“When you have got there, face to face with the Prefet, make your complaint, but as a man of political consequence, who will sooner or later be one of the motor powers of the huge machine of government.  You will speak of the police as a statesman should, admiring everything, the Prefet included.  The very best machines make oil-stains or splutter.  Do not be angry till the right moment.  You have no sort of grudge against Monsieur le Prefet, but persuade him to keep a sharp lookout on his people, and pity him for having to blow them up.  The quieter and more gentlemanly you are, the more terrible will the Prefet be to his men.  Then we shall be left in peace, and we may send for Esther back, for she must be belling like the does in the forest.”

The Prefet at that time was a retired magistrate.  Retired magistrates make far too young Prefets.  Partisans of the right, riding the high horse on points of law, they are not light-handed in arbitary action such as critical circumstances often require; cases in which the Prefet should be as prompt as a fireman called to a conflagration.  So, face to face with the Vice-President of the Council of State, the Prefet confessed to more faults than the police really has, deplored its abuses, and presently was able to recollect the visit paid to him by the Baron de Nucingen and his inquiries as to Peyrade.  The Prefet, while promising to check the rash zeal of his agents, thanked Lucien for having come straight to him, promised secrecy, and affected to understand the intrigue.

A few fine speeches about personal liberty and the sacredness of home life were bandied between the Prefet and the Minister; Monsieur de Serizy observing in conclusion that though the high interests of the kingdom sometimes necessitated illegal action in secret, crime began when these State measures were applied to private cases.

Next day, just as Peyrade was going to his beloved Cafe David, where he enjoyed watching the bourgeois eat, as an artist watches flowers open, a gendarme in private clothes spoke to him in the street.

“I was going to fetch you,” said he in his ear.  “I have orders to take you to the Prefecture.”

Peyrade called a hackney cab, and got in without saying a single word, followed by the gendarme.

The Prefet treated Peyrade as though he were the lowest warder on the hulks, walking to and fro in a side path of the garden of the Prefecture, which at that time was on the Quai des Orfevres.

“It is not without good reason, monsieur, that since 1830 you have been kept out of office.  Do not you know to what risk you expose us, not to mention yourself?”

The lecture ended in a thunderstroke.  The Prefet sternly informed poor Peyrade that not only would his yearly allowance be cut off, but that he himself would be narrowly watched.  The old man took the shock with an air of perfect calm.  Nothing can be more rigidly expressionless than a man struck by lightning.  Peyrade had lost all his stake in the game.  He had counted on getting an appointment, and he found himself bereft of everything but the alms bestowed by his friend Corentin.