ot to have been dismissed
under some frivolous pretext. He trembled until the day when, becoming
by mere chance sub-director, he saw himself secure of a retiring
pension. This cursory view of matters will serve to explain Monsieur
Thuillier's very limited scope and knowledge. He had learned the Latin,
mathematics, history, and geography that are taught in schools, but
he never got beyond what is called the second class; his father having
preferred to take advantage of a sudden opportunity to place him at the
ministry. So, while the young Thuillier was making his first records
on the Grand-Livre, he ought to have been studying his rhetoric and
philosophy.

While grinding the ministerial machine, he had no leisure to cultivate
letters, still less the arts; but he acquired a routine knowledge of his
business, and when he had an opportunity to rise, under the Empire,
to the sphere of superior employees, he assumed a superficial air of
competence which concealed the son of a porter, though none of it rubbed
into his mind. His ignorance, however, taught him to keep silence, and
silence served him well. He accustomed himself to practise, under the
imperial regime, a passive obedience which pleased his superiors; and it
was to this quality that he owed at a later period his promotion to the
rank of sub-director. His routine habits then became great experience;
his manners and his silence concealed his lack of education, and his
absolute nullity was a recommendation, for a cipher was needed. The
government was afraid of displeasing both parties in the Chamber by
selecting a man from either side; it therefore got out of the difficulty
by resorting to the rule of seniority. That is how Thuillier became
sub-director. Mademoiselle Thuillier, knowing that her brother abhorred
reading, and could substitute no business for the bustle of a public
office, had wisely resolved to plunge him into the cares of property,
into the culture of a garden, in short, into all the infinitely petty
concerns and neighborhood intrigues which make up the life of the
bourgeoisie.

The transplanting of the Thuillier household from the rue d'Argenteuil
to the rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer, the business of making the purchase,
of finding a suitable porter, and then of obtaining tenants occupied
Thuillier from 1831 to 1832. When the phenomenon of the change was
accomplished, and the sister saw that Jerome had borne it fairly well,
she found him other cares an