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Monsieur De Camors — Volume 1 by Octave Feuillet
page 118 of 121 (97%)
all sides, tempered the character, and developed men. And now note well,
Durocher! If France had been centralized formerly as to-day, your dear
Revolution never would have occurred--do you understand? Never! because
there would have been no men to make it. For may I not ask, whence came
that prodigious concourse of intelligences all fully armed, and with
heroic hearts, which the great social movement of '78 suddenly brought
upon the scene? Please recall to mind the most illustrious men of that
era--lawyers, orators, soldiers. How many were from Paris? All came
from the provinces, the fruitful womb of France! But to-day we 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
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