and belittling life resembles that of seminaries.  Wherever men live collectively this likeness is obvious; in regiments, in law-courts, you will find the elements of the school on a smaller or larger scale.  The government clerks, forced to be together for nine hours of the day, looked upon their office as a sort of class-room where they had tasks to perform, where the head of the bureau was no other than a schoolmaster, and where the gratuities bestowed took the place of prizes given out to proteges,—­a place, moreover, where they teased and hated each other, and yet felt a certain comradeship, colder than that of a regiment, which itself is less hearty than that of seminaries.  As a man advances in life he grows more selfish; egoism develops, and relaxes all the secondary bonds of affection.  A government office is, in short, a microcosm of society, with its oddities and hatreds, its envy and its cupidity, its determination to push on, no matter who goes under, its frivolous gossip which gives so many wounds, and its perpetual spying.

CHAPTER V

The machine in motion

At this moment the division of Monsieur de la Billardiere was in a state of unusual excitement, resulting very naturally from the event which was about to happen; for heads of divisions do not die every day, and there is no insurance office where the chances of life and death are calculated with more sagacity than in a government bureau.  Self-interest stifles all compassion, as it does in children, but the government service adds hypocrisy to boot.

The clerks of the bureau Baudoyer arrived at eight o’clock in the morning, whereas those of the bureau Rabourdin seldom appeared till nine,—­a circumstance which did not prevent the work in the latter office from being more rapidly dispatched than that of the former.  Dutocq had important reasons for coming early on this particular morning.  The previous evening he had furtively entered the study where Sebastien was at work, and had seen him copying some papers for Rabourdin; he concealed himself until he saw Sebastien leave the premises without taking any papers away with him.  Certain, therefore, of finding the rather voluminous memorandum which he had seen, together with its copy, in some corner of the study, he searched through the boxes one after another until he finally came upon the fatal list.  He carried it in hot haste to an autograph-printing house, where he obtained two pressed copies of the memorandum, showing, of course, Rabourdin’s own writing.  Anxious not to arouse suspicion, he had gone very early to the office and replaced both the memorandum and Sebastien’s copy in the box from which he had taken them.  Sebastien, who was kept up till after midnight at Madame Rabourdin’s party, was, in spite of his desire to get to the office early, preceded by the spirit of hatred.  Hatred lived in the rue Saint-Louis-Saint-Honore, whereas love and devotion lived far-off in the rue du Roi-Dore in the Marais.  This slight delay was destined to affect Rabourdin’s whole career.