This last question is answered truthfully only by the very poor; for, as the Government grants no pensions to the widows and orphans of employés who have had a private income of 20l. per annum, it naturally follows that very few employés are to be found who own to the fraction of a zwanziger. At the foot of the paper a broad margin is left, headed by the inoffensive title “Special Remark.” This margin is secretly filled up by the employé’s immediate superior, who there inscribes his own private opinion of the man who, throughout all the preceding answers, has sought to place himself in the best light possible. This opinion is never stated openly, but is, on the contrary, so carefully concealed that the employé never knows what his chief thinks of him, nor what report he makes to the greater chiefs above. The “special remark” is the indication which the high officials consult: it is the shadow of him who is remarked on, following him with noiseless step wherever he goes, and looming behind him, black and threatening, when he stands in the sunlighted prospect of a hoped-for promotion. An adverse remark is the stumbling-block, the pierre d’échopment of every Austrian bureaucrat: he cannot get over it; unless, indeed, he is able to leap over the head of the special remarker, and so change places and functions with him.
Yet, in spite of all these disagreeables, and notwithstanding the absence of salary for the first years of service, a place in a Government office is much sought after, and very difficult to procure. The curriculum, too, leading to it, is not a light one. Neither in Hungary nor in Bohemia, neither in Croatia nor in Corinthia, can a man obtain a Government office unless he has studied Latin and philosophy, logic and the exact sciences. Not that he is ever required to make use of his knowledge; but it is decreed that the knowledge should be acquired. The “course” takes eight years—the term prescribed by Government as absolutely necessary for the completion of an employé’s polite education. And when, after these eight years of hard study—after the numberless fees and presents, flatteries, bowings, and scrapings, initiatory to an appointment—the young man has at last wormed himself into the service, what is he to the Government? Not more than a sharp lad who writes a good hand is to the grocer at the corner. Indeed not so much; for the grocer would have to pay the sharp lad for his services, while the paternal Government would not dream of such an extravagance. No young man can hope for an apprenticeship who expects anything beyond the honour of being allowed to serve for love—and the future! This paternal Government—this national huckster which deals only in paper—paper diet, paper constitution, paper money, paper reform, neutrality, or amnesty—keeps its highly-educated apprentice of twenty-five somewhat longer than Laban kept Jacob waiting for his daughter. Ten, fifteen, and even twenty-five years he may have to serve for his Rachel,—an appointment with a salary; which, however, turns out most frequently to be only a Leah after all.
But it may be asked, how does the government manage to get so much gratuitous service? In a country where a man must eat, drink, and clothe himself handsomely, how can a paternal government be served for nothing? Is all service in Austria gratuitous? Does the employé receive from the butcher and baker and tailor the equivalent of what he bestows on the state? Not quite so. A paternal government which gets its allies to fight its battles for nothing, is clever enough to secure the support of its employés by their fathers. The fathers pay their sons for the services which these render to the state. The father of an employé expectant must give a promissory note to government, undertaking to supply his son with all things needful for the young man’s maintenance, if government, in return, will be generous enough to accept his son’s time and energies, and provide him with a place on some official treadmill. And the period for such an undertaking is—“during the emperor’s pleasure.”
The mode in which this magnificent appointment is applied for is much in the following manner: “The humble undersigned, who, according to testimonial annexed sub literâ A. has been born and baptized; who, according to school testimonials sub literis B. C. D. E. has studied with good success, and pursued the course of philosophy, and has also heard about law; who, according to medical testimonial sub literâ F. has been vaccinated with equally good success; who, according to promissory note sub literâ G. has a father who is willing to give him, for the duration of his (the son’s) apprenticeship, the weekly stipend of 1l.; most humbly begs a well-born, most praiseworthy Chamber to overwhelm him with the inestimable favour of making him honorary apprentice to such and such an office. Should the undersigned be so happy as to be accepted, he will be ready to pass the usual examinations in three months’ time.”
Remark, that the writer of this request speaks of himself in the third person singular. This is one of the many peculiarities in the Austrian official style. The third person, singular, is usually employed only in contempt. The officer addresses the private, the master the servant, the magistrate the criminal, all as He. A humble petitioner, therefore, must adopt the same formula when speaking of his own unworthy self to a well-born Court Chamber. This self-denying request granted, the candidate enters, as a probationary, the bureau in which he hopes to become hereafter an integral particle. Here he learns to fawn upon his chief in the proper official manner, to write confused reports about things of which he knows nothing, to make copies—reams of copies—of worthless original compositions; and after three months of these labours he is examined by the Director, who asks him nothing, but awards him a first-class testimonial—on the recommendation of the Chief. This first-class testimonial gives the poor mean-spirited youth the privilege of writing a second request, informing the Chamber of his good success, and expressing his ardent desire to leave the list of Honoraries and become an Ordinary.
Arrived at this Chimborazo of his wishes, the youth dresses himself in full evening costume, and at nine o’clock in the morning goes to the office to take the oath of allegiance to his Imperial, Royal, Apostolic Majesty. All his colleagues assemble there, with solemn faces. A crucifix and two lighted wax tapers are on the table in the middle of the room, and the novice, going up to the table, repeats slowly after his Chief the oath of allegiance; which is, in fact, a solemn promise to be an early riser and a quick penman, never to divulge an official secret, and to be incorruptible, generally and particularly.
The first promise is easily kept. The sooner a man rises and is out of the house, the sooner he is out of the way of his duns; for an unpaid Austrian employé is continually haunted by his creditors. The second of those two promises he fulfils by habit. Who would not be a swift and expert penman when writing all day and every day? The third no one asks him to break, for no one cares what he writes during all the weary hours of the day; his official secrets, if he has any, are safe from every one’s curiosity. As for the fourth, it is not kept at all. An Austrian employé accepts everything: money and trinkets; playthings for his boy, and gifts for his wife; hams and tongues; opera tickets and theatre stalls—he takes them all; and in return he may help the donor over some slippery pass, by dragging him out of the straight road into the crooked path leading to legal safety and moral dishonesty. Government gets off with its interests somewhat sacrificed; but the gain on one side makes up for the loss on the other. “Donis semper aperta est,” is the invisible inscription written on the Austrian office. It is forbidden to give or to receive; and he who gives runs as great a risk as he who receives; but both giver and receiver, running swiftly and keeping time and step together, generally manage to outstrip the stumbling march of the detective.
“Do not praise the day till it is over,” says the proverb; and, following the spirit of the adage, the maxim of the employé is, Do not condemn the Austrian Government till you are rid of it: that is, till you are dead. Nay, even then the paternal government steps in, to take care, not of the widows and orphans, but of more precious things; namely, the dead employé’s goods and chattels. Widows and orphans may shift for themselves; goods and chattels must be taken care of. So government sends an officer to take a list of all the employé’s effects remaining, and specially to search for money. In the case of any being found—a case as rare as the sight of a white elephant in Europe—the widow and orphans must give government a part: for government is co-heir whenever there is an official inheritance to be had. Then this same wise and liberal government refuses to grant a pension to the widow or orphan, if a private income of twenty pounds per annum is found among the reliquiæ. If nothing is found, and if the employé has been more than ten years an official, and more than three years in matrimonial bondage, government grants a pension of ten or twenty pounds yearly. If he has served for a less term, or been married for only two years and three quarters, the pension is forfeited.
But to look on the bright side. If the employé has died insolvent, the sorrowing matron, who was bowed down to earth with grief and tears, rises consoled. She is a female pensioner. Her husband is gone, her home, her love, her independence,—all are gone; but she herself must stay. Government has bought her. She has become its property, and cannot now leave the country, unless she likes to leave her pension behind her. Austria turns her paper money into chains, by which she holds her poor pensioner, as a boy holds a bird or a cockchafer by a string. See this ward of government, clad in a rusty black dress of doubtful condition; on her head a black bonnet that has seen its best days, from which hangs a long black veil; on her arm hangs a long black reticule; on her pale lips a long tale of privation and misery. This is her picture at she goes every three months to draw her pitiful allowance—proving by the attestation of the parish rector that she is alive, that she is herself, and none other. Just the same, too, is she when she goes her new year’s rounds to her late husband’s Chiefs and colleagues, and to those members of the Imperial family most notorious for their benevolence. On these annual occasions she carries needlework and trifles to be raffled for, and thinks herself happy if she can buy an extra log for her stove, or a pound of meat for her broth, from the proceeds. Thus she drags on her weary life, barely escaping, as pauvre honteuse, the misery, shame, and degradation of downright beggary.
Such is the career of an Austrian employé; and this sketch is equally characteristic of every employé in the Austrian service, whether civil or military, or under whatever denomination he serves. In each and every case the salary of the officials are so utterly inadequate to their wants, that they are urged by the necessities of their position to devote all their talents and energies to make money by any means in their power. Their official rank and influence are available to extort a bribe and to screen the guilty parties. Where all are corrupt who is to denounce the offender?