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.