The guilelessness of the supernumerary does not last long.

A youth enlightened by gleams by Parisian life soon measures the frightful distance that separates him from the head-clerkship, a distance which no mathematician, neither Archimedes, nor Leibnitz, nor Laplace has ever reckoned, the distance that exists between 0 and the figure 1.

He begins to perceive the impossibilities of his career; he hears talk of favoritism; he discovers the intrigues of officials: he sees the questionable means by which his superiors have pushed their way,--one has married a young woman who made a false step; another, the natural daughter of a minister; this one shouldered the responsibility of another's fault; that one, full of talent, risks his health in doing, with the perseverance of a mole, prodigies of work which the man of influence feels incapable of doing for himself, though he takes the credit.

Everything is known in a government office.

The incapable man has a wife with a clear head, who has pushed him along and got him nominated for deputy; if he has not talent enough for an office, he cabals in the Chamber.