_And yet one more point, it is not in his enemies or his calumniators
that his danger lies. The real, absolute evil is in the system of
routine and ill-will which attack the statesmen of probity. It will be
seen from these pages that there is a warning bell destined, alas! to
keep away from those in power the messengers who would bring them the
truth from outside, the unwelcome and much dreaded truth._

_The novel may sometimes be this stroke of the bell,--a stroke honest
and useful,--a disinterested _warner,_ and I have striven to make
_Monsieur le Ministre_ precisely that, in a small degree, for the
political world. I have essayed to paint this hell paved with some of
the good intentions. The success which greeted the appearance of this
book, might justify me in believing that I have succeeded in my task. I
trust that it will enjoy under its new form--so flattering to an author,
that an editor-artist is pleased to give it,--the success achieved under
its first form._

__Monsieur le Ministre_ is connected with more than one recollection of my
life. I was called upon one day to follow to his last resting-place--and
it is on an occasion like this that one discovers more readily and
perceives more clearly life's ironies--one of those men "who do nothing
but create other men," a journalist. It was bitterly cold and we stood
before the open grave, just in front of a railway embankment, in an out
of the way cemetery of Saint-Ouen,--the cemetery called _Cayenne,_
because the dead are "deported" thither. We were but four faithful
ones. Yes, four, but amongst these four must be included a young man,
bare-headed and wearing the uniform of an officer, who stood by the
deceased man's son._

_Whilst one of us bade the last farewell to the departed on the brink of
the grave, the scream of the railway engine cut short his words, and
seemed to hiss for the last time the fate of the vanquished man lying
there. As we were quitting the cemetery, a worthy man, a song-writer,
observed to me: "Well, if all those whom Leon Plee helped during his
lifetime had remembered him when he was dead, this little _Campo Santo_
of Saint-Ouen would not have been large enough to hold them all!"_

_Doubtless. But they did not remember him._

_And from the contrast between the shabby obsequies of the old
journalist and the solemn pomp of that of the funeral service of the
four days' minister came the idea of my book. It seemed to me that here
was an a