But
taken as a whole, there was still too much of the bourgeois element in
the administration; it was too readily moved by petty liberal
agitation; and as a result, it was inevitable that it should incline
sooner or later to the Constitutional party, and join ranks with the
bourgeoisie in the day of battle. In the great body of legal
functionaries, as in other departments of the administration, there
was not wanting a certain hypocrisy, or rather that spirit of
imitation which always leads France to model herself on the Court,
and, quite unintentionally, to deceive the powers that be.
Officials of both complexions were to be found in the court in which
young d'Esgrignon's fate depended. M. le President du Ronceret and an
elderly judge, Blondet by name, represented the section of
functionaries shelved for good, and resigned to stay where they were;
while the young and ambitious party comprised the examining magistrate
M. Camusot, and his deputy M. Michu, appointed through the interests
of the Cinq-Cygnes, and certain of promotion to the Court of Appeal of
Paris at the first opportunity.
President du Ronceret held a permanent post; it was impossible to turn
him out. The aristocratic party declined to give him what he
considered to be his due, socially speaking; so he declared for the
bourgeoisie, glossed over his disappointment with the name of
independence, and failed to realize that his opinions condemned him to
remain a president of a court of the first instance for the rest of
his life.
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