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?”