Bureaucracy

Honoré de Balzac

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9783749449057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Fiction
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Bureaucracy
• CHAPTER I. THE RABOURDIN HOUSEHOLD
• CHAPTER II. MONSIEUR DES LUPEAULX
• CHAPTER III. THE TEREDOS NAVALIS, OTHERWISE CALLED SHIP-WORM
• CHAPTER IV. THREE-QUARTER LENGTH PORTRAITS OF CERTAIN GOVERNMENT
• CHAPTER V. THE MACHINE IN MOTION
• CHAPTER VI. THE WORMS AT WORK
• CHAPTER VII. SCENES FROM DOMESTIC LIFE
• CHAPTER VIII. FORWARD, MOLLUSKS!
• CHAPTER IX. THE RESIGNATION
• Copyright