He went to ask the advice of his neighbor who was familiar with the law, being a municipal councilor. It's got to be done this way. The letter was sent off. Two months went by. The prefect didn't respond.
Prefects never respond.
They write poetry, they flirt with the wives of tax collectors, and they may even be off in Paris, where they'll spend their evenings at the Olympia with various ambassadors. Each week, the municipal surveyor stopped in front of Pop Rivoli's house. The duplicates piled up inside the tomb of the prefecture, along with the original petition on its stamped paper and a lot of undisturbed dust. Rivoli spotted the mailman coming by on his route, but never stopping at his gate. The cracks in the wall grew wider and longer, the stones detached themselves and rolled onto the road-bank, the mortar crumbled, and the surface lifted off more and more, because there had been a heavy frost in the meantime.