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 not 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