ls. This
time it was carried by a conservative. An attempt was first made to
annul the election, which had to be given up as the votes in dispute
were too many. Revenge was taken on the electors. Gendarmes, in the
communes, investigated the conduct of the cures, forest-guard, and
storekeeper. The hospital doctor, a conservative, was replaced by
an opportunist. The tax-comptroller, a man of the district, and of
suspicious zeal, was sent far into the west. Every functionary who, on
the even of the election, did not have a contrite look, was threatened
with dismissal. A road-surveyor was regarded as having been lukewarm,
and accordingly put on the retired list. There is no petty vexation that
was not resorted to, no insignificant person, whom they disdained to
strike. Stone breakers were denounced for saying that they ought not
to have their wages reduced. Sisters of charity, in a certain commune,
dispensed medicine to the poor; they were forbidden to do this, to annoy
the mayor living in Paris. The custodians of mortgages had an errand-boy
who was guilty of distributing, not voting-tickets, but family notices
(of a marriage) on the part of the new deputy; a few days after this, a
letter from the prefecture gave the custodian notice that the criminal
must be replaced in twenty-four hours. A notary, in a public meeting,
dared to interrupt the radical candidate; he was prosecuted in the court
for a violation of professional duties, and the judges of judiciary
reforms condemned him to three months 'suspension.' This took place,
"not in Languedoc, or in Provence, in the south among excited brains
where everything is allowable, but under the dull skies of Champagne.
And when I interrogate the conservatives of the West and the Center,
they reply: "We have seen many beside these, but is long since we have
ceased to be astonished!"]

[Footnote 4236: Ibid., p.105: "Each cantonal chief town has its office
of informers. The Minister of Public Worship has himself told that
on the first of January, 1890, there were 300 cures deprived of their
salary, about three or four times as many as on the first of January,
1889."]

[Footnote 4237: These figures are taken from the latest statistical
reports. Some of them are furnished by the chief or directors of special
services.]

[Footnote 4238: Taine could hardly have imagined how costly the modern
democracy would, 100 years later, become. How could he have imaged that
the "Human Rights" sh