has been held to cloak that of such and such a Minister of State.  Those, however, who search for vulgar gossip in this book, or who look for private scandal are far astray.  They are quite mistaken as regards the tendency and moral of Monsieur Claretie’s book.  The Vaudrey of the romance is no minister in particular, neither this statesman nor that.  He is the Minister whom we have had before our eyes for the last quarter of a century.  He is that one, at once potential and universal.  In him are united and portrayed all the traits by which the species may be determined.  He had been elected to office without knowing why, and to do him this justice, at least without any fault of his; he was deposed from power without knowing the reason, and we have no hesitation in saying, without his having done anything either good or bad to deserve his fall.  There he is minister, however; Minister of the Interior, and who knows? in a fair way, perhaps, to be swept by some favorable wind to the post of President of the Council; while not so very long ago to have been made sub-prefect of the first class, would have surpassed the wildest visions of his youth.  In Monsieur Claretie’s romance it is the old Member of Parliament, Collard—­of Nantes—­converted late in life to Republicanism, who chose the provincial Vaudrey for his Minister of the Interior; this may, with equal probability be Marshal MacMahon._

"In Monsieur Claretie’s romance, Monsieur le Ministre_ is of the Left Centre or the so-called Moderate Party, he is therefore on the side of Law and Order.  He enters into the Cabinet with the determination to reform every abuse, to recast everything; to seek for honest men, to make merit and not faction, the touchstone of advancement.  In short, to apply in his political life the glorious principles which—­and the noble maxims that—­He is only, however, forty-eight hours in office when he becomes quite demoralized, paralyzed and stultified for the rest of his ministerial life.  It is the phenomenon of crushing demoralization and of complete enervation of which the public, from the situation in which it is placed, sees only the results of which Monsieur Claretie, with a skilful hand describes for us the mechanism and the cause.  This Minister of State, supposed to be omnipotent in office, has not even the power to choose an undersecretary of State for himself.  The Minister who only the day before, from his seat upon one of the benches of the Opposition, sat with his head held aloft, his long body erect, with rigid dignity, as if made of triple brass, cannot now take the initiative in the appointment of a ‘garde champetre.’  His undersecretaries of State, his gardes champetres, he himself, his whole environment, in fact, are only painted dummies and the meek puppets that a director of the staff, a chief of a division, or a chief of a bureau sets in motion, to the tune he grinds out of his hand-organ, or moves them about at his will like pawns upon a