Hors-d'Œuvre

The Worker of the Eleventh Hour

A few days ago, the Academies held their quarterly session at the Palais Mazarin, in order to exchange a few periodic courtesies.

Three members of the Académie Française were present, whose names are of little importance. They had to share a purse of 200 francs, as attendance fees; they calculated, with the help of some colleagues from the Académie des Sciences, that each of them would receive a sum of 66 francs. 66, which is too tight... Our Courteline told me one evening that from a certain age one no longer has the right to be bored for free. This is an admirable statement. Boredom must be paid for like work (work is a boredom that is sometimes productive; boredom is sterile work). But only a few very distinguished people, such as academicians, heads of state, presidents of the Chamber, the Senate and other boards of directors, are in a position to put this invaluable rule of conduct into practice.

The quarterly meeting having ended, the precious collection of academicians that had been assembled for this occasion and which included the most curious artistic, literary and scientific varieties, was immediately dispersed. Only a few journalists remained in the meeting room, busy collecting notes.
Then, like a luxury carabinieri, a fourth member of the French Academy arrived. We will designate him discreetly, specifying that, in civilian life, before his incorporation, he was not a man of letters, nor a marshal, nor a duke, nor a bishop, nor precisely a senior politician. In civilian life, he did not do much: he was a diplomat, under the name of a street that is in the Madeleine district.
Is the session over? asked the former ambassador.
He was answered in the affirmative. Perfect, perfect, said the academician with an air of satisfaction that seemed at first inexplicable.
"So why did he come?" the journalists wondered.
It was soon understood. The academician made a sign to the usher, who brought him the register, and, on the register, the academician coldly affixed his signature.
Which entitles him to the attendance fee. The 200 franc allowance is no longer divided between three, but between four beneficiaries. The three good students who were conscientiously bored no longer receive 66 francs. 66, but 50 francs; a sum equal to that received by the amateur who skipped the ceremony.
We must not be indignant. Even astonishment would be exaggerated. We must refer to precedents, traditions, and the most respectable principles of our high administration.

A civil servant is paid to be in a certain place, for a certain period of time. The rule of the game is that the civil servant puts all his self-esteem (and I invoke here, once again, the authority of the author of Monsieur Badin) into not being in the place where he should be and not doing the things for which he is paid... Obviously, minor civil servants do not have the means to afford this satisfaction of self-esteem and must be conscientious. But, at a higher level of the hierarchy, the civil servant is represented in his office by his hat hanging on the coat rack. And the senior civil servant is recognized by the fact that he is never there: he is always somewhere else... Except, of course, when this senior civil servant is a diplomat: in this case, he is never somewhere else, and he is always there (because, precisely, a diplomat is paid to be somewhere else). Thus, our academician remained a civil servant and fulfilled a professional point of honor: it is interesting to receive an attendance fee, provided that one was absent.

And then there is a page in the Gospel that must appease the improbable scruples of the former ambassador and earn him the approval of all the academic prelates: it is the parable of the worker of the eleventh hour.

Truly, I tell you, it matters little that the construction site has closed its doors, provided that the cash register is still open.

G. DE LA FOUCHARDIÈRE.