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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bureaucracy, by Honore de Balzac
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Title: Bureaucracy
Author: Honore de Balzac
Release Date: June 23, 2004 [EBook #1343]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUREAUCRACY ***
Produced by John Bickers, Bonnie Sala and Dagny
BUREAUCRACY
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To the Comtesse Seraphina San Severino, with the respectful
homage of sincere and deep admiration
De Balzac
BUREAUCRACY
CHAPTER I
THE RABOURDIN HOUSEHOLD
In Paris, where men of thought and study bear a certain likeness to
one another, living as they do in a common centre, you must have met
with several resembling Monsieur Rabourdin, whose acquaintance we are
about to make at a moment when he is head of a bureau in one of our
most important ministries. At this period he was forty years old, with
gray hair of so pleasing a shade that women might at a pinch fall in
love with it for it softened a somewhat melancholy countenance, blue
eyes full of fire, a skin that was still fair, though rather ruddy and
touched here and there with strong red marks; a forehead and nose a la
Louis XV., a serious mouth, a tall figure, thin, or perhaps wasted,
like that of a man just recovering from illness, and finally, a
bearing that was midway between the indolence of a mere idler and the
thoughtfulness of a busy man. If this portrait serves to depict his
character, a sketch of this man's dress will bring it still further
into relief. Rabourdin wore habitually a blue surcoat, a white cravat,
a waistcoat crossed a la Robespierre, black trousers without straps,
gray silk stockings and low shoes. Well-shaved, and with his stomach
warmed by a cup of coffee, he left home at eight in the morning with
the regularity of clock-work, always passing along the same streets on
his way to the ministry: so neat was he, so formal, so starched that
he might have been taken for an Englishman on the road to his embassy.
From these general signs you will readily discern a family man,
harassed by vexations in his own household, worried by annoyances at
the ministry, yet philosopher enough to take life as he found it; an
honest man, loving his country and serving it, not concealing from
himself the obstacles in the way of those who seek to do right;
prudent, because he knew men; exquisitely courteous with women, of
whom he asked nothing,--a man full of acquirements, affable with his
inferiors, holding his equals at great distance, and dignified towards
his superiors. At the epoch of which we write, you would have noticed
in him the coldly resigned air of one who has buried the illusions of
his youth and renounced every secret ambition; you would have
recognized a discouraged, but not disgusted man, one who still clings
to his first projects,--more perhaps to employ his faculties than in
the hope of a doubtful success. He was not decorated with any order,
and always accused himself of weakness for having worn that of the
Fleur-de-lis in the early days of the Restoration.
The life of this man was marked by certain mysterious peculiarities.
He had never known his father; his mother, a woman to whom luxury was
everything, always elegantly dressed, always on pleasure bent, whose
beauty seemed to him miraculous and whom he very seldom saw, left him
little at her death; but she had given him that too common and
incomplete education which produces so much ambition and so little
ability. A few days before his mother's death, when he was just
sixteen, he left the Lycee Napoleon to enter as supernumerary a
government office, where an unknown protector had provided him with a
place. At twenty-two years of age Rabourdin became under-head-clerk;
at twenty-five, head-clerk, or, as it was termed, head of the bureau.
From that day the hand that assisted the young man to start in life
was never felt again in his career, except as to a single
circumstance; it led him, poor and friendless, to the house of a
Monsieur Leprince, formerly an auctioneer, a widower said to be
extremely rich, and father of an only daughter. Xavier Rabourdin fell
desperately in love with Mademoiselle Celestine Leprince, then
seventeen years of age, who had all the matrimonial claims of a dowry
of two hundred thousand francs. Carefully educated by an artistic
mother, who transmitted her own talents to her daughter, this young
lady was fitted to attract distinguished men. Tall, handsome, and
finely-formed, she was a good musician, drew and painted, spoke
several languages, and even knew something of science,--a dangerous
advantage, which requires a woman to avoid carefully all appearance of
pedantry. Blinded by mistaken tenderness, the mother gave the daughter
false ideas as to her probable future; to the maternal eyes a duke or
an ambassador, a marshal of France or a minister of State, could alone
give her Celestine her due place in society. The young lady had,
moreover, the manners, language, and habits of the great world. Her
dress was richer and more elegant than was suitable for an unmarried
girl; a husband could give her nothing more than she now had, except
happiness. Besides all such indulgences, the foolish spoiling of the
mother, who died a year after the girl's marriage, made a husband's
task all the more difficult. What coolness and composure of mind were
needed to rule such a woman! Commonplace suitors held back in fear.
Xavier Rabourdin, without parents and without fortune other than his
situation under government, was proposed to Celestine by her father.
She resisted for a long time; not that she had any personal objection
to her suitor, who was young, handsome, and much in love, but she
shrank from the plain name of Madame Rabourdin. Monsieur Leprince
assured his daughter that Xavier was of the stock that statesmen came
of. Celestine answered that a man named Rabourdin would never be
anything under the government of the Bourbons, etc. Forced back to his
intrenchments, the father made the serious mistake of telling his
daughter that her future husband was certain of becoming Rabourdin "de
something or other" before he reached the age of admission to the
Chamber. Xavier was soon to be appointed Master of petitions, and
general-secretary at his ministry. From these lower steps of the
ladder the young man would certainly rise to the higher ranks of the
administration, possessed of a fortune and a name bequeathed to him in
a certain will of which he, Monsieur Leprince, was cognizant. On this
the marriage took place.
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