Commune or department, such local society remains under the second Regime what it was under the first one, an extension of the central society, an appendix of the State, an adjunct of the great establishment of which the seat is at Paris.

In these adjuncts, controlled from above, nothing is changed, neither the extent and limits of the circumscription, nor the source and hierarchy of powers, nor the theoretic framework, nor the practical mechanism, not even the names.[4146] After the prefects of Empire come the prefects of the Restoration, the same in title and uniform, installed in the same mansion, to do the same work, with equal zeal, that is to say, with dangerous zeal, to such an extent that, on taking leave of their final audience, on setting out for their department, M.de Talleyrand, who knows men and institutions profoundly, gives them, as his last injunction, the following admirable order: "And, especially, no zeal! "-- According to the recommendation of Fouche, "the Bourbons slept in the bed of Napoleon," which was the bed of Louis XIV., but larger and more comfortable, widened by the Revolution and the Empire, adapted to the figure of its latest occupant, and enlarged by him so as to spread over the whole of France.

When, after twenty-five years of exile, one returns home, it is pleasant to find such a bed in the house ready made, taking down and remaking the old one would give double trouble; moreover, in the old one, one was less at his ease; let us profit by all that rebels and the usurper have done that was good.

In this particular, not alone the king, but again the most antiquated of the Bourbons are revolutionaries and Bonapartists; despotic traditionally, and monopolists through their situation, they accept with no regrets the systematic demolition effected by the Constituent Assembly, and the systematic centralization instituted by the First Consul.

The Duc d'Angouleme, when, in 1815, he was paraded about the country, among the bridges, canals, and splendid roads of Languedoc, on being reminded that these fine works were formerly executed by the "Etats" of the province, dryly replied "We prefer the departments to the provinces."[4147] With the exception of a few antiquarian and half-rustic royalists, nobody objects; there is no thought of reconstructing the machine on another plan; in sum, nobody is dissatisfied with the way it works.