“The police!” he cried; “one may say of it, as Basile said of calumny to Batholo, ‘The police, monsieur! you don’t know what you despise!’ And, after all,” he continued, after a pause, “who are they who despise it? Imbeciles, who don’t know any better than to insult their protectors. Suppress the police, and you destroy civilization. Do the police ask for the respect of such people? No, they want to inspire them with one sentiment only: fear, that great lever with which to govern mankind,--an impure race whose odious instincts God, hell, the executioner, and the gendarmes can scarcely restrain!” Stopping short before la Peyrade, and looking at him with a disdainful smile, he continued:-- “So you are one of those ninnies who see in the police nothing more than a horde of spies and informers? Have you never suspected the statesmen, the diplomats, the Richelieus it produces? Mercury, monsieur,--Mercury, the cleverest of the gods of paganism,--what was he but the police incarnate? It is true that he was also the god of thieves. We are better than he, for we don’t allow that junction of forces.” “And yet,” said la Peyrade, “Vautrin, or, I should say, Jacques Collin, the famous chief of the detective police--” “Yes, yes! but that’s in the lower ranks,” replied Corentin, resuming his walk; “there’s always a muddy place somewhere. Still, don’t be mistaken even in that. Vautrin is a man of genius, but his passions, like those of your uncle, dragged him down. But go up higher (for there lies the whole question, namely, the rung of the ladder on which a man has wits enough to perch). Take the prefect, for instance, that honored minister, flattered and respected, is he a spy? Well, I, monsieur, am the prefect of the secret police of diplomacy--of the highest statesmanship. And you hesitate to mount that throne!--to seem small and do great things; to live in a cave comfortably arranged like this, and command the light; to have at your orders an invisible army, always ready, always devoted, always submissive; to know the _other side_ of everything; to be duped by no intrigue because you hold the threads of all within your fingers; to see through all partitions; to penetrate all secrets, search all hearts, all consciences,--these are the things you fear! And yet you were not afraid to go and wallow in a Thuillier bog; you, a thoroughbred, allowed yourself to be harnessed to a hackney-coach, to the ignoble business of electing that parvenu bourgeois.” “A man does what he can,” said la Peyrade.