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The Deputy of Arcis

by Honoré de Balzac · English · Gutenberg #1871 · 747,442 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Deputy of Arcis

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley


        
Release date: July 26, 2004 [eBook #1871]
                Most recently updated: November 21, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1871

Credits: Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEPUTY OF ARCIS ***




Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





THE DEPUTY OF ARCIS


By Honore de Balzac



Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley





PART I. THE ELECTION




I. ALL ELECTIONS BEGIN WITH A BUSTLE

Before beginning to describe an election in the provinces, it is proper
to state that the town of Arcis-sur-Aube was not the theatre of the
events here related.

The arrondissement of Arcis votes at Bar-sur-Aube, which is forty miles
from Arcis; consequently there is no deputy from Arcis in the Chamber.

Discretion, required in a history of contemporaneous manners and morals,
dictates this precautionary word. It is rather an ingenious contrivance
to make the description of one town the frame for events which happened
in another; and several times already in the course of the Comedy of
Human Life, this means has been employed in spite of its disadvantages,
which consist chiefly in making the frame of as much importance as the
canvas.

Toward the end of the month of April, 1839, about ten o’clock in the
morning, the salon of Madame Marion, widow of a former receiver-general
of the department of the Aube, presented a singular appearance. All
the furniture had been removed except the curtains to the windows,
the ornaments on the fireplace, the chandelier, and the tea-table. An
Aubusson carpet, taken up two weeks before the usual time, obstructed
the steps of the portico, and the floor had been violently rubbed and
polished, though without increasing its usual brightness. All this was
a species of domestic premonition concerning the result of the elections
which were about to take place over the whole surface of France. Often
things are as spiritually intelligent as men,--an argument in favor of
the occult sciences.

The old man-servant of Colonel Giguet, Madame Marion’s older brother,
had just finished dusting the room; the chamber-maid and the cook were
carrying, with an alacrity that denoted an enthusiasm equal to their
attachment, all the chairs of the house, and piling them up in the
garden, where the trees were already unfolding their leaves, through
which the cloudless blue of the sky was visible. The springlike
atmosphere and sun of May allowed the glass door and the two windows of
the oblong salon to be kept open.

An old lady, Madame Marion herself, now ordered the two maids to place
the chairs at one end of the salon, four rows deep, leaving between the
rows a space of about three feet. When this was done, each row presented
a front of ten chairs, all of divers species. A line of chairs was also
placed along the wall, under the windows and before the glass door.
At the other end of the salon, facing the forty chairs, Madame Marion
placed three arm-chairs behind the tea-table, which was covered with a
green cloth, on which she placed a bell.

Old Colonel Giguet arrived on this battle-field at the moment when his
sister bethought herself of filling the empty spaces on either side
of the fireplace with benches from the antechamber, disregarding
the baldness of their velvet covers which had done good service for
twenty-four years.

“We can seat seventy persons,” she said to her brother triumphantly.

“God grant that we may have seventy friends!” replied the colonel.

“If, after receiving every night, for twenty-four years, the whole
society of Arcis-sur-Aube, a single one of my regular visitors fails us
on this occasion--” began the old lady, in a threatening manner.

“Pooh, pooh!” replied the colonel, interrupting his sister, “I’ll name
you ten who cannot and ought not to come. First,” he said, beginning to
count on his fingers, “Antonin Goulard, sub-prefect, for one; Frederic
Marest, _procureur-du-roi_, there’s two; Monsieur Olivier Vinet, his
substitute, three; Monsieur Martener, examining-judge, four; the justice
of peace--”

“But I am not so silly,” said the old lady, interrupting her brother in
her turn, “as to expect office-holders to come to a meeting the object
of which is to give another deputy to the Opposition. For all that,
Antonin Goulard, Simon’s comrade and schoolmate, would be very well
pleased to see him a deputy because--”

“Come, sister, leave our own business of politics to us men. Where is
Simon?”

“He is dressing,” she answered. “He was wise not to breakfast, for he is
very nervous. It is queer that, though he is in the habit of speaking in
court, he dreads this meeting as if he were certain to meet enemies.”

“Faith! I have often had to face masked batteries, and my soul--I won’t
say my body--never quailed; but if I had to stand there,” said the old
soldier, pointing to the tea-table, “and face forty bourgeois gaping
at me, their eyes fixed on mine, and expecting sonorous and correct
phrases, my shirt would be wringing wet before I could get out a word.”

“And yet, my dear father,” said Simon Giguet, entering from the smaller
salon, “you really must make that effort for me; for if there is a
man in the department of the Aube whose voice is all-powerful it is
assuredly you. In 1815--”

“In 1815,” said the little old man, who was wonderfully well preserved,
“I did not have to speak; I simply wrote out a little proclamation
which brought us two thousand men in twenty-four hours. But it is a
very different thing putting my name to a paper which is read by a
department, and standing up before a meeting to make a speech. Napoleon
himself failed there; at the 18th Brumaire he talked nothing but
nonsense to the Five Hundred.”

“But, my dear father,” urged Simon, “it concerns my life, my fortune, my
happiness. Fix your eyes on some one person and think you are talking to
him, and you’ll get through all right.”

“Heavens!” cried Madame Marion, “I am only an old woman, but under
such circumstances and knowing what depends on it, I--oh! I should be
eloquent!”

“Too eloquent, perhaps,” said the colonel. “To go beyond the mark is not
attaining it. But why make so much of all this?” he added, looking at
his son. “It is only within the last two days you have taken up this
candidacy of ideas; well, suppose you are not nominated,--so much the
worse for Arcis, that’s all.”

These words were in keeping with the whole life of him who said them.
Colonel Giguet was one of the most respected officers in the Grand
Army, the foundation of his character being absolute integrity joined to
extreme delicacy. Never did he put himself forward; favors, such as he
received, sought him. For this reason he remained eleven years a mere
captain of the artillery of the Guard, not receiving the rank of major
until 1814. His almost fanatical attachment to Napoleon forbade his
taking service under the Bourbons after the first abdication. In fact,
his devotion in 1815 was such that he would have been banished with so
many others if the Comte de Gondreville had not contrived to have his
name effaced from the ordinance and put on the retired list with a
pension, and the rank of colonel.

Madame Marion, _nee_ Giguet, had another brother who was colonel of
gendarmerie at Troyes, whom she followed to that town at an earlier
period. It was there that she married Monsieur Marion, receiver-general
of the Aube, who also had had a brother, the chief-justice of an
imperial court. While a mere barrister at Arcis this young man had
lent his name during the Terror to the famous Malin de l’Aube, the
representative of the people, in order to hold possession of the estate
of Gondreville. [See “An Historical Mystery.”] Consequently, all the
support and influence of Malin, now become count and senator, was at
the service of the Marion family. The barrister’s brother was made
receiver-general of the department, at a period when, far from having
forty applicants for one place, the government was fortunate in getting
any one to accept such a slippery office.

Marion, the receiver-general, inherited the fortune of his brother the
chief-justice, and Madame Marion that of her brother the colonel of
gendarmerie. In 1814, the receiver-general met with reverses. He died
when the Empire died; but his widow managed to gather fifteen thousand
francs a year from the wreck of his accumulated fortunes. The colonel of
gendarmerie had left his property to his sister on learning the marriage
of his brother the artillery officer to the daughter of a rich banker of
Hamburg. It is well known what a fancy all Europe had for the splendid
troopers of Napoleon!

In 1814, Madame Marion, half-ruined, returned to Arcis, her native
place, where she bought, on the Grande-Place, one of the finest houses
in the town. Accustomed to receive much company at Troyes, where the
receiver-general reigned supreme, she now opened her salon to the
notabilities of the liberal party in Arcis. A woman accustomed to the
advantages of salon royalty does not easily renounce them. Vanity is the
most tenacious of all habits.

Bonapartist, and afterwards a liberal--for, by the strangest of
metamorphoses, the soldiers of Napoleon became almost to a man
enamoured of the constitutional system--Colonel Giguet was, during the
Restoration, the natural president of the governing committee of Arcis,
which consisted of the notary Grevin, his son-in-law Beauvisage, and
Varlet junior, the chief physician of Arcis, brother-in-law of Grevin,
and a few other liberals.

“If our dear boy is not nominated,” said Madame Marion, having first
looked into the antechamber and garden to make sure that no one
overheard her, “he cannot have Mademoiselle Beauvisage; his success in
this election means a marriage with Cecile.”

“Cecile!” exclaimed the old man, opening his eyes very wide and looking
at his sister in stupefaction.

“There is no one but you in the whole department who would forget the
_dot_ and the expectations of Mademoiselle Beauvisage,” said his sister.

“She is the richest heiress in the department of the Aube,” said Simon
Giguet.

“But it seems to me,” said the old soldier, “that my son is not to be
despised as a match; he is your heir, he already has something from his
mother, and I expect to leave him something better than a dry name.”

“All that put together won’t make thirty thousand a year, and suitors
are already coming forward who have as much as that, not counting their
position,” returned Madame Marion.

“And?” asked the colonel.

“They have been refused.”

“Then what do the Beauvisage family want?” said the colonel, looking
alternately at his son and sister.

It may seem extraordinary that Colonel Giguet, the brother of Madame
Marion in whose house the society of Arcis had met for twenty-four
years, and whose salon was the echo of all reports, all scandals, and
all the gossip of the department of the Aube,--a good deal of it being
there manufactured,--should be ignorant of facts of this nature. But his
ignorance will seem natural when we mention that this noble relic of the
Napoleonic legions went to bed at night and rose in the morning with the
chickens, as all old persons should do if they wish to live out their
lives. He was never present at the intimate conversations which went
on in the salon. In the provinces there are two sorts of intimate
conversation,--one, which is held officially when all the company are
gathered together, playing at cards or conversing; the other, which
_simmers_, like a well made soup, when three or four friends remain
around the fireplace, friends who can be trusted to repeat nothing of
what is said beyond their own limits.

For nine years, ever since the triumph of his political ideas, the
colonel had lived almost entirely outside of social life. Rising with
the sun, he devoted himself to horticulture; he adored flowers, and of
all flowers he best loved roses. His hands were brown as those of a real
gardener; he took care himself of his beds. Constantly in conference
with his working gardener he mingled little, especially for the last two
years, with the life of others; of whom, indeed, he saw little. He took
but one meal with the family, namely, his dinner; for he rose too early
to breakfast with his son and sister. To his efforts we owe the famous
rose Giguet, known so well to all amateurs.

This old man, who had now passed into the state of a domestic fetich,
was exhibited, as we may well suppose, on all extraordinary occasions.
Certain families enjoy the benefit of a demi-god of this kind, and plume
themselves upon him as they would upon a title.

“I have noticed,” replied Madame Marion to her brother’s question, “that
ever since the revolution of July Madame Beauvisage has aspired to live
in Paris. Obliged to stay here as long as her father lives, she has
fastened her ambition on a future son-in-law, and my lady dreams now of
the splendors and dignities of political life.”

“Could you love Cecile?” said the colonel to his son.

“Yes, father.”

“And does she like you?”

“I think so; but the thing is, to please the mother and grandfather.
Though old Grevin himself wants to oppose my election, my success would
determine Madame Beauvisage to accept me, because she expects to manage
me as she pleases and to be minister under my name.”

“That’s a good joke!” cried Madame Marion. “What does she take us for?”

“Whom has she refused?” asked the colonel.

“Well, within the last three months, Antonin Goulard and the
_procureur-du-roi_, Frederic Marest, have received, so they say,
equivocal answers which mean anything--_except yes_.”

“Heavens!” cried the old man throwing up his arms. “What days we
live in, to be sure! Why, Lucie was the daughter of a hosier, and the
grand-daughter of a farmer. Does Madame Beauvisage want the Comte de
Cinq-Cygne for a son-in-law?”

“Don’t laugh at Madame Beauvisage, brother. Cecile is rich enough to
choose a husband anywhere, even in the class to which the Cinq-Cygnes
belong. But there’s the bell announcing the electors, and I
disappear--regretting much I can’t hear what you are all going to say.”




II. REVOLT OF A LIBERAL ROTTEN-BOROUGH

Though 1839 is, politically speaking, very distant from 1847, we can
still remember the elections produced by the Coalition, an ephemeral
effort of the Chamber of Deputies to realize the threat of parliamentary
government,--a threat _a la_ Cromwell, which without a Cromwell could
only end, under a prince “the enemy of fraud,” in the triumph of the
present system, by which the Chambers and the ministers are like the
wooden puppets which the proprietor of the Guignolet shows exhibits to
the great satisfaction of wonder-stricken idlers in the streets.

The arrondissement of Arcis-sur-Aube then found itself in a singular
position. It supposed itself free to choose its deputy. From 1816 to
1836 it had always elected one of the heaviest orators of the Left,
belonging to the famous seventeen who were called “Great Citizens” by
the liberal party,--namely, Francois Keller, of the house of Keller
Bros., the son-in-law of the Comte de Gondreville. Gondreville, one of
the most magnificent estates in France, is situated about a mile from
Arcis.

This banker, recently made count and peer of France, expected, no
doubt, to transfer to his son, then thirty years of age, his electoral
succession, in order to make him some day eligible for the peerage.
Already a major on the staff and a great favorite of the prince-royal,
Charles Keller, now a viscount, belonged to the court party of the
citizen-king. The most brilliant future seemed pledged to a young man
enormously rich, full of energy, already remarkable for his devotion to
the new dynasty, the grandson of the Comte de Gondreville, and nephew
of the Marechal de Carigliano; but this election, so necessary to his
future prospects, presented suddenly certain difficulties to overcome.

Since the accession to power of the bourgeois class, Arcis had felt a
vague desire to show itself independent. Consequently, the last election
of Francois Keller had been disturbed by certain republicans, whose red
caps and long beards had not, however, seriously alarmed the bourgeois
of Arcis. By canvassing the country carefully the radical candidate
would be able to secure some thirty or forty votes. A few of the
townspeople, humiliated at seeing their town always treated as a rotten
borough, joined the democrats, though enemies to democracy. In France,
under the system of balloting, politico-chemical products are formed in
which the laws of affinity are reversed.

Now, to elect young Keller in 1839, after having elected his father for
twenty years, would show a monstrous electoral servitude, against which
the pride of the newly enriched bourgeoisie revolved, for they felt
themselves to be fully worth either Monsieur Malin, otherwise called
Comte de Gondreville, the Keller Bros., the Cinq-Cygnes, or even, the
King of the French.

The numerous partisans of old Gondreville, the king of the department
of the Aube, were therefore awaiting some fresh proof of his ability,
already so thoroughly tested, to circumvent this rising revolt. In order
not to compromise the influence of his family in the arrondissement of
Arcis, that old statesman would doubtless propose for candidate some
young man who could be induced to accept an official function and then
yield his place to Charles Keller,--a parliamentary arrangement which
renders the elect of the people subject to re-election.

When Simon Giguet sounded the old notary Grevin, the faithful friend of
the Comte de Gondreville, on the subject of the elections, the old
man replied that, while he did not know the intentions of the Comte de
Gondreville, he should himself vote for Charles Keller and employ his
influence for that election.

As soon as this answer of old Grevin had circulated through Arcis, a
reaction against him set in. Although for thirty years this provincial
Aristides possessed the confidence of the whole town,--having been
mayor of Arcis from 1804 to 1814 and again during the Hundred Days,--and
although the Opposition had accepted him as their leader until the
triumph of 1830, at which period he refused the honors of the mayoralty
on the ground of his great age, and finally, although the town, in order
to manifest its affection for him, elected his son-in-law, Monsieur
Beauvisage, mayor in his stead, it now revolted against him and some
young striplings went so far as to talk of his dotage. The partisans of
Simon Giguet then turned to Phileas Beauvisage, the mayor, and won him
over the more easily to their side because, without having quarrelled
with his father-in-law, he assumed an independence of him which had
ended in coldness,--an independence that the sly old notary allowed him
to maintain, seeing in it an excellent means of action on the town of
Arcis.

The mayor, questioned the evening before in the open street, declared
positively that he should cast his vote for the first-comer on the list
of eligibles rather than give it to Charles Keller, for whom, however,
he had a high esteem.

“Arcis shall be no longer a rotten borough!” he said, “or I’ll emigrate
to Paris.”

Flatter the passions of the moment and you will always be a hero, even
at Arcis-sur-Aube.

“Monsieur le maire,” said everybody, “gives noble proof of his firmness
of character.”

Nothing progresses so rapidly as a legal revolt. That evening
Madame Marion and her friends organized for the morrow a meeting of
“independent electors” in the interests of Simon Giguet, the colonel’s
son. The morrow had now come and had turned the house topsy-turvy to
receive the friends on whose independence the leaders of the movement
counted. Simon Giguet, the native-born candidate of a little town
jealously desirous to elect a son of its own, had, as we have seen, put
to profit this desire; and yet, the whole prosperity and fortune of the
Giguet family were the work of the Comte de Gondreville. But when it
comes to an election, what are sentiments!

This Scene is written for the information of countries so unfortunate
as not to know the blessings of national representation, and which are,
therefore, ignorant by what intestinal convulsions, what Brutus-like
sacrifices, a little town gives birth to a deputy. Majestic but natural
spectacle, which may, indeed, be compared with that of childbirth,--the
same throes, the same impurities, the same lacerations, the same final
triumph!

It may be asked why an only son, whose fortune was sufficient, should
be, like Simon Giguet, an ordinary barrister in a little country town
where barristers are pretty nearly useless. A word about the candidate
is therefore necessary.

Colonel Giguet had had, between 1806 and 1813, by his wife who died in
1814, three children, the eldest of whom, Simon, alone survived. Until
he became an only child, Simon was brought up as a youth to whom the
exercise of a profession would be necessary. And about the time he
became by the death of his brothers the family heir, the young man met
with a serious disappointment. Madame Marion had counted much, for her
nephew, on the inheritance of his grandfather the banker of Hamburg. But
when that old German died in 1826, he left his grandson Giguet a paltry
two thousand francs a year. The worthy banker, endowed with great
procreative powers, having soothed the worries of business by the
pleasures of paternity, favored the families of eleven other children
who surrounded him, and who made him believe, with some appearance of
justice, that Simon Giguet was already a rich man.

Besides all this, the colonel was bent on giving his son an independent
position, and for this reason: the Giguets could not expect any
government favors under the Restoration. Even if Simon had not been the
son of an ardent Bonapartist, he belonged to a family whose members had
justly incurred the animosity of the Cinq-Cygne family, owing to
the part which Giguet, the colonel of gendarmerie, and the Marions,
including Madame Marion, had taken as witnesses on the famous trial of
the Messieurs de Simeuse, unjustly condemned in 1805 for the abduction
of the Comte de Gondreville, then senator, and formerly representative
of the people, who had despoiled the Cinq-Cygne family of their
property. [See “An Historical Mystery.”]

Grevin was not only one of the most important witnesses at that trial,
but he was one of the chief promoters of the prosecution. That affair
divides to this day the arrondissement of Arcis into two parties; one of
which declares the innocence of the condemned; the other standing by the
Comte de Gondreville and his adherents. Though, under the Restoration,
the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne used all the influence the return of the
Bourbons gave her to arrange things as she wished in the department
of the Aube, the Comte de Gondreville contrived to counterbalance this
Cinq-Cygne royalty by the secret authority he wielded over the liberals
of the town through the notary Grevin, Colonel Giguet, his son-in-law
Keller (always elected deputy in spite of the Cinq-Cygnes), and also by
the credit he maintained, as long as Louis XVIII. lived, in the counsels
of the crown. It was not until after the death of that king that the
Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne was able to get Michu appointed judge of the
court of assizes in Arcis. She desired of all things to obtain this
place for the son of the steward who had perished on the scaffold
at Troyes, the victim of his devotion to the Simeuse family, whose
full-length portrait always hung in her salon, whether in Paris or at
Cinq-Cygne. Until 1823 the Comte de Gondreville had possessed sufficient
power over Louis XVIII. to prevent this appointment of Michu.

It was by the advice of the Comte de Gondreville that Colonel Giguet
made his son a lawyer. Simon had all the more opportunity of shining
at the bar in the arrondissement of Arcis because he was the only
barrister, solicitors pleading their own cases in these petty
localities. The young man had really secured certain triumphs in the
court of assizes of the Aube, but he was none the less an object of
derision to Frederic Marest, _procureur-du-roi_, Olivier Vinet, the
substitute _procureur_, and the judge, Michu,--the three best minds in
the court.

Simon Giguet, like other men, paid goodly tribute to the mighty power of
ridicule that pursued him. He liked to hear himself talk, and he talked
on all occasions; he solemnly delivered himself of dry and long-winded
sentences which passed for eloquence among the upper bourgeoisie of
Arcis. The poor fellow belonged to that species of bore which desires
to explain everything, even the simplest thing. He explained rain; he
explained the revolution of July; he explained things impenetrable; he
explained Louis-Philippe, Odilon Barrot, Monsieur Thiers, the Eastern
Question; he explained Champagne; he explained 1788; he explained the
tariff of custom houses and humanitarians, magnetism and the economy of
the civil list.

This lean young man, with a bilious skin, tall enough to justify his
sonorous nullity (for it is rare that a tall man does not have eminent
faculties of some kind) outdid the puritanism of the votaries of the
extreme Left, all of them so sensitive, after the manner of prudes who
have their intrigues to hide. Dressed invariably in black, he wore a
white cravat which came down low on his chest, so that his face seemed
to issue from a horn of white paper, for the collar of his shirt was
high and stiff after a fashion now, fortunately, exploded. His trousers
and his coats were always too large for him. He had what is called
in the provinces dignity; that is to say, he was stiffly erect and
pompously dull in manner. His friend, Antonin Goulard, accused him of
imitating Monsieur Dupin. And in truth, the young barrister was apt to
wear shoes and stout socks of black filoselle.

Protected by the respect that every one bore to his father, and by
the influence exercised by his aunt over a little town whose principal
inhabitants had frequented her salon for many years, Simon Giguet,
possessing already ten thousand francs a year, not counting the fees
of his profession and the fortune his aunt would not fail to leave him,
felt no doubt of his election. Nevertheless, the first sound of the bell
announcing the arrival of the most influential electors echoed in the
heart of the ambitious aspirant and filled it with vague fears. Simon
did not conceal from himself the cleverness and the immense resources
of old Grevin, nor the prestige attending the means that would surely be
employed by the ministry to promote the candidacy of a young and dashing
officer then in Africa, attached to the staff of the prince-royal.

“I think,” he said to his father, “that I have the colic; I feel a
warmth at the pit of my stomach that makes me very uneasy.”

“Old soldiers,” replied the colonel, “have the same feeling when they
hear the cannon beginning to growl at the opening of a battle.”

“What will it be in the Chamber!” said the barrister.

“The Comte de Gondreville told me,” said the old colonel, “that he has
known more than one orator affected with the qualms which precede, even
with us old fire-eaters, the opening of a battle. But all this is
idle talk. You want to be a deputy,” added the old man, shrugging his
shoulders, “then be one!”

“Father, the real triumph will be Cecile! Cecile has an immense fortune.
Now-a-days an immense fortune means power.”

“Dear me! how times have changed! Under the Emperor men had to be
brave.”

“Each epoch is summed up in a phrase,” said Simon, recalling an
observation of the Comte de Gondreville, which paints that personage
well. He remarked: “Under the Empire, when it was desirable to destroy a
man, people said, ‘He is a coward.’ To-day we say, ‘He is a cheat.’”

“Poor France! where are they leading you?” cried the colonel; “I shall
go back to my roses.”

“Oh, stay, father! You are the keystone of the arch.”




III. OPPOSITION DEFINES ITSELF

The mayor, Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage, was the first to present
himself, accompanied by the successor of his father-in-law, the
busiest notary in town, Achille Pigoult, grandson of an old man who
had continued justice of the peace in Arcis during the Revolution, the
Empire, and the Restoration. Achille Pigoult, thirty-two years of age,
had been eighteen years a clerk in Grevin’s office with no means of
becoming himself a notary. His father, son of the justice of peace, had
died of a so-called apoplexy, having gone wrong in business.

The Comte de Gondreville, however, with whom old Pigoult had relations
dating back to 1793, lent money for the necessary security, and thus
enabled the grandson of the judge who made the first examination in the
Simeuse case to buy the practice of his master, Grevin. Achille had
set up his office in the Place de l’Eglise, in a house belonging to the
Comte de Gondreville, which the latter had leased to him at so low a
price that any one could see how desirous that crafty politician was to
hold the leading notary of Arcis in the hollow of his hand.

Young Pigoult, a short, skinny man, whose eyes seemed to pierce the
green spectacles which could not modify the spitefulness of his glance,
well-informed as to all the interests of the neighborhood, owing his
aptitude in managing affairs to a certain facility of speech, passed
for what is called a _quizzer_, saying things plainly and with more
cleverness than the aborigines could put into their conversations. Still
a bachelor, he was awaiting a rich marriage through the offices of
his two protectors, Grevin and the Comte de Gondreville. Consequently,
barrister Giguet was not a little surprised on seeing Achille appear at
the meeting in company with Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage.

The notary, whose face was so seamed by the smallpox that it seemed to
be covered with a white net, formed a perfect contrast to the rotund
person of the mayor, whose face resembled a full moon, but a warm
and lively moon; its tones of lily and of rose being still further
brightened by a gracious smile, the result not so much of a disposition
of the soul as of that formation of the lips for which the word
“simpering” seems to have been created. Phileas Beauvisage was endowed
with so great a contentment with himself that he smiled on all the world
and under all circumstances. Those simpering lips smiled at a funeral.
The liveliness that abounded in his infantine blue eyes did not
contradict that perpetual and well-nigh intolerable smile.

This internal satisfaction passed all the more readily for benevolence
and affability, because Phileas had made himself a language of his own,
remarkable for its immoderate use of the formulas of politeness. He
always “had the honor”; to all his inquiries as to the health of absent
persons he added the adjectives “dear,” “good,” “excellent.” He lavished
condoling or congratulatory phrases apropos of all the petty miseries
and all the little felicities of life. He concealed under a deluge of
commonplaces his native incapacity, his total want of education, and
a weakness of character which can only be expressed by the old word
“weathercock.” Be not uneasy: the weathercock had for its axis the
beautiful Madame Beauvisage, Severine Grevin, the most remarkable woman
in the arrondissement.

When Severine heard of what she called her husband’s “freak” as to
the election, she said to him on the morning of the meeting at Madame
Marion’s:--

“It was well enough to give yourself an air of independence; but you
mustn’t go to that Giguet meeting unless Achille Pigoult accompanies
you; I’ve told him to come and take you.”

Giving Achille Pigoult as mentor to Beauvisage meant sending a spy from
the Gondreville party to the Giguet assemblage. We may therefore imagine
the grimace which contracted the puritan visage of Simon, who was
forced to welcome graciously an _habitue_ of his aunt’s salon and an
influential elector, in whom, nevertheless, he saw an enemy.

“Ah!” he thought to himself, “what a mistake I made in refusing him
that security when he asked for it! Old Gondreville had more sense than
I--Good-day to you, Achille,” he said, assuming a jaunty manner; “I
suppose you mean to trip me up.”

“Your meeting isn’t a conspiracy against the independence of our votes,”
 replied the notary, smiling. “We are all playing above-board, I take
it.”

“Above-board,” echoed Beauvisage.

And the mayor began to laugh with that expressionless laugh by which
some persons end all their sentences; which may, perhaps, be called the
_ritornello_ of their conversation. After which he placed himself in
what we must describe as his third position, standing full-front, his
chest expanded, and his hands behind his back. He was dressed in black
coat and trousers, with an effulgent white waistcoat, opened in such a
way as to show two diamond shirt-buttons worth several thousand francs.

“We shall fight, but we shall not be the less good friends,” he said.
“That is the essence of constitutional morals; he! he! he! That is how
_I_ understand the alliance of monarchy with liberty; ha! ha! ha!”

Whereupon the mayor took Simon’s hand, saying:

“How are you, my good friend? Your dear aunt and our worthy colonel
are no doubt as well to-day as they were yesterday,--that is, I presume
so,--he! he! he!” adding, with an air of perfect beatitude, “perhaps a
little agitated by the ceremony now about to take place. Ha! ha! young
man; so we intend to enter a political career? Ha! ha! ha! This is our
first step--mustn’t step back--it is a great career. I’d rather it were
you than I to rush into the storms and tempests of the legislative body,
hi! hi!--however agreeable it may be to see that body in our own person,
hi! hi! hi!--the sovereign power of France in one four hundred and
fifty-third! Hi! hi! hi!”

The vocal organ of Phileas Beauvisage had an agreeable sonority
altogether in harmony with the leguminous curves of his face (of the
color of a light yellow pumpkin), his solid back, and his broadly
expanded chest. That voice, bass in volume, could soften to a baritone
and utter, in the giggle with which Phileas ended his phrases, a silvery
note. When God desired, in order to place all species of mankind in this
his terrestrial paradise, to create within it a provincial bourgeois,
his hands never made a more perfect and complete type than Phileas
Beauvisage.

“I admire,” said that great work, “the devotion of those who fling
themselves into the tumult of political life; he! he! he! It takes more
nerve than I possess. Who could have told us in 1812 or 1813 that we
should come to this? As for me, nothing can surprise me in these days,
when asphalt, India-rubber, railroads, and steam have changed the ground
we tread on, and overcoats, and distances, he, he!”

These last words were seasoned with a prolonged laugh, and accompanied
by a gesture which he had made more especially his own: he closed his
right fist, struck it into the rounded palm of his left hand, and rubbed
it there with joyous satisfaction. This performance coincided with his
laughs on the frequent occasions when he thought he had said a witty
thing. Perhaps it is superfluous to add that Phileas Beauvisage was
regarded in Arcis as an amiable and charming man.

“I shall endeavor,” replied Simon Giguet, “to worthily represent--”

“The sheep of Champagne,” interpolated Achille Pigoult, interrupting
him.

The candidate swallowed that shaft without reply, for he was forced at
that moment to go forward and receive two more influential electors.

One was the landlord of the Mulet, the best inn in Arcis, standing
on the Grande-Place at the corner of the rue de Brienne. This worthy
landlord, named Poupart, had married the sister of a man-servant
attached to the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, the well-known Gothard, one of
the actors and witnesses in the Simeuse affair.

Poupart, though a most devoted adherent of the Cinq-Cygne family, had
been sounded during the last day or two, by Colonel Giguet’s valet,
with so much cleverness and perseverance that he thought he was doing an
ill-turn to the Comte de Gondreville, the enemy of the Cinq-Cygnes, by
giving his influence to the election of Simon Giguet; and he was now
conversing on that point with the man who accompanied him, an apothecary
named Fromaget, who, as he did not furnish his wares to the chateau de
Gondreville, desired nothing better than to cabal against the Kellers.

These two individuals of the lesser bourgeoisie could, in consequence
of their connections, determine a certain number of floating votes, for
they influenced and advised a number of persons to whom the political
opinions of the candidate were a matter of indifference. Consequently,
Simon took possession of Poupart, and delivered the apothecary Fromaget
to his father, who had just come in to make his bow to the electors.

The sub-engineer of the arrondissement, the secretary of the mayor’s
office, four sheriffs, three solicitors, the clerk of the court, and
the clerk of the justice of the peace, the registry-clerk, and the
tax-collector, all officials under government, two doctors, rivals of
Varlet, Grevin’s brother-in-law, a miller named Laurent Goussard, the
head of the republicans of Arcis, the two assistant mayors, the printer
and publisher of Arcis, and about a dozen other bourgeois arrived in
succession, and walked about the garden until the gathering seemed
numerous enough to admit of opening the session.

At length, about mid-day, fifty men, all in their best clothes,--most of
them having come out of curiosity to see the handsome salons which were
much talked of throughout the arrondissement,--were seated on the chairs
Madame Marion had provided for them. The windows were left open, and
presently so deep a silence reigned that the rustle of Madame Marion’s
gown was heard,--that good woman not being able to resist the pleasure
of descending to the garden and placing herself in a corner whence she
could listen to what went on in the salon. The cook, the chamber-maid,
and the man-servant stood in the dining-room and shared the emotions of
their masters.

“Messieurs,” said Simon Giguet, “some among you desire to honor my
father by asking him to preside at this meeting; but Colonel Giguet
requests me to present his thanks, and express due gratitude for a
desire in which he sees a reward for his services to the country. We are
in his house; he thinks he ought, therefore, to decline those functions,
and he desires to propose in his stead an honorable merchant on whom
your suffrages have already bestowed the chief magistracy of this town,
Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage.”

“Bravo! bravo!”

“We are, I think, all of one mind in adopting for this
meeting--essentially friendly, but entirely free, which will prejudice
in no way whatever the great preparatory and primary meeting in which
you will produce your candidates and weigh their merits--in adopting, as
I said, the parliamentary and constitutional--forms--of the--electoral
Chamber.”

“Yes, yes!” cried the assembly with one voice.

“Consequently,” continued Simon, “I have the honor to request, according
to the wish of all present, that his honor the mayor will now take the
chair.”

Phileas rose and crossed the salon, conscious that he was becoming as
red as a cherry. Then, when he stood behind the table, he saw, not a
hundred eyes, but a hundred thousand candles. The sun seemed to him to
be setting fire to the salon, and he had, to use his own expression, a
lump of salt in his throat.

“Return thanks,” said Simon, in a low voice.

“Messieurs--”

Such total silence ensued that Phileas had a spasm of colic.

“What must I say, Simon?” he whispered.

“Well, well!” exclaimed Achille Pigoult.

“Messieurs,” said Simon, goaded by the sarcastic interjection of the
little notary, “the honor which you have done to Monsieur le Maire may
take him unawares, but it cannot surprise him.”

“That’s it,” said Beauvisage; “I am too sensible of this attention on
the part of my fellow-citizens not to be excessively flattered by it.”

“Bravo!” cried the notary alone.

“The devil take me!” thought Beauvisage, “if I am ever caught haranguing
again.”

“Will Messieurs Fromaget and Marcelin accept the functions of inspectors
of the ballot?”

“It would be more regular,” said Achille Pigoult, rising, “if the
meeting itself nominated those officers,--following, of course, the
parliamentary forms of the Chamber.”

“That is best,” said the huge Monsieur Mollot, clerk of the court;
“otherwise what is here taking place would be a mere farce; we should
not be free in our action, in which case we might as well continue to do
the will of Monsieur Simon Giguet.”

Simon said a few words to Beauvisage, who rose and delivered himself of
a “Messieurs!” in palpitating tones.

“Pardon me, Monsieur le president,” said Achille Pigoult, “the chairman
presides, he does not speak.”

“Messieurs,” continued Beauvisage, prompted by Simon, “if we
are--to conform--to parliamentary usage--I shall beg--the honorable
gentleman--Monsieur Pigoult--to address the meeting--from this
table--here present--”

Pigoult sprang to the table, stood beside it with his fingers resting
lightly on its edge, and gave proof of his boldness by delivering the
following speech without the slightest embarrassment, and somewhat after
the manner of the illustrious Monsieur Thiers.

“Messieurs, it was not I who made that proposal for parliamentary
usage; nevertheless I can conceive that an assemblage of some sixty
notabilities of Champagne needs a chairman to guide it; for no flock can
get on without a shepherd. If we had voted for secret balloting, I am
certain that the name of our excellent mayor would have been returned
unanimously. His opposition to the candidate put forward by his
relations proves to us that he possesses civic courage in the highest
degree, inasmuch as he has dared to free himself from the closest
ties--those of family. Patriotism before family! that is indeed so great
an effort that, to make it, we are forced to believe that Brutus from
his realm of justice still contemplates us after the lapse of two
thousand, five hundred and some years. It seemed natural to Maitre
Giguet, who had the merit of divining our wishes in the choice of a
chairman, to guide us still further in electing inspectors; but, if I am
not mistaken, you think with me that once is enough--and you are
right. Our mutual friend, Simon Giguet, who intends to offer himself
as candidate, would have the air of assuming mastery, and he might,
consequently, lose in our minds the good-will we should otherwise bestow
upon a modest attitude like that of his venerable father. Now what is
our worthy chairman doing at this moment by accepting the method of
presiding suggested to him by the candidate? He is depriving us of our
liberty! I ask you: is it proper that the chairman of our choice should
tell us to nominate, by rising or sitting, inspectors of the ballot thus
forced upon us? Have we any liberty of choice? If I were proposed, I
believe all present would rise out of politeness; indeed, we should all
feel bound to rise for one another, and I say there can be no choice
where there is no freedom of action.”

“He is right,” said the sixty auditors.

“Therefore, let us each write two names on a ballot, and the two
gentlemen who are elected will then feel themselves the real choice of
this assembly; they will have the right, conjointly with our honorable
chairman, to pronounce upon the majority when we come to a vote on
the resolutions to be offered. We are here, I think, to promise to a
candidate the fullest support that each can give at the coming
primary meeting of all the electors of the arrondissement. This act is
therefore, and I so declare it, a grave one. Does it not concern one
four-hundredth part of the governing power,--as our excellent mayor has
lately said with the ready wit that characterizes him and for which we
have so high an appreciation?”

During these remarks Colonel Giguet was cutting a sheet of paper into
strips, and Simon had sent for pens and ink.

This preliminary discussion on forms had already made Simon extremely
uneasy, and had also aroused the attention of the sixty assembled
bourgeois. Presently they began to write their ballots, and the wily
Pigoult contrived to obtain a majority for Monsieur Mollot, the clerk of
the court, and Monsieur Godivet, the registrar. These nominations were
naturally very displeasing to Fromaget, the apothecary, and Marcelin the
solicitor.

“You enable us,” said Achille Pigoult, “to manifest our independence.
Therefore you may feel more pride in being rejected than you could have
felt in being chosen.”

Everybody laughed.

Simon Giguet then produced silence by demanding speech of the chairman,
whose shirt was already wet and became still wetter as he mustered all
his courage to say:--

“Monsieur Simon Giguet has the floor.”




IV. THE FIRST PARLIAMENTARY TEMPEST

“Messieurs,” said Simon Giguet, “I ask permission to thank Monsieur
Achille Pigoult, who, although our meeting is altogether friendly--”

“It is a meeting preparatory to the great primary meeting,” said the
solicitor Marcelin.

“That is what I was about to explain,” resumed Simon, “I thank Monsieur
Achille Pigoult for having insisted on the strictness of parliamentary
forms. This is the first time that the arrondissement of Arcis has been
at liberty to use--”

“At liberty!” said Pigoult, interrupting the orator.

“At liberty!” cried the assembly.

“At liberty,” continued Simon Giguet, “to use its rights in the great
battle of a general election to the Chamber of Deputies; and as, in
a few days, we shall have a meeting, at which all electors will be
present, to judge of the merits of the candidates, we ought to feel
ourselves most fortunate in becoming accustomed here, in this limited
meeting, to the usages of great assemblies. We shall be all the more
able to decide the political future of the town of Arcis; for the
question now is to substitute a town’s interests for family interests, a
whole region for a man.”

Simon then reviewed the history of the Arcis elections for the last
twenty years. While approving the constant election of Francois Keller,
he said the moment had now come to shake off the yoke of the house of
Gondreville. Arcis ought to be no more a fief of the liberals than a
fief of the Cinq-Cygnes. Advanced opinions were arising in France of
which the Kellers were not the exponents. Charles Keller, having become
a viscount, belonged to the court; he could have no independence,
because, in presenting him as candidate, his family thought much more
of making him succeed to his father’s peerage than of benefiting his
constituency as deputy, etc., etc. And, finally, Simon presented himself
to the choice of his fellow-citizens, pledging his word to sit on the
same bench with the illustrious Odilon Barrot, and never to desert the
glorious flag of Progress.

_Progress_! one of those words behind which more flimsy ambitions than
ideas were trying to group themselves; for, after 1830, it represented
only the pretensions of a few hungry democrats. Nevertheless, this word
had still a great effect upon Arcis, and gave stability to whosoever
might inscribe it on his banner. To call himself a man of progress
was to declare himself a philosopher in all things and a puritan
in politics; it declared him in favor of railroads, mackintoshes,
penitentiaries, wooden pavements, Negro freedom, savings-banks, seamless
shoes, lighting by gas, asphalt pavements, universal suffrage, and
reduction of the civil list. In short, it meant pronouncing himself
against the treaties of 1815, against the Eldest Branch, against the
colossus of the North, perfidious Albion, against all enterprises, good
or bad, of the government. Thus we see that the word _progress_ might
signify “No,” as well as “Yes.” It was gilding put upon the word
_liberalism_, a new pass-word for new ambitions.

“If I have rightly understood what this meeting is for,” said Jean
Violette, a stocking-maker, who had recently bought the Beauvisage
house, “it is to pledge ourselves to support, by employing every means
in our power, Monsieur Simon Giguet at the elections as deputy in place
of Comte Francois Keller. If each of us intends to coalesce in this
manner we have only to say plainly Yes or No on that point.”

“That is going too quickly to the point! Political affairs do not
advance in that way, or there would be no politics at all!” cried
Pigoult, whose old grandfather, eighty-six years old, had just entered
the room. “The last speaker undertakes to decide what seems to me,
according to my feeble lights, the very object we are met to discuss. I
demand permission to speak.”

“Monsieur Achille Pigoult has the floor,” said Beauvisage, at last
able to pronounce that phrase with all his municipal and constitutional
dignity.

“Messieurs,” said the notary, “if there is a house in Arcis in which
no voice should be raised against the influence of the Comte de
Gondreville, it is surely the one we are now in. The worthy Colonel
Giguet is the only person in it who has not sought the benefits of the
senatorial power; he, at least, has never asked anything of the Comte de
Gondreville, who took his name off the list of exiles in 1815 and caused
him to receive the pension which the colonel now enjoys without lifting
a finger to obtain it.”

A murmur, flattering to the old soldier, greeted this observation.

“But,” continued the orator, “the Marions are covered with the count’s
benefits. Without that influence, the late Colonel Giguet would not have
commanded the gendarmerie of the Aube. The late Monsieur Marion would
not have been chief-justice of the Imperial court without the protection
of the count, to whom I myself have every reason to be thankful. You
will therefore think it natural that I should be his advocate within
these walls. There are, indeed, few persons in this arrondissement who
have not received benefits from that family.”

[Murmurs.]

“A candidate puts himself in the stocks,” continued Achille Pigoult,
warming up. “I have the right to scrutinize his life before I invest him
with my powers. I do not desire ingratitude in the delegate I may
help to send to the Chamber, for ingratitude is like misfortune--one
ingratitude leads to others. We have been, he tells us, the
stepping-stone of the Kellers; well, from what I have heard here, I am
afraid we may become the stepping-stone of the Giguets. We live in a
practical age, do we not? Well, then, let us examine into what will be
the results to the arrondissement of Arcis if Simon Giguet is elected.
They talk to you of independence! Simon, whom I thus maltreat as
candidate, is my personal friend, as he is that of all who hear me, and
I should myself be charmed to see him the orator of the Left, seated
between Garnier-Pages and Lafitte; but how would that benefit the
arrondissement? The arrondissement would lose the support of the Comte
de Gondreville and the Kellers. We all, in the course of five years,
have had and shall have need of the one and of the others. Some have
gone to the Marechale de Carigliano to obtain the release of a young
fellow who had drawn a bad number. Others have had recourse to the
influence of the Kellers in many matters which are decided according to
their recommendation. We have always found the old Comte de Gondreville
ready to do us service. It is enough to belong to Arcis to obtain
admission to him without being forced to kick our heels in his
antechamber. Those two families know every one in Arcis. Where is the
financial influence of the Giguets, and what power have they with the
ministry? Have they any standing at the Bourse? When we want to replace
our wretched wooden bridge with one of stone can they obtain from the
department and the State the necessary funds? By electing Charles Keller
we shall cement a bond of friendship which has never, to this day,
failed to do us service. By electing my good, my excellent schoolmate,
my worthy friend Simon Giguet, we shall realize nothing but losses until
the far-distant time when he becomes a minister. I know his modesty well
enough to be certain he will not contradict me when I say that I doubt
his election to the post of deputy.” [Laughter.] “I have come to
this meeting to oppose a course which I regard as fatal to our
arrondissement. Charles Keller belongs to the court, they say to me.
Well, so much the better! we shall not have to pay the costs of his
political apprenticeship; he knows the affairs of the country; he knows
parliamentary necessities; he is much nearer being a statesman than
my friend Simon, who will not pretend to have made himself a Pitt or a
Talleyrand in a little town like Arcis--”

“Danton went from it!” cried Colonel Giguet, furious at Achille’s speech
and the justice of it.

“Bravo!”

This was an acclamation, and sixty persons clapped their hands.

“My father has a ready wit,” whispered Simon Giguet to Beauvisage.

“I do not understand why, apropos of an election,” continued the old
colonel, rising suddenly, with the blood boiling in his face, “we
should be hauled up for the ties which connect us with the Comte de
Gondreville. My son’s fortune comes from his mother; he has asked
nothing of the Comte de Gondreville. The comte might never have existed
and Simon would have been what he now is,--the son of a colonel of
artillery who owes his rank to his services; a man whose opinions have
never varied. I should say openly to the Comte de Gondreville if he were
present: ‘We have elected your son-in-law for twenty years; to-day we
wish to prove that in so doing we acted of our own free-will, and we now
elect a man of Arcis, in order to show that the old spirit of 1789, to
which you owe your fortune, still lives in the land of Danton, Malin,
Grevin, Pigoult, Marion--That is all!”

And the old man sat down. Whereupon a great hubbub arose. Achille opened
his mouth to reply. Beauvisage, who would not have thought himself
chairman unless he had rung his bell, increased the racket, and called
for silence. It was then two o’clock.

“I shall take the liberty to observe to the honorable Colonel Giguet,
whose feelings are easily understood, that he took upon himself to
speak, which is against parliamentary usage,” said Achille Pigoult.

“I think it is not necessary to call the colonel to order,” said the
chairman. “He is a father--”

Silence was re-established.

“We did not come here,” cried Fromaget, “to say Amen to everything the
Messieurs Giguet, father and son, may wish--”

“No! no!” cried the assembly.

“Things are going badly,” said Madame Marion to her cook in the garden.

“Messieurs,” resumed Achille, “I confine myself to asking my friend
Simon Giguet, categorically, what he expects to do for our interests.”

“Yes! yes!” cried the assembly.

“Since when,” demanded Simon Giguet, “have good citizens like those of
Arcis made trade and barter of the sacred mission of deputy?”

It is impossible to represent the effect produced by noble sentiments on
a body of men. They will applaud fine maxims, while they none the less
vote for the degradation of their country, like the galley-slave who
shouted for the punishment of Robert Macaire when he saw the thing
played, and then went off and killed his own Monsieur Germeuil.

“Bravo!” cried several true-blood Giguet electors.

“You will send me to the Chamber,” went on Simon, “if you do send me, to
represent principles, the principles of 1789; to be one of the ciphers,
if you choose, of the Opposition, but a cipher that votes with it to
enlighten the government, make war against abuses, and promote progress
in all things--”

“What do you call progress?” asked Fromaget. “For us, progress means
getting the waste lands of la Champagne under cultivation.”

“Progress! I will explain to you what I mean by that,” cried Giguet,
exasperated by the interruption.

“It is the frontier of the Rhine for France,” put in the colonel, “and
the destruction of the treaties of 1815.”

“It is selling wheat dear and keeping bread cheap,” cried Achille
Pigoult sarcastically, thinking that he made a joke, but actually
expressing one of the delusions that reign in France.

“It is the happiness of all, obtained by the triumph of humanitarian
doctrines,” continued Simon.

“What did I tell you?” said Achille to his neighbors.

“Hush! silence! let us listen!” said various voices.

“Messieurs,” said the stout Mollot, smiling, “the debate is beginning;
give your attention to the orator; and let him explain himself.”

“In all transitional epochs, Messieurs,” continued Simon, gravely, “and
we are now in such an epoch--”

“Ba-a-a! ba-a-a!” bleated a friend of Achille Pigoult, who possessed the
faculty (precious at elections) of ventriloquism.

A roar of laughter came from the whole assembly, who were Champagnards
before all else. Simon Giguet folded his arms and waited till the tumult
subsided.

“If it was intended to give me a lesson,” he resumed, “and to tell me
that I belong to the flock of the glorious defenders of the rights of
humanity, the flock of the immortal priest who pleads for dying Poland,
the daring pamphleteers, the scrutinizers of the civil test, the
philosophers who demand sincerity in the working of our institutions, if
that was the intention of my nameless interrupter, I thank him. To
me, progress is the realization of all that was promised to us by the
revolution of July; it is electoral reform, it is--”

“What! are you a democrat?” said Achille Pigoult.

“No,” replied the candidate. “To desire the legitimate and regular
development of our institutions, is that being a democrat? To me,
progress is fraternity re-established between the members of the great
French family. We cannot conceal from ourselves that many sufferings--”

At three o’clock Simon Giguet was still explaining Progress, accompanied
by the rhythmic snores of various electors which denoted a sound
sleep. The malicious Achille Pigoult had urged all present to listen
religiously to the young orator, who was now floundering in his phrases
and paraphrases hopelessly at random.




V. THE PERPLEXITIES OF THE GOVERNMENT IN ARCIS

At this moment several groups of bourgeois, electors and non-electors,
were standing before the Chateau d’Arcis, the iron gates of which open
on the square near to the door of Madame Marion’s house. This square
is a piece of open ground from which issue several roads and several
streets. In it is a covered market. Opposite to the chateau, on the
other side of the square, which is neither paved nor macadamized, and
where the rain has made various little gutters, is a fine esplanade,
called the Avenue of Sighs. Is that to the honor or to the blame of the
leaders of the town? This singular ambibology is no doubt a stroke of
native wit.

Two handsome side avenues, planted with lindens, lead from the square
to a circular boulevard which forms another promenade, though usually
deserted, where more dirt and rubbish than promenaders may commonly be
seen.

At the height of the discussion which Achille Pigoult was dramatizing
with a coolness and courage worthy of a member of a real parliament,
four personages were walking down one of the linden avenues which led
from the Avenue of Sighs. When they reached the square, they stopped as
if by common consent, and looked at the inhabitants of Arcis, who were
humming before the chateau like so many bees before returning to their
hives at night. The four promenaders were the whole ministerial
conclave of Arcis, namely: the sub-prefect, the _procureur-du-roi_, his
substitute, and the examining-judge, Monsieur Martener. The judge of the
court, Monsieur Michu, was, as we know already, a partisan of the Elder
Branch and a devoted adherent of the house of Cinq-Cygne.

“No, I don’t understand the action of the government,” repeated the
sub-prefect, Antonin Goulard, pointing to the groups which seemed to
be thickening. “At such an important crisis to leave me without
instructions!”

“In that you are like the rest of us,” said Olivier Vinet, the
substitute, smiling.

“Why do you blame the government?” asked the _procureur-du-roi_,
Frederic Marest.

“The ministry is much embarrassed,” remarked young Martener. “It knows
that this arrondissement belongs, in a certain way, to the Kellers, and
it is very desirous not to thwart them. It is forced to keep on good
terms with the only man who is comparable to Monsieur de Talleyrand. It
is not to the prefect, but to the Comte de Gondreville that you ought to
send the commissary of police.”

“Meanwhile,” said Frederic Marest, “the Opposition is bestirring itself;
you see yourselves the influence of Monsieur Giguet. Our mayor, Monsieur
Beauvisage, is presiding over that preparatory meeting.”

“After all,” said Olivier Vinet slyly to the sub-prefect, “Simon Giguet
is your friend and schoolmate; he will belong to the Thiers’ party; you
risk nothing in supporting his election.”

“The present ministry could dismiss me before its fall,” replied the
sub-prefect, “and who knows when I should be reappointed?”

“Collinet, the grocer!--that makes the sixty-sixth elector who has
entered the Giguet house,” said Monsieur Martener, who was practising
his trade as examining-judge by counting the electors.

“If Charles Keller is the ministerial candidate,” resumed the
sub-prefect, “I ought to have been told of it; the government makes a
mistake in giving time for Simon Giguet to get hold of the electors.”

These four individuals had now reached, walking slowly, the spot where
the avenue ceases and becomes an open square.

“There’s Monsieur Groslier,” said the judge, catching sight of a man on
horseback.

This was the commissary of police; he saw the government of Arcis
collected on the public square, and he rode up to the four gentlemen.

“Well, Monsieur Groslier?” said the sub-prefect, taking the commissary a
little apart from his three colleagues.

“Monsieur,” said the commissary of police in a low voice, “Monsieur
la prefet has sent me to tell you some sad news; Monsieur le Vicomte
Charles Keller is dead. The news reached Paris by telegram night before
last, and the two Messieurs Keller, the Comte de Gondreville, the
Marechale Carigliano, in fact the whole family are now at Gondreville.
Abd-el-Kader has resumed the offensive in Africa; the war is being
vigorously carried on. This poor young man was among the first
victims of the renewal of hostilities. You will receive confidential
instructions, so Monsieur le prefet told me, in relation to the coming
election.”

“By whom?” asked the sub-prefect.

“If I knew that, the matter would not be confidential,” replied the
commissary. “In fact, I think the prefect himself does not know. He told
me that the matter would be a secret one between you and the ministry.”

Then he rode on, after seeing the sub-prefect lay his fingers on his
lips as a warning to keep silence.

“Well, what news from the prefecture?” said the _procureur-du-roi_, when
Goulard returned to the group of the three functionaries.

“Nothing satisfactory,” replied Goulard, stepping quickly, as if he
wanted to get away from the others, who now walked silently toward the
middle of the square, somewhat piqued by the manner of the sub-prefect.
There Monsieur Martener noticed old Madame Beauvisage, the mother of
Phileas, surrounded by nearly all the bourgeois on the square, to whom
she was apparently relating something. A solicitor, named Sinot, who
numbered all the royalists of Arcis among his clients, and who had not
gone to the Giguet meeting, now detached himself from the group, and
running to the door of the Marion house rang the bell violently.

“What can be the matter?” said Frederic Marest, dropping his eyeglass,
and calling the attention of his colleagues to this circumstance.

“The matter is, messieurs,” said the sub-prefect, thinking it useless
to keep a secret which was evidently known to the other party, “that
Charles Keller has been killed in Africa, and that this event doubles
the chances of Simon Giguet. You know Arcis; there can be no other
ministerial candidate than Charles Keller. Any other man would find the
whole local patriotism of the place arrayed against him.

“Will they really elect such an idiot as Simon Giguet?” said Olivier
Vinet, laughing.

This young substitute, then only twenty-three years of age, was the son
of one of our most famous attorney-generals, who had come into power
with the Revolution of July; he therefore owed his early entrance into
public life to the influence of his father. The latter, always elected
deputy by the town of Provins, is one of the buttresses of the Centre
in the Chamber. Therefore the son, whose mother was a Demoiselle de
Chargeboeuf [see “Pierrette”], had a certain air of assurance, both
in his functions and in his personal behavior, that plainly showed
the backing of his father. He expressed his opinion on men and things
without reserve; for he confidently expected not to stay very long
at Arcis, but to receive his appointment as _procureur-du-roi_ at
Versailles, a sure step to a post in Paris.

The confident air of this little Vinet, and the sort of assumption which
the certainty of making his way gave to him, was all the more irritating
to Frederic Marest, his superior, because a biting wit accompanied
the rather undisciplined habits and manners of his young subordinate.
Frederic Marest, _procureur-du-roi_, a man about forty years of age,
who had spent six years of his life under the Restoration in becoming a
substitute only to be neglected and left in Arcis by the government of
July, in spite of the fact that he had some eighteen thousand francs a
year of his own, was perpetually kept on the rack between the
necessity of winning the good graces of young Vinet’s father--a touchy
attorney-general who might become Keeper of the Seals--and of keeping
his own dignity.

Olivier Vinet, slender in figure, with a pallid face, lighted by a pair
of malicious green eyes, was one of those sarcastic young gentlemen,
inclined to dissipation, who nevertheless know how to assume the
pompous, haughty, and pedantic air with which magistrates arm themselves
when they once reach the bench. The tall, stout, heavy, and grave
_procureur-du-roi_ had lately invented a system by which he hoped to
keep out of trouble with the exasperating Olivier; he treated him as a
father would treat a spoilt child.

“Olivier,” he replied to his substitute, slapping him on the shoulder,
“a man of your capacity ought to reflect that Maitre Giguet is very
likely to become deputy. You’d have made that remark just as readily
before the people of Arcis as before us, who are safe friends.”

“There is one thing against Giguet,” observed Monsieur Martener.

This good young man, rather heavy but full of capacity, the son of a
physician in Provins, owed his place to Vinet’s father, who was long a
lawyer in Provins and still continued to be the patron of his people as
the Comte de Gondreville was the patron of the people of Arcis.

“What is that?” asked the sub-prefect.

“Local patriotism is always bitterly against a man who is imposed upon
the electors,” replied the examining-judge, “but when it happens that
the good people of Arcis have to elevate one of their own equals to the
Chamber, envy and jealousy are stronger than patriotism.”

“That is very simple,” said the _procureur-du-roi_, “and very true. If
you can manage to collect fifty ministerial votes you will find yourself
master of the coming election,” he added, addressing the sub-prefect.

“It will do if you produce a candidate of the same calibre as Simon
Giguet,” said Olivier Vinet.

The sub-prefect allowed an expression of satisfaction to appear upon his
features, which did not escape the notice of his three companions, with
whom, moreover, he had a full understanding. All four being bachelors,
and tolerably rich, they had formed, without premeditation, an alliance
against the dulness of the provinces. The three functionaries had
already remarked the sort of jealousy that Goulard felt for Giguet,
which a few words on their antecedents will explain.

Antonin Goulard, the son of a former huntsman to the house of Simeuse,
enriched by the purchase of the confiscated property of _emigres_ was,
like Simon Giguet, a son of Arcis. Old Goulard, his father, left the
abbey of Valpreux (corruption of Val-des-Preux) to live in Arcis after
the death of his wife, and he sent his son to the imperial lyceum, where
Colonel Giguet had already placed his son Simon. The two schoolmates
subsequently went through their legal studies in Paris together, and
their intimacy was continued in the amusements of youth. They promised
to help each other to success in life whenever they entered upon their
different careers. But fate willed that they should end by being rivals.

In spite of Goulard’s manifest advantages, in spite of the cross of the
Legion of honor which the Comte de Gondreville had obtained for him
in default of promotion, the offer of his heart and position had been
frankly declined when, about six months before this history begins, he
had privately presented himself to Madame Beauvisage as a suitor for her
daughter’s hand. No step of that nature is ever taken secretly in the
provinces. The _procureur-du-roi_, Frederic Marest, whose fortune,
buttonhole, and position were about on a par with those of Antonin
Goulard, had received a like refusal, three years earlier, based on the
difference of ages. Consequently, the two officials were on terms
of strict politeness with the Beauvisage family, and laughed at them
severally in private. Both had divined and communicated to each other
the real motive of the candidacy of Simon Giguet, for they fully
understood the hopes of Madame Marion; and they were bent on preventing
her nephew from marrying the heiress whose hand had been refused to
them.

“God grant that I may be master of this election,” said Goulard, “and
that the Comte de Gondreville may get me made a prefect, for I have no
more desire than you to spend the rest of my days here, though I was
born in Arcis.”

“You have a fine opportunity to be elected deputy yourself, my chief,”
 said Olivier Vinet to Marest. “Come and see my father, who will, I
think, arrive here from Provins in a few hours. Let us propose to him to
have you chosen as ministerial candidate.”

“Halt!” said Antonin; “the ministry has its own views about the deputy
of Arcis.”

“Ah, bah!” exclaimed Vinet, “there are two ministries: the one that
thinks it makes elections, and another that thinks it profits by them.”

“Don’t let us complicate Antonin’s difficulties,” said Frederic Marest,
winking at his substitute.

The four officials, who had crossed the open square and were close to
the Mulet inn, now saw Poupart leaving the house of Madame Marion and
coming towards them. A moment later, and the _porte cochere_ of that
house vomited the sixty-seven conspirators.

“So you went to that meeting?” said Antonin Goulard to Poupart.

“I shall never go again, monsieur le sous-prefet,” said the innkeeper.
“The son of Monsieur Keller is dead, and I have now no object in going
there. God has taken upon himself to clear the ground.”

“Well, Pigoult, what happened?” cried Olivier Vinet, catching sight of
the young notary.

“Oh!” said Pigoult, on whose forehead the perspiration, which had not
dried, bore testimony to his efforts, “Simon has just told some
news that made them all unanimous. Except five persons,--Poupart, my
grandfather, Mollot, Sinot, and I,--all present swore, as at the Jeu de
Paume, to employ every means to promote the triumph of Simon Giguet,
of whom I have made a mortal enemy. Oh! we got warm, I can tell you!
However, I led the Giguets to fulminate against the Gondrevilles. That
puts the old count on my side. No later than to-morrow he will hear
what the _soi-disant_ patriots of Arcis have said about him and his
corruptions and his infamies, to free their necks, as they called it, of
his yoke.”

“Unanimous, were they?” said Olivier Vinet, laughing.

“Unanimous, _to-day_,” remarked Monsieur Martener.

“Oh!” exclaimed Pigoult, “the general sentiment of the electors is for
one of their own townsmen. Whom can you oppose to Simon Giguet,--a man
who has just spent two hours in explaining the word _progress_.”

“Take old Grevin!” cried the sub-prefect.

“He has no such ambition,” replied Pigoult. “But we must first of
all consult the Comte de Gondreville. Look, look!” he added; “see
the attentions with which Simon is taking him that gilded booby,
Beauvisage.”

And he pointed to the candidate, who was holding the mayor by the arm
and whispering in his ear. Beauvisage meantime was bowing right and
left to the inhabitants, who gazed at him with the deference which
provincials always testify to the richest man in their locality.

“But there’s no use cajoling _him_,” continued Pigoult. “Cecile’s hand
does not depend on either her father or her mother.”

“On whom, then?”

“On my old patron, Monsieur Grevin. Even if Simon is elected deputy, the
town is not won.”

Though the sub-prefect and Frederic Marest tried to get an explanation
of these words, Pigoult refused to give the reason of an exclamation
which seemed to them big with meaning and implying a certain knowledge
of the plans of the Beauvisage family.

All Arcis was now in a commotion, not only on account of the fatal event
which had just overtaken the Gondreville family, but because of the
great resolution come to at the Giguet house, where Madame Marion and
her three servants were hurriedly engaged in putting everything in its
usual order, ready to receive her customary guests, whose curiosity
would probably bring them that evening in large numbers.




VI. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1814 FROM THE HOSIERY POINT OF VIEW

Champagne has all the appearance of a poor region, and it is a poor
region. Its general aspect is sad; the land is flat. Passing through
the villages, and even the towns, you will see nothing but miserable
buildings of wood or half-baked clay; the best are built of brick.
Stone is scarcely used at all except on public buildings. At Arcis the
chateau, the law courts, and the church are the only stone buildings.
Nevertheless, Champagne, or, if you prefer to say so, the departments of
the Aube, Marne, and Haut-Marne, richly endowed with vineyards, the fame
of which is world-wide, are otherwise full of flourishing industries.

Without speaking of the manufactures of Reims, nearly all the hosiery
of France--a very considerable trade--is manufactured about Troyes. The
surrounding country, over a circuit of thirty miles, is covered with
workmen, whose looms can be seen through the open doors as we pass
through the villages. These workmen are employed by agents, who
themselves are in the service of speculators called manufacturers. The
agents negotiate with the large Parisian houses, often with the retail
hosiers, all of whom put out the sign, “Manufacturers of Hosiery.” None
of them have ever made a pair of stockings, nor a cap, nor a sock;
all their hosiery comes chiefly from Champagne, though there are a few
skilled workmen in Paris who can rival the Champenois.

This intermediate agency between the producer and the consumer is
an evil not confined to hosiery. It exists in almost all trades, and
increases the cost of merchandise by the amount of the profit exacted
by the middlemen. To break down these costly partitions, that injure
the sale of products, would be a magnificent enterprise, which, in its
results, would attain to the height of statesmanship. In fact, industry
of all kinds would gain by establishing within our borders the cheapness
so essential to enable us to carry on victoriously the industrial
warfare with foreign countries,--a struggle as deadly as that of arms.

But the destruction of an abuse of this kind would not return to modern
philanthropists the glory and the advantages of a crusade against the
empty nutshells of the penitentiary and negrophobia; consequently, the
interloping profits of these _bankers of merchandise_ will continue to
weigh heavily both on producers and consumers. In France--keen-witted
land!--it is thought that to simplify is to destroy. The Revolution of
1789 is still a terror.

We see, by the industrial energy displayed in a land where Nature is a
godmother, what progress agriculture might make if capital would go into
partnership with the soil, which is not so thankless in Champagne as it
is in Scotland, where capital has done wonders. The day when agriculture
will have conquered the unfertile portion of those departments, and
industry has seconded capital on the Champagne chalk, the prosperity
of that region will triple itself. Into that land, now without luxury,
where homes are barren, English comfort will penetrate, money will
obtain that rapid circulation which is the half of wealth, and is
already beginning in several of the inert portions of our country.
Writers, administrators, the Church from its pulpit, the Press in its
columns, all to whom chance has given power to influence the masses,
should say and resay this truth,--to hoard is a social crime. The
deliberate hoarding of a province arrests industrial life, and injures
the health of a nation.

Thus the little town of Arcis, without much means of transition, doomed
apparently to the most complete immobility, is, relatively, a rich town
abounding in capital slowly amassed by its trade in hosiery.

Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage was the Alexander, or, if you will, the
Attila of this business. And here follow the means by which this
honorable merchant had acquired his supremacy over cotton.

The last remaining child of farmers named Beauvisage, tenants of the
splendid farm of Bellache, a dependency of the Gondreville estate, his
parents made, in 1811, a great sacrifice in order to buy a substitute
and save their only child from conscription. After that, in 1813, the
mother Beauvisage, having become a widow, saved her son once more
from enrolment in the Gardes, thanks to the influence of the Comte de
Gondreville. Phileas, who was then twenty-one years of age, had been
devoted for the last three years to the peaceable trade of hosiery.

Coming to the end of the lease of Bellache, old Madame Beauvisage
declined to renew it. She saw she had enough to do in her old age in
taking care of her property. That nothing might give her uneasiness
of mind, she proceeded, by the help of Monsieur Grevin, the notary
of Arcis, to liquidate her husband’s estate, although her son made no
request whatever for a settlement. The result proved that she owed him
the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand francs. The good woman did not
sell her landed property, most of which came from the unfortunate Michu,
the former bailiff of the Simeuse family; she paid the sum to Phileas
in ready money,--advising him to buy out the business of his employer,
Monsieur Pigoult, the son of the old justice of the peace, whose affairs
were in so bad a way that his death, as we have said, was thought to be
voluntary.

Phileas Beauvisage, a virtuous youth, having a deep respect for his
mother, concluded the purchase from his patron, and as he had the bump
of what phrenologists term “acquisitiveness,” his youthful ardor spent
itself upon this business, which he thought magnificent and desired to
increase by speculation.

The name of Phileas, which may seem peculiar, is only one of the many
oddities which we owe to the Revolution. Attached to the Simeuse family,
and consequently, good Catholics, the Beauvisage father and mother
desired to have their son baptized. The rector of Cinq-Cygne, the Abbe
Goujet, whom they consulted, advised them to give their son for patron
a saint whose Greek name might signify the municipality,--for the child
was born at a period when children were inscribed on the civil registers
under the fantastic names of the Republican calendar.

In 1814, hosiery, a stable business with few risks in ordinary times,
was subject to all the variations in the price of cotton. This price
depended at that time on the triumph or the defeat of the Emperor
Napoleon, whose adversaries, the English generals, used to say in Spain:
“The town is taken; now get out your bales.”

Pigoult, former patron of young Phileas, furnished the raw material to
his workmen, who were scattered all over the country. At the time when
he sold the business to Beauvisage junior, he possessed a large amount
of raw cotton bought at a high price, whereas Lisbon was sending
enormous quantities into the Empire at six sous the kilogramme, in
virtue of the Emperor’s celebrated decree. The reaction produced in
France by the introduction of the Portuguese cotton caused the death of
Pigoult, Achille’s father, and began the fortune of Phileas, who, far
from losing his head like his master, made his prices moderate by
buying cotton cheaply and in doubling the quantity ventured upon by
his predecessor. This simple system enabled Phileas to triple the
manufacture and to pose as the benefactor of the workingmen; so that
he was able to disperse his hosiery in Paris and all over France at
a profit, when the luckiest of his competitors were only able to sell
their goods at cost price.

At the beginning of 1814, Phileas had emptied his warerooms. The
prospect of a war on French soil, the hardships of which were likely to
press chiefly on Champagne, made him cautious. He manufactured nothing,
and held himself ready to meet all events with his capital turned into
gold. At this period the custom-house lines were no longer maintained.
Napoleon could not do without his thirty thousand custom-house officers
for service in the field. Cotton, then introduced through a thousand
loopholes, slipped into the markets of France. No one can imagine
how sly and how alert cotton had become at this epoch, nor with what
eagerness the English laid hold of a country where cotton stockings sold
for six francs a pair, and cambric shirts were objects of luxury.

Manufacturers from the second class, the principal workmen, reckoning on
the genius of Napoleon, had bought up the cottons that came from Spain.
They worked it up in hopes of being able later to give the law to the
merchants of Paris. Phileas observed these facts. When the war ravaged
Champagne, he kept himself between the French army and Paris. After each
lost battle he went among the workmen who had buried their products in
casks,--a sort of silo of hosiery,--then, gold in hand, this Cossack
of weaving bought up, from village to village, below the cost of
fabrication, tons of merchandise which might otherwise become at
any time a prey to an enemy whose feet were as much in need of being
_socked_ as its throat of being moistened.

Phileas displayed under these unfortunate circumstances an activity
nearly equal to that of the Emperor. This general of hosiery made a
commercial campaign of 1814 with splendid but ignored courage. A league
or two behind where the army advanced he bought up caps and socks as
the Emperor gathered immortal palms by his very reverses. The genius was
equal on both sides, though exercised in different spheres; one aimed
at covering heads, the other at mowing them down. Obliged to create some
means of transportation in order to save his tons of hosiery, which he
stored in a suburb of Paris, Phileas often put in requisition horses
and army-waggons, as if the safety of the empire were concerned. But
the majesty of commerce was surely as precious as that of Napoleon. The
English merchants, in buying out the European markets, certainly got the
better of the colossus who threatened their trade.

By the time the Emperor abdicated at Fontainebleau, Phileas, triumphant,
was master of the situation. He maintained, by clever manoeuvring, the
depreciation in cottons, and doubled his fortune at the moment when his
luckiest competitors were getting rid of their merchandise at a loss
of fifty per cent. He returned to Arcis with a fortune of three hundred
thousand francs, half of which, invested on the Grand-Livre at sixty,
returned him an income of fifteen thousand francs a year. He employed
the remainder in building, furnishing, and adorning a handsome house on
the Place du Pont in Arcis.

On the return of the successful hosier, Monsieur Grevin was naturally
his confidant. The notary had an only daughter to marry, then twenty
years of age. Grevin, a widower, knew the fortune of Madame Beauvisage,
the mother, and he believed in the energy and capacity of a young man
bold enough to have turned the campaign of 1814 to his profit. Severine
Grevin had her mother’s fortune of sixty thousand francs for her dower.
Grevin was then over fifty; he feared to die, and saw no chance of
marrying his daughter as he wished under the Restoration--for her, he
had had ambition. Under these circumstances he was shrewd enough to make
Phileas ask her in marriage.

Severine Grevin, a well-trained young lady and handsome, was considered
at that time the best match in Arcis. In fact, an alliance with the
intimate friend of the senator Comte de Gondreville, peer of France, was
certainly a great honor for the son of a Gondreville tenant-farmer. The
widow Beauvisage, his mother, would have made any sacrifice to obtain
it; but on learning the success of her son, she dispensed with the duty
of giving him a _dot_,--a wise economy which was imitated by the notary.

Thus was consummated the union of the son of a farmer formerly so
faithful to the Simeuse family with the daughter of its most cruel
enemy. It was, perhaps, the only application made of the famous saying
of Louis XVIII.: “Union and Oblivion.”

On the second return of the Bourbons, Grevin’s father-in-law, old Doctor
Varlet, died at the age of seventy-six, leaving two hundred thousand
francs in gold in his cellar, besides other property valued at an
equal sum. Thus Phileas and his wife had, outside of their business, an
assured income of thirty thousand francs a year.

The first two years of this marriage sufficed to show Madame Severine
and her father, Monsieur Grevin the absolute silliness of Phileas
Beauvisage. His one gleam of commercial rapacity had seemed to the
notary the result of superior powers; the shrewd old man had mistaken
youth for strength, and luck for genius in business. Phileas certainly
knew how to read and write and cipher well, but he had read nothing.
Of crass ignorance, it was quite impossible to keep up even a slight
conversation with him; he replied to all remarks with a deluge of
commonplaces pleasantly uttered. As the son of a farmer, however,
Phileas was not without a certain commercial good sense, and he was
also kind and tender, and would often weep at a moving tale. It was
this native goodness of heart which made him respect his wife, whose
superiority had always caused him the deepest admiration.

Severine, a woman of ideas, knew all things, so Phileas believed. And
she knew them the more correctly because she consulted her father on
all subjects. She was gifted with great firmness, which made her the
absolute mistress in her own home. As soon as the latter result was
attained, the old notary felt less regret in seeing that his daughter’s
only domestic happiness lay in the autocracy which usually satisfies all
women of her nature. But what of the woman herself? Here follows what
she was said to have found in life.




VII. THE BEAUVISAGE FAMILY

During the reaction of 1815, a Vicomte de Chargeboeuf (of the poorer
branch of the family) was sent to Arcis as sub-prefect through the
influence of the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne, to whose family he was allied.
This young man remained sub-prefect for five years. The beautiful Madame
Beauvisage was not, it was said, a stranger to the reasons that kept him
in this office for a period far too prolonged for his own advancement.
We ought to say, however, that these remarks were not justified by any
of the scandals which in the provinces betray those passions that are
difficult to conceal from the Argus-eyes of a little town. If Severine
loved the Vicomte de Chargeboeuf and was beloved by him, it was in all
honor and propriety, said the friends of the Grevins and the Marions;
and that double coterie imposed its opinion on the whole arrondissement;
but the Marions and the Grevins had no influence on the royalists, and
the royalists regarded the sub-prefect as fortunate in love.

As soon as the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne heard what was said in the
chateaux about her relation, she sent for him; and such was her horror
for all who were connected, near or far, with the actors in the judicial
drama so fatal to her family, that she strictly enjoined him to change
his residence. Not only that, but she obtained his appointment
as sub-prefect of Sancerre with the promise of advancement to the
prefecture.

Some shrewd observers declared that the viscount pretended this passion
for the purpose of being made prefect; for he well knew the hatred
felt by the marquise for the name of Grevin. Others remarked on the
coincidence of the viscount’s apparitions in Paris with the visits made
by Madame Beauvisage to the capital on frivolous pretexts. An impartial
historian would be puzzled to form a just opinion on the facts of
this matter, which are buried in the mysteries of private life. One
circumstance alone seems to give color to the reports.

Cecile-Renee Beauvisage was born in 1820, just as Monsieur de
Chargeboeuf left Arcis, and among his various names was that of Rene.
This name was given by the Comte de Gondreville as godfather of the
child. Had the mother objected to the name, she would in some degree
have given color to the rumor. As gossip always endeavors to justify
itself, the giving of this name was said to be a bit of maliciousness on
the part of the old count. Madame Keller, the count’s daughter, who was
named Cecile, was the godmother. As for the resemblance shown in the
person of Cecile-Renee Beauvisage, it was striking. This young girl was
like neither father nor mother; in course of time she had become the
living image of the Vicomte de Chargeboeuf, whose aristocratic manners
she had also acquired. This double resemblance, both moral and physical,
was not observed by the inhabitants of Arcis, for the viscount never
returned to that town.

Severine made her husband happy in his own way. He liked good living and
everything easy about him; she supplied him with the choicest wines, a
table worthy of a bishop, served by the best cook in the department but
without the pretensions of luxury; for she kept her household strictly
to the conditions of the burgher life of Arcis. It was a proverb in
Arcis that you must dine with Madame Beauvisage and spend your evening
with Madame Marion.

The renewed influence in the arrondissement of Arcis which the
Restoration gave to the house of Cinq-Cygne had naturally drawn closer
the ties that bound together the various families affected by the
criminal trial relating to the abduction of Gondreville. [See “An
Historical Mystery.”] The Marions, Grevins, and Giguets were all the
more united because the triumph of their political opinions, called
“constitutional,” now required the utmost harmony.

As a matter of policy Severine encouraged her husband to continue
his trade in hosiery, which any other man but himself would have long
renounced; and she sent him to Paris, and about the country, on business
connected with it. Up to the year 1830 Phileas, who was thus enabled
to exercise his bump of “acquisitiveness,” earned every year a sum
equivalent to his expenses. The interest on the property of Monsieur
and Madame Beauvisage, being capitalized for the last fifteen years
by Grevin’s intelligent care, became, by 1830, a round sum of half a
million francs. That sum was, in fact, Cecile’s _dot_, which the old
notary then invested in the Three-per-cents at fifty, producing a safe
income of thirty thousand a year.

After 1830 Beauvisage sold his business in hosiery to Jean Violette,
one of his agents (grandson of one of the chief witnesses for the
prosecution in the Simeuse trial), the proceeds of which amounted to
three hundred thousand francs. Monsieur and Madame Beauvisage had also
in prospect their double inheritance from old Grevin on one side, and
the old farmer’s wife Beauvisage on the other. Great provincial fortunes
are usually the product of time multiplied by economy. Thirty years of
old age make capital.

In giving to Cecile-Renee a _dot_ of fifty thousand francs a year,
her parents still reserved for themselves the two inheritances, thirty
thousand a year on the Grand Livre, and their house in Arcis.

If the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne were only dead, Cecile might assuredly
marry the young marquis; but the health of that great lady, who was
still vigorous and almost beautiful at sixty years of age, precluded all
hope of such a marriage if it even entered the minds of Grevin and his
daughter, as some persons, surprised at their rejection of eligible
suitors like the sub-prefect and the _procureur-du-roi_, declared that
it did.

The Beauvisage residence, one of the best in Arcis, stands on the Place
du Pont on a line with the rue Vide-Bourse, at the corner of the rue du
Pont, which leads to the Place de l’Eglise. Though, like many provincial
houses, without either court or garden, it produces a certain effect,
in spite of its ornamentation in bad taste. The front door opens on
the Place; the windows of the ground-floor look out on the street-side
towards the post-house and inn, and command beyond the Place a rather
picturesque view of the Aube, the navigation of which begins at the
bridge. Beyond the bridge is another little Place or square, on which
lives Monsieur Grevin, and from which the high-road to Sezanne starts.

On the street and on the square, the Beauvisage house, painted a
spotless white, looks as though built of stone. The height of the
windows and their external mouldings contribute to give a certain
style to the house which contrasts strongly with the generally forlorn
appearance of the houses of Arcis, constructed, as we have already said,
of wood, and covered with plaster, imitating the solidity of stone.
Still, these houses are not without a certain originality, through the
fact that each architect, or each burgher, has endeavored to solve for
himself the problem of styles of building.

The bridge at Arcis is of wood. About four hundred feet above the bridge
the river is crossed by another bridge, on which rise the tall wooden
sides of a mill with several sluices. The space between the public
bridge and this private bridge forms a basin, on the banks of which are
several large houses. By an opening between the roofs can be seen the
height on which stands the chateau of Arcis with its park and gardens,
its outer walls and trees which overhand the river above the bridges,
and the rather scanty pastures of the left bank.

The sound of the water as it runs through the courses above the dam, the
music of the wheels, from which the churned water falls back into the
basin in sparkling cascades, animate the rue du Pont, contrasting in
this respect with the tranquillity of the river flowing downward between
the garden of Monsieur Grevin, whose house is at one angle of the bridge
on the left bank, and the port where the boats and barges discharge
their merchandise before a line of poor but picturesque houses.

Nothing can better express provincial life than the deep silence that
envelops the little town and reigns in its busiest region. It is easy
to imagine, therefore, how disquieting the presence of a stranger, if
he only spends half a day there, may be to the inhabitants; with what
attention faces protrude from the windows to observe him, and also the
condition of espial in which all the residents of the little place stand
to each other. Life has there become so conventional that, except on
Sundays and fete-days, a stranger meets no one either on the boulevards
or the Avenue of Sighs, not even, in fact, upon the streets.

It will now be readily understood why the ground-floor of the Beauvisage
house is on a level with the street and square. The square serves as its
courtyard. Sitting at his window the eyes of the late hosier could take
in the whole of the Place de l’Eglise, the two squares of the bridge,
and the road to Sezanne. He could see the coaches arriving and the
travellers descending at the post-inn; and on court days he could watch
the proceedings around the offices of the mayor and the justice of
peace. For these reasons, Beauvisage would not have exchanged his house
for the chateau, in spite of its lordly air, its stone walls, and its
splendid situation.




VIII. IN WHICH THE DOT, ONE OF THE HEROINES OF THIS HISTORY, APPEARS

Entering the Beauvisage house we find a versatile, at the farther end
of which rises the staircase. To right we enter a large salon with
two windows opening on the square; to left is a handsome dining-room,
looking on the street. The floor above is the one occupied by the
family.

Notwithstanding the large fortune of the Beauvisage husband and wife,
their establishment consisted of only a cook and a chamber-maid, the
latter a peasant, who washed and ironed and frotted the floors rather
than waited on her two mistresses, who were accustomed to spend their
time in dressing and waiting upon each other. Since the sale of the
business to Jean Violette, the horse and cabriolet used by Phileas, and
kept at the Hotel de la Poste, had been relinquished and sold.

At the moment when Phileas reached his house after the Giguet meeting,
his wife, already informed of the resolutions passed, had put on her
boots and shawl and was preparing to go to her father; for she felt very
sure that Madame Marion would, on that same evening, make her certain
overtures relating to Simon and Cecile. After telling his wife of
Charles Keller’s death, Phileas asked her opinion with an artless “What
do you think of that, wife?” which fully pictured his habit of deferring
to Severine’s opinion in all things. Then he sat down in an arm-chair
and awaited her reply.

In 1839, Madame Beauvisage, then forty-four years old, was so
well-preserved that she might, in that respect, rival Mademoiselle Mars.
By calling to mind the most charming Celimene that the Theatre-Francais
ever had, an excellent idea of Severine Grevin’s appearance will be
obtained. The same richness of coloring, the same beauty of features,
the same clearly defined outlines; but the hosier’s wife was short,--a
circumstance which deprived her of that noble grace, that charming
coquetry _a la_ Sevigne, through which the great actress commends
herself to the memory of men who saw both the Empire and the
Restoration.

Provincial life and the rather careless style of dress into which,
for the last ten years, Severine had allowed herself to fall, gave a
somewhat common air to that noble profile and those beautiful
features; increasing plumpness was destroying the outlines of a figure
magnificently fine during the first twelve years of her married life.
But Severine redeemed these growing imperfections with a sovereign,
superb, imperious glance, and a certain haughty carriage of her head.
Her hair, still black and thick and long, was raised high upon her head,
giving her a youthful look. Her shoulders and bosom were snowy, but they
now rose puffily in a manner to obstruct the free movement of the neck,
which had grown too short. Her plump and dimpled arms ended in pretty
little hands that were, alas, too fat. She was, in fact, so overdone
with fulness of life and health that her flesh formed a little pad,
as one might call it, above her shoes. Two ear-drops, worth about
three-thousand francs each, adorned her ears. She wore a lace cap with
pink ribbons, a mousseline-de-laine gown in pink and gray stripes with
an edging of green, opened at the bottom to show a petticoat trimmed
with valencienne lace; and a green cashmere shawl with palm-leaves, the
point of which reached the ground as she walked.

“You are not so hungry,” she said, casting her eyes on Beauvisage,
“that you can’t wait half an hour? My father has finished dinner and I
couldn’t eat mine in peace without knowing what he thinks and whether we
ought to go to Gondreville.”

“Go, go, my dear. I’ll wait,” said Phileas, using the “thee” and “thou.”

“Good heavens!” cried Severine with a significant gesture of her
shoulders. “Shall I never break you of that habit of tutoying me?”

“I never do it before company--not since 1817,” said Phileas.

“You do it constantly before the servants and your daughter.”

“As you will, Severine,” replied Beauvisage sadly.

“Above all, don’t say a word to Cecile about this resolution of the
electors,” added Madame Beauvisage, who was looking in the glass to
arrange her shawl.

“Shall I go with you to your father’s?” asked Phileas.

“No, stay with Cecile. Besides, Jean Violette was to pay the rest of the
purchase-money to-day. He has twenty thousand francs to bring you. This
is the third time he has put us off three months; don’t grant him any
more delays; if he can’t pay now, give his note to Courtet, the sheriff,
and take the law of him. Achille Pigoult will tell you how to proceed.
That Violette is the worthy son of his grandfather; I think he is
capable of enriching himself by going into bankruptcy,--there’s neither
law nor gospel in him.”

“He is very intelligent,” said Beauvisage.

“You have given him the good-will of a fine business for thirty thousand
francs, which is certainly worth fifty thousand; and in ten years he has
only paid you ten thousand--”

“I never sued anybody yet,” replied Beauvisage, “and I’d rather lose my
money than torment a poor man--”

“A man who laughs at you!”

Beauvisage was silent; feeling unable to reply to that cruel remark, he
looked at the boards which formed the floor of the salon.

Perhaps the progressive abolition of mind and will in Beauvisage will
be explained by the abuse of sleep. Going to bed every night at eight
o’clock and getting up the next morning at eight, he had slept his
twelve hours nightly for the last twenty years, never waking; or if that
extraordinary event did occur, it was so serious a matter to his mind
that he talked of it all day. He spent an hour at his toilet, for his
wife had trained him not to appear in her presence at breakfast unless
properly shaved, cleaned, and dressed for the day. When he was in
business, he departed to his office after breakfast and returned only
in time for dinner. Since 1832, he had substituted for his business
occupations a daily visit to his father-in-law, a promenade about the
town, or visits to his friends.

In all weather he wore boots, blue coat and trousers, and a white
waistcoat,--the style of dress exacted by his wife. His linen was
remarkable for its fineness and purity, owing to the fact that Severine
obliged him to change it daily. Such care for his person, seldom taken
in the provinces, contributed to make him considered in Arcis very much
as a man of elegance is considered in Paris. Externally this worthy
seller of cotton hose seemed to be a personage; for his wife had sense
enough never to utter a word which could put the public of Arcis on the
scent of her disappointment and the utter nullity of her husband, who,
thanks to his smiles, his handsome dress, and his manners, passed for a
man of importance. People said that Severine was so jealous of him that
she prevented him from going out in the evening, while in point of fact
Phileas was bathing the roses and lilies of his skin in happy slumber.

Beauvisage, who lived according to his tastes, pampered by his wife,
well served by his two servants, cajoled by his daughter, called himself
the happiest man in Arcis, and really was so. The feeling of Severine
for this nullity of a man never went beyond the protecting pity of a
mother for her child. She disguised the harshness of the words she was
frequently obliged to say to him by a joking manner. No household was
ever more tranquil; and the aversion Phileas felt for society, where
he went to sleep, and where he could not play cards (being incapable of
learning a game), had made Severine sole mistress of her evenings.

Cecile’s entrance now put an end to her father’s embarrassment, and he
cried out heartily:--

“Hey! how fine we are!”

Madame Beauvisage turned round abruptly and cast a look upon her
daughter which made the girl blush.

“Cecile, who told you to dress yourself in that way?” she demanded.

“Are we not going to-night to Madame Marion’s? I dressed myself now to
see if my new gown fitted me.”

“Cecile! Cecile!” exclaimed Severine, “why do you try to deceive your
mother? It is not right; and I am not pleased with you--you are hiding
something from me.”

“What has she done?” asked Beauvisage, delighted to see his daughter so
prettily dressed.

“What has she done? I shall tell her,” said Madame Beauvisage, shaking
her finger at her only child.

Cecile flung herself on her mother’s neck, kissing and coaxing her,
which is a means by which only daughters get their own way.

Cecile Beauvisage, a girl of nineteen, had put on a gown of gray silk
trimmed with gimp and tassels of a deeper shade of gray, making the
front of the gown look like a pelisse. The corsage, ornamented with
buttons and caps to the sleeves, ended in a point in front, and was
laced up behind like a corset. This species of corset defined the back,
the hips, and the bust perfectly. The skirt, trimmed with three rows of
fringe, fell in charming folds, showing by its cut and its make the hand
of a Parisian dressmaker. A pretty fichu edged with lace covered her
shoulders; around her throat was a pink silk neckerchief, charmingly
tied, and on her head was a straw hat ornamented with one moss rose. Her
hands were covered with black silk mittens, and her feet were in bronze
kid boots. This gala air, which gave her somewhat the appearance of the
pictures in a fashion-book, delighted her father.

Cecile was well made, of medium height, and perfectly well-proportioned.
She had braided her chestnut hair, according to the fashion of 1839, in
two thick plaits which followed the line of the face and were fastened
by their ends to the back of her head. Her face, a fine oval, and
beaming with health, was remarkable for an aristocratic air which she
certainly did not derive from either her father or her mother. Her eyes,
of a light brown, were totally devoid of that gentle, calm, and almost
timid expression natural to the eyes of young girls. Lively, animated,
and always well in health, Cecile spoiled, by a sort of bourgeois
matter-of-factness, and the manners of a petted child, all that
her person presented of romantic charm. Still, a husband capable of
reforming her education and effacing the traces of provincial life,
might still evolve from that living block a charming woman of the world.

Madame Beauvisage had had the courage to bring up her daughter to good
principles; she had made herself employ a false severity which enabled
her to compel obedience and repress the little evil that existed in the
girl’s soul. Mother and daughter had never been parted; thus Cecile had,
what is more rare in young girls than is generally supposed, a purity of
thought, a freshness of heart, and a naivete of nature, real, complete,
and flawless.

“Your dress is enough to make me reflect,” said Madame Beauvisage. “Did
Simon Giguet say anything to you yesterday that you are hiding from me?”

“Dear mamma,” said Cecile in her mother’s ear, “he bores me; but there
is no one else for me in Arcis.”

“You judge him rightly; but wait till your grandfather has given an
opinion,” said Madame Beauvisage, kissing her daughter, whose reply
proved her good-sense, though it also revealed the breach made in her
innocence by the idea of marriage.

Severine was devoted to her father; she and her daughter allowed no one
but themselves to take charge of his linen; they knitted his socks for
him, and gave the most minute care to his comfort. Grevin knew that no
thought of self-interest had entered their affection; the million they
would probably inherit could not dry their tears at his death; old men
are very sensible to disinterested tenderness. Every morning before
going to see him, Madame Beauvisage and Cecile attended to his dinner
for the next day, sending him the best that the market afforded.

Madame Beauvisage had always desired that her father would present
her at the Chateau de Gondreville and connect her with the count’s
daughters; but the wise old man explained, again and again, how
difficult it would be to have permanent relations with the Duchesse de
Carigliano, who lived in Paris and seldom came to Gondreville, or with
the brilliant Madame Keller, after doing a business in hosiery.

“Your life is lived,” he said to his daughter; “find all your enjoyments
henceforth in Cecile, who will certainly be rich enough to give you an
existence as broad and high as you deserve. Choose a son-in-law with
ambition and means, and you can follow her to Paris and leave that
jackass Beauvisage behind you. If I live long enough to see Cecile’s
husband I’ll pilot you all on the sea of political interests, as I
once piloted others, and you will reach a position equal to that of the
Kellers.”

These few words were said before the revolution of July, 1830. Grevin
desired to live that he might get under way the future grandeur of his
daughter, his grand-daughter, and his great-grandchildren. His ambition
extended to the third generation.

When he talked thus, the old man’s idea was to marry Cecile to Charles
Keller; he was now grieving over that lost hope, uncertain where to look
in the future. Having no relations with Parisian society, and seeing in
the department of the Aube no other husband for Cecile than the youthful
Marquis de Cinq-Cygne, he was asking himself whether by the power of
gold he could surmount the animosities which the revolution of July had
roused between the royalists who were faithful to their principles, and
their conquerors. The happiness of his grand-daughter seemed to him so
doubtful if he delivered her into the hands of the proud and haughty
Marquise de Cinq-Cygne that he decided in his own mind to trust to the
friend of old age, Time. He hoped that his bitter enemy the marquise
might die, and, in that case, he thought he could win the son through
his grandfather, old d’Hauteserre, who was then living at Cinq-Cygne and
whom he knew to be accessible to the persuasions of money.

If this plan failed, and Cecile Beauvisage remained unmarried, he
resolved as a last resort to consult his friend Gondreville, who
would, he believed, find his Cecile a husband, after his heart and his
ambition, among the dukes of the Empire.




IX. A STRANGER

Severine found her father seated on a wooden bench at the end of his
terrace, under a bower of lilacs then in bloom, and taking his coffee;
for it was half-past five in the afternoon. She saw, by the pain on
her father’s face, that he had already heard the news. In fact, the old
count had sent a valet to his friend, begging him to come to him.

Up to the present time, old Grevin had endeavored not to encourage his
daughter’s ambition too far; but now, in the midst of the contradictory
reflections which the melancholy death of Charles Keller caused him, his
secret escaped his lips.

“My dear child,” he said to her, “I had formed the finest plans for your
future. Cecile was to have been Vicomtesse Keller, for Charles, by my
influence, would now have been selected deputy. Neither Gondreville nor
his daughter Madame Keller would have refused Cecile’s _dot_ of sixty
thousand francs a year, especially with the prospect of a hundred
thousand more which she will some day have from you. You would have
lived in Paris with your daughter, and played your part of mother-in-law
in the upper regions of power.”

Madame Beauvisage made a sign of satisfaction.

“But we are knocked down by the death of this charming young man, to
whom the prince royal had already given his friendship. Now this Simon
Giguet, who has thrust himself upon the scene, is a fool, and the worst
of all fools, for he thinks himself an eagle. You are, however, too
intimate with the Giguets and the Marion household not to put the utmost
politeness into your refusal--but you must refuse him.”

“As usual, you and I are of the same opinion, father.”

“You can say that I have otherwise disposed of Cecile’s hand, and
that will cut short all preposterous pretensions like that of Antonin
Goulard. Little Vinet may offer himself, and he is preferable to the
others who are smelling after the _dot_; he has talent, and shrewdness,
and he belongs to the Chargeboeufs by his mother; but he has too much
character not to rule his wife, and he is young enough to make himself
loved. You would perish between two sentiments--for I know you by heart,
my child.”

“I shall be much embarrassed this evening at the Marions’ to know what
to say,” remarked Severine.

“Well, then, my dear,” said her father, “send Madame Marion to me; I’ll
talk to her.”

“I knew, father, that you were thinking of our future, but I had no idea
you expected it to be so brilliant,” said Madame Beauvisage, taking the
hands of the old man and kissing them.

“I have pondered the matter so deeply,” said Grevin, “that in 1831 I
bought the Beauseant mansion in Paris, which you have probably seen.”

Madame de Beauvisage made a movement of surprise on hearing this secret,
until then so carefully kept, but she did not interrupt her father.

“It will be my wedding present,” he went on. “In 1832 I let it for seven
years to an Englishman for twenty-four thousand francs a year,--a pretty
stroke of business; for it only cost me three hundred and twenty-five
thousand francs, of which I thus recover nearly two hundred thousand.
The lease ends in July of this year.”

Severine kissed her father on the forehead and on both cheeks. This last
revelation so magnified her future that she was well-nigh dazzled.

“I shall advise my father,” she said to herself, as she recrossed
the bridge, “to give only the reversion of that property to his
grandchildren, and let me have the life-interest in it. I have no idea
of letting my daughter and son-in-law turn me out of doors; they must
live with me.”

At dessert, when the two women-servants were safely at their own
dinner in the kitchen, and Madame Beauvisage was certain of not being
overheard, she thought it advisable to give Cecile a little lecture.

“My daughter,” she said, “behave this evening with propriety, like a
well-bred girl; and from this day forth be more sedate. Do not chatter
heedlessly, and never walk alone with Monsieur Giguet, or Monsieur
Olivier Vinet, or the sub-prefect, or Monsieur Martener,--in fact, with
any one, not even Achille Pigoult. You will not marry any of the young
men of Arcis, or of the department. Your fate is to shine in Paris.
Therefore I shall now give you charming dresses, to accustom you to
elegance. We can easily find out where the Princesse de Cadignan and the
Marquise de Cinq-Cygne get their things. I mean that you shall cease to
look provincial. You must practise the piano for three hours every day.
I shall send for Monsieur Moise from Troyes until I know what master
I ought to get from Paris. Your talents must all be developed, for you
have only one year more of girlhood before you. Now I have warned you,
and I shall see how you behave this evening. You must manage to keep
Simon at a distance, but without coquetting with him.”

“Don’t be uneasy, mamma; I intend to adore the _stranger_.”

These words, which made Madame Beauvisage laugh, need some explanation.

“Ha! I haven’t seen him yet,” said Phileas, “but everybody is talking
about him. When I want to know who he is, I shall send the corporal or
Monsieur Groslier to ask him for his passport.”

There is no little town in France where, at a given time, the drama or
the comedy of the _stranger_ is not played. Often the stranger is an
adventurer who makes dupes and departs, carrying with him the reputation
of a woman, or the money of a family. Oftener the stranger is a real
stranger, whose life remains mysterious long enough for the town to busy
itself curiously about his words and deeds.

Now the probable accession to power of Simon Giguet was not the only
serious event that was happening in Arcis. For the last two days the
attention of the little town had been focussed on a personage just
arrived, who proved to be the first Unknown of the present generation.
The _stranger_ was at this moment the subject of conversation in every
household in the place. He was the beam fallen from heaven into the city
of the frogs.

The situation of Arcis-sur-Aube explains the effect which the arrival of
a stranger was certain to produce. About eighteen miles from Troyes, on
the high-road to Paris, opposite to a farm called “La Belle Etoile,”
 a county road branches off from the main road, and leads to Arcis,
crossing the vast plains where the Seine cuts a narrow green valley
bordered with poplars, which stand out upon the whiteness of the chalk
soil of Champagne. The main road from Arcis to Troyes is eighteen miles
in length, and makes the arch of a bow, the extremities of which are
Troyes and Arcis, so that the shortest route from Paris to Arcis is by
the county road which turns off, as we have said, near the Belle Etoile.
The Aube is navigable only from Arcis to its mouth. Therefore this town,
standing eighteen miles from a high-road, and separated from Troyes by
monotonous plains, is isolated more or less, and has but little commerce
or transportation either by land or water. Arcis is, in fact, a town
completely isolated, where no travellers pass, and is attached to Troyes
and La Belle Etoile by stage-coaches only. All the inhabitants know each
other; they even know the commercial travellers who come, now and then,
on business from the large Parisian houses. Thus, as in all provincial
towns in a like position, a stranger, if he stayed two days, would wag
the tongues and excite the imaginations of the whole community without
his name or his business being known.

Now, Arcis being still in a state of tranquillity three days before
the morning when, by the will of the creator of so many histories,
the present tale begins, there was seen to arrive by the county road
a stranger, driving a handsome tilbury drawn by a valuable horse,
and accompanied by a tiny groom, no bigger than my fist, mounted on a
saddle-horse. The coach, connecting with the diligences to Troyes, had
brought from La Belle Etoile three trunks coming from Paris, marked with
no name, but belonging to this stranger, who took up his quarters at the
Mulet inn. Every one in Arcis supposed, on the first evening, that this
personage had come with the intention of buying the estate of Arcis; and
much was said in all households about the future owner of the chateau.
The tilbury, the traveller, his horses, his servant, one and all
appeared to belong to a man who had dropped upon Arcis from the highest
social sphere.

The stranger, no doubt fatigued, did not show himself for a time;
perhaps he spent part of the day in arranging himself in the rooms
he had chosen, announcing his intention of staying a certain time. He
requested to see the stable where his horses were to be kept, showed
himself very exacting, and insisted that they should be placed in stalls
apart from those of the innkeeper’s horses, and from those of guests who
might come later. In consequence of such singular demands, the landlord
of the hotel du Mulet considered his guest to be an Englishman.

On the evening of the first day several attempts were made at the Mulet
by inquisitive persons to satisfy their curiosity; but no light whatever
could be obtained from the little groom, who evaded all inquiries, not
by refusals or by silence, but by sarcasms which seemed to be beyond his
years and to prove him a corrupt little mortal.

After making a careful toilet and dining at six o’clock, the stranger
mounted a horse, and, followed by his groom, rode off along the road to
Brienne, not returning till a very late hour to the Mulet. The landlord,
his wife, and her maids had meantime gained no information from a
careful examination of his trunks, and the articles about his rooms, as
to the projects or the condition of their mysterious inmate.

On the stranger’s return the mistress of the house carried up to him
the book in which, according to police regulations, he was required to
inscribe his name, rank, the object of his journey, and the place from
which he came.

“I shall write nothing,” he said to the mistress of the inn. “If any one
questions you, you can say I refused; and you may send the sub-prefect
to see me, for I have no passport. I dare say that many persons will
make inquiries about me, madame, and you can tell them just what you
like. I wish you to know nothing about me. If you worry me on this
point, I shall go to the Hotel de la Poste on the Place du Pont and
remain there for the fortnight I propose to spend here. I should be
sorry for that, because I know that you are the sister of Gothard, one
of the heroes of the Simeuse affair.”

“Enough, monsieur,” said the sister of the steward of Cinq-Cygne.

After such a beginning, the stranger kept the mistress of the house a
whole hour and made her tell him all she knew of Arcis, of its fortunes,
its interests, and its functionaries. The next day he disappeared on
horseback, followed by his tiger, returning at midnight.

We can now understand Mademoiselle Cecile’s little joke, which Madame
Beauvisage thought to be without foundation. Beauvisage and Cecile,
surprised by the order of the day promulgated by Severine, were
enchanted. While his wife went to dress for Madame Marion’s reception,
the father listened to the many conjectures it was natural a girl should
make in such a case. Then, fatigued with his day, he went to bed as soon
as his wife and daughter had departed.

As may readily be supposed by those who know anything of country towns,
a crowd of persons flocked to Madame Marion’s that evening. The triumph
of Giguet junior was thought to be a victory won against the Comte de
Gondreville, and to insure forever the independence of Arcis in the
matter of elections. The news of the death of poor Charles Keller was
regarded as a judgment from heaven, intended to silence all rivalries.

Antonin Goulard, Frederic Marest, Olivier Vinet, and Monsieur Martener,
the authorities who, until then, had frequented this salon (the
prevailing opinions of which did not seem to them contrary to the
government created by the popular will in July, 1830), came as usual,
possessed by curiosity to see what attitude the Beauvisage family would
take under the circumstances.

The salon, restored to its usual condition, showed no signs of the
meeting which appeared to have settled the destiny of Simon Giguet. By
eight o’clock four card-tables, each with four players, were under way.
The smaller salon and the dining-room were full of people. Never, except
on grand occasions, such as balls and fete-days, had Madame Marion seen
such an influx at the door of her salon, forming as it were the tail of
a comet.

“It is the dawn of power,” said Olivier Vinet to the mistress of the
house, showing her this spectacle, so gratifying to the heart of a
person who delighted in receiving company.

“No one knows what there is in Simon,” replied the mother. “We live in
times when young men who persevere and are moral and upright can aspire
to everything.”

This answer was made, not so much to Vinet as to Madame Beauvisage, who
had entered the room with her daughter and was now beginning to offer
her congratulations on the event. In order to escape indirect appeals
and pointed interpretations of careless words, Madame Beauvisage took a
vacant place at a whist-table and devoted her mind to the winning of one
hundred fishes. One hundred fishes, or counters, made fifty sous! When a
player had lost that sum it was talked of in Arcis for a couple of days.

Cecile went to talk with Mademoiselle Mollot, one of her good friends,
appearing to be seized with redoubled affection for her. Mademoiselle
Mollot was the beauty of Arcis, just as Cecile was the heiress. Monsieur
Mollot, clerk of the court, lived on the Grande-Place in a house
constructed in the same manner as that of Beauvisage on the Place du
Pont. Madame Mollot, forever seated at the window of her salon on the
ground-floor, was attacked (as the result of that situation) by intense,
acute, insatiable curiosity, now become a chronic and inveterate
disease. The moment a peasant entered the square from the road to
Brienne she saw him, and watched to see what business could have brought
him to Arcis; she had no peace of mind until that peasant was explained.
She spent her life in judging the events, men, things, and households of
Arcis.

The ambition of the house of Mollot, father, mother, and daughter, was
to marry Ernestine (an only daughter) to Antonin Goulard. Consequently
the refusal of the Beauvisage parents to entertain the proposals of
the sub-prefect had tightened the bonds of friendship between the two
families.

“There’s an impatient man!” said Ernestine to Cecile, indicating Simon
Giguet. “He wants to come and talk with us; but every one who comes in
feels bound to congratulate him. I’ve heard him say fifty times already:
‘It is, I think, less to me than to my father that this compliment of
my fellow-citizens has been paid; but, in any case, pray believe that
I shall be devoted not only to our general interests but to yours
individually.’ I can guess those words by the motion of his lips, and
all the while he is looking at you with an air of martyrdom.”

“Ernestine,” replied Cecile, “don’t leave me the whole evening; I
don’t want to listen to his proposals made under cover of ‘alases!’ and
mingled with sighs.”

“Don’t you want to be the wife of a Keeper of the Seals?”

“Ah! that’s all nonsense,” said Cecile, laughing.

“But I assure you,” persisted Ernestine, “that just before you came
in Monsieur Godivet, the registrar, was declaring with enthusiasm that
Simon would be Keeper of the Seals in three years.”

“Do they count on the influence of the Comte de Gondreville?” asked
the sub-prefect, coming up to the two girls and guessing that they were
making fun of his friend Giguet.

“Ah! Monsieur Antonin,” said the handsome Ernestine, “you who promised
my mother to find out all about the _stranger_, what have you heard
about him?”

“The events of to-day, Mademoiselle, are so much more important,” said
Antonin, taking a seat beside Cecile, like a diplomat delighted to
escape general attention by conversing with two girls. “All my career as
sub-prefect or prefect is at stake.”

“What! I thought you allowed your friend Simon to be nominated
unanimously.”

“Simon is my friend, but the government is my master, and I expect to
do my best to prevent Simon from being elected. And here comes Madame
Mollot, who owes me her concurrence as the wife of a man whose functions
attach him to the government.”

“I am sure we ask nothing better than to be on your side,” replied the
sheriff’s wife. “Mollot has told me,” she continued in a low voice,
“what took place here to-day--it is pitiable! Only one man showed
talent, and that was Achille Pigoult. Everybody agrees that he would
make a fine orator in the Chamber; and therefore, though he has nothing,
and my daughter has a _dot_ of sixty thousand francs, not to speak of
what, as an only child, she will inherit from us and also from her uncle
at Mollot and from my aunt Lambert at Troyes,--well, I declare to you
that if Monsieur Achille Pigoult did us the honor to ask her to wife,
I should give her to him; yes, I should--provided always she liked
him. But the silly little goose wants to marry as she pleases; it is
Mademoiselle Beauvisage who puts such notions into her head.”

The sub-prefect received this double broadside like a man who knows he
has thirty thousand francs a year, and expects a prefecture.

“Mademoiselle is right,” he said, looking at Cecile; “she is rich enough
to make a marriage of love.”

“Don’t let us talk about marriage,” said Ernestine; “it saddens my
poor dear Cecile, who was owning to me just now that in order not to be
married for her money, but for herself, she should like an affair with
some stranger who knew nothing of Arcis and her future expectations as
Lady Croesus, and would spin her a romance to end in true love and a
marriage.”

“That’s a very pretty idea!” cried Olivier Vinet, joining the group of
young ladies in order to get away from the partisans of Simon, the
idol of the day. “I always knew that Mademoiselle had as much sense as
money.”

“And,” continued Ernestine, “she has selected for the hero of her
romance--”

“Oh!” interrupted Madame Mollot, “an old man of fifty!--fie!”

“How do you know he is fifty?” asked Olivier Vinet, laughing.

“How?” replied Madame Mollot. “Why, this morning I was so puzzled that I
got out my opera-glass--”

“Bravo!” cried the superintendent of _ponts et chaussees_, who was
paying court to the mother to obtain the daughter.

“And so,” continued Madame Mollot, “I was able to see him shaving; with
such elegant razors!--mounted in gold, or silver-gilt!”

“Gold! gold, of course!” said Vinet. “When things are unknown they
should always be imagined of the finest quality. Consequently I, not
having seen this gentleman, am perfectly sure that he is at least a
count.”

This speech created a laugh; and the laughing group excited the jealousy
of a group of dowagers and the attention of a troop of men in black who
surrounded Simon Giguet. As for the latter, he was chafing in despair at
not being able to lay his fortune and his future at the feet of the rich
Cecile.

“Yes,” continued Vinet, “a man distinguished for his birth, for
his manners, his fortune, his equipages,--a lion, a dandy, a
yellow-kid-glover!”

“Monsieur Olivier,” said Ernestine, “he drives the prettiest tilbury you
ever saw.”

“What? Antonin, you never told me he had a tilbury when we were
talking about that conspirator this morning. A tilbury! Why, that’s an
extenuating circumstance; he can’t be a republican.”

“Mesdemoiselles, there is nothing that I will not do in the interests
of your amusement,” said Antonin Goulard. “I will instantly proceed
to ascertain if this individual is a count, and if he is, what kind of
count.”

“You can make a report upon him,” said the superintendent of bridges.

“For the use of all future sub-prefects,” added Olivier Vinet.

“How can you do it?” asked Madame Mollot.

“Oh!” replied the sub-prefect, “ask Mademoiselle Beauvisage whom she
would accept as her husband among all of us here present; she will not
answer. Allow me the same discretion. Mesdemoiselles, restrain your
anxiety; in ten minutes you shall know whether the Unknown is a count or
a commercial traveller.”




X. THE REVELATIONS OF AN OPERA-GLASS

Antonin Goulard left the little group of young ladies, in which,
besides Cecile and Ernestine, were Mademoiselle Berton, daughter of the
tax-collector,--an insignificant young person who played the part of
satellite to Cecile,--and Mademoiselle Herbelot, sister of the second
notary of Arcis, an old maid of thirty, soured, affected, and dressed
like all old maids; for she wore, over a bombazine gown, an embroidered
fichu, the corners of which, gathered to the front of the bodice, were
knotted together after the well-known fashion under the Terror.

“Julien,” said the sub-prefect to his valet, who was waiting in the
antechamber, “you who served six years at Gondreville ought to know how
a count’s coronet is made.”

“Yes, monsieur; it has pearls on its nine points.”

“Very good. Go to the Mulet, and try to clap your eye on the tilbury of
the gentleman who is stopping there, and then come and tell me what is
painted on it. Do your business thoroughly, and bring me all the gossip
of the inn. If you see the little groom, ask him at what hour to-morrow
his master can receive the sub-prefect--in case you find the nine
pearls. Don’t drink, don’t gossip yourself, and come back quickly; and
as soon as you get back let me know it by coming to the door of the
salon.”

“Yes, monsieur.”

The Mulet inn, as we have already said, stands on the square, at the
opposite corner to the garden wall of the Marion estate on the other
side of the road leading to Brienne. Therefore the solution of the
problem could be rapid. Antonin Goulard returned to his place by Cecile
to await results.

“We talked so much about the stranger yesterday that I dreamed of him
all night,” said Madame Mollot.

“Ha! ha! do you still dream of unknown heroes, fair lady?” said Vinet.

“You are very impertinent; if I chose I could make you dream of me,” she
retorted. “So this morning when I rose--”

It may not be useless to say that Madame Mollot was considered a clever
woman in Arcis; that is, she expressed herself fluently and abused that
advantage. A Parisian, wandering by chance into these regions, like the
Unknown, would have thought her excessively garrulous.

“--I was, naturally, making my toilet, and as I looked mechanically
about me--”

“Through the window?” asked Antonin.

“Certainly; my dressing-room opens on the street. Now you know, of
course, that Poupart has put the stranger into one of the rooms exactly
opposite to mine--”

“One room, mamma!” interrupted Ernestine. “The count occupies three
rooms! The little groom, dressed all in black, is in the first. They
have made a salon of the next, and the Unknown sleeps in the third.”

“Then he has half the rooms in the inn,” remarked Mademoiselle Herbelot.

“Well, young ladies, and what has that to do with his person?” said
Madame Mollot, sharply, not pleased at the interruption. “I am talking
of the man himself--”

“Don’t interrupt the orator,” put in Vinet.

“As I was stooping--”

“Seated?” asked Antonin.

“Madame was of course as she naturally would be,--making her toilet and
looking at the Mulet,” said Vinet.

In the provinces such jokes are prized, for people have so long said
everything to each other that they have recourse at last to the sort
of nonsense our fathers indulged in before the introduction of English
hypocrisy,--one of those products against which custom-houses are
powerless.

“Don’t interrupt the orator,” repeated Cecile Beauvisage to Vinet, with
whom she exchanged a smile.

“My eyes involuntarily fell on the window of the room in which the
stranger had slept the night before. I don’t know what time he went to
bed, although I was awake till past midnight; but I have the misfortune
to be married to a man who snores fit to crack the planks and the
rafters. If I fall asleep first, oh! I sleep so sound nothing can wake
me; but if Mollot drops off first my night is ruined--”

“Don’t you ever go off together?” said Achille Pigoult, joining the
group. “I see you are talking of sleep.”

“Hush, naughty boy!” replied Madame Mollot, graciously.

“Do you know what they mean?” whispered Cecile to Ernestine.

“At any rate, he was not in at one o’clock in the morning,” continued
Madame Mollot.

“Then he defrauded you!--came home without your knowing it!” said
Achille Pigoult. “Ha! that man is sly indeed; he’ll put us all in his
pouch and sell us in the market-place.”

“To whom?” asked Vinet.

“Oh! to a project! to an idea! to a system!” replied the notary, to whom
Olivier smiled with a knowing air.

“Imagine my surprise,” continued Madame Mollot, “when I saw a stuff, a
material, of splendid magnificence, most beautiful! dazzling! I said to
myself, ‘That must be a dressing-gown of the spun-glass material I have
sometimes seen in exhibitions of industrial products.’ So I fetched my
opera-glass to examine it. But, good gracious! what do you think I saw?
Above the dressing-gown, where the head ought to have been, I saw an
enormous mass, something like a knee--I can’t tell you how my curiosity
was excited.”

“I can conceive it,” said Antonin.

“No, you can _not_ conceive it,” said Madame Mollot; “for this knee--”

“Ah! I understand,” cried Olivier Vinet, laughing; “the Unknown was also
making his toilet, and you saw his two knees.”

“No, no!” cried Madame Mollot; “you are putting incongruities into my
mouth. The stranger was standing up; he held a sponge in his hand above
an immense basin, and--none of your jokes, Monsieur Olivier!--it wasn’t
his knee, it was his head! He was washing his bald head; he hasn’t a
spear of hair upon it.”

“Impudent man!” said Antonin. “He certainly can’t have come with ideas
of marriage in that head. Here we must have hair in order to be married.
That’s essential.”

“I am therefore right in saying that our Unknown visitor must be fifty
years old. Nobody ever takes to a wig before that time of life. After a
time, when his toilet was finished, he opened his window and looked out;
and _then_ he wore a splendid head of black hair. He turned his eyeglass
full on me,--for by that time, I was in my balcony. Therefore, my dear
Cecile, you see for yourself that you can’t take that man for the hero
of your romance.”

“Why not? Men of fifty are not to be despised, if they are counts,” said
Ernestine.

“Heavens! what has age to do with it?” said Mademoiselle Herbelot.

“Provided one gets a husband,” added Vinet, whose cold maliciousness
made him feared.

“Yes,” replied the old maid, feeling the cut, “I should prefer a man of
fifty, indulgent, kind, and considerate, to a young man without a heart,
whose wit would bite every one, even his wife.”

“This is all very well for conversation,” retorted Vinet, “but in order
to love the man of fifty and reject the other, it is necessary to have
the opportunity to choose.”

“Oh!” said Madame Mollot, in order to stop this passage at arms between
the old maid and Vinet, who always went to far, “when a woman has
had experience of life she knows that a husband of fifty or one of
twenty-five is absolutely the same thing if she merely respects him. The
important things in marriage are the benefits to be derived from it. If
Mademoiselle Beauvisage wants to go to Paris and shine there--and in
her place I should certainly feel so--she ought not to take a husband
in Arcis. If I had the fortune she will have, I should give my hand to
a count, to a man who would put me in a high social position, and I
shouldn’t ask to see the certificate of his birth.”

“It would satisfy you to see his toilet,” whispered Vinet in her ear.

“But the king makes counts,” said Madame Marion, who had now joined the
group and was surveying the bevy of young ladies.

“Ah! madame,” remarked Vinet, “but some young girls prefer their counts
already made.”

“Well, Monsieur Antonin,” said Cecile, laughing at Vinet’s sarcasm.
“Your ten minutes have expired, and you haven’t told us whether the
Unknown is a count or not.”

“I shall keep my promise,” replied the sub-prefect, perceiving at that
moment the head of his valet in the doorway; and again he left his place
beside Cecile.

“You are talking of the stranger,” said Madame Marion. “Is anything
really known about him?”

“No, madame,” replied Achille Pigoult; “but he is, without knowing it,
like the clown of a circus, the centre of the eyes of the two thousand
inhabitants of this town. I know one thing about him,” added the little
notary.

“Oh, tell us, Monsieur Achille!” cried Ernestine, eagerly.

“His tiger’s name is Paradise!”

“Paradise!” echoed every one included in the little circle.

“Can a man be called Paradise?” asked Madame Herbelot, who had joined
her sister-in-law.

“It tends to prove,” continued the notary, “that the master is an angel;
for when his tiger follows him--you understand.”

“It is the road of Paradise! very good, that,” said Madame Marion,
anxious to flatter Achille Pigoult in the interests of her nephew.

“Monsieur,” said Antonin’s valet in the dining-room, “the tilbury has a
coat of arms--”

“Coat of arms!”

“Yes, and droll enough they are! There’s a coronet with nine points and
pearls--”

“Then he’s a count!”

“And a monster with wings, flying like a postilion who has dropped
something. And here is what is written on the belt,” added the man,
taking a paper from his pocket. “Mademoiselle Anicette, the Princesse de
Cadignan’s lady’s maid, who came in a carriage” (the Cinq-Cygne carriage
before the door of the Mulet!) “to bring a letter to the gentleman,
wrote it down for me.”

“Give it to me.”

The sub-prefect read the words: _Quo me trahit fortuna_.

Though he was not strong enough in French blazon to know the house that
bore that device, Antonin felt sure that the Cinq-Cygnes would not
send their chariot, nor the Princess de Cadignan a missive by her maid,
except to a person of the highest nobility.

“Ha! so you know the maid of the Princess de Cadignan! happy man!” said
Antonin.

Julien, a young countryman, after serving six months in the household
of the Comte de Gondreville, had entered the service of the sub-prefect,
who wanted a servant of the _right style_.

“But, monsieur, Anicette is my father’s god-daughter. Papa, who wanted
to do well by the girl, whose father was dead, sent her to a dressmaker
in Paris because my mother could not endure her.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Rather; the proof is that she got into trouble in Paris; but finally,
as she has talent and can make gowns and dress hair, she got a place
with the princess.”

“What did she tell you about Cinq-Cygne? Is there much company?”

“A great deal, monsieur. There’s the princess and Monsieur d’Arthez, the
Duc de Maufrigneuse and the duchess and the young marquis. In fact the
chateau is full. They expect Monseigneur the Bishop of Troyes to-night.”

“Monsieur Troubert! I should like to know how long he is going to stay.”

“Anicette thinks for some time; and she believes he is coming to meet
the gentleman who is now at the Mulet. They expect more company. The
coachman told me they were talking a great deal about the election.
Monsieur le president Michu is expected in a few days.”

“Try to bring that lady’s maid into town on pretence of shopping. Have
you any designs upon her?”

“If she has any savings I don’t know but what I might. She is a sly one,
though.”

“Tell her to come and see you at the sub-prefecture.”

“Yes, monsieur. I’ll go and tell her now.”

“Don’t say anything about me, or she might not come.”

“Ah! monsieur; haven’t I served at Gondreville?”

“You don’t know why they sent that message from Cinq-Cygne at this hour,
do you? It is half-past nine o’clock.”

“It must have been something pressing. The gentleman had only just
returned from Gondreville.”

“Gondreville!--has he been to Gondreville?”

“He dined there, monsieur. If you went to the Mulet you’d laugh! The
little tiger is, saving your presence, as drunk as a fiddler. He drank
such a lot of champagne in the servants’ hall that he can’t stand on his
legs; they have been filling him for fun.”

“And the count?”

“The count had gone to bed; but as soon as he received the letter he got
up. He is now dressing himself; and they are putting the horse in the
tilbury. The count is to spend the night at Cinq-Cygne.”

“He must be some great personage.”

“Oh, yes, monsieur; for Gothard, the steward of Cinq-Cygne, came this
morning to see his brother-in-law Poupart, and warned him to be very
discreet about the gentleman and to serve him like a king.”

“Vinet must be right,” thought the sub-prefect. “Can there be some cabal
on foot?”

“It was Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse who sent Gothard to the Mulet.
Poupart came to the meeting here this morning only because the gentleman
wished him to do so; if he had sent him to Paris, he’d go. Gothard told
Poupart to keep silent about the gentleman, and to fool all inquisitive
people.”

“If you can get Anicette here, don’t fail to let me know,” said Antonin.

“But I could see her at Cinq-Cygne if monsieur would send me to his
house at Val-Preux.”

“That’s an idea. You might profit by the chariot to get there. But what
reason could you give to the little groom?”

“He’s a madcap, that boy, monsieur. Would you believe it, drunk as he
is, he has just mounted his master’s thoroughbred, a horse that can do
twenty miles an hour, and started for Troyes with a letter in order that
it may reach Paris to-morrow! And only nine years and a half old! What
will he be at twenty?”

The sub-prefect listened mechanically to these remarks. Julien gossiped
on, his master listening, absorbed in thought about the stranger.

“Wait here,” he said to the man as he turned with slow steps to re-enter
the salon. “What a mess!” he thought to himself,--“a man who dines at
Gondreville and spends the night at Cinq-Cygnes! Mysteries indeed!”

“Well?” cried the circle around Mademoiselle Beauvisage as soon as he
reappeared.

“He is a count, and _vieille roche_, I answer for it.”

“Oh! how I should like to see him!” cried Cecile.

“Mademoiselle,” said Antonin, smiling and looking maliciously at Madame
Mollot, “he is tall and well-made and does not wear a wig. His little
groom was as drunk as the twenty-four cantons; they filled him with
champagne at Gondreville and that little scamp, only nine years old,
answered my man Julien, who asked him about his master’s wig, with all
the assumption of an old valet: ‘My master! wear a wig!--if he did I’d
leave him. He dyes his hair and that’s bad enough.’”

“Your opera-glass magnifies,” said Achille Pigoult to Madame Mollot, who
laughed.

“Well, the tiger of the handsome count, drunk as he is, is now riding
to Troyes to post a letter, and he’ll get there, as they say, in
five-quarters of an hour.”

“I’d like to have that tiger,” said Vinet.

“If the count dined at Gondreville we shall soon know all about him,”
 remarked Cecile; “for my grandpapa is going there to-morrow morning.”

“What will strike you as very strange,” said Antonin Goulard, “is that
the party at Cinq-Cygne have just sent Mademoiselle Anicette, the maid
of the Princesse de Cadignan, in the Cinq-Cygne carriage, with a note to
the stranger, and he is going now to pass the night there.”

“_Ah ca_!” said Olivier Vinet, “then he is not a man; he’s a devil, a
phoenix, he will poculate--”

“Ah, fie! monsieur,” said Madame Mollot, “you use words that are
really--”

“‘Poculate’ is a word of the highest latinity, madame,” replied Vinet,
gravely. “So, as I said, he will poculate with Louis Philippe in the
morning, and banquet at the Holy-Rood with Charles the Tenth at
night. There is but one reason that allows a decent man to go to both
camps--from Montague to Capulet! Ha, ha! I know who that stranger is.
He’s--”

“The president of a railway from Paris to Lyons, or Paris to Dijon, or
from Montereau to Troyes.”

“That’s true,” said Antonin. “You have it. There’s nothing but
speculation that is welcomed everywhere.”

“Yes, just see how great names, great families, the old and the new
peerage are rushing hot-foot into enterprises and partnerships,” said
Achille Pigoult.

“Francs attract the Franks,” remarked Olivier Vinet, without a smile.

“You are not an _olive_-branch of peace,” said Madame Mollot, laughing.

“But is it not demoralizing to see such names as Verneuil, Maufrigneuse,
and Herouville side by side with those of du Tillet and Nucingen in the
Bourse speculations?”

“Our great Unknown is undoubtedly an embryo railway,” said Olivier
Vinet.

“Well, to-morrow all Arcis will be upside-down about it,” said Achille
Pigoult. “I shall call upon the Unknown and ask him to make me notary of
the affair. There’ll be two thousand deeds to draw, at the least.”

“Our romance is turning into a locomotive,” said Ernestine to Cecile.

“A count with a railway is all the more marriageable,” remarked Achille
Pigoult. “But who knows whether he is a bachelor?”

“Oh! I shall know that to-morrow from grandpapa,” cried Cecile, with
pretended enthusiasm.

“What a jest!” said Madame Mollot. “You can’t really mean, my little
Cecile, that you are thinking of that stranger?”

“But the husband is always the stranger,” interposed Olivier Vinet,
making a sign to Mademoiselle Beauvisage which she fully understood.

“Why shouldn’t I think of him?” asked Cecile; “that isn’t compromising.
Besides, he is, so these gentlemen say, either some great speculator, or
some great seigneur, and either would suit me. I love Paris; and I want
a house, a carriage, an opera-box, etc., in Paris.”

“That’s right,” said Vinet. “When people dream, they needn’t refuse
themselves anything. If I had the pleasure of being your brother I
should marry you to the young Marquis de Cinq-Cygne, who seems to me a
lively young scamp who will make the money dance, and will laugh at his
mother’s prejudices against the actors in the famous Simeuse melodrama.”

“It would be easier for you to make yourself prime-minister,”
 said Madame Marion. “There will never be any alliance between the
granddaughter of Grevin and the Cinq-Cygnes.”

“Romeo came within an ace of marrying Juliet,” remarked Achille Pigoult,
“and Mademoiselle is more beautiful than--”

“Oh! if you are going to quote operas and opera beauties!” said Herbelot
the notary, naively, having finished his game of whist.

“My legal brother,” said Achille Pigoult, “is not very strong on the
history of the middle ages.”

“Come, Malvina!” said the stout notary to his wife, making no reply to
his young associate.

“Tell me, Monsieur Antonin,” said Cecile to the sub-prefect, “you spoke
of Anicette, the maid of the Princesse de Cadignan; do you know her?”

“No, but Julien does; she is the goddaughter of his father, and they are
good friends together.”

“Then try, through Julien, to get her to live with us. Mamma wouldn’t
consider wages.”

“Mademoiselle, to hear is to obey, as they say to despots in Asia,”
 replied the sub-prefect. “Just see to what lengths I will go in order to
serve you.”

And he left the room to give Julien orders to go with Anicette in the
chariot and coax her away from the princess at any price.




XI. IN WHICH THE CANDIDATE BEGINS TO LOSE VOTES

At this moment Simon Giguet, who had got through his bowing and scraping
to all the influential men of Arcis, and who regarded himself as sure of
his election, joined the circle around Cecile and Mademoiselle Mollot.
The evening was far advanced. Ten o’clock had struck. After an enormous
consumption of cakes, orgeat, punch, lemonade, and various syrups, those
who had come that evening solely for political reasons and who were
not accustomed to Madame Marion’s floors, to them aristocratic,
departed,--all the more willingly, because they were unaccustomed to
sitting up so late. The evening then began to take on its usual air of
intimacy. Simon Giguet hoped that he could now exchange a few words with
Cecile, and he looked at her like a conqueror. The look displeased her.

“My dear fellow,” said Antonin to Simon, observing on his friend’s face
the glory of success, “you come at a moment when the noses of all the
young men in Arcis are put out of joint.”

“Very much so,” said Ernestine, whom Cecile had nudged with her elbow.
“We are distracted, Cecile and I, about the great Unknown, and we are
quarrelling for him.”

“But,” said Cecile, “he is no longer unknown; he is a count.”

“Some adventurer!” replied Simon Giguet, with an air of contempt.

“Will you say that, Monsieur Simon,” answered Cecile, feeling piqued,
“of a man to whom the Princesse de Cadignan has just sent her servants,
who dined at Gondreville to-day, and is to spend this evening with the
Marquise de Cinq-Cygne?”

This was said sharply, and in so hard a tone that Simon was
disconcerted.

“Ah, mademoiselle,” said Olivier Vinet, “if we said to each other’s
faces what we all say behind our backs, social life wouldn’t be
possible. The pleasures of society, especially in the provinces, are to
slander and backbite our neighbors.”

“Monsieur Simon is jealous of your enthusiasm for the mysterious count,”
 said Ernestine.

“It seems to me,” said Cecile, “that Monsieur Simon has no right to be
jealous of my affections.”

After which remark, uttered in a way to dumfound Simon, Cecile rose;
the others made way for her and she went to her mother, who was just
finishing her rubber of whist.

“My dearest!” cried Madame Marion, hurrying after the heiress, “I think
you are rather hard on my poor Simon.”

“What has she done, my dear little kitten?” asked Madame Beauvisage.

“Mamma, Monsieur Simon called my great Unknown an adventurer!”

Simon had followed his aunt and was now beside the card-table. The four
persons whose interests were concerned were thus in the middle of the
salon,--Cecile and her mother on one side of the table, Madame Marion
and her nephew on the other.

“Really, madame,” said Simon Giguet, “there must be a strong desire to
find fault and to quarrel with me simply because I happened to say
that a gentleman whom all Arcis is talking about and who stops at the
Mulet--”

“Do you think he has come here to put himself in competition with you?”
 said Madame Beauvisage jestingly.

“I should be very indignant with him certainly if he were to cause the
slightest misunderstanding between Mademoiselle Cecile and myself,” said
the candidate, with a supplicating look at the young girl.

“You gave your opinion, monsieur, in a decisive manner which proves that
you are very despotic,” she replied; “but you are right; if you wish to
be minister you ought to be decisive.”

Here Madame Marion took Madame Beauvisage by the arm and led her to
a sofa. Cecile, finding herself alone, returned to her former seat to
avoid hearing Simon’s answer to her speech, and the candidate was left
standing rather foolishly before the table, where he mechanically played
with the counters.

“My dear friend,” said Madame Marion in a low voice to Madame
Beauvisage, “you see that nothing can now hinder my nephew’s election.”

“I am delighted both for your sake and for the Chamber of Deputies,”
 said Severine.

“My nephew is certain to go far, my dear; and I’ll tell you why: his
own fortune, that which his father will leave him and mine, will amount
altogether to some thirty thousand francs a year. When a man is a deputy
and has a fortune like that, he can aspire to anything.”

“Madame, he has our utmost admiration and our most earnest wishes for
the success of his political career; but--”

“I am not asking for an answer,” said Madame Marion, hastily
interrupting her friend. “I only beg you to reflect on the following
suggestions: Do our children suit each other? Can we marry them? We
should then live in Paris during the sessions; and who knows if the
deputy of Arcis may not be settled there permanently in some fine place
in the magistracy? Look at Monsieur Vinet of Provins, how he has made
his way. People blamed Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf for marrying him; yet
she will soon be wife of the Keeper of the Seals; Monsieur Vinet can be
peer of France whenever he pleases.”

“Madame, I have not the power to marry my daughter according to my own
tastes. In the first place, her father and I leave her absolutely free
to choose for herself. If she wanted to marry the ‘great Unknown’ and we
found that the match was suitable, we should give our consent. Besides
this, Cecile is wholly dependent on her grandfather, who intends to give
her on her marriage the Hotel de Beauseant in Paris, which he purchased
for us six years ago; the value of which is now rated at eight hundred
thousand francs. It is one of the finest houses in the faubourg
Saint-Germain. Moreover, he intends to add two hundred thousand francs
for the cost of fitting it up. A grandfather who behaves in this way,
and who can influence my mother-in-law to make a few sacrifices for
her granddaughter in expectation of a suitable marriage, has a right to
advise--”

“Certainly,” said Madame Marion, stupefied by this confidence, which
made the marriage of her nephew and Cecile extremely difficult.

“Even if Cecile had nothing to expect from her grandfather Grevin,”
 continued Madame Beauvisage, “she would not marry without first
consulting him. If you have any proposals to make, go and see my
father.”

“Very good; I will go,” said Madame Marion.

Madame Beauvisage made a sign to Cecile, and together they left the
salon.

The next day Antonin and Frederic Marest found themselves, according
to their usual custom, with Monsieur Martener and Olivier, beneath the
lindens of the Avenue of Sighs, smoking their cigars and walking up and
down. This daily promenade is one of the petty pleasures of government
officials in the provinces when they happen to be on good terms with one
another.

After they had made a few turns, Simon Giguet came up and joined them
saying to the sub-prefect with a mysterious air:--

“You ought to be faithful to an old comrade who wishes to get you the
rosette of an officer and a prefecture.”

“You are beginning your political career betimes,” said Antonin,
laughing. “You are trying to corrupt me, rapid puritan!”

“Will you support me?”

“My dear fellow, you know very well that Bar-sur-Aube votes here. Who
can guarantee a majority under such circumstances? My colleague of
Bar-sur-Aube would complain of me if I did not unite my efforts with his
in support of the government. Your promise is conditional; whereas my
dismissal would be certain.”

“But I have no competitors.”

“You think so,” said Antonin, “but some one is sure to turn up; you may
rely on that.”

“Why doesn’t my aunt come, when she knows I am on a gridiron!” exclaimed
Giguet, suddenly. “These three hours are like three years!”

His secret had escaped him and he now admitted to his friend that Madame
Marion had gone on his behalf to old Grevin with a formal proposal for
Cecile’s hand.

The pair had now reached the Brienne road opposite to the Mulet
hostelry. While the lawyer looked down the street towards the bridge his
aunt would have to cross, the sub-prefect examined the gullies made by
the rain in the open square. Arcis is not paved. The plains of Champagne
furnish no material fit for building, nor even pebbles large enough for
cobble-stone pavements. One or two streets and a few detached places
are imperfectly macadamized and that is saying enough to describe their
condition after a rain. The sub-prefect gave himself an appearance
of occupation by apparently exercising his thoughts on this important
object; but he lost not a single expression of suffering on the anxious
face of his companion.

At this moment, the stranger was returning from the Chateau de
Cinq-Cygne, where he had apparently passed the night. Goulard resolved
to clear up, himself, the mystery wrapped about the Unknown, who was
physically enveloped in an overcoat of thick cloth called a _paletot_,
then the fashion. A mantle, thrown across his knees for a covering, hid
the lower half of his body, while an enormous muffler of red cashmere
covered his neck and head to the eyes. His hat, jauntily tipped to
one side, was, nevertheless, not ridiculous. Never was a mystery more
mysteriously bundled up and swathed.

“Look out!” cried the tiger, who preceded the tilbury on horseback.
“Open, papa Poupart, open!” he screamed in his shrill little voice.

The three servants of the inn ran out, and the tilbury drove in without
any one being able to see a single feature of the stranger’s face. The
sub-prefect followed the tilbury into the courtyard, and went to the
door of the inn.

“Madame Poupart,” said Antonin, “will you ask Monsieur--Monsieur--”

“I don’t know his name,” said Gothard’s sister.

“You do wrong! The rules of the police are strict, and Monsieur Groslier
doesn’t trifle, like some commissaries of police.”

“Innkeepers are never to blame about election-time,” remarked the little
tiger, getting off his horse.

“I’ll repeat that to Vinet,” thought the sub-prefect. “Go and ask your
master if he can receive the sub-prefect of Arcis.”

Presently Paradise returned.

“Monsieur begs Monsieur the sub-prefect to come up; he will be delighted
to see him.”

“My lad,” said Olivier Vinet, who with the two other functionaries had
joined the sub-prefect before the inn, “how much does your master give a
year for a boy of your cut and wits?”

“Give, monsieur! What do you take me for? Monsieur le comte lets himself
be milked, and I’m content.”

“That boy was raised in a good school!” said Frederic Marest.

“The highest school, monsieur,” said the urchin, amazing the four
friends with his perfect self-possession.

“What a Figaro!” cried Vinet.

“Mustn’t lower one’s price,” said the infant. “My master calls me a
little Robert-Macaire, and since we have learned how to invest our money
we are Figaro, plus a savings bank.”

“How much do you earn?”

“Oh! some races I make two or three thousand francs--and without selling
my master, monsieur.”

“Sublime infant!” said Vinet; “he knows the turf.”

“Yes, and all gentlemen riders,” said the child, sticking out his tongue
at Vinet.

Antonin Goulard, ushered by the landlord into a room which had been
turned into a salon, felt himself instantly under the focus of an
eyeglass held in the most impertinent manner by the stranger.

“Monsieur,” said the sub-prefect with a certain official hauteur, “I
have just learned from the wife of the innkeeper that you refuse to
conform to the ordinances of the police, and as I do not doubt that you
are a person of distinction, I have come myself--”

“Is your name Goulard?” demanded the stranger in a high voice.

“I am the sub-prefect, monsieur,” replied Antonin Goulard.

“Your father belonged to the Simeuse family?”

“And I, monsieur, belong to the government; that is how times differ.”

“You have a servant named Julien, who has tried to entice the Princesse
de Cadignan’s maid away from her?”

“Monsieur, I do not allow any one to speak to me in this manner,” said
Goulard; “you misunderstand my character.”

“And you want to know about mine!” returned the Unknown. “Well, I
will now make myself known. You can write in the landlord’s book:
‘Impertinent fellow. Direct from Paris. Age doubtful. Travelling for
pleasure.’ It would be rather a novelty in France to imitate England and
let people come and go as they please, without tormenting them at every
turn for ‘papers.’ I have no passport; now, what will you do to me?”

“The _procureur-du-roi_ is walking up and down there under the lindens,”
 said the sub-prefect.

“Monsieur Marest! Wish him good-morning from me.”

“But who are you?”

“Whatever you wish me to be, my dear Monsieur Goulard,” said the
stranger. “You alone shall decide _what_ I am to be in this department.
Give me some advice on that head. Here, read that.”

And the stranger handed the sub-prefect the following letter:--

  (Confidential.)       Prefecture of the Aube.

  Monsieur the Sub-prefect,--You will consult with the bearer of
  this letter as to the election at Arcis, and you will conform to
  all the suggestions and requests he may make to you. I request you
  to conduct this matter with the utmost discretion, and to treat
  the bearer with all the respect that is due to his station.

The letter was written and signed by the prefect of the Aube.

“You have been talking prose without knowing it,” said the Unknown,
taking back the letter.

Antonin Goulard, already struck with the aristocratic tone and manners
of this personage, became respectful.

“How was that, monsieur?” he asked.

“By endeavoring to entice Anicette. She told us of the attempts of your
man Julien to corrupt her. But my little tiger, Paradise, got the better
of him, and he ended by admitting that you wanted to put Anicette into
the service of one of the richest families in Arcis. Now, as the
richest family in Arcis is the Beauvisage family I make no doubt it is
Mademoiselle Cecile who covets this treasure.”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Very good; then Anicette shall enter the Beauvisage household at once.”

He whistled. Paradise presented himself so rapidly that his master said:
“You were listening!”

“In spite of myself, Monsieur le comte; these partitions are nothing but
paper. But if Monsieur le comte prefers, I will move upstairs.”

“No, you can listen; it is your perquisite. It is for me to speak low
when I don’t want you to know my affairs. Go back to Cinq-Cygne, and
give this gold piece to that little Anicette from me. Julien shall have
the credit of enticing her away,” he continued, addressing Goulard.
“That bit of gold will inform her that she is to follow him. Anicette
may be useful to the success of our candidate.”

“Anicette?”

“Monsieur, it is now thirty-two years since lady’s-maids have served
my purposes. I had my first adventure at the age of thirteen, like the
regent, the great-great-grandfather of our present King. Do you know the
fortune of this Mademoiselle Beauvisage?”

“I can’t help knowing it, monsieur, for yesterday at Madame Marion’s,
Madame Beauvisage said openly that Monsieur Grevin, Cecile’s
grandfather, would give his granddaughter the hotel de Beauseant in
Paris and two hundred thousand francs for a wedding present.”

The stranger’s eyes expressed no surprise. He seemed to consider the
fortune rather paltry.

“Do you know Arcis well?” he asked of Goulard.

“I am the sub-prefect and I was born here.”

“What is the best way to balk curiosity?”

“By satisfying it. For instance, Monsieur le Comte has a baptismal name;
let him register that with the title of count.”

“Very good; Comte Maxime.”

“And if monsieur will assume the position of a railway official, Arcis
will be content; it will amuse itself by floating that stick at least
for a fortnight.”

“No, I prefer to be concerned in irrigation; it is less common. I have
come down to survey the wastelands of Champagne in order to reclaim
them. That will be, my good Monsieur Goulard, a reason for inviting me
to dine with you to-morrow to meet the mayor and his family; I wish to
see them, and study them.”

“I shall be only to happy to receive you,” said the sub-prefect; “but I
must ask your indulgence for the deficiencies of my little household.”

“If I succeed in managing the election of Arcis according to the wishes
of those who have sent me here, you, my dear friend, will be made a
prefect. Here, read these”; and he held out two letters to his visitor.

“Very good, Monsieur le comte,” said Antonin, returning them.

“Make a list of all the votes on which the ministry may count. Above
all, let no one suspect that you and I understand each other. I am a
speculator in land, and I don’t care a fig for elections.”

“I will send the commissary of police to force you to inscribe your name
on Poupart’s register.”

“So do. Adieu, monsieur. Heavens! what a region this is,” said the
count, in a loud voice; “one can’t take a step without having the
community, sub-prefect and all, on one’s back.”

“You will have to answer to the commissary of police, monsieur,” said
Antonin, in an equally loud tone.

And for the next twenty minutes Madame Mollot talked of the altercation
that took place between the sub-prefect and the stranger.

“Well, what wood is the beam that has plumped into our bog made of?”
 said Olivier Vinet when Antonin Goulard rejoined them on leaving the
Mulet.

“He is a Comte Maxime who is here to study the geological system
of Champagne, with a view to finding mineral waters,” replied the
sub-prefect, with an easy manner.

“Say a speculator,” said Oliver.

“Does he expect to get the natives to lay out capital?” asked Monsieur
Martener.

“I doubt if our royalists will go into that kind of mining,” remarked
Vinet, laughing.

“What should you think from the air and gestures of Madame Marion?” said
the sub-prefect turning off the subject by pointing to Madame Marion and
Simon, who were deep in conversation.

Simon had gone toward the bridge to meet his aunt, and was now walking
with her up the square.

“If he was accepted one word would suffice,” said the shrewd Olivier.

“Well?” said all the officials when Simon came to them under the
lindens.

“My aunt thinks the matter very hopeful,” replied Simon. “Madame
Beauvisage and old Grevin, who has just gone to Gondreville, were not at
all surprised at my proposals; they talked of our respective fortunes,
and said they wished to leave Cecile perfectly free to make her choice.
Besides which, Madame Beauvisage said that, as for herself, she saw
no objection to an alliance by which she should feel herself honored;
although she postponed all answer until after my election, and possibly
my first appearance in the Chamber. Old Grevin said he should consult
the Comte de Gondreville, without whose advice he never took any
important step.”

“All of which means,” said Goulard, point-blank, “that you will never
marry Cecile, my old fellow.”

“Why not?” said Giguet, ironically.

“My dear friend, Madame Beauvisage and her daughter spend four
evenings every week in the salon of your aunt; your aunt is the most
distinguished woman in Arcis; and she is, though twenty years the elder,
an object of envy to Madame Beauvisage; don’t you see, therefore, that
they wished to wrap up their refusal in certain civilities?”

“Not to say entire yes or no in such cases,” said Vinet, “is to say
_no_, with due regard to the intimacy of the two families. Though Madame
Beauvisage has the largest fortune in Arcis, Madame Marion is the
most esteemed woman in the place; for, with the exception of our
chief-justice’s wife, who sees no one now, she is the only woman who
knows how to hold a salon; she is the queen of Arcis. Madame Beauvisage
has tried to make her refusal polite, that’s all.”

“I think that old Grevin was fooling your mother,” said Frederic Marest.

“Yesterday you attacked the Comte de Gondreville, you insulted and
grievously affronted him, and he is to be consulted about your marriage
to Cecile!”

“Pere Grevin is a sly old dog,” said Vinet.

“Madame Beauvisage is very ambitious,” pursued Antonin Goulard. “She
knows very well her daughter is to have two millions; she means to be
mother-in-law of a minister, or an ambassador, in order to play the
great lady in Paris.”

“Well, why not?” said Simon Giguet.

“I wish you may get it!” replied the sub-prefect looking at Vinet,
with whom he went off into a hearty laugh as soon as they were out of
hearing. “He won’t even be deputy,” added Antonin, addressing Vinet;
“the ministry have other views. You will find a letter from your father
when you get home, enjoining you to make sure of the votes of all the
persons in your department, and see that they go for the ministerial
candidate. Your own promotion depends on this; and he requests you to be
very discreet.”

“But who is the candidate for whom our ushers and sheriffs and clerks,
and solicitors and notaries are to vote?” asked Vinet.

“The one I shall name to you.”

“How do you know my father has written to me, and what he wrote?”

“The stranger told me--”

“The man after water?”

“My dear Vinet, you and I are not to know; we must treat him as a
stranger. He saw your father at Provins as he came through. Just now
this same man gave me a note from the prefect instructing me to
follow in every particular the instructions of Comte Maxime about this
election. I knew very well I should have a battle to fight! Come
and dine somewhere and we will get out our batteries. You are to be
_procureur-du-roi_ at Mantes, and I am to be prefect; but we must _seem_
to have nothing to do with the election, for don’t you see, we are
between the hammer and the anvil. Simon is the candidate of a party
which wants to overturn the present ministry and may succeed; but for
men as intelligent as you and I there is but one course to take.”

“What is that?”

“To serve those who make and unmake ministers. A letter was shown to
me from one of those personages who represent the stable and immovable
thought of the State.”

Before going farther, it is necessary to explain who this Unknown person
was, and what his purpose was in coming to Champagne.




XII. THE SALON OF MADAME D’ESPARD

About two months before the nomination of Simon Giguet, at eleven
o’clock one evening, in a mansion of the faubourg Saint-Honore belonging
to the Marquise d’Espard, while tea was being served the Chevalier
d’Espard, brother-in-law to the marquise, put down his tea-cup, and,
looking round the circle, remarked:--

“Maxime was very melancholy to-night,--didn’t you think so?”

“Yes,” replied Rastignac, “but his sadness is easily accounted for. He
is forty-eight years old; at that age a man makes no new friends, and
now that we have buried de Marsay, Maxime has lost the only man capable
of understanding him, of being useful to him, and of using him.”

“He probably has pressing debts. Couldn’t you put him in the way of
paying them?” said the marquise to Rastignac.

At this period Rastignac was, for the second time, in the ministry; he
had just been made count almost against his will. His father-in-law, the
Baron de Nucingen, was peer of France, his younger brother a bishop,
the Comte de Roche-Hugon, his brother-in-law, was an ambassador, and he
himself was thought to be indispensable in all future combinations of
the ministry.

“You always forget, my dear marquise,” replied Rastignac, “that our
government exchanges its silver for gold only; it pays no heed to men.”

“Is Maxime a man who would blow out his brains?” inquired the banker du
Tillet.

“Ha! you wish I were; we should be quits then,” said Comte Maxime de
Trailles, whom everybody supposed to have left the house.

The count rose suddenly, like an apparition, from the depths of an
arm-chair placed exactly behind that of the Chevalier d’Espard.

Every one present laughed.

“Will you have a cup of tea?” said the young Comtesse de Rastignac, whom
the marquise had asked to do the honors in her place.

“Gladly,” replied the count, standing before the fireplace.

This man, the prince of fashionable scoundrels, had managed to maintain
himself until now in the high and mighty position of a dandy in Paris,
then called _Gants Jaunes_ (lemon-kid-glovers), and since, “lions.”
 It is useless to relate the history of his youth, full of questionable
adventures, with now and then some horrible drama, in which he had
always known how to save appearances. To this man women were never
anything else than a means; he believed no more in their griefs than he
did in their joys; he regarded them, like the late de Marsay, as naughty
children. After squandering his own fortune, he had spent that of a
famous courtesan, La Belle Hollandaise, the mother of Esther Gobseck.
He had caused the misery of Madame Restaud, sister of Madame Delphine de
Nucingen, the mother of the young Comtesse de Rastignac.

The world of Paris offers many unimaginable situations. The Baronne de
Nucingen was at this moment in Madame d’Espard’s salon in presence of
the author of all her sister’s misery, in presence of a murderer who
killed only the happiness of women. That, perhaps, was the reason why
he was there. Madame de Nucingen had dined at Madame d’Espard’s with her
daughter, married a few months earlier to the Comte de Rastignac, who
had begun his political career by occupying the post of under-secretary
of state in the famous ministry of the late de Marsay, the only real
statesman produced by the Revolution of July.

Comte Maxime de Trailles alone knew how many disasters he had
caused; but he had always taken care to shelter himself from blame by
scrupulously obeying the laws of the Man-Code. Though he had squandered
in the course of his life more money than the four galleys of France
could have stolen in the same time, he had kept clear of justice. Never
had he lacked in honor; his gambling debts were paid scrupulously.
An admirable player, his partners were chiefly the great seigneurs,
ministers, and ambassadors. He dined habitually with all the members of
the diplomatic body. He fought duels, and had killed two or three men
in his life; in fact, he had half murdered them, for his coolness and
self-possession were unparalleled. No young man could compare with him
in dress, in the distinction of his manners, the elegance of his witty
speech, the grace of his easy carriage,--in short, what was called in
those days “the grand air.” In his capacity of page to the Emperor,
trained from the age of twelve in the art of riding, he was held to be
the skilfulest of horsemen. Having always fine horses in his stable, he
raised some, and ruled the fashion in equestrianism. No man could
stand a supper of young bloods better than he; he drank more than the
best-trained toper, but he came out fresh and cool, and ready to begin
again as if orgy were his element. Maxime, one of those despised men who
know how to repress the contempt they inspire by the insolence of their
attitude and the fear they cause, never deceived himself as to his
actual position. Hence his real strength. Strong men are always their
own critics.

Under the Restoration he had made the most of his former condition of
page to the Emperor. He attributed to his pretended Bonapartist opinions
the rebuffs he met with from the different ministers when he asked for
an office under the Bourbons; for, in spite of his connections, his
birth, and his dangerous aptitudes, he never obtained anything. After
the failure of these attempts he entered the secret cabal which led in
time to the fall of the Elder branch.

When the Younger branch, preceded by the Parisian populace, had trodden
down the Elder branch and was seated on the throne, Maxime reproduced
his attachment to Napoleon, for whom he cared as much as for his first
love. He then did great services to the newcomers, who soon found the
payment for them onerous; for Maxime too often demanded payment of men
who knew how to reckon those services. At the first refusal, Maxime
assumed at once an attitude of hostility, threatening to reveal
unpleasant details; for budding dynasties, like infants, have much
soiled linen. De Marsay, during his ministry, repaired the mistake of
his predecessors, who had ignored the utility of this man. He gave him
those secret missions which require a conscience made malleable by the
hammer of necessity, an adroitness which recoils before no methods,
impudence, and, above all, the self-possession, the coolness, the
embracing glance which constitute the hired _bravi_ of thought and
statesmanship. Such instruments are both rare and necessary.

As a matter of calculation, de Marsay maintained Comte Maxime de
Trailles in the highest society; he described him as a man ripened by
passions, taught by experience, who knew men and things, to whom travel
and a certain faculty for observation had imparted an understanding of
European interests, of foreign cabinets, and of all the ramifications
of the great continental families. De Marsay convinced Maxime of the
necessity of doing himself credit; he taught him discretion, less as a
virtue than a speculation; he proved to him that the governing powers
would never abandon a solid, safe, elegant, and polished instrument.

“In politics,” he said, blaming Maxime for having uttered a threat, “we
should never _blackmail_ but once.”

Maxime was a man who could sound the depths of that saying.

De Marsay dead, Comte Maxime de Trailles had fallen back into his former
state of existence. He went to the baths every year and gambled; he
returned to Paris for the winter; but, though he received some large
sums from the depths of certain niggardly coffers, that sort of half-pay
to a daring man kept for use at any moment and possessing many secrets
of the art of diplomacy, was insufficient for the dissipations of a
life as splendid as that of the king of dandies, the tyrant of several
Parisian clubs. Consequently Comte Maxime was often uneasy about matters
financial. Possessing no property, he had never been able to consolidate
his position by being made a deputy; also, having no ostensible
functions, it was impossible for him to hold a knife at the throat of
any minister to compel his nomination as peer of France. At the present
moment he saw that Time was getting the better of him; for his lavish
dissipations were beginning to wear upon his person, as they had already
worn out his divers fortunes. In spite of his splendid exterior, he knew
himself, and could not be deceived about that self. He intended to “make
an end”--to marry.

A man of acute mind, he was under no illusion as to the apparent
consideration in which he was held; he well knew it was false. No women
were truly on his side, either in the great world of Paris or among the
bourgeoisie. Much secret malignity, much apparent good-humor, and
many services rendered were necessary to maintain him in his present
position; for every one desired his fall, and a run of ill-luck might at
any time ruin him. Once sent to Clichy or forced to leave the country
by notes no longer renewable, he would sink into the gulf where so
many political carcasses may be seen,--carcasses of men who find no
consolation in one another’s company. Even this very evening he was in
dread of a collapse of that threatening arch which debt erects over the
head of many a Parisian. He had allowed his anxieties to appear upon his
face; he had refused to play cards at Madame d’Espard’s; he had talked
with the women in an absent-minded manner, and finally he had sunk down
silent and absorbed in the arm-chair from which he had just risen like
Banquo’s ghost.

Comte Maxime de Trailles now found himself the object of all glances,
direct and indirect, standing as he did before the fireplace and
illumined by the cross-lights of two candelabra. The few words said
about him compelled him, in a way, to bear himself proudly; and he did
so, like a man of sense, without arrogance, and yet with the intention
of showing himself to be above suspicion. A painter could scarcely have
found a better moment in which to seize the portrait of a man who, in
his way, was truly extraordinary. Does it not require rare faculties to
play such a part,--to enable one through thirty years to seduce
women; to constrain one to employ great gifts in an underhand sphere
only,--inciting a people to rebel, tracking the secrets of austere
politicians, and triumphing nowhere but in boudoirs and on the
back-stairs of cabinets?

Is there not something, difficult to say what, of greatness in being
able to rise to the highest calculations of statesmen and then to fall
coldly back into the void of a frivolous life? Where is the man of iron
who can withstand the alternating luck of gambling, the rapid missions
of diplomacy, the warfare of fashion and society, the dissipations of
gallantry,--the man who makes his memory a library of lies and craft,
who envelops such diverse thoughts, such conflicting manoeuvres, in one
impenetrable cloak of perfect manners? If the wind of favor had blown
steadily upon those sails forever set, if the luck of circumstances had
attended Maxime, he could have been Mazarin, the Marechal de Richelieu,
Potemkin, or--perhaps more truly--Lauzun, without Pignerol.

The count, though rather tall and constitutionally slender, had of late
acquired some protuberance of stomach, but he “restrained it to the
majestic,” as Brillat-Savarin once said. His clothes were always so well
made, that he kept about his whole person an air of youth, something
active and agile, due no doubt to his habits of exercise,--fencing,
riding, and hunting. Maxime possessed all the physical graces and
elegances of aristocracy, still further increased by his personally
superior bearing. His long, Bourbonine face was framed by whiskers and a
beard, carefully kept, elegantly cut, and black as jet. This color,
the same as that of his abundant hair, he now obtained by an Indian
cosmetic, very costly and used in Persia, the secret of which he kept
to himself. He deceived the most practised eye as to the white threads
which for some time past had invaded his hair. The remarkable property
of this dye, used by Persians for their beards only, is that it does not
render the features hard; it can be shaded by indigo to harmonize well
with the individual character of the skin. It was this operation that
Madame Mollot may have seen,--though people in Arcis, by way of a jest,
still ask themselves what it was that Madame Mollot saw.

Maxime had a very handsome forehead, blue eyes, a Greek nose, a pleasant
mouth, and a well-cut chin; but the circle of his eyes was now marked
with numberless lines, so fine that they might have been traced by a
razor and not visible at a little distance. His temples had similar
lines. The face was also slightly wrinkled. His eyes, like those of
gamblers who have sat up innumerable nights, were covered with a
glaze, but the glance, though it was thus weakened, was none the less
terrible,--in fact, it terrified; a hidden heat was felt beneath it, a
lava of passions not yet extinct. The mouth, once so fresh and rosy,
now had colder tints; it was straight no longer, but inclined to the
right,--a sinuosity that seemed to indicate falsehood. Vice had twisted
the lips, but the teeth were white and handsome.

These blemishes disappeared on a general view of his face and person.
His figure was so attractive that no young man could compete with Maxime
when on horseback in the Bois, where he seemed younger and more graceful
than the youngest and most graceful among them. The privilege of eternal
youth has been possessed by several men in our day.

The count was all the more dangerous because he seemed to be easy and
indolent, never showing the iron determination which he had about all
things. This apparent indifference, which enabled him to abet a popular
sedition for the purpose of strengthening the authority of a prince with
as much ability as he would have bestowed upon a court intrigue, had a
certain grace. People never distrust calmness and uniformity of manner,
especially in France, where we are accustomed to a great deal of
movement and stir about the smallest things.

The count, who was dressed in the fashion of 1839, wore a black coat,
a cashmere waistcoat of dark blue embroidered with tiny flowers of a
lighter blue, black trousers, gray silk stockings, and varnished leather
shoes. His watch, placed in one of his waistcoat pockets, was fastened
by an elegant chain to a button-hole.

“Rastignac,” he said, accepting the cup of tea which the pretty Madame
de Rastignac offered him, “will you come with me to the Austrian
ambassador’s?”

“My dear fellow, I am too recently married not to go home with my wife.”

“That means that _later_--” said the young countess, turning round and
looking at her husband.

“Later is the end of the world,” replied Maxime. “But I shall certainly
win my cause if I take Madame for a judge.”

With a charming gesture, the count invited the pretty countess to come
nearer to him. After listening a few moments and looking at her mother,
she said to Rastignac:--

“If you want to go to the embassy with Monsieur de Trailles, mamma will
take me home.”

A few moments later the Baronne de Nucingen and the Comtesse de
Rastignac went away together. Maxime and Rastignac followed a little
later, and when they were both seated in the count’s carriage, the
latter said:--

“What do you want of me, Maxime? Why do you take me by the throat in
this way? What did you say to my wife?”

“I told her I had something to say to you. You are a lucky fellow,
you are! You have ended by marrying the only heiress of the Nucingen
millions--after twenty years at hard labor.”

“Maxime!”

“But I! here am I, exposed to the doubts of everybody. A miserable
coward like du Tillet dares to ask if I have the courage to kill myself!
It is high time for me to settle down. Does the ministry want to get
rid of me, or does it not? You ought to know. At any rate, you must
find out,” continued Maxime, making a gesture with his hand to silence
Rastignac. “Here is my plan: listen to it. You ought to serve me, for
I have served you, and can serve you again. The life I live now is
intolerable; I want an escape from it. Help me to a marriage which
shall bring me half a million. Once married, appoint me minister to some
wretched little republic in America. I’ll stay there long enough to
make my promotion to the same post in Germany legitimate. If I am worth
anything, they will soon take me out of it; if I am not worth anything,
they can dismiss me. Perhaps I may have a child. If so, I shall be stern
with him; his mother will be rich; I’ll make him a minister, perhaps an
ambassador.”

“Here is my answer,” said Rastignac. “An incessant battle is going
on--greater than common people who are not in it have any idea
of--between power in its swaddling-clothes and power in its childhood.
Power in swaddling-clothes is the Chamber of Deputies which, not being
restrained by an hereditary chamber--”

“Ha! ha!” said Maxime, “you are now a peer of France.”

“I should say the same if I were not,” said the new peer. “But don’t
interrupt me; you are concerned in all this. The Chamber of Deputies is
fated to become the whole government, as de Marsay used to tell us (the
only man by whom France could have been saved), for peoples don’t die;
they are slaves or free men, and that’s all. Child-power is the royalty
that was crowned in August, 1830. The present ministry is beaten; it
dissolves the Chamber and brings on a general election in order to
prevent the coming ministry from calling one; but it does not expect a
victory. If it were victorious in these elections, the dynasty would be
in danger; whereas, if the ministry is beaten, the dynastic party can
fight to advantage for a long time. The mistakes of the Chamber will
turn to the profit of a will which wants, unfortunately, to be the whole
political power. When a ruler is that whole, as Napoleon was, there
comes a moment when he must supplement himself; and having by that
time alienated superior men, he, the great single will, can find no
assistant. That assistant ought to be what is called a cabinet; but
there is no cabinet in France, there is only a Will with a life lease.
In France it is the government that is blamed, the opposition never; it
may lose as many battles as it fights, but, like the allies in 1814, one
victory suffices. With ‘three glorious days’ it overturned and destroyed
everything. Therefore, if we are heirs of power, we must cease to
govern, and wait. I belong by my personal opinions to the aristocracy,
and by my public opinions to the royalty of July. The house of Orleans
served me to raise the fortunes of my family, and I shall ever remain
attached to it.”

“The ‘ever’ of Monsieur de Talleyrand, be it understood,” put in Maxime.

“At this moment I can’t do anything for you,” continued Rastignac. “We
shall not be in power more than six months longer. Yes, those six months
will be our last dying agony, I know that; but we know what we were when
we formed ourselves, a stop-gap ministry and that was all. But you can
distinguish yourself in the electoral battle that is soon to be fought.
If you can bring one vote to the Chamber, a deputy faithful to the
dynastic cause, you will find your wishes gratified. I will speak
of your good services, and I will keep my eye on the reports of our
confidential agents; I may find you some difficult task in which you can
distinguish yourself. If you succeed, I can insist upon your talents,
your devotion, and claim your reward. Your marriage, my dear fellow,
can be made only in some ambitious provincial family of tradespeople or
manufacturers. In Paris you are too well known. We must therefore look
out for a millionaire parvenu, endowed with a daughter, and possessed
with a desire to parade himself and his family at the Chateau des
Tuileries.”

“Make your father-in-law lend me twenty-five thousand francs to enable
me to wait as long as that; he will then have an interest in seeing
that I am not paid in holy-water if I succeed; he will further a rich
marriage for his own sake.”

“You are wily, Maxime, and you distrust me. But I like able men, and I
will attend to your affair.”

They reached the Austrian embassy. The Comte de Rastignac saw the
minister of the interior in one of the salons and went to talk with
him in a corner. Comte Maxime de Trailles, meantime, was apparently
engrossed by the old Comtesse de Listomere, but he was, in reality,
following the course of the conversation between the two peers of
France; he watched their gestures, interpreted their looks, and ended by
catching a favorable glance cast upon him by the minister.

Maxime and Rastignac left the embassy together about one in the morning,
and before getting into their respective carriages, Rastignac said to
Maxime on the steps of the portico: “Come and see me just before the
elections. Between now and then I shall know in what locality the
chances of the ministry are worst, and what resources two heads like
yours and mine can find there.”

“But my twenty-five thousand francs are needed,” replied de Trailles.

“Well, you must hide yourself, that’s all.”

Fifty days later, one morning before dawn, the Comte de Trailles went
to the rue de Varennes, mysteriously in a hired cab. At the gate of the
ministry of Public Works, he sent the cab away, looked about him to see
that he was not watched, and then waited in a little salon on the first
floor until Rastignac should awake. A few moments later the valet who
had taken in his card ushered Maxime into the minister’s bed-chamber,
where that statesman was making his morning toilet.

“My dear Maxime,” said the latter, “I can tell you a secret which will
be in the newspapers two days hence, and which, meantime, you can turn
to your own profit. That poor Charles Keller, who danced the mazurka so
well, as been killed in Africa. His death leaves a vacancy; he was our
candidate in the arrondissement of Arcis. Here is a copy of two reports,
one from the sub-prefect, the other from the commissary of police,
informing the ministry that the election of the poor fellow would meet
with opposition. In that of the commissary of police you will find some
information about the state of the town which ought to be useful to
a man of your shrewdness; it seems that the ambition of the rival
candidate comes chiefly from his desire to marry a certain heiress. To
one of your calibre that word is enough. The Cinq-Cygnes, the Princesse
de Cadignan, and Georges de Maufrigneuse are living at Cinq-Cygne,
close to Arcis; you can certainly obtain through them all the Legitimist
votes, therefore--”

“Don’t waste your breath,” said Maxime. “Is the commissary still there?”

“Yes.”

“Give me a letter to him.”

“My dear fellow,” replied Rastignac, giving Maxime quite a bundle of
papers, “you will find there two letters written to Gondreville for you.
You have been a page and he has been a senator; you can’t fail therefore
to understand each other. Madame Francois Keller is pious; here is a
letter introducing you to her from the Marechale de Carigliano. The
marechale has become dynastic; she recommends you warmly, and may go
down herself. I will only add one word: Distrust the sub-prefect, whom
I think capable of working this candidate, this Simon Giguet, into
a support for himself with the president of the council. If you want
letters, powers, credentials, write to me.”

“And those twenty-five thousand francs?” said Maxime.

“Sign this note to the order of du Tillet, and here’s the money.”

“I shall succeed,” said the count, “and you may tell the king that the
deputy of Arcis shall belong to him body and soul. If I fail, I give you
leave to abandon me.”

An hour later Maxime de Trailles was in his tilbury on the road to
Arcis.




XIII. PREFACE BEFORE LETTERING

Once in possession of the information furnished by the landlady of the
Mulet and by the sub-prefect Antonin Goulard, Monsieur de Trailles had
soon arranged his plan of electoral operations, and this plan evinces
itself so readily that the reader must already have perceived it.

To the candidacy of Simon Giguet, the wily agent of the government
policy suddenly and abruptly opposed that of Phileas Beauvisage; and
in spite of the nullity and unfitness of that individual this new
combination, we must admit, had several incontestable chances of
success. In the light of his municipal halo Beauvisage had one enormous
advantage with the mass of indifferent voters; as mayor of the town his
name was known to them. Logic has much more to do with the conducting of
matters and things here below than it seems to have; it is like a woman
to whom, after many infidelities, we still return. What common-sense
prescribes is that voters called upon to choose their representative
in public matters should be thoroughly informed as to his capacity, his
honesty, and his general character. Too often, in practice, unfortunate
twists are given to this principle; but whenever the electoral sheep,
left to their own instincts, can persuade themselves that they are
voting from their own intelligence and their own lights, we may be
certain to see them following that line eagerly and with a sentiment
of self-love. Now to know a man’s name, electorally speaking, is a good
beginning toward a knowledge of the man himself.

Passing from indifferent to interested electors, we may be sure that
Phileas was certain of rallying to himself the Gondreville party, now
deprived by death of their own candidate. The question for them was
to punish the presumption of Simon Giguet, and any candidate would be
acceptable to the viceroy of Arcis. The mere nomination of a man against
his grandson was a flagrant act of hostility and ingratitude, and a
check to the count’s provincial importance which must be removed and
punished at any cost.

Still, when the first news of his electoral ambition reached his
father-in-law, Beauvisage was met by an astonishment little flattering
to his feelings and not encouraging. The old notary had gauged his
son-in-law once for all, and to his just and upright mind the idea of
Phileas as a public man produced in its way the disagreeable effect that
discordant instruments produce upon the ear. If it be true that no man
is a prophet in his own country, he is often even less so in his own
family. Still, the first impression once passed, Grevin would doubtless
acclimatize himself to the idea of an expedient which would chime in
with the plans he had already made for Severine’s future. Besides, for
the safety of Gondreville’s interests, so seriously threatened, what
sacrifice of his own opinion would the old notary not have made?

With the legitimist and the republican parties who could have no weight
in the election, except that of increasing a majority, the candidacy of
Beauvisage had a singular recommendation,--namely, his utter incapacity.
Conscious of not possessing sufficient strength to elect a deputy of
their own, the two extremes of the antidynastic opposition seized,
almost with ardor, the opportunity to stick a thorn in the side in what
they called “the present order of things,” and it might confidently be
expected that in this frame of mind they would joyfully and with all
their hearts support a candidate so supremely ridiculous that a large
slice of the ridicule must fall upon the government which supported him.

Moreover, in the opinions of the Left-Cen

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