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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: public mind close calculations, precise statistics, and self-evident
proof. Rabourdin had long studied the budget under its double-aspect
of ways and means and of expenditure. Many a night he had lain awake
unknown to his wife. But so far he had only dared to conceive the plan
and fit it prospectively to the administrative skeleton; all of which
counted for nothing,--he must gain the ear of a minister capable of
appreciating his ideas. Rabourdin's success depended on the tranquil
condition of political affairs, which up to this time were still
unsettled. He had not considered the government as permanently secure
until three hundred deputies at least had the courage to form a
compact majority systematically ministerial. An administration founded
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