alize that his opinions condemned him to
remain a president of a court of the first instance for the rest of
his life. Once started in this track the sequence of events led du
Ronceret to place his hopes of advancement on the triumph of du
Croisier and the Left. He was in no better odor at the Prefecture than
at the Court-Royal. He was compelled to keep on good terms with the
authorities; the Liberals distrusted him, consequently he belonged to
neither party. He was obliged to resign his chances of election to du
Croisier, he exercised no influence, and played a secondary part. The
false position reacted on his character; he was soured and
discontented; he was tired of political ambiguity, and privately had
made up his mind to come forward openly as leader of the Liberal
party, and so to strike ahead of du Croisier. His behavior in the
d'Esgrignon affair was the first step in this direction. To begin
with, he was an admirable representative of that section of the middle
classes which allows its petty passions to obscure the wider interests
of the country; a class of crotchety politicians, upholding the
government one day and opposing it the next, compromising every cause
and helping none; helpless after they have done the mischief till they
set about brewing more; unwilling to face their own incompetence,
thwarting authority while professing to serve it. With a compound of
arrogance and humility they demand of the people more submission than
kings expect, and fret their souls because those above them are not
brought down to their level, as if greatness could be little, as if
power existed without force.

President du Ronceret was a tall, spare man with a receding forehead
and scanty, auburn hair. He was wall-eyed, his complexion was
blotched, his lips thin and hard, his scarcely audible voice came out
like the husky wheezings of asthma. He had for a wife a great, solemn,
clumsy creature, tricked out in the most ridiculous fashion, and
outrageously overdressed. Mme. la Presidente gave herself the airs of
a queen; she wore vivid colors, and always appeared at balls adorned
with the turban, dear to the British female, and lovingly cultivated
in out-of-the-way districts in France. Each of the pair had an income
of four or five thousand francs, which with the President's salary,
reached a total of some twelve thousand. In spite of a decided
tendency to parsimony, vanity required that they should receive one
evening in the w