Here we must explain, as much for foreigners as for our own grandchildren, what a supernumerary in a government office in Paris means.

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 as parvenus.  Journalists were apt to persecute the tribe, who were cousins, nephews, brothers, or other relatives of some minister, some deputy, or an influential peer.  The humbler clerks regarded them as a means of influence.

The poor supernumerary, on the other hand, who is the only real worker, is almost always the son of some former clerk’s widow, who lives on a meagre pension and sacrifices herself to support her son until he can get a place as copying-clerk, and then dies leaving him no nearer the head of his department than writer of deeds, order-clerks, or, possibly, under-head-clerk.  Living always in some locality where rents are low, this humble supernumerary starts early from home.  For him the Eastern question relates only to the morning skies.  To go on foot and not get muddied, to save his clothes, and allow for the time he may lose in standing under shelter