- In the second place,
there was a limit to his ambition; he did not keep constantly thinking
of mounting a step higher in the hierarchy; or how to pass from a
small town to a large one and hold on to his title; this would have
been a too troublesome and complicated matter; he would first have had
to find a purchaser and then sell his place, and next find a seller
and buy another at a higher price; a stock broker at Bordeaux, a
notary at Lyons, is not an aspirant for the post of stock broker or
notary at Paris. - Nothing then bore any resemblance to the itinerant
groups of functionaries of the present day which, in obedience to
orders from above, travels about governing each of our towns,
strangers on the wing, with no personal standing, without local landed
property, interests or means, encamped in some hired apartment, often
in a furnished room, sometimes stopping at a hotel, eternal nomads
awaiting a telegram, always prepared to pack up and leave for another
place a hundred leagues off in consideration of a hundred crowns extra
pay, and doing the same detached work over again. Their predecessor,
belonging to the country, was a stable fixture and contented; he was
not tormented by a craving for promotion; he had a career within the
bounds of his corporation and town; cherishing no wish or idea of
leaving it, he accommodated himself to it; he became proud of his
office and professional brethren, and rose above the egoism of the
individual; his self-love was bent on maintaining every prerogative
and interest belonging to his guild.
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