Can you understand, Monsieur Poiret," [Poiret jumped as if he had been shot] "how a nation can do without heads of divisions, general-secretaries and directors, and all this splendid array of officials, the glory of France and of the Emperor Napoleon,--who had his own good reasons for creating a myriad of offices?
I don't see how those nations have the audacity to live at all.

There's Austria, which has less than a hundred clerks in her war ministry, while the salaries and pensions of ours amount to a third of our whole budget, a thing that was unheard of before the Revolution.

I sum up all I've been saying in one single remark, namely, that the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres, which seems to have very little to do, had better offer a prize for the ablest answer to the following question: Which is the best organized State; the one that does many things with few officials, or the one that does next to nothing with an army of them ?" Poiret.

"Is that your last word ?" Bixiou.

"Yes, sir! whether English, French, German or Italian,--I let you off the other languages." Poiret [lifting his hands to heaven].