ces, the fruitful womb of France!
But to-day we have simply need of a deputy, peaceful times; and yet,
out of six hundred thousand souls, as we have seen, we can not find one
suitable man. Why is this the case, gentlemen? Because upon the soil of
uncentralized France men grew, while only functionaries germinate in the
soil of centralized France."

"God bless you, Monsieur!" said the Sub-prefect, with a smile.

"Pardon me, my dear Sub-prefect, but you, too, should understand that
I really plead your cause as well as my own, when I claim for
the provinces, and for all the functions of provincial life, more
independence, dignity, and grandeur. In the state to which these
functions are reduced at present, the administration and the judiciary
are equally stripped of power, prestige, and patronage. You smile,
Monsieur, but no longer, as formerly, are they the centres of life, of
emulation, and of light, civic schools and manly gymnasiums; they have
become merely simple, passive clockwork; and that is the case with the
rest, Monsieur de Camors. Our municipal institutions are a mere farce,
our provincial assemblies only a name, our local liberties naught!
Consequently, we have not now a man for a deputy. But why should we
complain? Does not Paris undertake to live, to think for us? Does
she not deign to cast to us, as of yore the Roman Senate cast to the
suburban plebeians, our food for the day-bread and vaudevilles--'panem
et circenses'. Yes, Monsieur, let us turn from the past to the
present--to France of to-day! A nation of forty millions of people who
await each morning from Paris the signal to know whether it is day or
night, or whether, indeed, they shall laugh or weep! A great people,
once the noblest, the cleverest in the world, repeating the same day,
at the same hour, in all the salons, and at all the crossways in the
empire, the same imbecile gabble engendered the evening before in the
mire of the boulevards. I tell you? Monsieur, it is humiliating that
all Europe, once jealous of us, should now shrug her shoulders in our
faces.--Besides, it is fatal even for Paris, which, permit me to add,
drunk with prosperity in its haughty isolation and self-fetishism, not a
little resembles the Chinese Empire-a focus of warmed-over, corrupt, and
frivolous civilization! As for the future, my dear sir, may God preserve
me from despair, since it concerns my country! This age has already seen
great things, great marvels, in fact; f