“That subject, Monsieur, is the arrogant supremacy assumed by Paris over all the rest of France.  I have not put my foot in the place since 1825, in order to testify the abhorrence with which it inspires me.  You are an educated, sensible young man, and, I trust, a good Frenchman.  Very well!  Is it right, I ask, that Paris shall every morning send out to us our ideas ready-made, and that all France shall become a mere humble, servile faubourg to the capital?  Do me the favor, I pray you, Monsieur, to answer that?”

“There is doubtless, my dear sir,” replied Camors, “some excess in this extreme centralization of France; but all civilized countries must have their capitals, and a head is just as necessary to a nation as to an individual.”

“Taking your own image, Monsieur, I shall turn it against you.  Yes, doubtless a head is as necessary to a nation as to an individual; if, however, the head becomes monstrous and deformed, the seat of intelligence will be turned into that of idiocy, and in place of a man of intellect, you have a hydrocephalus.  Pray give heed to what Monsieur the Sub-prefect, may say in answer to what I shall ask him.  Now, my dear Sub-prefect, be frank.  If tomorrow, the deputation of this district should become vacant, can you find within its broad limits, or indeed within the district, a man likely to fill all functions, good and bad?”

“Upon my word,” answered the official, “if you continue to refuse the office, I really know of no one else fit for it.”

“I shall persist all my life, Monsieur, for at my age assuredly I shall not expose myself to the buffoonery of your Parisian jesters.”

“Very well!  In that event you will be obliged to take some stranger—­perhaps, even one of those Parisian jesters.”

“You have heard him, Monsieur de Camors,” said M. des Rameures, with exultation.  “This district numbers six hundred thousand souls, and yet does not contain within it the material for one deputy.  There is no other civilized country, I submit, in which we can find a similar instance so scandalous.  For the people of France this shame is reserved exclusively, and it is your Paris that has brought it upon us.  Paris, absorbing all the blood, life, thought, and action of the country, has left a mere geographical skeleton in place of a nation!  These are the benefits of your centralization, since you have pronounced that word, which is quite as barbarous as the thing itself.”

“But pardon me, uncle,” said Madame de Tecle, quietly plying her needle, “I know nothing of these matters, but it seems to me that I have heard you say this centralization was the work of the Revolution and of the First Consul.  Why, therefore, do you call Monsieur de Camors to account for it?  That certainly does not seem to me just.”

“Nor does it seem so to me,” said Camors, bowing to Madame de Tecle.

“Nor to me either,” rejoined M. des Rameures, smiling.