ne the task, saddled as he
was with the reputation, derived from his pamphlet, of being a man of
letters and an able writer; therefore, in presence of the perilous honor
conferred upon him by his colleagues of the general Council, he sat down
terrified by his solitude and his insufficiency.

In vain did he lock himself into his study, gorge himself with black
coffee, mend innumerable pens, and write a score of times at the head of
his paper (which he was careful to cut of the exact dimensions as that
used by la Peyrade) the solemn words: "Report to the Members of the
Municipal Council of the City of Paris," followed, on a line by itself,
by a magnificent _Messieurs_--nothing came of it! He was fain to issue
furious from his study, complaining of the horrible household racket
which "cut the thread of his ideas"; though really no greater noise
than the closing of a door or the opening of a closet or the moving of
a chair had made itself heard. All this, however, did not help the
advancement of the work, which remained, as before--simply begun.

Most fortunately, it happened that Rabourdin, wanting to make some
change in his apartment, came, as was proper, to submit his plan to the
owner of the house. Thuillier granted cordially the request that was
made to him, and then discoursed to his tenant about the report with
which he was charged,--being desirous, he said, to obtain his ideas on
the subject.

Rabourdin, to whom no administrative question was foreign, very readily
threw upon the subject a number of very clear and lucid ideas. He was
one of those men to whom the quality of the intellect to which they
address themselves is more or less indifferent; a fool, or a man of
talent who will listen to them, serves equally well to think aloud to,
and they are, as a stimulant, about the same thing. After Rabourdin had
said his say, he observed that Thuillier had not understood him; but he
had listened to himself with pleasure, and he was, moreover, grateful
for the attention, obtuse as it was, of his hearer, and also for the
kindliness of the landlord in receiving his request.

"I must have among my papers," he said as he went away, "something on
this subject; I will look it up and send it to you."

Accordingly, that same evening Thuillier received a voluminous
manuscript; and he spent the entire night in delving into that precious
repository of ideas, from which he extracted enough to make a really
remarkable report, clum