The stern page on which the legislator has printed his imperative text is always provided with an ample margin where the administrator, charged with its execution, can write down the decisions that he is free to make.

In relation to each departmental or communal affair, the prefect can with his own hand write out what suits him on the white margin, which, as we have already seen, is ample enough; but the margin at his disposition is wider still and continues, beyond anything we have seen, on other pages; he is charge d'affaires not only of the department and commune, but again of the State.

Titular conductor or overseer of all general services, he is, in his circumscription, head inquisitor of the republican faith[4235], even in relation to private life and inner sentiments, the responsible director of orthodox or heretical acts or opinions, which are laudable or blamable in the innumerably army of functionaries by which the central state now undertakes the complete mastery of human life, the twenty distinct regiments of its vast hierarchy--with the staff of the clergy, of the magistracy, of the preventive and repressive police, of the customs; with the officials of bridges and highways, forest domains, stock-breeding establishments, postal and telegraph departments, tobacco and other monopolies; with those of every national enterprise which ought to be private, Sevres and Gobelins, deaf and dumb and blind asylums, and every auxiliary and special workshop for war and navigation purposes, which the state supports and manages.

I pass some of them and all too many.

Only remark this, that the indulgence or severity of the prefecture in the way of fiscal violations or irregularities is an advantage or danger of the highest importance to 377,000 dealers in wines and liquors; that an accusation brought before and admitted in the prefecture may deprive 38,000 clergymen of their bread,[4236] 43,000 letter-carriers and telegraph messengers, 45,000 sellers of tobacco and collecting-clerks, 75,000 stone-breakers, and 120,000 male and female teachers;[4237] directly or indirectly, the good or ill favor of the prefecture is of consequence, since recent military laws, to all adults between 20 and 45 years, and, since recent school laws, to all children between 6 and 13 years of age.