[19] Figg fought much more with the sword than with his fists.
An Austrian Employé.
Neither a gipsy nor an Austrian employé has any country. They both lead a nomadic life, without home or fixed habitation; and when the gipsy has stolen what the neighbours had to lose, and the Austrian employé has exhausted all the squeezable properties of his office, they both move off—the gipsy whither he likes best, the Austrian employé most frequently whither he likes least.
The Austrian employé seldom administers in the town or province to which he belongs. The sages of the Austrian empire had one wise axiom, on which rested the whole of the government machinery. This axiom, sowed hatred and distrust in the fertile plains of Hungary and the pleasant gardens of Italy, in the homesteads of the Tyrolese and in the cottages of the half-starved Silesians: and soon thousands of hirelings were needed to help cut the rank ears, and bring the poisonous harvest home. And what harvests did not Austria bring home in 1848 and 1849! The axiom is “Divide et impera;” and forms the secret of Austrian policy. Government appoints no Austrian subject to any post or office in his native place. He would have friends and relations there, with whom he would be tender in the matter of extortion; and Austria wants money, not friends. If an Italian were suffered to administer in Lombardy, where would the ducats and the spies come from? He would naturally seek to gain the love and confidence of his compatriots; but the Government who have standing armies and above 500,000 employés to pay, would rather have the ducats than the love—it wants spies, not confidence. Therefore must the Hungarian Radetsky suck the golden fluid from the veins of Lombardy, no matter what blood or tears may be shed; the Bohemian Windischgrätz must rule in Hungary; a garrison of Slavonians must hold the fortresses of Silesia; a soldier must judge civilians; a council of lords promote the interests of plebeians; and a celibatarian priest decide on causes matrimonial.
Consequent upon these regulations, the writer’s father, a native of Bohemia married to a Viennese lady, was sent to Hungary, to deal with a people of whose language he knew nothing, and of whose customs he knew worse than nothing: having scraped what little information he possessed from books which told him everything of Hungary but the truth.
An Austrian employé has no country. No sooner has he arrived at a place, than all his endeavours are bent on how to get away again. Of freedom he has less than any man in the town. He dares do nothing, however innocent, on which suspicion could by possibility fasten. He dares not visit his fellow employés: that would be plotting; he dares not openly offer a pinch of snuff to his superiors: that would be bribery; if he is in the money department, he must not have father, brother, or far-away cousin in the same office, for fear of connivance. For the Austrian Government has the worst possible opinion of its bureaucratic members; saying “quibbet præsumitur,” a thief—“donec probetur,” the contrary. If the employé is an inferior, he is condemned to starvation; if a superior, he is surrounded by a swarm of inferiors, who wait for his place, like carrion crows waiting for the carcase on which the vultures are feeding.
When such a place is vacant, what an uproar! what whisperings and shruggings of shoulders, what calculations and intrigues, hopes, energies, expectations and disappointments, among the office-seeking crowd! Early in the morning the candidate’s wife, if she is young, or his daughters, if they are pretty, go about from office to office canvassing for votes. Courtesies are proffered, promises are made, tears are shed, and family miseries related again and again; variegated, however, in pattern and direction, to suit the exigencies of the moment: sentimental with the amiable, humble with the proud, pleading poverty to the rich, and the rapid increase of a family to the bachelor, the fair petitioners always close with the same formulæ—“generous protector,” “just appreciator of the meanest merit,” “your great influence,” and “eternal gratitude.” And sometimes the candidate opens the small chest where, in spite of multitudinous christenings and many doctors’ bills, he has managed to keep a few articles of family plate or ancestral vertù, and, with a heavy sigh, wraps perhaps his silver candelabra in tissue paper, and sends them to the chief power among the electors—an incorruptible man, whom he does not attempt to bribe, but whose choice he seeks to enlighten. In this scramble two men only come off well—the chief elector, whom everybody propitiates, and the successful candidate: unless, indeed, his place has cost him more than it is worth: which is not a rare occurrence in bribing, money-loving Austria.
An Austrian employé, is nothing but an animated copying machine: for in Austria nothing is ever said or done; everything is written. Heaven only knows what they all write, and where those thousands of reams go to at last; but every one writes, from nine in the morning to late at night, and all the year round alike. Bent low over their desks, with black fingers, black looks, and blackest ennui, without hope either of an early promotion or a late dinner, there they sit and write, till their brains are muddled and their hands are weary: head, heart, and life are equally exhausted and dried up. Whole reams of foolscap are written out for Section A, and duplicates thereof made for Section B. These duplicates are copied for the Register’s Office; the copy is copied for the Chancellor; an extract of the original copy is to be sent to Section D; copy of the copy, and duplicate thereof, are to be carefully written out again on foolscap, and sent to the so-called Court Office “Hofkammer,” and there all is again written, copied, labelled, registered, and numbered; the documents are then thrust away into the proper pigeon-holes, where, for the most part, they get worm-eaten and are forgotten.
After an Austrian employé has written, from the 1st of January to the 31st of December, what no one will ever want to read, he must set a day aside whereon to fill up, in his own handwriting, the blanks left in a printed form called Comptabilitäts Tabelle. The following are the questions which he must answer there:—1. Name, age, birthplace? 2. Of what religion? 3. Where and what he has studied? what languages he speaks? what capabilities he possesses? 4. When he entered his Majesty’s service? what different situations he has held? and what situation he holds now while writing this abridged autobiography? 5. Is he husband, bachelor, or widower? father or childless? 6. Has he any private fortune?