a child to a teacher when the latter cannot or will not recognize that the mind he has ruled in childhood is becoming mature.  Like Madame de Stael, who exclaimed in a room full of people, addressing, as we may say, a greater man than herself, “Do you know you have really said something very profound!” Madame Rabourdin said of her husband:  “He certainly has a good deal of sense at times.”  Her disparaging opinion of him gradually appeared in her behavior through almost imperceptible motions.  Her attitude and manners expressed a want of respect.  Without being aware of it she injured her husband in the eyes of others; for in all countries society, before making up its mind about a man, listens for what his wife thinks of him, and obtains from her what the Genevese term “pre-advice.”

When Rabourdin became aware of the mistakes which love had led him to commit it was too late,—­the groove had been cut; he suffered and was silent.  Like other men in whom sentiments and ideas are of equal strength, whose souls are noble and their brains well balanced, he was the defender of his wife before the tribunal of his own judgment; he told himself that nature doomed her to a disappointed life through his fault; his; she was like a thoroughbred English horse, a racer harnessed to a cart full of stones; she it was who suffered; and he blamed himself.  His wife, by dint of constant repetition, had inoculated him with her own belief in herself.  Ideas are contagious in a household; the ninth thermidor, like so many other portentous events, was the result of female influence.  Thus, goaded by Celestine’s ambition, Rabourdin had long considered the means of satisfying it, though he hid his hopes, so as to spare her the tortures of uncertainty.  The man was firmly resolved to make his way in the administration by bringing a strong light to bear upon it.  He intended to bring about one of those revolutions which send a man to the head of either one party or another in society; but being incapable of so doing in his own interests, he merely pondered useful thoughts and dreamed of triumphs won for his country by noble means.  His ideas were both generous and ambitious; few officials have not conceived the like; but among officials as among artists there are more miscarriages than births; which is tantamount to Buffon’s saying that “Genius is patience.”

Placed in a position where he could study French administration and observe its mechanism, Rabourdin worked in the circle where his thought revolved, which, we may remark parenthetically, is the secret of much human accomplishment; and his labor culminated finally in the invention of a new system for the Civil Service of government.  Knowing the people with whom he had to do, he maintained the machine as it then worked, so it still works and will continue to work; for everybody fears to remodel it, though no one, according to Rabourdin, ought to be unwilling to simplify it.  In his opinion, the