on going on within me;
I am conscious that my powers and my faculties, formerly
unnaturally taxed, are giving way. I am letting the prosaic
influence of my life get hold of me. I who, by the very nature of
my efforts, looked to do some great thing, I am face to face with
none but petty ones; I measure stones, I inspect roads, I have not
enough to really occupy me for two hours in my day. I see my
colleagues marry, and fall into a situation contrary to the spirit
of modern society. I wanted to be useful to my country. Is my
ambition an unreasonable one? The country asked me to put forth
all my powers; it told me to become a representative of science;
yet here I am with folded arms in the depths of the provinces. I
am not even allowed to leave the locality in which I am penned, to
exercise my faculties in planning useful enterprises. A hidden but
very real disfavor is the certain reward of any one of us who
yields to an inspiration and goes beyond the special service laid
down for him.

No, the favor a superior man has to hope for in that case is that
his talent and his presumption may not be noticed, and that his
project may be buried in the archives of the administration. What
think you will be the reward of Vicat, the one among us who has
brought about the only real progress in the practical science of
construction? The Council-general of the _Ponts et Chaussees_,
composed in part of men worn-out by long and sometimes honorable
service, but whose only remaining force is for negation, and who
set aside everything they no longer comprehend, is the
extinguisher used to snuff out the projects of audacious spirits.
This Council seems to have been created to paralyze the arm of
that glorious youth of France, which asks only to work and to be
useful to its country.

Monstrous things are done in Paris. The future of a province
depends on the mere signature of men who (through intrigues I have
no time to explain to you) often stop the execution of useful and
much-needed work; in fact, the best plans are often those which
offer most to the cupidity of commercial companies or speculators.

Another five years and I shall no longer be myself; my ambition
will be quenched, my desire to use the faculties my country
ordered me to exercise gone forever; the faculties themselves are
rusting out in the miserable corner of the world in which I
vegetate. Tak