The ministry had fallen. M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin felt neither surprise nor regret at this. In the depths of his heart he had always considered it too restless and too disturbing, an object of suspicion, and not without reason, to the agriculturist, the large merchant, and the small investor. Without affecting the fortunate indifference of the masses, this cabinet had exercised, to the _préfet’s_ grief, a vexatious influence over freemasonry, the organisation by which, for fifteen years past, the whole political life of the department had been drawn together and held in check. M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin had been able to turn the masonic lodges of the department into boards vested with the preliminary choice of candidates for public offices, for electoral functions, and for party favours. Exercising in this way wide and definite prerogatives, the lodges, being as much opportunist as they were radical, combined, acted in concert with one another, and worked together for the republican cause. The _préfet_, rejoicing to see the ambition of some restraining the desires of others, gathered together, on the joint recommendation of the lodges, a band of senators, deputies, municipal councillors and road-surveyors, all equally loyal to the government, yet sufficiently diverse in opinion and sufficiently moderate to satisfy and reassure all republican parties, save the socialists. M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin had brought about this unanimity. And now the radical ministry must needs break up so happy a harmony. Ill-luck decreed that the holder of one of the minor portfolios (either agriculture or commerce) should travel through the department and stop for some hours in the county town. It sufficed for him to deliver a philosophic and moral speech at one assembly to flutter all the assemblies, divide each lodge into two, set brother against brother, and infuriate citizen Mandar, the chemist of the Rue Culture, master of the lodge “New Alliance,” and a radical, against M. Tricoul, vine-grower of Les Tournelles, master of the lodge “Sacred Friendship,” and an opportunist. Mentally M. Worms-Clavelin made another complaint against the fallen ministry: that of having lavishly distributed academic decorations and given Orders of Merit for agricultural proficiency to radical-socialists only, thus robbing the _préfet_ of the advantage of governing with the aid of these decorations, or at least by means of tardily fulfilled promises of them. M. _le préfet_ expressed his thoughts accurately as, alone in his study, he murmured these bitter words: “If they believed they could play at politics by upsetting my loyal lodges and fastening my useful palms to the tail of every drunken dog in the department, they’ll find themselves finely mistaken!” Thus it was that he heard of the fall of the ministry without any regret.