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Was the prefect of the Third Republic merely a passive agent from whom successive governments demanded unthinking application of Parisian-defined politics? This article intends to show, on the contrary, that the prefect possesses a considerable amount of discretionary power at the local level, which is where the prefect is confronted with the law and other legal sources from which she or he can draw adaptable and contextualized regulations. Thus, the prefect has a significant margin of assessment and interpretation that does not contradict the law nor the legal sources, and it enables the prefect to adapt a law to local circumstances. The author highlights the power both to temporize rules – or even to contravene them – without strictly contradicting the law and to “make the law” at the local level.