Des Lupeaulx.  “After all, though statistics are the childish foible of modern statesmen, who think that figures are estimates, we must cipher to estimate.  Figures are, moreover, the convincing argument of societies based on self-interest and money, and that is the sort of society the Charter has given us,—­in my opinion, at any rate.  Nothing convinces the ‘intelligent masses’ as much as a row of figures.  All things in the long run, say the statesmen of the Left, resolve themselves into figures.  Well then, let us figure” [the minister here goes off into a corner with a deputy, to whom he talks in a low voice].  “There are forty thousand government clerks in France.  The average of their salaries is fifteen hundred francs.  Multiply forty thousand by fifteen hundred and you have sixty millions.  Now, in the first place, a publicist would call the attention of Russia and China (where all government officials steal), also that of Austria, the American republics, and indeed that of the whole world, to the fact that for this price France possesses the most inquisitorial, fussy, ferreting, scribbling, paper-blotting, fault-finding old housekeeper of a civil service on God’s earth.  Not a copper farthing of the nation’s money is spent or hoarded that is not ordered by a note, proved by vouchers, produced and re-produced on balance-sheets, and receipted for when paid; orders and receipts are registered on the rolls, and checked and verified by an army of men in spectacles.  If there is the slightest mistake in the form of these precious documents, the clerk is terrified, for he lives on such minutiae.  Some nations would be satisfied to get as far as this; but Napoleon went further.  That great organizer appointed supreme magistrates of a court which is absolutely unique in the world.  These officials pass their days in verifying money-orders, documents, roles, registers, lists, permits, custom-house receipts, payments, taxes received, taxes spent, etc.; all of which the clerks write or copy.  These stern judges push the gift of exactitude, the genius of inquisition, the sharp-sightedness of lynxes, the perspicacity of account-books to the point of going over all the additions in search of subtractions.  These sublime martyrs to figures have been known to return to an army commissary, after a delay of two years, some account in which there was an error of two farthings.  This is how and why it is that the French system of administration, the purest and best on the globe has rendered robbery, as his Excellency has just told you, next to impossible, and as for peculation, it is a myth.  France at this present time possesses a revenue of twelve hundred millions, and she spends it.  That sum enters her treasury, and that sum goes out of it.  She handles, therefore, two thousand four hundred millions, and all she pays for the labor of those who do the work is sixty millions, —­two and a half per cent; and for that she obtains the certainty that there is no leakage.  Our political and administrative