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; for I beg you to remember I am by no
means an ene