In twelve years a grocer can earn enough to give him ten thousand francs a year; a painter can daub a mile of canvas and be decorated with the Legion of honor, or pose as a neglected genius.

A literary man becomes professor of something or other, or a journalist at a hundred francs for a thousand lines; he writes 'feuilletons,' or he gets into Saint-Pelagie for a brilliant article that offends the Jesuits,--which of course is an immense benefit to him and makes him a politician at once.

Even a lazy man, who does nothing but make debts, has time to marry a widow who pays them; a priest finds time to become a bishop 'in partibus.' A sober, intelligent young fellow, who begins with a small capital as a money-changer, soon buys a share in a broker's business; and, to go even lower, a petty clerk becomes a notary, a rag-picker lays by two or three thousand francs a year, and the poorest workmen often become manufacturers; whereas, in the rotatory movement of this present civilization, which mistakes perpetual division and redivision for progress, an unhappy civil service clerk, like Chazelle for instance, is forced to dine for twenty-two sous a meal, struggles with his tailor and bootmaker, gets into debt, and is an absolute nothing; worse than that, he becomes an idiot! Come, gentlemen, now's the time to make a stand! Let us all give in our resignations! Fleury, Chazelle, fling yourselves into other employments and become the great men you really are." Chazelle [calmed down by Bixiou's allocution].

"No, I thank you" [general laughter].
Bixiou.

"You are wrong; in your situation I should try to get ahead of the general-secretary." Chazelle [uneasily].