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The two clerks, by dint of quarrelling over the details of their lives, and washing much of their dirty linen at the office, had obtained the disrepute which they merited. "Do you take me for a Chazelle?" was a frequent saying that served to end many an annoying discussion.
Unlike these Siamese twins, two other clerks, Chazelle and Paulmier, were forever squabbling. One smoked, the other took snuff, and the merits of their respective use of tobacco were the origin of ceaseless disputes.
I don't know what Monsieur Rabourdin wants with Gabriel; he keeps him to do his private errands, I believe. Chazelle. "Damned unlucky!" You might have seen the elephant, and the hat too; they are big enough to be visible." I don't see why we should be treated like slaves because the government gives us four francs and sixty-five centimes a day."
Even a lazy man, who does nothing but make debts, has time to marry a widow who pays them; a priest finds time to become a bishop 'in partibus. A sober, intelligent young fellow, who begins with a small capital as a money-changer, soon buys a share in a broker's business; and, to go even lower, a petty clerk becomes a notary, a rag-picker lays by two or three thousand francs a year, and the poorest workmen often become manufacturers; whereas, in the rotatory movement of this present civilization, which mistakes perpetual division and redivision for progress, an unhappy civil service clerk, like Chazelle for instance, is forced to dine for twenty-two sous a meal, struggles with his tailor and bootmaker, gets into debt, and is an absolute nothing; worse than that, he becomes an idiot!
The poorest places are at the mercy of a thousand mischances because we are now ruled by a thousand sovereigns." Where do you find a thousand sovereigns? not in your pocket, are they?" Chazelle. "Count them up. The court, which ought to count for the other three hundred, has seven hundred parts less power to get a man appointed to a place under government than the Emperor Napoleon had." Fleury.
Chazelle's home, which was tyrannized over by a wife, furnished a subject of endless ridicule to Paulmier; whereas Paulmier, a bachelor, often half-starved like Vimeux, with ragged clothes and half-concealed penury was a fruitful source of ridicule to Chazelle.
Come, gentlemen, now's the time to make a stand! Let us all give in our resignations! Fleury, Chazelle, fling yourselves into other employments and become the great men you really are." Bixiou. "You are wrong; in your situation I should try to get ahead of the general-secretary." Bixiou. "You'll find out; do you suppose Baudoyer will overlook what happened just now?" Fleury.
About ten o'clock, in the bureau Baudoyer, Bixiou was relating the last moments of the life of the director to Minard, Desroys, Monsieur Godard, whom he had called from his private office, and Dutocq, who had rushed in with private motives of his own. Colleville and Chazelle were absent.
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