ncs. As a piece of
successful 'gerrymandering' the Republican treatment of this Department
of the Aveyron, by the way, in the elections of 1889, is worth
mentioning. In 1885, under the _scrutin de liste_, the Aveyron was
entitled to six deputies. It elected a solid Conservative
representation. In 1889, under the _scrutin d'arrondissement_, the
Government carved out seven seats for the Aveyron, and the electoral
districts were so ingeniously framed as to secure two out of these seven
seats for the Republicans--though the total of the votes cast in the
department showed a clear majority for the Monarchists of 5,582!

We had a banquet of Mayors while I was at Peyreguilhot; not such a
Belshazzar's feast as M. Constans gave at Paris to the thirteen
thousand, but a simple and interesting gathering of about a dozen
intelligent and active elective magistrates. Under a recent law all
Mayors, except in Paris, are now chosen by the Councils, but the
Government can revoke their commissions. Our guests at Peyreguilhot were
all shrewd, quiet, active men of the country. 'We shall be beaten in
September,' said one of them to me, 'because the Government employs men
enough to beat us. Moreover, our farmers say, "Why vote at all, for the
Mayors and the Prefect throw our votes out and cheat us?" Then, too, we
must have a man to vote for before we can make them move. They will not
vote for the Monarchy as a principle. But give them a man who touches
their imaginations and they will make him a Monarch.' They voted for
Louis Napoleon as soon as they saw him take the Assembly resolutely by
the throat. They would have voted, overwhelmingly, for Boulanger on
September 22 had he suddenly reappeared in Paris, demanding a revision
of the verdict of the High Court.

This is true, I think, not of the Lot-et-Garonne alone, but of all
France. It has been signally illustrated since the elections of 1889 by
what Stendhal would have called the rapid 'crystallization' of public
sympathy around the young Duc d'Orleans when he suddenly appeared in
Paris. The Government was completely bewildered and demoralized by this
'bolt out of the blue.' Instead of quietly reconducting the prince to
the frontier with a reprimand for his inconsiderate and unconventional
patriotism, it stupidly locked him up in a prison haunted by legends
disgraceful to the Republic, proceeded against him with clumsy
vehemence, gave him time to show himself to the French people, in the
w