gloved and booted in the latest fashion, and twirling an eyeglass, Benjamin de la Billardiere thought himself a charming fellow and possessed all the vices of the world with none of its graces.  He was now looking forward impatiently to the death of his father, that he might succeed to the title of baron.  His cards were printed “le Chevalier de la Billardiere” and on the wall of his office hung, in a frame, his coat of arms (sable, two swords in saltire, on a chief azure three mullets argent; with the motto; “Toujours fidele").  Possessed with a mania for talking heraldry, he once asked the young Vicomte de Portenduere why his arms were charged in a certain way, and drew down upon himself the happy answer, “I did not make them.”  He talked of his devotion to the monarchy and the attentions the Dauphine paid him.  He stood very well with des Lupeaulx, whom he thought his friend, and they often breakfasted together.  Bixiou posed as his mentor, and hoped to rid the division and France of the young fool by tempting him to excesses, and openly avowed that intention.

Such were the principal figures of La Billardiere’s division of the ministry, where also were other clerks of less account, who resembled more or less those that are represented here.  It is difficult even for an observer to decide from the aspect of these strange personalities whether the goose-quill tribe were becoming idiots from the effects of their employment or whether they entered the service because they were natural born fools.  Possibly the making of them lies at the door of Nature and of the government both.  Nature, to a civil-service clerk is, in fact, the sphere of the office; his horizon is bounded on all sides by green boxes; to him, atmospheric changes are the air of the corridors, the masculine exhalations contained in rooms without ventilators, the odor of paper, pens, and ink; the soil he treads is a tiled pavement or a wooden floor, strewn with a curious litter and moistened by the attendant’s watering-pot; his sky is the ceiling toward which he yawns; his element is dust.  Several distinguished doctors have remonstrated against the influence of this second nature, both savage and civilized, on the moral being vegetating in those dreadful pens called bureaus, where the sun seldom penetrates, where thoughts are tied down to occupations like that of horses who turn a crank and who, poor beasts, yawn distressingly and die quickly.  Rabourdin was, therefore, fully justified in seeking to reform their present condition, by lessening their numbers and giving to each a larger salary and far heavier work.  Men are neither wearied nor bored when doing great things.  Under the present system government loses fully four hours out of the nine which the clerks owe to the service, —­hours wasted, as we shall see, in conversations, in gossip, in disputes, and, above all, in underhand intriguing.  The reader must have haunted the bureaus of the ministerial departments before he can realize how much their petty