stocks, lose their savings, and are thankful to obtain a place in
some enterprise that is likely to succeed, after a first disaster and
liquidation, in the hands of an abler management. The late clerk then
rubs his hands, now empty, and says to himself, "I always did foresee
the success of the business." But nearly all these retired bureaucrats
have to fight against their former habits.

"Some," Colleville used to say, "are victims to a sort of 'spleen'
peculiar to the government clerk; they die of a checked circulation;
a red-tapeworm is in their vitals. That little Poiret couldn't see the
well-known white carton without changing color at the beloved sight; he
used to turn from green to yellow."

Mademoiselle Thuillier was considered the moving spirit of her brother's
household; she was not without decision and force of character, as the
following history will show. This superiority over those who immediately
surrounded her enabled her to judge her brother, although she adored
him. After witnessing the failure of the hopes she had set upon her
idol, she had too much real maternity in her feeling for him to let
herself be mistaken as to his social value.

Thuillier and his sister were children of the head porter at the
ministry of finance. Jerome had escaped, thanks to his near-sightedness,
all drafts and conscriptions. The father's ambition was to make his son
a government clerk. At the beginning of this century the army presented
too many posts not to leave various vacancies in the government offices.
A deficiency of minor officials enabled old Pere Thuillier to hoist his
son upon the lowest step of the bureaucratic hierarchy. The old man died
in 1814, leaving Jerome on the point of becoming sub-director, but with
no other fortune than that prospect. The worthy Thuillier and his wife
(who died in 1810) had retired from active service in 1806, with a
pension as their only means of support; having spent what property
they had in giving Jerome the education required in these days, and in
supporting both him and his sister.

The influence of the Restoration on the bureaucracy is well known. From
the forty and one suppressed departments a crowd of honorable employees
returned to Paris with nothing to do, and clamorous for places inferior
to those they had lately occupied. To these acquired rights were added
those of exiled families ruined by the Revolution. Pressed between the
two floods, Jerome thought himself lucky n