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All the préfets now appointed were native Dutchmen with the exception of two, De Celles at Amsterdam and De Standaart at the Hague; both were Belgians and both rendered themselves unpopular by their efforts to gain Napoleon's favour by a stringent enforcement of his orders.
"He won't only demoralize the army," pursued the Cigarette, with vivacious eloquence, "but if his example is followed, he'll ruin the Prefets, close the Bureaux, destroy the Exchequer, beggar all the officials, make African life as tame as milk and water, and rob you, M. le Colonel, of your very highest and dearest privilege!"
And indeed they are nothing else, or perhaps we should say they are something else but above all they are politicians. The schoolteachers depend on the préfets and the préfets depend much on the deputies, yet it is not the deputies who appoint them, but it is they who can remove them, who can get them promoted or disgraced, who by constant removals can reduce them to destitution.
They took charge of remote chapels on mountain tops, or in caves and ravines. They were always habited as Franciscan friars, but they were by no means a reputable order of men, and the French prefets in conjunction with the bishops have suppressed them.
Domingo had forty-four millions. These exchanges were effected by five hundred and sixty-nine vessels carrying one hundred and sixty-two thousand tons, of which Bordeaux provided two hundred and forty-six vessels, carrying seventy-five thousand tons. On the ruin of manufactures cf. the reports of prefets in the year X., with details from each department.
On the back of this important piece of paper I read as follows: That the permit must be produced at the demand of all agents authorized by law. That it is prohibited to shoot without it, or upon lands without the consent of the proprietor having the right or outside of the season fixed by the laws of the préfets.
"Well, then, this is the truth," said Peyrade, with a glance at his Cerberus' red eyes. The sham lawyer's face remained expressionless, impassible; he was doing his business, all truths were the same to him, he looked as though he suspected the Prefet of some caprice. Prefets have their little tantrums.
And Chalon-sur-Saône, where the workpeople commandeer a convoy of artillery destined for the army of M. le Comte d'Artois! The préfets of the various départements, the bureaucracy of provinces and cities, are not only amazed but struck with terror: "This is a new Revolution!" they cry in dismay. Yes! it is a new Revolution! the revolt of the peasantry of the poor, the humble, the oppressed!
Dark hints about spies, suspicious innuendoes of concealed enemies, plotting préfets and opened letters, had actually filled his brain to the exclusion of everything rational and reasonable, and I began seriously to fear for my poor friend's intellect. Hoping by a change of topic to induce a more equable tone of thinking, I asked about Ireland. "All right there! they've hanged 'em all," said he.
In some cases it is necessary for the prefets to send gendarmes, and have the law carried out by force; the village mayors being generally uneducated men, mere tools of the cures. After the idyllic pictures I have drawn of other parts of France, I am reluctantly obliged to draw a very different picture of society here.
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