But I should inform you that there are only twenty procureurs généraux in France and 20,000 competitors for the post.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2657578&forum_id=2#26212924)

https://books.google.com/books?id=yQrXaL4ojpAC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=If+you+have+no+patronage+you+will+rot+in+a+provincial+court.&source=bl&ots=g_2a9IWlXa&sig=PzyDmyLSD_KwBRwxx8ALy2-fW54&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QxUzVdPdGPiKsQTu4YGAAg&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=If%20you%20have%20no%20patronage%20you%20will%20rot%20in%20a%20provincial%20court.&f=false

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2657578&forum_id=2#27715629)

Speaking to a law student:

"And, then, what will you do? Shall you begin to work? Work, or what you understand by work at this moment, means, for a man of Poiret’s calibre, an old age in Mamma Vauquer’s lodging-house. There are fifty thousand young men in your position at this moment, all bent as you are on solving one and the same problem — how to acquire a fortune rapidly. You are but a unit in that aggregate. You can guess, therefore, what efforts you must make, how desperate the struggle is. There are not fifty thousand good positions for you; you must fight and devour one another like spiders in a pot. Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague. Honesty is nothing to the purpose. Men bow before the power of genius; they hate it, and try to slander it, because genius does not divide the spoil; but if genius persists, they bow before it. To sum it all up in a phrase, if they fail to smother genius in the mud, they fall on their knees and worship it. Corruption is a great power in the world, and talent is scarce. So corruption is the weapon of superfluous mediocrity; you will be made to feel the point of it everywhere."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2657578&forum_id=2#27715739)