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School prefects at Wrykyn did weekly essays for the headmaster. Those who had got their scholarships at the 'Varsity, or who were going up in the following year, used to take their essays to him after school and read them to him an unpopular and nerve-destroying practice, akin to suicide. Trevor had got his scholarship in the previous November.
He then said to me, "Bourrienne, I give up your department to you. Name whom you please for the appointments; but remember you must be responsible to me." What a list would have been which should contain the names of all the prefects, sub-prefects, receivers-general, and other civil officers to whom I gave places!
They had already arranged for the convention of an annual assembly of prefects who should act as channels of communication between the central authorities and the people in the provinces. This was designed to be the embryo of representative institutions, though obviously it bore that character in a very limited degree only.
The staff of the kitchen and sanitation were the same as in the household of the Emperor; and besides these, six pages of the Emperor were always in attendance upon the Empress. The chief almoner was Ferdinand de Rohan, former archbishop of Cambray. Another decree of the same date fixed the duties of the prefects of the palace. The latter subsequently became prefect of the Department of the Cher.
It began with a company of ten-year-olds who, with pencil boxes and drawing books, were being escorted by Althea Riley, one of the prefects, along the corridor to the studio. Hitherto, by dint of judicious curbing, they had always walked two and two in decent line and had refrained from prohibited conversation.
There were serious, anxious faces, provincial prefects with shaven lips and administrative whiskers, something less arrogant in that reception-room than in their prefectures; magistrates, stern of manner, dignified of gesture; deputies full of importance, shining lights of finance, substantial manufacturers from the country; and among them could be distinguished, here and there, the thin ambitious face of a deputy councillor to some prefecture, in the garb of a solicitor, black coat and white cravat; and one and all, standing or seated, alone or in groups, silently forced with a glance the lock of that lofty door, closed upon their destinies, from which they would come forth in a moment, triumphant or crestfallen.
Everybody knew about it as soon as ever he set foot in Grandcourt, and Daisy's name was common property all over the house. Arthur had contrived to reap no small advantage from the connection. The prefects had pretty much left him alone, and, as a relative of the master, he had been tacitly winked at in many of his escapades, with a leniency which another boy could not have hoped for.
Now, firstly, it is a headmaster's business to punish any breach of school rules, is it not? 'Well? 'And school prefects do not attend roll-call, and have no restrictions placed upon them in the matter of bounds? 'No. Well? 'Then perhaps you'll tell me what School rule Gethryn has broken? said Mr Robertson. 'You see you can't, he went on. 'Of course you can't.
Just how representative of the real sentiments of the nation was this assembly I do not know, but that the sentiment in favor of such a surrender of Montenegrin independence is far from being overwhelming would seem to be proved by the fact that the Serbs, in order to hold the territory thus given to them, have found it necessary to install a Serbian military governor in Cetinje, to replace by Serbs all the Montenegrin prefects, to raise a special gendarmerie recruited from men who are known to be friendly to Serbia and officered by Serbs, and to occupy this sister-state, which, it is alleged, requested union with Serbia of its own free will, with two battalions of Serbian infantry.
How conservative are the French people, at least in the institutions of local government, may be inferred from the fact that despite many changes in France during the nineteenth century from republic to empire to monarchy to republic to empire to republic, Bonaparte's system of prefects and sub-prefects has survived to the present day.
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