risen; far worse, he is no longer on the level of scientific knowledge; science has progressed, he has stayed where he was.  The man who came forth ready for life at twenty-two years of age, with every sign of superiority, has nothing left to-day but the reputation of it.  In the beginning, with his mind specially turned to the exact sciences and mathematics by his education, he neglected everything that was not his specialty; and you can hardly imagine his present dulness in all other branches of human knowledge.  I hardly dare confide even to you the secrets of his incapacity sheltered by the fact that he was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique.  With that label attached to him and on the faith of that prestige, no one dreams of doubting his ability.  To you alone do I dare reveal the fact that the dulling of all his talents has led him to spend a million on a single matter which ought not to have cost the administration more than two hundred thousand francs.  I wished to protest, and was about to inform the prefect; but an engineer I know very well reminded me of one of our comrades who was hated by the administration for doing that very thing.  “How would you like,” he said to me, “when you get to be engineer-in-chief to have your errors dragged forth by your subordinate?  Before long your engineer-in-chief will be made a divisional inspector.  As soon as any one of us commits a serious blunder, as he has done, the administration (which can’t allow itself to appear in the wrong) will quietly retire him from active duty by making him inspector.”

That’s how the reward of merit devolves on incapacity.  All France knew of the disaster which happened in the heart of Paris to the first suspension bridge built by an engineer, a member of the Academy of Sciences; a melancholy collapse caused by blunders such as none of the ancient engineers—­the man who cut the canal at Briare in Henri IV.’s time, or the monk who built the Pont Royal —­would have made; but our administration consoled its engineer for his blunder by making him a member of the Council-general.

Are the technical schools vast manufactories of incapables?  That subject requires careful investigation.  If I am right they need reforming, at any rate in their method of proceeding,—­for I am not, of course, doubting the utility of such schools.  Only, when we look back into the past we see that France in former days never wanted for the great talents necessary to the State; but now she prefers to hatch out talent geometrically, after the theory of Monge.  Did Vauban ever go to any other Ecole than that great school we call vocation?  Who was Riquet’s tutor?  When great geniuses arise above the social mass, impelled by vocation, they are nearly always rounded into completeness; the man is then not merely a specialist, he has the gift of universality.  Do you think that an engineer from the Ecole Polytechnique could ever create one of those miracles of architecture such