Its ancient organization is dissolved; it tears away its most precious tissues and falls into convulsions, which seem mortal.

Then, after multiplied throes and a painful lethargy, it re-establishes itself.

But its organization is no longer the same: by silent interior travail a new being is substituted for the old.

In 1808, its leading characteristics are decreed and defined: departments, arondissements, cantons and communes, no change have since taken place in its exterior divisions and functions.
Concordat, Code, Tribunals, University, Institute, Prefects, Council of State, Taxes, Collectors, Cours des Comptes, a uniform and centralized administration, its principal organs, are still the same.

Nobility, commoners, artisans, peasants, each class has henceforth the position, the sentiments, the traditions which we see at the present day (1875).
Thus the new creature is at once stable and complete; consequently its structure, its instincts and its faculties mark in advance the circle within which its thought and its action will be stimulated.