Sub-prefect, may say in answer to what I shall ask him. Now, my dear
Sub-prefect, be frank. If tomorrow, the deputation of this district
should become vacant, can you find within its broad limits, or indeed
within the district, a man likely to fill all functions, good and bad?"

"Upon my word," answered the official, "if you continue to refuse the
office, I really know of no one else fit for it."

"I shall persist all my life, Monsieur, for at my age assuredly I shall
not expose myself to the buffoonery of your Parisian jesters."

"Very well! In that event you will be obliged to take some stranger--
perhaps, even one of those Parisian jesters."

"You have heard him, Monsieur de Camors," said M. des Rameures, with
exultation. "This district numbers six hundred thousand souls, and yet
does not contain within it the material for one deputy. There is no
other civilized country, I submit, in which we can find a similar
instance so scandalous. For the people of France this shame is reserved
exclusively, and it is your Paris that has brought it upon us. Paris,
absorbing all the blood, life, thought, and action of the country, has
left a mere geographical skeleton in place of a nation! These are the
benefits of your centralization, since you have pronounced that word,
which is quite as barbarous as the thing itself."

"But pardon me, uncle," said Madame de Tecle, quietly plying her needle,
"I know nothing of these matters, but it seems to me that I have heard
you say this centralization was the work of the Revolution and of the
First Consul. Why, therefore, do you call Monsieur de Camors to account
for it? That certainly does not seem to me just."