A deputy.  “So you lose Rabourdin?”

Des Lupeaulx.  “He has resigned.”

Clergeot.  “They say he wanted to reform the administration.”

The Minister [looking at the deputies].  “Salaries are not really in proportion to the exigencies of the civil service.”

De la Briere.  “According to Monsieur Rabourdin, one hundred clerks with a salary of twelve thousand francs would do better and quicker work than a thousand clerks at twelve hundred.”

Clergeot.  “Perhaps he is right.”

The Minister.  “But what is to be done?  The machine is built in that way.  Must we take it to pieces and remake it?  No one would have the courage to attempt that in face of the Chamber, and the foolish outcries of the Opposition, and the fierce denunciations of the press.  It follows that there will happen, one of these days, some damaging ‘solution of continuity’ between the government and the administration.”

A deputy.  “In what way?”

The Minister.  “In many ways.  A minister will want to serve the public good, and will not be allowed to do so.  You will create interminable delays between things and their results.  You may perhaps render the theft of a penny actually impossible, but you cannot prevent the buying and selling of influence, the collusions of self-interest.  The day will come when nothing will be conceded without secret stipulations, which may never see the light.  Moreover, the clerks, one and all, from the least to the greatest, are acquiring opinions of their own; they will soon be no longer the hands of a brain, the scribes of governmental thought; the Opposition even now tends towards giving them a right to judge the government and to talk and vote against it.”

Baudoyer [in a low voice, but meaning to be heard].  “Monseigneur is really fine.”

Des Lupeaulx.  “Of course bureaucracy has its defects.  I myself think it slow and insolent; it hampers ministerial action, stifles projects, and arrests progress.  But, after all, French administration is amazingly useful.”

Baudoyer.  “Certainly!”

Des Lupeaulx.  “If only to maintain the paper and stamp industries!  Suppose it is rather fussy and provoking, like all good housekeepers, —­it can at any moment render an account of its disbursements.  Where is the merchant who would not gladly give five per cent of his entire capital if he could insure himself against leakage?”

The Deputy [a manufacturer].  “The manufacturing interests of all nations would joyfully unite against that evil genius of theirs called leakage.”