His budget was very honestly put together. And, apart from the irregularities that had now become regular as the result of a faulty administration common to the whole Republic, nothing worthy of blame could be discovered in it. M. Worms-Clavelin knew this. He felt himself strong in his integrity. But the polemics of the press put him out of patience. His heart was saddened by the animosity of his opponents and the rancour of the parties that he believed he had disarmed. After so many sacrifices he was pained at not having won the esteem of the Conservatives, which he secretly valued far more highly than the friendship of the Republicans. He would have to inspire _le Phare_ with pointed and forceful replies, to conduct a lively, and, perhaps protracted war. This thought was harassing to the deep slothfulness of his mind and alarming to his prudence, which feared every action as a source of peril. Thus he was in a very bad temper. And it was in a sharp voice that, throwing himself into the old leather arm-chair, he inquired of Rondonneau junior whether M. Guitrel had arrived. M. Guitrel had not yet come. So M. Worms-Clavelin, roughly snatching a paper from the jeweller’s desk, tried to read while smoking his cigar. But neither political ideas nor tobacco-smoke served to dispel the gloomy pictures that crowded into his mind. He read with his eyes, but thought of the attacks of _le Libéral_: “Transfer! There are not fifty people in the county town who know what a transfer is. And here I can see all the idiots in the department shaking their heads and solemnly repeating the phrase in their newspaper: ‘We regret to see that M. _le préfet_ has not abandoned the detestable and exploded practice of making transfers.’” He fell into thought. The ash from his cigar lavishly bestrewed his waistcoat. He went on thinking: “Why does _le Libéral_ attack me? I got its candidate returned. My department shows the greatest number of new adherents at election-times.” He turned over the page of the paper. He thought on again: “I have not covered up a deficit. The sums voted on the presentation of the estimates have not been spent in a different way from what was proposed. These people don’t know how to read a budget. And they are disingenuous.” He shrugged his shoulders; and gloomy, indifferent to the cigar ash which covered his chest and thighs, he plunged into the reading of his paper. His eyes fell on these lines: “We learn that a fire having broken out in a faubourg of Tobolsk, sixty wooden houses have fallen a prey to the flames. In consequence of the disaster more than a hundred families are homeless and starving.” As he read this, M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin emitted a deep shout, something like a triumphal growl, and, aiming a kick at the jeweller’s desk: “I say, Rondonneau, Tobolsk is a Russian town, isn’t it?” Rondonneau, raising his innocent, bald head towards the _préfet_, replied that Tobolsk was, indeed, a town in Asiatic Russia.