something I want to say to
you."

Bixiou [fingering Dutocq's waistcoat]. "You've a pretty waistcoat,
that cost you nothing; is that what you want to say?"

Dutocq. "Nothing, indeed! I never paid so dear for anything in my
life. That stuff cost six francs a yard in the best shop in the rue de
la Paix,--a fine dead stuff, the very thing for deep mourning."

Bixiou. "You know about engravings and such things, my dear fellow,
but you are totally ignorant of the laws of etiquette. Well, no man
can be a universal genius! Silk is positively not admissible in deep
mourning. Don't you see I am wearing woollen? Monsieur Rabourdin,
Monsieur Baudoyer, and the minister are all in woollen; so is the
faubourg Saint-Germain. There's no one here but Minard who doesn't
wear woollen; he's afraid of being taken for a sheep. That's the
reason why he didn't put on mourning for Louis XVIII."

[During this conversation Baudoyer is sitting by the fire in Godard's
room, and the two are conversing in a low voice.]

Baudoyer. "Yes, the worthy man is dying. The two ministers are both
with him. My father-in-law has been notified of the event. If you want
to do me a signal service you will take a cab and go and let Madame
Baudoyer know what is happening; for Monsieur Saillard can't leave his
desk, nor I my office. Put yourself at my wife's orders; do whatever
she wishes. She has, I believe, some ideas of her own, and wants to
take certain steps simultaneously." [The two functionaries go out
together.]

Godard. "Monsieur Bixiou, I am obliged to leave the office for the
rest of the day. You will take my place."

Baudoyer [to Bixiou, benignly]. "Consult me, if there is any
necessity."

Bixiou. "This time, La Billardiere is really dead."

Dutocq [in Bixiou's ear]. "Come outside a minute." [The two go into
the corridor and gaze at each other like birds of ill-omen.]

Dutocq [whispering]. "Listen. Now is the time for us to understand
each other and push our way. What would you say to your being made
head of the bureau, and I under you?"

Bixiou [shrugging his shoulders]. "Come, come, don't talk nonsense!"

Dutocq. "If Baudoyer gets La Billardiere's place Rabourdin won't stay
on where he is. Between ourselves, Baudoyer is so incapable that if du
Bruel and you don't help him he will certainly be dismissed in a
couple of months. If I know arithmetic that will give three empty
places for us to fill--"

Bixiou. "Three places right under our noses, which will certainly be
given to some bloated favorite, some spy, some pious fraud,--to
Colleville perhaps, whose wife has ended where all pretty women end
--in piety."

Dutocq. "No, to /you/, my dear fellow, if you will only, for once in
your life, use your wits logically." [He stopped as if to study the
effect of his adverb in Bixiou's face.] "Come, let us play fair."

Bixiou [stolidly]. "Let me see your game."

Dutocq. "I don't wish to be anything more than under-head-clerk. I
know myself perfectly well, and I know I haven't the ability, like
you, to be head of a bureau. Du Bruel can be director, and you the
head of this bureau; he will leave you his place as soon as he has
made his pile; and as for me, I shall swim with the tide comfortably,
under your protection, till I can retire on a pension."

Bixiou. "Sly dog! but how to you expect to carry out a plan which
means forcing the minister's hand and ejecting a man of talent?
Between ourselves, Rabourdin is the only man capable of taking charge
of the division, and I might say of the ministry. Do you know that
they talk of putting in over his head that solid lump of foolishness,
that cube of idiocy, Baudoyer?"

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/. Everybody 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?"