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The present hierarchy in these bodies results in the subordination of active energetic capacities to the worn-out capacities of old men, who, thinking they know best, alter or nullify the plans submitted by their subordinates, perhaps with the sole aim of making their existence felt; for that seems to me the only influence exercised over the public works of France by the Council-general of the Ponts et Chaussees.
We met a great number of waggons, harnessed and equipped like those in England; and the numbers of carriages reminded us, in some degree, of the extraordinary appearance, in this respect, which the approach to our own capital presents; a state of things widely different from the desolate chaussèes which the interior of France exhibits.
At first I lacked courage to venture very far from the Rue Fossette, but by degrees I sought the city gates, and passed them, and then went wandering away far along chaussees, through fields, beyond cemeteries, Catholic and Protestant, beyond farmsteads, to lanes and little woods, and I know not where.
Ingenieur des Ponts et Chaussees to his Satanic majesty would be a place of great business, profit and glory, and would require a man of first-rate abilities. Lucy has painted a beautiful portrait of her bullfinch, picking at a bunch of white currants the currants would, I am sure, be picked by any live bird. Tell me how you like Haji Baba. To MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
Jean Reynaud did better than keep his place; the pass-list showed his name seventh, but instead of entering 'l'Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees', he entered the military college at Fontainebleau in 1878. He was then just twenty-one; he was of age, master of his fortune, and the first act of the new administration was a great, a very great piece of extravagance.
In an article in the Annales des Ponts et Chaussees for July and August, 1839, p. 131, it was suggested that the sinking of the piers of a bridge at Tours in France was occasioned by the abstraction of water from the earth by artesian wells, and the consequent withdrawal of the mechanical support it had previously given to the strata containing it.
One of these villages, surely, must have lain near this fountain of Sidi Ahmed Zarroung, which now irrigates a few palms and vegetables and then loses itself in the sand; a second spring, sulphureous and medicinal, but destructive to plants, rises near at hand. This is the one which the gentleman of the Ponts et Chaussees recommended me for bathing purposes.
But we had a whole league to walk, thus far from Villette was the farm where he had breakfasted; the children, especially, were tired with their play; the spirits of most flagged at the prospect of this mid-day walk over chaussees flinty, glaring, and dusty. This state of things had been foreseen and provided for.
"THIS," he said, excavating from under a pile of miscellaneous rubbish a paper whereon was displayed the official stamp of the Ponts et Chaussees the Department of Public Works for whose servants this choice apartment is or rather ought to be exclusively reserved: the rule is not always obeyed. "Bring me THIS" tapping the document proudly "and you have the room."
The first thought of all is to become another Newton, or Laplace, or Vauban. Such are the efforts that France demands of the young men who leave her celebrated school. Now let us see the fate of these men culled with so much care from each generation. At one-and-twenty we dream of life, and expect marvels of it. I entered the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees; I was a pupil-engineer.
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