"The Palace Thief" is a first-person narrative in which the narrator is a teacher of classics whose job is essentially his life. Mr. Hundert tells his story in measured prose that evidently owes a great deal to the classical models that mean so much to him. Sedgewick, for instance, would never have been capable of expressing himself so gracefully.

One has only to read the first sentence to see the Ciceronian balance: "I tell this story not...., for..., and not..., for..." It is the type of prose written by classicists, with something of the eighteenth century about it—like the prose of men like Edward Gibbon, who had imbibed their classical models so completely that they wrote an English sentence like a Latin one.

The content of the story also reflects Hundert's mind. There is a great deal of reflection on moral and philosophical points and on the larger consequences for civilization of minor decisions. In the content, as in the style, there is a scrupulously classical weighing and balancing of precisely what the narrator wants to say.

Hundert's viewpoint is that of an insider in St. Benedict's school but an outsider in the world of Sedgewick Bell and his father, where decisions are made. This affects the speed and manner in which plot points are revealed, since the machinations in the story occur behind Hundert's back and take him by surprise, as does the corruption of political life.