The officer charged with the especial supervision of the districts or
circles, into which Berne had caused its dependent territory of Vaud to be
divided, was termed a _bailli_, a title that our word bailiff will
scarcely render, except as it may strictly mean a substitute for the
exercise of authority that is the property of another, but which, for the
want of a better term, we may be compelled occasionally to use. The
bailli, or bailiff, of Vevey was Peter Hofmeister, a member of one of
those families of the buergerschaft, or the municipal aristocracy of the
canton, which found its institutions venerable, just, and, and if one
might judge from their language, almost sacred, simply because it had been
in possession of certain exclusive privileges under their authority, that
were not only comfortable in their exercise but fecund in other worldly
advantages. This Peter Hofmeister was, in the main, a hearty,
well-meaning, and somewhat benevolent person, but, living as he did under
the secret consciousness that all was not as it should be, he pushed his
opinions on the subject of vested interests, and on the stability of
temporal matters, a little into extremes, pretty much on the same
principle as that on which the engineer expends the largest portion of his
art in fortifying the weakest point of the citadel, taking care that there
shall be a constant flight of shot, great and small, across the most
accessible of its approaches.
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