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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: engineers-in-chief, only a limited number of the sub-engineers can
hope to rise. Besides, above the grade of engineer-in-chief, there
is no absorbent class; for we cannot count as a means of
absorption the ten or fifteen places of inspector-generals or
divisionaries,--posts that are almost as useless in our corps as
colonels are in the artillery, where the battery is the essential
thing. The engineer-in-ordinary, like the captain of artillery,
knows the whole science. He ought not to have any one over him
except an administrative head to whom no more than eighty-six
engineers should report,--for one engineer, with two assistants is
enough for a department.
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