cry: 'What! he does not budge! If I were minister, which God forbid, I
would say nothing--and let others act--I would do nothing--and let
others talk.'"_

_Everybody, very fortunately--and all ministers do not reason like this
jester. But the truth is that it is very difficult for an honest man in
the midst of political entanglements as Vaudrey was, to realize his
dream. When opportunities arise--those opportunities that march only at
a snail's pace--one is not allowed to make use of them, they are
snatched from one. They arrive, only to take wings again. And in those
posts of daily combat, one has not only against one the enemies who
attack one openly, which would be but a slight matter, a touch with a
goad or a prick of the spur, at most--but one has to contend with
friends who compromise, and servants who serve one badly._

_Every man who occupies an office, whatever it may be, has for his
adversaries those who covet it, those who regret it, those who have once
filled it, and those who desire to fill it. What assaults too! Against a
successful rival, there is no infamy too base, no mine too deep, no
villainy too cruel, no lie too poisoned to be made use of--and the
minister, his Excellency, is like a hostage to Power._

_And yet one more point, it is not in his enemies or his calumniators
that his danger lies. The real, absolute evil is in the system of
routine and ill-will which attack the statesmen of probity. It will be
seen from these pages that there is a warning bell destined, alas! to
keep away from those in power the messengers who would bring them the
truth from outside, the unwelcome and much dreaded truth._

_The novel may sometimes be this stroke of the bell,--a stroke honest