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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Deputy of Arcis, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Deputy of Arcis
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: August, 1999  [Etext #1871]
+Posting Date: March 4, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEPUTY OF ARCIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DEPUTY OF ARCIS
+
+
+By Honore de Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I. THE ELECTION
+
+
+
+
+I. ALL ELECTIONS BEGIN WITH A BUSTLE
+
+Before beginning to describe an election in the provinces, it is proper
+to state that the town of Arcis-sur-Aube was not the theatre of the
+events here related.
+
+The arrondissement of Arcis votes at Bar-sur-Aube, which is forty miles
+from Arcis; consequently there is no deputy from Arcis in the Chamber.
+
+Discretion, required in a history of contemporaneous manners and morals,
+dictates this precautionary word. It is rather an ingenious contrivance
+to make the description of one town the frame for events which happened
+in another; and several times already in the course of the Comedy of
+Human Life, this means has been employed in spite of its disadvantages,
+which consist chiefly in making the frame of as much importance as the
+canvas.
+
+Toward the end of the month of April, 1839, about ten o'clock in the
+morning, the salon of Madame Marion, widow of a former receiver-general
+of the department of the Aube, presented a singular appearance. All
+the furniture had been removed except the curtains to the windows,
+the ornaments on the fireplace, the chandelier, and the tea-table. An
+Aubusson carpet, taken up two weeks before the usual time, obstructed
+the steps of the portico, and the floor had been violently rubbed and
+polished, though without increasing its usual brightness. All this was
+a species of domestic premonition concerning the result of the elections
+which were about to take place over the whole surface of France. Often
+things are as spiritually intelligent as men,--an argument in favor of
+the occult sciences.
+
+The old man-servant of Colonel Giguet, Madame Marion's older brother,
+had just finished dusting the room; the chamber-maid and the cook were
+carrying, with an alacrity that denoted an enthusiasm equal to their
+attachment, all the chairs of the house, and piling them up in the
+garden, where the trees were already unfolding their leaves, through
+which the cloudless blue of the sky was visible. The springlike
+atmosphere and sun of May allowed the glass door and the two windows of
+the oblong salon to be kept open.
+
+An old lady, Madame Marion herself, now ordered the two maids to place
+the chairs at one end of the salon, four rows deep, leaving between the
+rows a space of about three feet. When this was done, each row presented
+a front of ten chairs, all of divers species. A line of chairs was also
+placed along the wall, under the windows and before the glass door.
+At the other end of the salon, facing the forty chairs, Madame Marion
+placed three arm-chairs behind the tea-table, which was covered with a
+green cloth, on which she placed a bell.
+
+Old Colonel Giguet arrived on this battle-field at the moment when his
+sister bethought herself of filling the empty spaces on either side
+of the fireplace with benches from the antechamber, disregarding
+the baldness of their velvet covers which had done good service for
+twenty-four years.
+
+"We can seat seventy persons," she said to her brother triumphantly.
+
+"God grant that we may have seventy friends!" replied the colonel.
+
+"If, after receiving every night, for twenty-four years, the whole
+society of Arcis-sur-Aube, a single one of my regular visitors fails us
+on this occasion--" began the old lady, in a threatening manner.
+
+"Pooh, pooh!" replied the colonel, interrupting his sister, "I'll name
+you ten who cannot and ought not to come. First," he said, beginning to
+count on his fingers, "Antonin Goulard, sub-prefect, for one; Frederic
+Marest, _procureur-du-roi_, there's two; Monsieur Olivier Vinet, his
+substitute, three; Monsieur Martener, examining-judge, four; the justice
+of peace--"
+
+"But I am not so silly," said the old lady, interrupting her brother in
+her turn, "as to expect office-holders to come to a meeting the object
+of which is to give another deputy to the Opposition. For all that,
+Antonin Goulard, Simon's comrade and schoolmate, would be very well
+pleased to see him a deputy because--"
+
+"Come, sister, leave our own business of politics to us men. Where is
+Simon?"
+
+"He is dressing," she answered. "He was wise not to breakfast, for he is
+very nervous. It is queer that, though he is in the habit of speaking in
+court, he dreads this meeting as if he were certain to meet enemies."
+
+"Faith! I have often had to face masked batteries, and my soul--I won't
+say my body--never quailed; but if I had to stand there," said the old
+soldier, pointing to the tea-table, "and face forty bourgeois gaping
+at me, their eyes fixed on mine, and expecting sonorous and correct
+phrases, my shirt would be wringing wet before I could get out a word."
+
+"And yet, my dear father," said Simon Giguet, entering from the smaller
+salon, "you really must make that effort for me; for if there is a
+man in the department of the Aube whose voice is all-powerful it is
+assuredly you. In 1815--"
+
+"In 1815," said the little old man, who was wonderfully well preserved,
+"I did not have to speak; I simply wrote out a little proclamation
+which brought us two thousand men in twenty-four hours. But it is a
+very different thing putting my name to a paper which is read by a
+department, and standing up before a meeting to make a speech. Napoleon
+himself failed there; at the 18th Brumaire he talked nothing but
+nonsense to the Five Hundred."
+
+"But, my dear father," urged Simon, "it concerns my life, my fortune, my
+happiness. Fix your eyes on some one person and think you are talking to
+him, and you'll get through all right."
+
+"Heavens!" cried Madame Marion, "I am only an old woman, but under
+such circumstances and knowing what depends on it, I--oh! I should be
+eloquent!"
+
+"Too eloquent, perhaps," said the colonel. "To go beyond the mark is not
+attaining it. But why make so much of all this?" he added, looking at
+his son. "It is only within the last two days you have taken up this
+candidacy of ideas; well, suppose you are not nominated,--so much the
+worse for Arcis, that's all."
+
+These words were in keeping with the whole life of him who said them.
+Colonel Giguet was one of the most respected officers in the Grand
+Army, the foundation of his character being absolute integrity joined to
+extreme delicacy. Never did he put himself forward; favors, such as he
+received, sought him. For this reason he remained eleven years a mere
+captain of the artillery of the Guard, not receiving the rank of major
+until 1814. His almost fanatical attachment to Napoleon forbade his
+taking service under the Bourbons after the first abdication. In fact,
+his devotion in 1815 was such that he would have been banished with so
+many others if the Comte de Gondreville had not contrived to have his
+name effaced from the ordinance and put on the retired list with a
+pension, and the rank of colonel.
+
+Madame Marion, _nee_ Giguet, had another brother who was colonel of
+gendarmerie at Troyes, whom she followed to that town at an earlier
+period. It was there that she married Monsieur Marion, receiver-general
+of the Aube, who also had had a brother, the chief-justice of an
+imperial court. While a mere barrister at Arcis this young man had
+lent his name during the Terror to the famous Malin de l'Aube, the
+representative of the people, in order to hold possession of the estate
+of Gondreville. [See "An Historical Mystery."] Consequently, all the
+support and influence of Malin, now become count and senator, was at
+the service of the Marion family. The barrister's brother was made
+receiver-general of the department, at a period when, far from having
+forty applicants for one place, the government was fortunate in getting
+any one to accept such a slippery office.
+
+Marion, the receiver-general, inherited the fortune of his brother the
+chief-justice, and Madame Marion that of her brother the colonel of
+gendarmerie. In 1814, the receiver-general met with reverses. He died
+when the Empire died; but his widow managed to gather fifteen thousand
+francs a year from the wreck of his accumulated fortunes. The colonel of
+gendarmerie had left his property to his sister on learning the marriage
+of his brother the artillery officer to the daughter of a rich banker of
+Hamburg. It is well known what a fancy all Europe had for the splendid
+troopers of Napoleon!
+
+In 1814, Madame Marion, half-ruined, returned to Arcis, her native
+place, where she bought, on the Grande-Place, one of the finest houses
+in the town. Accustomed to receive much company at Troyes, where the
+receiver-general reigned supreme, she now opened her salon to the
+notabilities of the liberal party in Arcis. A woman accustomed to the
+advantages of salon royalty does not easily renounce them. Vanity is the
+most tenacious of all habits.
+
+Bonapartist, and afterwards a liberal--for, by the strangest of
+metamorphoses, the soldiers of Napoleon became almost to a man
+enamoured of the constitutional system--Colonel Giguet was, during the
+Restoration, the natural president of the governing committee of Arcis,
+which consisted of the notary Grevin, his son-in-law Beauvisage, and
+Varlet junior, the chief physician of Arcis, brother-in-law of Grevin,
+and a few other liberals.
+
+"If our dear boy is not nominated," said Madame Marion, having first
+looked into the antechamber and garden to make sure that no one
+overheard her, "he cannot have Mademoiselle Beauvisage; his success in
+this election means a marriage with Cecile."
+
+"Cecile!" exclaimed the old man, opening his eyes very wide and looking
+at his sister in stupefaction.
+
+"There is no one but you in the whole department who would forget the
+_dot_ and the expectations of Mademoiselle Beauvisage," said his sister.
+
+"She is the richest heiress in the department of the Aube," said Simon
+Giguet.
+
+"But it seems to me," said the old soldier, "that my son is not to be
+despised as a match; he is your heir, he already has something from his
+mother, and I expect to leave him something better than a dry name."
+
+"All that put together won't make thirty thousand a year, and suitors
+are already coming forward who have as much as that, not counting their
+position," returned Madame Marion.
+
+"And?" asked the colonel.
+
+"They have been refused."
+
+"Then what do the Beauvisage family want?" said the colonel, looking
+alternately at his son and sister.
+
+It may seem extraordinary that Colonel Giguet, the brother of Madame
+Marion in whose house the society of Arcis had met for twenty-four
+years, and whose salon was the echo of all reports, all scandals, and
+all the gossip of the department of the Aube,--a good deal of it being
+there manufactured,--should be ignorant of facts of this nature. But his
+ignorance will seem natural when we mention that this noble relic of the
+Napoleonic legions went to bed at night and rose in the morning with the
+chickens, as all old persons should do if they wish to live out their
+lives. He was never present at the intimate conversations which went
+on in the salon. In the provinces there are two sorts of intimate
+conversation,--one, which is held officially when all the company are
+gathered together, playing at cards or conversing; the other, which
+_simmers_, like a well made soup, when three or four friends remain
+around the fireplace, friends who can be trusted to repeat nothing of
+what is said beyond their own limits.
+
+For nine years, ever since the triumph of his political ideas, the
+colonel had lived almost entirely outside of social life. Rising with
+the sun, he devoted himself to horticulture; he adored flowers, and of
+all flowers he best loved roses. His hands were brown as those of a real
+gardener; he took care himself of his beds. Constantly in conference
+with his working gardener he mingled little, especially for the last two
+years, with the life of others; of whom, indeed, he saw little. He took
+but one meal with the family, namely, his dinner; for he rose too early
+to breakfast with his son and sister. To his efforts we owe the famous
+rose Giguet, known so well to all amateurs.
+
+This old man, who had now passed into the state of a domestic fetich,
+was exhibited, as we may well suppose, on all extraordinary occasions.
+Certain families enjoy the benefit of a demi-god of this kind, and plume
+themselves upon him as they would upon a title.
+
+"I have noticed," replied Madame Marion to her brother's question, "that
+ever since the revolution of July Madame Beauvisage has aspired to live
+in Paris. Obliged to stay here as long as her father lives, she has
+fastened her ambition on a future son-in-law, and my lady dreams now of
+the splendors and dignities of political life."
+
+"Could you love Cecile?" said the colonel to his son.
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"And does she like you?"
+
+"I think so; but the thing is, to please the mother and grandfather.
+Though old Grevin himself wants to oppose my election, my success would
+determine Madame Beauvisage to accept me, because she expects to manage
+me as she pleases and to be minister under my name."
+
+"That's a good joke!" cried Madame Marion. "What does she take us for?"
+
+"Whom has she refused?" asked the colonel.
+
+"Well, within the last three months, Antonin Goulard and the
+_procureur-du-roi_, Frederic Marest, have received, so they say,
+equivocal answers which mean anything--_except yes_."
+
+"Heavens!" cried the old man throwing up his arms. "What days we
+live in, to be sure! Why, Lucie was the daughter of a hosier, and the
+grand-daughter of a farmer. Does Madame Beauvisage want the Comte de
+Cinq-Cygne for a son-in-law?"
+
+"Don't laugh at Madame Beauvisage, brother. Cecile is rich enough to
+choose a husband anywhere, even in the class to which the Cinq-Cygnes
+belong. But there's the bell announcing the electors, and I
+disappear--regretting much I can't hear what you are all going to say."
+
+
+
+
+II. REVOLT OF A LIBERAL ROTTEN-BOROUGH
+
+Though 1839 is, politically speaking, very distant from 1847, we can
+still remember the elections produced by the Coalition, an ephemeral
+effort of the Chamber of Deputies to realize the threat of parliamentary
+government,--a threat _a la_ Cromwell, which without a Cromwell could
+only end, under a prince "the enemy of fraud," in the triumph of the
+present system, by which the Chambers and the ministers are like the
+wooden puppets which the proprietor of the Guignolet shows exhibits to
+the great satisfaction of wonder-stricken idlers in the streets.
+
+The arrondissement of Arcis-sur-Aube then found itself in a singular
+position. It supposed itself free to choose its deputy. From 1816 to
+1836 it had always elected one of the heaviest orators of the Left,
+belonging to the famous seventeen who were called "Great Citizens" by
+the liberal party,--namely, Francois Keller, of the house of Keller
+Bros., the son-in-law of the Comte de Gondreville. Gondreville, one of
+the most magnificent estates in France, is situated about a mile from
+Arcis.
+
+This banker, recently made count and peer of France, expected, no
+doubt, to transfer to his son, then thirty years of age, his electoral
+succession, in order to make him some day eligible for the peerage.
+Already a major on the staff and a great favorite of the prince-royal,
+Charles Keller, now a viscount, belonged to the court party of the
+citizen-king. The most brilliant future seemed pledged to a young man
+enormously rich, full of energy, already remarkable for his devotion to
+the new dynasty, the grandson of the Comte de Gondreville, and nephew
+of the Marechal de Carigliano; but this election, so necessary to his
+future prospects, presented suddenly certain difficulties to overcome.
+
+Since the accession to power of the bourgeois class, Arcis had felt a
+vague desire to show itself independent. Consequently, the last election
+of Francois Keller had been disturbed by certain republicans, whose red
+caps and long beards had not, however, seriously alarmed the bourgeois
+of Arcis. By canvassing the country carefully the radical candidate
+would be able to secure some thirty or forty votes. A few of the
+townspeople, humiliated at seeing their town always treated as a rotten
+borough, joined the democrats, though enemies to democracy. In France,
+under the system of balloting, politico-chemical products are formed in
+which the laws of affinity are reversed.
+
+Now, to elect young Keller in 1839, after having elected his father for
+twenty years, would show a monstrous electoral servitude, against which
+the pride of the newly enriched bourgeoisie revolved, for they felt
+themselves to be fully worth either Monsieur Malin, otherwise called
+Comte de Gondreville, the Keller Bros., the Cinq-Cygnes, or even, the
+King of the French.
+
+The numerous partisans of old Gondreville, the king of the department
+of the Aube, were therefore awaiting some fresh proof of his ability,
+already so thoroughly tested, to circumvent this rising revolt. In order
+not to compromise the influence of his family in the arrondissement of
+Arcis, that old statesman would doubtless propose for candidate some
+young man who could be induced to accept an official function and then
+yield his place to Charles Keller,--a parliamentary arrangement which
+renders the elect of the people subject to re-election.
+
+When Simon Giguet sounded the old notary Grevin, the faithful friend of
+the Comte de Gondreville, on the subject of the elections, the old
+man replied that, while he did not know the intentions of the Comte de
+Gondreville, he should himself vote for Charles Keller and employ his
+influence for that election.
+
+As soon as this answer of old Grevin had circulated through Arcis, a
+reaction against him set in. Although for thirty years this provincial
+Aristides possessed the confidence of the whole town,--having been
+mayor of Arcis from 1804 to 1814 and again during the Hundred Days,--and
+although the Opposition had accepted him as their leader until the
+triumph of 1830, at which period he refused the honors of the mayoralty
+on the ground of his great age, and finally, although the town, in order
+to manifest its affection for him, elected his son-in-law, Monsieur
+Beauvisage, mayor in his stead, it now revolted against him and some
+young striplings went so far as to talk of his dotage. The partisans of
+Simon Giguet then turned to Phileas Beauvisage, the mayor, and won him
+over the more easily to their side because, without having quarrelled
+with his father-in-law, he assumed an independence of him which had
+ended in coldness,--an independence that the sly old notary allowed him
+to maintain, seeing in it an excellent means of action on the town of
+Arcis.
+
+The mayor, questioned the evening before in the open street, declared
+positively that he should cast his vote for the first-comer on the list
+of eligibles rather than give it to Charles Keller, for whom, however,
+he had a high esteem.
+
+"Arcis shall be no longer a rotten borough!" he said, "or I'll emigrate
+to Paris."
+
+Flatter the passions of the moment and you will always be a hero, even
+at Arcis-sur-Aube.
+
+"Monsieur le maire," said everybody, "gives noble proof of his firmness
+of character."
+
+Nothing progresses so rapidly as a legal revolt. That evening
+Madame Marion and her friends organized for the morrow a meeting of
+"independent electors" in the interests of Simon Giguet, the colonel's
+son. The morrow had now come and had turned the house topsy-turvy to
+receive the friends on whose independence the leaders of the movement
+counted. Simon Giguet, the native-born candidate of a little town
+jealously desirous to elect a son of its own, had, as we have seen, put
+to profit this desire; and yet, the whole prosperity and fortune of the
+Giguet family were the work of the Comte de Gondreville. But when it
+comes to an election, what are sentiments!
+
+This Scene is written for the information of countries so unfortunate
+as not to know the blessings of national representation, and which are,
+therefore, ignorant by what intestinal convulsions, what Brutus-like
+sacrifices, a little town gives birth to a deputy. Majestic but natural
+spectacle, which may, indeed, be compared with that of childbirth,--the
+same throes, the same impurities, the same lacerations, the same final
+triumph!
+
+It may be asked why an only son, whose fortune was sufficient, should
+be, like Simon Giguet, an ordinary barrister in a little country town
+where barristers are pretty nearly useless. A word about the candidate
+is therefore necessary.
+
+Colonel Giguet had had, between 1806 and 1813, by his wife who died in
+1814, three children, the eldest of whom, Simon, alone survived. Until
+he became an only child, Simon was brought up as a youth to whom the
+exercise of a profession would be necessary. And about the time he
+became by the death of his brothers the family heir, the young man met
+with a serious disappointment. Madame Marion had counted much, for her
+nephew, on the inheritance of his grandfather the banker of Hamburg. But
+when that old German died in 1826, he left his grandson Giguet a paltry
+two thousand francs a year. The worthy banker, endowed with great
+procreative powers, having soothed the worries of business by the
+pleasures of paternity, favored the families of eleven other children
+who surrounded him, and who made him believe, with some appearance of
+justice, that Simon Giguet was already a rich man.
+
+Besides all this, the colonel was bent on giving his son an independent
+position, and for this reason: the Giguets could not expect any
+government favors under the Restoration. Even if Simon had not been the
+son of an ardent Bonapartist, he belonged to a family whose members had
+justly incurred the animosity of the Cinq-Cygne family, owing to
+the part which Giguet, the colonel of gendarmerie, and the Marions,
+including Madame Marion, had taken as witnesses on the famous trial of
+the Messieurs de Simeuse, unjustly condemned in 1805 for the abduction
+of the Comte de Gondreville, then senator, and formerly representative
+of the people, who had despoiled the Cinq-Cygne family of their
+property. [See "An Historical Mystery."]
+
+Grevin was not only one of the most important witnesses at that trial,
+but he was one of the chief promoters of the prosecution. That affair
+divides to this day the arrondissement of Arcis into two parties; one of
+which declares the innocence of the condemned; the other standing by the
+Comte de Gondreville and his adherents. Though, under the Restoration,
+the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne used all the influence the return of the
+Bourbons gave her to arrange things as she wished in the department
+of the Aube, the Comte de Gondreville contrived to counterbalance this
+Cinq-Cygne royalty by the secret authority he wielded over the liberals
+of the town through the notary Grevin, Colonel Giguet, his son-in-law
+Keller (always elected deputy in spite of the Cinq-Cygnes), and also by
+the credit he maintained, as long as Louis XVIII. lived, in the counsels
+of the crown. It was not until after the death of that king that the
+Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne was able to get Michu appointed judge of the
+court of assizes in Arcis. She desired of all things to obtain this
+place for the son of the steward who had perished on the scaffold
+at Troyes, the victim of his devotion to the Simeuse family, whose
+full-length portrait always hung in her salon, whether in Paris or at
+Cinq-Cygne. Until 1823 the Comte de Gondreville had possessed sufficient
+power over Louis XVIII. to prevent this appointment of Michu.
+
+It was by the advice of the Comte de Gondreville that Colonel Giguet
+made his son a lawyer. Simon had all the more opportunity of shining
+at the bar in the arrondissement of Arcis because he was the only
+barrister, solicitors pleading their own cases in these petty
+localities. The young man had really secured certain triumphs in the
+court of assizes of the Aube, but he was none the less an object of
+derision to Frederic Marest, _procureur-du-roi_, Olivier Vinet, the
+substitute _procureur_, and the judge, Michu,--the three best minds in
+the court.
+
+Simon Giguet, like other men, paid goodly tribute to the mighty power of
+ridicule that pursued him. He liked to hear himself talk, and he talked
+on all occasions; he solemnly delivered himself of dry and long-winded
+sentences which passed for eloquence among the upper bourgeoisie of
+Arcis. The poor fellow belonged to that species of bore which desires
+to explain everything, even the simplest thing. He explained rain; he
+explained the revolution of July; he explained things impenetrable; he
+explained Louis-Philippe, Odilon Barrot, Monsieur Thiers, the Eastern
+Question; he explained Champagne; he explained 1788; he explained the
+tariff of custom houses and humanitarians, magnetism and the economy of
+the civil list.
+
+This lean young man, with a bilious skin, tall enough to justify his
+sonorous nullity (for it is rare that a tall man does not have eminent
+faculties of some kind) outdid the puritanism of the votaries of the
+extreme Left, all of them so sensitive, after the manner of prudes who
+have their intrigues to hide. Dressed invariably in black, he wore a
+white cravat which came down low on his chest, so that his face seemed
+to issue from a horn of white paper, for the collar of his shirt was
+high and stiff after a fashion now, fortunately, exploded. His trousers
+and his coats were always too large for him. He had what is called
+in the provinces dignity; that is to say, he was stiffly erect and
+pompously dull in manner. His friend, Antonin Goulard, accused him of
+imitating Monsieur Dupin. And in truth, the young barrister was apt to
+wear shoes and stout socks of black filoselle.
+
+Protected by the respect that every one bore to his father, and by
+the influence exercised by his aunt over a little town whose principal
+inhabitants had frequented her salon for many years, Simon Giguet,
+possessing already ten thousand francs a year, not counting the fees
+of his profession and the fortune his aunt would not fail to leave him,
+felt no doubt of his election. Nevertheless, the first sound of the bell
+announcing the arrival of the most influential electors echoed in the
+heart of the ambitious aspirant and filled it with vague fears. Simon
+did not conceal from himself the cleverness and the immense resources
+of old Grevin, nor the prestige attending the means that would surely be
+employed by the ministry to promote the candidacy of a young and dashing
+officer then in Africa, attached to the staff of the prince-royal.
+
+"I think," he said to his father, "that I have the colic; I feel a
+warmth at the pit of my stomach that makes me very uneasy."
+
+"Old soldiers," replied the colonel, "have the same feeling when they
+hear the cannon beginning to growl at the opening of a battle."
+
+"What will it be in the Chamber!" said the barrister.
+
+"The Comte de Gondreville told me," said the old colonel, "that he has
+known more than one orator affected with the qualms which precede, even
+with us old fire-eaters, the opening of a battle. But all this is
+idle talk. You want to be a deputy," added the old man, shrugging his
+shoulders, "then be one!"
+
+"Father, the real triumph will be Cecile! Cecile has an immense fortune.
+Now-a-days an immense fortune means power."
+
+"Dear me! how times have changed! Under the Emperor men had to be
+brave."
+
+"Each epoch is summed up in a phrase," said Simon, recalling an
+observation of the Comte de Gondreville, which paints that personage
+well. He remarked: "Under the Empire, when it was desirable to destroy a
+man, people said, 'He is a coward.' To-day we say, 'He is a cheat.'"
+
+"Poor France! where are they leading you?" cried the colonel; "I shall
+go back to my roses."
+
+"Oh, stay, father! You are the keystone of the arch."
+
+
+
+
+III. OPPOSITION DEFINES ITSELF
+
+The mayor, Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage, was the first to present
+himself, accompanied by the successor of his father-in-law, the
+busiest notary in town, Achille Pigoult, grandson of an old man who
+had continued justice of the peace in Arcis during the Revolution, the
+Empire, and the Restoration. Achille Pigoult, thirty-two years of age,
+had been eighteen years a clerk in Grevin's office with no means of
+becoming himself a notary. His father, son of the justice of peace, had
+died of a so-called apoplexy, having gone wrong in business.
+
+The Comte de Gondreville, however, with whom old Pigoult had relations
+dating back to 1793, lent money for the necessary security, and thus
+enabled the grandson of the judge who made the first examination in the
+Simeuse case to buy the practice of his master, Grevin. Achille had
+set up his office in the Place de l'Eglise, in a house belonging to the
+Comte de Gondreville, which the latter had leased to him at so low a
+price that any one could see how desirous that crafty politician was to
+hold the leading notary of Arcis in the hollow of his hand.
+
+Young Pigoult, a short, skinny man, whose eyes seemed to pierce the
+green spectacles which could not modify the spitefulness of his glance,
+well-informed as to all the interests of the neighborhood, owing his
+aptitude in managing affairs to a certain facility of speech, passed
+for what is called a _quizzer_, saying things plainly and with more
+cleverness than the aborigines could put into their conversations. Still
+a bachelor, he was awaiting a rich marriage through the offices of
+his two protectors, Grevin and the Comte de Gondreville. Consequently,
+barrister Giguet was not a little surprised on seeing Achille appear at
+the meeting in company with Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage.
+
+The notary, whose face was so seamed by the smallpox that it seemed to
+be covered with a white net, formed a perfect contrast to the rotund
+person of the mayor, whose face resembled a full moon, but a warm
+and lively moon; its tones of lily and of rose being still further
+brightened by a gracious smile, the result not so much of a disposition
+of the soul as of that formation of the lips for which the word
+"simpering" seems to have been created. Phileas Beauvisage was endowed
+with so great a contentment with himself that he smiled on all the world
+and under all circumstances. Those simpering lips smiled at a funeral.
+The liveliness that abounded in his infantine blue eyes did not
+contradict that perpetual and well-nigh intolerable smile.
+
+This internal satisfaction passed all the more readily for benevolence
+and affability, because Phileas had made himself a language of his own,
+remarkable for its immoderate use of the formulas of politeness. He
+always "had the honor"; to all his inquiries as to the health of absent
+persons he added the adjectives "dear," "good," "excellent." He lavished
+condoling or congratulatory phrases apropos of all the petty miseries
+and all the little felicities of life. He concealed under a deluge of
+commonplaces his native incapacity, his total want of education, and
+a weakness of character which can only be expressed by the old word
+"weathercock." Be not uneasy: the weathercock had for its axis the
+beautiful Madame Beauvisage, Severine Grevin, the most remarkable woman
+in the arrondissement.
+
+When Severine heard of what she called her husband's "freak" as to
+the election, she said to him on the morning of the meeting at Madame
+Marion's:--
+
+"It was well enough to give yourself an air of independence; but you
+mustn't go to that Giguet meeting unless Achille Pigoult accompanies
+you; I've told him to come and take you."
+
+Giving Achille Pigoult as mentor to Beauvisage meant sending a spy from
+the Gondreville party to the Giguet assemblage. We may therefore imagine
+the grimace which contracted the puritan visage of Simon, who was
+forced to welcome graciously an _habitue_ of his aunt's salon and an
+influential elector, in whom, nevertheless, he saw an enemy.
+
+"Ah!" he thought to himself, "what a mistake I made in refusing him
+that security when he asked for it! Old Gondreville had more sense than
+I--Good-day to you, Achille," he said, assuming a jaunty manner; "I
+suppose you mean to trip me up."
+
+"Your meeting isn't a conspiracy against the independence of our votes,"
+replied the notary, smiling. "We are all playing above-board, I take
+it."
+
+"Above-board," echoed Beauvisage.
+
+And the mayor began to laugh with that expressionless laugh by which
+some persons end all their sentences; which may, perhaps, be called the
+_ritornello_ of their conversation. After which he placed himself in
+what we must describe as his third position, standing full-front, his
+chest expanded, and his hands behind his back. He was dressed in black
+coat and trousers, with an effulgent white waistcoat, opened in such a
+way as to show two diamond shirt-buttons worth several thousand francs.
+
+"We shall fight, but we shall not be the less good friends," he said.
+"That is the essence of constitutional morals; he! he! he! That is how
+_I_ understand the alliance of monarchy with liberty; ha! ha! ha!"
+
+Whereupon the mayor took Simon's hand, saying:
+
+"How are you, my good friend? Your dear aunt and our worthy colonel
+are no doubt as well to-day as they were yesterday,--that is, I presume
+so,--he! he! he!" adding, with an air of perfect beatitude, "perhaps a
+little agitated by the ceremony now about to take place. Ha! ha! young
+man; so we intend to enter a political career? Ha! ha! ha! This is our
+first step--mustn't step back--it is a great career. I'd rather it were
+you than I to rush into the storms and tempests of the legislative body,
+hi! hi!--however agreeable it may be to see that body in our own person,
+hi! hi! hi!--the sovereign power of France in one four hundred and
+fifty-third! Hi! hi! hi!"
+
+The vocal organ of Phileas Beauvisage had an agreeable sonority
+altogether in harmony with the leguminous curves of his face (of the
+color of a light yellow pumpkin), his solid back, and his broadly
+expanded chest. That voice, bass in volume, could soften to a baritone
+and utter, in the giggle with which Phileas ended his phrases, a silvery
+note. When God desired, in order to place all species of mankind in this
+his terrestrial paradise, to create within it a provincial bourgeois,
+his hands never made a more perfect and complete type than Phileas
+Beauvisage.
+
+"I admire," said that great work, "the devotion of those who fling
+themselves into the tumult of political life; he! he! he! It takes more
+nerve than I possess. Who could have told us in 1812 or 1813 that we
+should come to this? As for me, nothing can surprise me in these days,
+when asphalt, India-rubber, railroads, and steam have changed the ground
+we tread on, and overcoats, and distances, he, he!"
+
+These last words were seasoned with a prolonged laugh, and accompanied
+by a gesture which he had made more especially his own: he closed his
+right fist, struck it into the rounded palm of his left hand, and rubbed
+it there with joyous satisfaction. This performance coincided with his
+laughs on the frequent occasions when he thought he had said a witty
+thing. Perhaps it is superfluous to add that Phileas Beauvisage was
+regarded in Arcis as an amiable and charming man.
+
+"I shall endeavor," replied Simon Giguet, "to worthily represent--"
+
+"The sheep of Champagne," interpolated Achille Pigoult, interrupting
+him.
+
+The candidate swallowed that shaft without reply, for he was forced at
+that moment to go forward and receive two more influential electors.
+
+One was the landlord of the Mulet, the best inn in Arcis, standing
+on the Grande-Place at the corner of the rue de Brienne. This worthy
+landlord, named Poupart, had married the sister of a man-servant
+attached to the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, the well-known Gothard, one of
+the actors and witnesses in the Simeuse affair.
+
+Poupart, though a most devoted adherent of the Cinq-Cygne family, had
+been sounded during the last day or two, by Colonel Giguet's valet,
+with so much cleverness and perseverance that he thought he was doing an
+ill-turn to the Comte de Gondreville, the enemy of the Cinq-Cygnes, by
+giving his influence to the election of Simon Giguet; and he was now
+conversing on that point with the man who accompanied him, an apothecary
+named Fromaget, who, as he did not furnish his wares to the chateau de
+Gondreville, desired nothing better than to cabal against the Kellers.
+
+These two individuals of the lesser bourgeoisie could, in consequence
+of their connections, determine a certain number of floating votes, for
+they influenced and advised a number of persons to whom the political
+opinions of the candidate were a matter of indifference. Consequently,
+Simon took possession of Poupart, and delivered the apothecary Fromaget
+to his father, who had just come in to make his bow to the electors.
+
+The sub-engineer of the arrondissement, the secretary of the mayor's
+office, four sheriffs, three solicitors, the clerk of the court, and
+the clerk of the justice of the peace, the registry-clerk, and the
+tax-collector, all officials under government, two doctors, rivals of
+Varlet, Grevin's brother-in-law, a miller named Laurent Goussard, the
+head of the republicans of Arcis, the two assistant mayors, the printer
+and publisher of Arcis, and about a dozen other bourgeois arrived in
+succession, and walked about the garden until the gathering seemed
+numerous enough to admit of opening the session.
+
+At length, about mid-day, fifty men, all in their best clothes,--most of
+them having come out of curiosity to see the handsome salons which were
+much talked of throughout the arrondissement,--were seated on the chairs
+Madame Marion had provided for them. The windows were left open, and
+presently so deep a silence reigned that the rustle of Madame Marion's
+gown was heard,--that good woman not being able to resist the pleasure
+of descending to the garden and placing herself in a corner whence she
+could listen to what went on in the salon. The cook, the chamber-maid,
+and the man-servant stood in the dining-room and shared the emotions of
+their masters.
+
+"Messieurs," said Simon Giguet, "some among you desire to honor my
+father by asking him to preside at this meeting; but Colonel Giguet
+requests me to present his thanks, and express due gratitude for a
+desire in which he sees a reward for his services to the country. We are
+in his house; he thinks he ought, therefore, to decline those functions,
+and he desires to propose in his stead an honorable merchant on whom
+your suffrages have already bestowed the chief magistracy of this town,
+Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage."
+
+"Bravo! bravo!"
+
+"We are, I think, all of one mind in adopting for this
+meeting--essentially friendly, but entirely free, which will prejudice
+in no way whatever the great preparatory and primary meeting in which
+you will produce your candidates and weigh their merits--in adopting, as
+I said, the parliamentary and constitutional--forms--of the--electoral
+Chamber."
+
+"Yes, yes!" cried the assembly with one voice.
+
+"Consequently," continued Simon, "I have the honor to request, according
+to the wish of all present, that his honor the mayor will now take the
+chair."
+
+Phileas rose and crossed the salon, conscious that he was becoming as
+red as a cherry. Then, when he stood behind the table, he saw, not a
+hundred eyes, but a hundred thousand candles. The sun seemed to him to
+be setting fire to the salon, and he had, to use his own expression, a
+lump of salt in his throat.
+
+"Return thanks," said Simon, in a low voice.
+
+"Messieurs--"
+
+Such total silence ensued that Phileas had a spasm of colic.
+
+"What must I say, Simon?" he whispered.
+
+"Well, well!" exclaimed Achille Pigoult.
+
+"Messieurs," said Simon, goaded by the sarcastic interjection of the
+little notary, "the honor which you have done to Monsieur le Maire may
+take him unawares, but it cannot surprise him."
+
+"That's it," said Beauvisage; "I am too sensible of this attention on
+the part of my fellow-citizens not to be excessively flattered by it."
+
+"Bravo!" cried the notary alone.
+
+"The devil take me!" thought Beauvisage, "if I am ever caught haranguing
+again."
+
+"Will Messieurs Fromaget and Marcelin accept the functions of inspectors
+of the ballot?"
+
+"It would be more regular," said Achille Pigoult, rising, "if the
+meeting itself nominated those officers,--following, of course, the
+parliamentary forms of the Chamber."
+
+"That is best," said the huge Monsieur Mollot, clerk of the court;
+"otherwise what is here taking place would be a mere farce; we should
+not be free in our action, in which case we might as well continue to do
+the will of Monsieur Simon Giguet."
+
+Simon said a few words to Beauvisage, who rose and delivered himself of
+a "Messieurs!" in palpitating tones.
+
+"Pardon me, Monsieur le president," said Achille Pigoult, "the chairman
+presides, he does not speak."
+
+"Messieurs," continued Beauvisage, prompted by Simon, "if we
+are--to conform--to parliamentary usage--I shall beg--the honorable
+gentleman--Monsieur Pigoult--to address the meeting--from this
+table--here present--"
+
+Pigoult sprang to the table, stood beside it with his fingers resting
+lightly on its edge, and gave proof of his boldness by delivering the
+following speech without the slightest embarrassment, and somewhat after
+the manner of the illustrious Monsieur Thiers.
+
+"Messieurs, it was not I who made that proposal for parliamentary
+usage; nevertheless I can conceive that an assemblage of some sixty
+notabilities of Champagne needs a chairman to guide it; for no flock can
+get on without a shepherd. If we had voted for secret balloting, I am
+certain that the name of our excellent mayor would have been returned
+unanimously. His opposition to the candidate put forward by his
+relations proves to us that he possesses civic courage in the highest
+degree, inasmuch as he has dared to free himself from the closest
+ties--those of family. Patriotism before family! that is indeed so great
+an effort that, to make it, we are forced to believe that Brutus from
+his realm of justice still contemplates us after the lapse of two
+thousand, five hundred and some years. It seemed natural to Maitre
+Giguet, who had the merit of divining our wishes in the choice of a
+chairman, to guide us still further in electing inspectors; but, if I am
+not mistaken, you think with me that once is enough--and you are
+right. Our mutual friend, Simon Giguet, who intends to offer himself
+as candidate, would have the air of assuming mastery, and he might,
+consequently, lose in our minds the good-will we should otherwise bestow
+upon a modest attitude like that of his venerable father. Now what is
+our worthy chairman doing at this moment by accepting the method of
+presiding suggested to him by the candidate? He is depriving us of our
+liberty! I ask you: is it proper that the chairman of our choice should
+tell us to nominate, by rising or sitting, inspectors of the ballot thus
+forced upon us? Have we any liberty of choice? If I were proposed, I
+believe all present would rise out of politeness; indeed, we should all
+feel bound to rise for one another, and I say there can be no choice
+where there is no freedom of action."
+
+"He is right," said the sixty auditors.
+
+"Therefore, let us each write two names on a ballot, and the two
+gentlemen who are elected will then feel themselves the real choice of
+this assembly; they will have the right, conjointly with our honorable
+chairman, to pronounce upon the majority when we come to a vote on
+the resolutions to be offered. We are here, I think, to promise to a
+candidate the fullest support that each can give at the coming
+primary meeting of all the electors of the arrondissement. This act is
+therefore, and I so declare it, a grave one. Does it not concern one
+four-hundredth part of the governing power,--as our excellent mayor has
+lately said with the ready wit that characterizes him and for which we
+have so high an appreciation?"
+
+During these remarks Colonel Giguet was cutting a sheet of paper into
+strips, and Simon had sent for pens and ink.
+
+This preliminary discussion on forms had already made Simon extremely
+uneasy, and had also aroused the attention of the sixty assembled
+bourgeois. Presently they began to write their ballots, and the wily
+Pigoult contrived to obtain a majority for Monsieur Mollot, the clerk of
+the court, and Monsieur Godivet, the registrar. These nominations were
+naturally very displeasing to Fromaget, the apothecary, and Marcelin the
+solicitor.
+
+"You enable us," said Achille Pigoult, "to manifest our independence.
+Therefore you may feel more pride in being rejected than you could have
+felt in being chosen."
+
+Everybody laughed.
+
+Simon Giguet then produced silence by demanding speech of the chairman,
+whose shirt was already wet and became still wetter as he mustered all
+his courage to say:--
+
+"Monsieur Simon Giguet has the floor."
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE FIRST PARLIAMENTARY TEMPEST
+
+"Messieurs," said Simon Giguet, "I ask permission to thank Monsieur
+Achille Pigoult, who, although our meeting is altogether friendly--"
+
+"It is a meeting preparatory to the great primary meeting," said the
+solicitor Marcelin.
+
+"That is what I was about to explain," resumed Simon, "I thank Monsieur
+Achille Pigoult for having insisted on the strictness of parliamentary
+forms. This is the first time that the arrondissement of Arcis has been
+at liberty to use--"
+
+"At liberty!" said Pigoult, interrupting the orator.
+
+"At liberty!" cried the assembly.
+
+"At liberty," continued Simon Giguet, "to use its rights in the great
+battle of a general election to the Chamber of Deputies; and as, in
+a few days, we shall have a meeting, at which all electors will be
+present, to judge of the merits of the candidates, we ought to feel
+ourselves most fortunate in becoming accustomed here, in this limited
+meeting, to the usages of great assemblies. We shall be all the more
+able to decide the political future of the town of Arcis; for the
+question now is to substitute a town's interests for family interests, a
+whole region for a man."
+
+Simon then reviewed the history of the Arcis elections for the last
+twenty years. While approving the constant election of Francois Keller,
+he said the moment had now come to shake off the yoke of the house of
+Gondreville. Arcis ought to be no more a fief of the liberals than a
+fief of the Cinq-Cygnes. Advanced opinions were arising in France of
+which the Kellers were not the exponents. Charles Keller, having become
+a viscount, belonged to the court; he could have no independence,
+because, in presenting him as candidate, his family thought much more
+of making him succeed to his father's peerage than of benefiting his
+constituency as deputy, etc., etc. And, finally, Simon presented himself
+to the choice of his fellow-citizens, pledging his word to sit on the
+same bench with the illustrious Odilon Barrot, and never to desert the
+glorious flag of Progress.
+
+_Progress_! one of those words behind which more flimsy ambitions than
+ideas were trying to group themselves; for, after 1830, it represented
+only the pretensions of a few hungry democrats. Nevertheless, this word
+had still a great effect upon Arcis, and gave stability to whosoever
+might inscribe it on his banner. To call himself a man of progress
+was to declare himself a philosopher in all things and a puritan
+in politics; it declared him in favor of railroads, mackintoshes,
+penitentiaries, wooden pavements, Negro freedom, savings-banks, seamless
+shoes, lighting by gas, asphalt pavements, universal suffrage, and
+reduction of the civil list. In short, it meant pronouncing himself
+against the treaties of 1815, against the Eldest Branch, against the
+colossus of the North, perfidious Albion, against all enterprises, good
+or bad, of the government. Thus we see that the word _progress_ might
+signify "No," as well as "Yes." It was gilding put upon the word
+_liberalism_, a new pass-word for new ambitions.
+
+"If I have rightly understood what this meeting is for," said Jean
+Violette, a stocking-maker, who had recently bought the Beauvisage
+house, "it is to pledge ourselves to support, by employing every means
+in our power, Monsieur Simon Giguet at the elections as deputy in place
+of Comte Francois Keller. If each of us intends to coalesce in this
+manner we have only to say plainly Yes or No on that point."
+
+"That is going too quickly to the point! Political affairs do not
+advance in that way, or there would be no politics at all!" cried
+Pigoult, whose old grandfather, eighty-six years old, had just entered
+the room. "The last speaker undertakes to decide what seems to me,
+according to my feeble lights, the very object we are met to discuss. I
+demand permission to speak."
+
+"Monsieur Achille Pigoult has the floor," said Beauvisage, at last
+able to pronounce that phrase with all his municipal and constitutional
+dignity.
+
+"Messieurs," said the notary, "if there is a house in Arcis in which
+no voice should be raised against the influence of the Comte de
+Gondreville, it is surely the one we are now in. The worthy Colonel
+Giguet is the only person in it who has not sought the benefits of the
+senatorial power; he, at least, has never asked anything of the Comte de
+Gondreville, who took his name off the list of exiles in 1815 and caused
+him to receive the pension which the colonel now enjoys without lifting
+a finger to obtain it."
+
+A murmur, flattering to the old soldier, greeted this observation.
+
+"But," continued the orator, "the Marions are covered with the count's
+benefits. Without that influence, the late Colonel Giguet would not have
+commanded the gendarmerie of the Aube. The late Monsieur Marion would
+not have been chief-justice of the Imperial court without the protection
+of the count, to whom I myself have every reason to be thankful. You
+will therefore think it natural that I should be his advocate within
+these walls. There are, indeed, few persons in this arrondissement who
+have not received benefits from that family."
+
+[Murmurs.]
+
+"A candidate puts himself in the stocks," continued Achille Pigoult,
+warming up. "I have the right to scrutinize his life before I invest him
+with my powers. I do not desire ingratitude in the delegate I may
+help to send to the Chamber, for ingratitude is like misfortune--one
+ingratitude leads to others. We have been, he tells us, the
+stepping-stone of the Kellers; well, from what I have heard here, I am
+afraid we may become the stepping-stone of the Giguets. We live in a
+practical age, do we not? Well, then, let us examine into what will be
+the results to the arrondissement of Arcis if Simon Giguet is elected.
+They talk to you of independence! Simon, whom I thus maltreat as
+candidate, is my personal friend, as he is that of all who hear me, and
+I should myself be charmed to see him the orator of the Left, seated
+between Garnier-Pages and Lafitte; but how would that benefit the
+arrondissement? The arrondissement would lose the support of the Comte
+de Gondreville and the Kellers. We all, in the course of five years,
+have had and shall have need of the one and of the others. Some have
+gone to the Marechale de Carigliano to obtain the release of a young
+fellow who had drawn a bad number. Others have had recourse to the
+influence of the Kellers in many matters which are decided according to
+their recommendation. We have always found the old Comte de Gondreville
+ready to do us service. It is enough to belong to Arcis to obtain
+admission to him without being forced to kick our heels in his
+antechamber. Those two families know every one in Arcis. Where is the
+financial influence of the Giguets, and what power have they with the
+ministry? Have they any standing at the Bourse? When we want to replace
+our wretched wooden bridge with one of stone can they obtain from the
+department and the State the necessary funds? By electing Charles Keller
+we shall cement a bond of friendship which has never, to this day,
+failed to do us service. By electing my good, my excellent schoolmate,
+my worthy friend Simon Giguet, we shall realize nothing but losses until
+the far-distant time when he becomes a minister. I know his modesty well
+enough to be certain he will not contradict me when I say that I doubt
+his election to the post of deputy." [Laughter.] "I have come to
+this meeting to oppose a course which I regard as fatal to our
+arrondissement. Charles Keller belongs to the court, they say to me.
+Well, so much the better! we shall not have to pay the costs of his
+political apprenticeship; he knows the affairs of the country; he knows
+parliamentary necessities; he is much nearer being a statesman than
+my friend Simon, who will not pretend to have made himself a Pitt or a
+Talleyrand in a little town like Arcis--"
+
+"Danton went from it!" cried Colonel Giguet, furious at Achille's speech
+and the justice of it.
+
+"Bravo!"
+
+This was an acclamation, and sixty persons clapped their hands.
+
+"My father has a ready wit," whispered Simon Giguet to Beauvisage.
+
+"I do not understand why, apropos of an election," continued the old
+colonel, rising suddenly, with the blood boiling in his face, "we
+should be hauled up for the ties which connect us with the Comte de
+Gondreville. My son's fortune comes from his mother; he has asked
+nothing of the Comte de Gondreville. The comte might never have existed
+and Simon would have been what he now is,--the son of a colonel of
+artillery who owes his rank to his services; a man whose opinions have
+never varied. I should say openly to the Comte de Gondreville if he were
+present: 'We have elected your son-in-law for twenty years; to-day we
+wish to prove that in so doing we acted of our own free-will, and we now
+elect a man of Arcis, in order to show that the old spirit of 1789, to
+which you owe your fortune, still lives in the land of Danton, Malin,
+Grevin, Pigoult, Marion--That is all!"
+
+And the old man sat down. Whereupon a great hubbub arose. Achille opened
+his mouth to reply. Beauvisage, who would not have thought himself
+chairman unless he had rung his bell, increased the racket, and called
+for silence. It was then two o'clock.
+
+"I shall take the liberty to observe to the honorable Colonel Giguet,
+whose feelings are easily understood, that he took upon himself to
+speak, which is against parliamentary usage," said Achille Pigoult.
+
+"I think it is not necessary to call the colonel to order," said the
+chairman. "He is a father--"
+
+Silence was re-established.
+
+"We did not come here," cried Fromaget, "to say Amen to everything the
+Messieurs Giguet, father and son, may wish--"
+
+"No! no!" cried the assembly.
+
+"Things are going badly," said Madame Marion to her cook in the garden.
+
+"Messieurs," resumed Achille, "I confine myself to asking my friend
+Simon Giguet, categorically, what he expects to do for our interests."
+
+"Yes! yes!" cried the assembly.
+
+"Since when," demanded Simon Giguet, "have good citizens like those of
+Arcis made trade and barter of the sacred mission of deputy?"
+
+It is impossible to represent the effect produced by noble sentiments on
+a body of men. They will applaud fine maxims, while they none the less
+vote for the degradation of their country, like the galley-slave who
+shouted for the punishment of Robert Macaire when he saw the thing
+played, and then went off and killed his own Monsieur Germeuil.
+
+"Bravo!" cried several true-blood Giguet electors.
+
+"You will send me to the Chamber," went on Simon, "if you do send me, to
+represent principles, the principles of 1789; to be one of the ciphers,
+if you choose, of the Opposition, but a cipher that votes with it to
+enlighten the government, make war against abuses, and promote progress
+in all things--"
+
+"What do you call progress?" asked Fromaget. "For us, progress means
+getting the waste lands of la Champagne under cultivation."
+
+"Progress! I will explain to you what I mean by that," cried Giguet,
+exasperated by the interruption.
+
+"It is the frontier of the Rhine for France," put in the colonel, "and
+the destruction of the treaties of 1815."
+
+"It is selling wheat dear and keeping bread cheap," cried Achille
+Pigoult sarcastically, thinking that he made a joke, but actually
+expressing one of the delusions that reign in France.
+
+"It is the happiness of all, obtained by the triumph of humanitarian
+doctrines," continued Simon.
+
+"What did I tell you?" said Achille to his neighbors.
+
+"Hush! silence! let us listen!" said various voices.
+
+"Messieurs," said the stout Mollot, smiling, "the debate is beginning;
+give your attention to the orator; and let him explain himself."
+
+"In all transitional epochs, Messieurs," continued Simon, gravely, "and
+we are now in such an epoch--"
+
+"Ba-a-a! ba-a-a!" bleated a friend of Achille Pigoult, who possessed the
+faculty (precious at elections) of ventriloquism.
+
+A roar of laughter came from the whole assembly, who were Champagnards
+before all else. Simon Giguet folded his arms and waited till the tumult
+subsided.
+
+"If it was intended to give me a lesson," he resumed, "and to tell me
+that I belong to the flock of the glorious defenders of the rights of
+humanity, the flock of the immortal priest who pleads for dying Poland,
+the daring pamphleteers, the scrutinizers of the civil test, the
+philosophers who demand sincerity in the working of our institutions, if
+that was the intention of my nameless interrupter, I thank him. To
+me, progress is the realization of all that was promised to us by the
+revolution of July; it is electoral reform, it is--"
+
+"What! are you a democrat?" said Achille Pigoult.
+
+"No," replied the candidate. "To desire the legitimate and regular
+development of our institutions, is that being a democrat? To me,
+progress is fraternity re-established between the members of the great
+French family. We cannot conceal from ourselves that many sufferings--"
+
+At three o'clock Simon Giguet was still explaining Progress, accompanied
+by the rhythmic snores of various electors which denoted a sound
+sleep. The malicious Achille Pigoult had urged all present to listen
+religiously to the young orator, who was now floundering in his phrases
+and paraphrases hopelessly at random.
+
+
+
+
+V. THE PERPLEXITIES OF THE GOVERNMENT IN ARCIS
+
+At this moment several groups of bourgeois, electors and non-electors,
+were standing before the Chateau d'Arcis, the iron gates of which open
+on the square near to the door of Madame Marion's house. This square
+is a piece of open ground from which issue several roads and several
+streets. In it is a covered market. Opposite to the chateau, on the
+other side of the square, which is neither paved nor macadamized, and
+where the rain has made various little gutters, is a fine esplanade,
+called the Avenue of Sighs. Is that to the honor or to the blame of the
+leaders of the town? This singular ambibology is no doubt a stroke of
+native wit.
+
+Two handsome side avenues, planted with lindens, lead from the square
+to a circular boulevard which forms another promenade, though usually
+deserted, where more dirt and rubbish than promenaders may commonly be
+seen.
+
+At the height of the discussion which Achille Pigoult was dramatizing
+with a coolness and courage worthy of a member of a real parliament,
+four personages were walking down one of the linden avenues which led
+from the Avenue of Sighs. When they reached the square, they stopped as
+if by common consent, and looked at the inhabitants of Arcis, who were
+humming before the chateau like so many bees before returning to their
+hives at night. The four promenaders were the whole ministerial
+conclave of Arcis, namely: the sub-prefect, the _procureur-du-roi_, his
+substitute, and the examining-judge, Monsieur Martener. The judge of the
+court, Monsieur Michu, was, as we know already, a partisan of the Elder
+Branch and a devoted adherent of the house of Cinq-Cygne.
+
+"No, I don't understand the action of the government," repeated the
+sub-prefect, Antonin Goulard, pointing to the groups which seemed to
+be thickening. "At such an important crisis to leave me without
+instructions!"
+
+"In that you are like the rest of us," said Olivier Vinet, the
+substitute, smiling.
+
+"Why do you blame the government?" asked the _procureur-du-roi_,
+Frederic Marest.
+
+"The ministry is much embarrassed," remarked young Martener. "It knows
+that this arrondissement belongs, in a certain way, to the Kellers, and
+it is very desirous not to thwart them. It is forced to keep on good
+terms with the only man who is comparable to Monsieur de Talleyrand. It
+is not to the prefect, but to the Comte de Gondreville that you ought to
+send the commissary of police."
+
+"Meanwhile," said Frederic Marest, "the Opposition is bestirring itself;
+you see yourselves the influence of Monsieur Giguet. Our mayor, Monsieur
+Beauvisage, is presiding over that preparatory meeting."
+
+"After all," said Olivier Vinet slyly to the sub-prefect, "Simon Giguet
+is your friend and schoolmate; he will belong to the Thiers' party; you
+risk nothing in supporting his election."
+
+"The present ministry could dismiss me before its fall," replied the
+sub-prefect, "and who knows when I should be reappointed?"
+
+"Collinet, the grocer!--that makes the sixty-sixth elector who has
+entered the Giguet house," said Monsieur Martener, who was practising
+his trade as examining-judge by counting the electors.
+
+"If Charles Keller is the ministerial candidate," resumed the
+sub-prefect, "I ought to have been told of it; the government makes a
+mistake in giving time for Simon Giguet to get hold of the electors."
+
+These four individuals had now reached, walking slowly, the spot where
+the avenue ceases and becomes an open square.
+
+"There's Monsieur Groslier," said the judge, catching sight of a man on
+horseback.
+
+This was the commissary of police; he saw the government of Arcis
+collected on the public square, and he rode up to the four gentlemen.
+
+"Well, Monsieur Groslier?" said the sub-prefect, taking the commissary a
+little apart from his three colleagues.
+
+"Monsieur," said the commissary of police in a low voice, "Monsieur
+la prefet has sent me to tell you some sad news; Monsieur le Vicomte
+Charles Keller is dead. The news reached Paris by telegram night before
+last, and the two Messieurs Keller, the Comte de Gondreville, the
+Marechale Carigliano, in fact the whole family are now at Gondreville.
+Abd-el-Kader has resumed the offensive in Africa; the war is being
+vigorously carried on. This poor young man was among the first
+victims of the renewal of hostilities. You will receive confidential
+instructions, so Monsieur le prefet told me, in relation to the coming
+election."
+
+"By whom?" asked the sub-prefect.
+
+"If I knew that, the matter would not be confidential," replied the
+commissary. "In fact, I think the prefect himself does not know. He told
+me that the matter would be a secret one between you and the ministry."
+
+Then he rode on, after seeing the sub-prefect lay his fingers on his
+lips as a warning to keep silence.
+
+"Well, what news from the prefecture?" said the _procureur-du-roi_, when
+Goulard returned to the group of the three functionaries.
+
+"Nothing satisfactory," replied Goulard, stepping quickly, as if he
+wanted to get away from the others, who now walked silently toward the
+middle of the square, somewhat piqued by the manner of the sub-prefect.
+There Monsieur Martener noticed old Madame Beauvisage, the mother of
+Phileas, surrounded by nearly all the bourgeois on the square, to whom
+she was apparently relating something. A solicitor, named Sinot, who
+numbered all the royalists of Arcis among his clients, and who had not
+gone to the Giguet meeting, now detached himself from the group, and
+running to the door of the Marion house rang the bell violently.
+
+"What can be the matter?" said Frederic Marest, dropping his eyeglass,
+and calling the attention of his colleagues to this circumstance.
+
+"The matter is, messieurs," said the sub-prefect, thinking it useless
+to keep a secret which was evidently known to the other party, "that
+Charles Keller has been killed in Africa, and that this event doubles
+the chances of Simon Giguet. You know Arcis; there can be no other
+ministerial candidate than Charles Keller. Any other man would find the
+whole local patriotism of the place arrayed against him.
+
+"Will they really elect such an idiot as Simon Giguet?" said Olivier
+Vinet, laughing.
+
+This young substitute, then only twenty-three years of age, was the son
+of one of our most famous attorney-generals, who had come into power
+with the Revolution of July; he therefore owed his early entrance into
+public life to the influence of his father. The latter, always elected
+deputy by the town of Provins, is one of the buttresses of the Centre
+in the Chamber. Therefore the son, whose mother was a Demoiselle de
+Chargeboeuf [see "Pierrette"], had a certain air of assurance, both
+in his functions and in his personal behavior, that plainly showed
+the backing of his father. He expressed his opinion on men and things
+without reserve; for he confidently expected not to stay very long
+at Arcis, but to receive his appointment as _procureur-du-roi_ at
+Versailles, a sure step to a post in Paris.
+
+The confident air of this little Vinet, and the sort of assumption which
+the certainty of making his way gave to him, was all the more irritating
+to Frederic Marest, his superior, because a biting wit accompanied
+the rather undisciplined habits and manners of his young subordinate.
+Frederic Marest, _procureur-du-roi_, a man about forty years of age,
+who had spent six years of his life under the Restoration in becoming a
+substitute only to be neglected and left in Arcis by the government of
+July, in spite of the fact that he had some eighteen thousand francs a
+year of his own, was perpetually kept on the rack between the
+necessity of winning the good graces of young Vinet's father--a touchy
+attorney-general who might become Keeper of the Seals--and of keeping
+his own dignity.
+
+Olivier Vinet, slender in figure, with a pallid face, lighted by a pair
+of malicious green eyes, was one of those sarcastic young gentlemen,
+inclined to dissipation, who nevertheless know how to assume the
+pompous, haughty, and pedantic air with which magistrates arm themselves
+when they once reach the bench. The tall, stout, heavy, and grave
+_procureur-du-roi_ had lately invented a system by which he hoped to
+keep out of trouble with the exasperating Olivier; he treated him as a
+father would treat a spoilt child.
+
+"Olivier," he replied to his substitute, slapping him on the shoulder,
+"a man of your capacity ought to reflect that Maitre Giguet is very
+likely to become deputy. You'd have made that remark just as readily
+before the people of Arcis as before us, who are safe friends."
+
+"There is one thing against Giguet," observed Monsieur Martener.
+
+This good young man, rather heavy but full of capacity, the son of a
+physician in Provins, owed his place to Vinet's father, who was long a
+lawyer in Provins and still continued to be the patron of his people as
+the Comte de Gondreville was the patron of the people of Arcis.
+
+"What is that?" asked the sub-prefect.
+
+"Local patriotism is always bitterly against a man who is imposed upon
+the electors," replied the examining-judge, "but when it happens that
+the good people of Arcis have to elevate one of their own equals to the
+Chamber, envy and jealousy are stronger than patriotism."
+
+"That is very simple," said the _procureur-du-roi_, "and very true. If
+you can manage to collect fifty ministerial votes you will find yourself
+master of the coming election," he added, addressing the sub-prefect.
+
+"It will do if you produce a candidate of the same calibre as Simon
+Giguet," said Olivier Vinet.
+
+The sub-prefect allowed an expression of satisfaction to appear upon his
+features, which did not escape the notice of his three companions, with
+whom, moreover, he had a full understanding. All four being bachelors,
+and tolerably rich, they had formed, without premeditation, an alliance
+against the dulness of the provinces. The three functionaries had
+already remarked the sort of jealousy that Goulard felt for Giguet,
+which a few words on their antecedents will explain.
+
+Antonin Goulard, the son of a former huntsman to the house of Simeuse,
+enriched by the purchase of the confiscated property of _emigres_ was,
+like Simon Giguet, a son of Arcis. Old Goulard, his father, left the
+abbey of Valpreux (corruption of Val-des-Preux) to live in Arcis after
+the death of his wife, and he sent his son to the imperial lyceum, where
+Colonel Giguet had already placed his son Simon. The two schoolmates
+subsequently went through their legal studies in Paris together, and
+their intimacy was continued in the amusements of youth. They promised
+to help each other to success in life whenever they entered upon their
+different careers. But fate willed that they should end by being rivals.
+
+In spite of Goulard's manifest advantages, in spite of the cross of the
+Legion of honor which the Comte de Gondreville had obtained for him
+in default of promotion, the offer of his heart and position had been
+frankly declined when, about six months before this history begins, he
+had privately presented himself to Madame Beauvisage as a suitor for her
+daughter's hand. No step of that nature is ever taken secretly in the
+provinces. The _procureur-du-roi_, Frederic Marest, whose fortune,
+buttonhole, and position were about on a par with those of Antonin
+Goulard, had received a like refusal, three years earlier, based on the
+difference of ages. Consequently, the two officials were on terms
+of strict politeness with the Beauvisage family, and laughed at them
+severally in private. Both had divined and communicated to each other
+the real motive of the candidacy of Simon Giguet, for they fully
+understood the hopes of Madame Marion; and they were bent on preventing
+her nephew from marrying the heiress whose hand had been refused to
+them.
+
+"God grant that I may be master of this election," said Goulard, "and
+that the Comte de Gondreville may get me made a prefect, for I have no
+more desire than you to spend the rest of my days here, though I was
+born in Arcis."
+
+"You have a fine opportunity to be elected deputy yourself, my chief,"
+said Olivier Vinet to Marest. "Come and see my father, who will, I
+think, arrive here from Provins in a few hours. Let us propose to him to
+have you chosen as ministerial candidate."
+
+"Halt!" said Antonin; "the ministry has its own views about the deputy
+of Arcis."
+
+"Ah, bah!" exclaimed Vinet, "there are two ministries: the one that
+thinks it makes elections, and another that thinks it profits by them."
+
+"Don't let us complicate Antonin's difficulties," said Frederic Marest,
+winking at his substitute.
+
+The four officials, who had crossed the open square and were close to
+the Mulet inn, now saw Poupart leaving the house of Madame Marion and
+coming towards them. A moment later, and the _porte cochere_ of that
+house vomited the sixty-seven conspirators.
+
+"So you went to that meeting?" said Antonin Goulard to Poupart.
+
+"I shall never go again, monsieur le sous-prefet," said the innkeeper.
+"The son of Monsieur Keller is dead, and I have now no object in going
+there. God has taken upon himself to clear the ground."
+
+"Well, Pigoult, what happened?" cried Olivier Vinet, catching sight of
+the young notary.
+
+"Oh!" said Pigoult, on whose forehead the perspiration, which had not
+dried, bore testimony to his efforts, "Simon has just told some
+news that made them all unanimous. Except five persons,--Poupart, my
+grandfather, Mollot, Sinot, and I,--all present swore, as at the Jeu de
+Paume, to employ every means to promote the triumph of Simon Giguet,
+of whom I have made a mortal enemy. Oh! we got warm, I can tell you!
+However, I led the Giguets to fulminate against the Gondrevilles. That
+puts the old count on my side. No later than to-morrow he will hear
+what the _soi-disant_ patriots of Arcis have said about him and his
+corruptions and his infamies, to free their necks, as they called it, of
+his yoke."
+
+"Unanimous, were they?" said Olivier Vinet, laughing.
+
+"Unanimous, _to-day_," remarked Monsieur Martener.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Pigoult, "the general sentiment of the electors is for
+one of their own townsmen. Whom can you oppose to Simon Giguet,--a man
+who has just spent two hours in explaining the word _progress_."
+
+"Take old Grevin!" cried the sub-prefect.
+
+"He has no such ambition," replied Pigoult. "But we must first of
+all consult the Comte de Gondreville. Look, look!" he added; "see
+the attentions with which Simon is taking him that gilded booby,
+Beauvisage."
+
+And he pointed to the candidate, who was holding the mayor by the arm
+and whispering in his ear. Beauvisage meantime was bowing right and
+left to the inhabitants, who gazed at him with the deference which
+provincials always testify to the richest man in their locality.
+
+"But there's no use cajoling _him_," continued Pigoult. "Cecile's hand
+does not depend on either her father or her mother."
+
+"On whom, then?"
+
+"On my old patron, Monsieur Grevin. Even if Simon is elected deputy, the
+town is not won."
+
+Though the sub-prefect and Frederic Marest tried to get an explanation
+of these words, Pigoult refused to give the reason of an exclamation
+which seemed to them big with meaning and implying a certain knowledge
+of the plans of the Beauvisage family.
+
+All Arcis was now in a commotion, not only on account of the fatal event
+which had just overtaken the Gondreville family, but because of the
+great resolution come to at the Giguet house, where Madame Marion and
+her three servants were hurriedly engaged in putting everything in its
+usual order, ready to receive her customary guests, whose curiosity
+would probably bring them that evening in large numbers.
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1814 FROM THE HOSIERY POINT OF VIEW
+
+Champagne has all the appearance of a poor region, and it is a poor
+region. Its general aspect is sad; the land is flat. Passing through
+the villages, and even the towns, you will see nothing but miserable
+buildings of wood or half-baked clay; the best are built of brick.
+Stone is scarcely used at all except on public buildings. At Arcis the
+chateau, the law courts, and the church are the only stone buildings.
+Nevertheless, Champagne, or, if you prefer to say so, the departments of
+the Aube, Marne, and Haut-Marne, richly endowed with vineyards, the fame
+of which is world-wide, are otherwise full of flourishing industries.
+
+Without speaking of the manufactures of Reims, nearly all the hosiery
+of France--a very considerable trade--is manufactured about Troyes. The
+surrounding country, over a circuit of thirty miles, is covered with
+workmen, whose looms can be seen through the open doors as we pass
+through the villages. These workmen are employed by agents, who
+themselves are in the service of speculators called manufacturers. The
+agents negotiate with the large Parisian houses, often with the retail
+hosiers, all of whom put out the sign, "Manufacturers of Hosiery." None
+of them have ever made a pair of stockings, nor a cap, nor a sock;
+all their hosiery comes chiefly from Champagne, though there are a few
+skilled workmen in Paris who can rival the Champenois.
+
+This intermediate agency between the producer and the consumer is
+an evil not confined to hosiery. It exists in almost all trades, and
+increases the cost of merchandise by the amount of the profit exacted
+by the middlemen. To break down these costly partitions, that injure
+the sale of products, would be a magnificent enterprise, which, in its
+results, would attain to the height of statesmanship. In fact, industry
+of all kinds would gain by establishing within our borders the cheapness
+so essential to enable us to carry on victoriously the industrial
+warfare with foreign countries,--a struggle as deadly as that of arms.
+
+But the destruction of an abuse of this kind would not return to modern
+philanthropists the glory and the advantages of a crusade against the
+empty nutshells of the penitentiary and negrophobia; consequently, the
+interloping profits of these _bankers of merchandise_ will continue to
+weigh heavily both on producers and consumers. In France--keen-witted
+land!--it is thought that to simplify is to destroy. The Revolution of
+1789 is still a terror.
+
+We see, by the industrial energy displayed in a land where Nature is a
+godmother, what progress agriculture might make if capital would go into
+partnership with the soil, which is not so thankless in Champagne as it
+is in Scotland, where capital has done wonders. The day when agriculture
+will have conquered the unfertile portion of those departments, and
+industry has seconded capital on the Champagne chalk, the prosperity
+of that region will triple itself. Into that land, now without luxury,
+where homes are barren, English comfort will penetrate, money will
+obtain that rapid circulation which is the half of wealth, and is
+already beginning in several of the inert portions of our country.
+Writers, administrators, the Church from its pulpit, the Press in its
+columns, all to whom chance has given power to influence the masses,
+should say and resay this truth,--to hoard is a social crime. The
+deliberate hoarding of a province arrests industrial life, and injures
+the health of a nation.
+
+Thus the little town of Arcis, without much means of transition, doomed
+apparently to the most complete immobility, is, relatively, a rich town
+abounding in capital slowly amassed by its trade in hosiery.
+
+Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage was the Alexander, or, if you will, the
+Attila of this business. And here follow the means by which this
+honorable merchant had acquired his supremacy over cotton.
+
+The last remaining child of farmers named Beauvisage, tenants of the
+splendid farm of Bellache, a dependency of the Gondreville estate, his
+parents made, in 1811, a great sacrifice in order to buy a substitute
+and save their only child from conscription. After that, in 1813, the
+mother Beauvisage, having become a widow, saved her son once more
+from enrolment in the Gardes, thanks to the influence of the Comte de
+Gondreville. Phileas, who was then twenty-one years of age, had been
+devoted for the last three years to the peaceable trade of hosiery.
+
+Coming to the end of the lease of Bellache, old Madame Beauvisage
+declined to renew it. She saw she had enough to do in her old age in
+taking care of her property. That nothing might give her uneasiness
+of mind, she proceeded, by the help of Monsieur Grevin, the notary
+of Arcis, to liquidate her husband's estate, although her son made no
+request whatever for a settlement. The result proved that she owed him
+the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand francs. The good woman did not
+sell her landed property, most of which came from the unfortunate Michu,
+the former bailiff of the Simeuse family; she paid the sum to Phileas
+in ready money,--advising him to buy out the business of his employer,
+Monsieur Pigoult, the son of the old justice of the peace, whose affairs
+were in so bad a way that his death, as we have said, was thought to be
+voluntary.
+
+Phileas Beauvisage, a virtuous youth, having a deep respect for his
+mother, concluded the purchase from his patron, and as he had the bump
+of what phrenologists term "acquisitiveness," his youthful ardor spent
+itself upon this business, which he thought magnificent and desired to
+increase by speculation.
+
+The name of Phileas, which may seem peculiar, is only one of the many
+oddities which we owe to the Revolution. Attached to the Simeuse family,
+and consequently, good Catholics, the Beauvisage father and mother
+desired to have their son baptized. The rector of Cinq-Cygne, the Abbe
+Goujet, whom they consulted, advised them to give their son for patron
+a saint whose Greek name might signify the municipality,--for the child
+was born at a period when children were inscribed on the civil registers
+under the fantastic names of the Republican calendar.
+
+In 1814, hosiery, a stable business with few risks in ordinary times,
+was subject to all the variations in the price of cotton. This price
+depended at that time on the triumph or the defeat of the Emperor
+Napoleon, whose adversaries, the English generals, used to say in Spain:
+"The town is taken; now get out your bales."
+
+Pigoult, former patron of young Phileas, furnished the raw material to
+his workmen, who were scattered all over the country. At the time when
+he sold the business to Beauvisage junior, he possessed a large amount
+of raw cotton bought at a high price, whereas Lisbon was sending
+enormous quantities into the Empire at six sous the kilogramme, in
+virtue of the Emperor's celebrated decree. The reaction produced in
+France by the introduction of the Portuguese cotton caused the death of
+Pigoult, Achille's father, and began the fortune of Phileas, who, far
+from losing his head like his master, made his prices moderate by
+buying cotton cheaply and in doubling the quantity ventured upon by
+his predecessor. This simple system enabled Phileas to triple the
+manufacture and to pose as the benefactor of the workingmen; so that
+he was able to disperse his hosiery in Paris and all over France at
+a profit, when the luckiest of his competitors were only able to sell
+their goods at cost price.
+
+At the beginning of 1814, Phileas had emptied his warerooms. The
+prospect of a war on French soil, the hardships of which were likely to
+press chiefly on Champagne, made him cautious. He manufactured nothing,
+and held himself ready to meet all events with his capital turned into
+gold. At this period the custom-house lines were no longer maintained.
+Napoleon could not do without his thirty thousand custom-house officers
+for service in the field. Cotton, then introduced through a thousand
+loopholes, slipped into the markets of France. No one can imagine
+how sly and how alert cotton had become at this epoch, nor with what
+eagerness the English laid hold of a country where cotton stockings sold
+for six francs a pair, and cambric shirts were objects of luxury.
+
+Manufacturers from the second class, the principal workmen, reckoning on
+the genius of Napoleon, had bought up the cottons that came from Spain.
+They worked it up in hopes of being able later to give the law to the
+merchants of Paris. Phileas observed these facts. When the war ravaged
+Champagne, he kept himself between the French army and Paris. After each
+lost battle he went among the workmen who had buried their products in
+casks,--a sort of silo of hosiery,--then, gold in hand, this Cossack
+of weaving bought up, from village to village, below the cost of
+fabrication, tons of merchandise which might otherwise become at
+any time a prey to an enemy whose feet were as much in need of being
+_socked_ as its throat of being moistened.
+
+Phileas displayed under these unfortunate circumstances an activity
+nearly equal to that of the Emperor. This general of hosiery made a
+commercial campaign of 1814 with splendid but ignored courage. A league
+or two behind where the army advanced he bought up caps and socks as
+the Emperor gathered immortal palms by his very reverses. The genius was
+equal on both sides, though exercised in different spheres; one aimed
+at covering heads, the other at mowing them down. Obliged to create some
+means of transportation in order to save his tons of hosiery, which he
+stored in a suburb of Paris, Phileas often put in requisition horses
+and army-waggons, as if the safety of the empire were concerned. But
+the majesty of commerce was surely as precious as that of Napoleon. The
+English merchants, in buying out the European markets, certainly got the
+better of the colossus who threatened their trade.
+
+By the time the Emperor abdicated at Fontainebleau, Phileas, triumphant,
+was master of the situation. He maintained, by clever manoeuvring, the
+depreciation in cottons, and doubled his fortune at the moment when his
+luckiest competitors were getting rid of their merchandise at a loss
+of fifty per cent. He returned to Arcis with a fortune of three hundred
+thousand francs, half of which, invested on the Grand-Livre at sixty,
+returned him an income of fifteen thousand francs a year. He employed
+the remainder in building, furnishing, and adorning a handsome house on
+the Place du Pont in Arcis.
+
+On the return of the successful hosier, Monsieur Grevin was naturally
+his confidant. The notary had an only daughter to marry, then twenty
+years of age. Grevin, a widower, knew the fortune of Madame Beauvisage,
+the mother, and he believed in the energy and capacity of a young man
+bold enough to have turned the campaign of 1814 to his profit. Severine
+Grevin had her mother's fortune of sixty thousand francs for her dower.
+Grevin was then over fifty; he feared to die, and saw no chance of
+marrying his daughter as he wished under the Restoration--for her, he
+had had ambition. Under these circumstances he was shrewd enough to make
+Phileas ask her in marriage.
+
+Severine Grevin, a well-trained young lady and handsome, was considered
+at that time the best match in Arcis. In fact, an alliance with the
+intimate friend of the senator Comte de Gondreville, peer of France, was
+certainly a great honor for the son of a Gondreville tenant-farmer. The
+widow Beauvisage, his mother, would have made any sacrifice to obtain
+it; but on learning the success of her son, she dispensed with the duty
+of giving him a _dot_,--a wise economy which was imitated by the notary.
+
+Thus was consummated the union of the son of a farmer formerly so
+faithful to the Simeuse family with the daughter of its most cruel
+enemy. It was, perhaps, the only application made of the famous saying
+of Louis XVIII.: "Union and Oblivion."
+
+On the second return of the Bourbons, Grevin's father-in-law, old Doctor
+Varlet, died at the age of seventy-six, leaving two hundred thousand
+francs in gold in his cellar, besides other property valued at an
+equal sum. Thus Phileas and his wife had, outside of their business, an
+assured income of thirty thousand francs a year.
+
+The first two years of this marriage sufficed to show Madame Severine
+and her father, Monsieur Grevin the absolute silliness of Phileas
+Beauvisage. His one gleam of commercial rapacity had seemed to the
+notary the result of superior powers; the shrewd old man had mistaken
+youth for strength, and luck for genius in business. Phileas certainly
+knew how to read and write and cipher well, but he had read nothing.
+Of crass ignorance, it was quite impossible to keep up even a slight
+conversation with him; he replied to all remarks with a deluge of
+commonplaces pleasantly uttered. As the son of a farmer, however,
+Phileas was not without a certain commercial good sense, and he was
+also kind and tender, and would often weep at a moving tale. It was
+this native goodness of heart which made him respect his wife, whose
+superiority had always caused him the deepest admiration.
+
+Severine, a woman of ideas, knew all things, so Phileas believed. And
+she knew them the more correctly because she consulted her father on
+all subjects. She was gifted with great firmness, which made her the
+absolute mistress in her own home. As soon as the latter result was
+attained, the old notary felt less regret in seeing that his daughter's
+only domestic happiness lay in the autocracy which usually satisfies all
+women of her nature. But what of the woman herself? Here follows what
+she was said to have found in life.
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE BEAUVISAGE FAMILY
+
+During the reaction of 1815, a Vicomte de Chargeboeuf (of the poorer
+branch of the family) was sent to Arcis as sub-prefect through the
+influence of the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne, to whose family he was allied.
+This young man remained sub-prefect for five years. The beautiful Madame
+Beauvisage was not, it was said, a stranger to the reasons that kept him
+in this office for a period far too prolonged for his own advancement.
+We ought to say, however, that these remarks were not justified by any
+of the scandals which in the provinces betray those passions that are
+difficult to conceal from the Argus-eyes of a little town. If Severine
+loved the Vicomte de Chargeboeuf and was beloved by him, it was in all
+honor and propriety, said the friends of the Grevins and the Marions;
+and that double coterie imposed its opinion on the whole arrondissement;
+but the Marions and the Grevins had no influence on the royalists, and
+the royalists regarded the sub-prefect as fortunate in love.
+
+As soon as the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne heard what was said in the
+chateaux about her relation, she sent for him; and such was her horror
+for all who were connected, near or far, with the actors in the judicial
+drama so fatal to her family, that she strictly enjoined him to change
+his residence. Not only that, but she obtained his appointment
+as sub-prefect of Sancerre with the promise of advancement to the
+prefecture.
+
+Some shrewd observers declared that the viscount pretended this passion
+for the purpose of being made prefect; for he well knew the hatred
+felt by the marquise for the name of Grevin. Others remarked on the
+coincidence of the viscount's apparitions in Paris with the visits made
+by Madame Beauvisage to the capital on frivolous pretexts. An impartial
+historian would be puzzled to form a just opinion on the facts of
+this matter, which are buried in the mysteries of private life. One
+circumstance alone seems to give color to the reports.
+
+Cecile-Renee Beauvisage was born in 1820, just as Monsieur de
+Chargeboeuf left Arcis, and among his various names was that of Rene.
+This name was given by the Comte de Gondreville as godfather of the
+child. Had the mother objected to the name, she would in some degree
+have given color to the rumor. As gossip always endeavors to justify
+itself, the giving of this name was said to be a bit of maliciousness on
+the part of the old count. Madame Keller, the count's daughter, who was
+named Cecile, was the godmother. As for the resemblance shown in the
+person of Cecile-Renee Beauvisage, it was striking. This young girl was
+like neither father nor mother; in course of time she had become the
+living image of the Vicomte de Chargeboeuf, whose aristocratic manners
+she had also acquired. This double resemblance, both moral and physical,
+was not observed by the inhabitants of Arcis, for the viscount never
+returned to that town.
+
+Severine made her husband happy in his own way. He liked good living and
+everything easy about him; she supplied him with the choicest wines, a
+table worthy of a bishop, served by the best cook in the department but
+without the pretensions of luxury; for she kept her household strictly
+to the conditions of the burgher life of Arcis. It was a proverb in
+Arcis that you must dine with Madame Beauvisage and spend your evening
+with Madame Marion.
+
+The renewed influence in the arrondissement of Arcis which the
+Restoration gave to the house of Cinq-Cygne had naturally drawn closer
+the ties that bound together the various families affected by the
+criminal trial relating to the abduction of Gondreville. [See "An
+Historical Mystery."] The Marions, Grevins, and Giguets were all the
+more united because the triumph of their political opinions, called
+"constitutional," now required the utmost harmony.
+
+As a matter of policy Severine encouraged her husband to continue
+his trade in hosiery, which any other man but himself would have long
+renounced; and she sent him to Paris, and about the country, on business
+connected with it. Up to the year 1830 Phileas, who was thus enabled
+to exercise his bump of "acquisitiveness," earned every year a sum
+equivalent to his expenses. The interest on the property of Monsieur
+and Madame Beauvisage, being capitalized for the last fifteen years
+by Grevin's intelligent care, became, by 1830, a round sum of half a
+million francs. That sum was, in fact, Cecile's _dot_, which the old
+notary then invested in the Three-per-cents at fifty, producing a safe
+income of thirty thousand a year.
+
+After 1830 Beauvisage sold his business in hosiery to Jean Violette,
+one of his agents (grandson of one of the chief witnesses for the
+prosecution in the Simeuse trial), the proceeds of which amounted to
+three hundred thousand francs. Monsieur and Madame Beauvisage had also
+in prospect their double inheritance from old Grevin on one side, and
+the old farmer's wife Beauvisage on the other. Great provincial fortunes
+are usually the product of time multiplied by economy. Thirty years of
+old age make capital.
+
+In giving to Cecile-Renee a _dot_ of fifty thousand francs a year,
+her parents still reserved for themselves the two inheritances, thirty
+thousand a year on the Grand Livre, and their house in Arcis.
+
+If the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne were only dead, Cecile might assuredly
+marry the young marquis; but the health of that great lady, who was
+still vigorous and almost beautiful at sixty years of age, precluded all
+hope of such a marriage if it even entered the minds of Grevin and his
+daughter, as some persons, surprised at their rejection of eligible
+suitors like the sub-prefect and the _procureur-du-roi_, declared that
+it did.
+
+The Beauvisage residence, one of the best in Arcis, stands on the Place
+du Pont on a line with the rue Vide-Bourse, at the corner of the rue du
+Pont, which leads to the Place de l'Eglise. Though, like many provincial
+houses, without either court or garden, it produces a certain effect,
+in spite of its ornamentation in bad taste. The front door opens on
+the Place; the windows of the ground-floor look out on the street-side
+towards the post-house and inn, and command beyond the Place a rather
+picturesque view of the Aube, the navigation of which begins at the
+bridge. Beyond the bridge is another little Place or square, on which
+lives Monsieur Grevin, and from which the high-road to Sezanne starts.
+
+On the street and on the square, the Beauvisage house, painted a
+spotless white, looks as though built of stone. The height of the
+windows and their external mouldings contribute to give a certain
+style to the house which contrasts strongly with the generally forlorn
+appearance of the houses of Arcis, constructed, as we have already said,
+of wood, and covered with plaster, imitating the solidity of stone.
+Still, these houses are not without a certain originality, through the
+fact that each architect, or each burgher, has endeavored to solve for
+himself the problem of styles of building.
+
+The bridge at Arcis is of wood. About four hundred feet above the bridge
+the river is crossed by another bridge, on which rise the tall wooden
+sides of a mill with several sluices. The space between the public
+bridge and this private bridge forms a basin, on the banks of which are
+several large houses. By an opening between the roofs can be seen the
+height on which stands the chateau of Arcis with its park and gardens,
+its outer walls and trees which overhand the river above the bridges,
+and the rather scanty pastures of the left bank.
+
+The sound of the water as it runs through the courses above the dam, the
+music of the wheels, from which the churned water falls back into the
+basin in sparkling cascades, animate the rue du Pont, contrasting in
+this respect with the tranquillity of the river flowing downward between
+the garden of Monsieur Grevin, whose house is at one angle of the bridge
+on the left bank, and the port where the boats and barges discharge
+their merchandise before a line of poor but picturesque houses.
+
+Nothing can better express provincial life than the deep silence that
+envelops the little town and reigns in its busiest region. It is easy
+to imagine, therefore, how disquieting the presence of a stranger, if
+he only spends half a day there, may be to the inhabitants; with what
+attention faces protrude from the windows to observe him, and also the
+condition of espial in which all the residents of the little place stand
+to each other. Life has there become so conventional that, except on
+Sundays and fete-days, a stranger meets no one either on the boulevards
+or the Avenue of Sighs, not even, in fact, upon the streets.
+
+It will now be readily understood why the ground-floor of the Beauvisage
+house is on a level with the street and square. The square serves as its
+courtyard. Sitting at his window the eyes of the late hosier could take
+in the whole of the Place de l'Eglise, the two squares of the bridge,
+and the road to Sezanne. He could see the coaches arriving and the
+travellers descending at the post-inn; and on court days he could watch
+the proceedings around the offices of the mayor and the justice of
+peace. For these reasons, Beauvisage would not have exchanged his house
+for the chateau, in spite of its lordly air, its stone walls, and its
+splendid situation.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. IN WHICH THE DOT, ONE OF THE HEROINES OF THIS HISTORY, APPEARS
+
+Entering the Beauvisage house we find a versatile, at the farther end
+of which rises the staircase. To right we enter a large salon with
+two windows opening on the square; to left is a handsome dining-room,
+looking on the street. The floor above is the one occupied by the
+family.
+
+Notwithstanding the large fortune of the Beauvisage husband and wife,
+their establishment consisted of only a cook and a chamber-maid, the
+latter a peasant, who washed and ironed and frotted the floors rather
+than waited on her two mistresses, who were accustomed to spend their
+time in dressing and waiting upon each other. Since the sale of the
+business to Jean Violette, the horse and cabriolet used by Phileas, and
+kept at the Hotel de la Poste, had been relinquished and sold.
+
+At the moment when Phileas reached his house after the Giguet meeting,
+his wife, already informed of the resolutions passed, had put on her
+boots and shawl and was preparing to go to her father; for she felt very
+sure that Madame Marion would, on that same evening, make her certain
+overtures relating to Simon and Cecile. After telling his wife of
+Charles Keller's death, Phileas asked her opinion with an artless "What
+do you think of that, wife?" which fully pictured his habit of deferring
+to Severine's opinion in all things. Then he sat down in an arm-chair
+and awaited her reply.
+
+In 1839, Madame Beauvisage, then forty-four years old, was so
+well-preserved that she might, in that respect, rival Mademoiselle Mars.
+By calling to mind the most charming Celimene that the Theatre-Francais
+ever had, an excellent idea of Severine Grevin's appearance will be
+obtained. The same richness of coloring, the same beauty of features,
+the same clearly defined outlines; but the hosier's wife was short,--a
+circumstance which deprived her of that noble grace, that charming
+coquetry _a la_ Sevigne, through which the great actress commends
+herself to the memory of men who saw both the Empire and the
+Restoration.
+
+Provincial life and the rather careless style of dress into which,
+for the last ten years, Severine had allowed herself to fall, gave a
+somewhat common air to that noble profile and those beautiful
+features; increasing plumpness was destroying the outlines of a figure
+magnificently fine during the first twelve years of her married life.
+But Severine redeemed these growing imperfections with a sovereign,
+superb, imperious glance, and a certain haughty carriage of her head.
+Her hair, still black and thick and long, was raised high upon her head,
+giving her a youthful look. Her shoulders and bosom were snowy, but they
+now rose puffily in a manner to obstruct the free movement of the neck,
+which had grown too short. Her plump and dimpled arms ended in pretty
+little hands that were, alas, too fat. She was, in fact, so overdone
+with fulness of life and health that her flesh formed a little pad,
+as one might call it, above her shoes. Two ear-drops, worth about
+three-thousand francs each, adorned her ears. She wore a lace cap with
+pink ribbons, a mousseline-de-laine gown in pink and gray stripes with
+an edging of green, opened at the bottom to show a petticoat trimmed
+with valencienne lace; and a green cashmere shawl with palm-leaves, the
+point of which reached the ground as she walked.
+
+"You are not so hungry," she said, casting her eyes on Beauvisage,
+"that you can't wait half an hour? My father has finished dinner and I
+couldn't eat mine in peace without knowing what he thinks and whether we
+ought to go to Gondreville."
+
+"Go, go, my dear. I'll wait," said Phileas, using the "thee" and "thou."
+
+"Good heavens!" cried Severine with a significant gesture of her
+shoulders. "Shall I never break you of that habit of tutoying me?"
+
+"I never do it before company--not since 1817," said Phileas.
+
+"You do it constantly before the servants and your daughter."
+
+"As you will, Severine," replied Beauvisage sadly.
+
+"Above all, don't say a word to Cecile about this resolution of the
+electors," added Madame Beauvisage, who was looking in the glass to
+arrange her shawl.
+
+"Shall I go with you to your father's?" asked Phileas.
+
+"No, stay with Cecile. Besides, Jean Violette was to pay the rest of the
+purchase-money to-day. He has twenty thousand francs to bring you. This
+is the third time he has put us off three months; don't grant him any
+more delays; if he can't pay now, give his note to Courtet, the sheriff,
+and take the law of him. Achille Pigoult will tell you how to proceed.
+That Violette is the worthy son of his grandfather; I think he is
+capable of enriching himself by going into bankruptcy,--there's neither
+law nor gospel in him."
+
+"He is very intelligent," said Beauvisage.
+
+"You have given him the good-will of a fine business for thirty thousand
+francs, which is certainly worth fifty thousand; and in ten years he has
+only paid you ten thousand--"
+
+"I never sued anybody yet," replied Beauvisage, "and I'd rather lose my
+money than torment a poor man--"
+
+"A man who laughs at you!"
+
+Beauvisage was silent; feeling unable to reply to that cruel remark, he
+looked at the boards which formed the floor of the salon.
+
+Perhaps the progressive abolition of mind and will in Beauvisage will
+be explained by the abuse of sleep. Going to bed every night at eight
+o'clock and getting up the next morning at eight, he had slept his
+twelve hours nightly for the last twenty years, never waking; or if that
+extraordinary event did occur, it was so serious a matter to his mind
+that he talked of it all day. He spent an hour at his toilet, for his
+wife had trained him not to appear in her presence at breakfast unless
+properly shaved, cleaned, and dressed for the day. When he was in
+business, he departed to his office after breakfast and returned only
+in time for dinner. Since 1832, he had substituted for his business
+occupations a daily visit to his father-in-law, a promenade about the
+town, or visits to his friends.
+
+In all weather he wore boots, blue coat and trousers, and a white
+waistcoat,--the style of dress exacted by his wife. His linen was
+remarkable for its fineness and purity, owing to the fact that Severine
+obliged him to change it daily. Such care for his person, seldom taken
+in the provinces, contributed to make him considered in Arcis very much
+as a man of elegance is considered in Paris. Externally this worthy
+seller of cotton hose seemed to be a personage; for his wife had sense
+enough never to utter a word which could put the public of Arcis on the
+scent of her disappointment and the utter nullity of her husband, who,
+thanks to his smiles, his handsome dress, and his manners, passed for a
+man of importance. People said that Severine was so jealous of him that
+she prevented him from going out in the evening, while in point of fact
+Phileas was bathing the roses and lilies of his skin in happy slumber.
+
+Beauvisage, who lived according to his tastes, pampered by his wife,
+well served by his two servants, cajoled by his daughter, called himself
+the happiest man in Arcis, and really was so. The feeling of Severine
+for this nullity of a man never went beyond the protecting pity of a
+mother for her child. She disguised the harshness of the words she was
+frequently obliged to say to him by a joking manner. No household was
+ever more tranquil; and the aversion Phileas felt for society, where
+he went to sleep, and where he could not play cards (being incapable of
+learning a game), had made Severine sole mistress of her evenings.
+
+Cecile's entrance now put an end to her father's embarrassment, and he
+cried out heartily:--
+
+"Hey! how fine we are!"
+
+Madame Beauvisage turned round abruptly and cast a look upon her
+daughter which made the girl blush.
+
+"Cecile, who told you to dress yourself in that way?" she demanded.
+
+"Are we not going to-night to Madame Marion's? I dressed myself now to
+see if my new gown fitted me."
+
+"Cecile! Cecile!" exclaimed Severine, "why do you try to deceive your
+mother? It is not right; and I am not pleased with you--you are hiding
+something from me."
+
+"What has she done?" asked Beauvisage, delighted to see his daughter so
+prettily dressed.
+
+"What has she done? I shall tell her," said Madame Beauvisage, shaking
+her finger at her only child.
+
+Cecile flung herself on her mother's neck, kissing and coaxing her,
+which is a means by which only daughters get their own way.
+
+Cecile Beauvisage, a girl of nineteen, had put on a gown of gray silk
+trimmed with gimp and tassels of a deeper shade of gray, making the
+front of the gown look like a pelisse. The corsage, ornamented with
+buttons and caps to the sleeves, ended in a point in front, and was
+laced up behind like a corset. This species of corset defined the back,
+the hips, and the bust perfectly. The skirt, trimmed with three rows of
+fringe, fell in charming folds, showing by its cut and its make the hand
+of a Parisian dressmaker. A pretty fichu edged with lace covered her
+shoulders; around her throat was a pink silk neckerchief, charmingly
+tied, and on her head was a straw hat ornamented with one moss rose. Her
+hands were covered with black silk mittens, and her feet were in bronze
+kid boots. This gala air, which gave her somewhat the appearance of the
+pictures in a fashion-book, delighted her father.
+
+Cecile was well made, of medium height, and perfectly well-proportioned.
+She had braided her chestnut hair, according to the fashion of 1839, in
+two thick plaits which followed the line of the face and were fastened
+by their ends to the back of her head. Her face, a fine oval, and
+beaming with health, was remarkable for an aristocratic air which she
+certainly did not derive from either her father or her mother. Her eyes,
+of a light brown, were totally devoid of that gentle, calm, and almost
+timid expression natural to the eyes of young girls. Lively, animated,
+and always well in health, Cecile spoiled, by a sort of bourgeois
+matter-of-factness, and the manners of a petted child, all that
+her person presented of romantic charm. Still, a husband capable of
+reforming her education and effacing the traces of provincial life,
+might still evolve from that living block a charming woman of the world.
+
+Madame Beauvisage had had the courage to bring up her daughter to good
+principles; she had made herself employ a false severity which enabled
+her to compel obedience and repress the little evil that existed in the
+girl's soul. Mother and daughter had never been parted; thus Cecile had,
+what is more rare in young girls than is generally supposed, a purity of
+thought, a freshness of heart, and a naivete of nature, real, complete,
+and flawless.
+
+"Your dress is enough to make me reflect," said Madame Beauvisage. "Did
+Simon Giguet say anything to you yesterday that you are hiding from me?"
+
+"Dear mamma," said Cecile in her mother's ear, "he bores me; but there
+is no one else for me in Arcis."
+
+"You judge him rightly; but wait till your grandfather has given an
+opinion," said Madame Beauvisage, kissing her daughter, whose reply
+proved her good-sense, though it also revealed the breach made in her
+innocence by the idea of marriage.
+
+Severine was devoted to her father; she and her daughter allowed no one
+but themselves to take charge of his linen; they knitted his socks for
+him, and gave the most minute care to his comfort. Grevin knew that no
+thought of self-interest had entered their affection; the million they
+would probably inherit could not dry their tears at his death; old men
+are very sensible to disinterested tenderness. Every morning before
+going to see him, Madame Beauvisage and Cecile attended to his dinner
+for the next day, sending him the best that the market afforded.
+
+Madame Beauvisage had always desired that her father would present
+her at the Chateau de Gondreville and connect her with the count's
+daughters; but the wise old man explained, again and again, how
+difficult it would be to have permanent relations with the Duchesse de
+Carigliano, who lived in Paris and seldom came to Gondreville, or with
+the brilliant Madame Keller, after doing a business in hosiery.
+
+"Your life is lived," he said to his daughter; "find all your enjoyments
+henceforth in Cecile, who will certainly be rich enough to give you an
+existence as broad and high as you deserve. Choose a son-in-law with
+ambition and means, and you can follow her to Paris and leave that
+jackass Beauvisage behind you. If I live long enough to see Cecile's
+husband I'll pilot you all on the sea of political interests, as I
+once piloted others, and you will reach a position equal to that of the
+Kellers."
+
+These few words were said before the revolution of July, 1830. Grevin
+desired to live that he might get under way the future grandeur of his
+daughter, his grand-daughter, and his great-grandchildren. His ambition
+extended to the third generation.
+
+When he talked thus, the old man's idea was to marry Cecile to Charles
+Keller; he was now grieving over that lost hope, uncertain where to look
+in the future. Having no relations with Parisian society, and seeing in
+the department of the Aube no other husband for Cecile than the youthful
+Marquis de Cinq-Cygne, he was asking himself whether by the power of
+gold he could surmount the animosities which the revolution of July had
+roused between the royalists who were faithful to their principles, and
+their conquerors. The happiness of his grand-daughter seemed to him so
+doubtful if he delivered her into the hands of the proud and haughty
+Marquise de Cinq-Cygne that he decided in his own mind to trust to the
+friend of old age, Time. He hoped that his bitter enemy the marquise
+might die, and, in that case, he thought he could win the son through
+his grandfather, old d'Hauteserre, who was then living at Cinq-Cygne and
+whom he knew to be accessible to the persuasions of money.
+
+If this plan failed, and Cecile Beauvisage remained unmarried, he
+resolved as a last resort to consult his friend Gondreville, who
+would, he believed, find his Cecile a husband, after his heart and his
+ambition, among the dukes of the Empire.
+
+
+
+
+IX. A STRANGER
+
+Severine found her father seated on a wooden bench at the end of his
+terrace, under a bower of lilacs then in bloom, and taking his coffee;
+for it was half-past five in the afternoon. She saw, by the pain on
+her father's face, that he had already heard the news. In fact, the old
+count had sent a valet to his friend, begging him to come to him.
+
+Up to the present time, old Grevin had endeavored not to encourage his
+daughter's ambition too far; but now, in the midst of the contradictory
+reflections which the melancholy death of Charles Keller caused him, his
+secret escaped his lips.
+
+"My dear child," he said to her, "I had formed the finest plans for your
+future. Cecile was to have been Vicomtesse Keller, for Charles, by my
+influence, would now have been selected deputy. Neither Gondreville nor
+his daughter Madame Keller would have refused Cecile's _dot_ of sixty
+thousand francs a year, especially with the prospect of a hundred
+thousand more which she will some day have from you. You would have
+lived in Paris with your daughter, and played your part of mother-in-law
+in the upper regions of power."
+
+Madame Beauvisage made a sign of satisfaction.
+
+"But we are knocked down by the death of this charming young man, to
+whom the prince royal had already given his friendship. Now this Simon
+Giguet, who has thrust himself upon the scene, is a fool, and the worst
+of all fools, for he thinks himself an eagle. You are, however, too
+intimate with the Giguets and the Marion household not to put the utmost
+politeness into your refusal--but you must refuse him."
+
+"As usual, you and I are of the same opinion, father."
+
+"You can say that I have otherwise disposed of Cecile's hand, and
+that will cut short all preposterous pretensions like that of Antonin
+Goulard. Little Vinet may offer himself, and he is preferable to the
+others who are smelling after the _dot_; he has talent, and shrewdness,
+and he belongs to the Chargeboeufs by his mother; but he has too much
+character not to rule his wife, and he is young enough to make himself
+loved. You would perish between two sentiments--for I know you by heart,
+my child."
+
+"I shall be much embarrassed this evening at the Marions' to know what
+to say," remarked Severine.
+
+"Well, then, my dear," said her father, "send Madame Marion to me; I'll
+talk to her."
+
+"I knew, father, that you were thinking of our future, but I had no idea
+you expected it to be so brilliant," said Madame Beauvisage, taking the
+hands of the old man and kissing them.
+
+"I have pondered the matter so deeply," said Grevin, "that in 1831 I
+bought the Beauseant mansion in Paris, which you have probably seen."
+
+Madame de Beauvisage made a movement of surprise on hearing this secret,
+until then so carefully kept, but she did not interrupt her father.
+
+"It will be my wedding present," he went on. "In 1832 I let it for seven
+years to an Englishman for twenty-four thousand francs a year,--a pretty
+stroke of business; for it only cost me three hundred and twenty-five
+thousand francs, of which I thus recover nearly two hundred thousand.
+The lease ends in July of this year."
+
+Severine kissed her father on the forehead and on both cheeks. This last
+revelation so magnified her future that she was well-nigh dazzled.
+
+"I shall advise my father," she said to herself, as she recrossed
+the bridge, "to give only the reversion of that property to his
+grandchildren, and let me have the life-interest in it. I have no idea
+of letting my daughter and son-in-law turn me out of doors; they must
+live with me."
+
+At dessert, when the two women-servants were safely at their own
+dinner in the kitchen, and Madame Beauvisage was certain of not being
+overheard, she thought it advisable to give Cecile a little lecture.
+
+"My daughter," she said, "behave this evening with propriety, like a
+well-bred girl; and from this day forth be more sedate. Do not chatter
+heedlessly, and never walk alone with Monsieur Giguet, or Monsieur
+Olivier Vinet, or the sub-prefect, or Monsieur Martener,--in fact, with
+any one, not even Achille Pigoult. You will not marry any of the young
+men of Arcis, or of the department. Your fate is to shine in Paris.
+Therefore I shall now give you charming dresses, to accustom you to
+elegance. We can easily find out where the Princesse de Cadignan and the
+Marquise de Cinq-Cygne get their things. I mean that you shall cease to
+look provincial. You must practise the piano for three hours every day.
+I shall send for Monsieur Moise from Troyes until I know what master
+I ought to get from Paris. Your talents must all be developed, for you
+have only one year more of girlhood before you. Now I have warned you,
+and I shall see how you behave this evening. You must manage to keep
+Simon at a distance, but without coquetting with him."
+
+"Don't be uneasy, mamma; I intend to adore the _stranger_."
+
+These words, which made Madame Beauvisage laugh, need some explanation.
+
+"Ha! I haven't seen him yet," said Phileas, "but everybody is talking
+about him. When I want to know who he is, I shall send the corporal or
+Monsieur Groslier to ask him for his passport."
+
+There is no little town in France where, at a given time, the drama or
+the comedy of the _stranger_ is not played. Often the stranger is an
+adventurer who makes dupes and departs, carrying with him the reputation
+of a woman, or the money of a family. Oftener the stranger is a real
+stranger, whose life remains mysterious long enough for the town to busy
+itself curiously about his words and deeds.
+
+Now the probable accession to power of Simon Giguet was not the only
+serious event that was happening in Arcis. For the last two days the
+attention of the little town had been focussed on a personage just
+arrived, who proved to be the first Unknown of the present generation.
+The _stranger_ was at this moment the subject of conversation in every
+household in the place. He was the beam fallen from heaven into the city
+of the frogs.
+
+The situation of Arcis-sur-Aube explains the effect which the arrival of
+a stranger was certain to produce. About eighteen miles from Troyes, on
+the high-road to Paris, opposite to a farm called "La Belle Etoile,"
+a county road branches off from the main road, and leads to Arcis,
+crossing the vast plains where the Seine cuts a narrow green valley
+bordered with poplars, which stand out upon the whiteness of the chalk
+soil of Champagne. The main road from Arcis to Troyes is eighteen miles
+in length, and makes the arch of a bow, the extremities of which are
+Troyes and Arcis, so that the shortest route from Paris to Arcis is by
+the county road which turns off, as we have said, near the Belle Etoile.
+The Aube is navigable only from Arcis to its mouth. Therefore this town,
+standing eighteen miles from a high-road, and separated from Troyes by
+monotonous plains, is isolated more or less, and has but little commerce
+or transportation either by land or water. Arcis is, in fact, a town
+completely isolated, where no travellers pass, and is attached to Troyes
+and La Belle Etoile by stage-coaches only. All the inhabitants know each
+other; they even know the commercial travellers who come, now and then,
+on business from the large Parisian houses. Thus, as in all provincial
+towns in a like position, a stranger, if he stayed two days, would wag
+the tongues and excite the imaginations of the whole community without
+his name or his business being known.
+
+Now, Arcis being still in a state of tranquillity three days before
+the morning when, by the will of the creator of so many histories,
+the present tale begins, there was seen to arrive by the county road
+a stranger, driving a handsome tilbury drawn by a valuable horse,
+and accompanied by a tiny groom, no bigger than my fist, mounted on a
+saddle-horse. The coach, connecting with the diligences to Troyes, had
+brought from La Belle Etoile three trunks coming from Paris, marked with
+no name, but belonging to this stranger, who took up his quarters at the
+Mulet inn. Every one in Arcis supposed, on the first evening, that this
+personage had come with the intention of buying the estate of Arcis; and
+much was said in all households about the future owner of the chateau.
+The tilbury, the traveller, his horses, his servant, one and all
+appeared to belong to a man who had dropped upon Arcis from the highest
+social sphere.
+
+The stranger, no doubt fatigued, did not show himself for a time;
+perhaps he spent part of the day in arranging himself in the rooms
+he had chosen, announcing his intention of staying a certain time. He
+requested to see the stable where his horses were to be kept, showed
+himself very exacting, and insisted that they should be placed in stalls
+apart from those of the innkeeper's horses, and from those of guests who
+might come later. In consequence of such singular demands, the landlord
+of the hotel du Mulet considered his guest to be an Englishman.
+
+On the evening of the first day several attempts were made at the Mulet
+by inquisitive persons to satisfy their curiosity; but no light whatever
+could be obtained from the little groom, who evaded all inquiries, not
+by refusals or by silence, but by sarcasms which seemed to be beyond his
+years and to prove him a corrupt little mortal.
+
+After making a careful toilet and dining at six o'clock, the stranger
+mounted a horse, and, followed by his groom, rode off along the road to
+Brienne, not returning till a very late hour to the Mulet. The landlord,
+his wife, and her maids had meantime gained no information from a
+careful examination of his trunks, and the articles about his rooms, as
+to the projects or the condition of their mysterious inmate.
+
+On the stranger's return the mistress of the house carried up to him
+the book in which, according to police regulations, he was required to
+inscribe his name, rank, the object of his journey, and the place from
+which he came.
+
+"I shall write nothing," he said to the mistress of the inn. "If any one
+questions you, you can say I refused; and you may send the sub-prefect
+to see me, for I have no passport. I dare say that many persons will
+make inquiries about me, madame, and you can tell them just what you
+like. I wish you to know nothing about me. If you worry me on this
+point, I shall go to the Hotel de la Poste on the Place du Pont and
+remain there for the fortnight I propose to spend here. I should be
+sorry for that, because I know that you are the sister of Gothard, one
+of the heroes of the Simeuse affair."
+
+"Enough, monsieur," said the sister of the steward of Cinq-Cygne.
+
+After such a beginning, the stranger kept the mistress of the house a
+whole hour and made her tell him all she knew of Arcis, of its fortunes,
+its interests, and its functionaries. The next day he disappeared on
+horseback, followed by his tiger, returning at midnight.
+
+We can now understand Mademoiselle Cecile's little joke, which Madame
+Beauvisage thought to be without foundation. Beauvisage and Cecile,
+surprised by the order of the day promulgated by Severine, were
+enchanted. While his wife went to dress for Madame Marion's reception,
+the father listened to the many conjectures it was natural a girl should
+make in such a case. Then, fatigued with his day, he went to bed as soon
+as his wife and daughter had departed.
+
+As may readily be supposed by those who know anything of country towns,
+a crowd of persons flocked to Madame Marion's that evening. The triumph
+of Giguet junior was thought to be a victory won against the Comte de
+Gondreville, and to insure forever the independence of Arcis in the
+matter of elections. The news of the death of poor Charles Keller was
+regarded as a judgment from heaven, intended to silence all rivalries.
+
+Antonin Goulard, Frederic Marest, Olivier Vinet, and Monsieur Martener,
+the authorities who, until then, had frequented this salon (the
+prevailing opinions of which did not seem to them contrary to the
+government created by the popular will in July, 1830), came as usual,
+possessed by curiosity to see what attitude the Beauvisage family would
+take under the circumstances.
+
+The salon, restored to its usual condition, showed no signs of the
+meeting which appeared to have settled the destiny of Simon Giguet. By
+eight o'clock four card-tables, each with four players, were under way.
+The smaller salon and the dining-room were full of people. Never, except
+on grand occasions, such as balls and fete-days, had Madame Marion seen
+such an influx at the door of her salon, forming as it were the tail of
+a comet.
+
+"It is the dawn of power," said Olivier Vinet to the mistress of the
+house, showing her this spectacle, so gratifying to the heart of a
+person who delighted in receiving company.
+
+"No one knows what there is in Simon," replied the mother. "We live in
+times when young men who persevere and are moral and upright can aspire
+to everything."
+
+This answer was made, not so much to Vinet as to Madame Beauvisage, who
+had entered the room with her daughter and was now beginning to offer
+her congratulations on the event. In order to escape indirect appeals
+and pointed interpretations of careless words, Madame Beauvisage took a
+vacant place at a whist-table and devoted her mind to the winning of one
+hundred fishes. One hundred fishes, or counters, made fifty sous! When a
+player had lost that sum it was talked of in Arcis for a couple of days.
+
+Cecile went to talk with Mademoiselle Mollot, one of her good friends,
+appearing to be seized with redoubled affection for her. Mademoiselle
+Mollot was the beauty of Arcis, just as Cecile was the heiress. Monsieur
+Mollot, clerk of the court, lived on the Grande-Place in a house
+constructed in the same manner as that of Beauvisage on the Place du
+Pont. Madame Mollot, forever seated at the window of her salon on the
+ground-floor, was attacked (as the result of that situation) by intense,
+acute, insatiable curiosity, now become a chronic and inveterate
+disease. The moment a peasant entered the square from the road to
+Brienne she saw him, and watched to see what business could have brought
+him to Arcis; she had no peace of mind until that peasant was explained.
+She spent her life in judging the events, men, things, and households of
+Arcis.
+
+The ambition of the house of Mollot, father, mother, and daughter, was
+to marry Ernestine (an only daughter) to Antonin Goulard. Consequently
+the refusal of the Beauvisage parents to entertain the proposals of
+the sub-prefect had tightened the bonds of friendship between the two
+families.
+
+"There's an impatient man!" said Ernestine to Cecile, indicating Simon
+Giguet. "He wants to come and talk with us; but every one who comes in
+feels bound to congratulate him. I've heard him say fifty times already:
+'It is, I think, less to me than to my father that this compliment of
+my fellow-citizens has been paid; but, in any case, pray believe that
+I shall be devoted not only to our general interests but to yours
+individually.' I can guess those words by the motion of his lips, and
+all the while he is looking at you with an air of martyrdom."
+
+"Ernestine," replied Cecile, "don't leave me the whole evening; I
+don't want to listen to his proposals made under cover of 'alases!' and
+mingled with sighs."
+
+"Don't you want to be the wife of a Keeper of the Seals?"
+
+"Ah! that's all nonsense," said Cecile, laughing.
+
+"But I assure you," persisted Ernestine, "that just before you came
+in Monsieur Godivet, the registrar, was declaring with enthusiasm that
+Simon would be Keeper of the Seals in three years."
+
+"Do they count on the influence of the Comte de Gondreville?" asked
+the sub-prefect, coming up to the two girls and guessing that they were
+making fun of his friend Giguet.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Antonin," said the handsome Ernestine, "you who promised
+my mother to find out all about the _stranger_, what have you heard
+about him?"
+
+"The events of to-day, Mademoiselle, are so much more important," said
+Antonin, taking a seat beside Cecile, like a diplomat delighted to
+escape general attention by conversing with two girls. "All my career as
+sub-prefect or prefect is at stake."
+
+"What! I thought you allowed your friend Simon to be nominated
+unanimously."
+
+"Simon is my friend, but the government is my master, and I expect to
+do my best to prevent Simon from being elected. And here comes Madame
+Mollot, who owes me her concurrence as the wife of a man whose functions
+attach him to the government."
+
+"I am sure we ask nothing better than to be on your side," replied the
+sheriff's wife. "Mollot has told me," she continued in a low voice,
+"what took place here to-day--it is pitiable! Only one man showed
+talent, and that was Achille Pigoult. Everybody agrees that he would
+make a fine orator in the Chamber; and therefore, though he has nothing,
+and my daughter has a _dot_ of sixty thousand francs, not to speak of
+what, as an only child, she will inherit from us and also from her uncle
+at Mollot and from my aunt Lambert at Troyes,--well, I declare to you
+that if Monsieur Achille Pigoult did us the honor to ask her to wife,
+I should give her to him; yes, I should--provided always she liked
+him. But the silly little goose wants to marry as she pleases; it is
+Mademoiselle Beauvisage who puts such notions into her head."
+
+The sub-prefect received this double broadside like a man who knows he
+has thirty thousand francs a year, and expects a prefecture.
+
+"Mademoiselle is right," he said, looking at Cecile; "she is rich enough
+to make a marriage of love."
+
+"Don't let us talk about marriage," said Ernestine; "it saddens my
+poor dear Cecile, who was owning to me just now that in order not to be
+married for her money, but for herself, she should like an affair with
+some stranger who knew nothing of Arcis and her future expectations as
+Lady Croesus, and would spin her a romance to end in true love and a
+marriage."
+
+"That's a very pretty idea!" cried Olivier Vinet, joining the group of
+young ladies in order to get away from the partisans of Simon, the
+idol of the day. "I always knew that Mademoiselle had as much sense as
+money."
+
+"And," continued Ernestine, "she has selected for the hero of her
+romance--"
+
+"Oh!" interrupted Madame Mollot, "an old man of fifty!--fie!"
+
+"How do you know he is fifty?" asked Olivier Vinet, laughing.
+
+"How?" replied Madame Mollot. "Why, this morning I was so puzzled that I
+got out my opera-glass--"
+
+"Bravo!" cried the superintendent of _ponts et chaussees_, who was
+paying court to the mother to obtain the daughter.
+
+"And so," continued Madame Mollot, "I was able to see him shaving; with
+such elegant razors!--mounted in gold, or silver-gilt!"
+
+"Gold! gold, of course!" said Vinet. "When things are unknown they
+should always be imagined of the finest quality. Consequently I, not
+having seen this gentleman, am perfectly sure that he is at least a
+count."
+
+This speech created a laugh; and the laughing group excited the jealousy
+of a group of dowagers and the attention of a troop of men in black who
+surrounded Simon Giguet. As for the latter, he was chafing in despair at
+not being able to lay his fortune and his future at the feet of the rich
+Cecile.
+
+"Yes," continued Vinet, "a man distinguished for his birth, for
+his manners, his fortune, his equipages,--a lion, a dandy, a
+yellow-kid-glover!"
+
+"Monsieur Olivier," said Ernestine, "he drives the prettiest tilbury you
+ever saw."
+
+"What? Antonin, you never told me he had a tilbury when we were
+talking about that conspirator this morning. A tilbury! Why, that's an
+extenuating circumstance; he can't be a republican."
+
+"Mesdemoiselles, there is nothing that I will not do in the interests
+of your amusement," said Antonin Goulard. "I will instantly proceed
+to ascertain if this individual is a count, and if he is, what kind of
+count."
+
+"You can make a report upon him," said the superintendent of bridges.
+
+"For the use of all future sub-prefects," added Olivier Vinet.
+
+"How can you do it?" asked Madame Mollot.
+
+"Oh!" replied the sub-prefect, "ask Mademoiselle Beauvisage whom she
+would accept as her husband among all of us here present; she will not
+answer. Allow me the same discretion. Mesdemoiselles, restrain your
+anxiety; in ten minutes you shall know whether the Unknown is a count or
+a commercial traveller."
+
+
+
+
+X. THE REVELATIONS OF AN OPERA-GLASS
+
+Antonin Goulard left the little group of young ladies, in which,
+besides Cecile and Ernestine, were Mademoiselle Berton, daughter of the
+tax-collector,--an insignificant young person who played the part of
+satellite to Cecile,--and Mademoiselle Herbelot, sister of the second
+notary of Arcis, an old maid of thirty, soured, affected, and dressed
+like all old maids; for she wore, over a bombazine gown, an embroidered
+fichu, the corners of which, gathered to the front of the bodice, were
+knotted together after the well-known fashion under the Terror.
+
+"Julien," said the sub-prefect to his valet, who was waiting in the
+antechamber, "you who served six years at Gondreville ought to know how
+a count's coronet is made."
+
+"Yes, monsieur; it has pearls on its nine points."
+
+"Very good. Go to the Mulet, and try to clap your eye on the tilbury of
+the gentleman who is stopping there, and then come and tell me what is
+painted on it. Do your business thoroughly, and bring me all the gossip
+of the inn. If you see the little groom, ask him at what hour to-morrow
+his master can receive the sub-prefect--in case you find the nine
+pearls. Don't drink, don't gossip yourself, and come back quickly; and
+as soon as you get back let me know it by coming to the door of the
+salon."
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+The Mulet inn, as we have already said, stands on the square, at the
+opposite corner to the garden wall of the Marion estate on the other
+side of the road leading to Brienne. Therefore the solution of the
+problem could be rapid. Antonin Goulard returned to his place by Cecile
+to await results.
+
+"We talked so much about the stranger yesterday that I dreamed of him
+all night," said Madame Mollot.
+
+"Ha! ha! do you still dream of unknown heroes, fair lady?" said Vinet.
+
+"You are very impertinent; if I chose I could make you dream of me," she
+retorted. "So this morning when I rose--"
+
+It may not be useless to say that Madame Mollot was considered a clever
+woman in Arcis; that is, she expressed herself fluently and abused that
+advantage. A Parisian, wandering by chance into these regions, like the
+Unknown, would have thought her excessively garrulous.
+
+"--I was, naturally, making my toilet, and as I looked mechanically
+about me--"
+
+"Through the window?" asked Antonin.
+
+"Certainly; my dressing-room opens on the street. Now you know, of
+course, that Poupart has put the stranger into one of the rooms exactly
+opposite to mine--"
+
+"One room, mamma!" interrupted Ernestine. "The count occupies three
+rooms! The little groom, dressed all in black, is in the first. They
+have made a salon of the next, and the Unknown sleeps in the third."
+
+"Then he has half the rooms in the inn," remarked Mademoiselle Herbelot.
+
+"Well, young ladies, and what has that to do with his person?" said
+Madame Mollot, sharply, not pleased at the interruption. "I am talking
+of the man himself--"
+
+"Don't interrupt the orator," put in Vinet.
+
+"As I was stooping--"
+
+"Seated?" asked Antonin.
+
+"Madame was of course as she naturally would be,--making her toilet and
+looking at the Mulet," said Vinet.
+
+In the provinces such jokes are prized, for people have so long said
+everything to each other that they have recourse at last to the sort
+of nonsense our fathers indulged in before the introduction of English
+hypocrisy,--one of those products against which custom-houses are
+powerless.
+
+"Don't interrupt the orator," repeated Cecile Beauvisage to Vinet, with
+whom she exchanged a smile.
+
+"My eyes involuntarily fell on the window of the room in which the
+stranger had slept the night before. I don't know what time he went to
+bed, although I was awake till past midnight; but I have the misfortune
+to be married to a man who snores fit to crack the planks and the
+rafters. If I fall asleep first, oh! I sleep so sound nothing can wake
+me; but if Mollot drops off first my night is ruined--"
+
+"Don't you ever go off together?" said Achille Pigoult, joining the
+group. "I see you are talking of sleep."
+
+"Hush, naughty boy!" replied Madame Mollot, graciously.
+
+"Do you know what they mean?" whispered Cecile to Ernestine.
+
+"At any rate, he was not in at one o'clock in the morning," continued
+Madame Mollot.
+
+"Then he defrauded you!--came home without your knowing it!" said
+Achille Pigoult. "Ha! that man is sly indeed; he'll put us all in his
+pouch and sell us in the market-place."
+
+"To whom?" asked Vinet.
+
+"Oh! to a project! to an idea! to a system!" replied the notary, to whom
+Olivier smiled with a knowing air.
+
+"Imagine my surprise," continued Madame Mollot, "when I saw a stuff, a
+material, of splendid magnificence, most beautiful! dazzling! I said to
+myself, 'That must be a dressing-gown of the spun-glass material I have
+sometimes seen in exhibitions of industrial products.' So I fetched my
+opera-glass to examine it. But, good gracious! what do you think I saw?
+Above the dressing-gown, where the head ought to have been, I saw an
+enormous mass, something like a knee--I can't tell you how my curiosity
+was excited."
+
+"I can conceive it," said Antonin.
+
+"No, you can _not_ conceive it," said Madame Mollot; "for this knee--"
+
+"Ah! I understand," cried Olivier Vinet, laughing; "the Unknown was also
+making his toilet, and you saw his two knees."
+
+"No, no!" cried Madame Mollot; "you are putting incongruities into my
+mouth. The stranger was standing up; he held a sponge in his hand above
+an immense basin, and--none of your jokes, Monsieur Olivier!--it wasn't
+his knee, it was his head! He was washing his bald head; he hasn't a
+spear of hair upon it."
+
+"Impudent man!" said Antonin. "He certainly can't have come with ideas
+of marriage in that head. Here we must have hair in order to be married.
+That's essential."
+
+"I am therefore right in saying that our Unknown visitor must be fifty
+years old. Nobody ever takes to a wig before that time of life. After a
+time, when his toilet was finished, he opened his window and looked out;
+and _then_ he wore a splendid head of black hair. He turned his eyeglass
+full on me,--for by that time, I was in my balcony. Therefore, my dear
+Cecile, you see for yourself that you can't take that man for the hero
+of your romance."
+
+"Why not? Men of fifty are not to be despised, if they are counts," said
+Ernestine.
+
+"Heavens! what has age to do with it?" said Mademoiselle Herbelot.
+
+"Provided one gets a husband," added Vinet, whose cold maliciousness
+made him feared.
+
+"Yes," replied the old maid, feeling the cut, "I should prefer a man of
+fifty, indulgent, kind, and considerate, to a young man without a heart,
+whose wit would bite every one, even his wife."
+
+"This is all very well for conversation," retorted Vinet, "but in order
+to love the man of fifty and reject the other, it is necessary to have
+the opportunity to choose."
+
+"Oh!" said Madame Mollot, in order to stop this passage at arms between
+the old maid and Vinet, who always went to far, "when a woman has
+had experience of life she knows that a husband of fifty or one of
+twenty-five is absolutely the same thing if she merely respects him. The
+important things in marriage are the benefits to be derived from it. If
+Mademoiselle Beauvisage wants to go to Paris and shine there--and in
+her place I should certainly feel so--she ought not to take a husband
+in Arcis. If I had the fortune she will have, I should give my hand to
+a count, to a man who would put me in a high social position, and I
+shouldn't ask to see the certificate of his birth."
+
+"It would satisfy you to see his toilet," whispered Vinet in her ear.
+
+"But the king makes counts," said Madame Marion, who had now joined the
+group and was surveying the bevy of young ladies.
+
+"Ah! madame," remarked Vinet, "but some young girls prefer their counts
+already made."
+
+"Well, Monsieur Antonin," said Cecile, laughing at Vinet's sarcasm.
+"Your ten minutes have expired, and you haven't told us whether the
+Unknown is a count or not."
+
+"I shall keep my promise," replied the sub-prefect, perceiving at that
+moment the head of his valet in the doorway; and again he left his place
+beside Cecile.
+
+"You are talking of the stranger," said Madame Marion. "Is anything
+really known about him?"
+
+"No, madame," replied Achille Pigoult; "but he is, without knowing it,
+like the clown of a circus, the centre of the eyes of the two thousand
+inhabitants of this town. I know one thing about him," added the little
+notary.
+
+"Oh, tell us, Monsieur Achille!" cried Ernestine, eagerly.
+
+"His tiger's name is Paradise!"
+
+"Paradise!" echoed every one included in the little circle.
+
+"Can a man be called Paradise?" asked Madame Herbelot, who had joined
+her sister-in-law.
+
+"It tends to prove," continued the notary, "that the master is an angel;
+for when his tiger follows him--you understand."
+
+"It is the road of Paradise! very good, that," said Madame Marion,
+anxious to flatter Achille Pigoult in the interests of her nephew.
+
+"Monsieur," said Antonin's valet in the dining-room, "the tilbury has a
+coat of arms--"
+
+"Coat of arms!"
+
+"Yes, and droll enough they are! There's a coronet with nine points and
+pearls--"
+
+"Then he's a count!"
+
+"And a monster with wings, flying like a postilion who has dropped
+something. And here is what is written on the belt," added the man,
+taking a paper from his pocket. "Mademoiselle Anicette, the Princesse de
+Cadignan's lady's maid, who came in a carriage" (the Cinq-Cygne carriage
+before the door of the Mulet!) "to bring a letter to the gentleman,
+wrote it down for me."
+
+"Give it to me."
+
+The sub-prefect read the words: _Quo me trahit fortuna_.
+
+Though he was not strong enough in French blazon to know the house that
+bore that device, Antonin felt sure that the Cinq-Cygnes would not
+send their chariot, nor the Princess de Cadignan a missive by her maid,
+except to a person of the highest nobility.
+
+"Ha! so you know the maid of the Princess de Cadignan! happy man!" said
+Antonin.
+
+Julien, a young countryman, after serving six months in the household
+of the Comte de Gondreville, had entered the service of the sub-prefect,
+who wanted a servant of the _right style_.
+
+"But, monsieur, Anicette is my father's god-daughter. Papa, who wanted
+to do well by the girl, whose father was dead, sent her to a dressmaker
+in Paris because my mother could not endure her."
+
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"Rather; the proof is that she got into trouble in Paris; but finally,
+as she has talent and can make gowns and dress hair, she got a place
+with the princess."
+
+"What did she tell you about Cinq-Cygne? Is there much company?"
+
+"A great deal, monsieur. There's the princess and Monsieur d'Arthez, the
+Duc de Maufrigneuse and the duchess and the young marquis. In fact the
+chateau is full. They expect Monseigneur the Bishop of Troyes to-night."
+
+"Monsieur Troubert! I should like to know how long he is going to stay."
+
+"Anicette thinks for some time; and she believes he is coming to meet
+the gentleman who is now at the Mulet. They expect more company. The
+coachman told me they were talking a great deal about the election.
+Monsieur le president Michu is expected in a few days."
+
+"Try to bring that lady's maid into town on pretence of shopping. Have
+you any designs upon her?"
+
+"If she has any savings I don't know but what I might. She is a sly one,
+though."
+
+"Tell her to come and see you at the sub-prefecture."
+
+"Yes, monsieur. I'll go and tell her now."
+
+"Don't say anything about me, or she might not come."
+
+"Ah! monsieur; haven't I served at Gondreville?"
+
+"You don't know why they sent that message from Cinq-Cygne at this hour,
+do you? It is half-past nine o'clock."
+
+"It must have been something pressing. The gentleman had only just
+returned from Gondreville."
+
+"Gondreville!--has he been to Gondreville?"
+
+"He dined there, monsieur. If you went to the Mulet you'd laugh! The
+little tiger is, saving your presence, as drunk as a fiddler. He drank
+such a lot of champagne in the servants' hall that he can't stand on his
+legs; they have been filling him for fun."
+
+"And the count?"
+
+"The count had gone to bed; but as soon as he received the letter he got
+up. He is now dressing himself; and they are putting the horse in the
+tilbury. The count is to spend the night at Cinq-Cygne."
+
+"He must be some great personage."
+
+"Oh, yes, monsieur; for Gothard, the steward of Cinq-Cygne, came this
+morning to see his brother-in-law Poupart, and warned him to be very
+discreet about the gentleman and to serve him like a king."
+
+"Vinet must be right," thought the sub-prefect. "Can there be some cabal
+on foot?"
+
+"It was Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse who sent Gothard to the Mulet.
+Poupart came to the meeting here this morning only because the gentleman
+wished him to do so; if he had sent him to Paris, he'd go. Gothard told
+Poupart to keep silent about the gentleman, and to fool all inquisitive
+people."
+
+"If you can get Anicette here, don't fail to let me know," said Antonin.
+
+"But I could see her at Cinq-Cygne if monsieur would send me to his
+house at Val-Preux."
+
+"That's an idea. You might profit by the chariot to get there. But what
+reason could you give to the little groom?"
+
+"He's a madcap, that boy, monsieur. Would you believe it, drunk as he
+is, he has just mounted his master's thoroughbred, a horse that can do
+twenty miles an hour, and started for Troyes with a letter in order that
+it may reach Paris to-morrow! And only nine years and a half old! What
+will he be at twenty?"
+
+The sub-prefect listened mechanically to these remarks. Julien gossiped
+on, his master listening, absorbed in thought about the stranger.
+
+"Wait here," he said to the man as he turned with slow steps to re-enter
+the salon. "What a mess!" he thought to himself,--"a man who dines at
+Gondreville and spends the night at Cinq-Cygnes! Mysteries indeed!"
+
+"Well?" cried the circle around Mademoiselle Beauvisage as soon as he
+reappeared.
+
+"He is a count, and _vieille roche_, I answer for it."
+
+"Oh! how I should like to see him!" cried Cecile.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Antonin, smiling and looking maliciously at Madame
+Mollot, "he is tall and well-made and does not wear a wig. His little
+groom was as drunk as the twenty-four cantons; they filled him with
+champagne at Gondreville and that little scamp, only nine years old,
+answered my man Julien, who asked him about his master's wig, with all
+the assumption of an old valet: 'My master! wear a wig!--if he did I'd
+leave him. He dyes his hair and that's bad enough.'"
+
+"Your opera-glass magnifies," said Achille Pigoult to Madame Mollot, who
+laughed.
+
+"Well, the tiger of the handsome count, drunk as he is, is now riding
+to Troyes to post a letter, and he'll get there, as they say, in
+five-quarters of an hour."
+
+"I'd like to have that tiger," said Vinet.
+
+"If the count dined at Gondreville we shall soon know all about him,"
+remarked Cecile; "for my grandpapa is going there to-morrow morning."
+
+"What will strike you as very strange," said Antonin Goulard, "is that
+the party at Cinq-Cygne have just sent Mademoiselle Anicette, the maid
+of the Princesse de Cadignan, in the Cinq-Cygne carriage, with a note to
+the stranger, and he is going now to pass the night there."
+
+"_Ah ca_!" said Olivier Vinet, "then he is not a man; he's a devil, a
+phoenix, he will poculate--"
+
+"Ah, fie! monsieur," said Madame Mollot, "you use words that are
+really--"
+
+"'Poculate' is a word of the highest latinity, madame," replied Vinet,
+gravely. "So, as I said, he will poculate with Louis Philippe in the
+morning, and banquet at the Holy-Rood with Charles the Tenth at
+night. There is but one reason that allows a decent man to go to both
+camps--from Montague to Capulet! Ha, ha! I know who that stranger is.
+He's--"
+
+"The president of a railway from Paris to Lyons, or Paris to Dijon, or
+from Montereau to Troyes."
+
+"That's true," said Antonin. "You have it. There's nothing but
+speculation that is welcomed everywhere."
+
+"Yes, just see how great names, great families, the old and the new
+peerage are rushing hot-foot into enterprises and partnerships," said
+Achille Pigoult.
+
+"Francs attract the Franks," remarked Olivier Vinet, without a smile.
+
+"You are not an _olive_-branch of peace," said Madame Mollot, laughing.
+
+"But is it not demoralizing to see such names as Verneuil, Maufrigneuse,
+and Herouville side by side with those of du Tillet and Nucingen in the
+Bourse speculations?"
+
+"Our great Unknown is undoubtedly an embryo railway," said Olivier
+Vinet.
+
+"Well, to-morrow all Arcis will be upside-down about it," said Achille
+Pigoult. "I shall call upon the Unknown and ask him to make me notary of
+the affair. There'll be two thousand deeds to draw, at the least."
+
+"Our romance is turning into a locomotive," said Ernestine to Cecile.
+
+"A count with a railway is all the more marriageable," remarked Achille
+Pigoult. "But who knows whether he is a bachelor?"
+
+"Oh! I shall know that to-morrow from grandpapa," cried Cecile, with
+pretended enthusiasm.
+
+"What a jest!" said Madame Mollot. "You can't really mean, my little
+Cecile, that you are thinking of that stranger?"
+
+"But the husband is always the stranger," interposed Olivier Vinet,
+making a sign to Mademoiselle Beauvisage which she fully understood.
+
+"Why shouldn't I think of him?" asked Cecile; "that isn't compromising.
+Besides, he is, so these gentlemen say, either some great speculator, or
+some great seigneur, and either would suit me. I love Paris; and I want
+a house, a carriage, an opera-box, etc., in Paris."
+
+"That's right," said Vinet. "When people dream, they needn't refuse
+themselves anything. If I had the pleasure of being your brother I
+should marry you to the young Marquis de Cinq-Cygne, who seems to me a
+lively young scamp who will make the money dance, and will laugh at his
+mother's prejudices against the actors in the famous Simeuse melodrama."
+
+"It would be easier for you to make yourself prime-minister,"
+said Madame Marion. "There will never be any alliance between the
+granddaughter of Grevin and the Cinq-Cygnes."
+
+"Romeo came within an ace of marrying Juliet," remarked Achille Pigoult,
+"and Mademoiselle is more beautiful than--"
+
+"Oh! if you are going to quote operas and opera beauties!" said Herbelot
+the notary, naively, having finished his game of whist.
+
+"My legal brother," said Achille Pigoult, "is not very strong on the
+history of the middle ages."
+
+"Come, Malvina!" said the stout notary to his wife, making no reply to
+his young associate.
+
+"Tell me, Monsieur Antonin," said Cecile to the sub-prefect, "you spoke
+of Anicette, the maid of the Princesse de Cadignan; do you know her?"
+
+"No, but Julien does; she is the goddaughter of his father, and they are
+good friends together."
+
+"Then try, through Julien, to get her to live with us. Mamma wouldn't
+consider wages."
+
+"Mademoiselle, to hear is to obey, as they say to despots in Asia,"
+replied the sub-prefect. "Just see to what lengths I will go in order to
+serve you."
+
+And he left the room to give Julien orders to go with Anicette in the
+chariot and coax her away from the princess at any price.
+
+
+
+
+XI. IN WHICH THE CANDIDATE BEGINS TO LOSE VOTES
+
+At this moment Simon Giguet, who had got through his bowing and scraping
+to all the influential men of Arcis, and who regarded himself as sure of
+his election, joined the circle around Cecile and Mademoiselle Mollot.
+The evening was far advanced. Ten o'clock had struck. After an enormous
+consumption of cakes, orgeat, punch, lemonade, and various syrups, those
+who had come that evening solely for political reasons and who were
+not accustomed to Madame Marion's floors, to them aristocratic,
+departed,--all the more willingly, because they were unaccustomed to
+sitting up so late. The evening then began to take on its usual air of
+intimacy. Simon Giguet hoped that he could now exchange a few words with
+Cecile, and he looked at her like a conqueror. The look displeased her.
+
+"My dear fellow," said Antonin to Simon, observing on his friend's face
+the glory of success, "you come at a moment when the noses of all the
+young men in Arcis are put out of joint."
+
+"Very much so," said Ernestine, whom Cecile had nudged with her elbow.
+"We are distracted, Cecile and I, about the great Unknown, and we are
+quarrelling for him."
+
+"But," said Cecile, "he is no longer unknown; he is a count."
+
+"Some adventurer!" replied Simon Giguet, with an air of contempt.
+
+"Will you say that, Monsieur Simon," answered Cecile, feeling piqued,
+"of a man to whom the Princesse de Cadignan has just sent her servants,
+who dined at Gondreville to-day, and is to spend this evening with the
+Marquise de Cinq-Cygne?"
+
+This was said sharply, and in so hard a tone that Simon was
+disconcerted.
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle," said Olivier Vinet, "if we said to each other's
+faces what we all say behind our backs, social life wouldn't be
+possible. The pleasures of society, especially in the provinces, are to
+slander and backbite our neighbors."
+
+"Monsieur Simon is jealous of your enthusiasm for the mysterious count,"
+said Ernestine.
+
+"It seems to me," said Cecile, "that Monsieur Simon has no right to be
+jealous of my affections."
+
+After which remark, uttered in a way to dumfound Simon, Cecile rose;
+the others made way for her and she went to her mother, who was just
+finishing her rubber of whist.
+
+"My dearest!" cried Madame Marion, hurrying after the heiress, "I think
+you are rather hard on my poor Simon."
+
+"What has she done, my dear little kitten?" asked Madame Beauvisage.
+
+"Mamma, Monsieur Simon called my great Unknown an adventurer!"
+
+Simon had followed his aunt and was now beside the card-table. The four
+persons whose interests were concerned were thus in the middle of the
+salon,--Cecile and her mother on one side of the table, Madame Marion
+and her nephew on the other.
+
+"Really, madame," said Simon Giguet, "there must be a strong desire to
+find fault and to quarrel with me simply because I happened to say
+that a gentleman whom all Arcis is talking about and who stops at the
+Mulet--"
+
+"Do you think he has come here to put himself in competition with you?"
+said Madame Beauvisage jestingly.
+
+"I should be very indignant with him certainly if he were to cause the
+slightest misunderstanding between Mademoiselle Cecile and myself," said
+the candidate, with a supplicating look at the young girl.
+
+"You gave your opinion, monsieur, in a decisive manner which proves that
+you are very despotic," she replied; "but you are right; if you wish to
+be minister you ought to be decisive."
+
+Here Madame Marion took Madame Beauvisage by the arm and led her to
+a sofa. Cecile, finding herself alone, returned to her former seat to
+avoid hearing Simon's answer to her speech, and the candidate was left
+standing rather foolishly before the table, where he mechanically played
+with the counters.
+
+"My dear friend," said Madame Marion in a low voice to Madame
+Beauvisage, "you see that nothing can now hinder my nephew's election."
+
+"I am delighted both for your sake and for the Chamber of Deputies,"
+said Severine.
+
+"My nephew is certain to go far, my dear; and I'll tell you why: his
+own fortune, that which his father will leave him and mine, will amount
+altogether to some thirty thousand francs a year. When a man is a deputy
+and has a fortune like that, he can aspire to anything."
+
+"Madame, he has our utmost admiration and our most earnest wishes for
+the success of his political career; but--"
+
+"I am not asking for an answer," said Madame Marion, hastily
+interrupting her friend. "I only beg you to reflect on the following
+suggestions: Do our children suit each other? Can we marry them? We
+should then live in Paris during the sessions; and who knows if the
+deputy of Arcis may not be settled there permanently in some fine place
+in the magistracy? Look at Monsieur Vinet of Provins, how he has made
+his way. People blamed Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf for marrying him; yet
+she will soon be wife of the Keeper of the Seals; Monsieur Vinet can be
+peer of France whenever he pleases."
+
+"Madame, I have not the power to marry my daughter according to my own
+tastes. In the first place, her father and I leave her absolutely free
+to choose for herself. If she wanted to marry the 'great Unknown' and we
+found that the match was suitable, we should give our consent. Besides
+this, Cecile is wholly dependent on her grandfather, who intends to give
+her on her marriage the Hotel de Beauseant in Paris, which he purchased
+for us six years ago; the value of which is now rated at eight hundred
+thousand francs. It is one of the finest houses in the faubourg
+Saint-Germain. Moreover, he intends to add two hundred thousand francs
+for the cost of fitting it up. A grandfather who behaves in this way,
+and who can influence my mother-in-law to make a few sacrifices for
+her granddaughter in expectation of a suitable marriage, has a right to
+advise--"
+
+"Certainly," said Madame Marion, stupefied by this confidence, which
+made the marriage of her nephew and Cecile extremely difficult.
+
+"Even if Cecile had nothing to expect from her grandfather Grevin,"
+continued Madame Beauvisage, "she would not marry without first
+consulting him. If you have any proposals to make, go and see my
+father."
+
+"Very good; I will go," said Madame Marion.
+
+Madame Beauvisage made a sign to Cecile, and together they left the
+salon.
+
+The next day Antonin and Frederic Marest found themselves, according
+to their usual custom, with Monsieur Martener and Olivier, beneath the
+lindens of the Avenue of Sighs, smoking their cigars and walking up and
+down. This daily promenade is one of the petty pleasures of government
+officials in the provinces when they happen to be on good terms with one
+another.
+
+After they had made a few turns, Simon Giguet came up and joined them
+saying to the sub-prefect with a mysterious air:--
+
+"You ought to be faithful to an old comrade who wishes to get you the
+rosette of an officer and a prefecture."
+
+"You are beginning your political career betimes," said Antonin,
+laughing. "You are trying to corrupt me, rapid puritan!"
+
+"Will you support me?"
+
+"My dear fellow, you know very well that Bar-sur-Aube votes here. Who
+can guarantee a majority under such circumstances? My colleague of
+Bar-sur-Aube would complain of me if I did not unite my efforts with his
+in support of the government. Your promise is conditional; whereas my
+dismissal would be certain."
+
+"But I have no competitors."
+
+"You think so," said Antonin, "but some one is sure to turn up; you may
+rely on that."
+
+"Why doesn't my aunt come, when she knows I am on a gridiron!" exclaimed
+Giguet, suddenly. "These three hours are like three years!"
+
+His secret had escaped him and he now admitted to his friend that Madame
+Marion had gone on his behalf to old Grevin with a formal proposal for
+Cecile's hand.
+
+The pair had now reached the Brienne road opposite to the Mulet
+hostelry. While the lawyer looked down the street towards the bridge his
+aunt would have to cross, the sub-prefect examined the gullies made by
+the rain in the open square. Arcis is not paved. The plains of Champagne
+furnish no material fit for building, nor even pebbles large enough for
+cobble-stone pavements. One or two streets and a few detached places
+are imperfectly macadamized and that is saying enough to describe their
+condition after a rain. The sub-prefect gave himself an appearance
+of occupation by apparently exercising his thoughts on this important
+object; but he lost not a single expression of suffering on the anxious
+face of his companion.
+
+At this moment, the stranger was returning from the Chateau de
+Cinq-Cygne, where he had apparently passed the night. Goulard resolved
+to clear up, himself, the mystery wrapped about the Unknown, who was
+physically enveloped in an overcoat of thick cloth called a _paletot_,
+then the fashion. A mantle, thrown across his knees for a covering, hid
+the lower half of his body, while an enormous muffler of red cashmere
+covered his neck and head to the eyes. His hat, jauntily tipped to
+one side, was, nevertheless, not ridiculous. Never was a mystery more
+mysteriously bundled up and swathed.
+
+"Look out!" cried the tiger, who preceded the tilbury on horseback.
+"Open, papa Poupart, open!" he screamed in his shrill little voice.
+
+The three servants of the inn ran out, and the tilbury drove in without
+any one being able to see a single feature of the stranger's face. The
+sub-prefect followed the tilbury into the courtyard, and went to the
+door of the inn.
+
+"Madame Poupart," said Antonin, "will you ask Monsieur--Monsieur--"
+
+"I don't know his name," said Gothard's sister.
+
+"You do wrong! The rules of the police are strict, and Monsieur Groslier
+doesn't trifle, like some commissaries of police."
+
+"Innkeepers are never to blame about election-time," remarked the little
+tiger, getting off his horse.
+
+"I'll repeat that to Vinet," thought the sub-prefect. "Go and ask your
+master if he can receive the sub-prefect of Arcis."
+
+Presently Paradise returned.
+
+"Monsieur begs Monsieur the sub-prefect to come up; he will be delighted
+to see him."
+
+"My lad," said Olivier Vinet, who with the two other functionaries had
+joined the sub-prefect before the inn, "how much does your master give a
+year for a boy of your cut and wits?"
+
+"Give, monsieur! What do you take me for? Monsieur le comte lets himself
+be milked, and I'm content."
+
+"That boy was raised in a good school!" said Frederic Marest.
+
+"The highest school, monsieur," said the urchin, amazing the four
+friends with his perfect self-possession.
+
+"What a Figaro!" cried Vinet.
+
+"Mustn't lower one's price," said the infant. "My master calls me a
+little Robert-Macaire, and since we have learned how to invest our money
+we are Figaro, plus a savings bank."
+
+"How much do you earn?"
+
+"Oh! some races I make two or three thousand francs--and without selling
+my master, monsieur."
+
+"Sublime infant!" said Vinet; "he knows the turf."
+
+"Yes, and all gentlemen riders," said the child, sticking out his tongue
+at Vinet.
+
+Antonin Goulard, ushered by the landlord into a room which had been
+turned into a salon, felt himself instantly under the focus of an
+eyeglass held in the most impertinent manner by the stranger.
+
+"Monsieur," said the sub-prefect with a certain official hauteur, "I
+have just learned from the wife of the innkeeper that you refuse to
+conform to the ordinances of the police, and as I do not doubt that you
+are a person of distinction, I have come myself--"
+
+"Is your name Goulard?" demanded the stranger in a high voice.
+
+"I am the sub-prefect, monsieur," replied Antonin Goulard.
+
+"Your father belonged to the Simeuse family?"
+
+"And I, monsieur, belong to the government; that is how times differ."
+
+"You have a servant named Julien, who has tried to entice the Princesse
+de Cadignan's maid away from her?"
+
+"Monsieur, I do not allow any one to speak to me in this manner," said
+Goulard; "you misunderstand my character."
+
+"And you want to know about mine!" returned the Unknown. "Well, I
+will now make myself known. You can write in the landlord's book:
+'Impertinent fellow. Direct from Paris. Age doubtful. Travelling for
+pleasure.' It would be rather a novelty in France to imitate England and
+let people come and go as they please, without tormenting them at every
+turn for 'papers.' I have no passport; now, what will you do to me?"
+
+"The _procureur-du-roi_ is walking up and down there under the lindens,"
+said the sub-prefect.
+
+"Monsieur Marest! Wish him good-morning from me."
+
+"But who are you?"
+
+"Whatever you wish me to be, my dear Monsieur Goulard," said the
+stranger. "You alone shall decide _what_ I am to be in this department.
+Give me some advice on that head. Here, read that."
+
+And the stranger handed the sub-prefect the following letter:--
+
+  (Confidential.)       Prefecture of the Aube.
+
+  Monsieur the Sub-prefect,--You will consult with the bearer of
+  this letter as to the election at Arcis, and you will conform to
+  all the suggestions and requests he may make to you. I request you
+  to conduct this matter with the utmost discretion, and to treat
+  the bearer with all the respect that is due to his station.
+
+The letter was written and signed by the prefect of the Aube.
+
+"You have been talking prose without knowing it," said the Unknown,
+taking back the letter.
+
+Antonin Goulard, already struck with the aristocratic tone and manners
+of this personage, became respectful.
+
+"How was that, monsieur?" he asked.
+
+"By endeavoring to entice Anicette. She told us of the attempts of your
+man Julien to corrupt her. But my little tiger, Paradise, got the better
+of him, and he ended by admitting that you wanted to put Anicette into
+the service of one of the richest families in Arcis. Now, as the
+richest family in Arcis is the Beauvisage family I make no doubt it is
+Mademoiselle Cecile who covets this treasure."
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Very good; then Anicette shall enter the Beauvisage household at once."
+
+He whistled. Paradise presented himself so rapidly that his master said:
+"You were listening!"
+
+"In spite of myself, Monsieur le comte; these partitions are nothing but
+paper. But if Monsieur le comte prefers, I will move upstairs."
+
+"No, you can listen; it is your perquisite. It is for me to speak low
+when I don't want you to know my affairs. Go back to Cinq-Cygne, and
+give this gold piece to that little Anicette from me. Julien shall have
+the credit of enticing her away," he continued, addressing Goulard.
+"That bit of gold will inform her that she is to follow him. Anicette
+may be useful to the success of our candidate."
+
+"Anicette?"
+
+"Monsieur, it is now thirty-two years since lady's-maids have served
+my purposes. I had my first adventure at the age of thirteen, like the
+regent, the great-great-grandfather of our present King. Do you know the
+fortune of this Mademoiselle Beauvisage?"
+
+"I can't help knowing it, monsieur, for yesterday at Madame Marion's,
+Madame Beauvisage said openly that Monsieur Grevin, Cecile's
+grandfather, would give his granddaughter the hotel de Beauseant in
+Paris and two hundred thousand francs for a wedding present."
+
+The stranger's eyes expressed no surprise. He seemed to consider the
+fortune rather paltry.
+
+"Do you know Arcis well?" he asked of Goulard.
+
+"I am the sub-prefect and I was born here."
+
+"What is the best way to balk curiosity?"
+
+"By satisfying it. For instance, Monsieur le Comte has a baptismal name;
+let him register that with the title of count."
+
+"Very good; Comte Maxime."
+
+"And if monsieur will assume the position of a railway official, Arcis
+will be content; it will amuse itself by floating that stick at least
+for a fortnight."
+
+"No, I prefer to be concerned in irrigation; it is less common. I have
+come down to survey the wastelands of Champagne in order to reclaim
+them. That will be, my good Monsieur Goulard, a reason for inviting me
+to dine with you to-morrow to meet the mayor and his family; I wish to
+see them, and study them."
+
+"I shall be only to happy to receive you," said the sub-prefect; "but I
+must ask your indulgence for the deficiencies of my little household."
+
+"If I succeed in managing the election of Arcis according to the wishes
+of those who have sent me here, you, my dear friend, will be made a
+prefect. Here, read these"; and he held out two letters to his visitor.
+
+"Very good, Monsieur le comte," said Antonin, returning them.
+
+"Make a list of all the votes on which the ministry may count. Above
+all, let no one suspect that you and I understand each other. I am a
+speculator in land, and I don't care a fig for elections."
+
+"I will send the commissary of police to force you to inscribe your name
+on Poupart's register."
+
+"So do. Adieu, monsieur. Heavens! what a region this is," said the
+count, in a loud voice; "one can't take a step without having the
+community, sub-prefect and all, on one's back."
+
+"You will have to answer to the commissary of police, monsieur," said
+Antonin, in an equally loud tone.
+
+And for the next twenty minutes Madame Mollot talked of the altercation
+that took place between the sub-prefect and the stranger.
+
+"Well, what wood is the beam that has plumped into our bog made of?"
+said Olivier Vinet when Antonin Goulard rejoined them on leaving the
+Mulet.
+
+"He is a Comte Maxime who is here to study the geological system
+of Champagne, with a view to finding mineral waters," replied the
+sub-prefect, with an easy manner.
+
+"Say a speculator," said Oliver.
+
+"Does he expect to get the natives to lay out capital?" asked Monsieur
+Martener.
+
+"I doubt if our royalists will go into that kind of mining," remarked
+Vinet, laughing.
+
+"What should you think from the air and gestures of Madame Marion?" said
+the sub-prefect turning off the subject by pointing to Madame Marion and
+Simon, who were deep in conversation.
+
+Simon had gone toward the bridge to meet his aunt, and was now walking
+with her up the square.
+
+"If he was accepted one word would suffice," said the shrewd Olivier.
+
+"Well?" said all the officials when Simon came to them under the
+lindens.
+
+"My aunt thinks the matter very hopeful," replied Simon. "Madame
+Beauvisage and old Grevin, who has just gone to Gondreville, were not at
+all surprised at my proposals; they talked of our respective fortunes,
+and said they wished to leave Cecile perfectly free to make her choice.
+Besides which, Madame Beauvisage said that, as for herself, she saw
+no objection to an alliance by which she should feel herself honored;
+although she postponed all answer until after my election, and possibly
+my first appearance in the Chamber. Old Grevin said he should consult
+the Comte de Gondreville, without whose advice he never took any
+important step."
+
+"All of which means," said Goulard, point-blank, "that you will never
+marry Cecile, my old fellow."
+
+"Why not?" said Giguet, ironically.
+
+"My dear friend, Madame Beauvisage and her daughter spend four
+evenings every week in the salon of your aunt; your aunt is the most
+distinguished woman in Arcis; and she is, though twenty years the elder,
+an object of envy to Madame Beauvisage; don't you see, therefore, that
+they wished to wrap up their refusal in certain civilities?"
+
+"Not to say entire yes or no in such cases," said Vinet, "is to say
+_no_, with due regard to the intimacy of the two families. Though Madame
+Beauvisage has the largest fortune in Arcis, Madame Marion is the
+most esteemed woman in the place; for, with the exception of our
+chief-justice's wife, who sees no one now, she is the only woman who
+knows how to hold a salon; she is the queen of Arcis. Madame Beauvisage
+has tried to make her refusal polite, that's all."
+
+"I think that old Grevin was fooling your mother," said Frederic Marest.
+
+"Yesterday you attacked the Comte de Gondreville, you insulted and
+grievously affronted him, and he is to be consulted about your marriage
+to Cecile!"
+
+"Pere Grevin is a sly old dog," said Vinet.
+
+"Madame Beauvisage is very ambitious," pursued Antonin Goulard. "She
+knows very well her daughter is to have two millions; she means to be
+mother-in-law of a minister, or an ambassador, in order to play the
+great lady in Paris."
+
+"Well, why not?" said Simon Giguet.
+
+"I wish you may get it!" replied the sub-prefect looking at Vinet,
+with whom he went off into a hearty laugh as soon as they were out of
+hearing. "He won't even be deputy," added Antonin, addressing Vinet;
+"the ministry have other views. You will find a letter from your father
+when you get home, enjoining you to make sure of the votes of all the
+persons in your department, and see that they go for the ministerial
+candidate. Your own promotion depends on this; and he requests you to be
+very discreet."
+
+"But who is the candidate for whom our ushers and sheriffs and clerks,
+and solicitors and notaries are to vote?" asked Vinet.
+
+"The one I shall name to you."
+
+"How do you know my father has written to me, and what he wrote?"
+
+"The stranger told me--"
+
+"The man after water?"
+
+"My dear Vinet, you and I are not to know; we must treat him as a
+stranger. He saw your father at Provins as he came through. Just now
+this same man gave me a note from the prefect instructing me to
+follow in every particular the instructions of Comte Maxime about this
+election. I knew very well I should have a battle to fight! Come
+and dine somewhere and we will get out our batteries. You are to be
+_procureur-du-roi_ at Mantes, and I am to be prefect; but we must _seem_
+to have nothing to do with the election, for don't you see, we are
+between the hammer and the anvil. Simon is the candidate of a party
+which wants to overturn the present ministry and may succeed; but for
+men as intelligent as you and I there is but one course to take."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"To serve those who make and unmake ministers. A letter was shown to
+me from one of those personages who represent the stable and immovable
+thought of the State."
+
+Before going farther, it is necessary to explain who this Unknown person
+was, and what his purpose was in coming to Champagne.
+
+
+
+
+XII. THE SALON OF MADAME D'ESPARD
+
+About two months before the nomination of Simon Giguet, at eleven
+o'clock one evening, in a mansion of the faubourg Saint-Honore belonging
+to the Marquise d'Espard, while tea was being served the Chevalier
+d'Espard, brother-in-law to the marquise, put down his tea-cup, and,
+looking round the circle, remarked:--
+
+"Maxime was very melancholy to-night,--didn't you think so?"
+
+"Yes," replied Rastignac, "but his sadness is easily accounted for. He
+is forty-eight years old; at that age a man makes no new friends, and
+now that we have buried de Marsay, Maxime has lost the only man capable
+of understanding him, of being useful to him, and of using him."
+
+"He probably has pressing debts. Couldn't you put him in the way of
+paying them?" said the marquise to Rastignac.
+
+At this period Rastignac was, for the second time, in the ministry; he
+had just been made count almost against his will. His father-in-law, the
+Baron de Nucingen, was peer of France, his younger brother a bishop,
+the Comte de Roche-Hugon, his brother-in-law, was an ambassador, and he
+himself was thought to be indispensable in all future combinations of
+the ministry.
+
+"You always forget, my dear marquise," replied Rastignac, "that our
+government exchanges its silver for gold only; it pays no heed to men."
+
+"Is Maxime a man who would blow out his brains?" inquired the banker du
+Tillet.
+
+"Ha! you wish I were; we should be quits then," said Comte Maxime de
+Trailles, whom everybody supposed to have left the house.
+
+The count rose suddenly, like an apparition, from the depths of an
+arm-chair placed exactly behind that of the Chevalier d'Espard.
+
+Every one present laughed.
+
+"Will you have a cup of tea?" said the young Comtesse de Rastignac, whom
+the marquise had asked to do the honors in her place.
+
+"Gladly," replied the count, standing before the fireplace.
+
+This man, the prince of fashionable scoundrels, had managed to maintain
+himself until now in the high and mighty position of a dandy in Paris,
+then called _Gants Jaunes_ (lemon-kid-glovers), and since, "lions."
+It is useless to relate the history of his youth, full of questionable
+adventures, with now and then some horrible drama, in which he had
+always known how to save appearances. To this man women were never
+anything else than a means; he believed no more in their griefs than he
+did in their joys; he regarded them, like the late de Marsay, as naughty
+children. After squandering his own fortune, he had spent that of a
+famous courtesan, La Belle Hollandaise, the mother of Esther Gobseck.
+He had caused the misery of Madame Restaud, sister of Madame Delphine de
+Nucingen, the mother of the young Comtesse de Rastignac.
+
+The world of Paris offers many unimaginable situations. The Baronne de
+Nucingen was at this moment in Madame d'Espard's salon in presence of
+the author of all her sister's misery, in presence of a murderer who
+killed only the happiness of women. That, perhaps, was the reason why
+he was there. Madame de Nucingen had dined at Madame d'Espard's with her
+daughter, married a few months earlier to the Comte de Rastignac, who
+had begun his political career by occupying the post of under-secretary
+of state in the famous ministry of the late de Marsay, the only real
+statesman produced by the Revolution of July.
+
+Comte Maxime de Trailles alone knew how many disasters he had
+caused; but he had always taken care to shelter himself from blame by
+scrupulously obeying the laws of the Man-Code. Though he had squandered
+in the course of his life more money than the four galleys of France
+could have stolen in the same time, he had kept clear of justice. Never
+had he lacked in honor; his gambling debts were paid scrupulously.
+An admirable player, his partners were chiefly the great seigneurs,
+ministers, and ambassadors. He dined habitually with all the members of
+the diplomatic body. He fought duels, and had killed two or three men
+in his life; in fact, he had half murdered them, for his coolness and
+self-possession were unparalleled. No young man could compare with him
+in dress, in the distinction of his manners, the elegance of his witty
+speech, the grace of his easy carriage,--in short, what was called in
+those days "the grand air." In his capacity of page to the Emperor,
+trained from the age of twelve in the art of riding, he was held to be
+the skilfulest of horsemen. Having always fine horses in his stable, he
+raised some, and ruled the fashion in equestrianism. No man could
+stand a supper of young bloods better than he; he drank more than the
+best-trained toper, but he came out fresh and cool, and ready to begin
+again as if orgy were his element. Maxime, one of those despised men who
+know how to repress the contempt they inspire by the insolence of their
+attitude and the fear they cause, never deceived himself as to his
+actual position. Hence his real strength. Strong men are always their
+own critics.
+
+Under the Restoration he had made the most of his former condition of
+page to the Emperor. He attributed to his pretended Bonapartist opinions
+the rebuffs he met with from the different ministers when he asked for
+an office under the Bourbons; for, in spite of his connections, his
+birth, and his dangerous aptitudes, he never obtained anything. After
+the failure of these attempts he entered the secret cabal which led in
+time to the fall of the Elder branch.
+
+When the Younger branch, preceded by the Parisian populace, had trodden
+down the Elder branch and was seated on the throne, Maxime reproduced
+his attachment to Napoleon, for whom he cared as much as for his first
+love. He then did great services to the newcomers, who soon found the
+payment for them onerous; for Maxime too often demanded payment of men
+who knew how to reckon those services. At the first refusal, Maxime
+assumed at once an attitude of hostility, threatening to reveal
+unpleasant details; for budding dynasties, like infants, have much
+soiled linen. De Marsay, during his ministry, repaired the mistake of
+his predecessors, who had ignored the utility of this man. He gave him
+those secret missions which require a conscience made malleable by the
+hammer of necessity, an adroitness which recoils before no methods,
+impudence, and, above all, the self-possession, the coolness, the
+embracing glance which constitute the hired _bravi_ of thought and
+statesmanship. Such instruments are both rare and necessary.
+
+As a matter of calculation, de Marsay maintained Comte Maxime de
+Trailles in the highest society; he described him as a man ripened by
+passions, taught by experience, who knew men and things, to whom travel
+and a certain faculty for observation had imparted an understanding of
+European interests, of foreign cabinets, and of all the ramifications
+of the great continental families. De Marsay convinced Maxime of the
+necessity of doing himself credit; he taught him discretion, less as a
+virtue than a speculation; he proved to him that the governing powers
+would never abandon a solid, safe, elegant, and polished instrument.
+
+"In politics," he said, blaming Maxime for having uttered a threat, "we
+should never _blackmail_ but once."
+
+Maxime was a man who could sound the depths of that saying.
+
+De Marsay dead, Comte Maxime de Trailles had fallen back into his former
+state of existence. He went to the baths every year and gambled; he
+returned to Paris for the winter; but, though he received some large
+sums from the depths of certain niggardly coffers, that sort of half-pay
+to a daring man kept for use at any moment and possessing many secrets
+of the art of diplomacy, was insufficient for the dissipations of a
+life as splendid as that of the king of dandies, the tyrant of several
+Parisian clubs. Consequently Comte Maxime was often uneasy about matters
+financial. Possessing no property, he had never been able to consolidate
+his position by being made a deputy; also, having no ostensible
+functions, it was impossible for him to hold a knife at the throat of
+any minister to compel his nomination as peer of France. At the present
+moment he saw that Time was getting the better of him; for his lavish
+dissipations were beginning to wear upon his person, as they had already
+worn out his divers fortunes. In spite of his splendid exterior, he knew
+himself, and could not be deceived about that self. He intended to "make
+an end"--to marry.
+
+A man of acute mind, he was under no illusion as to the apparent
+consideration in which he was held; he well knew it was false. No women
+were truly on his side, either in the great world of Paris or among the
+bourgeoisie. Much secret malignity, much apparent good-humor, and
+many services rendered were necessary to maintain him in his present
+position; for every one desired his fall, and a run of ill-luck might at
+any time ruin him. Once sent to Clichy or forced to leave the country
+by notes no longer renewable, he would sink into the gulf where so
+many political carcasses may be seen,--carcasses of men who find no
+consolation in one another's company. Even this very evening he was in
+dread of a collapse of that threatening arch which debt erects over the
+head of many a Parisian. He had allowed his anxieties to appear upon his
+face; he had refused to play cards at Madame d'Espard's; he had talked
+with the women in an absent-minded manner, and finally he had sunk down
+silent and absorbed in the arm-chair from which he had just risen like
+Banquo's ghost.
+
+Comte Maxime de Trailles now found himself the object of all glances,
+direct and indirect, standing as he did before the fireplace and
+illumined by the cross-lights of two candelabra. The few words said
+about him compelled him, in a way, to bear himself proudly; and he did
+so, like a man of sense, without arrogance, and yet with the intention
+of showing himself to be above suspicion. A painter could scarcely have
+found a better moment in which to seize the portrait of a man who, in
+his way, was truly extraordinary. Does it not require rare faculties to
+play such a part,--to enable one through thirty years to seduce
+women; to constrain one to employ great gifts in an underhand sphere
+only,--inciting a people to rebel, tracking the secrets of austere
+politicians, and triumphing nowhere but in boudoirs and on the
+back-stairs of cabinets?
+
+Is there not something, difficult to say what, of greatness in being
+able to rise to the highest calculations of statesmen and then to fall
+coldly back into the void of a frivolous life? Where is the man of iron
+who can withstand the alternating luck of gambling, the rapid missions
+of diplomacy, the warfare of fashion and society, the dissipations of
+gallantry,--the man who makes his memory a library of lies and craft,
+who envelops such diverse thoughts, such conflicting manoeuvres, in one
+impenetrable cloak of perfect manners? If the wind of favor had blown
+steadily upon those sails forever set, if the luck of circumstances had
+attended Maxime, he could have been Mazarin, the Marechal de Richelieu,
+Potemkin, or--perhaps more truly--Lauzun, without Pignerol.
+
+The count, though rather tall and constitutionally slender, had of late
+acquired some protuberance of stomach, but he "restrained it to the
+majestic," as Brillat-Savarin once said. His clothes were always so well
+made, that he kept about his whole person an air of youth, something
+active and agile, due no doubt to his habits of exercise,--fencing,
+riding, and hunting. Maxime possessed all the physical graces and
+elegances of aristocracy, still further increased by his personally
+superior bearing. His long, Bourbonine face was framed by whiskers and a
+beard, carefully kept, elegantly cut, and black as jet. This color,
+the same as that of his abundant hair, he now obtained by an Indian
+cosmetic, very costly and used in Persia, the secret of which he kept
+to himself. He deceived the most practised eye as to the white threads
+which for some time past had invaded his hair. The remarkable property
+of this dye, used by Persians for their beards only, is that it does not
+render the features hard; it can be shaded by indigo to harmonize well
+with the individual character of the skin. It was this operation that
+Madame Mollot may have seen,--though people in Arcis, by way of a jest,
+still ask themselves what it was that Madame Mollot saw.
+
+Maxime had a very handsome forehead, blue eyes, a Greek nose, a pleasant
+mouth, and a well-cut chin; but the circle of his eyes was now marked
+with numberless lines, so fine that they might have been traced by a
+razor and not visible at a little distance. His temples had similar
+lines. The face was also slightly wrinkled. His eyes, like those of
+gamblers who have sat up innumerable nights, were covered with a
+glaze, but the glance, though it was thus weakened, was none the less
+terrible,--in fact, it terrified; a hidden heat was felt beneath it, a
+lava of passions not yet extinct. The mouth, once so fresh and rosy,
+now had colder tints; it was straight no longer, but inclined to the
+right,--a sinuosity that seemed to indicate falsehood. Vice had twisted
+the lips, but the teeth were white and handsome.
+
+These blemishes disappeared on a general view of his face and person.
+His figure was so attractive that no young man could compete with Maxime
+when on horseback in the Bois, where he seemed younger and more graceful
+than the youngest and most graceful among them. The privilege of eternal
+youth has been possessed by several men in our day.
+
+The count was all the more dangerous because he seemed to be easy and
+indolent, never showing the iron determination which he had about all
+things. This apparent indifference, which enabled him to abet a popular
+sedition for the purpose of strengthening the authority of a prince with
+as much ability as he would have bestowed upon a court intrigue, had a
+certain grace. People never distrust calmness and uniformity of manner,
+especially in France, where we are accustomed to a great deal of
+movement and stir about the smallest things.
+
+The count, who was dressed in the fashion of 1839, wore a black coat,
+a cashmere waistcoat of dark blue embroidered with tiny flowers of a
+lighter blue, black trousers, gray silk stockings, and varnished leather
+shoes. His watch, placed in one of his waistcoat pockets, was fastened
+by an elegant chain to a button-hole.
+
+"Rastignac," he said, accepting the cup of tea which the pretty Madame
+de Rastignac offered him, "will you come with me to the Austrian
+ambassador's?"
+
+"My dear fellow, I am too recently married not to go home with my wife."
+
+"That means that _later_--" said the young countess, turning round and
+looking at her husband.
+
+"Later is the end of the world," replied Maxime. "But I shall certainly
+win my cause if I take Madame for a judge."
+
+With a charming gesture, the count invited the pretty countess to come
+nearer to him. After listening a few moments and looking at her mother,
+she said to Rastignac:--
+
+"If you want to go to the embassy with Monsieur de Trailles, mamma will
+take me home."
+
+A few moments later the Baronne de Nucingen and the Comtesse de
+Rastignac went away together. Maxime and Rastignac followed a little
+later, and when they were both seated in the count's carriage, the
+latter said:--
+
+"What do you want of me, Maxime? Why do you take me by the throat in
+this way? What did you say to my wife?"
+
+"I told her I had something to say to you. You are a lucky fellow,
+you are! You have ended by marrying the only heiress of the Nucingen
+millions--after twenty years at hard labor."
+
+"Maxime!"
+
+"But I! here am I, exposed to the doubts of everybody. A miserable
+coward like du Tillet dares to ask if I have the courage to kill myself!
+It is high time for me to settle down. Does the ministry want to get
+rid of me, or does it not? You ought to know. At any rate, you must
+find out," continued Maxime, making a gesture with his hand to silence
+Rastignac. "Here is my plan: listen to it. You ought to serve me, for
+I have served you, and can serve you again. The life I live now is
+intolerable; I want an escape from it. Help me to a marriage which
+shall bring me half a million. Once married, appoint me minister to some
+wretched little republic in America. I'll stay there long enough to
+make my promotion to the same post in Germany legitimate. If I am worth
+anything, they will soon take me out of it; if I am not worth anything,
+they can dismiss me. Perhaps I may have a child. If so, I shall be stern
+with him; his mother will be rich; I'll make him a minister, perhaps an
+ambassador."
+
+"Here is my answer," said Rastignac. "An incessant battle is going
+on--greater than common people who are not in it have any idea
+of--between power in its swaddling-clothes and power in its childhood.
+Power in swaddling-clothes is the Chamber of Deputies which, not being
+restrained by an hereditary chamber--"
+
+"Ha! ha!" said Maxime, "you are now a peer of France."
+
+"I should say the same if I were not," said the new peer. "But don't
+interrupt me; you are concerned in all this. The Chamber of Deputies is
+fated to become the whole government, as de Marsay used to tell us (the
+only man by whom France could have been saved), for peoples don't die;
+they are slaves or free men, and that's all. Child-power is the royalty
+that was crowned in August, 1830. The present ministry is beaten; it
+dissolves the Chamber and brings on a general election in order to
+prevent the coming ministry from calling one; but it does not expect a
+victory. If it were victorious in these elections, the dynasty would be
+in danger; whereas, if the ministry is beaten, the dynastic party can
+fight to advantage for a long time. The mistakes of the Chamber will
+turn to the profit of a will which wants, unfortunately, to be the whole
+political power. When a ruler is that whole, as Napoleon was, there
+comes a moment when he must supplement himself; and having by that
+time alienated superior men, he, the great single will, can find no
+assistant. That assistant ought to be what is called a cabinet; but
+there is no cabinet in France, there is only a Will with a life lease.
+In France it is the government that is blamed, the opposition never; it
+may lose as many battles as it fights, but, like the allies in 1814, one
+victory suffices. With 'three glorious days' it overturned and destroyed
+everything. Therefore, if we are heirs of power, we must cease to
+govern, and wait. I belong by my personal opinions to the aristocracy,
+and by my public opinions to the royalty of July. The house of Orleans
+served me to raise the fortunes of my family, and I shall ever remain
+attached to it."
+
+"The 'ever' of Monsieur de Talleyrand, be it understood," put in Maxime.
+
+"At this moment I can't do anything for you," continued Rastignac. "We
+shall not be in power more than six months longer. Yes, those six months
+will be our last dying agony, I know that; but we know what we were when
+we formed ourselves, a stop-gap ministry and that was all. But you can
+distinguish yourself in the electoral battle that is soon to be fought.
+If you can bring one vote to the Chamber, a deputy faithful to the
+dynastic cause, you will find your wishes gratified. I will speak
+of your good services, and I will keep my eye on the reports of our
+confidential agents; I may find you some difficult task in which you can
+distinguish yourself. If you succeed, I can insist upon your talents,
+your devotion, and claim your reward. Your marriage, my dear fellow,
+can be made only in some ambitious provincial family of tradespeople or
+manufacturers. In Paris you are too well known. We must therefore look
+out for a millionaire parvenu, endowed with a daughter, and possessed
+with a desire to parade himself and his family at the Chateau des
+Tuileries."
+
+"Make your father-in-law lend me twenty-five thousand francs to enable
+me to wait as long as that; he will then have an interest in seeing
+that I am not paid in holy-water if I succeed; he will further a rich
+marriage for his own sake."
+
+"You are wily, Maxime, and you distrust me. But I like able men, and I
+will attend to your affair."
+
+They reached the Austrian embassy. The Comte de Rastignac saw the
+minister of the interior in one of the salons and went to talk with
+him in a corner. Comte Maxime de Trailles, meantime, was apparently
+engrossed by the old Comtesse de Listomere, but he was, in reality,
+following the course of the conversation between the two peers of
+France; he watched their gestures, interpreted their looks, and ended by
+catching a favorable glance cast upon him by the minister.
+
+Maxime and Rastignac left the embassy together about one in the morning,
+and before getting into their respective carriages, Rastignac said to
+Maxime on the steps of the portico: "Come and see me just before the
+elections. Between now and then I shall know in what locality the
+chances of the ministry are worst, and what resources two heads like
+yours and mine can find there."
+
+"But my twenty-five thousand francs are needed," replied de Trailles.
+
+"Well, you must hide yourself, that's all."
+
+Fifty days later, one morning before dawn, the Comte de Trailles went
+to the rue de Varennes, mysteriously in a hired cab. At the gate of the
+ministry of Public Works, he sent the cab away, looked about him to see
+that he was not watched, and then waited in a little salon on the first
+floor until Rastignac should awake. A few moments later the valet who
+had taken in his card ushered Maxime into the minister's bed-chamber,
+where that statesman was making his morning toilet.
+
+"My dear Maxime," said the latter, "I can tell you a secret which will
+be in the newspapers two days hence, and which, meantime, you can turn
+to your own profit. That poor Charles Keller, who danced the mazurka so
+well, as been killed in Africa. His death leaves a vacancy; he was our
+candidate in the arrondissement of Arcis. Here is a copy of two reports,
+one from the sub-prefect, the other from the commissary of police,
+informing the ministry that the election of the poor fellow would meet
+with opposition. In that of the commissary of police you will find some
+information about the state of the town which ought to be useful to
+a man of your shrewdness; it seems that the ambition of the rival
+candidate comes chiefly from his desire to marry a certain heiress. To
+one of your calibre that word is enough. The Cinq-Cygnes, the Princesse
+de Cadignan, and Georges de Maufrigneuse are living at Cinq-Cygne,
+close to Arcis; you can certainly obtain through them all the Legitimist
+votes, therefore--"
+
+"Don't waste your breath," said Maxime. "Is the commissary still there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Give me a letter to him."
+
+"My dear fellow," replied Rastignac, giving Maxime quite a bundle of
+papers, "you will find there two letters written to Gondreville for you.
+You have been a page and he has been a senator; you can't fail therefore
+to understand each other. Madame Francois Keller is pious; here is a
+letter introducing you to her from the Marechale de Carigliano. The
+marechale has become dynastic; she recommends you warmly, and may go
+down herself. I will only add one word: Distrust the sub-prefect, whom
+I think capable of working this candidate, this Simon Giguet, into
+a support for himself with the president of the council. If you want
+letters, powers, credentials, write to me."
+
+"And those twenty-five thousand francs?" said Maxime.
+
+"Sign this note to the order of du Tillet, and here's the money."
+
+"I shall succeed," said the count, "and you may tell the king that the
+deputy of Arcis shall belong to him body and soul. If I fail, I give you
+leave to abandon me."
+
+An hour later Maxime de Trailles was in his tilbury on the road to
+Arcis.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. PREFACE BEFORE LETTERING
+
+Once in possession of the information furnished by the landlady of the
+Mulet and by the sub-prefect Antonin Goulard, Monsieur de Trailles had
+soon arranged his plan of electoral operations, and this plan evinces
+itself so readily that the reader must already have perceived it.
+
+To the candidacy of Simon Giguet, the wily agent of the government
+policy suddenly and abruptly opposed that of Phileas Beauvisage; and
+in spite of the nullity and unfitness of that individual this new
+combination, we must admit, had several incontestable chances of
+success. In the light of his municipal halo Beauvisage had one enormous
+advantage with the mass of indifferent voters; as mayor of the town his
+name was known to them. Logic has much more to do with the conducting of
+matters and things here below than it seems to have; it is like a woman
+to whom, after many infidelities, we still return. What common-sense
+prescribes is that voters called upon to choose their representative
+in public matters should be thoroughly informed as to his capacity, his
+honesty, and his general character. Too often, in practice, unfortunate
+twists are given to this principle; but whenever the electoral sheep,
+left to their own instincts, can persuade themselves that they are
+voting from their own intelligence and their own lights, we may be
+certain to see them following that line eagerly and with a sentiment
+of self-love. Now to know a man's name, electorally speaking, is a good
+beginning toward a knowledge of the man himself.
+
+Passing from indifferent to interested electors, we may be sure that
+Phileas was certain of rallying to himself the Gondreville party, now
+deprived by death of their own candidate. The question for them was
+to punish the presumption of Simon Giguet, and any candidate would be
+acceptable to the viceroy of Arcis. The mere nomination of a man against
+his grandson was a flagrant act of hostility and ingratitude, and a
+check to the count's provincial importance which must be removed and
+punished at any cost.
+
+Still, when the first news of his electoral ambition reached his
+father-in-law, Beauvisage was met by an astonishment little flattering
+to his feelings and not encouraging. The old notary had gauged his
+son-in-law once for all, and to his just and upright mind the idea of
+Phileas as a public man produced in its way the disagreeable effect that
+discordant instruments produce upon the ear. If it be true that no man
+is a prophet in his own country, he is often even less so in his own
+family. Still, the first impression once passed, Grevin would doubtless
+acclimatize himself to the idea of an expedient which would chime in
+with the plans he had already made for Severine's future. Besides, for
+the safety of Gondreville's interests, so seriously threatened, what
+sacrifice of his own opinion would the old notary not have made?
+
+With the legitimist and the republican parties who could have no weight
+in the election, except that of increasing a majority, the candidacy of
+Beauvisage had a singular recommendation,--namely, his utter incapacity.
+Conscious of not possessing sufficient strength to elect a deputy of
+their own, the two extremes of the antidynastic opposition seized,
+almost with ardor, the opportunity to stick a thorn in the side in what
+they called "the present order of things," and it might confidently be
+expected that in this frame of mind they would joyfully and with all
+their hearts support a candidate so supremely ridiculous that a large
+slice of the ridicule must fall upon the government which supported him.
+
+Moreover, in the opinions of the Left-Centre which had provisionally
+adopted Simon Giguet as its candidate, this move of Beauvisage was
+likely to produce a serious split; for he too had declared himself a
+man of the dynastic opposition, and, until further orders, Monsieur
+de Trailles (though all the while assuring him of the support of the
+ministry) encouraged his retaining that political tint, which was
+clearly the most popular in that region. But whatever baggage of
+political convictions the incorruptible deputy of Arcis might bring with
+him to Paris, his horoscope was drawn: it was very certain that after
+his first appearance in the salons of the Tuileries an august seduction
+would make a henchman of him, if ministerial blandishments had not
+already produced that result.
+
+The public side of this matter being thus well-planned and provided for,
+the ministerial agent could turn his attention to the personal aspect
+of the question, namely, that of turning the stuff he was making into a
+deputy to the still further use of being made into a father-in-law.
+
+First point, the _dot_; second point, the daughter; and both appeared to
+suit him. The first did not dazzle him; but as to the second, he did not
+conceal from himself the imperfections of a provincial education which
+he should have to unmake, but this was no serious objection to his
+sapient conjugal pedagogy.
+
+Madame Beauvisage, when the matter was laid before her, swept her
+husband into it at a single bound. Maxime recognized her for an
+ambitious woman who, in spite of her forty-four years, still had the
+air of being conscious of a heart. Hence he saw that the game had better
+begin with a false attack on her to fall back later on the daughter. How
+far these advanced works could be pushed, circumstances would show. In
+either case, Maxime was well aware that his title, his reputation as
+a man of the world, and his masterly power of initiating them into
+the difficult and elegant mysteries of Parisian society were powerful
+reasons to bind the two women to him, not to speak of their gratitude
+for the political success of Monsieur Beauvisage of which he was the
+author.
+
+But however all this might be, his matrimonial campaign offered one very
+serious difficulty. The consent of old Grevin would have to be obtained,
+and he was not a man to allow Cecile to be married without investigating
+to its depths the whole past of a suitor. This inquiry made, was it not
+to be feared that the thirty years' stormy biography of a roue would
+seem to the cautious old man a poor security for the future?
+
+However, the species of governmental mission with which Monsieur
+de Trailles appeared in Arcis might seem to be an offset and even a
+condonation that would neutralize the effect of such disclosures. By
+getting the Comte de Gondreville to confide the news of that mission to
+old Grevin before it was publicly made known, he had flattered the old
+man's vanity and obtained a certain foothold in his mind. Moreover, he
+determined, when the time came, to forestall the old notary's distrust
+by seeming to distrust himself, and to propose, as a precaution
+against his old habits of extravagance, to introduce a clause into the
+marriage-contract providing for the separation of property and settling
+the wife's fortune upon herself. In this way he gave security against
+any return to his old habits of prodigality. As for himself, it was his
+affair to obtain such empire over his wife by the power of sentiment
+that he could recover practically the marital power of which the
+contract dispossessed him.
+
+At first nothing occurred to contradict the wisdom and clearsightedness
+of all these intentions. The Beauvisage candidacy being made public took
+fire like a train of gunpowder, and Monsieur de Trailles was able to
+feel such assurance of the success of his efforts that he wrote to
+Rastignac informing him of the fortunate and highly successful progress
+of his mission.
+
+But, all of a sudden, in face of the triumphant Beauvisage rose another
+candidate; and, be it said in passing for the sake of our history,
+this rivalry presented itself under such exceptional and unforeseen
+circumstances that it changed what might have been a trivial electoral
+struggle into a drama possessing wider and more varied interests.
+
+The man who now appears in this narrative will play so considerable a
+part in it that it seems necessary to install him, as it were, by means
+of retrospective and somewhat lengthy explanations. But to suspend the
+course of the narrative for this purpose would be to fly in the face
+of every rule of art and expose the present pious guardian of literary
+orthodoxy to the wrath of critics. In presence of this difficulty, the
+author would find himself greatly embarrassed, if his lucky star had not
+placed in his hands a correspondence in which, with a vim and animation
+that he himself could never have imparted to them, all the details that
+are essential to a full explanation will be found related.
+
+These letters must be read with attention. They bring upon the scene
+many persons already well-known in the Comedy of Human Life, and
+they reveal a vast number of facts necessary to the understanding and
+development of the present drama. Their statements made, and brought to
+the point where we now seem to abandon our narrative, the course of
+that narrative will, without concussion and quite naturally, resume its
+course; and we like to persuade ourselves that, by thus introducing this
+series of letters, the unity of our tale, which seemed for a moment in
+danger, will be maintained.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II. LETTERS EXPLANATORY
+
+
+
+
+I. THE COMTE DE L'ESTORADE TO MONSIEUR MARIE-GASTON
+
+            [See "The Memoirs of Two Young Married Women."]
+
+Dear Monsieur,--In accordance with your desire I have seen the prefect
+of police, in order to ascertain if the pious intention of which you
+wrote me in your letter, dated from Carrara, would meet with opposition
+from the authorities.
+
+The prefect informed me that the imperial decree of the 23rd Prairial,
+year XII., by which the whole system of burials is still regulated,
+establishes, in the most unequivocal manner, the right of all persons to
+be interred on their own property. You have only to obtain a permit
+from the prefecture of the Seine-et-Oise, and then, without further
+formality, you can remove the remains of Madame Marie-Gaston to the
+mausoleum you propose to erect in your park at Ville d'Avray.
+
+But I shall venture myself to offer an objection. Are you quite sure
+that you will not expose yourself to certain difficulties made by the
+Chaulieus, with whom you are not on the best of terms?
+
+Will they not, to a certain extent, be justified in complaining that the
+removal from a public cemetery to private grounds of the body of one who
+is dear to them as well as to you, would make their visits to her grave
+entirely dependent on your good will and pleasure? For of course, and
+this is evident, you will always have the right to forbid their entrance
+to your property.
+
+I know that, legally, the body of the wife, living or dead, belongs to
+the husband, to the exclusion of her relations, even the nearest; but,
+under the influence of the ill-will of which they have already given you
+proof, the relations of Madame Marie-Gaston might have the distressing
+idea of carrying the matter into court, and if so, how painful to you!
+You would gain the suit, no doubt, for the Duc de Chaulieu's influence
+is not what it was under the Restoration; but have you reflected on the
+venom which the speech of a lawyer might shed upon such a question? and
+remember that he will speak as the echo of honorable affections--those
+of a father, mother, and two brothers asking not to be deprived of the
+sad happiness of praying at the grave of their lost one.
+
+If you will let me express my thought, it is not without keen regret
+that I see you engaged in creating fresh nourishment for your grief,
+already so long inconsolable. We had hoped that, after passing two years
+in Italy, you would return to us more resigned, and able to take up an
+active life which might distract your mind. Evidently, this species of
+temple which you propose, in the fervor of your recollections, to erect
+in a spot where they are, alas! already too numerous, can only serve to
+perpetuate their bitterness; and I cannot approve the revival you are
+proposing to make of them.
+
+Nevertheless, as we should always serve a friend according to his
+wishes, not our own, I have done your commission relating to Monsieur
+Dorlange, the sculptor, but I must tell you frankly that he showed no
+eagerness to enter into your wishes. His first remark, when I announced
+myself as coming from you, was that he did not know you; and this reply,
+singular as it may seem to you, was made so naturally that at first I
+thought there must be some mistake, the result, possibly, of confusion
+of name. However, before long your oblivious friend was willing to agree
+that he studied with you at the college of Tours and also that hew as
+the same Monsieur Dorlange who, in 1831 and under quite exceptional
+circumstances, carried off the grand prize for sculpture. No doubt
+remained in my mind as to his identity. I attributed his want of
+memory to the long interruption (of which you yourself told me) in your
+intercourse. I think that that interruption wounded him more than you
+are aware, and when he seemed to have forgotten your very name, it was
+simply a revenge he could not help taking when the occasion offered.
+
+But that was not the real obstacle. Remembering the fraternal intimacy
+that once existed between Monsieur Dorlange and yourself, I could not
+suppose his wounded feelings inexorable. So, after explaining to him the
+nature of the work you wanted him to do, I was about to say a few words
+as to the grievance he might have against you, when I suddenly found
+myself face to face with an obstacle of a most unexpected nature.
+
+"Monsieur," he said to me, "the importance of the order you wish to give
+me, the assurance that no expense should be spared for the grandeur and
+perfection of the work, the invitation you convey to me to go to Carrara
+and choose the marble and see it excavated, all that is truly a great
+piece of good fortune for an artist, and at any other time I should
+gladly have accepted it. But at the present moment, without having
+actually decided to abandon the career of Art, I am on the point of
+entering that of politics. My friends urge me to present myself at
+the coming elections, and you will easily see that, if elected, my
+parliamentary duties and my initiation into an absolutely new life
+would, for a long time at least, preclude my entering with sufficient
+absorption of mind into the work you propose to me." And then, after
+a pause, he added; "I should have to satisfy a great grief which seeks
+consolation from this projected mausoleum. Such grief would, naturally,
+be impatient; whereas I should be slow, preoccupied in mind, and
+probably hindered. It is therefore better that the proposal should be
+made elsewhere; but this will not prevent me from feeling, as I ought,
+both gratified and honored by the confidence shown in me."
+
+I thought for a moment of asking him whether, in case his election
+failed, I could then renew the proposal, but on the whole I contented
+myself with expressing regret and saying that I would inform you of the
+result of my mission. It is useless to add that I shall know in a few
+days the upshot of this sudden parliamentary ambition which has, so
+inopportunely, started up in your way.
+
+I think myself that this candidacy may be only a blind. Had you not
+better write yourself to Monsieur Dorlange? for his whole manner, though
+perfectly polite and proper, seemed to show a keen remembrance of the
+wrong you did him in renouncing his friendship, with that of your other
+friends, at the time of your marriage. I know it may cost you some pain
+to explain the really exceptional circumstances of your marriage; but
+after what I have seen in the mind of your old friend, I think, if
+you really wish for the assistance of his great talent, you should
+personally take some steps to obtain it.
+
+But if you feel that any such action is more than you have strength for,
+I suggest another means. In all matters in which my wife has taken part
+I have found her a most able negotiator; and in this particular case
+I should feel the utmost confidence in her intervention. She herself
+suffered from the exclusiveness of Madame Marie-Gaston's love for you.
+No one can explain to him better than she the absorbing conjugal life
+which drew its folds so closely around you. And it seems to me that the
+magnanimity and comprehension which she always showed to her "dear lost
+treasure," as she calls her, might be conveyed by her to your friend.
+
+You have plenty of time to think over this suggestion, for Madame de
+l'Estorade is, just now, still suffering from a serious illness, brought
+on by maternal terror. A week ago our little Nais came near being
+crushed to death before her eyes; and without the courageous assistance
+of a stranger who sprang to the horses' heads and stopped them short,
+God knows what dreadful misfortune would have overtaken us. This cruel
+emotion produced in Madame de l'Estorade a nervous condition which
+seriously alarmed us for a time. Though she is now much better, it
+will be several days before she could see Monsieur Dorlange in case her
+feminine mediation may seem to you desirable.
+
+But once more, in closing, my dear Monsieur Gaston, would it not be
+better to abandon your idea? A vast expense, a painful quarrel with the
+Chaulieus, and, for you, a renewal of your bitter sorrow--this is what
+I fear. Nevertheless, I am, at all times and for all things, entirely at
+your orders, as indeed my sentiments of esteem and gratitude command.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
+
+Paris, February, 1839.
+
+Dear Madame de Camps,--Of all the proofs of sympathy which the accident
+to my dear child has brought me, not one has touched me so much as your
+excellent letter.
+
+In reply to your affectionate solicitude I must tell you that in that
+terrible moment Nais was marvellously calm and self-possessed. It could
+not, I think, be possible to see death nearer; yet neither before nor
+after the accident did my valiant little daughter even blench; her whole
+behavior showed the utmost resolution, and, thank God! her health has
+not suffered for a moment.
+
+As for me, in consequence of such terror, I was seized with convulsive
+spasms, and for several days, as I now hear, the doctors were very
+uneasy, and even feared for my reason. But thanks to the strength of my
+constitution, I am now almost myself again, and nothing would remain of
+this cruel agitation if, by a singular fatality, it were not connected
+with another unpleasant circumstance which has lately seen fit to fasten
+upon my life.
+
+Before receiving from your letter these fresh assurances of your regard,
+I had thought of invoking the help of your friendship and advice; and
+to-day, when you tell me that it would make you happy and proud to take
+the place of my poor Louise de Chaulieu, the precious friend of whom
+death has deprived me, can I hesitate for a moment?
+
+I take you at your word, and that delightful cleverness with which you
+foiled the fools who commented on your marriage to Monsieur de Camps
+[see "Madame Firmiani"], that singular tact with which we saw you steer
+your way through circumstances that were full of embarrassment and
+danger, in short the wonderful art which enabled you to keep both
+your secret and your dignity, I now ask you to put to the service of
+assisting me in the dilemma I mentioned just now.
+
+Unfortunately in consulting a physician we naturally want to see him and
+tell him our symptoms _viva voce_, and it is here that Monsieur de Camps
+with his industrial genius seems to me most aggravating. Thanks to those
+villanous iron-works which he has taken it into his head to purchase,
+you are almost lost to Paris and to society! Formerly when we had you
+here, at hand, in ten minutes talk, without embarrassment, without
+preparation, I could have told you everything; but now I am obliged to
+think over what I have to say, to gather myself together, and pass into
+the solemnity of a written statement.
+
+But after all, perhaps it is better to plunge boldly in, and since, in
+spite of circumlocutions and preambles, I shall have sooner or later
+to come to the point, why not say at once that my trouble concerns the
+stranger who saved my daughter's life.
+
+Stranger! yes, a stranger to Monsieur de l'Estorade and to all who have
+told you about the accident, but not a stranger to me, whom, for the
+last three months, this man has condescended to honor with the most
+obstinate attention. That the mother of three children, one of them
+a big boy of fifteen, should at thirty-three years of age become the
+object of an ardent passion will seem to you, as it does to me, an
+impossible fact; and that is the ridiculous misfortune about which I
+want to consult you.
+
+When I say that this stranger is known to me, I must correct myself; for
+I know neither his name, nor his abode, nor anything about him. I have
+never met him in society, and I may add that, although he wears
+the ribbon of the Legion of honor, there is nothing in his air and
+manner--which are totally devoid of elegance--to make me suppose I ever
+shall meet him in our world.
+
+It was at Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, where, as you know, I go to hear mass,
+that this annoying obsession began. I used almost daily to take my
+children to walk in the Tuileries, as the house we have hired here
+has no garden. This habit being noticed by my persecutor, I found him
+repeatedly there and wherever else I might be met outside of my own
+home. Perfectly discreet, although so audacious, this singular follower
+never accompanied me to my own door; he kept at a sufficient distance to
+give me the comfort of feeling that his foolish assiduity would not be
+observed by others.
+
+Heaven only knows the sacrifices and annoyances I have borne to be rid
+of him. I never go to church now except on Sundays; I often keep my dear
+children at home to the injury of their health; or else I make excuses
+not to accompany them, and against all the principles of my education
+and prudence, I leave them to the care of the servants. Visits, shopping
+I do only in a carriage, which did not prevent my _shadow_ from being
+at hand when the accident happened to Nais, and saving her life, an act
+that was brave and providential.
+
+But it is precisely this great obligation I am now under which
+makes--does it not, I appeal to you?--a most deplorable complication.
+
+In the first place, about thanking him. If I do that, I encourage him,
+and he would certainly take advantage of it to change the character of
+our present intercourse. But if I pass him without notice--think of it!
+a mother--a mother who owes him the life of her daughter, to pretend not
+to see him! to pass him without a single word of gratitude!
+
+That, however, is the intolerable alternative in which I find myself
+placed, and you can now see how much I need the counsels of your
+experience. What can I do to break the unpleasant habit this man has
+taken of being my shadow? How shall I thank him without encouraging him?
+or not thank him without incurring self-reproach?
+
+Those are the problems submitted to your wisdom. If you will do me
+the kindness to solve them--and I know no one so capable--I shall add
+gratitude to all the other affectionate sentiments which, as you know, I
+have so long felt for you.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE COMTE DE L'ESTORADE TO MONSIEUR MARIE-GASTON
+
+Paris, February, 1839.
+
+Perhaps, my dear Monsieur Gaston, the public journals will have told you
+before this letter can arrive of the duel fought yesterday between your
+friend Monsieur Dorlange and the Duc de Rhetore. But the papers, while
+announcing the fact as a piece of news, are debarred by custom and
+propriety from inferring the motives of a quarrel, and therefore they
+will only excite your curiosity without satisfying it.
+
+I have, fortunately, heard from a very good source, all the details of
+the affair, and I hasten to transmit them to you; they are, I think, of
+a nature to interest you to the highest degree.
+
+Three days ago, that is to say on the very evening of the day when I
+paid my visit to Monsieur Dorlange, the Duc de Rhetore occupied a stall
+at the Opera-house. Next to him sat Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who has
+recently returned from a diplomatic mission which kept him out of France
+for several years. During the entr'acte these gentlemen did not leave
+their seats to walk about the foyer; but, as is often done, they stood
+up, with their backs to the stage, facing the audience and consequently
+Monsieur Dorlange, who was seated directly behind them, seeming to
+be absorbed in an evening newspaper. There had been that day a very
+scandalous, or what is called a very interesting, session of the Chamber
+of deputies.
+
+The conversation between the duke and the marquis having naturally
+turned on the events of Parisian society which had taken place during
+Monsieur de Ronquerolles' absence, the latter made the following remark
+which was of a nature to rouse the attention of Monsieur Dorlange.
+
+"Your poor sister Madame de Macumer! what a sad end, after her singular
+marriage!"
+
+"Ah! you know," replied Monsieur de Rhetore, in that high-pitched tone
+of his, "my sister had too much imagination not to be romantic
+and visionary. She loved her first husband, Monsieur de Macumer,
+passionately, but after a time one gets tired of everything, even
+widowhood. This Marie-Gaston crossed her path. He is agreeable in
+person; my sister was rich; he was deeply in debt and behaved with
+corresponding eagerness and devotion. The result was that the scoundrel
+not only succeeded Monsieur de Macumer and killed his wife with
+jealousy, but he got out of her every penny the law allowed the poor
+foolish woman to dispose of. My sister's property amounted to at
+least twelve hundred thousand francs, not counting a delightful villa
+splendidly furnished which she built at Ville d'Avray. Half of this that
+man obtained, the other half went to the Duc and Duchesse de Chaulieu,
+my father and mother, who were entitled to it by law as heirs ascendant.
+As for my brother Lenoncourt and myself, we were simply disinherited."
+
+As soon as your name, my dear Monsieur Gaston, was uttered, Monsieur
+Dorlange laid aside his newspaper, and then, as Monsieur de Rhetore
+ended his remarks, he rose and said:--
+
+"Pardon me, Monsieur le duc, if I venture to correct your statement;
+but, as a matter of conscience, I ought to inform you that you are
+totally misinformed."
+
+"What is that you say?" returned the duke, blinking his eyes and
+speaking in that contemptuous tone we can all imagine.
+
+"I say, Monsieur le duc, that Marie-Gaston is my friend from childhood;
+he has never been thought a _scoundrel_; on the contrary, the world
+knows him as a man of honor and talent. So far from killing his wife
+with jealousy, he made her perfectly happy during the three years their
+marriage lasted. As for the property--"
+
+"Have you considered, monsieur," said the Duc de Rhetore, interrupting
+him, "the result of such language?"
+
+"Thoroughly, monsieur; and I repeat that the property left to
+Marie-Gaston by the will of his wife is so little desired by him that,
+to my knowledge, he is about to spend a sum of two or three hundred
+thousand francs in building a mausoleum for a wife whom he has never
+ceased to mourn."
+
+"After all, monsieur, who are you?" said the Duc de Rhetore, again
+interrupting him with ill-restrained impatience.
+
+"Presently," replied Monsieur Dorlange, "I shall have the honor to tell
+you; you must now permit me to add that the property of which you say
+you have been disinherited Madame Marie-Gaston had the right to dispose
+of without any remorse of conscience. It came from her first husband,
+the Baron de Macumer; and she had, previously to that marriage, given up
+her own property in order to constitute a fortune for your brother,
+the Duc de Lenoncourt-Givry, who, as younger son, had not, like you,
+Monsieur le Duc, the advantages of an entail."
+
+So saying, Monsieur Dorlange felt in his pocket for his card-case.
+
+"I have no cards with me," he said at last, "but my name is Dorlange, a
+theatrical name, easy to remember, and I live at No. 42 rue de l'Ouest."
+
+"Not a very central quarter," remarked Monsieur de Rhetore, ironically.
+Then turning to Monsieur de Ronquerolles, whom he thus constituted one
+of his seconds, "I beg your pardon, my dear fellow," he said, "for
+the voyage of discovery you will have to undertake for me to-morrow
+morning." And then almost immediately he added: "Come to the foyer; we
+can talk there with greater _safety_."
+
+By his manner of accenting the last word it was impossible to mistake
+the insulting meaning he intended to attach to it.
+
+The two gentlemen having left their seats, without this scene attracting
+any notice, in consequence of the stalls being empty for the most
+part during the entr'acte, Monsieur Dorlange saw at some distance the
+celebrated sculptor Stidmann, and went up to him.
+
+"Have you a note-book of any kind in your pocket?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I always carry one."
+
+"Will you lend it to me and let me tear out a page? I have an idea in
+my mind which I don't want to lose. If I do not see you again after
+the play to make restitution, I will send it to you to-morrow morning
+without fail."
+
+Returning to his place, Monsieur Dorlange sketched something rapidly,
+and when the curtain rose and the two gentlemen returned to their seats,
+he touched the Duc de Rhetore lightly on the shoulder and said, giving
+him the drawing:--
+
+"My card, which I have the honor to present to you."
+
+This "card" was a charming sketch of an architectural design placed in a
+landscape. Beneath it was written "Plan for a mausoleum to be erected to
+the memory of Madame Marie-Gaston, _nee_ Chaulieu, by her husband; from
+the designs of Charles Dorlange, sculptor, 42 rue de l'Ouest."
+
+It was impossible to let Monsieur de Rhetore know more delicately that
+he had to do with a suitable adversary; and you will remark, my dear
+Monsieur Gaston, that Monsieur Dorlange made this drawing the means of
+enforcing his denial and giving proof of your disinterestedness and the
+sincerity of your grief.
+
+After the play was over, Monsieur de Rhetore parted from Monsieur
+de Ronquerolles, and the latter went up to Monsieur Dorlange and
+endeavored, very courteously, to bring about a reconciliation, remarking
+to him that, while he was right in the subject-matter, his method of
+proceeding was unusual and offensive; Monsieur de Rhetore, on the other
+hand, had shown great moderation, and would now be satisfied with a mere
+expression of regret; in short, Monsieur de Ronquerolles said all that
+can be said on such an occasion.
+
+Monsieur Dorlange would not listen to anything which seemed a submission
+on his part, and the next day he received a visit from Monsieur de
+Ronquerolles and General Montriveau on behalf of the Duc de Rhetore.
+Again an effort was made to induce Monsieur Dorlange to give another
+turn to his words. But your friend would not depart from this
+ultimatum:--
+
+"Will Monsieur de Rhetore withdraw the words I felt bound to notice; if
+so, I will withdraw mine."
+
+"But that is impossible," they said to him. "Monsieur de Rhetore has
+been personally insulted; you, on the contrary, have not been. Right or
+wrong, he has the conviction that Monsieur Marie-Gaston has done him
+an injury. We must always make certain allowances for wounded
+self-interests; you can never get absolute justice from them."
+
+"It comes to this, then," replied Monsieur Dorlange, "that Monsieur de
+Rhetore may continue to calumniate my friend at his ease; in the first
+place, because he is in Italy; and secondly, because Marie-Gaston would
+always feel extreme repugnance to come to certain extremities with the
+brother of his wife. It is precisely that powerlessness, relatively
+speaking, to defend himself, which constitutes my right--I will say
+more--my duty to interfere. It was not without a special permission of
+Providence that I was enabled to catch a few of the malicious words that
+were said of him, and, as Monsieur de Rhetore declines to modify any of
+them, we must, if it please you, continue this matter to the end."
+
+The duel then became inevitable; the terms were arranged in the course
+of the day, and the meeting, with pistols, was appointed for the day
+after. On the ground Monsieur Dorlange was perfectly cool. When the
+first fire was exchanged without result, the seconds proposed to put an
+end to the affair.
+
+"No, one more shot!" he said gaily, as if he were shooting in a
+pistol-gallery.
+
+This time he was shot in the fleshy part of the thigh, not a dangerous
+wound, but one which caused him to lose a great deal of blood. As they
+carried him to the carriage which brought him, Monsieur de Rhetore, who
+hastened to assist them, being close beside him, he said, aloud:--
+
+"This does not prevent Marie-Gaston from being a man of honor and a
+heart of gold."
+
+Then he fainted.
+
+This duel, as you can well believe, has made a great commotion; Monsieur
+Dorlange has been the hero of the hour for the last two days; it is
+impossible to enter a single salon without finding him the one topic
+of conversation. I heard more, perhaps, in the salon of Madame de
+Montcornet than elsewhere. She receives, as you know, many artists and
+men of letters, and to give you an idea of the manner in which your
+friend is considered, I need only stenograph a conversation at which I
+was present in the countess's salon last evening.
+
+The chief talkers were Emile Blondet of the "Debats," and Monsieur
+Bixiou, the caricaturist, one of the best-informed _ferrets_ of Paris.
+They are both, I think, acquaintances of yours, but, at any rate, I
+am certain of your intimacy with Joseph Bridau, our great painter, who
+shared in the talk, for I well remember that he and Daniel d'Arthez were
+the witnesses of your marriage.
+
+"The first appearance of Dorlange in art," Joseph Bridau was saying,
+when I joined them, "was fine; the makings of a master were already so
+apparent in the work he did for his examinations that the Academy, under
+pressure of opinion, decided to crown him--though he laughed a good deal
+at its programme."
+
+"True," said Bixiou, "and that 'Pandora' he exhibited in 1837, after his
+return from Rome, is also a very remarkable figure. But as she won him,
+at once, the cross and any number of commissions from the government and
+the municipality, together with scores of flourishing articles in
+the newspapers, I don't see how he can rise any higher after all that
+success."
+
+"That," said Blondet, "is a regular Bixiou opinion."
+
+"No doubt; and well-founded it is. Do you know the man?"
+
+"No; he is never seen anywhere."
+
+"Exactly; he is a bear, but a premeditated bear; a reflecting and
+determined bear."
+
+"I don't see," said Joseph Bridau, "why this savage inclination for
+solitude should be so bad for an artist. What does a sculptor gain by
+frequenting salons where gentlemen and ladies have taken to a habit of
+wearing clothes?"
+
+"Well, in the first place, a sculptor can amuse himself in a salon;
+and that will keep him from taking up a mania, or becoming a visionary;
+besides, he sees the world as it is, and learns that 1839 is not the
+fifteenth nor the sixteenth century."
+
+"Has Dorlange any such delusions?" asked Emile Blondet.
+
+"He? he will talk to you by the hour of returning to the life of the
+great artists of the middle ages with the universality of their studies
+and their knowledge, and that frightfully laborious life of theirs;
+which may help us to understand the habits and ways of a semi-barbarous
+society, but can never exist in ours. He does not see, the innocent
+dreamer, that civilization, by strangely complicating all social
+conditions, absorbs for business, for interests, for pleasures, thrice
+as much time as a less advanced society required for the same purposes.
+Look at the savage in his hut; he hasn't anything to do. Whereas we,
+with the Bourse, the opera, the newspapers, parliamentary discussions,
+salons, elections, railways, the Cafe de Paris and the National
+Guard--what time have we, if you please, to go to work?"
+
+"Beautiful theory of a do-nothing!" cried Emile Blondet, laughing.
+
+"No, my dear fellow, I am talking truth. The curfew no longer rings at
+nine o'clock. Only last night my concierge Ravenouillet gave a party;
+and I think I made a great mistake in not accepting the indirect
+invitation he gave me to be present."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Joseph Bridau, "it is certain that if a man doesn't
+mingle in the business, the interests, and the pleasures of our
+epoch, he can make out of the time he thus saves a pretty capital.
+Independently of his orders, Dorlange has, I think, a little competence;
+so that nothing hinders him from arranging his life to suit himself."
+
+"But you see he goes to the opera; for it was there he found his duel.
+Besides, you are all wrong in representing him as isolated from this
+contemporaneous life, for I happen to know that he is just about to
+harness himself to it by the most rattling and compelling chains of the
+social system--I mean political interests."
+
+"Does he want to be a statesman?" asked Emile Blondet, sarcastically.
+
+"Yes, no doubt that's in his famous programme of universality; and you
+ought to see the consistency and perseverance he puts into that idea!
+Only last year two hundred and fifty thousand francs dropped into his
+mouth as if from the skies, and he instantly bought a hovel in the rue
+Saint-Martin to make himself eligible for the Chamber. Then--another
+pretty speculation--with the rest of the money he bought stock in the
+'National,' where I meet him every time I want to have a laugh over the
+republican Utopia. He has his flatterers on the staff of that estimable
+newspaper; they have persuaded him that he's a born orator and can
+cut the finest figure in the Chamber. They even talk of getting up a
+candidacy for him; and on some of their enthusiastic days they go so far
+as to assert that he bears a distant likeness to Danton."
+
+"But this is getting burlesque," said Emile Blondet.
+
+I don't know if you have ever remarked, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that in
+men of real talent there is always great leniency of judgment. In this,
+Joseph Bridau is pre-eminent.
+
+"I think with you," he said, "that if Dorlange takes this step, and
+enters politics, he will be lost to art. But, after all, why should he
+not succeed in the Chamber? He expresses himself with great facility,
+and seems to me to have ideas at his command. Look at Canalis when he
+was made deputy! 'What! a poet!' everybody cried out,--which didn't
+prevent him from making himself a fine reputation as orator, and
+becoming a minister."
+
+"But the first question is how to get into the Chamber," said Emile
+Blondet. "Where does Dorlange propose to stand?"
+
+"Why, naturally, for one of the rotten boroughs of the 'National.' I
+don't know if it has yet been chosen."
+
+"General rule," said the writer for the "Debats." "To obtain your
+election, even though you may have the support of an active and ardent
+party, you must also have a somewhat extended political notoriety, or,
+at any rate, some provincial backing of family or fortune. Has Dorlange
+any of those elements of success?"
+
+"As for the backing of a family, that element is particularly lacking,"
+replied Bixiou; "in fact, in his case, it is conspicuously absent."
+
+"Really?" said Emile Blondet. "Is he a natural child?"
+
+"Nothing could be more natural,--father and mother unknown. But I
+believe, myself, that he can be elected. It is the ins and outs of his
+political ideas that will be the wonder."
+
+"He is a republican, I suppose, if he is a friend of those 'National'
+gentlemen, and resembles Danton?"
+
+"Yes, of course; but he despises his co-religionists, declaring they
+are only good for carrying a point, and for violence and bullying.
+Provisionally, he is satisfied with a monarchy hedged in by republican
+institutions; but he insists that our civic royalty will infallibly be
+lost through the abuse of influence, which he roughly calls corruption.
+This will lead him towards the little Church of the Left-centre; but
+there again--for there's always a but--he finds only a collection
+of ambitious minds and eunuchs unconsciously smoothing the way to a
+revolution, which he, for his part, sees looming on the horizon with
+great regret, because, he says, the masses are too little prepared,
+and too little intelligent, not to let it slip through their fingers.
+Legitimacy he simply laughs at; he doesn't admit it to be a principle
+in any way. To him it is simply the most fixed and consistent form of
+monarchical heredity; he sees no other superiority in it than that of
+old wine over new. But while he is neither legitimist, nor conservative,
+nor Left-centre, and is republican without wanting a republic, he
+proclaims himself a Catholic, and sits astride the hobby of that party,
+namely,--liberty of education. But this man, who wants free education
+for every one, is afraid of the Jesuits; and he is still, as in 1829,
+uneasy about the encroachments of the clergy and the Congregation. Can
+any of you guess the great party which he proposes to create in the
+Chamber, and of which he intends to be the leader? That of the righteous
+man, the impartial man, the honest man! as if any such thing could live
+and breathe in the parliamentary cook-shops; and as if, moreover, all
+opinions, to hide their ugly nothingness, had not, from time immemorial,
+wrapped themselves in that banner."
+
+"Does he mean to renounce sculpture absolutely?" asked Joseph Bridau.
+
+"Not yet; he is just finishing the statue of some saint, I don't know
+which; but he lets no one see it, and says he does not intend to send it
+to the Exhibition this year--he has ideas about it."
+
+"What ideas?" asked Emile Blondet.
+
+"Oh! that religious works ought not to be delivered over to the judgment
+of critics, or to the gaze of a public rotten with scepticism; they
+ought, he thinks, to go, without passing through the uproar of the
+world, piously and modestly to the niches for which they are intended."
+
+"_Ah ca_!" exclaimed Emile Blondet, "and it is this fervent Catholic who
+fights a duel!"
+
+"Better or worse than that. This Catholic lives with a woman whom he
+brought back from Italy,--a species of Goddess of Liberty, who serves
+him as model and housekeeper."
+
+"What a tongue that Bixiou has; he keeps a regular intelligence office,"
+said some of the little group as it broke up at the offer of tea from
+Madame de Montcornet.
+
+You see from this, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that the political
+aspirations of Monsieur Dorlange are not regarded seriously by his
+friends. I do not doubt that you will write to him soon to thank him
+for the warmth with which he defended you from calumny. That courageous
+devotion has given me a true sympathy for him, and I shall hope that
+you will use the influence of early friendship to turn his mind from the
+deplorable path he seems about to enter. I make no judgment on the other
+peculiarities attributed to him by Monsieur Bixiou, who has a cutting
+and a flippant tongue; I am more inclined to think, with Joseph Bridau,
+that such mistakes are venial. But a fault to be forever regretted,
+according to my ideas, will be that of abandoning his present career
+to fling himself into the maelstrom of politics. You are yourself
+interested in turning him from this idea, if you strongly desire to
+entrust that work to his hands. Preach to him as strongly as you can the
+wisdom of abiding by his art.
+
+On the subject of the explanation I advised you to have with him, I must
+tell you that your task is greatly simplified. You need not enter
+into any of the details which would be to you so painful. Madame de
+l'Estorade, to whom I spoke of the role of mediator which I wanted her
+to play, accepted the part very willingly. She feels confident of being
+able, after half an hour's conversation, to remove the painful feeling
+from your friend's mind, and drive away the clouds between you.
+
+While writing this long letter, I have sent for news of his condition.
+He is going on favorably, and the physicians say that, barring all
+unforeseen accidents, his friends need have no anxiety as to his state.
+It seems he is an object of general interest, for, to use the expression
+of my valet, people are "making cue" to leave their names at his door.
+It must be added that the Duke de Rhetore is not liked, which may partly
+account for this sympathy. The duke is stiff and haughty, but there is
+little in him. What a contrast the brother is to her who lives in our
+tenderest memory. She was simple and kind, yet she never derogated from
+her dignity; nothing equalled the lovable qualities of her heart but the
+charms of her mind.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORAADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
+
+Paris, February, 1839.
+
+Nothing could be more judicious than what you have written me, my dear
+friend. It was certainly to have been expected that my "bore" would have
+approached me on the occasion of our next meeting. His heroism gave him
+the right to do so, and politeness made it a duty. Under pain of being
+thought unmannerly he was bound to make inquiries as to the results
+of the accident on my health and that of Nais. But if, contrary to all
+these expectations, he did not descend from his cloud, my resolution,
+under your judicious advice, was taken. If the mountain did not come
+to me, I should go to the mountain; like Hippolyte in the tale of
+Theramene, I would rush upon the monster and discharge my gratitude
+upon him at short range. I have come to think with you that the really
+dangerous side of this foolish obsession on his part is its duration and
+the inevitable gossip in which, sooner or later, it would involve me.
+
+Therefore, I not only accepted the necessity of speaking to my shadow
+first, but under pretence that my husband wished to call upon him and
+thank him in person, I determined to ask him his name and address, and
+if I found him a suitable person I intended to ask him to dinner on the
+following day; believing that if he had but a shadow of common-sense,
+he would, when he saw the manner in which I live with my husband, my
+frantic passion, as you call it, for my children, in short, the whole
+atmosphere of my well-ordered home, he would, as I say, certainly see
+the folly of persisting in his present course. At any rate half the
+danger of his pursuit was over if it were carried on openly. If I was
+still to be persecuted, it would be in my own home, where we are
+all, more or less, exposed to such annoyances, which an honest woman
+possessing some resources of mind can always escape with honor.
+
+Well, all these fine schemes and all your excellent advice have come to
+nothing. Since the accident, or rather since the day when my physician
+first allowed me to go out, nothing, absolutely nothing have I seen
+of my unknown lover. But, strange to say, although his presence was
+intolerably annoying, I am conscious that he still exercises a sort
+of magnetism over me. Without seeing him, I feel him near me; his eyes
+weigh upon me, though I do not meet them. He is ugly, but his ugliness
+has something energetic and powerfully marked, which makes one
+remember him as a man of strong and energetic faculties. In fact, it
+is impossible not to think about him; and now that he appears to have
+relieved me of his presence, I an conscious of a void--that sort of void
+the ear feels when a sharp and piercing noise which has long annoyed it
+ceases. What I am going to add may seem to you great foolishness; but
+are we always mistress of such mirages of the imagination?
+
+I have often told you of my arguments with Louise de Chaulieu in
+relation to the manner in which women ought to look at life. I used
+to tell her that the passion with which she never ceased to pursue the
+ideal was ill-regulated and fatal to happiness. To this she answered:
+"You have never loved, my dearest; love has this rare phenomenon about
+it: we may live all our lives without ever meeting the being to whom
+nature has assigned the power of making us happy. But if the day of
+splendor comes when that being unexpectedly awakes your heart from
+sleep, what will you do then?" [See "Memoirs of Two Young Married
+Women."]
+
+The words of those about to die are often prophetic. What if this man
+were to be the tardy serpent with whom Louise threatened me? That he
+could ever be really dangerous to me; that he could make me fail in my
+duty, that is certainly not what I fear; I am strong against all such
+extremes. But I did not, like you, my dear Madame de Camps, marry a
+man whom my heart had chosen. It was only by dint of patience,
+determination, and reason that I was able to build up the solid and
+serious attachment which binds me to Monsieur de l'Estorade. Ought I
+not, therefore, to be doubly cautious lest anything distract me from
+that sentiment, be it only the diversion of my thoughts in this annoying
+manner, to another man?
+
+I shall say to you, as, MONSIEUR, Louis XIV.'s brother, said to his
+wife, to whom he was in the habit of showing what he had written and
+asking her to decipher it: See into my heart and mind, dear friend,
+disperse the mists, quiet the worries, and the flux and reflux of will
+which this affair stirs up in me. My poor Louise was mistaken, was she
+not? I am not a woman, am I, on whom the passion of love could gain a
+foothold? The man who, on some glorious day, will render me happy is
+my Armand, my Rene, my Nais, three angels for whom I have hitherto
+lived--there can never be for me, I feel it deeply, another passion!
+
+
+
+
+V. THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
+
+Paris, March, 1839.
+
+About the year 1820 in the course of the same week two _news_ (to use
+the schoolboy phrase of my son Armand) entered the college of Tours. One
+had a charming face, the other would have been thought ugly if health,
+frankness, and intelligence beaming on his features had not compensated
+for their irregularity and inelegance.
+
+Here you will stop me, and ask whether I have come to the end of my own
+adventure, that I should now be writing this feuilleton-story. No, this
+tale is really a continuation of that adventure, though it seems little
+like it; so, give it your best attention and do not interrupt me again.
+
+One of these lads, the handsome one, was dreamy, contemplative, and a
+trifle _elegaic_; the other, ardent, impetuous, and always in action.
+They were two natures which completed each other; a priceless blessing
+to every friendship that is destined to last. Both had the same
+bar-sinister on them at their birth. The dreamer was the natural son of
+the unfortunate Lady Brandon. His name was Marie-Gaston; which, indeed,
+seems hardly an actual name. The other, born of wholly unknown parents,
+was named Dorlange, which is certainly no name at all. Dorlange, Valmon,
+Volmar, Melcourt, are heard upon the stage and nowhere else; already
+they belong to a past style, and will soon rejoin Alceste, Arnolphe,
+Clitandre, Damis, Eraste, Philinte, and Arsinoe.
+
+Another reason why the poor ill-born lads should cling together was
+the cruel abandonment to which they were consigned. For the seven years
+their studies lasted there was not a day, even during the holidays, when
+the door of their prison opened. Now and then Marie-Gaston received
+a visit from an old woman who had served his mother; through her the
+quarterly payment for his schooling was regularly made. That of Dorlange
+was also made with great punctuality through a banker in Tours. A point
+to be remarked is that the price paid for the schooling of the latter
+was the highest which the rules of the establishment allowed; hence the
+conclusion that his unknown parents were persons in easy circumstances.
+Among his comrades, Dorlange attained to a certain respect which, had
+it been withheld, he would very well have known how to enforce with his
+fists. But under their breaths, his comrades remarked that he was never
+sent for to see friends in the parlor, and that outside the college
+walls no one appeared to take an interest in him.
+
+The two lads, who were both destined to become distinguished men, were
+poor scholars; though each had his own way of studying. By the time
+he was fifteen Marie-Gaston had written a volume of verses, satires,
+elegies, meditations, not to speak of two tragedies. The favorite
+studies of Dorlange led him to steal logs of wood, out of which, with
+his knife, he carved madonnas, grotesque figures, fencing-masters,
+saints, grenadiers of the Old Guard, and, but this was secretly,
+Napoleons.
+
+In 1827, their school-days ended, the two friends left college together
+and were sent to Paris. A place had been chosen for Dorlange in the
+atelier of the sculptor Bosio, and from that moment a rather fantastic
+course was pursued by an unseen protection that hovered over him. When
+he reached the house in Paris to which the head-master of the school had
+sent him, he found a dainty little apartment prepared for his reception.
+Under the glass shade of the clock was a large envelope addressed to
+him, so placed as to strike his eye the moment that he entered the
+room. In that envelope was a note, written in pencil, containing these
+words:--
+
+  The day after your arrival in Paris go at eight in the morning
+  punctually to the garden of the Luxembourg, Allee de
+  l'Observatoire, fourth bench to the right, starting from the gate.
+  This order is strict. Do not fail to obey it.
+
+Punctual to the minute, Dorlange was not long at the place of rendezvous
+before he was met by a very small man, whose enormous head, bearing an
+immense shock of hair, together with a pointed nose, chin, and crooked
+legs made him seem like a being escaped from one of Hoffman's tales.
+Without saying a word, for to his other physical advantages this weird
+messenger added that of being deaf and dumb, he placed in the young
+man's hand a letter and a purse. The letter said that the family of
+Dorlange were glad to see that he wished to devote himself to art. They
+urged him to work bravely and to profit by the instructions of the great
+master under whose direction he was placed. They hoped he would live
+virtuously; and, in any case, an eye would be kept upon his conduct.
+There was no desire, the letter went on to say, that he should be
+deprived of the respectable amusements of his age. For his needs and
+for his pleasures, he might count upon the sum of six hundred and fifty
+francs every three months, which would be given to him in the same place
+by the same man; but he was expressly forbidden to follow the messenger
+after he had fulfilled his commission; if this injunction were directly
+or indirectly disobeyed, the punishment would be severe; it would be
+nothing less than the withdrawal of the stipend and, possibly, total
+abandonment.
+
+Do you remember, my dear Madame de Camps, that in 1831 you and I went
+together to the Beaux-Arts to see the exhibition of works which were
+competing for the Grand Prix in sculpture? The subject given out for
+competition was Niobe weeping for her children. Do you also remember my
+indignation at one of the competing works around which the crowd was so
+compact that we could scarcely approach it? The insolent youth had dared
+to turn that sacred subject into jest! His Niobe was infinitely touching
+in her beauty and grief, but to represent her children, as he did,
+by monkeys squirming on the ground in the most varied and grotesque
+attitudes, what a deplorable abuse of talent--!
+
+You tried in vain to make me see that the monkeys were enchantingly
+graceful and clever, and that a mother's blind idolatry could not be
+more ingeniously ridiculed; I held to the opinion that the conception
+was monstrous, and the indignation of the old academicians who demanded
+the expulsion of this intolerable work, seemed to me most justifiable.
+But the Academy, instigated by the public and by the newspapers, which
+talked of opening a subscription to send the young sculptor to Rome,
+were not of my opinion and that of their older members. The extreme
+beauty of the Niobe atoned for all the rest and the defamer of mothers
+saw his work crowned, in spite of an admonition given to him by the
+venerable secretary on the day of the distribution of the prizes.
+But, poor fellow! I excuse him, for I now learn that he never knew his
+mother. It was Dorlange, the poor abandoned child at Tours, the friend
+of Marie-Gaston.
+
+From 1827 to 1831 the two friends were inseparable. Dorlange, regularly
+supplied with means, was a sort of Marquis d'Aligre; Gaston, on the
+contrary, was reduced to his own resources for a living, and would have
+lived a life of extreme poverty had it not been for his friend. But
+where friends love each other--and the situation is more rare
+than people imagine--all on one side and nothing on the other is a
+determining cause for association. So, without any reckoning between
+them, our two pigeons held in common their purse, their earnings, their
+pains, pleasures, hopes, in fact, they held all things in common, and
+lived but one life between the two. This state of things lasted till
+Dorlange had won the Grand Prix, and started for Rome. Henceforth
+community of interests was no longer possible. But Dorlange, still
+receiving an ample income through his mysterious dwarf, bethought
+himself of making over to Gaston the fifteen hundred francs paid to him
+by the government for the "prix de Rome." But a good heart in receiving
+is more rare than the good heart that gives. His mind being ulcerated
+by constant misfortune Marie-Gaston refused, peremptorily, what pride
+insisted on calling _alms_. Work, he said, had been provided for him by
+Daniel d'Arthez, one of our greatest writers, and the payment for that,
+added to his own small means, sufficed him. This proud rejection, not
+properly understood by Dorlange, produced a slight coolness between
+the two friends; nevertheless, until the year 1833, their intimacy
+was maintained by a constant exchange of letters. But here, on
+Marie-Gaston's side, perfect confidence ceased, after a time, to exist.
+He was hiding something; his proud determination to depend wholly on
+himself was a sad mistake. Each day brought him nearer to penury. At
+last, staking all upon one throw, he imprudently involved himself in
+journalism. Assuming all the risks of an enterprise which amounted to
+thirty thousand francs, a stroke of ill-fortune left him nothing to look
+forward to but a debtor's prison, which yawned before him.
+
+It was at this moment that his meeting with Louise de Chaulieu
+took place. During the nine months that preceded their marriage,
+Marie-Gaston's letters to his friend became fewer and far-between.
+Dorlange ought surely to have been the first to know of this change in
+the life of his friend, but not one word of it was confided to him.
+This was exacted by the high and mighty lady of Gaston's love, Louise de
+Chaulieu, Baronne de Macumer.
+
+When the time for the marriage came, Madame de Macumer pushed this mania
+for secrecy to extremes. I, her nearest and dearest friend, was scarcely
+informed of the event, and no one was admitted to the ceremony
+except the witnesses required by law. Dorlange was still absent. The
+correspondence between them ceased, and if Marie-Gaston had entered the
+convent of La Trappe, he could not have been more completely lost to his
+friend.
+
+When Dorlange returned from Rome in 1836, the sequestration of
+Marie-Gaston's person and affection was more than ever close and
+inexorable. Dorlange had too much self-respect to endeavor to pass the
+barriers thus opposed to him, and the old friends not only never saw
+each other, but no communication passed between them.
+
+But when the news of Madame Marie-Gaston's death reached him Dorlange
+forgot all and hastened to Ville d'Avray to comfort his friend. Useless
+eagerness! Two hours after that sad funeral was over, Marie-Gaston,
+without a thought for his friends or for a sister-in-law and two nephews
+who were dependent on him, flung himself into a post-chaise and started
+for Italy. Dorlange felt that this egotism of sorrow filled the measure
+of the wrong already done to him; and he endeavored to efface from
+his heart even the recollection of a friendship which sympathy under
+misfortune could not recall.
+
+My husband and I loved Louise de Chaulieu too tenderly not to continue
+our affection for the man who had been so much to her. Before leaving
+France, Marie-Gaston had requested Monsieur de l'Estorade to take charge
+of his affairs, and later he sent him a power-of-attorney to enable him
+to do so properly.
+
+Some weeks ago his grief, still living and active, suggested to him a
+singular idea. In the midst of the beautiful park at Ville d'Avray is a
+little lake, with an island upon it which Louise dearly loved. To that
+island, a shady calm retreat, Marie-Gaston wished to remove the body of
+his wife, after building a mausoleum of Carrara marble to receive it. He
+wrote to us to communicate this idea, and, remembering Dorlange in this
+connection, he requested my husband to see him and ask him to undertake
+the work. At first Dorlange feigned not to remember even the name of
+Marie-Gaston, and he made some civil pretext to decline the commission.
+But see and admire the consistency of such determinations when people
+love each other! That very evening, being at the opera, he heard the
+Duc de Rhetore speak insultingly of his former friend, and he vehemently
+resented the duke's words. A duel followed in which he was wounded; the
+news of this affair has probably already reached you. So here is a man
+facing death at night for a friend whose very name he pretended not to
+know in the morning!
+
+You will ask, my dear Madame de Camps, what this long tale has to do
+with my own ridiculous adventure. That is what I would tell you now if
+my letter were not so immoderately long. I told you my tale would prove
+to be a feuilleton-story, and I think the moment has come to make the
+customary break in it. I hope I have not sufficiently exalted your
+curiosity to have the right not to satisfy it. To be concluded,
+therefore, whether you like it or not, in the following number.
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
+
+Paris, March, 1839.
+
+The elements of the long biographical dissertation I lately sent you,
+my dear friend, were taken chiefly from a recent letter from Monsieur
+Marie-Gaston. On leaning of the brave devotion shown in his defence his
+first impulse was to rush to Paris and press the hand of the friend who
+avenged himself thus nobly for neglect and forgetfulness. Unfortunately
+the evening before his departure he met with a dangerous fall at
+Savarezza, one of the outlying quarries of Carrara, and dislocated
+his ankle. Being obliged to postpone his journey, he wrote to Monsieur
+Dorlange to express his gratitude; and, by the same courier, he sent
+me a voluminous letter, relating the whole past of their lifelong
+friendship and asking me to see Monsieur Dorlange and be the mediator
+between them. He was not satisfied with the expression of his warm
+gratitude, he wanted also to show him that in spite of contrary
+appearances, he had never ceased to deserve the affection of his early
+friend.
+
+On receiving Monsieur Gaston's letter, my first idea was to write to
+the sculptor and ask him to come and see me, but finding that he was not
+entirely recovered from his wound, I went, accompanied by my husband and
+Nais, to the artist's studio, which we found in a pleasant little house
+in the rue de l'Ouest, behind the garden of the Luxembourg, one of the
+most retired quarters of Paris. We were received in the vestibule by a
+woman about whom Monsieur de l'Estorade had already said a word to
+me. It appears that the _laureat_ of Rome did not leave Italy without
+bringing away with him an agreeable souvenir in the form of a bourgeoise
+Galatea, half housekeeper, half model; about whom certain indiscreet
+rumors are current. But let me hasten to say that there was absolutely
+nothing in her appearance or manner to lead me to credit them. In fact,
+there was something cold and proud and almost savage about her,
+which is, they tell me, a strong characteristic of the Transteverine
+peasant-women. When she announced our names Monsieur Dorlange was
+standing in a rather picturesque working costume with his back to us,
+and I noticed that he hastily drew an ample curtain before the statue on
+which he was engaged.
+
+At the moment when he turned round, and before I had time to look
+at him, imagine my astonishment when Nais ran forward and, with the
+artlessness of a child, flung her arms about his neck crying out:--
+
+"Are! here is my monsieur who saved me!"
+
+What! the monsieur who saved her? Then Monsieur Dorlange must be the
+famous Unknown?--Yes, my dear friend, I now recognized him. Chance, that
+cleverest of romance-makers, willed that Monsieur Dorlange and my bore
+were one. Happily, my husband had launched into the expression of his
+feelings as a grateful father; I thus had time to recover myself, and
+before it became my turn to say a word, I had installed upon my face
+what you are pleased to call my grand l'Estorade air; under which, as
+you know, I mark twenty-five degrees below zero, and can freeze the
+words on the lips of any presuming person.
+
+As for Monsieur Dorlange, he seemed to me less troubled than surprised
+by the meeting. Then, as if he thought we kept him too long on the topic
+of our gratitude, he abruptly changed the subject.
+
+"Madame," he said to me, "since we are, as it seems, more acquainted
+than we thought, may I dare to gratify my curiosity?"--
+
+I fancied I saw the claw of a cat preparing to play with its mouse, so I
+answered, coldly:--
+
+"Artists, I am told, are often indiscreet in their curiosity."
+
+I put a well-marked stiffness into my manner which completed the meaning
+of the words. I could not see that it baffled him.
+
+"I hope," he replied, "that my question is not of that kind. I only
+desire to ask if you have a sister."
+
+"No, monsieur," I replied, "I have no sister--none, at least, that I
+know of," I added, jestingly.
+
+"I thought it not unlikely, however," continued Monsieur Dorlange, in
+the most natural manner possible; "for the family in which I have met a
+lady bearing the strongest resemblance to you is surrounded by a certain
+mysterious atmosphere which renders all suppositions possible."
+
+"Is there any indiscretion in asking the name of that family?"
+
+"Not the least; they are people whom you must have known in Paris in
+1829-1830. They lived in great state and gave fine parties. I myself met
+them in Italy."
+
+"But their name?" I said.
+
+"De Lanty," he replied, without embarrassment or hesitation.
+
+And, in fact, my dear Madame de Camps, a family of that name did live
+in Paris about that time, and you probably remember, as I do, that many
+strange stories were told about them. As Monsieur Dorlange answered my
+question he turned back towards his veiled statue.
+
+"The sister whom you have not, madame," he said to me abruptly, "I shall
+permit myself to give you, and I venture to hope that you will see a
+certain family likeness in her."
+
+So saying, he removed the cloth that concealed his work, and there _I_
+stood, under the form of a saint, with a halo round my head. Could I be
+angry at the liberty thus taken?
+
+My husband and Nais gave a cry of admiration at the wonderful likeness
+they had before their eyes. As for Monsieur Dorlange, he at once
+explained the cause of his scenic effect.
+
+"This statue," he said, "is a Saint-Ursula, ordered by a convent in the
+provinces. Under circumstances which it would take too long to relate,
+the type of this saint, the person whom I mentioned just now, was firmly
+fixed in my memory. I should vainly have attempted to create by my
+imagination another type for that saint, it could not have been so
+completely the expression of my thought. I therefore began to model this
+figure which you see from memory, then one day, madame, at Saint-Thomas
+d'Aquin, I saw you, and I had the superstition to believe that you were
+sent to me by Providence. After that, I worked from you only, and as
+I did not feel at liberty to ask you to come to my studio, the best I
+could do was to study you when we met, and I multiplied my chances of
+doing so. I carefully avoided knowing your name and social position, for
+I feared to bring you down from the ideal and materialize you."
+
+"Oh! I have often seen you following us," said Nais, with her clever
+little air.
+
+How little we know children, and their turn for observation! As for my
+husband, it seemed to me that he ought to have pricked up his ears at
+this tale of the daring manner in which his wife had been used as
+a model. Monsieur de l'Estorade is certainly no fool; in all social
+matters he has the highest sense of conventional propriety, and as for
+jealousy, I think if I gave him the slightest occasion he would show
+himself ridiculously jealous. But now, the sight of his "beautiful
+Renee," as he calls me, done into white marble in the form of a saint,
+had evidently cast him into a state of admiring ecstasy. He, with Nais,
+were taking an inventory to prove the fidelity of the likeness--yes, it
+was really my attitude, really my eyes, really my mouth, really those
+two little dimples in my cheeks!
+
+I felt it my duty to take up the role that Monsieur de l'Estorade laid
+aside, so I said, very gravely, to the presuming artist:--
+
+"Do you not think, monsieur, that to appropriate without permission,
+or--not to mince my words--steal a person's likeness, may seem a very
+strange proceeding?"
+
+"For that reason, madame," he replied, in a respectful tone, "I was
+fully determined to abide by your wishes in the matter. Although my
+statue is fated to be buried in the oratory of a distant convent,
+I should not have sent it to its destination without obtaining your
+permission to do so. I could have known your name whenever I wished;
+I already knew your address; and I intended, when the time came, to
+confess the liberty I had taken, and ask you to visit my studio. I
+should then have said what I say now: if the likeness displeases you
+I can, with a few strokes of my chisel, so change it as to make it
+unrecognizable."
+
+My husband, who apparently thought the likeness not sufficiently close,
+turned, at this moment, to Monsieur Dorlange, and said, with a delighted
+air:--
+
+"Do you not think, monsieur, that Madame de l'Estorade's nose is rather
+more delicate than you have made it?"
+
+All this _unexpectedness_ so upset me that I felt unfitted to intervene
+on behalf of Monsieur Marie-Gaston, and I should, I believe, have
+pleaded his cause very ill if Monsieur Dorlange had not stopped me at
+the first words I said about it.
+
+"I know, madame," he said, "all that you can possibly tell me about
+my unfaithful friend. I do not forgive, but I forget my wrong. Things
+having so come about that I have nearly lost my life for his sake, it
+would certainly be very illogical to keep a grudge against him. Still,
+as regards that mausoleum at Ville d'Avray, nothing would induce me to
+undertake it. I have already mentioned to Monsieur de l'Estorade one
+hindrance that is daily growing more imperative; but besides that, I
+think it a great pity that Marie-Gaston should thus ruminate on his
+grief; and I have written to tell him so. He ought to be more of a
+man, and find in study and in work the consolations we can always find
+there."
+
+The object of our visit being thus disposed of, I saw no hope of getting
+to the bottom of the other mystery it had opened, so I rose to take
+leave, and as I did so Monsieur Dorlange said to me:--
+
+"May I hope that you will not exact the injury I spoke of to my statue?"
+
+"It is for my husband and not for me to reply to that question," I said;
+"however, we can talk of it later, for Monsieur de l'Estorade hopes that
+you will give us the honor of a visit."
+
+Monsieur bowed in respectful acquiescence, and we came away,--I, in
+great ill-humor; I was angry with Nais, and also with my husband, and
+felt much inclined to make him a scene, which he would certainly not
+have understood.
+
+Now what do you think of all this? Is the man a clever swindler, who
+invented that fable for some purpose, or is he really an artist, who
+took me in all simplicity of soul for the living realization of his
+idea? That is what I intend to find out in the course of a few days, for
+now I am committed to your programme, and to-morrow Monsieur and Madame
+de l'Estorade will have the honor of inviting Monsieur Dorlange to
+dinner.
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
+
+Paris, March, 1839.
+
+My dear friend,--Monsieur Dorlange dined with us yesterday. My intention
+was to invite him alone to a formal family dinner, so as to have him
+more completely under my eye, and put him to the question at my ease.
+But Monsieur de l'Estorade, to whom I had not explained my charitable
+motives, showed me that such an invitation might wound the sensibilities
+of our guest; it might seem to him that the Comte de l'Estorade thought
+the sculptor Dorlange unfitted for the society of his friends.
+
+"We can't," said my husband gaily, "treat him like the sons of our
+farmers who come here with the epaulet of a lieutenant on their
+shoulder, and whom we invite with closed doors because we can't send
+them to the servants' hall."
+
+We therefore invited to meet him Monsieur Joseph Bridau, the painter,
+the Chevalier d'Espard, Monsieur and Madame de la Bastie (formerly, you
+remember, Mademoiselle Modeste Mignon) and the Marquis de Ronquerolles.
+When my husband invited the latter, he asked him if he had any objection
+to meeting the adversary of the Duc de Rhetore.
+
+"So far from objecting," replied Monsieur de Ronquerolles, "I am glad of
+the opportunity to meet a man of talent, who in the affair you speak of
+behaved admirably." And he added, after my husband had told him of our
+great obligation to Monsieur Dorlange, "Then he is a true hero, your
+sculptor! if he goes on this way, we can't hold a candle to him."
+
+In his studio, with a bare throat leaving his head, which is rather too
+large for his body, free, and dressed in a sort of Oriental costume,
+Monsieur Dorlange looked to me a great deal better than he does in
+regular evening dress. Though I must say that when he grows animated in
+speaking his face lights up, a sort of a magnetic essence flows from his
+eyes which I had already noticed in our preceding encounters. Madame de
+la Bastie was as much struck as I was by this peculiarity.
+
+I don't know if I told you that the ambition of Monsieur Dorlange is to
+be returned to the Chamber at the coming elections. This was the reason
+he gave for declining Monsieur Gaston's commission. What Monsieur de
+l'Estorade and I thought, at first, to be a mere excuse was an actual
+reason. At table when Monsieur Joseph Bridau asked him point-blank what
+belief was to be given to the report of his parliamentary intentions,
+Monsieur Dorlange formally announced them; from that moment, throughout
+the dinner, the talk was exclusively on politics.
+
+When it comes to topics foreign to his studies, I expected to find our
+artist, if not a novice, at least very slightly informed. Not at all.
+On men, on things, on the past as on the future of parties, he had very
+clear and really novel views, which were evidently not borrowed from the
+newspapers; and he put them forth in lively, easy, and elegant language;
+so that after his departure Monsieur de Ronquerolles and Monsieur de
+l'Estorade declared themselves positively surprised at the strong and
+powerful political attitude he had taken. This admission was all the
+more remarkable because, as you know, the two gentlemen are zealous
+conservatives, whereas Monsieur Dorlange inclines in a marked degree to
+democratic principles.
+
+This unexpected superiority in my problematical follower reassured
+me not a little; still, I was resolved to get to the bottom of the
+situation, and therefore, after dinner I drew him into one of those
+tete-a-tetes which the mistress of a house can always bring about.
+
+After talking awhile about Monsieur Marie-Gaston, our mutual friend, the
+enthusiasms of my dear Louise and my efforts to moderate them, I asked
+him how soon he intended to send his Saint-Ursula to her destination.
+
+"Everything is ready for her departure," he replied, "but I want your
+_exeat_, madame; will you kindly tell me if you desire me to change her
+expression?"
+
+"One question in the first place," I replied: "Will your work suffer by
+such a change, supposing that I desire it?"
+
+"Probably. If you cut the wings of a bird you hinder its flight."
+
+"Another question: Is it I, or the _other person_ whom the statue best
+represents?"
+
+"You, madame; that goes without saying, for you are the present, she the
+past."
+
+"But, to desert the past for the present is a bad thing and goes by a
+bad name, monsieur; and yet you proclaim it with a very easy air."
+
+"True," said Monsieur Dorlange, laughing, "but art is ferocious;
+wherever it sees material for its creations, it pounces upon it
+desperately."
+
+"Art," I replied, "is a great word under which a multitude of things
+shelter themselves. The other day you told me that circumstances, too
+long to relate at that moment, had contributed to fix the image of which
+I was the reflection in your mind, where it has left a vivid memory; was
+not that enough to excite my curiosity?"
+
+"It was true, madame, that time did not allow of my making an
+explanation of those circumstances; but, in any case, having the honor
+of speaking to you for the first time, it would have been strange, would
+it not, had I ventured to make you any confidences?"
+
+"Well, but now?" I said, boldly.
+
+"Now, unless I receive more express encouragement, I am still unable to
+suppose that anything in my past can interest you."
+
+"Why not? Some acquaintances ripen fast. Your devotion to my Nais
+has advanced our friendship rapidly. Besides," I added, with affected
+levity, "I am passionately fond of stories."
+
+"But mine has no conclusion to it; it is an enigma even to myself."
+
+"All the better; perhaps between us we might find the key to it."
+
+Monsieur Dorlange appeared to take counsel with himself; then, after a
+short pause he said:--
+
+"It is true that women are admirably fitted to seize the lighter shades
+of meaning in acts and sentiments which we men are unable to decipher.
+But this confidence does not concern myself alone; I should have to
+request that it remain absolutely between ourselves, not even excepting
+Monsieur de l'Estorade from this restriction. A secret is never safe
+beyond the person who confides it, and the person who hears it."
+
+I was much puzzled, as you can well suppose, about what might follow;
+still, continuing my explorations, I replied:--
+
+"Monsieur de l'Estorade is so little in the habit of hearing everything
+from me, that he never even read a line of my correspondence with Madame
+Marie-Gaston."
+
+Until then, Monsieur Dorlange had stood before the fireplace, at one
+corner of which I was seated; but he now took a chair beside me and
+said, by way of preamble:--
+
+"I mentioned to you, madame, the family of Lanty--"
+
+At that instant--provoking as rain in the midst of a picnic--Madame de
+la Bastie came up to ask me if I had been to see Nathan's last drama.
+Monsieur Dorlange was forced to give up his seat beside me, and no
+further opportunity for renewing the conversation occurred during the
+evening.
+
+I have really, as you see now, no light upon the matter, and yet when
+I recall the whole manner and behavior of Monsieur Dorlange, whom I
+studied carefully, my opinion inclines to his perfect innocence. Nothing
+proves that the love I suspected plays any part in this curious affair;
+and I will allow you to think that I and my terrors, with which I
+tormented you, were terribly absurd,--in short, that I have played the
+part of Belise in the _Femmes Savantes_, who fancies that every man she
+sees is fatally in love with her.
+
+I therefore cheerfully abandon that stupid conclusion. Lover or not,
+Monsieur Dorlange is a man of high character, with rare distinction of
+mind; and if, as I believe now, he has no misplaced pretensions, it is
+an honor and pleasure to count him among our friends. Nais is enchanted
+with her preserver. After he left us that evening, she said to me, with
+an amusing little air of approbation,--
+
+"Mamma, how well Monsieur Dorlange talks."
+
+Apropos of Nais, here is one of her remarks:--
+
+"When he stopped the horses, mamma, and you did not seem to notice him,
+I thought he was only a man."
+
+"How do you mean,--only a man?"
+
+"Well, yes! one of those persons to whom one pays no attention. But, oh!
+I was so glad when I found out he was a monsieur. Didn't you hear me cry
+out, 'Ah! you are the monsieur who saved me'?"
+
+Though her innocence is perfect, there was such pride and vanity in this
+little speech that I gave her, as you may well suppose, a lecture upon
+it. This distinction of man and monsieur is dreadful; but, after all,
+the child told the truth. She only said, with her blunt simplicity, what
+our democratic customs still allow us to put in practice, though they
+forbid us to put it into words. The Revolution of '89 has at least
+introduced that virtuous hypocrisy into our social system.
+
+But I refrain from politics.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
+
+April, 1839.
+
+For the last two weeks we have heard nothing more of Monsieur Dorlange.
+Not only has he not seen fit to renew the conversation so provokingly
+interrupted by Madame de la Bastie, but he has not even remembered that
+it was proper to leave his card at the house after a dinner.
+
+While we were breakfasting yesterday morning, I happened to make this
+remark (though without any sharpness), and just then our Lucas, who, as
+an old servant, sometimes allows himself a little familiarity, had the
+door swung triumphantly open to admit him, bearing _something_, I knew
+not what, wrapped in tissue paper, which he deposited with great care on
+the table, giving a note to Monsieur de l'Estorade at the same time.
+
+"What is that?" I said to Lucas, on whose face I detected the signs of
+a "surprise," at the same time putting out my hand to uncover the
+mysterious article.
+
+"Oh! madame must be careful!" cried Lucas; "it is fragile."
+
+During this time my husband had read the note, which he now passed to
+me, saying:--
+
+"Read it. Monsieur Dorlange sends us an excuse."
+
+The note said:--
+
+  Monsieur le Comte,--I think I observed that Madame la comtesse
+  granted me rather reluctantly her permission to profit by the
+  audacious larceny I committed at her expense. I have, therefore,
+  taken upon myself to change the character of my statue, and, at
+  the present moment, the _two sisters_ no longer resemble each
+  other. Nevertheless, as I did not wish that _all_ should be lost
+  to the world, I modelled the head of Saint-Ursula before
+  retouching it. From that model I have now made a reduction, which
+  I place upon the charming shoulders of a countess not yet
+  canonized, thank God! The mould was broken as soon as the one
+  cast, which I have now the honor of sending you, was made. This
+  fact may, perhaps, give some little additional value to the bust
+  in your eyes.
+
+  Accept, Monsieur le comte, etc., etc.
+
+While I was reading the note, my husband, Lucas, Rene, and Nais had
+eagerly extracted me from my swathings, and then, in truth, I appeared
+no longer a saint, but a woman of the world. I really thought my husband
+and children would go out of their minds with admiration and pleasure.
+The news of this masterpiece spread about the house, and all our
+servants, whom we rather spoil, came flocking, one after another, as
+if sent for, crying out, "Oh, it is madame's own self!" I alone did not
+share in the general enthusiasm. As for Monsieur de l'Estorade, after
+working for an hour to find a place in his study where the bust could be
+seen in its best light, he came in to say to me:--
+
+"On my way to the Treasury to-day I shall go and see Monsieur Dorlange,
+and if he is at liberty this evening I shall ask him to dine with us.
+To-day is Armand's half-holiday, and I would like him to see the boy.
+The assembled family can then thank him for his gift."
+
+Monsieur Dorlange accepted the invitation. At dinner Monsieur de
+l'Estorade inquired further about his candidacy, giving it however, no
+approval. This led straight to politics. Armand, whose mind is naturally
+grave and reflective and who reads the newspapers, mingled in the
+conversation. Against the practice of youths of the present day, he
+thinks like his father; that is, he is very conservative; though perhaps
+less just and wise, as might well be expected in a lad of fifteen. He
+was consequently led to contradict Monsieur Dorlange, whose inclination
+as I told you, is somewhat jacobin. And I must say I thought the
+arguments of my little man neither bad nor ill-expressed. Without
+ceasing to be polite, Monsieur Dorlange had an air of disdaining a
+discussion with the poor boy, so much so that I saw Armand on the point
+of losing patience and replying sharply. However, as he has been well
+brought up, I had only to make him a sign and he controlled himself; but
+seeing him turn scarlet and shut himself up in gloomy silence, I felt
+that his pride had received a blow, and I thought it little generous in
+Monsieur Dorlange to crush a young lad in that way.
+
+I know very well that children in these days make the mistake of wishing
+to be personages before their time, and that it often does them good
+to suppress such conceit. But really, Armand has an intellectual
+development and a power of reasoning beyond his age. Do you want a proof
+of it? Until last year, I had never consented to part with him, and it
+was only as a day scholar that he followed his course of study at the
+College Henri IV. Well, he himself, for the sake of his studies, which
+were hindered by going and coming to and fro, asked to be placed in
+the regular manner in the school; and he employed more entreaties and
+arguments with me to put him under that discipline than an ordinary boy
+would have used to escape it. Therefore this manly air and manner, which
+in most schoolboys would, of course, be intolerably ridiculous, seems in
+him the result of his natural precocity; and this precocity ought to be
+forgiven him, inasmuch as it comes to him from God.
+
+In consequence of his unfortunate birth Monsieur Dorlange is less fitted
+than most men to judge of children in their homes, and he therefore,
+necessarily, shows a want of indulgence. But he had better take care; if
+he wishes to pay court to me merely as a friend he has chosen a very bad
+method of doing so.
+
+Of course an evening in the midst of the family did not allow of his
+returning to the subject of his private history; but I thought he did
+not show any particular desire to do so. In fact, he occupied himself
+much more with Nais than with me, cutting out silhouettes in black paper
+for her during nearly the whole evening. I must also mention that Madame
+de Rastignac came in and I, on my side, was obliged to give my company
+to her. While we were conversing near the fire, Monsieur Dorlange at
+the other end of the room was posing the two children Nais and Rene, who
+presently brought me their likenesses snipped out with scissors, Nais
+whispering triumphantly in my ear:--
+
+"You don't know; but Monsieur Dorlange is going to make my bust in
+marble."
+
+Since this family dinner, civil war has been declared among my children.
+Nais extols to the skies her "dear preserver," as she calls him, and is
+supported in her opinion by Rene, who is delivered over to the sculptor
+body and soul in return for a superb lancer on horseback which Monsieur
+Dorlange cut out for him. Armand, on the contrary, thinks him ugly,
+which is undeniable; he says he resembles the portraits of Danton which
+he has seen in the illustrated histories of the Revolution, in which
+remark there is some truth. He says also that Monsieur Dorlange has
+given me in my bust the air of a grisette, which is not true at all.
+Hence, disputes among my darlings which are endless.
+
+
+
+
+IX. DORLANGE TO MARIE-GASTON
+
+Paris, April, 1839.
+
+Why do I desert my art, and what do I intend to do in this cursed galley
+of politics? This shows what it is, my dear romantic friend, to shut
+one's self up for years in a conjugal convent. During that time the
+world has progressed. To friends forgotten at the gate life brings
+new combinations; and the more they are ignored, the more disposed the
+forgetter is to cast the blame upon those forgotten; it is so easy to
+preach to others!
+
+Learn, then, my dear inquisitor, that I do not enter politics of my own
+volition. In pushing myself in this unexpected manner into the electoral
+breach, I merely follow an inspiration that has been made to me. A
+ray of light has come into my darkness; a father has partly revealed
+himself, and, if I may believe appearances, he holds a place in
+the world which ought to satisfy the most exacting ambition. This
+revelation, considering the very ordinary course of my life, has come to
+me surrounded by fantastic and romantic circumstances which served to be
+related to you in some detail.
+
+As you have lived in Italy, I think it useless to explain to you the
+Cafe Greco, the usual rendezvous of the pupils of the Academy and
+the artists of all countries who flock to Rome. In Paris, rue de
+Coq-Saint-Honore, we have a distant counterpart of that institution in a
+cafe long known as that of the Cafe des Arts. Two or three times a week
+I spend an evening there, where I meet several of my contemporaries
+in the French Academy in Rome. They have introduced me to a number of
+journalists and men of letters, all of them amiable and distinguished
+men, with whom there is both profit and pleasure in exchanging ideas.
+
+In a certain corner, where we gather, many questions of a nature to
+interest serious minds are debated; but the most eager interest, namely
+politics, takes the lead in our discussions. In this little club the
+prevailing opinion is democratic; it is represented under all its
+aspects, the phalansterian Utopia not excepted. That's enough to tell
+you that before this tribunal the ways of the government are often
+judged with severity, and that the utmost liberty of language reigns in
+our discussions. The consequence is that about a year ago the waiter
+who serves us habitually took me aside one day to give me, as he said, a
+timely warning.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "you are watched by the police; and you would do
+well not to talk like Saint Paul, open-mouthed."
+
+"The police! my good friend," I replied, "why the devil should the
+police watch me? What I say, and a good deal else, is printed every
+morning in the newspapers."
+
+"No matter for that, they _are_ watching you. I have seen it. There is
+a little old man, who takes a great deal of snuff, who is always within
+hearing distance of you; when you speak he seems to pay more attention
+to your words than to those of the others; and once I saw him write
+something down in a note-book in marks that were not writing."
+
+"Well, the next time he comes, point him out to me."
+
+The next time proved to be the next day. The person shown to me was a
+short man with gray hair, a rather neglected person and a face deeply
+pitted with the small-pox, which seemed to make him about fifty years of
+age. He frequently dipped in a large snuffbox; and seemed to be giving
+to my remarks an attention I might consider either flattering or
+inquisitive, as I pleased; but a certain air of gentleness and integrity
+in this supposed police-spy inclined me to the kinder interpretation. I
+said so to the waiter, who had plumed himself on discovering a spy.
+
+"_Parbleu_!" he replied, "they always put on that honeyed manner to hide
+their game."
+
+Two days later, on a Sunday, at the hour of vespers, in one of my
+rambles about old Paris--for which, as you know, I always had a taste--I
+happened to enter the church of Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile, the parish church
+of the remote quarter of the city which bears that name. This church
+is a building of very little interest, no matter what historians and
+certain "Guides to Paris" may say. I should therefore have passed
+rapidly through it if the remarkable talent of the organist who was
+performing part of the service had not induced me to remain.
+
+To say that the playing of that man realized my ideal is giving it high
+praise, for I dare say you will remember that I always distinguished
+between organ-players and organists, a superior order of nobility the
+title of which is not to be given unwittingly.
+
+The service over, I had a curiosity to see the face of so eminent an
+artist buried in that out-of-the-way place. Accordingly I posted myself
+near the door of the organ loft, to see him as he left the church--a
+thing I certainly would not have done for a crowned head; but great
+artists, after all, are they not kings by divine right?
+
+Imagine my amazement when, after waiting a few minutes, instead of
+seeing a totally unknown face I saw that of a man in whom I recognized
+my listener at the Cafe des Arts. But that is not all: behind him came
+the semblance of a human being in whose crooked legs and bushy
+tangled hair I recognized by old tri-monthly providence, my banker, my
+_money-bringer_,--in a word my worthy friend, the mysterious dwarf.
+
+I did not escape, myself, his vigilant eye, and I saw him point me out
+to the organist with an eager gesture. The latter turned hastily to
+look at me and then, without further demonstration, continued his way.
+Meanwhile the bandy-legged creature went up familiarly to the giver of
+holy-water and offered him a pinch of snuff; then without paying any
+further attention to me, he limped to a low door at the side of the
+church and disappeared. The evident pains this deformed being had taken
+to fix the organist's attention upon me seemed to me a revelation.
+Evidently, the _maestro_ knew of the singular manner by which my
+quarterly stipend had reached me; which stipend, I should tell you, had
+been regularly continued until my orders for work so increased as to put
+me beyond all necessity. It was not improbable therefore that this man,
+who listened to me at the Cafe des Arts, was the repository of other
+secrets relating to my early life; and I became most eager to obtain an
+explanation from him; all the more because, as I was now living on
+my own resources, my curiosity could not be punished, as formerly
+threatened, by the withdrawal of my subsidy.
+
+Making my decision quickly, I followed the organist at once; but by the
+time I reached the door of the church he was out of sight. However, my
+luck prompted me to follow the direction he had taken, and as I reached
+the quai de Bethune I saw him to my great joy rapping at the door of
+a house. Entering resolutely after him, I asked the porter for the
+organist of Saint-Louis-de-l'Ile.
+
+"Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau?"
+
+"Yes; Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau; he lives here I believe."
+
+"Fourth floor above the entresol, door to the left. He has just come in,
+and you can overtake him on the stairs."
+
+Rapidly as I ran up, my man had the key of his door already in the lock
+when I reached him.
+
+"Have I the honor of speaking to Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau?" I asked.
+
+"Don't know any such person," he replied with effrontery, unlocking his
+door.
+
+"Perhaps I pronounce the name incorrectly; I mean the organist of
+Saint-Louis-de-l'Ile."
+
+"I have never heard of any organist in this house."
+
+"Pardon me, monsieur, there is one, for the concierge has just told me
+so. Besides I saw you leave the organ loft of that church followed by an
+individual who--"
+
+Before I could finish my sentence this singular individual cut short our
+interview by entering his apartment and locking the door behind him. For
+a moment I thought that I must have been mistaken; but on reflection
+I saw that a mistake was impossible. I had to do with a man who, for
+years, had proved his unremitting discretion. No, he was obstinately
+bent on avoiding me; I was not mistaken in recognizing him.
+
+I then began to pull the bell vigorously, being quite resolved to get
+some answer at least to my demand. For some little time the besieged
+took the racket I made patiently; then, all of a sudden, I noticed that
+the bell had ceased to ring. Evidently, the wire was disconnected; the
+besieged was secure, unless I kicked in the door; but that of course,
+was not altogether the thing to do.
+
+I returned to the porter and, without giving the reasons for my
+discomfiture, I told him about it. In that way I won his confidence
+and so obtained some little information about the impenetrable Monsieur
+Jacques Bricheteau. Though readily given, this information did not
+enlighten me at all as to the actual situation. Bricheteau was said
+to be a quiet lodger, civil, but not communicative; though punctual in
+paying his rent, his means seemed small; he kept no servant and took his
+meals out of the house. Going out every morning before ten o'clock,
+he seldom came in before night; the inference was that he was either a
+clerk in some office, or that he gave music lessons in private houses.
+
+One detail alone in the midst of this vague and useless information was
+of interest. For the last few months Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau had
+received a voluminous number of letters the postage on which indicated
+that they came from foreign parts; but, in spite of his desires,
+the worthy concierge had never, he said, been able to decipher the
+post-mark. Thus this detail, which might have been very useful to me
+became for the moment absolutely worthless.
+
+I returned home, persuading myself that a pathetic letter addressed to
+the refractory Bricheteau would induce him to receive me. Mingling with
+my entreaties the touch of a threat, I let him know that I was firmly
+resolved at all costs to get to the bottom of the mystery which weighed
+upon my life; the secret of which he evidently knew. The next morning,
+before nine o'clock, I went to his house, only to learn that after
+paying the rent to the end of his term, he had packed up his furniture
+and left the house in the early morning, without the porter being able
+to discover from the men who removed his property (well-paid to keep
+silence, no doubt) where they were ordered to carry it. These men being
+strangers in the quarter, it was quite impossible to discover them
+later.
+
+I felt, however, that I still had a clue to him, through the organ at
+Saint-Louis, and the following Sunday after high mass I posted myself
+as before at the door of the organ loft, determined not to let go of
+the sphinx until I had made him speak. But here again, disappointment!
+Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau's place was taken by a pupil. The same thing
+happened on the three following Sundays. On the fourth, I accosted the
+pupil and asked him if the master were ill.
+
+"No, monsieur," he replied. "Monsieur Bricheteau has asked for leave of
+absence. He will be absent for some time; I believe on business."
+
+"Where, then, can I write to him?"
+
+"I don't rightly know; but I think you had better address your letter to
+his house; not far from here, quai de Bethune."
+
+"But he has moved; didn't you know it?"
+
+"No, indeed; where does he live now?"
+
+This was poor luck; to ask information of a man who asked it of me when
+I questioned him. As if to put be quite beside myself while I was making
+these inquiries, I saw that damned dwarf in the distance evidently
+laughing at me.
+
+Happily for my patience and my curiosity, which, under the pressure of
+all this opposition was growing terrible, a certain amount of light was
+given me. A few days after my last discomfiture, a letter reached me
+bearing the post-mark Stockholm, Sweden; which address did not surprise
+me because, while in Rome, I had been honored by the friendship of
+Thorwaldsen, the great Swedish sculptor, and I had often met in his
+studio many of his compatriots. Probably, therefore, this letter
+conveyed an order from one of them, sent through Thorwaldsen. But, on
+opening the letter what was my amazement, and my emotion, in presence of
+its opening words:--
+
+  Monsieur my Son,--
+
+The letter was long. I had no patience to read it until I knew the
+name I bore. I turned to the signature; again my disappointment was
+complete--there was no name!
+
+  Monsieur my Son,
+
+said my anonymous father,--
+
+  I do not regret that by your passionate insistence on knowing the
+  secret of your birth, you have forced the person who has watched
+  over you from childhood to come here to confer with me as to the
+  course your vehement and dangerous curiosity requires us to
+  pursue.
+
+  For some time past, I have entertained a thought which I bring to
+  maturity to-day; the execution of which could have been more
+  satisfactorily settled by word of mouth than it can now be by
+  correspondence.
+
+  Immediately after your birth, which cost your mother's life, being
+  forced to expatriate myself, I made in a foreign country a noble
+  fortune, and I occupy in the ministry of that country an eminent
+  position. I foresee the moment when, free to restore to you my
+  name, I shall also be able to secure to you the inheritance of my
+  titles and the position to which I have attained.
+
+  But, to reach that height, the reputation you have, I am told,
+  acquired in art is not a sufficient recommendation. It is my wish
+  that you should enter political life; and in that career, under
+  the present institutions of France, there are not two ways of
+  becoming a man of distinction: you must begin by being made a
+  deputy. I know that you are not yet of the legal age, and also
+  that you do not possess the property qualification. But, in
+  another year you will be thirty years old, and that is just the
+  necessary time required by law to be a land-owner before becoming
+  a candidate for election.
+
+  To-morrow, therefore, you can present yourself to Mongenod Bros.,
+  bankers, rue de la Victoire. A sum of two hundred and fifty
+  thousand francs will be paid to you; this you must immediately
+  employ in the purchase of real estate, applying part of the
+  surplus to obtain an interest in some newspaper which, when the
+  right time comes, will support your candidacy, and the rest in
+  another expense I shall presently explain to you.
+
+  Your political aptitude is guaranteed to me by the person who,
+  with a disinterested zeal for which I shall ever be grateful, has
+  watched over you since you were abandoned. For some time past he
+  has secretly followed you and listened to you, and he is certain
+  that you will make yourself a dignified position in the Chamber.
+  Your opinions of ardent yet moderate liberalism please me; without
+  being aware of it, you have very cleverly played into my game. I
+  cannot as yet tell you the place of your probable election. The
+  secret power which is preparing for that event is all the more
+  certain to succeed because its plans are pursued quietly and for
+  the present in the shade. But success will be greatly assisted by
+  the execution of a work which I shall now propose to you,
+  requesting you to accept its apparent strangeness without surprise
+  or comment.
+
+  For the time being you must continue to be a sculptor, and with
+  the talents of which you have already given proofs, I wish you to
+  make a statue of Saint-Ursula. That is a subject which does not
+  lack either interest or poesy. Saint-Ursula, virgin and martyr,
+  was, as is generally believed, a daughter of prince of Great
+  Britain. Becoming the abbess of a convent of unmarried women, who
+  were called with popular naivete the Eleven Thousand Virgins, she
+  was martyred by the Huns in the fifth century; later, she was
+  patroness of the order of the Ursulines, to which she gave its
+  name, and she was also patroness of the famous house of Sorbonne.
+  An able artist like yourself could, it seems to me, make much of
+  these details.
+
+  Without knowing the locality of which you will be made the
+  representative, it is expedient that you should from the present
+  moment, make known your political opinions and your intention of
+  becoming a candidate for election. But I cannot too strongly
+  insist on your keeping secret the communication now made to you;
+  at any rate as much as your patience will allow. Leave my agent in
+  peace, and await the slow and quiet development of the brilliant
+  future to which you are destined, without yielding to a curiosity
+  which might, I warn you, lead to great disasters.
+
+  If you refuse to enter my plans, you will take from yourself all
+  chance of ever penetrating a mystery which you have shown yourself
+  so eager to understand. But I do not admit even the supposition of
+  your resistance, and I prefer to believe in your deference to the
+  wishes of a father who will regard it as the finest day of his
+  life when at last it be granted to him to reveal himself to his
+  son.
+
+  P.S. Your statue, which is intended for a convent of Ursuline
+  nuns, must be in white marble. Height: one metre seven hundred and
+  six millimetres; in other words, five feet three inches. As it
+  will not be placed in a niche, you must carefully finish all sides
+  of it. The costs of the work are to be taken out of the two
+  hundred and fifty thousand francs mentioned above.
+
+This letter chilled and pained me. In the first place, it took from me a
+hope long cherished,--that of recovering a mother as loving as yours, of
+whose adorable tenderness, dear friend, you have so often told me. After
+all, it was a half-light thrown upon the fogs of my life without even
+allowing me to know whether I was or was not the child of a legitimate
+marriage. It also seemed to me that such paternal intimations addressed
+to a man of my age were much too despotic and imperious. Was it not
+a strange proceeding to change my whole life as if I were a boy just
+leaving school! At first I employed to myself all the arguments against
+this political vocation which you and my other friends have since
+addressed to me. Nevertheless curiosity impelled me to go the
+Mongenods'; and finding there, sure enough, in actual, living money,
+the two hundred and fifty thousand francs announced to me, I was led to
+reason in another way.
+
+I reflected that a will which began by making such an outlay must have
+something serious in it. And inasmuch as this mysterious father knew all
+and I nothing, it seemed to me that to enter on a struggle with him was
+neither reasonable nor opportune. In fact, had I any real repugnance to
+the career suggested to me? No. Political interests have always roused
+me to a certain degree; and if my electoral attempt should come to
+nothing, I could always return to my art without being more ridiculous
+than the other still-born ambitions which each new legislature produces.
+
+Accordingly, I have bought the necessary piece of property, and
+made myself a shareholder in the "National." I have also made the
+Saint-Ursula, and am now awaiting instructions, which seem to me rather
+long in coming, as to her actual destination. Moreover, I have made
+known my parliamentary ambition, and the fact that I intend to stand in
+the coming elections.
+
+I need not ask you to preserve the utmost secrecy about my present
+confidence. Discretion is a virtue which you practise, to my knowledge,
+in too signal a manner to need any exhorting thereto from me. But I am
+wrong, dear friend, in making these unkind allusions to the past, for at
+this moment I am, more perhaps than you know, the obliged party. Partly
+out of interest in me, but more because of the general aversion your
+brother-in-law's extreme haughtiness inspires, the democratic party has
+flocked to my door to make inquiries about my wound, and the talk and
+excitement about this duel have served me well; there is no doubt that
+my candidacy has gained much ground. Therefore, I say, a truce to your
+gratitude; do you not see how much I owe to you?
+
+
+
+
+X. DORLANGE TO MARIE-GASTON
+
+Paris, April, 1839.
+
+Dear Friend,--For better or for worse, I continue my candidacy without a
+constituency to elect me. This surprises my friends and worries me, for
+it is only a few weeks now to the general election; and if it happens
+that all this mysterious "preparation" comes to nought, a pretty figure
+I shall cut in the caricatures of Monsieur Bixiou, of whose malicious
+remarks on the subject you lately wrote me.
+
+One thing reassures me: it does not seem likely that any one would
+have sown two hundred and fifty thousand francs in my electoral furrow
+without feeling pretty sure of gathering a harvest. Perhaps, to take
+a cheerful view of the matter, this very slowness may be considered as
+showing great confidence of success.
+
+However that may be, I am kept by this long delay in a state of inaction
+which weighs upon me. Astride as it were of two existences,--one in
+which I have not set foot, the other in which my foot still lingers,--I
+have no heart to undertake real work; I am like a traveller who, having
+arrived before the hour when the diligence starts, does not know what to
+do with his person nor how to spend his time. You will not complain,
+I think, that I turn this enforced _far niente_ to the profit of our
+correspondence; and now that I am thus at leisure, I shall take up
+two points in your last letter which did not seem to me of sufficient
+importance to pay much attention to at the time: I refer to your warning
+that my parliamentary pretensions did not meet the approval of Monsieur
+Bixiou; and to your suggestion that I might expose myself to falling in
+love with Madame de l'Estorade--if I were not in love with her
+already. Let us discuss, in the first instance, Monsieur Bixiou's grand
+disapprobation--just as we used to talk in the olden time of the grand
+treachery of Monsieur de Mirabeau.
+
+I'll describe that man to you in a single word. Envy. In Monsieur Bixiou
+there is, unquestionably, the makings of a great artist; but in the
+economy of his existence the belly has annihilated the heart and the
+head, and he is now and forever under the dominion of sensual appetites;
+he is riveted to the condition of a _caricaturist_,--that is to say, to
+the condition of a man who from day to day discounts himself in petty
+products, regular galley-slave pot-boilers, which, to be sure, give him
+a lively living, but in themselves are worthless and have no future.
+With talents misused and now impotent, he has in his mind, as he has
+on his face, that everlasting and despairing _grin_ which human thought
+instinctively attributes to fallen angels. Just as the Spirit of
+darkness attacks, in preference, great saints because they recall to him
+most bitterly the angelic nature from which he has fallen, so Monsieur
+Bixiou delights to slaver the talents and characters of those who he
+sees have courageously refused to squander their strength, sap, and aims
+as he has done.
+
+But the thing which ought to reassure you somewhat as to the danger of
+his calumny and his slander (for he employs both forms of backbiting) is
+that at the very time when he believes he is making a burlesque autopsy
+of me he is actually an obedient puppet whose wire I hold in my hands,
+and whom I am making talk as I please. Being convinced that a certain
+amount of noisy discussion would advance my political career, I
+looked about me for what I may call a public crier. Among these
+circus trumpets, if I could have found one with a sharper tone, a more
+deafening blare than Bixiou's, I would have chosen it. As it was, I
+have profited by the malevolent curiosity which induces that amiable
+lepidopter to insinuate himself into all studios. I confided the whole
+affair to him; even to the two hundred and fifty thousand francs (which
+I attributed to a lucky stroke at the Bourse), I told him all my plans
+of parliamentary conduct, down to the number of the house I have bought
+to conform to the requirements of the electoral law. It is all jotted
+down in his notebook.
+
+That statement, I think, would somewhat reduce the admiration of
+his hearers in the salon Montcornet did they know of it. As for the
+political horoscope which he has been so kind as to draw for me, I
+cannot honestly say that his astrology is at fault. It is very certain
+that with my intention of following no set of fixed opinions, I must
+reach the situation so admirably summed up by the lawyer of Monsieur de
+la Palisse, when he exclaimed with burlesque emphasis: "What do you do,
+gentlemen, when you place a man in solitude? You isolate him."
+
+Isolation will certainly be my lot, and the artist-life, in which a man
+lives alone and draws from himself like the Great Creator whose work
+he toils to imitate, has predisposed me to welcome the situation.
+But although, in the beginning especially, it will deprive me of all
+influence in the lobbies, it may serve me well in the tribune, where I
+shall be able to speak with strength and _freedom_. Being bound by no
+promises and by no party trammels, nothing will prevent me from being
+the man I am, and expressing, in all their sacred crudity, the ideas
+which I think sound and just. I know very well that before an audience
+plain, honest truth may fail to be contagious or even welcome. But have
+you never remarked that, by using our opportunities wisely, we finally
+meet with days which may be called the festivals of morality and
+intelligence, days on which, naturally and almost without effort, the
+thought of good triumphs?
+
+I do not, however, conceal from myself that, although I may reach
+to some reputation as an orator, such a course will never lead to
+a ministry, and that it does not bestow that reputation of being a
+practical man to which it is now the fashion to sacrifice so much. But
+if at arm's length in the tribune I have but little influence, I shall
+make my mark at a greater distance. I shall speak as it were from a
+window, beyond the close and narrow sphere of parliamentary discussion,
+and above the level of its petty passions and its petty interests. This
+species of success appears to meet the views of the mysterious paternal
+intentions toward me. What they seem to require is that I shall sound
+and resound. From that point of view, i' faith, politics have a poetic
+side which is not out of keeping with my past life.
+
+Now, to take up your other warning: that of my passion born or to be
+born for Madame de l'Estorade. I quote your most judicious deductions
+for the purpose of answering them fully.
+
+In 1837, when you left for Italy, Madame de l'Estorade was, you say, in
+the flower of her beauty; and the queer, audacious persistence which I
+have shown in deriving inspiration from her shows that it has not faded.
+Hence, if the evil be not already done, you warn me to be on my guard;
+from the admiration of an artist to the adoration of the man there is
+but a step, and the history of the late Pygmalion is commended to my
+study.
+
+In the first place, learned doctor and mythologian, allow me this
+remark. Being on the spot and therefore much better placed than you
+to judge of the dangers of the situation, I can assure you that the
+principal person concerned does not appear to feel the least anxiety.
+Monsieur de l'Estorade quarrels with me for one thing only: he thinks my
+visits too few, and my reserve misanthropy.
+
+_Parbleu_! I hear you say, a husband is always the last to know that
+his wife is being courted. So be it. But the high renown of Madame de
+l'Estorade's virtue, her cold and rather calculating good sense, which
+often served to balance the ardent and passionate impetuosity of one you
+knew well,--what of that? And will you not grant that motherhood as it
+appears in that lady--pushed to a degree of fervor which I might almost
+call fanaticism--would be to her an infallible preservative?
+
+So much for her. But it is not, I see, for her tranquillity, it is mine
+for which your friendship is concerned; if Pygmalion had not succeeded
+in giving life to his statue, a pretty life his love would have made
+him!
+
+To your charitable solicitude I must answer, (1) by asserting my
+principles (though the word and the thing are utterly out of date); (2)
+by a certain stupid respect that I feel for conjugal loyalty; (3) by the
+natural preoccupation which the serious public enterprise I am about to
+undertake must necessarily give to my mind and imagination. I must also
+tell you that I belong, if not by spiritual height, at least by all the
+tendencies of my mind and character, to that strong and serious school
+of artists of another age who, finding that art is long and life is
+short--_ars longa et vita brevis_--did not commit the mistake of wasting
+their time and lessening their powers of creation by silly and insipid
+intrigues.
+
+But I have a better reason still to offer you. As Monsieur de l'Estorade
+has told you of the really romantic incidents of my first meeting with
+his wife, you know already that a _memory_ was the cause of my studying
+her as a model. Well, that memory, while it attracted me to the
+beautiful countess, is the strongest of all reasons to keep me from
+her. This appears to you, I am sure, sufficiently enigmatical and
+far-fetched; but wait till I explain it.
+
+If you had not thought proper to break the thread of our intercourse, I
+should not to-day be obliged to take up the arrears of our confidence;
+as it is, my dear boy, you must now take your part in my past history
+and listen to me bravely.
+
+In 1835, the last year of my stay in Rome, I became quite intimate with
+a comrade in the Academy named Desroziers. He was a musician and a man
+of distinguished and very observing mind, who would probably have gone
+far in his art if malarial fever had not put an end to him the following
+year. Suddenly the idea took possession of us to go to Sicily, one of
+the excursions permitted by the rules of the school; but as we were
+radically "dry," as they say, we walked about Rome for some time
+endeavoring to find some means of recruiting our finances. On one of
+these occasions we happened to pass before the Palazzo Braschi. Its
+wide-open doors gave access to the passing and repassing of a crowd of
+persons of all sorts.
+
+"_Parbleu_!" exclaimed Desroziers, "here's the very thing for us."
+
+And without explaining his words or where he was taking me, he made me
+follow the crowd and enter the palace.
+
+After mounting a magnificent marble staircase and crossing a very long
+suite of apartments rather poorly furnished,--which is customary in
+Italian palaces, all their luxury being put into ceilings, statues,
+paintings, and other objects of art,--we reached a room that was wholly
+hung with black and lighted by quantities of tapers. It was, of course,
+a _chambre-ardente_. In the middle of it on a raised platform surmounted
+by a baldaquin, lay a _thing_, the most hideous and grotesque thing you
+can possibly conceive. Imagine a little old man whose hands and face had
+reached such a stage of emaciation that a mummy would have seemed to you
+in comparison plump and comely.
+
+Clothed in black satin breeches, a violet velvet coat cut _a la
+Francaise_, a white waistcoat embroidered in gold, from which issued
+an enormous shirt-frill of point d'Angleterre, this skeleton had cheeks
+covered with a thick layer of rouge which heightened still further the
+parchment tones of the rest of his skin. Upon his head was a blond wig
+frizzed into innumerable little curls, surmounted by an immense plumed
+hat jauntily perched to one side in a manner which irresistibly provoked
+the laughter of even the most respectful visitors.
+
+After one glance given to this ridiculous and lamentable exhibition,--an
+obligatory part of all funerals, according to the etiquette of the Roman
+aristocracy,--Desroziers exclaimed: "There's the end; now come and see
+the beginning."
+
+Not replying to any of my questions, because he was arranging a dramatic
+effect, he took me to the Albani gallery and placed me before a statue
+representing Adonis stretched on a lion's skin.
+
+"What do you think of that?" he said.
+
+"What?" I replied at a first glance; "why, it is as fine as an antique."
+
+"Antique as much as I am!" replied Desroziers. "It is a portrait in
+youth of that wizened old being we have just seen dead."
+
+"Antique or not, it is a masterpiece," I said. "But how is all this
+beauty, or its hideous caricature, to get us to Sicily? That is the
+question."
+
+"I'll tell you," replied Desroziers. "I know the family of that old
+scarecrow. His niece married the Comte de Lanty, and they have long
+wanted to buy this statue which the Albani museum won't give up at any
+price. They have tried to have it copied, but they never got anything
+satisfactory. Now, you know the director of the museum well. Get him to
+let you make a copy of it. I give music-lessons to the Comte de Lanty's
+daughter, Mademoiselle Marianina, and I'll talk of your copy. If you
+succeed, as of course you will, the count will buy it and pay you forty
+times the cost of a trip to Sicily."
+
+Two days later I began the work, and, as it suited my taste, I worked so
+hotly at it that by the end of three weeks the Lanty family, escorted
+by Desroziers, came to see my copy. The count, who seemed to me a good
+connoisseur, declared himself satisfied with the work and bought
+it. Mademoiselle Marianina, who was the heiress and favorite of her
+grand-uncle, was particularly delighted with it. Marianina was then
+about twenty-one years old, and I shall not make you her portrait
+because you know Madame de l'Estorade, to whom her likeness is
+extraordinary. Already an accomplished musician, this charming girl had
+a remarkable inclination for all the arts. Coming from time to time to
+my studio to watch the completion of the statue, a taste for sculpture
+seized her, as it did the Princesse Marie d'Orleans, and until the
+departure of the family, which took place a few months before I myself
+left Rome, Mademoiselle de Lanty took lessons from me in modelling.
+
+I never dreamed of being another Saint-Preux or Abelard, but I must own
+that I found rare happiness in imparting my knowledge. Marianina was so
+gay and happy, her judgment of art so sound, her voice, when she sang,
+so stirred my heart, that had it not been for her vast fortune, which
+kept me at a distance, I should have run great danger to my peace
+of mind. Admitted into the household on the footing of a certain
+familiarity, I could see that my beautiful pupil took pleasure in our
+intercourse, and when the family returned to Paris she expressed the
+utmost regret at leaving Rome; I even fancied, God forgive me, that I
+saw something like a tear in her eye when we parted.
+
+On my return to Paris, some months later, my first visit was to the
+hotel de Lanty. Marianina was too well bred and too kind at heart to
+be discourteous to any one, but I felt at once that a cold restrained
+manner was substituted for the gracious friendliness of the past. It
+seemed to me probable that her evident liking, I will not say for me
+personally, but for my conversation and acquirements, had been noticed
+by her parents, who had doubtless taught her a lesson; in fact, the
+stiff and forbidding manner of Monsieur and Madame de Lanty left me no
+other supposition.
+
+Naturally, I did not call again; but a few months later, when I
+exhibited my Pandora in the salon of 1837, I one day saw the whole
+Lanty family approach it. The mother was on the arm of Comte Maxime de
+Trailles, a well-known lion. _Nil admirari_ is the natural instinct
+of all men of the world; so, after a very cursory glance at my work,
+Monsieur de Trailles began to find shocking faults in it, and in so
+high and clear a voice that not a word was lost within a certain range.
+Marianina shrugged her shoulders as she listened to this profound
+discourse, and when it was ended she said,--
+
+"How fortunate you came with us! Without your enlightened knowledge
+I might, with the rest of the good public, have thought this statue
+admirable. It is a pity the sculptor is not here to learn his business
+from you."
+
+"He _is_ here, behind you," said a stout woman, who had once been
+my landlady, and was standing near, laughing heartily. Involuntarily
+Marianina turned; when she saw me a vivid color came into her cheeks,
+and I slipped away into the crowd. A girl who took my part so warmly,
+and then showed such emotion on being detected in doing so, could not be
+absolutely indifferent to me; and as on my first visit I had only, after
+all, been coldly received, I decided, after my great success at the
+Exhibition, in consequence of which I was made a chevalier of the Legion
+of honor, to call again upon the Lantys; perhaps my new distinctions
+would procure me a better reception.
+
+Monsieur de Lanty received me without rising, and with the following
+astounding apostrophe:--
+
+"I think you very courageous, monsieur, to venture to present yourself
+here."
+
+"I have never been received in a manner that seemed to require courage
+on my part."
+
+"You have come, no doubt," continued Monsieur de Lanty, "in search of
+your property which you were careless enough to leave in our hands. I
+shall return you that article of gallantry."
+
+So saying, he rose and took from a drawer in his secretary an elegant
+little portfolio, which he gave to me.
+
+As I looked at it in a sort of stupefaction, he added:
+
+"Yes; I know the letters are not there; I presume you will allow me to
+keep them."
+
+"This portfolio, the letters you mention--all this is an enigma to me,
+monsieur."
+
+At this moment Madame de Lanty entered the room.
+
+"What do you want?" said her husband, roughly.
+
+"I knew monsieur was here, and as I feared some painful explanation, I
+came to do my duty as a woman, and interpose."
+
+"You need fear nothing, madame," I said; "evidently what is taking place
+is the result of some misunderstanding."
+
+"Ah! this is too much!" cried Monsieur de Lanty, reopening the drawer
+from which he had taken the portfolio, and taking out a packet of
+letters tied with a rose-colored ribbon. "I think these will put an end
+to your _misunderstanding_."
+
+I looked at the letters; they were not postmarked, and simply bore my
+name, Monsieur Dorlange, in a woman's handwriting, which was unknown to
+me.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "you know more than I do; you have in your
+possession letters that seem to belong to me, but which I have never
+received."
+
+"Upon my word," cried Monsieur de Lanty, "you are an admirable comedian;
+I never saw innocence better played."
+
+"But, monsieur," I said, "who wrote those letters, and why are they
+addressed to me?"
+
+"It is useless to deny them, monsieur," said Madame de Lanty; "Marianina
+has confessed all."
+
+"Mademoiselle Marianina!" I exclaimed. "Then the matter is very simple;
+have the goodness to bring us together; let me hear from her lips the
+explanation of this singular affair."
+
+"The evasion is clever," replied Monsieur de Lanty; "but my daughter
+is no longer here: she is in a convent, forever sheltered from your
+intrigues and the dangers of her own ridiculous passion. If that is
+what you came to know, all is said. Let us part, for my patience and
+moderation have a limit, if your insolence has none."
+
+"Monsieur!" I began, angrily; but Madame de Lanty, who was standing
+behind her husband, made me a gesture as if she would fall upon her
+knees; and reflecting that perhaps Marianina's future depended on the
+attitude I now took, I controlled myself and left the room without
+further words.
+
+The next morning, before I was out of bed, the Abbe Fontanon was
+announced to me. When he entered he proved to be a tall old man with a
+bilious skin and a sombre, stern expression, which he tried to soften by
+a specious manner and a show of gentle but icy obsequiousness.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "Madame la Comtesse de Lanty, whose confessor I
+have the honor to be, requests me to give you a few explanations, to
+which you have an incontestable right, as to the scene that took place
+last evening between her husband and yourself."
+
+"I am ready to listen to you, monsieur," I replied.
+
+"Monsieur de Lanty," continued the abbe, "is a bad sleeper; and one
+night last summer he was awakened by the sound of cautious steps.
+He opened his door, and called out to know who was there. He was not
+mistaken; some one was there, but did not answer, and disappeared before
+Monsieur de Lanty could obtain a light. At first it was thought to be
+an attempt at robbery; but on further inquiry it appeared that a
+_gentleman_ had taken a room in the neighborhood, and had frequently
+been seen in company with Mademoiselle Marianina,--in short, the matter
+concerned a love affair and not a robbery. Monsieur de Lanty has long
+watched his daughter, whose ardent inclinations have given him much
+anxiety; you yourself, monsieur, caused him some uneasiness in Rome--"
+
+"Very needless, Monsieur l'abbe," I said, interrupting him.
+
+"Yes. I know that your relations to Mademoiselle de Lanty have always
+been perfectly proper and becoming. But since their return to Paris
+another individual has occupied her mind,--a bold and enterprising man,
+capable of risking everything to compromise and thus win an heiress.
+Being taxed with having encouraged this man and allowed these nocturnal
+interviews, Mademoiselle de Lanty at first denied everything. Then,
+evidently fearing that her father, a violent man, would take some
+steps against her lover, she threw herself at his feet and admitted the
+visits, but denied that the visitor was the man her father named to her.
+At first she refused obstinately to substitute another name for the
+one she disavowed. After some days passed in this struggle, she finally
+confessed to her mother, under a pledge of secrecy, that her father was
+right in his suspicions, but she dreaded the results to the family
+if she acknowledged the truth to him. The man in question was a noted
+duellist, and her father and brother would surely bring him to account
+for his conduct. It was then, monsieur, that the idea occurred to this
+imprudent girl to substitute another name for that of her real lover."
+
+"Ah! I understand," I said; "the name of a nobody, an artist, a
+sculptor, or some insignificant individual of that kind."
+
+"You do Mademoiselle de Lanty injustice by that remark," replied the
+abbe. "What decided her to make your name a refuge against the dangers
+she foresaw was the fact that Monsieur de Lanty had formerly had
+suspicions about you, and she thought that circumstance gave color to
+her statement."
+
+"But, Monsieur l'abbe," I said, "how do you explain those letters, that
+portfolio, which her father produced yesterday?"
+
+"That again was an invention of Marianina; and I may add that this
+duplicity assures me that had she remained in the world her future might
+have been terrible."
+
+"Am I to suppose that this tale has been told you by Madame de Lanty?"
+
+"Confided to me, monsieur, yes. You yourself saw Madame de Lanty's
+desire to stop your explanations yesterday, lest the truth might
+appear to her husband. I am requested by her to thank you for your
+connivance--passive, of course--in this pious falsehood. She felt that
+she could only show her profound gratitude by telling you the whole
+truth and relying upon your discretion."
+
+"Where is Mademoiselle Marianina?"
+
+"As Monsieur de Lanty told you, in a convent in Italy. To avoid scandal,
+it was thought best to send her to some safe retreat. Her own conduct
+will decide her future."
+
+Now what do you think of that history? Does it not seem to you very
+improbable? Here are two explanations which have each come into my mind
+with the force of a conviction. First, Marianina's brother has just
+married into a grand-ducal family of Germany. Immense sacrifices must
+have been required of the de Lanty family to make such an alliance.
+Was Marianina's _dot_, and the fortune she inherited from that old
+grand-uncle, required to pay the costs of that princely union? Secondly,
+did Marianina really feel an attachment for me? And did she, in a
+girlish way, express it on those letters which she never sent? To punish
+her, had her parents sent her to a convent? And to disgust me, and throw
+me off the track, had the mother invented this history of another love
+in which she seemed to make me play so mortifying a part?
+
+I may add that the intervention of the Abbe Fontanon authorizes such an
+interpretation. I have made inquiries about him, and I find he is one
+of those mischievous priests who worm themselves into the confidence of
+families for their own ends; he has already destroyed the harmony of
+one home,--that of Monsieur de Granville, attorney-general of the royal
+court of Paris under the Restoration.
+
+As to the truth or falsehood of these suppositions I know nothing, and,
+in all probability, shall continue to know nothing. But, as you can
+easily understand, the thought of Marianina is a luminous point to
+which my eye is forever attached. Shall I love her? Shall I hate her and
+despise her? That is the question perpetually in my mind. Uncertainty
+of that kind is far more certain to fix a woman in a man's soul than to
+dislodge her.
+
+Well, to sum up in two brief sentences my reply to your warnings: As
+for the opinion of Monsieur Bixiou, I care as little for it as for last
+year's roses; and as for that other danger which you fear, I cannot tell
+you whether I love Marianina or not, but this I know, I do _not_ love
+Madame de l'Estorade. That, I think, is giving you a plain and honest
+answer. And now, let us leave our master the Future to do what he likes.
+
+
+
+
+XI. THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
+
+Paris, May, 1839.
+
+Monsieur Dorlange came last evening to take leave of us. He starts
+to-day for Arcis-sur-Aube, where the ceremony of inaugurating _his_
+statue takes place. That is also the place selected by the Opposition
+journals for his candidacy. Monsieur de l'Estorade declares that the
+locality could not have been worse chosen, and that it leaves his
+election without a chance.
+
+Monsieur Dorlange paid his visit early. I was alone. Monsieur de
+l'Estorade was dining with the Minister of the Interior, and the
+children were in bed. The conversation interrupted by Madame de la
+Bastie could now be renewed, as I was about to ask him to continue the
+history, of which he had only told me the last words, when our old Lucas
+brought me a letter. It was from my Armand, to let me know that he had
+been ill since morning, and was then in the infirmary.
+
+"Order the carriage," I said to Lucas, in a state of agitation you can
+easily conceive.
+
+"But, madame," replied Lucas, "monsieur has ordered the carriage to
+fetch him at half-past nine o'clock, and Tony has already started."
+
+"Then send for a cab."
+
+"I don't know that I can find one," said our old servant, who is a man
+of difficulties; "it is beginning to rain."
+
+Without noticing that remark and without thinking of Monsieur Dorlange,
+I went hastily to my room to put on my bonnet and shawl. That done, I
+returned to the salon, where my visitor still remained.
+
+"You must excuse me, monsieur," I said to him, "for leaving you so
+abruptly. I must hasten to the Henri IV. College. I could not possibly
+pass a night in the dreadful anxiety my son's letter has caused me; he
+tells me he has been ill since morning in the infirmary."
+
+"But," replied Monsieur Dorlange, "surely you are not going alone in a
+hired carriage to that lonely quarter?"
+
+"Lucas will go with me."
+
+At that moment Lucas returned; his prediction was realized; there was
+not a coach on the stand; it was raining in torrents. Time was passing;
+already it was almost too late to enter the school, where masters and
+pupils go to bed at nine o'clock.
+
+"Put on thick shoes," I said to Lucas, "and come with me on foot."
+
+Instantly I saw his face lengthen. He is no longer young and loves his
+ease; moreover, he complains every winter of rheumatism. He made various
+objections,--that it was very late; that we should "revolutionize" the
+school; I should take cold; Monsieur Armand could not be very ill if he
+wrote himself; in short, it was clear that my plan of campaign did not
+suit my old retainer.
+
+Monsieur Dorlange very obligingly offered to go himself in my place and
+bring me word about Armand; but that did not suit me at all; I felt that
+I _must_ see for myself. Having thanked him, I said to Lucas in a tone
+of authority:--
+
+"Get ready at once, for one thing is true in your remarks: it is getting
+late."
+
+Seeing himself driven into a corner, Lucas raised the standard of
+revolt.
+
+"It is not possible that madame should go out in such weather; and I
+don't want monsieur to scold me for giving in to such a singular idea."
+
+"Then you do not intend to obey me?"
+
+"Madame knows very well that for anything reasonable I would do what she
+told me if I had to go through fire to obey her."
+
+"Heat is good for rheumatism, but rain is not," I said; then, turning to
+Monsieur Dorlange, I added: "As you were so kind as to offer to do this
+errand alone, may I ask you to give me your arm and come with me?"
+
+"I am like Lucas," he said, "I do not think this excursion absolutely
+necessary; but as I am not afraid of being scolded by Monsieur de
+l'Estorade, I shall have the honor to accompany you."
+
+We started. The weather was frightful; we had hardly gone fifty steps
+before we were soaked in spite of Lucas's huge umbrella, with which
+Monsieur Dorlange sheltered me at his own expense. Luckily a coach
+happened to pass; Monsieur Dorlange hailed the driver; it was empty.
+Of course I could not tell my companion that he was not to get in; such
+distrust was extremely unbecoming and not for me to show. But you know,
+my dear friend, that showers of rain have helped lovers from the days
+of Dido down. However, Monsieur Dorlange said nothing: he saw my anxiety
+and he had the good taste not to attempt conversation, breaking the
+silence only from time to time with casual remarks. When we reached the
+school, after getting out of the carriage to give me his hand he saw for
+himself that he must not enter the house and he therefore got back into
+the carriage to await my return.
+
+Well, I found Monsieur Armand had hoaxed me. His illness reduced itself
+to a headache, which departed soon after he had written me. The doctor,
+for the sake of ordering something, had told him to take an infusion
+of linden-leaves, telling him that the next day he could go back to his
+studies. I had taken a club to kill a flea, and committed all sorts of
+enormities to get there at an hour when the entire establishment were
+going to bed, only to find my young gentleman perfectly well and playing
+chess with one of the nurses.
+
+On leaving the school I found the rain had ceased and the moon was
+shining brightly. My heart was full; the reaction from my great anxiety
+had set in and I felt a need of breathing the fresh air. I therefore
+proposed to Monsieur Dorlange to dismiss the coach and return on foot.
+
+Here was an opportunity for him to make me that long-delayed
+explanation; but Monsieur Dorlange seemed so little inclined to take
+advantage of it that, using Monsieur Armand's freak as a text, he read
+me a lecture on the danger of spoiling children: a subject which was not
+at all agreeable to me, as he must have perceived from the rather stiff
+manner with which I listened to him. Come, thought I, I must and will
+get to the bottom of this history; it is like the tale of Sancho's
+herdsman, which had the faculty of never getting told. So, cutting short
+my companion's theories of education, I said distinctly:--
+
+"This is a very good time, I think, to continue the confidence you were
+about to make to me. Here we are sure of no interruption."
+
+"I am afraid I shall prove a poor story-teller," replied Monsieur
+Dorlange. "I have spent all my fire this very day in telling that tale
+to Marie-Gaston."
+
+"That," I answered laughing, "is against your own theory of secrecy, in
+which a third party is one too many."
+
+"Oh, Marie-Gaston and I count for one only. Besides, I had to reply to
+his odd ideas about you and me."
+
+"What about me?"
+
+"Well, he imagined that in looking at the sun I should be dazzled by its
+rays."
+
+"Which means, speaking less metaphorically--?"
+
+"That, in view of the singularities which accompanied my first knowledge
+of you and led me to the honor of your acquaintance, I might
+expose myself to the danger, madame, of not retaining my reason and
+self-possession."
+
+"And your history refutes this fear in the mind of Monsieur
+Marie-Gaston?"
+
+"You shall judge."
+
+And then, without further preamble, he told me a long tale which I need
+not repeat here; the gist of it is, however, that Monsieur Dorlange is
+in love with a woman who posed in his imagination for Saint-Ursula; but
+as this woman appears to be forever lost to him it did not seem to me
+impossible that in the long run he might transfer his sentiments for her
+memory to me. When he had finished his tale he asked if I did not think
+it a victorious answer to the ridiculous fears of our friend.
+
+"Modesty," I replied, "obliges me to share your security; but they say
+that in the army shots frequently ricochet and kill their victims."
+
+"Then you think me capable of the impertinence Marie-Gaston is good
+enough to suspect in me?"
+
+"I don't know about its being an impertinence," I said stiffly, "but
+if such a fancy came into your mind, I should think you very much to be
+pitied."
+
+His answer was vehement.
+
+"Madame," he said, "you will not have to pity me. In my opinion, first
+love is a vaccination which protects us from a second."
+
+The conversation stopped there. We had now reached my own door, and
+I invited Monsieur Dorlange to come in. He accepted my politeness,
+remarking that Monsieur de l'Estorade had probably returned and he could
+thus take leave of him.
+
+My husband was at home. I don't know whether Lucas, forestalling the
+rebuke I intended to give him, had made out a story to excuse himself,
+or whether Monsieur de l'Estorade for the first time in his life, felt,
+in view of my maternal escapade, a movement of jealousy. It is certain,
+however, that his manner of receiving me was curt; he called it an
+unheard-of thing to go out at such an hour, in such weather, to see
+a boy who proved, by announcing his own illness, that it was nothing
+serious. After letting him talk in this discourteous way for some little
+time, I thought it was time to put an end to the scene, so I said in a
+rather peremptory tone:--
+
+"As I wanted to sleep at night, I went to the school in a pelting rain;
+I came back by moonlight; and I beg you to remark that monsieur, who was
+so good as to escort me, has come upstairs to bid you good-bye, because
+he leaves Paris to-morrow morning."
+
+I have habitually enough power over Monsieur de l'Estorade to make this
+call to order effective; but I saw that my husband was displeased, and
+that instead of having made Monsieur Dorlange an easy diversion, I had
+called down upon his head the ill-humor of my ogre, who instantly turned
+upon him.
+
+After telling him that much had been said about his candidacy during
+dinner at the ministry, Monsieur de l'Estorade began to show him all
+the reasons why he might expect an overwhelming defeat; namely, that
+Arcis-sur-Aube was one of the boroughs where the administration felt
+itself most secure; that a man of extraordinary political ability had
+already been sent there to manipulate the election, and had made a
+first report giving triumphant news of his success. These were only
+generalities, to which Monsieur Dorlange replied with modesty, but also
+with the air of a man who had resolved who take his chances against all
+risks to which his election might be exposed. Monsieur de l'Estorade
+then produced a final shaft which, under the circumstances, was
+calculated to have a marvellous effect, because it attacked both the
+candidate and his private life.
+
+"Listen to me, my dear monsieur," said my husband, "when a man starts
+on an electoral career he must remember that he stakes everything; his
+public life and also his private life. Your adversaries will ransack
+your present and your past with a pitiless hand, and sorrow to him who
+has any dark spots to hide. Now I ought not to conceal from you that
+to-night, at the ministers', much was said about a little scandal which,
+while it may be venial in the life of an artist, takes proportions
+altogether more serious in that of the people's representative. You
+understand me, of course. I refer to that handsome Italian woman whom
+you have in your house. Take care; some puritanical elector whose own
+morality may be more or less problematical, is likely to call you to
+account for her presence."
+
+The reply made by Monsieur Dorlange was very dignified.
+
+"To those," he said, "who may arraign me on that detail of my private
+life I wish but one thing--that they may have nothing worse upon their
+consciences. If I had not already wearied madame on our way from the
+school with an interminable story, I would tell you the facts relating
+to my handsome Italian, and you would see, Monsieur le comte, that her
+presence in my house reflects in no way upon me.
+
+"But," returned Monsieur de l'Estorade, softening his tone, "you take my
+observation rather too seriously. As I said just now, an artist may have
+a handsome model in his house--that may be natural enough--but she is
+not a usual piece of furniture in that of a legislator."
+
+"No, what seems more to their liking," replied Monsieur Dorlange, with
+some heat, "is the good they can get for themselves out of a calumny
+accepted eagerly and without examination. However, far from dreading
+inquiry on the subject you mention, I desire it, and the ministry will
+do me a great service if it will employ the extremely able political
+personage you say they have put upon my path to bring that delicate
+question before the electors."
+
+"Do you really start to-morrow?" asked Monsieur de l'Estorade, finding
+that he had started a subject which not only did not confound Monsieur
+Dorlange, but, on the contrary, gave him the opportunity to reply with a
+certain hauteur of tone and speech.
+
+"Yes, and very early too; so that I must now take leave of you, having
+certain preparations still to make."
+
+So saying, Monsieur Dorlange rose, and after making me a rather
+ceremonious bow and not bestowing his hand on Monsieur de l'Estorade,
+who, in turn, did not hold out his own, he left the room.
+
+"What was the matter with Armand?" asked my husband, as if to avoid any
+other explanation.
+
+"Never mind Armand," I said, "it is far more interesting to know what
+is the matter with you; for never did I see you so out of tune, so sharp
+and uncivil."
+
+"What! because I told a ridiculous candidate that he would have to go
+into mourning for his reputation?"
+
+"In the first place, that was not complimentary; and in any case the
+moment was ill-chosen with a man on whom my maternal anxiety had just
+imposed a disagreeable service."
+
+"I don't like meddlers," retorted Monsieur de l'Estorade, raising his
+voice more than I had ever known him do to me. "And after all, if he had
+not been here to give you his arm you would not have gone."
+
+"You are mistaken; I should have gone alone; for your servant, being
+master here, refused to accompany me."
+
+"But you must certainly admit that if any acquaintance had met you at
+half-past nine o'clock walking arm-in-arm with Monsieur Dorlange the
+thing would have seemed to them, to say the least, singular."
+
+Pretending to discover what I had known for the last hour, I
+exclaimed:--
+
+"Is it possible that after sixteen years of married life you do me
+the honor to be jealous. Now I see why, in spite of your respect for
+proprieties, you spoke to Monsieur Dorlange in my presence of that
+Italian woman whom people think his mistress; that was a nice little
+perfidy by which you meant to ruin him in my estimation."
+
+Thus exposed to the light, my poor husband talked at random for a
+time, and finally had no resource but to ring for Lucas and lecture him
+severely. That ended the explanation.
+
+What do you think of this conjugal proceeding, by which my husband,
+wishing to do a man some harm in my estimation, gave him the opportunity
+to appear to the utmost advantage? For--there was no mistaking it--the
+sort of emotion with which Monsieur Dorlange repelled the charge was the
+cry of a conscience at peace with itself, and which knows itself able to
+confound a calumny.
+
+
+
+
+XII. DORLANGE TO MARIE-GASTON
+
+Paris, May, 1839.
+
+On my return this evening from the Estorades, on whom I had paid my
+parting call, I found your letter, my dear friend, in which you announce
+your coming arrival. I shall await you to-morrow during the day, but
+in the evening I must, without further delay, start for Arcis-sur-Aube,
+where, in the course of the next week my political matters will come
+to a head. What particular hold I may have on that town, which, as it
+appears, I have the ambition to represent, and on what co-operation
+and assistance I may rely,--in a word, _who_ is making my electoral
+bed,--all that I know as little about as I did last year when I was told
+for the first time that I must enter political life.
+
+A few days ago I received a second letter from my father, postmarked
+Paris this time, and not Stockholm. Judging by the style of the
+document, it would not surprise me if the "eminent services" rendered
+in a Northern court by the mysterious author of my days turned out to be
+those of a Prussian corporal. It would be impossible to issue orders
+in a more imperative tone, or to dwell more minutely on trifling
+particulars.
+
+The note or memorandum was headed thus: _What my son is to do_.
+
+On receipt of these instructions I am to send to its destination the
+Saint-Ursula; to superintend the packing and boxing of it myself, and to
+despatch it by the fastest carrier, to Mother Marie-des-Anges, superior
+of the convent of the Ursulines at Arcis-sur-Aube.
+
+The order went on to say that I was to follow the statue in a few days,
+so as to arrive at the said Arcis-sur-Aube not later than the 3rd of
+May. Even the inn at which I was to put up was dictated. I would find
+myself expected at the Hotel de la Poste; so that if I happen to prefer
+any of the others I must resign that fancy. I am also enjoined to
+publish in the newspapers on the day of my departure the fact that
+I present myself as candidate in the electoral arrondissement of
+Arcis-sur-Aube; avoiding, however, to make any profession of political
+faith, which would be both useless and premature. The document ended
+with an injunction which, while it humiliated me somewhat, gave me a
+certain faith in what was happening. The Mongenod Brothers, and draw for
+another sum of two hundred and fifty thousand francs, which _is to
+be_ deposited in my name, "taking the utmost care," continued my
+instructions, "when transporting this money from Paris to Arcis-sur-Aube
+that it be not lost or stolen."
+
+What do you think of that last clause, dear friend? That sum _is to
+be_ deposited; then it is not already there; and suppose it is not
+there?--Besides, what am I to do with it in Arcis? Am I to stand my
+election on English principles? if so, a profession of political faith
+would certainly be useless and premature. As to the advice not to lose
+or allow to be stolen the money in my possession, do you not think that
+that is making me rather juvenile? I feel an inclination to suck my
+thumb and cry for a rattle. However, I shall let myself go with the
+current that is bearing me along, and, notwithstanding the news of your
+coming arrival, after paying a visit to the Brothers Mongenod, I shall
+valiantly start, imagining the stupefaction of the good people of
+Arcis on seeing another candidate pop up in their midst like a
+Jack-in-the-box.
+
+In Paris I have already fired my gun. The "National" has announced my
+candidacy in the warmest terms; and it seems that this evening, in the
+house of the Minister of the Interior, where Monsieur de l'Estorade was
+dining, I was discussed at some length. I ought to add that, according
+to Monsieur de l'Estorade, the general impression is that I shall
+certainly fail of election. The ministry might possibly fear a candidate
+from the Left centre; but as for the democratic party to which I am
+supposed to belong, they do not even allow that it exists. The Left
+centre candidate has, however, been disposed of by a ministerial envoy
+of the ablest and most active description, and at this moment, when I
+set off my small balloon, the election of the Conservative candidate is
+pretty well assured.
+
+Among the elements of my inevitable defeat, Monsieur de l'Estorade
+condescended to mention a matter about which, dear friend, I am rather
+surprised that you have not already lectured me. It is one of those
+agreeable calumnies put in circulation in the salon Montcornet by the
+honored and honorable Monsieur Bixiou. The scandal concerns a handsome
+Italian woman whom I brought back from Italy and with whom I am said to
+be living in a manner not canonical. Come, tell me, what hindered you
+from asking me to explain this important matter? Did you think the
+charge so shameful that you feared to offend me by alluding to it? Or
+have you such confidence in my morality that you felt no need of being
+strengthened therein? I did not have time to enter upon the necessary
+explanations to Monsieur de l'Estorade, neither have I the leisure to
+write them to you now. If I speak of the incident it is for the purpose
+of telling you of an observation I think I have made, into the truth of
+which I want you to examine after you get here. It is this:--
+
+I have an idea that it would not be agreeable to Monsieur de l'Estorade
+to see me successful in my electoral campaign. He never gave much
+approbation to the plan; in fact he tried to dissuade me, but always
+from the point of view of my own interests. But to-day, when he
+finds that the plan has taken shape, and is actually discussed in the
+ministerial salon, my gentleman turns bitter, and he seems to feel
+a malignant pleasure in prophesying my defeat and in producing this
+charming little infamy under which he expects to bury our friendship.
+
+Why so! I will tell you: while feeling some gratitude for the service I
+did him, the worthy man also felt from the height of his social position
+a superiority over me of which my entrance to the Chamber will now
+dispossess him; and it is not agreeable to him to renounce that sense of
+superiority. After all, what is an artist, even though he may be a man
+of genius, compared to a peer of France, a personage who puts his hand
+to the tiller and steers the great political and social system; a man
+who has access to kings and ministers, and who would have the right
+if, by impossibility, such audacity should seize upon his mind, of
+depositing a black ball against the budget. Well, this privileged being
+does not like that I, and others like me, should assume the importance
+and authority of that insolent elective Chamber.
+
+But that is not all. Hereditary statesmen have a foolish pretension:
+that of being initiated by long study into a certain science represented
+as arduous, which they call the science of public affairs and which they
+(like physicians with medical science) alone have the right to practise.
+They are not willing that an underling, a journalist for instance, or
+lower than that, an artist, a cutter of images, should presume to slip
+into their domain and speak out beside them. A poet, an artist, a writer
+may be endowed with eminent faculties, they will agree to that; the
+profession of such men presupposes it; but statesmen they cannot be.
+Chateaubriand himself, though better placed than the rest of us to make
+himself a niche in the Governmental Olympus, was turned out of doors one
+morning by a concise little note, signed Joseph de Villele, dismissing
+him, as was proper, to Rene, Atala, and other futilities.
+
+I know that time and that tall posthumous daughter of ours whom we call
+Posterity will some day do good justice and plead the right thing in the
+right place. Towards the end of 2039, the world, if it deigns to last
+till then, will know what Canalis, Joseph Bridau, Daniel d'Arthez,
+Stidmann, and Leon de Lora were in 1839; whereas an infinitely small
+number of persons will know that during the same period Monsieur le
+Comte de l'Estorade was peer of France, and president of the Cour des
+comptes; Monsieur le Comte de Rastignac minister of Public Works; and
+his brother-in-law, Monsieur le Baron Martial de la Roche-Hugon was a
+diplomat and Councillor of State employed on more or less extraordinary
+services.
+
+But while awaiting this tardy classification and distant reform, I think
+it well to let our great governing class know from time to time
+that unless their names are Richelieu or Colbert they are liable to
+competition and are forced to accept it. So, with this aggravating
+intention I begin to take pleasure in my enterprise; and if I am
+elected, I shall, unless you assure me that I have mistaken de
+l'Estorade's meaning, find occasion to let him and others of his kind
+know that one can, if so disposed, climb over the walls of their little
+parks and strut as their equals.
+
+But how is it, my dear friend, that I rattle on about myself and say no
+word about the sad emotions which must attend your return to France? How
+can you bear them? And instead of endeavoring to lay them aside, I fear
+you are willingly nursing them and taking a melancholy pleasure in their
+revival. Dear friend, I say to you of these great sorrows what I said
+just now of our governing class--we should consider them from the point
+of view of time and space, by the action of which they become after a
+while imperceptible.
+
+Do me a favor! On arriving in Paris without having a house prepared to
+receive you, it would be very friendly--you would seem like the man of
+old times--if you would take up your quarters with me, instead of going
+to Ville d'Avray, which, indeed, I think dangerous and even bad for you.
+Stay with me, and you can thus judge of my handsome housekeeper, and you
+will see how much she has been calumniated and misunderstood. You
+will also be near to the l'Estorades in whom I expect you to find
+consolations; and besides, this act would be a charming expiation for
+all the involuntary wrongs you have done me. At any rate, I have given
+my orders, and your room is ready for you.
+
+P.S. You have not yet arrived, dear friend, and I must close this
+letter, which will be given to you by my housekeeper when you come by my
+house, for I am certain that your first visit will be to me.
+
+I went this morning to the Mongenods'; the two hundred and fifty
+thousand francs were there, but with the accompaniment of a most
+extraordinary circumstance; the money was in the name of the Comte de
+Sallenauve, otherwise Dorlange, sculptor, 42 rue de l'Ouest. In spite
+of an appellation which has never been mine, the money was mine, and was
+paid to me without the slightest hesitation. I had enough presence of
+mind not to seem stupefied by my new name and title before the cashier;
+but I saw Monsieur Mongenod the elder in private, a man who enjoys the
+highest reputation at the Bank, and to him I expressed my astonishment,
+asking for whatever explanations he was able to give me. He could give
+none; the money came to him through a Dutch banker, his correspondent
+at Rotterdam, and he knew nothing beyond that. _Ah ca_! what does it
+all mean? Am I to be a noble? Has the moment come for my father to
+acknowledge me? I start in a state of agitation and of anxiety which you
+can well understand. Until I hear from you, I shall address my letters
+to you here. If you decide not to stay in my house, let me know
+your address at once. Say nothing of what I have now told you to the
+l'Estorades; let it remain secret between us.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. DORLANGE TO MARIE-GASTON
+
+Arcis-sur-Aube, May 3, 1839.
+
+Dear friend,--Last evening, before Maitre Achille Pigoult, notary of
+this place, the burial of Charles Dorlange took place,--that individual
+issuing to the world, like a butterfly from a grub, under the name
+and estate of Charles de Sallenauve, son of Francois-Henri-Pantaleon
+Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve. Here follows the tale of certain facts
+which preceded this brilliant transformation.
+
+Leaving Paris on the evening of May 1st, I arrived at Arcis, according
+to my father's directions, on the following day. You can believe my
+surprise when I saw in the street where the diligence stopped the
+elusive Jacques Bricheteau, whom I had not seen since our singular
+meeting on the Ile Saint-Louis. This time I beheld him, instead of
+behaving like the dog of Jean de Nivelle, come towards me with a smile
+upon his lips, holding out his hand and saying:--
+
+"At last, my dear monsieur, we are almost at the end of all our
+mysteries, and soon, I hope, you will see that you have no cause to
+complain of me. Have you brought the money?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, "neither lost nor stolen." And I drew from my pocket
+a wallet containing the two hundred and fifty thousand francs in bank
+notes.
+
+"Very good!" said Jacques Bricheteau. "Now let us go to the Hotel de la
+Poste; no doubt you know who awaits you there."
+
+"No, indeed I do not," I replied.
+
+"You must have remarked the name and title under which that money was
+paid to you?"
+
+"Certainly; that strange circumstance struck me forcibly, and has, I
+must own, stirred my imagination."
+
+"Well, we shall now completely lift the veil, one corner of which we
+were careful to raise at first, so that you might not come too abruptly
+to the great and fortunate event that is now before you."
+
+"Am I to see my father?"
+
+"Yes," replied Jacques Bricheteau; "your father is awaiting you; but I
+must warn you against a probable cloud on his manner of receiving you.
+The marquis has suffered much; the court life which he has always led
+has trained him to show no outward emotions; besides, he has a horror of
+everything bourgeois. You must not be surprised, therefore, at the cold
+and dignified reception he will probably give you; at heart, he is good
+and kind, and you will appreciate him better when you know him."
+
+"Here," thought I, "are very comforting assurances, and as I myself am
+not very ardently disposed, I foresee that this interview will be at
+some degrees below zero."
+
+On going into the room where the Marquis awaited me, I saw a very tall,
+very thin, very bald man, seated at a table on which he was arranging
+papers. On hearing the door open, he pushed his spectacles up on his
+forehead, rested his hands on the arms of his chair, and looking round
+at us he waited.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte de Sallenauve," said Jacques Bricheteau, announcing
+me with the solemnity of an usher of ambassadors or a groom of the
+Chambers.
+
+But in the presence of the man to whom I owed my life the ice in me was
+instantly melted; I stepped forward with an eager impulse, feeling the
+tears rise to my eyes. He did not move. There was not the faintest trace
+of agitation in his face, which had that peculiar look of high dignity
+that used to be called "the grand air"; he merely held out his hand,
+limply grasped mine, and then said:
+
+"Be seated, monsieur--for I have not yet the right to call you my son."
+
+When Jacques Bricheteau and I had taken chairs--
+
+"Then you have no objection," said this strange kind of father, "to
+assuming the political position we are trying to secure for you?"
+
+"None at all," said I. "The notion startled me at first, but I soon grew
+accustomed to it; and to ensure success, I have punctually carried out
+all the instructions that were conveyed to me."
+
+"Excellent," said the Marquis, taking up from the table a gold snuff-box
+which he twirled in his fingers.
+
+Then, after a short silence, he added:
+
+"Now I owe you certain explanations. Our good friend Jacques Bricheteau,
+if he will have the kindness, will lay them before you."
+
+This was equivalent to the royal formula of the old regime: "My
+chamberlain will tell you the rest."
+
+"To go back to the origin of everything," said Jacques Bricheteau,
+accepting the duty thus put upon him, "I must first tell you that you
+are not a legitimate Sallenauve. When Monsieur le marquis, here
+present, returned after the emigration, in the year 1808, he made the
+acquaintance of your mother, and in 1809 you were born as the fruit of
+their intercourse. Your birth, as you already know, cost your mother her
+life, and as misfortunes never come singly, Monsieur de Sallenauve was
+compromised in a conspiracy against the imperial power and compelled to
+fly the country. Brought up in Arcis with me, the marquis, wishing to
+give me a proof of his friendship, confided to me, on his departure
+to this new expatriation, the care of your childhood. I accepted that
+charge, I will not say with alacrity, but certainly with gratitude."
+
+At these words the marquis held out his hand to Jacques Bricheteau, who
+was seated near him, and after a silent pressure, which did not seem to
+me remarkably warm, Jacques Bricheteau continued:--
+
+"The mysterious precautions I was forced to take in carrying out my
+trust are explained by Monsieur le marquis's position towards the
+various governments which have succeeded each other in France since
+the period of your birth. Under the Empire, I feared that a government
+little indulgent to attacks upon itself might send you to share your
+father's exile; it was then that the idea of giving you a sort of
+anonymous existence first occurred to me. Under the Restoration I feared
+for you another class of enemies; the Sallenauve family, which has no
+other representatives at the present day than Monsieur le marquis, was
+then powerful. In some way it got wind of your existence, and also of
+the fact that the marquis had taken the precaution not to recognize you,
+in order to retain the right to leave you his whole fortune, which, as a
+natural child, the law would in part have deprived you. The obscurity in
+which I kept you seemed to me the best security, against the schemes of
+greedy relations, and certain mysterious steps taken by them from time
+to time proved the wisdom of these precautions. Under the government
+of July, on the other hand, it was I myself who I feared might endanger
+you. I had seen the establishment of the new order of things with
+the deepest regret, and not believing in its duration, I took part in
+certain active hostilities against it, which brought me under the ban of
+the police."
+
+Here the recollection that Jacques Bricheteau had been pointed out by
+the waiter of the Cafe des Arts as a member of the police made me smile,
+whereupon the speaker stopped and said with a very serious air:--
+
+"Do these explanations which I have the honor to give you seem
+improbable?"
+
+I explained the meaning of my smile.
+
+"That waiter," said Jacques Bricheteau, "was not altogether mistaken;
+for I have long been employed at the prefecture of police in the
+health department; but I have nothing to do with police espial; on the
+contrary, I have more than once come near being the victim of it."
+
+Here a rather ridiculous noise struck our ears, nothing less than a loud
+snore from my father, who thus gave us to know that he did not take
+a very keen interest in the explanations furnished in his name with
+a certain prolixity. I don't know whether Jacques Bricheteau's vanity
+being touched put him slightly out of temper, but he rose impatiently
+and shook the arm of the sleeper, crying out:--
+
+"Hey! marquis, if you sleep like this at the Council of state, upon my
+soul, your country must be well governed!"
+
+Monsieur de Sallenauve opened his eyes, shook himself, and then said,
+turning to me:--
+
+"Pardon me, Monsieur le comte, but for the last ten nights I have
+travelled, without stopping, to meet you here; and though I spent the
+last night in a bed, I am still much fatigued."
+
+So saying he rose, took a large pinch of snuff, and began to walk up and
+down the room, while Jacques Bricheteau continued:--
+
+"It is a little more than a year since I received a letter from your
+father explaining his long silence, the plans he had made for you, and
+the necessity he was under of keeping his incognito for a few years
+longer. It was at that very time that you made your attempt to penetrate
+a secret the existence of which had become apparent to you."
+
+"You made haste to escape me," I said laughing. "It was then you went to
+Stockholm."
+
+"No, I went to your father's residence; I put the letter that he gave me
+for you into the post at Stockholm."
+
+"I do not seize your--"
+
+"Nothing is easier to understand," interrupted the marquis. "I do not
+reside in Sweden, and we wished to throw you off the track."
+
+"Will you continue the explanation yourself?" asked Jacques Bricheteau,
+who spoke, as you may have observed, my dear friend, with elegance and
+fluency.
+
+"No, no, go on," said the marquis; "you are giving it admirably."
+
+"Feeling certain that your equivocal position as to family would injure
+the political career your father desired you to enter, I made that
+remark to him in one of my letters. He agreed with me, and resolved
+to hasten the period of your legal recognition, which, indeed, the
+extinction of the family in its other branch rendered desirable. But the
+recognition of a natural son is a serious act which the law surrounds
+with many precautions. Deeds must be signed before a notary, and to do
+this by power of attorney would involve both in a publicity which he
+is anxious for the present to avoid, he being married, and, as it were,
+naturalized in the country of his adoption. Hence, he decided to come
+here himself, obtaining leave of absence for a few weeks, in order
+to sign in person all papers necessary to secure to you his name and
+property in this country. Now let me put to you a final question. Do you
+consent to take the name of de Sallenauve and be recognized as his son?"
+
+"I am not a lawyer," I answered; "but it seems to me that, supposing I
+do not feel honored by this recognition, it does not wholly depend on me
+to decline it."
+
+"Pardon me," replied Jacques Bricheteau; "under the circumstances
+you could, if you chose, legally contest the paternity. I will also
+add,--and in doing so I am sure that I express the intentions of your
+father,--if you think that a man who has already spent half a million on
+furthering your career is not a desirable father, we leave you free to
+follow your own course, and shall not insist in any way."
+
+"Precisely, precisely," said Monsieur de Sallenauve, uttering that
+affirmation with the curt intonation and shrill voice peculiar to the
+relics of the old aristocracy.
+
+Politeness, to say the least, forced me to accept the paternity thus
+offered to me. To the few words I uttered to that effect, Jacques
+Bricheteau replied gaily:--
+
+"We certainly do not intend to make you buy a father in a poke.
+Monsieur le marquis is desirous of laying before you all title-deeds and
+documents of every kind of which he is the present holder. Moreover, as
+he has been so long absent from this country, he intends to prove his
+identity by several of his contemporaries who are still living. For
+instance, among the honorable personages who have already recognized
+him I may mention the worthy superior of the Ursuline convent, Mother
+Marie-des-Anges, for whom, by the bye, you have done a masterpiece."
+
+"Faith, yes," said the marquis, "a pretty thing, and if you turn out as
+well in politics--"
+
+"Well, marquis," interrupted Jacques Bricheteau, who seemed to me
+inclined to manage the affair, "are you ready to proceed with our young
+friend to the verification of the documents?"
+
+"That is unnecessary," I remarked, and did not think that by this
+refusal I pledged my faith too much; for, after all, what signify papers
+in the hands of a man who might have forged them or stolen them? But my
+father would not consent; and for more than two hours they spread before
+me parchments, genealogical trees, contracts, patents, documents of all
+kinds, from which it appeared that the family of Sallenauve is, after
+that of Cinq-Cygne, the most ancient family in the department of
+the Aube. I ought to add that the exhibition of these archives was
+accompanied by an infinite number of spoken details which seemed to make
+the identity of the Marquis de Sallenauve indisputable. On all other
+subjects my father is laconic; his mental capacity does not seem to me
+remarkable, and he willingly allowed his _mouthpiece_ to talk for him.
+But here, in the matter of his parchments, he was loquaciously full of
+anecdotes, recollections, heraldic knowledge; in short, he was exactly
+the old noble, ignorant and superficial in all things, but possessed of
+Benedictine erudition where the genealogy of his family was concerned.
+
+The _session_ would, I believe, be still going on, if Jacques Bricheteau
+had not intervened. As the marquis was preparing to read a voluminous
+memorandum refuting a chapter in Tallemant des Reaux' "Historiettes"
+which did not redound to the credit of the great house of Sallenauve,
+the wise organist remarked that it was time we dined, if we intended
+to keep an appointment already made for seven o'clock at the office of
+Maitre Achille Pigoult the notary.
+
+We dined, not at the table-d'hote, but in private, and the dinner seemed
+very long on account of the silent preoccupation of the marquis, and the
+slowness with which, owing to his loss of teeth, he swallowed his food.
+
+At seven o'clock we went to the notary's office; but as it is now two
+o'clock in the morning, and I am heavy with sleep, I shall put off till
+to-morrow an account of what happened there.
+
+
+May 4, 5 A.M.
+
+I reckoned on peaceful slumbers, embellished by dreams. On the contrary,
+I did not sleep an hour, and I have waked up stung to the heart by an
+odious thought. But before I transmit that thought to you, I must tell
+you what happened at the notary's.
+
+Maitre Achille Pigoult, a puny little man, horribly pitted with the
+small-pox, and afflicted with green spectacles, above which he darts
+glances of vivacious intelligence, asked us if we felt warm enough, the
+room having no fire. Politeness required us to say yes, although he had
+already given signs of incendiarism by striking a match, when, from a
+distant and dark corner of the room, a broken, feeble voice, the
+owner of which we had not as yet perceived, interposed to prevent the
+prodigality.
+
+"No, Achille, no, don't make a fire," said an old man. "There are five
+in the room, and the lamp gives out a good heat; before long the room
+would be too hot to bear."
+
+Hearing these words, the marquis exclaimed:--
+
+"Ah! this is the good Monsieur Pigoult, formerly justice of the peace."
+
+Thus recognized, the old man rose and went up to my father, into whose
+face he peered.
+
+"_Parbleu_!" he cried, "I recognize you for a Champagnard of the
+_vieille roche_. Achille did not deceive me in declaring that I should
+see two of my former acquaintances. You," he said, addressing the
+organist, "you are little Bricheteau, the nephew of our good abbess,
+Mother Marie-des-Anges; but as for that tall skeleton, looking like
+a duke and peer, I can't recall his name. However, I don't blame my
+memory; after eighty-six years' service it may well be rusty."
+
+"Come, grandfather," said Achille Pigoult, "brush up your memory; and
+you, gentlemen, not a word, not a gesture. I want to be clear in my own
+mind. I have not the honor to know the client for whom I am asked to
+draw certain deeds, and I must, as a matter of legal regularity, have
+him identified."
+
+While his son spoke, the old man was evidently straining his memory.
+My father, fortunately, has a nervous twitching of the face, which
+increased under the fixed gaze his _certifier_ fastened upon him.
+
+"Hey! _parbleu_! I have it!" he cried. "Monsieur is the Marquise de
+Sallenauve, whom we used to call the 'Grimacer,' and who would now be
+the owner of the Chateau d'Arcis if, instead of wandering off, like
+the other fools, into emigration, he had stayed at home and married his
+pretty cousin."
+
+"You are still _sans-culotte_, it seems," said the marquis, laughing.
+
+"Messieurs," said the notary, gravely, "the proof I had arranged for
+myself is conclusive. This proof, together with the title-deeds and
+documents Monsieur le marquis has shown to me, and which he deposits in
+my hands, together with the certificate of identity sent to me by Mother
+Marie-des-Anges, who cannot, under the rules of her Order, come to
+my office, are sufficient for the execution of the deeds which I have
+here--already prepared. The presence of two witnesses is required for
+one of them. Monsieur Bricheteau will, of course, be the witness on your
+side and on the other my father, if agreeable to you; it is an honor
+that, as I think, belongs to him of right, for, as one may say, this
+matter has revived his memory."
+
+"Very good, messieurs, let us proceed," said Jacques Bricheteau,
+heartily.
+
+The notary sat down at his desk; the rest of us sat in a circle around
+him, and the reading of the first document began. Its purport
+was to establish, authentically, the recognition made by
+Francois-Henri-Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve, of me, his
+son. But in the course of the reading a difficulty came up. Notarial
+deeds must, under pain of being null and void, state the domicile of all
+contracting parties. Now, where was my father's domicile? This part had
+been left in blank by the notary, who now insisted on filling it before
+proceeding farther.
+
+"As for this domicile," said Achille Pigoult, "Monsieur le marquis
+appears to have none in France, as he does not reside in this country,
+and has owned no property here for a long time."
+
+"It is true," said the marquis, seeming to put more meaning into his
+words than they naturally carried, "I am a mere vagabond in France."
+
+"Ah!" said Jacques Bricheteau, "vagabonds like you, who can present
+their sons with the necessary sums to buy estates, are not to be pitied.
+Still, the remark is a just one, not only as to France, but as to your
+residence in foreign countries. With your eternal mania for roving, it
+is really very difficult to assign you a domicile."
+
+"Well," said Achille Pigoult, "it does not seem worth while to let so
+small a matter stop us. Monsieur," he continued, motioning to me, "is
+now the owner of the Chateau d'Arcis, for an engagement to sell is as
+good as the sale itself. What more natural, therefore, than that
+the father's domicile should be stated as being on his son's estate,
+especially as this is really the family property now returned into
+the hands of the family, being purchased by the father for the son,
+particularly as that father is known and recognized by some of the
+oldest and most important inhabitants of the place?"
+
+"Yes, that is true," said old Pigoult, adopting his son's opinion
+without hesitation.
+
+"In short," said Jacques Bricheteau, "you think the matter can go on."
+
+"You see that my father, a man of great experience, did not hesitate to
+agree with me. We say, therefore," continued the notary, taking up
+his pen, "Francois-Henri-Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve,
+domiciled with Monsieur Charles de Sallenauve, his natural son, by
+him legally recognized, in the house known as the Chateau d'Arcis,
+arrondissement of Arcis-sur-Aube, department of the Aube."
+
+The rest of the deed was read and executed without comment.
+
+Then followed a rather ridiculous scene.
+
+"Now, Monsieur le comte," said Jacques Bricheteau, "embrace your
+father."
+
+The marquis opened his arms rather indifferently, and I coldly fell into
+them, vexed with myself for not being deeply moved and for not hearing
+in my heart the voice of kindred. Was this barrenness of emotion the
+result of my sudden accession to wealth? A moment later a second deed
+made me possessor, on payment of one hundred and eighty thousand francs
+in ready money, of the Chateau d'Arcis,--a grand edifice which had
+caught my eye, on my first arrival in the town, by its lordly and feudal
+air.
+
+"You may congratulate yourselves," said Achille Pigoult, "that you have
+got that estate for a song."
+
+"Come, come!" said Jacques Bricheteau, "how long have you had it on
+your hands to sell? Your client would have let it go for one hundred and
+fifty thousand to others, but, as family property, you thought you could
+get more from us. We shall have to spend twenty thousand to make the
+house habitable; the land doesn't return a rental of more than four
+thousand; so that our money, all expenses deducted, won't return us more
+than two and a half per cent."
+
+"What are you complaining about?" returned Achille Pigoult. "You have
+employment to give and money to pay in the neighborhood, and what can be
+better for a candidate?"
+
+"Ah! that electoral business," said Jacques Bricheteau; "we will talk
+about that to-morrow when we bring you the purchase-money and your
+fees."
+
+Thereupon we took leave, and returned to the Hotel de la Poste, where I
+bade good-night to my father and came to my room to write to you.
+
+Now I must tell you the terrible idea that drove sleep from my brain
+and put the pen once more in my hand,--although I am somewhat distracted
+from it by writing the foregoing two pages, and I do not see quite as
+much evidence for my notion as I did before I renewed this letter.
+
+One thing is certain: during the last year many romantic incidents have
+happened to me. You may say that adventure seems to be the logical way
+of life for one in my position; that my birth, the chances that brought
+you (whose fate is so like mine) and me together, my relations with
+Marianina and my handsome housekeeper, and perhaps I might say with
+Madame de l'Estorade, all point to the possession of a fickle star, and
+that my present affair is only one of its caprices.
+
+True; but what if, at the present moment under the influence of that
+star, I were implicated without my knowledge in some infernal plot of
+which I was made the passive instrument?
+
+To put some order into my ideas, I begin by this half-million spent for
+an interest which you must agree is very nebulous,--that of fitting me
+to succeed my father in the ministry of some imaginary country, the name
+of which is carefully concealed from me.
+
+Next: who is spending these fabulous sums on me? Is it a father tenderly
+attached to a child of love? No, it is a father who shows me the
+utmost coldness, who goes to sleep when deeds which concern our mutual
+existence are being drawn, and for whom I, on my side, am conscious of
+no feeling; in fact, not to mince my words, I should think him a great
+booby of an _emigre_ if it were not for the filial respect and duty I
+force myself to feel for him.
+
+_But_--suppose this man were not my father, not even the Marquis de
+Sallenauve, as he asserts himself to be; suppose, like that unfortunate
+Lucien de Rubempre, whose history has made so much noise, I were caught
+in the toils of a serpent like that false abbe Don Carlos Herrera, and
+had made myself liable to the same awful awakening. You may say to me
+that you see no such likelihood; that Carlos Herrera had an object in
+fascinating Lucien and making him his double; but that I, an older man
+with solid principles and no love of luxury, who have lived a life of
+thought and toil, should fear such influence, is nonsense.
+
+So be it. But why should the man who recognizes me as his son conceal
+the very country in which he lives, and the name by which he is known
+in that equally nameless Northern land which it is intimated that he
+governs? Why make such sacrifices for my benefit and show so little
+confidence? And see the mystery with which Jacques Bricheteau has
+surrounded my life! Do you think that that long-winded explanation of
+his explained it?
+
+All this, my dear friend, rolling in my head and clashing with that
+half-million already paid to me, has given substance to a strange idea,
+at which you may perhaps laugh, but which, nevertheless, is not without
+precedent in criminal annals.
+
+I told you just now that this thought invaded me as it were suddenly;
+it came like an instinct upon me. Assuredly, if I had had the faintest
+inkling of it last evening, I would have cut off my right hand sooner
+than sign that deed by which I have henceforth bound my fate to that
+of an unknown man whose past and future may be as gloomy as a canto of
+Dante's Hell, and who may drag me down with him into utter darkness.
+
+In short, this idea--round which I am making you circle because I cannot
+bring myself to let you enter it--here it is, in all its crudity; I
+am afraid of being, without my knowledge, the agent, the tool of those
+associations of false coiners who are known in criminal records to
+concoct schemes as complicated and mysterious as the one I am now
+involved in, in order to put into circulation the money they coin. In
+all such cases you will find great coming and going of accomplices;
+cheques drawn from a distance on the bankers in great commercial
+centres like Paris, Stockholm, Rotterdam. Often one hears of poor dupes
+compromised. In short, do you not see in the mysterious ways of this
+Bricheteau something like an imitation, a reflection of the manoeuvres
+to which these criminal workers are forced to have recourse, arranging
+them with a talent and a richness of imagination to which a novelist can
+scarcely attain?
+
+One thing is certain: there is about me a thick unwholesome atmosphere,
+in which I feel that air is lacking and I cannot breathe. However,
+assure me, if you can, persuade me, I ask no better, that this is all an
+empty dream. But in any case I am determined to have a full explanation
+with these two men to-morrow, and to obtain, although so late, more
+light than they have yet doled out to me....
+
+Another and yet stranger fact! As I wrote those last words, a noise of
+horses' hoofs came from the street. Distrustful now of everything, I
+opened my window, and in the dawning light I saw a travelling carriage
+before the door of the inn, the postilion in the saddle, and Jacques
+Bricheteau talking to some one who was seated in the vehicle. Deciding
+quickly on my action, I ran rapidly downstairs; but before I reached the
+bottom I heard the roll of wheels and the cracking of the postilion's
+whip. At the foot of the staircase I came face to face with Jacques
+Bricheteau. Without seeming embarrassed, in fact with the most natural
+air in the world, he said to me,--
+
+"What! my dear ward already up?"
+
+"Of course; the least I could do was to say farewell to my excellent
+father."
+
+"He did not wish it," replied that damned musician, with an
+imperturbability and phlegm that deserved a thrashing; "he feared the
+emotions of parting."
+
+"Is he so dreadfully hurried that he could not even give a day to his
+new and ardent paternity?"
+
+"The truth is, he is an original; what he came to do, he has done; after
+that, to his mind, there is nothing to stay for."
+
+"Ah! I understand; he hastens to those high functions he performs at
+that Northern court!"
+
+Jacques Bricheteau could no longer mistake the ironical tone in which
+these words were said.
+
+"Until now," he said, "you have shown more faith."
+
+"Yes; but I confess that faith begins to stagger under the weight of the
+mysteries with which it is loaded down without relief."
+
+"Seeing you at this decisive moment in your career giving way to doubts
+which our whole conduct pursued to you through many years ought to
+refute, I should be almost in despair," replied Jacques Bricheteau, "if
+I had none but personal denials and asseverations to offer you. But, as
+you will remember, old Pigoult spoke of an aunt of mine, living in this
+neighborhood, where you will soon, I hope, find her position a most
+honorable one. I had arranged that you should see her in the course of
+the day; but now, if you will grant me the time to shave, I will take
+you at once, early as it is, to the convent of the Ursulines. There you
+shall question Mother Marie-des-Anges, who has the reputation of a saint
+throughout this whole department, and I think that at the close of your
+interview with her no doubt can remain upon your mind."
+
+While that devil of a man was speaking, his countenance had so perfect a
+look of integrity and benevolence, his speech, always calm, elegant,
+and self-possessed, so impressed the mind of his hearer, that I felt the
+tide of my anger going down and my sense of security rising.
+
+In fact, his answer _is_ irresistible. The convent of the Ursuline
+sisters--heavens and earth! that can't be the rendezvous of makers of
+false coin; and if the Mother Marie-des-Anges guarantees my father
+to me, as it appears she has already done to the notary, I should be
+foolish indeed to persist in my doubts.
+
+"Very good," I said to Jacques Bricheteau, "I will go up and get my hat
+and walk up and down the bank of the river until you are ready."
+
+"That's right; and be sure you watch the door of the hotel to see that
+I do not give you the slip as I did once upon a time on the Quai de
+Bethune."
+
+Impossible to be more intelligent than that man; he seems to divine
+one's thoughts. I was ashamed of this last doubt of mine, and told him
+that, on the whole, I would go and finish a letter while awaiting him.
+It was this letter, dear friend, which I must now close if I wish it to
+go by to-day's post. I will write you soon of my visit to the convent.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. MARIE-GASTON TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE
+
+Arcis-sur-Aube, May 6, 1839.
+
+Madame,--In any case I should gladly have profited by the request you
+were so good as to make that I should write to you during my stay in
+this town; but in granting me this favor you could not really know the
+full extent of your charity. Without you, madame, and the consolation
+of writing to you sometimes, what would become of me under the habitual
+weight of my sad thoughts in a town which has neither society, nor
+commerce, nor curiosities, nor environs; and where all intellectual
+activity spends itself on the making of pickled pork, soap-grease,
+stockings, and cotton night-caps. Dorlange, whom I shall not long call
+by that name (you shall presently know why) is so absorbed in steering
+his electoral frigate that I scarcely see him.
+
+I told you, madame, that I resolved to come down here and join our
+mutual friend in consequence of a certain trouble of mind apparent in
+one of his letters, which informed me of a great revolution taking place
+in his life. I am able to-day to be more explicit. Dorlange at last
+knows his father. He is the natural son of the Marquis de Sallenauve,
+the last living scion of one of the best families in Champagne. Without
+explaining the reasons which have hitherto induced him to keep his son's
+birth secret, the marquis has now recognized him legally. He has
+also bought and presented to him an estate formerly belonging to the
+Sallenauve family. This estate is situated in Arcis itself, and its
+possession will assist the project of our friend's election. That
+project dates much farther back than we thought; and it did not take its
+rise in the fancy of Dorlange.
+
+A year ago, the marquis began to prepare for it by sending his son a sum
+of money for the purchase of real estate in conformity with electoral
+laws; and it is also for the furtherance of this purpose that he has now
+made him doubly a landowner. The real object of all these sacrifices not
+seeming plain to Charles de Sallenauve, doubts have arisen in his mind,
+and it was to assist in dispelling them that my friendship for the poor
+fellow brought me here.
+
+The marquis appears to be as odd and whimsical as he is opulent; for,
+instead of remaining in Arcis, where his presence and his name would
+contribute to the success of the election he desires, the very day after
+legal formalities attending the recognition of his son had been complied
+with, he departed furtively for foreign countries, where he says he has
+important interests, without so much as taking leave of his son. This
+coldness has poisoned the happiness Charles would otherwise feel in
+these events; but one must take fathers as they are, for Dorlange and I
+are living proofs that all cannot have them as they want them.
+
+Another eccentricity of the marquis is the choice he has made, as chief
+assistant in his son's election, of an old Ursuline nun, with whom
+he seems to have made a bargain, in which, strange to say, you have
+unconsciously played a part. Yes, madame, the Saint-Ursula for which,
+unknown to yourself, you were posing, will have, to all appearances, a
+considerable influence on the election of our friend. The case is this:
+
+For many years Mother Marie-des-Anges, superior of the Ursuline convent
+at Arcis-sur-Aube, has desired to install in the chapel of her convent
+an image of its patron saint. But this abbess, who is a woman of taste
+and intelligence, would not listen to the idea of one of those stock
+figures which can be bought ready-made from the venders of church
+decorations. On the other hand, she thought it was robbing her poor to
+spend on this purpose the large sum necessary to procure a work of art.
+The nephew of this excellent woman is an organist in Paris to whom the
+Marquis de Sallenauve, then in emigration, had confided the care of his
+son. When it became a question of making Charles a deputy, the marquis
+naturally thought of Arcis, a place where his family had left so many
+memories. The organist also recollected his aunt's desire; he knew
+how influential she was in that region because of her saintliness, and
+having in his nature a touch of that intrigue which likes to undertake
+things difficult and arduous, he went to see her, with the approval of
+the Marquis de Sallenauve, and let her know that one of the most skilful
+sculptors in Paris was ready to make her the statue of Saint-Ursula
+if she, on her side, would promise to secure the artist's election as
+deputy from the arrondissement of Arcis.
+
+The old nun did not think the undertaking beyond her powers. She now
+possesses the object of her pious longings; the statue arrived some days
+ago, and is already in the chapel of the convent, where she proposes to
+give it, before long, a solemn inauguration. It now remains to be seen
+whether the good nun will perform her part of the contract.
+
+Well, madame, strange to say, after hearing and inquiring into the whole
+matter I shall not be surprised if this remarkable woman should
+carry the day. From the description our friend gives of her, Mother
+Marie-des-Anges is a small woman, short and thick-set, whose face
+is prepossessing and agreeable beneath its wrinkles and the mask of
+saffron-tinted pallor which time and the austerities of a cloister have
+placed upon it. Carrying very lightly the weight of her corpulence and
+also that of her seventy-six years, she is lively, alert, and frisky
+to a degree that shames the youngest of us. For fifty years she has
+governed in a masterly manner her community, which has always been the
+most regular, the best organized, and also the richest society in the
+diocese of Troyes. Admirably fitted for the training of youth, she
+has long conducted a school for girls, which is famous throughout the
+department of the Aube and adjacent regions. Having thus superintended
+the education of nearly all the daughters of the best houses in the
+province, it is easy to imagine the influence she has acquired among the
+aristocracy,--an influence she probably intends to use in the electoral
+struggle she has promised to take part in.
+
+On the other hand, it appears that this really extraordinary woman
+is the sovereign disposer of the votes of the democratic party in the
+arrondissement of Arcis. Until now, the existence of that party in Arcis
+has been considered problematical; but it is actually, by its nature,
+active and stirring, and our candidate proposes to present himself
+under its banner. Evidently, therefore, the support the good mother has
+promised will be useful and important.
+
+I am sure you will admire with me the--as one might say--bicephalous
+ability of this old nun, who has managed to keep well with the nobility
+and the secular clergy on the one hand, and on the other to lead with
+her wand the radical party, their sworn enemy. Admirable for her charity
+and her lucid intellect, respected throughout the region as a saint,
+exposed during the Revolution to a dreadful persecution, which she bore
+with rare courage, one can easily understand her close relations with
+the upper and conservative classes; but why she should be equally
+welcome to democrats and to the subverters of order would seem, at
+first, to pass all belief.
+
+The power which she undoubtedly wields over the revolutionary party took
+its rise, madame, in a struggle which they formerly had together. In
+1793 that amiable party were bent on cutting her throat. Driven from
+her convent, and convicted of harboring a "refractory" priest, she was
+incarcerated, arraigned before the Revolutionary tribunal, and condemned
+to death. The matter was reported to Danton, a native of Arcis, and
+then a member of the National Convention. Danton had known Mother
+Marie-des-Anges; he thought her the most virtuous and enlightened woman
+he had ever met. Hearing of her condemnation, he was furiously angry,
+and wrote, as they said in those days, a high-horse letter to the
+Revolutionary tribunal, and, with an authority no human being in Arcis
+would have dared to contest, he ordered a reprieve.
+
+The same day he mounted the tribune, and after speaking in general terms
+of the "bloody boobies" who by their foolish fury compromised the future
+of the Revolution, he told who and what Mother Marie-des-Anges really
+was; he dwelt on her marvellous aptitude for the training of youth, and
+he presented a scheme in which she was placed at the head of a "grand
+national gynaecium," the organization of which was to be made the
+subject of another decree. Robespierre, who would have thought the
+intellect of an Ursuline nun only a more imperative reason for bringing
+her under the revolutionary axe, was absent that day from the
+session, and the motion was voted with enthusiasm. The head of Mother
+Marie-des-Anges being indispensably necessary to the carrying out of
+this decree of the sovereign people, she kept it on her shoulders, and
+the headsman put aside his machine.
+
+Though the other decree, organising the Grand National Gynaecium,
+was lost sight of in the many other duties that devolved upon the
+Convention, the excellent nun carried it out after her fashion. Instead
+of something grand and Greek and national, she started in Arcis a
+secular girl's-school, and as soon as a little quiet was restored to the
+minds of the community, pupils flocked in from all quarters. Under the
+Empire Mother Marie-des-Anges was able to reconstitute her Ursuline
+sisterhood, and the first act of her restored authority was a
+recognition of gratitude. She decreed that on every year on the 5th of
+April, the anniversary of Danton's death, a service should be held
+in the chapel of the convent for the repose of his soul. To those who
+objected to this edict she answered: "Do you know many for whom it is
+more necessary to implore God's mercy?"
+
+Under the Restoration, the celebration of this service became a sort of
+scandal; but Mother Marie-des-Anges would never hear of suppressing it,
+and the great veneration which has always surrounded her obliged these
+cavillers to hold their tongues. This courageous obstinacy had its
+reward, under the government of July. To-day Mother Marie-des-Anges is
+high in court favor, and there is nothing she cannot obtain in the
+most august regions of power; but it is only just to add that she asks
+nothing,--not even for her charities, for she provides the means to do
+them nobly by the wise manner in which she administers the property of
+her convent.
+
+Her gratitude, thus openly shown to the memory of the great
+revolutionist, has been of course to the revolutionary party a potent
+recommendation, but not the only one.
+
+In Arcis the leader of the advanced Left is a rich miller named Laurent
+Goussard, who possesses two or three mills on the river Aube. This man,
+formerly a member of the revolutionary municipality of Arcis and the
+intimate friend of Danton, was the one who wrote to the latter telling
+him that the axe was suspended over the throat of the ex-superior of the
+Ursulines. This, however, did not prevent the worthy _sans-culotte_
+from buying up the greater part of the convent property when it was sold
+under the name of national domain.
+
+At the period when Mother Marie-des-Anges was authorized to reconstitute
+her community, Laurent Goussard, who had not made much by his purchase,
+went to see the good abbess, and proposed to her to buy back the former
+property of her convent. Very shrewd in business, Laurent Goussard,
+whose niece Mother Marie-des-Anges had educated gratuitously, seemed to
+pique himself on the great liberality of his offer, the terms of
+which were that the sisterhood should reimburse him the amount of his
+purchase-money. The dear man was not however making a bad bargain, for
+the difference in the value of assignats with which he had paid and
+the good sound money he would receive made a pretty profit. But Mother
+Marie-des-Anges, remembering that without his warning Danton could not
+have saved her, did better still for her first helper. At the time when
+Laurent Goussard made his offer the community of the Ursulines was,
+financially speaking, in an excellent position. Having since its
+restoration received many liberal gifts, it was also enriched by the
+savings of its superior, made from the proceeds of her secular school,
+which she generously made over to the common fund. Laurent Goussard must
+therefore have been thunderstruck when he read the following letter:--
+
+  Your proposal does not suit me. My conscience will not allow me to
+  buy property below its proper value. Before the Revolution the
+  property of our abbey was estimated at--[so much]. That is the
+  price I choose to give, and not that to which it has fallen since
+  the great depreciation of all property called national. In a word,
+  my friend, I wish to pay you more than you ask; let me know if
+  that suits you.
+
+Laurent Goussard thought at first that either she had misunderstood him
+or he her. But when it became clear to him that owing to these pretended
+scruples of Mother Marie-des-Anges, he was the gainer of fifty thousand
+francs, he would not do violence to so tender a conscience, and he
+pocketed this profit (which came to him literally from heaven), but he
+went about relating everywhere the marvellous proceeding, which, as you
+can well imagine, put Mother Marie-des-Anges on a pinnacle of respect
+(especially from the holders of other national property) which leaves
+her nothing to fear from any future revolution. Personally Laurent
+Goussard has become her slave, her henchman. He does no business, he
+takes no step, he never moves a sack of flour without going to her for
+advice; and, as she said in joke the other day, if she took a fancy to
+make a John the Baptist of the sub-prefect, Laurent Goussard would bring
+her his head on a charger. That is proof enough that he will also bring
+his vote and that of his friends to any candidate she may favor.
+
+Among the clergy Mother Marie-des-Anges has, naturally, many
+affiliations,--as much on account of her high reputation for goodness as
+for the habit of her order, but she particularly counts among the
+number of her most zealous servitors Monseigneur Troubert, bishop of the
+diocese, who, though formerly a familiar of the Congregation [see "The
+Vicar of Tours"], has nevertheless managed to secure from the dynasty of
+July an archbishopric which will lead to a cardinalship.
+
+When you have the clergy you have, or you are very near having, the
+legitimist party with you,--a party which, while passionately desirous
+of free education and filled with hatred for the July throne, is not
+averse, when occasion offers, to yielding to a monstrous union with
+the radical party. Now the head of the legitimists in Arcis and its
+neighborhood is, of course, the family of Cinq-Cygne. Never does the old
+marquise, whose haughty nature and powerful will you, madame, know well
+[see "An Historical Mystery"],--never does she drive into Arcis from her
+chateau of Cinq-Cygne, without paying a visit to Mother Marie-des-Anges,
+who in former days educated her daughter Berthe, now the Duchesse
+Georges de Maufrigneuse.
+
+But now we come to the most opposing and resisting side,--that of
+the conservatives, which must not be confounded with the party of the
+administration. Here we find as its leader the Comte de Gondreville,
+your husband's colleague in the Chamber of peers. Closely allied to the
+count is a very influential man, his old friend Grevin, formerly mayor
+and notary of Arcis, who, in turn, draws after him another elector of
+considerable influence, Maitre Achille Pigoult, to whom, on retiring
+from active life, he sold his practice as notary.
+
+But Mother Marie-des-Anges has a powerful means of access to the Comte
+de Gondreville through his daughter, the Marechale de Carigliano. That
+great lady, who, as you know, has taken to devotion, goes into retreat
+every year at the Ursuline convent. More than that, the good Mother,
+without giving any explanation, intimates that she has a lever of some
+kind on the Comte de Gondreville known to herself only; in fact, the
+life of that old regicide--turned senator, then count of the Empire,
+then peer of France under two dynasties--has wormed itself through too
+many tortuous underground ways not to allow us to suppose the existence
+of secrets he might not care to have unmasked.
+
+Now Gondreville is Grevin,--his confidant, and, as they say, his tool,
+his catspaw for the last fifty years. But even supposing that by
+an utter impossibility their close union should, under present
+circumstances, be sundered, we are certainly sure of Achille Pigoult,
+Grevin's successor, on whom, when the purchase of the chateau d'Arcis
+was made in his office by the Marquis de Sallenauve, a fee was bestowed
+of such an unusual amount that to accept it was virtually to pledge
+himself.
+
+As for the ruck of the electors, our friend cannot fail to make recruits
+there, by the work he is about to give in repairing the chateau, which,
+fortunately for him, is falling into ruin in several places. We must
+also count on the manifesto which Charles de Sallenauve has just issued,
+in which he openly declares that he will accept neither favors
+nor employment from the government. So that, really, taking into
+consideration his own oratorical talent, the support of the Opposition
+journals both here and in Paris, the insults and calumnies which the
+ministerial journals are already beginning to fire upon him, I feel
+great hopes of his success.
+
+Forgive me for presenting to you in glowing colors the parliamentary
+future of a man of whom, you said to me the other day, you felt
+you could not safely make a friend, because of the lofty and rather
+impertinent assumption of his personality. To tell the truth, madame,
+whatever political success may be in store for Charles de Sallenauve,
+I fear he may one day regret the calmer fame of which he was already
+assured in the world of art. But neither he nor I was born under an
+easy and accommodating star. Birth has been a costly thing to us; it is
+therefore doubly cruel not to like us. You have been kind to me because
+you fancy that a lingering fragrance of our dear Louise still clings to
+me; give something, I beseech you, of the same kindness to him whom I
+have not hesitated in this letter to call our friend.
+
+
+
+
+XV. MARIE-GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE
+
+Arcis-sur-Aube, May 13, 1839.
+
+Madame,--I see that the electoral fever is upon you, as you are good
+enough to send me from Monsieur de l'Estorade so many _discouragements_
+which certainly deserve consideration.
+
+We knew already of the mission given to Comte Maxime de Trailles,--a
+mission he endeavored at first to conceal under some irrigating project.
+We even know what you, madame, seem not to know,--that this able
+ministerial agent has found means to combine with the cares of electoral
+politics those of his own private policy. Monsieur Maxime de Trailles,
+if we are rightly informed, was on the point of succumbing to the
+chronic malady with which he has been so long afflicted; I mean _debt_.
+Not debts, for we say "the debt of Monsieur de Trailles," as we say
+"the debt of England." In this extremity the patient, resolved on
+heroic remedies, adopted that of marriage, which might perhaps be called
+marriage _in extremis_.
+
+To cut a long story short, Monsieur de Trailles was sent to Arcis to
+put an end to the candidacy of an upstart of the Left centre, a certain
+Simon Giguet; and having brought forward the mayor of the town as
+the ministerial candidate, he finds the said mayor, named Beauvisage,
+possessed of an only daughter, rather pretty, and able to bring
+her husband five hundred thousand francs amassed in the honorable
+manufacture of cotton night-caps. Now you see, I am sure, the mechanism
+of the affair.
+
+As for our own claims, we certainly do not make cotton night-caps, but
+we make statues,--statues for which we are decorated with the Legion of
+honor; religious statues, inaugurated with great pomp by Monseigneur the
+bishop of the diocese and all the constituted authorities; statues, or
+rather _a_ statue, which the whole population of the town has flocked
+to the Ursuline convent to behold, where Mesdames the nuns, not a little
+puffed up with this magnificent addition to their bijou of a chapel,
+have kept their house and their oratory open to all comers for this
+whole day. Is not that likely to popularize our candidacy?
+
+This evening, to crown the ceremony of inaugurating our Saint-Ursula,
+we give in our chateau of Arcis a banquet to fifty guests, among whom we
+have had the malice to invite (with the chief inhabitants of the place)
+all the ministerial functionaries and, above all, the ministerial
+candidate. But, in view of our own declared candidacy, we feel pretty
+well assured that the latter will not respond to the invitation. So much
+the better! more room for others; and the missing guests, whose names
+will be made known on the morrow, will be convicted of a _servilism_
+which will, we think, injure their influence with the population.
+
+Yesterday we paid a visit at the chateau de Cinq-Cygne, where d'Arthez
+presented us, in the first place, to the Princesse de Cadignan, who is
+wonderfully well preserved. Both she and the old Marquise de Cinq-Cygne
+received Dorlange--I should say, Sallenauve--in the warmest manner.
+It was from them that we learned the history of Monsieur Maxime de
+Trailles' mission and its present results. It seems that on his arrival
+the ministerial agent received some attentions at Cinq-Cygne,--mere
+floating sticks, to discover the set of his current. He evidently
+flattered himself that he should find support at Cinq-Cygne for his
+electioneering intrigue; which is so far from being the case that Duc
+Georges de Maufrigneuse, to whom, as a Jockey Club comrade, he told all
+his projects, gave us the information about them which I have now given
+to you, and which, if you will be so kind, I should like you to make
+over to Monsieur de l'Estorade.
+
+
+May 12th.
+
+The dinner has taken place, madame; it was magnificently served, and
+Arcis will talk about it for some time to come. Sallenauve has in
+that great organist (who, by the bye, showed his talent on the organ
+admirably during the ceremony of inauguration) a sort of steward and
+factotum who leaves all the Vatels of the world far behind him; he
+would never have fallen on his sword for lack of a fish! Colored lamps,
+garlands, draperies, decorated the dining-room; even fireworks were
+provided; nothing was wanting to the fete, which lasted to a late hour
+in the gardens of the chateau, where the populace danced and drank to
+its heart's content.
+
+Nearly all the invited guests came except those we desired to
+compromise. The invitations having been sent at short notice, it was
+amusing to read the notes and letters of excuse, which Sallenauve
+ordered to be brought to him in the salon as they arrived. As he opened
+each he took care to say: "This is from Monsieur the sub-prefect; this
+from the _procureur-du-roi_; this from Monsieur Vinet the substitute,
+expressing regret that they cannot accept the invitation." All these
+concerted refusals were received with smiles and whispers by the
+company; but when a letter arrived from Beauvisage, and Sallenauve read
+aloud the "impossibility in which he found himself to _correspond_
+to his politeness," the hilarity grew noisy and general, and was only
+stopped by the entrance of Monsieur Martener, examining judge, who
+performed an act of courage in coming to the dinner which his colleagues
+declined. We must remark, however, than an examining-judge has two sides
+to him. On that of the judge he is irremovable; he can only be deprived
+of the slight increase of salary he receives as an examiner and of the
+privilege of signing warrants and questioning thieves,--splendid rights
+of which the chancellor can mulct him by a stroke of his pen. But
+allowing that Monsieur Martener was only semi-brave, he was greeted on
+this occasion as a full moon.
+
+The Duc de Maufrigneuse, d'Arthez, and Monseigneur the bishop, who was
+staying at Cinq-Cygne for a few days, were all present, and this made
+more noticeable the absence of one man, namely, Grevin, whose excuse,
+sent earlier in the day, was not read to the company. The non-appearance
+of the Comte de Gondreville was explained by the recent death of his
+grandson, Charles Keller; and in sending the invitation Sallenauve had
+been careful to let him know he should understand a refusal. But that
+Grevin, the count's right arm, should absent himself, seemed to show
+that he and his patron were convinced of the probable election of
+Beauvisage, and would have no intercourse with the new candidate.
+
+The dinner being given in honor of Saint-Ursula's installation, which
+could not be celebrated by a banquet in the convent, Sallenauve had a
+fine opportunity for the following toast:--
+
+"To the Mother of the poor; the noble and saintly spirit which, for
+fifty years, has shone on Champagne, and to which we owe the vast number
+of distinguished and accomplished women who adorn this beautiful region
+of our country."
+
+If you know, as I do, madame, what a forlorn, beggarly region Champagne
+is, you would say, or something like it, that Sallenauve is a rascally
+fellow, and that the passion to enter the legislature makes a man
+capable of shocking deceit. Was it worth while, in fact, for a man who
+usually respects himself to boldly tell a lie of criminal dimensions,
+when a moment later a little unforeseen circumstance occurred which did
+more than all the speeches ever uttered to commend him to the sympathy
+of the electors?
+
+You told me, madame, that your son Armand found a strong likeness to
+the portraits of Danton in our friend Sallenauve; and it seems that the
+boy's remark was true, for several persons present who had known the
+great revolutionist during his lifetime made the same observation.
+Laurent Goussard, who, as I told you in a former letter, was Danton's
+friend, was also, in a way, his brother-in-law; for Danton, who was
+something of a gallant, had been on close terms for several years with
+the miller's sister. Well, the likeness must be striking, for after
+dinner, while we were taking our coffee, the worthy Goussard, whose
+head was a little warmed by the fumes of wine, came up to Sallenauve
+and asked him whether he was certain he had made no mistake about his
+father, and could honestly declare that Danton had nothing to do with
+his making.
+
+Sallenauve took the matter gaily, and answered arithmetically,--
+
+"Danton died April 5, 1794. To be his son, I must have been born no
+later than January, 1795, which would make me forty-four years old
+to-day. But the register of my birth, and I somewhat hope my face, make
+me out exactly thirty."
+
+"Yes, you are right," said Laurent Goussard; "figures demolish my idea;
+but no matter,--we'll vote for you all the same."
+
+I think the man is right; this chance resemblance is likely to have
+great weight in the election. You must remember, madame, that, in spite
+of the fatal facts which cling about his memory, Danton is not an object
+of horror and execration in Arcis, where he was born and brought up. In
+the first place time has purged him; his grand character and powerful
+intellect remain, and the people are proud of their compatriot. In Arcis
+they talk of Danton as in Marseilles they talk of Cannebiere. Fortunate,
+therefore, is our candidate's likeness to this demigod, the worship
+of whom is not confined to the town, but extends to the surrounding
+country.
+
+These voters _extra muros_ are sometimes curiously simple-minded, and
+obvious contradictions trouble them not at all. Some agents sent into
+the adjacent districts have used this fancied resemblance; and as in a
+rural propaganda the object is less to strike fair than to strike hard,
+Laurent Goussard's version, apocryphal as it is, is hawked about the
+country villages with a coolness that admits of no contradiction.
+
+While this pretended revolutionary origin is advancing our friend's
+prospects in one direction, in another the tale put forth to the worthy
+voters whom it is desirable to entice is different, but truer and not
+less striking to the minds of the country-people. This is the gentlemen,
+they are told, who has bought the chateau of Arcis; and as the chateau
+of Arcis stands high above the town and is known to all the country
+round, it is to these simple folk a species of symbol. They are always
+ready to return to memories of the past, which is much less dead and
+buried than people suppose; "Ah! he's the _seigneur_ of the chateau,"
+they say.
+
+This, madame, is how the electoral kitchen is carried on and the way in
+which a deputy is cooked.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. MARIE-GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE
+
+Arcis-sur-Aube, May 15, 1839.
+
+Madame,--You do me the honor to say that my letters amuse you, and you
+tell me not to fear that I send too many.
+
+We are no longer at the Hotel de la Poste, having left it for the
+chateau; but thanks to the rivalry existing between the two inns, the
+Poste and the Mulet, in the latter of which Monsieur de Trailles has
+established his headquarters, we are kept informed of what is going
+on in the town and among our enemies. Since our departure, as our late
+landlord informs us, a Parisian journalist has arrived at his hotel.
+This individual, whose name I do not know, at once announced himself as
+Jack-the-giant-killer, sent down to reinforce with his Parisian vim and
+vigor the polemic which the local press, subsidized by the "bureau of
+public spirit," has directed against us.
+
+In that there is nothing very grave or very gay; since the world was a
+world, governments have always found pens for sale, and never have
+they failed to buy them; but the comedy of this affair begins with the
+co-arrival and the co-presence in the hotel of a young lady of very
+problematical virtue. The name of this young lady as it appears on her
+passport is Mademoiselle Chocardelle; but the journalist in speaking of
+her calls her Antonia, or, when he wants to treat her with more respect,
+Mademoiselle Antonia.
+
+Now, what can bring Mademoiselle Chocardelle to Arcis? A pleasure trip,
+you will say, offered to her by the journalist, who combines with
+that object our daily defamation and his consequent earnings from
+the secret-service fund of the government. Not at all; Mademoiselle
+Chocardelle has come to Arcis on business of her own,--namely, to
+enforce a claim.
+
+It seems that Charles Keller before his departure for Africa, where
+he met a glorious death, drew a note of hand, payable to Mademoiselle
+Antonia on order, for ten thousand francs, "value received in
+furniture," a charming ambiguity, the furniture having been received by,
+and not from, Mademoiselle Chocardelle, who estimated at ten thousand
+francs the sacrifice she made in accepting it.
+
+A few days after Charles Keller's death, the note being almost due,
+Mademoiselle Antonia went to the counting-room of the Keller Brothers
+to inquire about its payment. The cashier, who is crabbed, like all
+cashiers, replied that he did not see how Mademoiselle Antonia had the
+face to present such a note; at any rate, the heads of the house were
+at Gondreville, where the whole family had met after receiving the fatal
+news, and he should pay no such note without referring the matter to
+them.
+
+"Very good, then I'll refer it to them myself," replied Mademoiselle
+Antonia. Thereupon she was meditating a departure alone to Arcis, when
+the government felt the need of insulting us with more wit and point
+than provincial journalism can muster, and so confided that employment
+to a middle-aged journalist to whom Mademoiselle Antonia had, during the
+absence of Charles Keller, shown some kindness. "I am going to Arcis,"
+seems to have been said at the same instant by writer and lady. The most
+commonplace lives encounter similar coincidences.
+
+Now, madame, admire the manner in which things link together. Setting
+forth on a purely selfish financial enterprise, behold Mademoiselle
+Chocardelle suddenly brought to the point of wielding an immense
+electoral influence! And observe also that her influence is of a nature
+to compensate for all the witty pin-pricks of her gallant companion.
+
+Mademoiselle's affair, it appears, hung fire. Twice she went to
+Gondreville, and was not admitted. The journalist was busy,--partly
+with his articles, and partly with certain commissions given to him by
+Monsieur de Trailles, under whose orders he was told to place himself.
+Mademoiselle Antonia was therefore much alone; and in the ennui of
+such solitude, she was led to create for herself a really desperate
+amusement.
+
+A few steps from the Hotel de la Poste is a bridge across the Aube;
+a path leads down beside it, by a steep incline, to the water's edge,
+which, being hidden from the roadway above and little frequented, offers
+peace and solitude to whoever may like to dream there to the sound of
+the rippling current. Mademoiselle Antonia at first took a book with
+her; but books not being, as she says, in her line, she looked about for
+other ways of killing her time, and bethought herself of fishing, for
+which amusement the landlord of the inn supplied her with a rod. Much
+pleased with her first successes, the pretty exile devoted herself to
+an occupation which must be attractive,--witness the fanatics that it
+makes; and the few persons who crossed the bridge could admire at all
+hours a charming naiad in a flounced gown and a broad-brimmed straw hat,
+engaged in fishing with the conscientious gravity of a _gamin de Paris_.
+
+Up to this time Mademoiselle Antonia and her fishing have had nothing to
+do with our election; but if you will recall, madame, in the history
+of Don Quixote (which I have heard you admire for its common-sense and
+jovial reasoning) the rather disagreeable adventures of Rosinante and
+the muleteers, you will have a foretaste of the good luck which the
+development of Mademoiselle Antonia's new passion brought to us.
+
+Our rival, Beauvisage, is not only a successful stocking-maker and an
+exemplary mayor, but he is also a model husband, having never tripped in
+loyalty to his wife, whom he respects and admires. Every evening, by her
+orders, he goes to bed before ten o'clock, while Madame Beauvisage and
+her daughter go into what Arcis is pleased to call society. But there is
+no more treacherous water, they say, than still water, just as there
+was nothing less proper and well-behaved than the calm and peaceable
+Rosinante on the occasion referred to.
+
+At any rate, while making the tour of his town according to his laudable
+official habit, Beauvisage from the top of the bridge chanced to catch
+sight of the fair Parisian who with outstretched arms and gracefully
+bent body was pursuing her favorite pastime. A slight movement, the
+charming impatience with which the pretty fisher twitched her line from
+the water when the fish had not bitten, was perhaps the electric shock
+which struck upon the heart of the magistrate, hitherto irreproachable.
+No one can say, perhaps, how the thing really came about. But I ought to
+remark that during the interregnum that occurred between the making of
+socks and night-caps and the assumption of municipal duties, Beauvisage
+himself had practised the art of fishing with a line with distinguished
+success. Probably it occurred to him that the poor young lady, having
+more ardor than science, was not going the right way to work, and the
+thought of improving her method may have been the real cause of his
+apparent degeneracy. However that may be, it is certain that, crossing
+the bridge in company with her mother, Mademoiselle Beauvisage suddenly
+cried out, like a true _enfant terrible_,--
+
+"Goodness! there's papa talking with that Parisian woman!"
+
+To assure herself at a glance of the monstrous fact, to rush down the
+bank and reach her husband (whom she found with laughing lips and the
+happy air of a browsing sheep), to blast him with a stern "What are
+you doing here?" to order his retreat to Arcis with the air of a queen,
+while Mademoiselle Chocardelle, first astonished and then enlightened as
+to what it all meant, went off into fits of laughter, took scarcely the
+time I have taken to tell it. Such, madame, was the proceeding by which
+Madame Beauvisage, _nee_ Grevin, rescued her husband; and though that
+proceeding may be called justifiable, it was certainly injudicious,
+for before night the whole town had heard of the catastrophe, and
+Beauvisage, arraigned and convicted by common consent of deplorable
+immorality, saw fresh desertions taking place in the already winnowed
+phalanx of his partisans.
+
+However, the Gondreville and Grevin side still held firm, and--would you
+believe it, madame?--it was again Mademoiselle Antonia to whom we owe
+the overthrow of their last rampart.
+
+Here is the tale of that phenomenon: Mother Marie-des-Anges wanted an
+interview with the Comte de Gondreville; but how to get it she did not
+know, because to ask for it was not, as she thought, proper. Having, it
+appears, unpleasant things to say to him, she did not wish to bring the
+old man to the convent expressly to hear them; such a proceeding seemed
+to her uncharitable. Besides, things comminatory delivered point-blank
+will often provoke their recipient instead of alarming him; whereas the
+same things slipped in sweetly never fail of their effect. Still, time
+was passing; the election, as you know, takes place to-morrow, Sunday,
+and the preparatory meeting of all the candidates and the electors,
+to-night. The poor dear saintly woman did not know what course to take,
+when a little matter occurred, most flattering to her vanity, which
+solved her doubts. A pretty sinner, she was told, who had come to Arcis
+to "do" Monsieur Keller the financier, then at Gondreville, out of some
+money, had heard of the virtues and the inexhaustible kindness of Mother
+Marie-des-Anges--in short, she regarded her, after Danton, as the most
+interesting object of the place, and deeply regretted that she dared not
+ask to be admitted to her presence.
+
+An hour later the following note was left at the Hotel de la Poste:--
+
+  Mademoiselle,--I am told that you desire to see me, but that you
+  do not know how to accomplish it. Nothing is easier. Ring the
+  door-bell of my quiet house, ask to see me, and do not be alarmed
+  at my black robe and aged face. I am not one of those who force
+  their advice upon pretty young women who do not ask for it, and
+  who may become in time greater saints than I. That is the whole
+  mystery of obtaining an interview with Mother Marie-des-Anges, who
+  salutes you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. [Picture of
+  small cross.]
+
+An invitation so graciously given was not to be resisted; and
+Mademoiselle Antonia, after putting on the soberest costume she could
+get together, went to the convent.
+
+I wish I could give you the details of that interview, which must have
+been curious; but no one was present, and nothing was known except what
+the lost sheep, who returned in tears, told of it. When the journalist
+tried to joke her on this conversion, Mademoiselle Antonia turned upon
+him.
+
+"Hold your tongue," she said; "you never in your life wrote a sentence
+like what she said to me."
+
+"What did she say to you?"
+
+"'Go, my child,' said that old woman, 'the ways of God are beautiful,
+and little known; there is often more of a saint in a Magdalen than in a
+nun.'"
+
+The journalist laughed, but scenting danger he said,--
+
+"When are you going again to Gondreville to see that Keller? If he
+doesn't pay the money soon, I'll hit him a blow in some article, in
+spite of all Maxime may say."
+
+"I don't play dirty tricks myself," replied Antonia, with dignity.
+
+"Don't you? Do you mean you are not going to present that note again?"
+
+"Not now," replied the admirer and probably the echo of Mother
+Marie-des-Anges, but using her own language; "I don't blackmail a family
+in affliction. I should remember it on my death-bed, and doubt God's
+mercy."
+
+"Why don't you make yourself an Ursuline, now that we are here?"
+
+"Ha, if I only had the courage! I might be happier if I did. But, in
+any case, I am not going to Gondreville; Mother Marie-des-Anges has
+undertaken to arrange that matter for me."
+
+"Foolish girl! Have you given her that note?"
+
+"I wanted to tear it up, but she prevented me, and told me to give it to
+her and she would arrange it honestly for my interests."
+
+"Very fine! You were a creditor, and now you are a beggar."
+
+"No, for I have given the money in alms. I told madame to keep it for
+her poor."
+
+"Oh! if you add the vice of patronizing convents to your other vice of
+fishing in rivers, you will be a pleasant girl to frequent."
+
+"You won't frequent me much longer, for I go to-night, and leave you to
+your dirty work."
+
+"Bless me! so you retire to the Carmelites?"
+
+"The Carmelites!" replied Antonia, wittily; "no, my old fellow, we don't
+retire to the Carmelites unless we leave a king."
+
+Such women, even the most ignorant, all know the story of La Valliere,
+whom they would assuredly have made their patroness if Sister
+Louise-of-the-Sacred-Mercy had been canonized.
+
+I don't know how Mother Marie-des-Anges managed it, but early this
+morning the carriage of the old Comte de Gondreville stopped before the
+gate of the convent; and when the count again entered it he was driven
+to the office of his friend Grevin; and later in the day the latter said
+to several friends that certainly his son-in-law was too much of a
+fool, he had compromised himself with that Parisian woman, and would
+undoubtedly lose his election.
+
+I am told that the rectors of the two parishes in Arcis have each
+received a thousand crowns for their poor from Mother Marie-des-Anges,
+who informed them that it came from a benefactor who did not wish his
+name known. Sallenauve is furious because our partisans are going about
+saying that the money came from him. But when you are running before the
+wind you can't mathematically measure each sail, and you sometimes get
+more of a breeze than you really want.
+
+Monsieur Maxime de Trailles makes no sign, but there is every reason
+to suppose that this failure of his candidate, which he must see is now
+inevitable, will bury both him and his marriage. But, at any rate, he is
+a clever fellow, who will manage to get his revenge.
+
+What a curious man, madame, this organist is! His name is that of one
+of our greatest physicians,--though they are not related to each
+other,--Bricheteau. No one ever showed more activity, more presence of
+mind, more devotion, more intelligence; and there are not two men in all
+Europe who can play the organ as he does. You say you do not want Nais
+to be a mere piano _strummer_; then I advise you to let this Bricheteau
+teach her. He is a man who would show her what music really is; he will
+not give himself airs, for I assure you he is as modest as he is gifted.
+To Sallenauve he is like a little terrier; as watchful, as faithful, and
+I may add as ugly,--if so good and frank a countenance as his can ever
+be thought anything but handsome!
+
+
+
+
+XVII. MARIE-GASTON TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE
+
+Arcis-sur-Aube, May 16, 1839.
+
+Madame,--Last evening the preparatory meeting took place,--a ridiculous
+ceremony, very annoying to the candidates, which cannot, however, be
+avoided.
+
+Perhaps it is natural that before pledging themselves to a man who is
+to represent them for four or five years, voters should want to question
+him, and discover, if possible, what he really is. Is he a man of
+intelligence? Does he really sustain the ideas put forth about him? Will
+he be cordial and affable to the various interests which may claim his
+support? Is he firm in character? Can he defend his ideas--if he has
+any? In a word, will the constituency be worthily, faithfully, and
+honestly represented? That is the serious and respectable aspect of this
+institution, which, not being a part of the law, must, in order to be so
+firmly fixed in our customs, have a sound reason for its existence.
+
+But every medal has its reverse; as may be seen in these meetings of
+candidates with electors puffed up by their own self-importance, eager
+to exercise for a moment the sovereignty they are about to delegate to
+their deputy, and selling it as dearly as they can to him. Considering
+the impertinence of certain questions addressed to a candidate, it would
+really seem as if the latter were a serf over whom each elector had
+rights of life and death. Not a corner of his private life where the
+unhappy man is safe from prying curiosity. All things are possible
+in the line of preposterous questioning; for instance: Why does the
+candidate prefer the wine of Champagne to the wine of Bordeaux? At
+Bordeaux, where wine is a religion, this preference implies an idea of
+non-patriotism and may seriously affect the election. Many voters go
+to these meetings solely to enjoy the embarrassment of the candidates.
+Holding them as it were in the pillory, they play with them like a child
+with a beetle, an old judge with the criminal he examines, or a young
+surgeon at an autopsy.
+
+Others have not such elevated tastes; they come merely to enjoy the
+racket, the confusion of tongues which is certain to take place on such
+occasions. Some see their opportunity to exhibit a choice talent; for
+(as they say in the reports of the Chamber) when "the tumult is at its
+height," a cock is heard to crow or a dog to howl as if his paw were
+trodden upon,--noises that are imitated with marvellous accuracy. But
+truly, are not fools and stupid beings a majority in the world, and
+ought they not to have their representative?
+
+The meeting took place in a large dance-hall, the loft for the orchestra
+forming a sort of private box to which non-voters were admitted, I
+among the number. Some ladies had already taken the front seats; Madame
+Marion, aunt of Simon Giguet, the Left centre candidate; Madame and
+Mademoiselle Mollot, wife and daughter of the clerk of the court,
+and some others whose names and position I did not catch. Madame and
+Mademoiselle Beauvisage shone conspicuously, like Brutus and Cassius, by
+their absence.
+
+Before the candidacy of Monsieur Beauvisage was brought forward on the
+ministerial side after the death of Charles Keller, that of Monsieur
+Simon Giguet was thought to be certain of success. Now, in consequence
+of that of our friend Sallenauve, who has in turn distanced Beauvisage,
+Giguet has fallen a step lower still. His father, a former colonel
+of the Empire, is greatly respected throughout this region. As an
+expression of regret for not electing his son (according to all
+probabilities), the electors made him, by acclamation, chairman of the
+meeting.
+
+The first candidate who was called upon to speak was Simon Giguet; he
+made a long-winded address, full of commonplaces. Few questions were
+asked him which deserve a place in the present report. The audience felt
+that the tug of war was elsewhere.
+
+Monsieur Beauvisage was then summoned; whereupon Maitre Achille Pigoult
+the notary rose, and asked leave to make a statement.
+
+"Monsieur le maire," he said, "has, since yesterday, been attacked by--"
+
+"Ha! ha!" derisive laughter on the part of the electors.
+
+Colonel Giguet rang his bell repeatedly, without being able to enforce
+silence. At the first lull Maitre Pigoult resumed,--
+
+"I have the honor to inform you, gentlemen, that, attacked by an
+indisposition which, not serious in itself--"
+
+Fresh interruption, noisier than the first.
+
+Like all military men, Colonel Giguet is not patient nor parliamentary;
+he therefore rose and called out vehemently,--
+
+"Messieurs, we are not at a circus. I request you to behave in a more
+seemly manner; if not, I leave the chair."
+
+It is to be supposed that men in masses like to be handled roughly;
+for this lesson was greeted with merry applause, after which silence
+appeared to be firmly re-established.
+
+"I regret to inform you," began Maitre Achille Pigoult, varying his
+formula for the third time, "that, attacked by an indisposition happily
+not serious, which may confine him to his chamber--"
+
+"Throat trouble," suggested a voice.
+
+"--our venerable and excellent mayor," continued Achille Pigoult, taking
+no notice of the interruption, "is unable to be present at this meeting.
+Madame Beauvisage, with whom I have just had the honor of an interview,
+requests me to inform you that, _for the present_, Monsieur Beauvisage
+renounces the honor of receiving your suffrages, and requests those of
+you who have given him your intelligent sympathy to transfer your votes
+to Monsieur Simon Giguet."
+
+This Achille Pigoult is a malicious fellow, who intentionally brought in
+the name of Madame Beauvisage to exhibit her conjugal sovereignty. But
+the assembly was really too provincial to catch the meaning of that
+little bit of treachery. Besides, in the provinces, women take part in
+the most virile affairs of the men. The well-known saying of the vicar's
+old housekeeper, "We don't say masses at that price," would pass without
+comment in Champagne.
+
+At last came Sallenauve. I was struck with the ease and quiet dignity
+of his manner. That is a very reassuring pledge, madame, of his conduct
+under more trying circumstances; for when a man rises to speak it makes
+but little difference who and what his audience are. To an orator goaded
+by fear, great lords and porters are precisely the same thing. They are
+eyes that look at you, ears that hear you. Individuals are not there,
+only one huge being,--an assembly, felt as a mass, without analyzing the
+elements.
+
+After enumerating briefly the ties which connected him with this region,
+slipping in as he did so an adroit and dignified allusion to his birth
+which "was not like that of others," Sallenauve stated clearly his
+political ideas. A Republic he thought the finest of all governments;
+but he did not believe it possible to establish one in France;
+consequently, he did not desire it. He thought that a truly
+parliamentary government, in which court influence should be so
+vigorously muzzled that nothing need be feared from its tendency to
+interference and caballing would best conduce to the dignity and the
+welfare of the nation. Liberty and equality, the two great principles
+that triumphed in '89, would obtain from such a government the strongest
+guarantees. As to the manoeuvring of the royal power against
+those principles, it was not for institutions to check it, but for
+men,--customs, public opinion, rather than laws; and for himself,
+Sallenauve, he should ever stand in the breach as a living obstacle.
+He declared himself a warm partisan of free education; believed
+that greater economy might be exercised in the budget; that too many
+functionaries were attached to the government; and, above all, that
+the court was too largely represented in the Chamber. To maintain his
+independence he was firmly resolved to accept no post and no favors from
+the government. Neither ought those who might elect him to expect that
+he would ever take steps on their behalf which were not warranted by
+reason and by justice. It was said that the word _impossible_ was not
+French. Yet there was an impossibility by which he took pride in being
+stopped--that of injustice, and that of disloyalty, even the faintest,
+to the Right. [Loud applause.]
+
+Silence being once more restored,--
+
+"Monsieur," said one of the electors, after obtaining the floor from the
+chairman, "you say that you will accept no post under government. Does
+not that imply reproach to public functionaries? My name is Godivet; I
+am registrar of the archives, but I do not consider that a reason why I
+should incur the contempt of my fellow-citizens."
+
+Sallenauve replied,--
+
+"I am happy, monsieur, to learn that the government has invested a
+man like you with functions which you fulfil, I am sure, with perfect
+uprightness and great ability; but I venture to ask if you rose to your
+present position at one jump?"
+
+"Certainly not, monsieur; I began by being a supernumerary for three
+years; after that I passed through all the grades; and I can show that
+favor had nothing to do with my promotion."
+
+"Then, monsieur, what would you say if with my rank as deputy (supposing
+that I obtain the suffrages of this arrondissement) I, who have never
+been a supernumerary and never passed through any grades, and whose
+only claim upon the administration is that of having voted for it,--what
+would you say if I were suddenly appointed over your head as the
+director-general of your department?"
+
+"I should say--I should say, monsieur, that the choice was a good one,
+because the king himself would have made it."
+
+"No, monsieur, you would not say it, or if you said it aloud, which I
+scarcely think possible, you would think in your heart that the choice
+was ridiculous and unjust. 'How the devil,' you would say to yourself,
+'could this man, this sculptor, know anything about the intricate
+business of registering archives?' And you would be right in condemning
+such royal caprice; for what becomes of long and honorable services,
+justly acquired rights, and steady promotion under such a system of
+arbitrary choice? It is that I may not be the accomplice of this crying
+abuse, because I think it neither just nor honest nor useful to obtain
+in this way important public functions, that I denounce the system and
+bind myself to accept no office. Is this, monsieur, pouring contempt on
+public functions? Is it not rather lifting them to higher honor?"
+
+Monsieur Godivet declared himself satisfied, and said no more.
+
+"_Ah ca_! monsieur," cried another elector, after demanding the floor
+in the rather tipsy voice, "you say you will ask no favors for your
+constituents; then what good will you be to us?"
+
+"My friend, I did not say I would ask nothing for my constituents. I
+said I would ask nothing but what was just; but that, I may add, I shall
+ask with energy and perseverance, for that is how justice should be
+followed up."
+
+"But," persisted the voter, "there are various ways of doing justice;
+witness the suit I was made to lose against Jean Remy, with whom I had
+trouble about a boundary--"
+
+Colonel Giguet, interrupting,--
+
+"Come, come, you are not going, I hope to talk about your private
+affairs, and speak disrespectfully of magistrates?"
+
+The voter resumed,--
+
+"Magistrates, colonel, I respect, for I was one myself for six months in
+'93, and I know the law. But, returning to my point, I ask monsieur, who
+is here to answer questions, to me as well as to others, what he thinks
+about tobacco licenses."
+
+"My opinion on tobacco licenses! That is rather difficult to formulate;
+I can, however, say that, if my information is correct, they are usually
+very well distributed."
+
+"Hey! hey! you're a man, you!" cried the inebriate elector, "and I'll
+vote for you, for they can't fool you,--no! But they do give those
+licenses all wrong! Look at that daughter of Jean Remy. Bad neighbor.
+Never owned anything but his cart, and fights every day with his wife--"
+
+"But, my good fellow," said the chairman, interposing, "you are abusing
+the patience of this assembly."
+
+"No, no! let him talk!" cried voices from all parts of the room.
+
+The voter was amusing, and Sallenauve himself seemed to let the chairman
+know he would like to see what the man was driving at.
+
+The elector, being allowed to continue, went on:--
+
+"I was going to say, with due respect to you, colonel, about that
+daughter of Jean Remy's,--a man I'll pursue to hell, for my bounds were
+in their right place, and them experts was all wrong. Well! what did
+that slut do? Left her father and mother and went to Paris! What did she
+do there? I didn't go to see, but I'm told she made acquaintance with
+a deputy, and has got the tobacco license for the rue Mouffetard, the
+longest street in Paris. But I'd like to see my wife, widow of an honest
+man, doubled up with rheumatism for having slept in the woods during
+that terror in 1815,--I'd like to see my poor widow get a license!"
+
+"But you are not dead yet," they shouted to him from all parts of the
+room. The colonel, meantime, to put an end to the burlesque scene,
+nodded to a little confectioner who was waiting for the floor, a
+well-known Republican. The new questioner, in a falsetto voice, put the
+following insidious question to the candidate,--a question which might,
+by the way, be called national in Arcis,--
+
+"What does Monsieur think of Danton?"
+
+"Monsieur Dauphin," said the chairman, "I have the honor to remind you
+that Danton belongs to history."
+
+"To the Pantheon of history, monsieur; that is the proper expression."
+
+"Well, history, or the Pantheon of history, as you please; but Danton is
+irrelevant here."
+
+"Permit me, Mr. Chairman," said Sallenauve, "though the question does
+not seem to have much purpose on the bearing of this meeting, I cannot
+forego the opportunity thus given me to give proof of the impartiality
+and independence with which I can judge that great memory, the fame of
+which still echoes in this town."
+
+"Hear! hear!" cried the assembly, almost unanimously.
+
+"I am firmly convinced," resumed Sallenauve, "that if Danton had been
+born in a calm and peaceful epoch like our own, he would have shown
+himself, what in fact he was, a good father, a good husband, a warm and
+faithful friend, a man of kindly temper, who, by the force of his great
+talents, would have risen to some eminent place in the State and in
+society."
+
+"Yes, yes! bravo! very good!"
+
+"Born, on the contrary, in troublesome times, and amid the storm of
+unchained passions, Danton was better constituted than others to kindle
+the flame of that atmosphere of fire. Danton was the torch that fired;
+his scarlet glare lent itself only too readily to scenes of blood
+and horror which I must not recall. But, they said, the national
+independence was at stake, traitors and dissemblers must be awed,--in
+a word, a cruel and awful sacrifice was necessary for the public weal.
+Messieurs, I do not accept that theory. To kill, without the necessity
+demonstrated a score of times of legitimate defence, to kill women,
+children, prisoners, unarmed men, was a crime,--a crime, look at it how
+you will, that was execrable; those who ordered it, those who consented
+to it, those who executed it are, to my mind, deserving of the same
+reprobation."
+
+I wish I could give you an idea, madame, of the tone and expression
+of Sallenauve as he uttered this anathema. You know how his face is
+transfigured when an ardent thought comes into his mind. The assemblage
+was mute and gloomy. Evidently he had wounded their sensibilities; but,
+under the curb of his powerful hand, it dared not throw up its head.
+
+"But," he continued, "to all consummated and irreparable crimes there
+are two issues,--repentance and expiation. His repentance Danton did not
+utter,--he was too proud a man,--but he _acted_ it. He was the first,
+to the sound of that axe falling without pity and without respite,--the
+first, at the risk of his own head being the next victim,--to call for a
+'committee of mercy.' It was the sure, the infallible means of bringing
+him to expiation; and you all know whether, when that day of expiation
+came, he quailed before it. Passing through death,--won by his
+courageous effort to stop the effusion of blood,--it may be truly said
+that the face and the memory of Danton have washed off the bloody stain
+which September put upon them. Committed, at the age of thirty-five,
+to the judgment of posterity, Danton has left us the memory of a great
+intellect, a strong and powerful character, noble private qualities,
+more than one generous action,--all derived from his own being; whereas
+the bloody errors he committed were the contagion of his epoch. In a
+word, with men of his quality, unjust would be the justice which does
+not temper itself with mercy. And here, messieurs, you have in your
+midst--better than you, better than I, better than all orators and
+historians--a woman who has weighed and understood Danton, and who says
+to the pitiless, with the impulse of her charity, 'He has gone to God;
+let us pray for him.'"
+
+The trap thus avoided by this happy allusion to Mother Marie-des-Anges,
+and the assembly evidently satisfied, it might be supposed that the
+candidate had come to the end of his baiting. The colonel was even
+preparing to pass to the vote, when several electors sprang up,
+declaring that two important explanations were still required from the
+candidate. He had said that he should ever be found an obstacle to all
+attempts of the royal power to subvert our institutions. What did he
+mean by such resistance? Was it armed resistance, the resistance of
+riots and barricades?
+
+"Barricades," replied Sallenauve, "have nearly always seemed to me
+machines which turned of themselves and crushed the men who raised them.
+We must believe that in the nature of riots there is something which
+serves the interests of the government, for I have invariably heard the
+police accused of inciting them. My resistance, that which I spoke of,
+will ever be a legal resistance, pursued by legal means, by the press,
+by the tribune, and with patience,--that great force granted to the
+oppressed and to the vanquished."
+
+If you knew Latin, madame, I should say to you, _In cauda venenum_;
+which means, "In the tail of the serpent is its venom,"--a remark of
+antiquity which modern science does not admit. Monsieur de l'Estorade
+was not mistaken; Sallenauve's private life was destined to be
+ransacked, and, no doubt under the inspiration of the virtuous Maxime de
+Trailles, the second question put to our friend was about the handsome
+Italian woman said to be _hidden_ by him in his house in Paris.
+
+Sallenauve showed no embarrassment at being thus interpellated. He
+merely asked whether the assembly would think proper to spend its time
+in listening to a romantic story in which there was no scandal.
+
+But here comes Sallenauve himself; he tells me that the electoral
+college is formed in a manner that leaves little doubt of his election.
+I leave my pen to him, to tell you the romantic tale, already, I
+believe, interrupted on several occasions. He will close this letter.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. CHARLES DE SALLENAUVE TO THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE
+
+
+7 P.M.
+
+Madame,--The rather abrupt manner in which I parted from you and
+Monsieur de l'Estorade the evening of our visit to Armand's school, has
+been explained to you by the preoccupations of all sorts to which at
+that moment I was a victim. Marie-Gaston tells me that he has kept you
+informed of the subsequent events.
+
+I acknowledge that in the restless and agitated state of mind in which
+I then was, the sort of belief which Monsieur de l'Estorade appeared to
+give to the scandal which he mentioned caused me great displeasure and
+some surprise. How, thought I, is it possible that a man of Monsieur de
+l'Estorade's morality and intellect can _a priori_ suppose me capable of
+such disorder, when he sees me anxious to give to my life all the weight
+and consideration which the respect of others alone can bestow? Only a
+few moments before this painful conversation I had been on the point
+of making you a confidence which would, I presume, have protected me
+against the unfortunate impression which Monsieur de l'Estorade conveyed
+to your mind. As for Monsieur de l'Estorade himself, I was, I confess,
+so annoyed at seeing the careless manner in which he made himself the
+echo of a calumny against which I felt he ought rather to have defended
+me that I did not _deign_ to make any explanation to him. I now withdraw
+that word, but it was then the true expression of a displeasure keenly
+felt.
+
+In the course of my electoral contest, I have been obliged to make
+public the justification I did not make to you; and I have had the
+satisfaction of finding that men in masses are more capable than
+individuals of understanding generous impulses and of distinguishing the
+honest language of truth. Here are the facts which I related, but more
+briefly and with less detail, to my electors.
+
+A few months before my departure from Rome, I was in a cafe frequented
+by the pupils of the Academy, when an Italian musician, named Benedetto,
+came in, as he usually did every evening. Nominally he was a musician
+and a tolerable one; but we had been warned that he was also a spy of
+the Roman police. However that might be, he was very amusing; and as we
+cared nothing for the police, we not only endured but we encouraged his
+visits,--which was not hard to do in view of his passion for _poncio
+spongato_ and _spuma di latte_.
+
+On his entrance one evening, a member of our party asked him who was the
+woman with whom he had met him that morning.
+
+"My wife, signore," answered the Italian.
+
+"Yours, Benedetto!--you the husband of such a beauty!"
+
+"Si, signore."
+
+"Nonsense! you are ugly and drunken, and people say you are police spy;
+but she, on the contrary, is as handsome as Diana the huntress."
+
+"I charmed her with my talent; she adores me."
+
+"Well, if she is your wife, make her pose to our friend here, Dorlange,
+who wants a model for his Pandora. He can't get a finer one."
+
+"That can be managed," replied the Italian.
+
+The next day I was in my studio in company with several young painters
+and sculptors when Benedetto came in accompanied by a woman of rare
+beauty, whom I need not describe, for you have seen her, madame, at my
+house. A joyous hurrah greeted the Italian, who said to me,--
+
+"_Ecco la Pandora_! Hey! what do you think of her?"
+
+"Marvellously beautiful; but would she pose?"
+
+"Pooh!" exclaimed Benedetto, with an air which seemed to say: "I'd like
+to see her refuse."
+
+"But," I remarked, "she would cost too much, a model of her beauty."
+
+"No; you need only make my bust--just a plaster cast--and give it to
+her."
+
+"Very good," I said. Then I told my friends to go and leave us alone
+together.
+
+Nobody minded me. Judging the wife by the husband, the eager young
+fellows pressed round her; while she, wounded and angered by the
+audacity of their eyes, looked like a caged panther irritated by
+peasants at a fair.
+
+Going up to her and pulling her aside, Benedetto told her in Italian
+that I wanted to copy her from head to foot, and she must then and there
+take off her clothes. The woman gave him one withering look, and
+made for the door. Benedetto rushed forward to prevent her; while my
+comrades, for the honor of the studio, endeavored to bar his way.
+
+Then began an argument between the wife and the husband; but, as I saw
+that Benedetto sustained his part of it with great brutality, I was
+angry, and, having a pretty vigorous arm, I pushed him aside, and took
+the wife, who was trembling all over, to the door. She said, in Italian,
+a few words of thanks, and disappeared instantly.
+
+Returning to Benedetto, who was gesticulating furiously, I told him to
+leave the studio, that his conduct was infamous, and if I heard of his
+ill-treating his wife I would have him punished.
+
+"_Debole_!" (idiot!) he replied, shrugging his shoulders, and departing
+amid derisive cheers.
+
+Several days passed, and no signs of Benedetto. By the end of a week he
+was forgotten. Three days before my departure from Rome his wife entered
+my studio.
+
+"You are leaving Rome," she said, "and I want you to take me with you."
+
+"Take you with me!--but your husband?"
+
+"Dead," she answered tranquilly.
+
+A thought crossed my mind.
+
+"Did you kill him?" I said.
+
+She made an affirmative sign, adding, "But I meant to die too."
+
+"How was it?" I asked.
+
+"After he offered me that affront," she replied, "he came home and beat
+me, as he often did; then he went out and was gone all day. At night he
+returned with a pistol and threatened to shoot me; but I got the pistol
+away from him, for he was drunk. I threw him--the _briccone_!--on his
+bed, and he fell asleep. Then I stuffed up the doors and windows, and
+lighted the charcoal brazier. My head ached horribly, and I knew nothing
+more till the next day, when I woke up in the hands of my neighbors.
+They had smelt the charcoal, and burst in the door,--but he was dead."
+
+"And the law?"
+
+"I told the judge everything. Besides, _he_ had tried to sell me to
+an Englishman,--that's why he wanted to disgrace me here with you; he
+thought I would resist less. The judge told me I might go, I had done
+right; then I confessed to a priest, and he gave me absolution."
+
+"But, _cara mia_, what can you do in France? Better stay in Italy;
+besides, I am not rich."
+
+She smiled disdainfully.
+
+"I shall not cost you much," she said; "on the contrary, I can save you
+money."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"I can be the model for your statues if I choose. Besides which, I am a
+capital housekeeper. If Benedetto had behaved properly, we should have
+had a good home,--_per che_, I know how to make one; and I've another
+great talent too!"
+
+She ran to a guitar, which was hanging on the wall, and began to sing a
+bravura air, accompanying herself with singular energy.
+
+"In France," she said, when she had finished, "I could take lessons and
+go upon the stage, where I know I should succeed; that was Benedetto's
+idea."
+
+"But why not do that in Italy?"
+
+"I am hiding from that Englishman," she replied; "he wants to carry me
+off. I am determined to go to France; I have learned to speak French. If
+I stay here, I shall throw myself into the Tiber."
+
+By abandoning such a nature, more terrible than seductive, to itself,
+Monsieur de l'Estorade will, I think, agree that I was likely to cause
+some misfortune. I consented, therefore, that Signora Luigia should
+accompany me to Paris. Since then she has managed my household with
+discretion and economy. She even offered to pose for my Pandora; but the
+memory of that scene with her husband has, as you may well believe, kept
+me from accepting her offer. I have given her a singing-master, and she
+is now almost prepared to make her appearance on the stage. But in spite
+of her theatrical projects, she, pious like all Italians, has joined the
+sisterhood of the Virgin in Saint-Sulpice, my parish church, and during
+the month of May, which began a few days ago, the letter of chairs
+counts on her beautiful voice for part of her receipts. She is assiduous
+at the services, confesses, and takes the sacrament regularly. Her
+confessor, a most respectable old man, came to see me lately to request
+that she might not be required to pose for any more of my statues,
+saying that she would not listen to him on that point, believing herself
+bound in honor to me.
+
+My own intention, if I am elected, which now seems probable, is to
+separate from this woman. In a position which will place me more before
+the public, she would become an object of remark as injurious to
+her reputation and future prospects as to mine. I have talked with
+Marie-Gaston about the difficulty I foresee in making this separation.
+Until now, my house has been the whole of Paris to this poor woman;
+and the thought of flinging her alone into the gulf, of which she knows
+nothing, horrifies me.
+
+Marie-Gaston thinks that the help and advice of a person of her own sex,
+with a high reputation for virtue and good judgment, would be in such
+a case most efficacious; and he declares that he and I both know a lady
+who, at our earnest entreaty, might take this duty upon herself. The
+person to whom Marie-Gaston makes allusion is but a recent acquaintance
+of mine, and I could hardly ask even an old friend to take such a care
+upon her shoulders. I know, however, that you once did me the honor to
+say that "certain relations ripen rapidly." Marie-Gaston insists that
+this lady, being kind and pious and most charitable, will be attracted
+by the idea of helping and advising a poor lonely woman. On our return
+to Paris, madame, we shall venture to consult you, and you will tell us
+whether we may ask for this precious assistance.
+
+In any case, I will ask you to be my intermediary with Monsieur de
+l'Estorade; tell him the facts I have now told you, and say that I hope
+the little cloud between us may be effectually removed. If I am elected,
+we shall be, I know, in opposite camps; but as my intention is not to
+take a tone of systematic opposition in all the questions which may
+arise between our parties, I do not think there _need_ be any break
+between us.
+
+By this time to-morrow, madame, I may have received a checkmate which
+will send me back forever to my studio, or I shall have a foot in a
+new career. Shall I tell you that the thought of the latter result
+distresses me?--doubtless from a fear of the Unknown.
+
+I was almost forgetting to give you another piece of news. I have
+consulted Mother Marie-des-Anges (whose history Marie-Gaston tells me
+he has related to you) on the subject of my doubts and fears as to the
+violence done to Mademoiselle de Lanty, and she has promised that in
+course of time she will discover the convent in which Marianina is a
+prisoner. The worthy Mother, if she takes this into her head, is almost
+certain to succeed in finding the original of her Saint-Ursula.
+
+I am not feeling at all easy in mind about Marie-Gaston. He seems to me
+in a state of feverish agitation, partly created by the immense interest
+he takes in my success. But I greatly fear that his efforts will
+result in a serious reaction. His own grief, which at this moment he is
+repressing, has not in reality lost its sting. Have you not been struck
+by the rather flighty and mocking tone of his letters, some of which he
+has shown to me? That is not in his nature, for in his happiest days
+he was never turbulently gay; and I am sadly afraid that when this
+fictitious excitement about my election is over he may fall into utter
+prostration. He has, however, consented to come and live with me,
+and not to go to Ville d'Avray unless I am with him. Even this act of
+prudence, which I asked without hoping to obtain it, makes me uneasy.
+Evidently he is afraid of the memories that await him there. Have I the
+power to lessen the shock? Old Philippe, who was left in charge of the
+place when he went to Italy, had orders not to move or change anything
+whatever in the house. Our friend is therefore likely to find himself,
+in presence of those speaking objects, on the morrow as it were of his
+wife's death. Another alarming thing! he has only spoken of her once,
+and will not suffer me to approach the subject. I hope, however, that
+this may be a crisis; once passed, I trust we may, by all uniting,
+succeed in composing his mind.
+
+Victor or vanquished, I trust to meet you soon, madame, and always as
+your most respectful and devoted servant,
+
+Charles de Sallenauve.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. MARIE-GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE
+
+Arcis-sur-Aube, May 17, 1839.
+
+That stupid riot in Paris, the incredible particulars of which we heard
+this morning by telegraph, came near causing us to lose the election.
+
+The sub-prefect instantly placarded all over the town the news of this
+attempt at insurrection--no doubt instigated by the government to affect
+the elections. "What! elect a democrat!" was repeated everywhere in
+Arcis, and doubtless elsewhere, "so that his speeches in the Chamber may
+be made the ammunition of insurgents!"
+
+That argument threw our phalanx into disorder and hesitation. But the
+idea occurred to Jacques Bricheteau to turn the danger itself to good
+account, and he hastily printed on a sheet of paper and distributed all
+over the town in enormous quantities the following notice:--
+
+  A bloody riot took place yesterday in Paris. Questioned as to the
+  employment of such guilty and desperate means of opposition, one
+  of our candidates, Monsieur de Sallenauve, answered thus: "Riots
+  will always be found to serve the interests of the government; for
+  this reason the police are invariably accused of inciting them.
+  True resistance, that which I stand for, will always be legal
+  resistance, pursued by legal means, by the press, by the tribune,
+  and with Patience--that great force granted to the oppressed and
+  to the vanquished."
+
+These words, you will remember, madame, were those in which Sallenauve
+answered his questioners at the preparatory meeting. Then followed in
+large letters:--
+
+  THE RIOT HAS BEEN SUPPRESSED. WHO WILL PROFIT BY IT?
+
+That sheet of paper did marvels; it completely foiled the efforts of
+Monsieur de Trailles, who, throwing off the mask, had spent his day in
+perorating, in white gloves, on the market-place and from the steps of
+the electoral college.
+
+This evening the result is known; namely, two hundred and one votes
+cast: two for Beauvisage; twenty-nine for Simon Giguet; one hundred and
+seventy for Sallenauve.
+
+Consequently, Monsieur Charles de Sallenauve is proclaimed Deputy.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III. MONSIEUR DE SALLENAUVE
+
+
+
+
+I. THE SORROWS OF MONSIEUR DE TRAILLES
+
+During the evening which followed the election in which he had played a
+part so humiliating to his vanity, Maxime de Trailles returned to Paris.
+It might be supposed that in making, on his arrival, a rapid toilet and
+ordering his carriage to be instantly brought round, he was hastening to
+pay a visit to the Comte de Rastignac, minister of Public Works, to whom
+he must have desired to render an account of his mission, and explain as
+best he could the reasons of its ill-success.
+
+But another and more pressing interest seemed to claim him.
+
+"To Colonel Franchessini's," he said to his coachman.
+
+Arriving at the gate of one of the prettiest hotels in the _quartier_
+Breda, and nodding to the concierge, he received an affirmative sign,
+which meant, "Monsieur is at home"; and at the same time a valet
+appeared on the portico to receive him.
+
+"Is the colonel visible?" he asked.
+
+"He has just gone into madame's room. Does monsieur wish me to call
+him?"
+
+"No, I'll wait for him in the study."
+
+Then, like one familiar with the house, and without waiting for the
+servant to usher him, he entered a large room on the ground-floor, which
+looked into a garden, and was filled with a miscellaneous collection of
+articles testifying to the colonel's habits and tastes. Books, charts,
+and maps certainly justified the word "study"; but, as a frantic
+sportsman and member of the Jockey Club, the colonel had allowed
+this sanctum of mental labor and knowledge to become, by degrees, his
+smoking, fencing, and harness room. Pipes and weapons of all shapes and
+all lands, saddles, hunting-whips, spurs, bits of many patterns, foils
+and boxing-gloves formed a queer and heterogenous collection. However,
+by thus surrounding his daily life with the objects of his favorite
+_studies_, the colonel proved himself a man who possessed the courage
+of his opinions. In fact, he openly said that, beyond a passing notice,
+there was no reading worth a man's attention except the "Stud Journal."
+
+It is to be supposed, however, that politics had managed in some way
+to slip into this existence devoted to muscular exercise and the hippic
+science, for, from a heap of the morning journals disdainfully flung
+upon the floor by the worthy colonel, Monsieur de Trailles picked up
+a copy of the legitimist organ, in which he read, under the heading of
+ELECTIONS, the following article:
+
+  The staff of the National Guard and the Jockey Club, which had
+  various representatives in the last Chamber, have just sent one of
+  their shining notabilities to the one about to open. Colonel
+  Franchessini, so well known for his ardor in punishing the
+  refractories of the National Guard, has been elected almost
+  unanimously in one of the rotten boroughs of the civil list. It is
+  supposed that he will take his seat beside the phalanx of other
+  henchmen, and show himself in the Chamber, as he has elsewhere,
+  one of the firmest supporters of the policy of the _present order
+  of things_.
+
+As Maxime finished reading the article, the colonel entered.
+
+After serving the Empire for a very short time, Colonel Franchessini
+had become one of the most brilliant colonels of the Restoration; but
+in consequence of certain mists which had risen about the perfect
+honorableness of his character he had found himself obliged to send in
+his resignation, so that in 1830 he was fully prepared to devote himself
+in the most ardent manner to the dynasty of July. He did not re-enter
+military service, because, shortly after his misadventure he had met
+with an Englishwoman, enormously rich, who being taken with his beauty,
+worthy at that time of the Antinous, had made him her husband, and the
+colonel henceforth contented himself with the epaulets of the staff
+of the National Guard. He became, in that position, one of the most
+exacting and turbulent of blusterers, and through the influence of that
+quality combined with the fortune his wife had given him, he had
+just been elected, as the paper stated, to the Chamber of deputies.
+Approaching the fifties, like his friend de Trailles, Colonel
+Franchessini had still some pretensions to the after-glow of youth,
+which his slim figure and agile military bearing seemed likely to
+preserve to him for some time longer. Although he had conquered the
+difficulty of his gray hair, reducing its silvery reflections by
+keeping it cut very close, he was less resigned to the scantiness of his
+moustache, which he wore in youthful style, twirled to a sharp point by
+means of a Hungarian cosmetic, which also preserved to a certain degree
+its primitive color. But whoso wants to prove too much proves nothing,
+and in the black which the colonel used there was noticeably a raw tone,
+and an equality of shade too perfect for truth of nature. Hence his
+countenance, swarthy and strongly marked with the Italian origin
+indicated by his name, had an expression of singular rigidity, to which
+his features, now become angular, his piercing glance, and his nose like
+the beak of a bird of prey, did not afford the requisite corrective.
+
+"Hey, Maxime!" he cried, shaking hands with his visitor, "where the
+devil do you come from? It is more than a fortnight since I have seen
+you at the club."
+
+"Where do I come from?" replied Monsieur de Trailles. "I'll tell you
+presently; but first let me congratulate you on your election."
+
+"Yes," said the colonel, with apparent indifference, "_they_ would put
+me up; but I assure you, upon my honor, I was very innocent of it all,
+and if no one had done more than I--"
+
+"But, my dear fellow, you are a blessed choice for that arrondissement;
+I only wish that the electors I have had to do with were equally
+intelligent."
+
+"What! have you been standing for election? I didn't suppose, taking
+into consideration the--rather troubled state of your finances, that you
+could manage it."
+
+"True, and I was not electioneering on my own account. Rastignac was
+uneasy about the arrondissement of Arcis-sur-Aube, and he asked me to go
+down there for a few days."
+
+"Arcis-sur-Aube? Seems to me I read an article about that this morning
+in one of those cabbage-leaves. Horrid choice, isn't it?--some plasterer
+or image-maker they propose to send us?"
+
+"Precisely; and it is about that very thing I have come to see you
+before I see the others. I have just arrived, and I don't want to go to
+Rastignac until after I have talked with you."
+
+"How is he getting on, that little minister?" said the colonel, taking
+no notice of the clever steps by which Maxime was gravitating toward the
+object of his visit. "They seem to be satisfied with him at the palace.
+Do you know that little Nucingen whom he married?"
+
+"Yes, I often see Rastignac; he is a very old acquaintance of mine."
+
+"She is pretty, that little thing," continued the colonel, "very pretty;
+and I think, the first year of marriage well buried, one might risk
+one's self in that direction with some success."
+
+"Come, come," said Maxime, "you are a serious man now, a legislator! As
+for me, the mere meddling in electoral matters in the interests of other
+people has sobered me."
+
+"Did you say you went to Arcis-sur-Aube to hinder the election of that
+stone-cutter?"
+
+"Not at all; I went there to throw myself in the way of the election of
+a Left-centre candidate."
+
+"Pah! the Left, pure and simple, is hardly worse. But take a cigar;
+these are excellent. The princes smoke them."
+
+The colonel rose and rang the bell, saying to the servant when he came,
+"A light!"
+
+The cigars lighted, Monsieur de Trailles endeavored to prevent another
+interruption by declaring before he was questioned that he had never
+smoked anything more exquisite. Comfortably ensconced in his arm-chair,
+the colonel seemed to offer the hope of a less fugacious attention, and
+Monsieur de Trailles resumed:--
+
+"All went well at first. To crush the candidate the ministry wanted
+to be rid of,--a lawyer, and the worst sort of cad,--I unearthed a
+stocking-maker, a fearful fool, whom I persuaded to offer himself as
+candidate. The worthy man was convinced that he belonged to the dynastic
+opposition. That is the opinion which, for the time being, prevails in
+that region. The election, thanks to me, was as good as made; and, our
+man once in Paris, the great Seducer in the Tuileries had only to say
+five words to him, and this dynastic opposer could have been turned
+inside out like one of this own stockings, and made to do whatever was
+wanted of him."
+
+"Pretty well played that!" said the colonel. "I recognize my Maxime."
+
+"You will recognize him still farther when he tells you that he was
+able, without recourse to perquisites, to make his own little profit out
+of the affair. In order to graft a little parliamentary ambition upon
+my vegetable, I addressed myself to his wife,--a rather appetizing
+provincial, though past her prime."
+
+"Yes, yes, I see; very good!" said Franchessini; "husband made
+deputy--satisfied--shut his mouth."
+
+"You are all wrong, my dear fellow; the pair have an only daughter, a
+spoilt child, nineteen years old, very agreeable face, and something
+like a million in her pocket."
+
+"But, my dear Maxime, I passed your tailor's house last night, and it
+was not illuminated."
+
+"No; that would have been premature. However, here was the situation:
+two women frantic to get to Paris; gratitude to the skies for the man
+who would get them an introduction to the Palais-Bourbon; the little
+one crazy for the title of countess; the mother transported at the idea,
+carefully insinuated by me, of holding a political salon,--you must see
+all that such a situation offers, and you know me too well, I fancy, to
+suppose that I should fall below any of its opportunities."
+
+"Quite easy in mind as to that," said the colonel, getting up to open a
+window and let out the smoke of their two cigars.
+
+"I was on the point," continued Maxime, "of pocketing both daughter and
+_dot_, when there fell from the skies, or rather there rose from the
+nether regions, a Left candidate, the stone-cutter, as you call him, a
+man with two names,--in short, a natural son--"
+
+"Ha!" said the colonel, "those fellows do have lucky stars, to be sure.
+I am not surprised if one of them mowed the grass from under your feet."
+
+"My dear friend," said Maxime, "if we were in the middle ages, I should
+explain by magic and sorcery the utter discomfiture of my candidate,
+and the election of the stone-man, whom you are fated to have for your
+colleague. How is it possible to believe, what is however the fact, that
+an old _tricoteuse_, a former friend of Danton, and now the abbess of
+a convent of Ursulines, should actually, by the help of her nephew, an
+obscure organist in Paris, have so bewitched the whole electoral college
+that this upstart has been elected by a large majority?"
+
+"But I suppose he had some friends and acquaintances in the town?"
+
+"Not the ghost of one,--unless it might be that nun. Fortune, relations,
+father, even a name, he never had until the day of his arrival at Arcis
+two weeks ago; and now, if you please, the Comte Charles de Sallenauve,
+seigneur of the chateau of Arcis, is elected to the Chamber of deputies!
+God only knows how it was done! The pretended head of a former great
+family, representing himself as absent in foreign lands for many years,
+suddenly appears with this schemer before a notary in Arcis, recognizes
+him at a gallop as his son, buys the chateau of Arcis and presents it
+to him, and is off during the night before any one could even know what
+road he took. The trick thus played, the abbess and her aide-de-camp,
+the organist, launched the candidate, and at once republicans,
+legitimists, conservatives, clergy, nobility, bourgeoisie, in fact
+everybody, as if by some spell cast upon that region, all did the
+bidding of that old witch of a nun, and without the stalwart battalion
+of the functionaries (who under my eye stood firm and did not flinch),
+his election would have been, like yours, unanimous."
+
+"Then, my poor friend, good-bye to the _dot_."
+
+"Not precisely; though it must certainly be adjourned. The father
+grumbles because the blessed tranquillity of his life was disturbed and
+he himself covered with ridicule, though the poor dear man had already
+enough of that! The daughter still wants to be a countess, but the
+mother takes it hard that her political salon should be floating away
+from her, and God knows how far I shall be led in order to comfort her.
+Besides all this, I myself am goaded by the necessity of having to find
+the solution of my own problem pretty soon. I _had_ found it there: I
+intended to marry, and take a year to settle my affairs; at the next
+session I should have made my father-in-law resign and stepped into his
+seat in the Chamber; then, you understand, what an horizon before me!"
+
+"But, my dear fellow, political horizon apart, don't let that million
+slip through your fingers."
+
+"Oh, heavens! as for that, except for the delay, I feel safe enough. My
+future family is about to remove to Paris. After this mortifying defeat,
+life in Arcis will not be endurable. Beauvisage (forgive the name, it is
+that of my adopted family)--Beauvisage is like Coriolanus, ready if he
+can to bring fire and slaughter on his ungrateful birthplace. Besides,
+in transplanting themselves hither, these unfortunate exiles know where
+to lay their heads, being the owners of the hotel Beauseant."
+
+"Owners of the hotel Beauseant!" cried the colonel, in amazement.
+
+"Yes; Beauseant--Beauvisage; only a termination to change. Ah! my dear
+fellow, you don't know what these provincial fortunes are, accumulated
+penny by penny, especially when to the passion for saving is added the
+incessant aspiration of that leech called commerce. We must make up our
+minds to some course; the bourgeoisie are rising round us like a flood;
+it is almost affable in them to buy our chateaus and estates when they
+might guillotine us as in 1793, and get them for nothing."
+
+"Happily for you, my dear Maxime, you have reduced the number of your
+chateaus and estates."
+
+"You see yourself that is not so," replied Maxime, "inasmuch as I am
+now engaged in providing myself with one. The Beauseant house is to be
+repaired and refurnished immediately, and I am charged with the ordering
+of the work. But I have made my future mother-in-law another promise,
+and I want your help, my dear fellow, in fulfilling it."
+
+"It isn't a tobacco license, or a stamped-paper office, is it?"
+
+"No, something less difficult. These damned women, when hatred or a
+desire for vengeance takes possession of them, are marvels of instinct;
+and Madame Beauvisage, who roars like a lioness at the very name of
+Sallenauve, has taken it into her head that beneath his incomprehensible
+success there is some foul intrigue or mystery. It is certain that the
+appearance and disappearance of this mysterious father have given rise
+to very singular conjectures; and probably if the thumb-screws were put
+upon the organist, who was, they say, entrusted with the education
+of the interesting bastard, we might get the secret of his birth and
+possibly other unexpected revelations. Now I have thought of a man on
+whom you have, I believe, great influence, who might in this hunt for
+facts assist us immensely. Don't you remember the robbery of those
+jewels from Jenny Cardine, about which she was so unhappy one night at
+Very's? You asked the waiter for pens and paper, and on a simple
+note which you sent at three o'clock in the morning to a Monsieur
+Saint-Esteve the police went to work, and before the evening of the next
+day the thieves were captured and the jewels restored."
+
+"Yes," said the colonel, "I remember all that; my interference was
+lucky. But I must tell you that had I paused to reflect I should not
+have treated Monsieur de Saint-Esteve so cavalierly. He is a man to be
+approached with greater ceremony."
+
+"_Ah ca_! but isn't he a former galley-slave, whose pardon you helped to
+obtain, and who feels for you the veneration they say Fieschi felt for
+one of his protectors?"
+
+"Yes, that is true. Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, like his predecessor,
+Bibi-Lupin, has had _misfortunes_; but he is to-day the head of the
+detective police, the important functions of which office he fulfils
+with rare capacity. If the matter concerned anything that comes within
+his department, I should not hesitate to give you a letter to him; but
+the affair you speak of is delicate; and in any case I must first sound
+him and see if he is willing to talk with you."
+
+"I thought you managed him despotically. Let us say no more about it, if
+you think it so very difficult."
+
+"The greatest difficulty is that I never see him; and I naturally cannot
+write to him for such an object. I should have to watch for an occasion,
+a chance meeting. But why don't you speak of this to Rastignac? He could
+give him an order to act at once."
+
+"Don't you understand that Rastignac will receive me very ill indeed? I
+had assured him, by letter, of success, and now I am forced to report
+in person our defeat. Besides, on every account, I would rather owe this
+service to your friendship."
+
+"Well, it sha'n't fail you," said the colonel, rising. "I'll do my best
+to satisfy you; only, there must be a delay."
+
+The visit had lasted long, and Maxime felt that a hint was given him to
+abridge it. He therefore took leave, putting into his manner a certain
+coldness which the colonel appeared not to notice.
+
+No sooner had Monsieur de Trailles departed than Franchessini opened
+a pack of cards and took out the knave of spades. This he cut up in a
+curious manner, leaving the figure untouched. Placing this species
+of hieroglyphic between two sheets of paper, he consigned it to an
+envelope. On this envelope and disguising his hand the colonel wrote as
+follows:--
+
+  Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, rue Saint-Anne, near the Quai des
+  Orfevres.
+
+That done, he rang the bell and gave orders to put up his carriage,
+which he had ordered before Maxime's arrival; after which he went out
+alone on foot, and threw his singular missive into the first street
+letter-box that he passed. He had taken care, before he left the house,
+to see if it were properly sealed.
+
+
+
+
+II. A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ELEVEN O'CLOCK AND MIDNIGHT
+
+As a result of the elections which had just taken place, the ministry,
+contrary to expectation, maintained a majority in the Chamber,--a
+doubtful and provisional majority which would give it an uncertain and
+struggling existence. But, at any rate, it had obtained that merely
+numerical success which parties seek at any price to prolong their
+power. The Te Deum was sung in all its camps,--a paean which serves as
+well to celebrate victorious defeats as honest victories.
+
+On the evening of the day when Colonel Franchessini received the visit
+from Maxime de Trailles, the general result of the elections was made
+known. The ministers of the left bank, whose wives received on that day,
+found their salons crowded, particularly the Comte de Rastignac, the
+minister of Public Works.
+
+Madame de l'Estorade, too much absorbed in her children to be very exact
+in the fulfilment of her social duties, had owed a visit to Madame
+de Rastignac ever since the evening when the minister's wife had
+interrupted her conversation with the sculptor apropos of the famous
+statue. Monsieur de l'Estorade, zealous conservative as we know already,
+had insisted that politics and politeness now combined to oblige them
+both to pay this social debt. Arriving early, in order to be rid the
+sooner of such a bore, Madame de l'Estorade found herself seated at
+the upper end of a circle of women, while the men stood about them
+conversing. Her chair was side by side with that of Madame de Rastignac.
+
+In hoping to make her visit short, Madame de l'Estorade had not counted
+on the allurements of conversation which, under the circumstances of
+this so-called political victory, laid hold of her husband. A man of
+more influence by his judgment than by his oratory in the Chamber of
+Peers, Monsieur de l'Estorade, as he circulated through the salons, was
+stopped at every turn by the various notabilities of politics, finance,
+and diplomacy, and requested to give his opinion on the future of the
+session now about to begin. To all such questions he replied with more
+or less extended observations, and sometimes he had the pleasure of
+finding himself the centre of a group respectfully receptive of his
+opinions. This success rendered him very inattentive to the telegraphy
+of his wife, who, watching his various evolutions, made him signs
+whenever she could catch his eye that she wished to go away.
+
+The years that had elapsed since Monsieur de l'Estorade had obtained the
+hand of the beautiful Renee de Maucombe, while they had scarcely dimmed
+the splendor of her beauty, had considerably aged her husband. The
+twenty years' difference in their ages--he being now fifty-two, she
+thirty-two--was growing all the more apparent because even at the time
+of the marriage he was turning gray and his health was failing. An
+affection of the liver, latent for several years, was now developing,
+and at the same time the wilful disposition which is noticeable in
+statesmen and men of ambition made his mouth less sensitive to the
+conjugal bit. Monsieur de l'Estorade talked so long and so well that
+after a time the salons thinned, leaving a group of the intimates of
+the house around his wife and their hostess. At this moment the minister
+himself slipped an arm through his, and, leading him up to the group
+surrounding their two wives, Rastignac said to Madame de l'Estorade,--
+
+"I bring you back your husband; I have just found him in criminal
+conversation with a member of the Zollverin, who would probably have
+clung to him all night if it had not been for me."
+
+"I was myself on the point of asking Madame de Rastignac for a bed, that
+I might release her from the burden of my company, which Monsieur de
+l'Estorade's interminable conversations have put upon her."
+
+Madame de Rastignac protested that, on the contrary, she desired
+to enjoy as long as possible Madame de l'Estorade's company, only
+regretting that she had been so often obliged to interrupt their
+conversation to receive those strange objects, the newly fledged
+deputies, who had come in relays to make their bow to her.
+
+"Oh! my dear," cried Rastignac, "here's the session about to open, and
+we really must not take these disdainful airs toward the elect of the
+nation. Besides which, you will get into difficulties with madame, who,
+I am told, is the protectress of one of these sovereigns of late date."
+
+"I?" said Madame de l'Estorade, rather surprised, and blushing a little.
+She had one of those complexions, still fresh and dazzling, which are
+predisposed to these flushes of color.
+
+"Ah! true," said Madame de Rastignac; "I had forgotten that artist who
+cut out the pretty figures for your children the last time I had the
+pleasure of paying you a visit. I own I was far from thinking then that
+he would be one of our masters."
+
+"And yet, ever since then," replied Madame de l'Estorade, "his election
+has been talked about; though it must be owned that until now no one
+thought seriously of it."
+
+"I did," said Monsieur de l'Estorade, rather eagerly, seizing the
+occasion to put another star to his reputation for prophecy; "from the
+first political conversation that I had with him I said--and Monsieur de
+Ronquerolles is here to bear me out--that I was surprised at the ability
+and the breadth of aim he manifested."
+
+"Certainly," said the personage thus interpellated, "he is not an
+ordinary fellow; but I do not believe in his future. He is a man who
+goes by the first impulsion, and, as Monsieur de Talleyrand has wisely
+remarked, the first impulse is the good impulse."
+
+"Well, monsieur?" inquired Madame de l'Estorade, ingenuously.
+
+"Well, madame," replied Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who was vain of his
+scepticism, "heroism is not of our day; it is heavy baggage, horribly
+embarrassing, which gets us into mud-holes continually."
+
+"Nevertheless, I believe that great qualities of heart and mind have
+some share in the composition of a distinguished man."
+
+"Qualities of mind? Yes, you are right there, provided always they work
+in a certain direction. But as for qualities of the heart in political
+life, what good are they?--to hoist you on stilts with which you can't
+walk as well as you can on the ground, and from which you are liable to
+fall and break your neck at the first push."
+
+"At that rate," said Madame de Rastignac, laughing, while Madame de
+l'Estorade was silent, disdaining to reply, "the political world must be
+peopled by none but scoundrels."
+
+"That is so, madame,--ask Lazarille"; and as he made this allusion to a
+famous stage joke, he laid his hand on the minister's shoulder.
+
+"My dear fellow," said Rastignac, "I think your generalities are a
+little too particular."
+
+"No, no; but come," returned Monsieur de Ronquerolles, "let us talk
+seriously. To my knowledge, this Monsieur de Sallenauve--that is the
+name I think he has taken in exchange for Dorlange, which he himself
+called theatrical--has done, within a short time, two fine actions. I,
+being present and assisting, saw him stand up to be killed by the Duc de
+Rhetore, on account of certain ill-sounding words said about a friend.
+Those words, in the first place, he could not help hearing; and having
+heard them it was, I will not say his duty, but his _right_ to resent
+them."
+
+"Ah!" said Madame de Rastignac, "then it was he who fought that duel
+people said so much about?"
+
+"Yes, madame, and I ought to say--for I understand such matters--that at
+the meeting he behaved with consummate bravery."
+
+To avoid the recital of the second fine action, Madame de l'Estorade, at
+the risk of impolitely cutting short a topic thus begun, rose, and made
+an almost imperceptible sign to her husband that she wished to go. But
+Monsieur de l'Estorade took advantage of its faintness to stay where he
+was.
+
+Monsieur de Ronquerolles continued:--
+
+"His other fine action was to throw himself in front of some runaway
+horses to save madame's daughter from imminent death."
+
+All eyes turned on Madame de l'Estorade, who, this time, blushed deeply;
+but recovering speech, if only in order to seem composed, she said with
+feeling,--
+
+"According to your theory of heroism you must think Monsieur de
+Sallenauve very foolish to have thus risked his life and his future; but
+I assure you that there is one woman who will never agree with you, and
+that is--the mother of my child."
+
+As she said the words, tears were in Madame de l'Estorade's voice; she
+pressed Madame de Rastignac's hand affectionately, and made so decided a
+movement to leave the room that she finally put in motion her immovable
+husband.
+
+"Thank you," said Madame de Rastignac, as she accompanied her to
+the door, "for having broken a lance with that cynic; Monsieur de
+Rastignac's past life has left him with odious acquaintances."
+
+As she resumed her place, Monsieur de Ronquerolles was saying,--
+
+"Ha! saved her child's life indeed! The fact is that poor l'Estorade is
+turning as yellow as a lemon."
+
+"Ah, monsieur, but that is shocking," cried Madame de Rastignac. "A
+woman whom no breath of slander has ever touched; who lives only for her
+husband and children; whose eyes were full of tears at the mere thought
+of the danger the child had run!--"
+
+"Heavens! madame," retorted Monsieur de Ronquerolles, paying no heed to
+the rebuke, "all I can say is that newfoundlands are always dangerous.
+If Madame de l'Estorade becomes too much compromised, she has one
+resource,--she can marry him to the girl he saved."
+
+Monsieur de Ronquerolles had no sooner said the words than he perceived
+the horrible blunder he had committed in making such a speech before
+Mademoiselle de Nucingen. He colored high,--a most unusual sign in
+him,--and the solemn silence which seemed to wrap all present completed
+his discomfiture.
+
+"This clock must be slow," said the minister, catching at any words
+that would make a sound and break up an evening that was ending
+unfortunately.
+
+"True," said de Ronquerolles, looking at his watch; "it is a quarter to
+twelve."
+
+He bowed to Madame de Rastignac ceremoniously, and went away, followed
+by the rest of the company.
+
+"You saw his embarrassment," said Rastignac to his wife; "he had no
+malicious intention in what he said."
+
+"It is of no consequence. I was saying just now to Madame de
+l'Estorade's that your past life had given you a number of detestable
+acquaintances."
+
+"But, my dear, the King himself is compelled to smile graciously on men
+he would fain put in the Bastille,--if we still had a Bastille and the
+Charter permitted him."
+
+Madame de Rastignac made no reply, and without bidding her husband
+good-night, she went up to her room. A few moments later the minister
+went to the private door which led into it, and not finding the key in
+the lock, he said, "Augusta!" in the tone of voice a simple bourgeois
+might have used in such a case.
+
+For all answer, he heard a bolt run hastily on the other side of the
+door.
+
+"Ah!" he thought to himself with a gesture of vexation, "there are some
+pasts very different from that door,--they are always wide open to the
+present."
+
+Then, after a moment's silence, he added, to cover his retreat,
+"Augusta, I wanted to ask you what hour Madame de l'Estorade receives. I
+ought to call upon her to-morrow, after what happened here to-night."
+
+"At four o'clock," said the young wife through the door,--"on her return
+from the Tuileries, where she takes the children to walk every day."
+
+One of the questions that were frequently put by Parisian society after
+the marriage of Madame de Rastignac was: "Does she love her husband?"
+
+The doubt was permissible. The marriage of Mademoiselle de Nucingen was
+the unpleasant and scarcely moral product of one of those immoral
+unions which find their issue in the life of a daughter, after years and
+satiety have brought them to a condition of dry-rot and paralysis. In
+such marriages of _convenience_ the husband is satisfied, for he
+escapes a happiness which has turned rancid to him, and he profits by
+a speculation like that of the magician in the "Arabian Nights" who
+exchanges old lamps for new. But the wife, on the contrary, must ever
+feel a living memory between herself and her husband; a memory which may
+revive, and while wholly outside of the empire of the senses, has the
+force of an old authority antagonistic to her young influence. In such a
+position the wife is a victim.
+
+During the short time we have taken to give this brief analysis of a
+situation too frequently existing, Rastignac lingered at the door.
+
+"Well," he said at last, deciding to retire, "good-night, Augusta."
+
+As he said the words, rather piteously, the door opened suddenly,
+and his wife, throwing herself into his arms, laid her head upon his
+shoulder sobbing.
+
+The question was answered: Madame de Rastignac loved her husband; but
+for all that, the distant muttering of a subterranean fire might be
+heard beneath the flowers of their garden.
+
+
+
+
+III. A MINISTER'S MORNING
+
+The next day, when Rastignac entered his office, the adjoining
+waiting-room was already occupied by eleven persons waiting with letters
+of introduction to solicit favors, also two peers of France and several
+deputies.
+
+Presently a bell rang. The usher, with an eagerness which communicated
+itself to all present, entered the sanctum; an instant later he came
+out, bearing this stereotyped message:--
+
+"The minister is obliged to attend a Council. He will, however, have the
+honor to receive the gentlemen of the two Chambers. As for the others,
+they can call again at another time."
+
+"What other time?" asked one of the postponed; "this is the third time
+in three days that I have come here uselessly."
+
+The usher made a gesture which meant, "It is not my affair; I follow my
+orders." But hearing certain murmurs as to the _privilege_ granted to
+honorable members, he said, with a certain solemnity,--
+
+"The honorable gentlemen came to discuss affairs of public interest with
+his Excellency."
+
+The office-seekers, being compelled to accept this fib, departed. After
+which the bell rang again. The usher then assumed his most gracious
+expression of face. By natural affinity, the lucky ones had gathered in
+a group at one end of the room. Though they had never seen one another
+before, most of them being the offspring of the late national lying-in,
+they seemed to recognize a certain representative air which is very
+difficult to define, though it can never be mistaken. The usher, not
+venturing to choose among so many eminent personages, turned a mute,
+caressing glance on all, as if to say,--
+
+"Whom shall I have the honor of first announcing?"
+
+"Gentlemen," said Colonel Franchessini, "I believe I have seen you all
+arrive."
+
+And he walked to the closed door, which the usher threw open, announcing
+in a loud, clear voice,--
+
+"Monsieur le Colonel Franchessini!"
+
+"Ha! so you are the first this morning," said the minister, making a few
+steps towards the colonel, and giving him his hand. "What have you come
+for, my dear fellow?--a railroad, a canal, a suspension bridge?"
+
+"I have come, my good-natured minister, on private business in which you
+are more interested than I."
+
+"That is not a judicious way of urging it, for I warn you I pay little
+or no attention to my own business."
+
+"I had a visit from Maxime this morning, on his return from
+Arcis-sur-Aube," said the colonel, coming to the point. "He gave me all
+the particulars of that election. He thinks a spoke might be put in the
+wheel of it. Now, if you have time to let me make a few explanations--"
+
+The minister, who was sitting before his desk with his back to the
+fireplace, turned round to look at the clock.
+
+"Look here, my dear fellow," he said, "I'm afraid you will be long, and
+I have a hungry pack outside there waiting for me. I shouldn't listen to
+you comfortably. Do me the favor to go and take a walk and come back at
+twelve o'clock to breakfast. I'll present you to Madame de Rastignac,
+whom you don't know, I think, and after breakfast we will take a few
+turns in the garden; then I can listen to you in peace."
+
+"Very good, I accept that arrangement," said the colonel, rising.
+
+As he crossed the waiting-room, he said,--
+
+"Messieurs, I have not delayed you long, I hope."
+
+Then, after distributing a few grasps of the hand, he departed.
+
+Three hours later, when the colonel entered the salon where he was
+presented to Madame de Rastignac, he found there the Baron de Nucingen,
+who came nearly every day to breakfast with his son-in-law before
+the Bourse hour, Emile Blondet of the "Debats," Messieurs Moreau (de
+l'Oise), Dionis, and Camusot, three deputies madly loquacious, and two
+newly elected deputies whose names it is doubtful if Rastignac knew
+himself. Franchessini also recognized Martial de la Roche-Hugon, the
+minister's brother-in-law, and the inevitable des Lupeaulx, peer of
+France. As for another figure, who stood talking with the minister
+for some time in the recess of a window, the colonel learned, after
+inquiring of Emile Blondet, that it was that of a former functionary of
+the upper police, who continued, as an amateur, to do part of his former
+business, going daily to each minister under all administrations with as
+much zeal and regularity as if he were still charged with his official
+duties.
+
+Madame de Rastignac seen at close quarters seemed to the colonel a
+handsome blonde, not at all languishing. She was strikingly like
+her mother, but with that shade of greater distinction which in the
+descendants of parvenus increases from generation to generation as they
+advance from their source. The last drop of the primitive Goriot blood
+had evaporated in this charming young woman, who was particularly
+remarkable for the high-bred delicacy of all her extremities, the
+absence of which in Madame de Nucingen had shown the daughter of Pere
+Goriot.
+
+As the colonel wished to retain a footing in the house he now entered
+for the first time, he talked about his wife.
+
+"She lived," he said, "in the old English fashion, in her _home_; but he
+should be most glad to bring her out of her retreat in order to present
+her to Madame de Rastignac if the latter would graciously consent."
+
+"Now," said the minister, dropping the arm of Emile Blondet, with whom
+he had been conversing, "let us go into the garden,"--adding, as soon as
+they were alone, "We want no ears about us in this matter."
+
+"Maxime came to see me, as I told you," said the colonel, "on his return
+from Arcis-sur-Aube, and he is full of an idea of discovering something
+about the pretended parentage of this sculptor by which to oust him--"
+
+"I know," interrupted Rastignac; "he spoke to me about that idea, and
+there's neither rhyme nor reason in it. Either this Sallenauve has some
+value, or he is a mere cipher. If the latter, it is useless to employ
+such a dangerous instrument as the man Maxime proposes to neutralize a
+power that does not exist. If, on the other hand, this new deputy
+proves really an orator, we can deal with him in the tribune and in the
+newspapers without the help of such underground measures. General rule:
+in a land of unbridled publicity like ours, wherever the hand of the
+police appears, if even to lay bare the most shameful villany, there's
+always a hue and cry against the government. Public opinion behaves like
+the man to whom another man sang an air of Mozart to prove that Mozart
+was a great musician. Was he vanquished by evidence? 'Mozart,' he
+replied to the singer, 'may have been a great musician, but you, my dear
+fellow, have a cold in your head.'"
+
+"There's a great deal of truth in what you say," replied Franchessini;
+"but the man whom Maxime wants to unmask may be one of those
+honest mediocrities who make themselves a thorn in the side of all
+administrations; your most dangerous adversaries are not the giants of
+oratory."
+
+"I expect to find out the real weight of the man before long," replied
+Rastignac, "from a source I have more confidence in than I have in
+Monsieur de Trailles. On this very occasion he has allowed himself to be
+tripped up, and now wants to compensate by heroic measures for his own
+lack of ability. As for your other man, I shall not employ him for the
+purpose Maxime suggests, but you may tell him from me--"
+
+"Yes!" said Franchessini, with redoubled attention.
+
+"--that if he meddles in politics, as he shows an inclination to do,
+there are certain deplorable memories in his life--"
+
+"But they are only memories now; he has made himself a new skin."
+
+"I know all about him," replied Rastignac; "do you suppose there are
+no other detectives in Paris? I know that since 1830, when he took
+Bibi-Lupin's place as chief of the detective police, he has given his
+life a most respectable bourgeois character; the only fault I find is
+that he overdoes it."
+
+"And yet--" said the colonel.
+
+"He is rich," continued Rastignac, not heeding the interruption. "His
+salary is twelve thousand francs, and he has the three hundred thousand
+Lucien de Rubempre left him,--also the proceeds of a manufactory of
+varnished leather which he started at Gentilly; it pays him a large
+profit. His aunt, Jacqueline Collin, who lives with him, still does a
+shady business secretly, which of course brings in large fees, and I
+have the best of reasons for believing that they both gamble at the
+Bourse. He is so anxious to keep out of the mud that he has gone to the
+other extreme. Every evening he plays dominoes, like any bourgeois, in
+a cafe near the Prefecture, and Sundays he goes out to a little box of a
+place he has bought near the forest of Romainville, in the Saint-Gervais
+meadows; there he cultivates blue dahlias, and talked, last year, of
+crowning a Rosiere. All that, my dear colonel, is too bucolic to allow
+of my employing him on any political police-work."
+
+"I think myself," said Franchessini, "that in order not to attract
+attention, he rolls himself too much into a ball."
+
+"Make him unwind, and then, if he wants to return to active life and
+take a hand in politics, he may find some honest way of doing so. He'll
+never make a Saint Vincent de Paul,--though the saint was at the galleys
+once upon a time; but there are plenty of ways in which he could get a
+third or fourth class reputation. If Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, as he now
+calls himself, takes that course, and I am still in power, tell him to
+come and see me; I might employ him then."
+
+"That is something, certainly," said Franchessini, aloud; but he thought
+to himself that since the days of the pension Vauquer the minister
+had taken long strides and that roles had changed between himself and
+Vautrin.
+
+"You can tell him what I say," continued Rastignac, going up the steps
+of the portico, "but be cautious how you word it."
+
+"Don't be uneasy," replied the colonel. "I will speak to him
+judiciously, for he's a man who must not be pushed too far; there are
+some old scores in life one can't wipe out."
+
+The minister, by making no reply to this remark, seemed to admit the
+truth of it.
+
+"You must be in the Chamber when the king opens it; we shall want all
+the enthusiasm we can muster," said Rastignac to the colonel, as they
+parted.
+
+The latter, when he took leave of Madame de Rastignac, asked on what day
+he might have the honor of presenting his wife.
+
+"Why, any day," replied the countess, "but particularly on Fridays."
+
+
+
+
+IV. A CATECHISM
+
+Rastignac called on Madame de l'Estorade the next day at the hour named
+to him by his wife. Like all those present at the scene produced by
+Monsieur de Ronquerolles, the minister had been struck by the emotion
+shown by the countess, and, without stopping to analyze the nature of
+the sentiment she might feel for the man who had saved her child, he was
+convinced of her serious interest in him.
+
+By the suddenness and the masterly stroke of his election, Sallenauve
+had become an object of strong interest to the minister,--all the
+more because up to the last moment his candidacy was not seriously
+considered. It was now known that in the preparatory meeting he had
+given proofs of talent. To his active and dangerous party, which had but
+few representatives in the Chamber, he might become an organ that would
+echo far. By his peculiar position of birth and fortune, whatever
+might be the truth of it, he was one who could do without the favors of
+government; and all information obtained about him went to show that he
+was a man of grave character and opinions, who could not be turned from
+his chosen way.
+
+On the other hand, the cloud upon his life might at a given moment serve
+to neutralize his honor; and Rastignac, while rejecting the proposal of
+de Trailles and Franchessini to put the mystery into the hands of the
+police, did not himself renounce a means which, dangerous as it seemed
+to him, he might use if occasion warranted.
+
+In this situation Madame de l'Estorade could be useful to him in two
+ways. Through her he could meet the new deputy accidentally, without
+appearing to seek him, and thus study him at his ease, in order to know
+if he had a vulnerable point accessible to persuasion. And, secondly,
+if he found him unpersuadable, he could let Madame de l'Estorade know
+in confidence of the secret inquiry about to be carried on into
+Sallenauve's antecedents, which, conveyed by her to the deputy,
+would have the effect of making him cautious and, consequently, less
+aggressive.
+
+However, his immediate plan suffered some modification; for Madame
+de l'Estorade was not at home, and he was just leaving the house when
+Monsieur de l'Estorade returned on foot.
+
+"My wife will be here soon," he said; "she has gone to Ville d'Avray
+with her daughter, and Monsieur and Madame Octave de Camps. Monsieur
+Marie-Gaston, one of our good friends,--you know, the charming poet who
+married Louise de Chaulieu,--has a country-house in that neighborhood,
+where his wife died. He returned there to-day for the first time since
+his misfortune; and these ladies have had the charity to meet him there,
+and so lessen the first shock of his recollections."
+
+"I can therefore hardly hope to see her to-day; and it was to her, and
+not to you, my dear count, that I came to offer my excuses for the scene
+of last night which seemed to annoy her much. Say to her, if you please,
+that I will take another opportunity of doing so,--By the bye," he
+added, "the election of your friend Sallenauve is making a devilish
+talk; the king spoke to me about it this morning, and I did not please
+him by repeating the favorable opinion you expressed of the new deputy
+last night."
+
+"Well, but you know the tribune is a reef on which reputations are often
+wrecked. I am sorry you represented Sallenauve to the king as being on
+intimate terms with us. I have nothing to do with elections; but I may
+say that I did all I could to dissuade this objectionable candidate from
+presenting himself."
+
+"Of course the king cannot blame you for merely knowing an Opposition
+deputy."
+
+"No; but last night, in your salon, you seemed to imply that my wife
+was much interested in him. I did not wish to contradict you before
+witnesses; besides, really, one can't repudiate a man to whom we
+are under a great obligation. But my wife, ever since the day he was
+nominated, feels that our gratitude has become a burden. She was saying
+to me the other day that we had better let the acquaintance die out."
+
+"Not, I hope, until you have done me a service by means of it," said
+Rastignac.
+
+"At your orders, my dear minister, in all things."
+
+"I want to meet this man and judge him for myself. To send him an
+invitation to dinner would be useless; under the eye of his party, he
+would not dare accept it, or if he did, he would be on his guard, and
+I should not see him as he is. But if I met him accidentally, I should
+find him without armor, and I could feel for his vulnerable spots."
+
+"To invite you both to dine with me might be open to the same objection;
+but I could, one of these evenings, make sure of a visit from him, and
+let you know--Stop!" cried Monsieur de l'Estorade; "a bright idea has
+come to me."
+
+"If it is really bright," thought Rastignac, "it is fortunate I did not
+meet the wife."
+
+"We are just about to give a children's ball,--a fancy of my little
+girl, to which Madame de l'Estorade, weary of refusing, has at last
+consented; the child wishes it to be given in celebration of her rescue.
+Of course, therefore, the rescuer is a necessary and integral part of
+the affair. Come to the ball, and I promise you noise enough to cover
+all investigations of your man; and certainly premeditation will never
+be suspected at such a meeting."
+
+"You are too good," replied Rastignac, pressing the peer's hand
+affectionately. "Perhaps we had better say nothing about it to Madame de
+l'Estorade; a mere hint given to our man would put him on his guard, and
+I want to spring upon him suddenly, like a tiger on his prey."
+
+"That's understood--complete surprise to everybody."
+
+"Adieu, then," said Rastignac; "I shall make the king laugh to-morrow at
+the notion of children plotting politics."
+
+"Ah!" replied Monsieur de l'Estorade, philosophically, "but isn't that
+how life itself is carried on?--great effects from little causes."
+
+Rastignac had scarcely departed before Madame de l'Estorade returned
+with Nais and Monsieur and Madame de Camps.
+
+"My dear," said her husband, "you have just missed a charming visitor."
+
+"Who was it?" asked the countess, indifferently.
+
+"The minister of Public Works, who came to make you his excuses. He
+noticed with regret the disagreeable impression made upon you by the
+theories of that scamp de Ronquerolles."
+
+"He has taken a good deal of trouble for a very small matter," said
+Madame de l'Estorade, not sharing her husband's enthusiasm.
+
+"But all the same," he replied, "it was very gracious of him to think
+of your feelings." Then, in order to change the conversation, he asked
+Madame de Camps about their visit.
+
+"Oh!" she replied, "the place is enchanting; you have no idea of its
+elegance and _comfort_."
+
+"How about Gaston?" asked Monsieur de l'Estorade.
+
+"He was, I won't say very calm," replied Madame de l'Estorade, "but
+at any rate master of himself. His condition satisfied me all the more
+because the day had begun by a serious annoyance to him."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"Monsieur de Sallenauve could not come with him," replied Nais, taking
+upon herself to reply.
+
+She was one of those children brought up in a hot-house, who put
+themselves forward much oftener than they ought to do.
+
+"Nais," said Madame de l'Estorade, "go to Mary and tell her to do up
+your hair."
+
+The child understood perfectly well that she was sent away for speaking
+improperly, and she made a face as she left the room.
+
+"This morning," said Madame de l'Estorade as soon as Nais had shut the
+door, "Monsieur Gaston and Monsieur de Sallenauve were to start together
+for Ville d'Avray, and meet us there, as agreed upon. But last night
+they had a visit from that organist who took such an active part in the
+election. He came to hear the Italian housekeeper sing and judge if she
+were ready to go upon the stage."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Monsieur de l'Estorade; "of course Sallenauve wants to
+get rid of her now that he has ceased to make statues."
+
+"Just so," replied Madame de l'Estorade, with a slight tone of asperity.
+"In order to put a stop to all calumny Monsieur de Sallenauve wishes her
+to carry out her idea of going on the stage; but he wanted, in the
+first place, an opinion he could trust. Monsieur Gaston and Monsieur de
+Sallenauve accompanied the organist to Saint-Sulpice, where, during the
+services of the Month of Mary, the Italian woman sings every evening.
+After hearing her, the organist said she had a fine contralto that was
+worth, at the lowest, sixty thousand francs a year."
+
+"Just the revenue of my iron-works," remarked Monsieur de Camps.
+
+"That evening," continued Madame de l'Estorade, "Monsieur de Sallenauve
+told his housekeeper the opinion given of her talent, and with great
+kindness and delicacy let her know that she must now carry out her
+intention of supporting herself in that way. 'Yes,' she replied, 'I
+think the time has come. We will talk of it later'; and she stopped the
+conversation. This morning when the breakfast hour came, there was no
+sign of her. Thinking she must be ill, Monsieur de Sallenauve sent
+an old charwoman who does the rough work of the house to her room. No
+answer. Much disturbed, Monsieur Gaston and Monsieur de Sallenauve went
+themselves to see what it meant. After knocking and calling in vain,
+they determined to open the door, the key of which was outside. In the
+room no housekeeper! but in place of her a letter addressed to Monsieur
+de Sallenauve, in which she said that finding herself an embarrassment
+to him, she had retired to the house of one of her friends, thanking him
+for all his goodness to her."
+
+"The bird has found its wings," said Monsieur de l'Estorade, "and takes
+flight."
+
+"That is not Monsieur de Sallenauve's idea," replied the countess; "he
+does not believe in such ingratitude. He is confident that, feeling
+herself a burden to him and yielding to the desperation which is natural
+to her, she felt obliged to leave his house without giving him a chance
+in any manner to provide for her future."
+
+"A good riddance!" remarked Monsieur de l'Estorade.
+
+"Neither Monsieur de Sallenauve nor Monsieur Gaston takes that stoical
+view of it. In view of the headstrong nature of the woman, they fear
+some violence to herself, which, as we know, she once attempted. Or else
+they dread some evil adviser. The charwoman states that two or three
+visits have been lately made at the house by a lady of middle age,
+richly dressed, in a carriage, whose manner was singular, and who seemed
+to desire secrecy in speaking with Luigia."
+
+"Some charitable woman, of course," said Monsieur de l'Estorade; "the
+runaway is given to piety."
+
+"At any rate the truth must be discovered, and it was that which kept
+Monsieur de Sallenauve from accompanying Monsieur Gaston to Ville
+d'Avray."
+
+"Well," remarked Monsieur de l'Estorade, "in spite of their respective
+virtue, it is my opinion he holds by her."
+
+"In any case," returned Madame de l'Estorade, emphasizing the word, "she
+does not _hold_ by him."
+
+"I don't agree with you," said Madame de Camps; "to avoid a man is often
+the greatest proof of love."
+
+Madame de l'Estorade looked at her friend with a vexed air, and a slight
+tinge of color came into her cheeks. But no one took notice of it, for
+at this moment the servant threw open the door and announced dinner.
+
+After dinner, the theatre was proposed; that is one of the amusements
+that Parisians miss the most in the provinces. Monsieur Octave de Camps,
+coming from his "villanous iron-works," as Madame de l'Estorade called
+them, had arrived in Paris eager for this pleasure, which his wife, more
+serious and sober, did not enjoy to the same extent. Therefore, when
+Monsieur de Camps proposed going to the Porte-Saint-Martin to see a
+fairy piece then much in vogue, Madame Octave replied:--
+
+"Neither Madame de l'Estorade nor I have the least desire to go out this
+evening; we are very tired with our expedition. Take Rene and Nais; they
+will enjoy the fairies far more than we."
+
+The two children awaited in deep anxiety the permission which Madame
+de l'Estorade finally granted; and a few moments later the two friends,
+left to themselves, prepared for an evening of comfortable talk.
+
+"I am not at home to any one," said Madame de l'Estorade to Lucas, as
+soon as her family had departed.
+
+"Now that we are alone," said Madame de Camps, "I shall proceed to
+blows; I have not travelled two hundred miles to wrap up in cotton-wool
+the truth I have come to tell you."
+
+"Ready to hear it," said Madame de l'Estorade, laughing.
+
+"Your last letter, my dear, simply frightened me."
+
+"Why? Because I told you I was trying to keep a man at a distance?"
+
+"Yes. Why keep him at a distance? If Monsieur de Camps or Monsieur
+Gaston or Monsieur de Rastignac were to make a practice of coming here
+habitually, would you trouble yourself about them?"
+
+"No; but they have not the same claim upon me: it is that I fear."
+
+"Tell me, do you think Monsieur de Sallenauve loves you?"
+
+"No; I am now quite sure to the contrary; and I also think that on my
+side--"
+
+"We'll talk about that presently; now I want to ask if you desire
+Monsieur de Sallenauve to love you?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!"
+
+"Well, then, the best possible way to make him do so is to wound his
+self-love, and show yourself unjust and ungrateful to him; you will only
+force him to think the more of you."
+
+"But, my dear friend, isn't that a very far-fetched observation?"
+
+"Did you never observe that men are more taken by our snubs than by our
+caresses? Severity fixes their attention upon us."
+
+"If that were so, all the men we disdain and never think of would sigh
+for us."
+
+"Oh! my dear, don't make me talk such nonsense. To take fire, a man must
+have some degree of combustibility; and if that _other_ person is lost
+to him forever, why shouldn't he, as you said yourself, ricochet upon
+you?"
+
+"That other person is not lost to him; he expects, more than ever, to
+find her by the help of a very clever seeker, the mother-superior of a
+convent at Arcis."
+
+"Very good; then why employ the delay in holding him at arm's-length,--a
+proceeding which will only draw him towards you?"
+
+"My dear moralist, I don't admit your theory in the least. As for
+Monsieur de Sallenauve, he will be much too busy with his duties in
+the Chamber to think of me. Besides, he is a man who is full of
+self-respect; he will be mortified by my manner, which will seem to him
+both ungrateful and unjust. If I try to put two feet of distance between
+us, he will put four; you may rely on that."
+
+"And _you_, my dear?" asked Madame de Camps.
+
+"How do you mean?--I?"
+
+"You who are not busy, who have no Chamber to occupy your mind; you who
+have, I will agree, a great deal of self-respect, but who know as little
+about the things of the heart as the veriest school-girl,--what
+will become of you under the dangerous system you are imposing upon
+yourself?"
+
+"If I don't love him when near, I shall certainly love him still less at
+a distance."
+
+"So that when you see him take his ostracism coolly, your self-love as a
+woman will not be piqued."
+
+"Certainly not; that is precisely the result I desire."
+
+"And if you find, on the contrary, that he complains of you, or if
+he does not complain, that he suffers from your treatment, will your
+conscience tell you absolutely nothing?"
+
+"It will tell me that I am doing right, and that I could not do
+otherwise."
+
+"And if success attends him and fame with its hundred voices talks of
+him, how will you think of him?"
+
+"As I think of Monsieur Thiers and Monsieur Berryer."
+
+"And Nais, who adores him and will probably say, the first time he dines
+with you, 'Ah! mamma, how well he talks!'--"
+
+"If you are going to argue on the chatter of a child--"
+
+"And Monsieur de l'Estorade, who already irritates you? He is beginning
+to-day to sacrifice him to the spirit of party; shall you silence
+him every time he makes some malevolent insinuation about Monsieur de
+Sallenauve, and denies his honor and his talent?--you know the judgment
+people make on those who do not think as we do."
+
+"In short," said Madame de l'Estorade, "you are trying to make me admit
+that the surest way to think of a person is to put him out of sight."
+
+"Listen to me, my dear," said Madame de Camps, with a slight touch of
+gravity. "I have read and re-read your letters. You were there your
+own self, more natural and less quibbling than you are now, and an
+impression has remained upon my mind: it is that Monsieur de Sallenauve
+has touched your heart, though he may not have entered it."
+
+Madame de l'Estorade made a gesture of denial, but the confessor went
+on:--
+
+"I know that idea provokes you; you can't very well admit to me what you
+have studiously denied to yourself. But what is, is. We don't say of
+a man, 'A sort of magnetism issues from him, one feels his eye without
+meeting it'; we don't cry out, 'I am invulnerable on the side of love,'
+without having had some prickings of it."
+
+"But so many things have happened since I wrote that nonsense."
+
+"True, he was only a sculptor then, and before long he may be a
+minister,--not like Monsieur de Rastignac, but like our great poet,
+Canalis."
+
+"I like sermons with definite deductions," said Madame de l'Estorade,
+with a touch of impatience.
+
+"That is what Vergniaud said to Robespierre on the 31st of May, and I
+reply, with Robespierre, Yes, I'll draw my conclusion; and it is
+against your self-confidence as a woman, who, having reached the age
+of thirty-two without a suspicion of what love is, cannot admit that at
+this late date she may be subjected to the common law."
+
+"But what I want is a practical conclusion," said Madame de l'Estorade,
+tapping her foot.
+
+"My practical conclusion,--here it is," replied Madame Octave. "If you
+will not persist in the folly of swimming against the current, I see
+no danger whatever in your being submerged. You are strong; you have
+principles and religion; you adore your children; you love Monsieur
+de l'Estorade, their father, in them. With all that ballast you cannot
+sink."
+
+"Well?" said Madame de l'Estorade, interrogatively.
+
+"Well, there is no need to have recourse to violent measures, the
+success of which is very problematical. Remain as you are; build no
+barricades when no one attacks you. Don't excite tempests of heart and
+conscience merely to pacify your conscience and quiet your heart, now
+ruffled only by a tiny breeze. No doubt between a man and a woman the
+sentiment of friendship does take something of the character ordinarily
+given to love; but such friendship is neither an impossible illusion nor
+is it a yawning gulf."
+
+"Then," said Madame de l'Estorade, with a thoughtful air, "do you wish
+me to make a friend of Monsieur de Sallenauve?"
+
+"Yes, dear, in order not to make him a fixed idea, a regret, a
+struggle,--three things which poison life."
+
+"But my husband, who has already had a touch of jealousy?"
+
+"As for your husband, I find him somewhat changed, and not for the
+better. I miss that deference he always showed to you personally, to
+your ideas and impressions,--a deference which honored him more than he
+thought, because there is true greatness in the power to admire. I
+may be mistaken, but it seems to me that public life is spoiling him
+a little. As you cannot be with him in the Chamber of peers, he is
+beginning to suspect that he can have a life without you. If I were you,
+I should watch these symptoms of independence, and not let the work of
+your lifetime come to nought."
+
+"Do you know, my dear," said Madame de l'Estorade, laughing, "that you
+are giving me advice that may end in fire and slaughter?"
+
+"Not at all. I am a woman forty-five years of age, who has always seen
+things on their practical side. I did not marry my husband, whom I
+loved, until I had convinced myself, by putting him to the test, that
+he was worthy of my esteem. I don't make life; I take it as it
+comes,--trying to put order and _possibility_ into all the occurrences
+it brings to me. I an neither the frenzied passion of Louise de
+Chaulieu, nor the insensible reason of Renee de Maucombe. I am a Jesuit
+in petticoats, persuaded that rather wide sleeves are better than
+sleeves that are tight to the wrist; and I have never gone in search of
+the philosopher's stone--"
+
+At this instant Lucas opened the door of the salon and announced,--
+
+"Monsieur le Comte de Sallenauve."
+
+His mistress gave him a look inquiring why he had disobeyed her orders,
+to which Lucas replied by a sign implying that he did not suppose the
+prohibition applied in this instance.
+
+Madame de Camps, who had never yet seen the new deputy, now gave her
+closest attention to a study of him.
+
+Sallenauve explained his visit by his great desire to know how matters
+had gone at Ville d'Avray, and whether Marie-Gaston had been deeply
+affected by his return there. As for the business which detained him
+in Paris, he said he had so far met with no success. He had seen
+the prefect of police, who had given him a letter to Monsieur
+de Saint-Esteve, the chief of the detective police. Aware of the
+antecedents of that man, Monsieur de Sallenauve expressed himself as
+much surprised to find a functionary with extremely good manners and
+bearing; but he held out faint hope of success. "A woman hiding in
+Paris," he said, "is an eel in its safest hole." He (Sallenauve) should
+continue the search the next day with the help of Jacques Bricheteau;
+but if nothing came of it, he should go in the evening to Ville d'Avray,
+for he did not, he said, share Madame de l'Estorade's security as to
+Gaston's state of mind.
+
+As he was taking leave, Madame de l'Estorade said to him,--
+
+"Do not forget Nais' ball which takes place the day after to-morrow.
+You will affront her mortally if you fail to be present. Try to bring
+Monsieur Gaston with you. It might divert his mind a little."
+
+
+
+
+V. CHILDREN
+
+On his return from the theatre Monsieur Octave de Camps declared that it
+would be long before they caught him at a _fairy_ piece again. But Nais,
+on the contrary, still under the spell of its marvels gave a lively
+recital of the scene, which showed how much her imagination was capable
+of being stirred.
+
+As Madame de Camps and her husband walked away together, the former
+remarked,--
+
+"That child is really very disquieting. Madame de l'Estorade develops
+her too much; I should not be surprised if she gave her a great deal of
+trouble in future years."
+
+It would be difficult to mark the precise moment in our contemporary
+habits and customs when a new species of religion, which might be called
+child-idolatry, appeared. Nor shall we find it easier to discover by
+what species of influence this worship has reached its present enormous
+development among us. But, although unexplained, the fact exists and
+ought to be recorded by every faithful historian of the great and the
+little movements of society. In the family of to-day children have taken
+the place of the household gods of the ancients, and whoever does not
+share this worship is not a morose and sour spirit, nor a captious and
+annoying reasoner,--he is simply an atheist.
+
+Try to amuse one of these beloved adored ones, all puffed up, as they
+naturally are, by a sense of their importance, with dolls and toys
+and Punch-and-Judys, as in the days of our unsophisticated innocence!
+Nonsense! Boys must have ponies and cigarettes, and the reading of
+novelettes; and girls, the delight of playing hostess, giving afternoon
+dances, and evening parties at which the real Guignol of the Champs
+Elysees and Robert Houdin appear,--the entertainment being announced
+on the invitation cards. Sometimes, as now in the case of Nais de
+l'Estorade, these little sovereigns obtain permission to give a ball in
+_grown-up_ style,--so much so, that policemen are stationed about the
+doors, and Delisle, Nattier, and Prevost provide the toilets and the
+decorations.
+
+With the character we have already seen in Nais, it may be said that no
+one was better fitted than she for the duties that devolved upon her
+by the abdication of her mother. This abdication took place before the
+evening of the ball itself, for it was Mademoiselle Nais de l'Estorade
+who, in her own name, invited her guests to do her the honor to pass
+the evening _chez elle_; and as Madame de l'Estorade would not allow the
+parody to go as far as printed cards, Nais spent several days
+writing her notes of invitation, taking care to put in the corner, in
+conspicuous letters, the sacramental word, "Dancing."
+
+Nothing could be more curious, or, as Madame de Camps might have said,
+more alarming, than the self-possession of this little girl of fourteen,
+behaving precisely as she had seen her mother do on like occasions;
+stationed, to receive her company, at the door of the salon, and marking
+by her manner the proper grades of welcome, from eager cordiality to a
+coldness that verged on disdain. To her best friends she gave her hand
+in truly English style; for the rest she had smiles, apportioned to the
+degrees of intimacy,--simple inclination of the head for unknown
+guests or those of less account; with little speeches now and then, and
+delicious mamma-like airs for the tiny children whom it is necessary to
+ask to these juvenile routs, however dangerous and difficult to manage
+that element may be.
+
+With the fathers and mothers of her guests, as the ball was not given
+for them, Nais as a general thing reversed the nature of the Gospel
+invocation, _Sinite parvulos venire ad me_, and was careful not to
+pass the limit of cold though respectful politeness. But when Lucas,
+following the instructions he had received, reversed the natural order
+of things and announced, "Mesdemoiselles de la Roche-Hugon, Madame la
+Baronne de la Roche-Hugon, and Madame la Comtesse de Rastignac," the
+little strategist laid aside her reserve, and, running up to the wife of
+the minister, she took her hand and pressed it to her lips with charming
+grace.
+
+After the dancing began, Nais was unable to accept all the invitations
+which the elegant young lions vied with one another in pressing upon
+her; in fact, she grew sadly confused as to the number and order of
+her engagements,--a circumstance which very nearly led, in spite of the
+_entente cordiale_, to an open rupture between France and perfidious
+Albion. A quadrille doubly promised, to a young English peer aged ten
+and a pupil in the Naval School of about the same years, came very near
+producing unpleasant complications, inasmuch as the young British scion
+of nobility had assumed a boxing attitude. That fray pacified, another
+annoying episode occurred. A small boy, seeing a servant with a tray of
+refreshments and being unable to reach up to the objects of his greed,
+had the deplorable idea of putting his hand on the edge of the tray and
+bending it down to him. Result: a cascade of mingled orgeat, negus,
+and syrups; and happy would it have been had the young author of this
+mischief been the only sufferer from the sugary torrent; but, alas!
+nearly a dozen innocent victims were splashed and spattered by the
+disastrous accident,--among them four or five bacchantes, who were
+furious at seeing their toilets injured, and would fain have made an
+Orpheus of the clumsy infant. While he was being rescued with great
+difficulty from their clutches by the German governess, a voice was
+heard amid the hubbub,--that of a pretty little blonde, saying to a
+small Scottish youth with whom she had danced the whole evening,--
+
+"How odd of Nais to invite little boys of that age!"
+
+"That's easily explained," said the Scottish youth; "he's a boy of the
+Treasury department. Nais had to ask him on account of her parents,--a
+matter of policy, you know."
+
+Then, taking the arm of one of his friends, the same youth continued:--
+
+"Hey, Ernest," he said, "I'd like a cigar; suppose we find a quiet
+corner, out of the way of all this racket?"
+
+"I can't, my dear fellow," replied Ernest, in a whisper; "you know
+Leontine always makes me a scene when she smells I've been smoking, and
+she is charming to me to-night. See, look at what she has given me!"
+
+"A horse-hair ring!" exclaimed the Scot, disdainfully, "with two locked
+hearts; all the boys at school have them."
+
+"What have you to show that's better?" replied Ernest, in a piqued tone.
+
+"Oh!" said the Scot, with a superior air, "something much better."
+
+And drawing from the pouch which formed an integral part of his costume
+a note on violet paper highly perfumed,--
+
+"There," he said, putting it under Ernest's nose, "smell that!"
+
+Indelicate friend that he was, Ernest pounced upon the note and took
+possession of it. The Scottish youth, furious, flung himself upon the
+treacherous French boy; on which Monsieur de l'Estorade, a thousand
+leagues from imagining the subject of the quarrel, intervened and parted
+the combatants, which enabled the ravisher to escape into a corner of
+the salon to enjoy his booty. The note contained no writing. The young
+scamp had probably taken the paper out of his mother's blotting-book.
+A moment after, returning to his adversary and giving him the note, he
+said in a jeering tone,--
+
+"There's your note; it is awfully compromising."
+
+"Keep it, monsieur," replied the Scot. "I shall ask for it to-morrow
+in the Tuileries, under the horse-chestnuts; meantime, you will please
+understand that all intercourse is at an end between us."
+
+Ernest was less knightly; he contented himself with putting the thumb
+of his right hand to his nose and spreading the fingers,--an ironical
+gesture he had acquired from his mother's coachman; after which he ran
+to find his partner for the next quadrille.
+
+But what details are these on which we are wasting time, when we know
+that interests of the highest order are moving, subterraneously, beneath
+the surface of the children's ball.
+
+Arriving from Ville d'Avray late in the afternoon, Sallenauve had
+brought Madame de l'Estorade ill news of Marie-Gaston. Under an
+appearance of resignation, he was gloomy, and, singular to say, he had
+not visited the grave of his wife,--as if he feared an emotion he might
+not have the power to master. It seemed to Sallenauve that his friend
+had come to the end of his strength, and that a mental prostration of
+the worst character was succeeding the over-excitement he had shown at
+his election. One thing reassured the new deputy, and enabled him to
+come to Paris for, at any rate, a few hours. A friend of Marie-Gaston,
+an English nobleman with whom he had been intimate in Florence, came out
+to see him, and the sad man greeted the new-comer with apparent joy.
+
+In order to distract Sallenauve's thoughts from this anxiety, Madame de
+l'Estorade introduced him to Monsieur Octave de Camps, the latter having
+expressed a great desire to know him. The deputy had not talked
+ten minutes with the iron-master before he reached his heart by the
+magnitude of the metallurgical knowledge his conversation indicated.
+
+During the year in which he had been preparing for a parliamentary life,
+Sallenauve had busied himself by acquiring the practical knowledge which
+enables an orator of the Chamber to take part in all discussions and
+have reasons to give for his general views. He had turned his attention
+more especially to matters connected with the great question of the
+revenue and taxation; such, for instance, as the custom-house, laws of
+exchange, stamp duties, and taxation, direct and indirect. Approaching
+in this manner that problematical science--which is, nevertheless, so
+sure of itself!--called political economy, Sallenauve had also studied
+the sources which contribute to form the great current of national
+prosperity; and in this connection the subject of mines, the topic
+at this moment most interesting to Monsieur de Camps, had not been
+neglected by him. We can imagine the admiration of the iron-master, who
+had studied too exclusively the subject of iron ore to know much about
+the other branches of metallurgy, when the young deputy told him,
+apropos of the wealth of our soil, a sort of Arabian Nights tale, which,
+if science would only take hold of it, might become a reality.
+
+"But, monsieur, do you really believe," cried Monsieur de Camps, "that,
+besides our coal and iron mines, we possess mines of copper, lead, and,
+possibly, silver?"
+
+"If you will take the trouble to consult certain specialists," replied
+Sallenauve, "you will find that neither the boasted strata of Bohemia
+and Saxony nor even those of Russia and Hungary can be compared to those
+hidden in the Pyrenees, in the Alps from Briancon to the Isere, in
+the Cevennes on the Lozere side, in the Puy-de-Dome, Bretagne, and the
+Vosges. In the Vosges, more especially about the town of Saint-Die, I
+can point out to you a single vein of the mineral of silver which
+lies to the depth of fifty to eighty metres with a length of thirteen
+kilometres."
+
+"But, monsieur, why has such untold metallurgical wealth never been
+worked?"
+
+"It has been, in former days," replied Sallenauve, "especially during
+the Roman occupation of Gaul. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the
+work was abandoned; but the lords of the soil and the clergy renewed it
+in the middle ages; after that, during the struggle of feudality against
+the royal power and the long civil wars which devastated France, the
+work was again suspended, and has never since been taken up."
+
+"Are you sure of what you say?"
+
+"Ancient authors, Strabo and others, all mention these mines, and the
+tradition of their existence still lingers in the regions where they are
+situated; decrees of emperors and the ordinances of certain of our kings
+bear testimony to the value of their products; in certain places more
+material proof may be found in excavations of considerable depth and
+length, in galleries and halls cut in the solid rock,--in short, in the
+many traces still existing of those vast works which have immortalized
+Roman industry. To this must be added that the modern study of
+geological science has confirmed and developed these irrefutable
+indications."
+
+The imagination of Monsieur Octave de Camps, hitherto limited to the
+development of a single iron-mine, took fire, and he was about to
+ask his instructor to give him his ideas on the manner of awakening a
+practical interest in the matter, when Lucas, throwing wide open the
+double doors of the salon, announced in his loudest and most pompous
+voice,--
+
+"Monsieur the minister of Public Works."
+
+The effect produced on the elders of the assembly was electric.
+
+"I want to see what sort of figure that little Rastignac cuts as a
+statesman," said Monsieur de Camps, rising from his seat; but in his
+heart he was thinking of the government subsidy he wanted for his
+iron-mine. The new deputy, on his side, foresaw an inevitable meeting
+with the minister, and wondered what his friends in the Opposition would
+say when they read in the "National" that a representative of the Left
+was seen to have an interview with a minister celebrated for his art in
+converting political opponents. Anxious also to return to Marie-Gaston,
+he resolved to profit by the general stir created by the minister's
+arrival to slip away; and by a masterly manoeuvre he made his way slyly
+to the door of the salon, expecting to escape without being seen. But
+he reckoned without Nais, to whom he was engaged for a quadrille. That
+small girl sounded the alarm at the moment when he laid his hand on the
+handle of the door; and Monsieur de l'Estorade, mindful of his promise
+to Rastignac, hastened to put a stop to the desertion. Finding his quiet
+retreat impossible, Sallenauve was afraid that an open departure after
+the arrival of the minister might be construed as an act of puritanical
+opposition in the worst taste; he therefore accepted the situation
+promptly, and decided to remain.
+
+Monsieur de l'Estorade knew that Sallenauve was far too wise to be the
+dupe of any artifices he might have used to bring about his introduction
+to the minister. He therefore went straight to the point, and soon after
+Rastignac's arrival he slipped his arm through that of the statesman,
+and, approaching the deputy, said to him,--
+
+"Monsieur the minister of Public Works, who, on the eve of the battle,
+wishes me to introduce him to a general of the enemy's army."
+
+"Monsieur le ministre does me too much honor," replied Sallenauve,
+ceremoniously. "Far from being a general, I am a private soldier, and a
+very unknown one."
+
+"Hum!" said the minister; "it seems to me that the battle at
+Arcis-sur-Aube was not an insignificant victory; you routed our ranks,
+monsieur, in a singular manner."
+
+"There was nothing wonderful in that; you must have heard that a saint
+fought for us."
+
+"Well, at any rate," said Rastignac, "I prefer this result to the one
+arranged for us by a man I thought cleverer than he proved to be, whom
+I sent down there. It seems that Beauvisage is a perfect nonentity;
+he'd have rubbed off upon us; and after all, he was really as much Left
+centre as the other man, Giguet. Now the Left centre is our real enemy,
+because it is aiming to get our portfolios."
+
+"Oh!" said Monsieur de l'Estorade, "after what we heard of the man, I
+think he would have done exactly what was wanted of him."
+
+"My dear friend, don't believe that," said the minister. "Fools are
+often more tenacious of the flag under which they enlisted than we think
+for. Besides, to go over to the enemy is to make a choice, and that
+supposes an operation of the mind; it is much easier to be obstinate."
+
+"I agree with the minister," said Sallenauve; "extreme innocence
+and extreme rascality are equally able to defend themselves against
+seduction."
+
+Here Monsieur de l'Estorade, seeing, or pretending to see, a signal made
+to him, looked over his shoulder and said,--
+
+"I'm coming."
+
+And the two adversaries being thus buckled together, he hastened away as
+if summoned to some duty as master of the house.
+
+Sallenauve was anxious not to seem disturbed at finding himself alone
+with the minister. The meeting having come about, he decided to endure
+it with a good grace, and, taking the first word, he asked if the
+ministry had prepared, in view of the coming sessions, a large number of
+bills.
+
+"No, very few," replied Rastignac. "To tell the truth, we do not expect
+to be in power very long; we brought about an election because in the
+general confusion into which the press has thrown public opinion, our
+constitutional duty was to force that opinion to reconstitute itself;
+but the fact is, we did not expect the result to be favorable to us, and
+we are therefore taken somewhat unawares."
+
+"You are like the peasant," said Sallenauve, laughing, "who, expecting
+the end of the world, did not sow his wheat."
+
+"Well, we don't look upon our retirement as the end of the world," said
+Rastignac, modestly; "there are men to come after us, and many of
+them well able to govern; only, as we expected to give but few more
+representations in that transitory abode called 'power,' we have
+not unpacked either our costumes or our scenery. Besides, the coming
+session, in any case, can only be a business session. The question now
+is, of course, between the palace, that is, personal influence, and the
+doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. This question will naturally come
+up when the vote is taken on the secret-service fund. Whenever, in one
+way or the other, that is settled, and the budget is voted, together
+with a few bills of secondary interest, Parliament has really completed
+its task; it will have put an end to a distressing struggle, and the
+country will know to which of the two parties it can look for the
+development of its prosperity."
+
+"And you think," said Sallenauve, "that in a well-balanced system of
+government that question is a useful one to raise?"
+
+"Well," replied Rastignac, "we have not raised it. It is born perhaps
+of circumstances; a great deal, as I think, from the restlessness of
+certain ambitions, and also from the tactics of parties."
+
+"So that, in your opinion, one of the combatants is not guilty and has
+absolutely nothing to reproach himself with?"
+
+"You are a republican," said Rastignac, "and therefore, _a priori_, an
+enemy to the dynasty. I think I should lose my time in trying to change
+your ideas on the policy you complain of."
+
+"You are mistaken," said the theoretical republican deputy; "I have no
+preconceived hatred to the reigning dynasty. I even think that in
+its past, _striped_, if I may say so, with royal affinities and
+revolutionary memories, it has all that is needed to respond to the
+liberal and monarchical instincts of the nation. But you will find it
+difficult to persuade me that in the present head of the dynasty we
+shall not find extreme ideas of personal influence, which in the long
+run will undermine and subvert the finest as well as the strongest
+institutions."
+
+"Yes," said Rastignac, ironically, "and they are saved by the famous
+axiom of the deputy of Sancerre: 'The king reigns, but does not
+govern.'"
+
+Whether he was tired of standing to converse, or whether he wished to
+prove his ease in releasing himself from the trap which had evidently
+been laid for him, Sallenauve, before replying, drew up a chair for his
+interlocutor, and, taking one himself, said,--
+
+"Will you permit me to cite the example of another royal behavior?--that
+of a prince who was not considered indifferent to his royal prerogative,
+and who was not ignorant of constitutional mechanism--"
+
+"Louis XVIII.," said Rastignac, "or, as the newspapers used to call him,
+'the illustrious author of the Charter'?"
+
+"Precisely; and will you kindly tell me where he died?"
+
+"_Parbleu_! at the Tuileries."
+
+"And his successor?"
+
+"In exile--Oh! I see what you are coming to."
+
+"My conclusion is certainly not difficult to guess. But have you fully
+remarked the deduction to be drawn from that royal career?--for which I
+myself feel the greatest respect. Louis XVIII. was not a citizen king.
+He granted this Charter, but he never consented to it. Born nearer to
+the throne than the prince whose regrettable tendencies I mentioned
+just now, he might naturally share more deeply still the ideas,
+the prejudices, and the infatuations of the court; in person he was
+ridiculous (a serious princely defect in France); he bore the brunt of a
+new and untried regime; he succeeded a government which had intoxicated
+the people with that splendid gilded smoke called glory; and if he was
+not actually brought back to France by foreigners, at any rate he came
+as the result of the armed invasion of Europe. Now, shall I tell you
+why, in spite of all these defects and disadvantages, in spite, too, of
+the ceaseless conspiracy kept up against his government, it was given to
+him to die tranquilly in his bed at the Tuileries?"
+
+"Because he had made himself a constitutional king," said Rastignac,
+with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "But do you mean to say that we
+are not that?"
+
+"In the letter, yes; in the spirit, no. When Louis XVIII. gave his
+confidence to a minister, he gave it sincerely and wholly. He did
+not cheat him; he played honestly into his hand,--witness the famous
+ordinance of September 5, and the dissolution of the Chamber, which was
+more Royalist than himself,--a thing he had the wisdom not to desire.
+Later, a movement of public opinion shook the minister who had led him
+along that path; that minister was his favorite, his son, as he called
+him. No matter; yielding to the constitutional necessity, he bravely
+sent him to foreign parts, after loading him with crosses and
+titles,--in short, with everything that could soften the pain of his
+fall; and he did not watch and manoeuvre surreptitiously to bring him
+back to power, which that minister never regained."
+
+"For a man who declares he does not hate us," said Rastignac, "you
+treat us rather roughly. According to you we are almost faithless to the
+constitutional compact, and our policy, to your thinking ambiguous and
+tortuous, gives us a certain distant likeness to Monsieur Doublemain in
+the 'Mariage de Figaro.'"
+
+"I do not say that the evil is as deep as that," replied Sallenauve;
+"perhaps, after all, _we_ are simply a _faiseur_,--using the word, be it
+understood, in the sense of a meddler, one who wants to have his finger
+in everything."
+
+"Ah! monsieur, but suppose we are the ablest politician in the country."
+
+"If we are, it does not follow that our kingdom ought not to have the
+chance of becoming as able as ourselves."
+
+"_Parbleu_!" cried Rastignac, in the tone of a man who comes to the
+climax of a conversation, "I wish I had power to realize a wish--"
+
+"And that is?"
+
+"To see you grappling with that ability which you call meddlesome."
+
+"Well, you know, Monsieur le ministre, that we all spend three fourths
+of life in wishing for the impossible."
+
+"Why impossible? Would you be the first man of the Opposition to be seen
+at the Tuileries? An invitation to dinner given publicly, openly, which
+would, by bringing you into contact with one whom you misjudge at a
+distance--"
+
+"I should have the honor to refuse."
+
+And he emphasized the words _have the honor_ in a way to show the
+meaning he attached to them.
+
+"You are all alike, you men of the Opposition!" cried the minister;
+"you won't let yourselves be enlightened when the opportunity presents
+itself; or, to put it better, you--"
+
+"Do you call the rays of those gigantic red bottles in a chemist's shop
+_light_, when they flash into your eyes as you pass them after dark?
+Don't they, on the contrary, seem to blind you?"
+
+"It is not our rays that frighten you," said Rastignac; "it is the dark
+lantern of your party watchmen on their rounds."
+
+"There may be some truth in what you say; a party and the man who
+undertakes to represent it are in some degree a married couple, who in
+order to live peaceably together must be mutually courteous, frank, and
+faithful in heart as well as in principle."
+
+"Well, try to be moderate. Your dream is far more impossible to realize
+than mine; the day will come when you will have more to say about the
+courtesy of your chaste better half."
+
+"If there is an evil for which I ought to be prepared, it is that."
+
+"Do you think so? With the lofty and generous sentiments so apparent in
+your nature, shall you remain impassive under political attack,--under
+calumny, for instance?"
+
+"You yourself, Monsieur le ministre, have not escaped its venom; but it
+did not, I think, deter you from your course."
+
+"But," said Rastignac, lowering his voice, "suppose I were to tell you
+that I have already sternly refused to listen to a proposal to search
+into your private life on a certain side which, being more in the shade
+than the rest, seems to offer your enemies a chance to entrap you."
+
+"I do not thank you for the honor you have done yourself in rejecting
+with contempt the proposals of men who can be neither of my party nor of
+yours; they belong to the party of base appetites and selfish passions.
+But, supposing the impossible, had they found some acceptance from
+you, pray believe that my course, which follows the dictates of my
+conscience, could not be affected thereby."
+
+"But your party,--consider for a moment its elements: a jumble of
+foiled ambitions, brutal greed, plagiarists of '93, despots disguising
+themselves as lovers of liberty."
+
+"My party has nothing, and seeks to gain something. Yours calls itself
+conservative, and it is right; its chief concern is how to preserve its
+power, offices, and wealth,--in short, all it now monopolizes."
+
+"But, monsieur, we are not a closed way; we open our way, on the
+contrary, to all ambitions. But the higher you are in character and
+intellect, the less we can allow you to pass, dragging after you your
+train of democrats; for the day when that crew gains the upper hand it
+will not be a change of policy, but a revolution."
+
+"But what makes you think I want an opening of any kind?"
+
+"What! follow a course without an aim?--a course that leads nowhere? A
+certain development of a man's faculties not only gives him the right
+but makes it his duty to seek to govern."
+
+"To watch the governing power is a useful career, and, I may add, a very
+busy one."
+
+"You can fancy, monsieur," said Rastignac, good-humoredly, "that if
+Beauvisage were in your place I should not have taken the trouble to
+argue with him; I may say, however, that he would have made my effort
+less difficult."
+
+"This meeting, which _chance_ has brought about between us," said
+Sallenauve, "will have one beneficial result; we understand each
+other henceforth, and our future meetings will always therefore be
+courteous--which will not lessen the strength of our convictions."
+
+"Then I must say to the king--for I had his royal commands to--"
+
+Rastignac did not end the sentence in which he was, so to speak, firing
+his last gun, for the orchestra began to play a quadrille, and Nais,
+running up, made him a coquettish courtesy, saying,--
+
+"Monsieur le ministre, I am very sorry, but you have taken my partner,
+and you must give him up. He is down for my eleventh quadrille, and if I
+miss it my list gets into terrible confusion."
+
+"You permit me, monsieur?" said Sallenauve, laughing. "As you see, I am
+not a very savage republican." So saying, he followed Nais, who led him
+along by the hand.
+
+Madame de l'Estorade, comprehending that this fancy of Nais was rather
+compromising to the dignity of the new deputy, had arranged that several
+papas and mammas should figure in the same quadrille; and she herself
+with the Scottish lad danced _vis-a-vis_ to her daughter, who beamed
+with pride and joy. In the evolutions of the last figure, where Nais had
+to take her mother's hand, she said, pressing it passionately,--
+
+"Poor mamma! if it hadn't been for _him_, you wouldn't have me now."
+
+This sudden reminder so agitated Madame de l'Estorade, coming as it did
+unexpectedly, that she was seized with a return of the nervous trembling
+her daughter's danger had originally caused, and was forced to sit down.
+Seeing her change color, Sallenauve, Nais, and Madame Octave de Camps
+ran to her to know if she were ill.
+
+"It is nothing," she answered, addressing Sallenauve; "only that my
+little girl reminded me suddenly of the utmost obligation we are under
+to you, monsieur. 'Without _him_,' she said, 'you would not have me.'
+Ah! monsieur, without your generous courage where would my child be
+now?"
+
+"Come, come, don't excite yourself," interposed Madame Octave de Camps,
+observing the convulsive and almost gasping tone of her friend's voice.
+"It is not reasonable to put yourself in such a state for a child's
+speech."
+
+"She is better than the rest of us," replied Madame de l'Estorade,
+taking Nais in her arms.
+
+"Come, mamma, be reasonable," said that young lady.
+
+"She puts nothing in the world," continued Madame de l'Estorade, "before
+her gratitude to her preserver, whereas her father and I have scarcely
+shown him any."
+
+"But, madame," said Sallenauve, "you have courteously--"
+
+"Courteously!" interrupted Nais, shaking her pretty head with an air of
+disapproval; "if any one had saved my daughter, I should be different to
+him from that."
+
+"Nais," said Madame de Camps, sternly, "children should be silent when
+their opinion is not asked."
+
+"What is the matter," said Monsieur de l'Estorade, joining the group.
+
+"Nothing," said Madame de Camps; "only a giddiness Renee had in
+dancing."
+
+"Is it over?"
+
+"Yes, I am quite well again," said Madame de l'Estorade.
+
+"Then come and say good-night to Madame de Rastignac, who is preparing
+to take leave."
+
+In his eagerness to get to the minister's wife, he forgot to give
+his own wife his arm. Sallenauve was more thoughtful. As they walked
+together in the wake of her husband, Madame de l'Estorade said,--
+
+"I saw you talking for a long time with Monsieur de Rastignac; did he
+practise his well-known seductions upon you?"
+
+"Do you think he succeeded?" replied Sallenauve.
+
+"No; but such attempts to capture are always disagreeable, and I beg
+you to believe that I was not a party to the plot. I am not so violently
+ministerial as my husband."
+
+"Nor I as violently revolutionary as they think."
+
+"I trust that these annoying politics, which have already produced a
+jar between you and Monsieur de l'Estorade, may not disgust you with the
+idea of being counted among our friends."
+
+"That is an honor, madame, for which I can only be grateful."
+
+"It is not an honor but a pleasure that I hoped you would find in it,"
+said Madame de l'Estorade, quickly. "I say, with Nais, if I had saved
+the life of a friend's child, I should cease to be ceremonious with
+her."
+
+So saying, and without listening to his answer, she disengaged her arm
+quickly from that of Sallenauve, and left him rather astonished at the
+tone in which she had spoken.
+
+In seeing Madame de l'Estorade so completely docile to the advice, more
+clever than prudent, perhaps, of Madame de Camps, the reader, we think,
+can scarcely be surprised. A certain attraction has been evident for
+some time on the part of the frigid countess not only to the preserver
+of her daughter, but to the man who under such romantic and singular
+circumstances had come before her mind. Carefully considered, Madame de
+l'Estorade is seen to be far from one of those impassible natures which
+resist all affectionate emotions except those of the family. With a
+beauty that was partly Spanish, she had eyes which her friend Louise
+de Chaulieu declared could ripen peaches. Her coldness was not what
+physicians call congenital; her temperament was an acquired one.
+Marrying from _reason_ a man whose mental insufficiency is very
+apparent, she made herself love him out of pity and a sense of
+protection. Up to the present time, by means of a certain atrophy of
+heart, she had succeeded, without one failure, in making Monsieur de
+l'Estorade perfectly happy. With the same instinct, she had exaggerated
+the maternal sentiment to an almost inconceivable degree, until in that
+way she had fairly stifled all the other cravings of her nature. It must
+be said, however, that the success she had had in accomplishing this
+hard task was due in a great measure to _the circumstance_ of Louise de
+Chaulieu. To her that dear mistaken one was like the drunken slave whom
+the Spartans made a living lesson to their children; and between the two
+friends a sort of tacit wager was established. Louise having taken the
+side of romantic passion, Renee held firmly to that of superior reason;
+and in order to win the game, she had maintained a courage of good sense
+and wisdom which might have cost her far more to practise without this
+incentive. At the age she had now reached, and with her long habit
+of self-control, we can understand how, seeing, as she believed, the
+approach of a love against which she had preached so vehemently, she
+should instantly set to work to rebuff it; but a man who did not feel
+that love, while thinking her ideally beautiful, and who possibly
+loved elsewhere,--a man who had saved her child from death and asked
+no recompense, who was grave, serious, and preoccupied in an absorbing
+enterprise,--why should she still continue to think such a man
+dangerous? Why not grant to him, without further hesitation, the
+lukewarm sentiment of friendship?
+
+
+
+
+VI. CURIOSITY THAT CAME WITHIN AN ACE OF BEING FATAL
+
+On returning to Ville d'Avray, Sallenauve was confronted by a singular
+event. Who does not know how sudden events upset the whole course of our
+lives, and place us, without our will, in compromising positions?
+
+Sallenauve was not mistaken in feeling serious anxiety as to the mental
+state of his friend Marie-Gaston.
+
+When that unfortunate man had left the scene of his cruel loss
+immediately after the death of his wife, he would have done a wiser
+thing had he then resolved never to revisit it. Nature, providentially
+ordered, provides that if those whose nearest and dearest are struck by
+the hand of death accept the decree with the resignation which ought to
+follow the execution of all necessary law, they will not remain too long
+under the influence of their grief. Rousseau has said, in his famous
+letter against suicide: "Sadness, weariness of spirit, regret, despair
+are not lasting sorrows, rooted forever in the soul; experience will
+always cast out that feeling of bitterness which makes us at first
+believe our grief eternal."
+
+But this truth ceases to be true for imprudent and wilful persons, who
+seek to escape the first anguish of sorrow by flight or some violent
+distraction. All mental and moral suffering is a species of illness
+which, taking time for its specific, will gradually wear out, in the
+long run, of itself. If, on the contrary, it is not allowed to consume
+itself slowly on the scene of its trouble, if it is fanned into flame by
+motion or violent remedies, we hinder the action of nature; we deprive
+ourselves of the blessed relief of comparative forgetfulness, promised
+to those who will accept their suffering, and so transform it into a
+chronic affection, the memories of which, though hidden, are none the
+less true and deep.
+
+If we violently oppose this salutary process, we produce an acute evil,
+in which the imagination acts upon the heart; and as the latter from
+its nature is limited, while the former is infinite, it is impossible
+to calculate the violence of the impressions to which a man may yield
+himself.
+
+When Marie-Gaston returned to the house at Ville d'Avray, after two
+years' absence, he fancied that only a tender if melancholy memory
+awaited him; but not a step could he make without recalling his lost
+joys and the agony of losing them. The flowers that his wife had loved,
+the lawns, the trees just budding into greenness under the warm breath
+of May,--they were here before his eyes; but she who had created this
+beauteous nature was lying cold in the earth. Amid all the charms and
+elegances gathered to adorn this nest of their love, there was nothing
+for the man who rashly returned to that dangerous atmosphere but sounds
+of lamentation, the moans of a renewed and now ever-living grief.
+Alarmed himself at the vertigo of sorrow which seized him, Marie-Gaston
+shrank, as Sallenauve had said, from taking the last step in his ordeal;
+he had calmly discussed with his friend the details of the mausoleum he
+wished to raise above the mortal remains of his beloved Louise, but he
+had not yet brought himself to visit her grave in the village cemetery
+where he had laid them. There was everything, therefore, to fear from
+a grief which time had not only not assuaged, but, on the contrary, had
+increased by duration, until it was sharper and more intolerable than
+before.
+
+The gates were opened by Philippe, the old servant, who had been
+constituted by Madame Gaston majordomo of the establishment.
+
+"How is your master?" asked Sallenauve.
+
+"He has gone away, monsieur," replied Philippe.
+
+"Gone away!"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; with that English gentleman whom monsieur left here with
+him."
+
+"But without a word to me! Do you know where they have gone?"
+
+"After dinner, which went off very well, monsieur suddenly gave orders
+to pack his travelling-trunk; he did part of it himself. During that
+time the Englishman, who said he would go into the park and smoke, asked
+me privately where he could go to write a letter without monsieur seeing
+him. I took him to my room; but I did not dare question him about
+this journey, for I never saw any one with such forbidding and
+uncommunicative manners. By the time the letter was written monsieur
+was ready, and without giving me any explanation they both got into
+the Englishman's carriage, and I heard one of them say to the coachman,
+'Paris.'"
+
+"What became of the letter?" asked Sallenauve.
+
+"It is there in my room, where the Englishman gave it me secretly. It is
+addressed to monsieur."
+
+"Fetch it at once, my dear man," cried Sallenauve.
+
+After reading the letter, his face seemed to Philippe convulsed.
+
+"Tell them not to unharness," he said; and he read the letter through a
+second time.
+
+When the old servant returned after executing the order, Sallenauve
+asked him at what hour they had started.
+
+"About nine," answered Philippe.
+
+"Three hours in advance!" muttered the deputy, looking at his watch, and
+returning to the carriage which had brought him. As he was getting into
+it, the old majordomo forced himself to say,--
+
+"Monsieur found no bad news in that letter, did he?"
+
+"No; but your master may be absent for some time; keep the house in good
+order." Then he said to the coachman, "Paris!"
+
+The next day, quite early in the morning, Monsieur de l'Estorade was in
+his study, employed in a rather singular manner. It will be remembered
+that on the day when Sallenauve, then Dorlange the sculptor, had sent
+him the bust of Madame de l'Estorade, he had not found a place where, as
+he thought, the little masterpiece had a proper light. From the moment
+that Rastignac hinted to him that his intercourse with the sculptor,
+now deputy, might injure him at court, he had agreed with his son Armand
+that the artist had given to Madame de l'Estorade the air of a grisette;
+but now that Sallenauve, by his resistance to ministerial blandishments,
+had taken an openly hostile attitude to the government, that bust seemed
+to the peer of France no longer worthy of exhibition, and the worthy man
+was now engaged in finding some dark corner where, without recourse to
+the absurdity of actually hiding it, it would be out of range to the
+eyes of visitors, whose questions as to its maker he should no longer
+be forced to answer. He was therefore perched on the highest step of
+his library ladder, holding in his hands the gift of the sculptor, and
+preparing to relegate it to the top of a bookcase, where it was destined
+to keep company with an owl and a cormorant shot by Armand during the
+recent holidays and stuffed by paternal pride, when the door of the
+study opened and Lucas announced,--
+
+"Monsieur Philippe."
+
+The age of the old majordomo and the confidential post he occupied in
+Marie-Gaston's establishment seemed to the factotum of the house of
+l'Estorade to authorize the designation of "monsieur,"--a civility
+expectant of return, be it understood.
+
+Descending from his eminence, the peer of France asked Philippe what
+brought him, and whether anything had happened at Ville d'Avray. The old
+servant related the singular departure of his master, and the no less
+singular departure of Sallenauve without a word of explanation; then he
+added,--
+
+"This morning, while putting monsieur's room in order, a letter
+addressed to Madame le comtesse fell out of a book. As the letter was
+sealed and all ready to be sent, I supposed that monsieur, in the hurry
+of departure, had forgotten to tell me to put it in the post. I thought
+therefore I had better bring it here myself. Perhaps Madame la comtesse
+will find in it some explanation of this sudden journey, about which I
+have dreamed all night."
+
+Monsieur de l'Estorade took the letter.
+
+"Three black seals!" he said.
+
+"The color doesn't surprise me," replied Philippe; "for since Madame's
+death monsieur has not laid off his mourning; but I do think three seals
+are rather strange."
+
+"Very well," said Monsieur de l'Estorade; "I will give the letter to my
+wife."
+
+"If there should be anything in it to ease my mind about monsieur, would
+Monsieur le comte be so kind as to let me know?" said Philippe.
+
+"You can rely on that, my good fellow. _Au revoir_."
+
+"I beg Monsieur le comte's pardon for offering an opinion," said the
+majordomo, not accepting the leave just given him to depart; "but in
+case the letter contained some bad news, doesn't Monsieur le comte think
+that it would be best for him to know of it, in order to prepare Madame
+la comtesse for the shock?"
+
+"What! Do you suppose--" said Monsieur de l'Estorade, not finishing his
+idea.
+
+"I don't know; but monsieur has been very gloomy the last few days."
+
+"To break the seal of a letter not addressed to us is always a serious
+thing to do," remarked the peer of France. "This bears my wife's
+address, but--in point of fact--it was never sent to her; in short, it
+is most embarrassing."
+
+"But if by reading it some misfortune might be averted?"
+
+"Yes, yes; that is just what keeps me in doubt."
+
+Here Madame de l'Estorade cut the matter short by entering the room.
+Lucas had told her of the unexpected arrival of Philippe.
+
+"Is anything the matter?" she asked with anxious curiosity.
+
+The apprehensions Sallenauve had expressed the night before as to
+Marie-Gaston's condition returned to her mind. As soon as Philippe had
+repeated the explanations he had already given to her husband, she broke
+the seals of the letter.
+
+Whatever may have been the contents of that disquieting epistle, nothing
+was reflected on Madame de l'Estorade's face.
+
+"You say that your master left Ville d'Avray in company with an English
+gentleman," she said to Philippe. "Did he seem to go unwillingly, as if
+yielding to violence?"
+
+"No, far from that, madame; he seemed to be rather cheerful."
+
+"Well, there is nothing that need make us uneasy. This letter was
+written some days ago, and, in spite of its three black seals, it has no
+reference to anything that has happened since."
+
+Philippe bowed and went away. As soon as husband and wife were alone
+together, Monsieur de l'Estorade said, stretching out his hand for the
+letter,--
+
+"What did he write about?"
+
+"No, don't read it," said the countess, not giving him the letter.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It would pain you. It is enough for me to have had the shock; I could
+scarcely control myself before that old servant."
+
+"Does it refer to suicide?"
+
+Madame de l'Estorade nodded her head in affirmation.
+
+"A real, immediate intention?"
+
+"The letter is dated yesterday morning; and apparently, if it had not
+been for the providential arrival of that Englishman, the poor fellow
+would have taken advantage of Monsieur de Sallenauve's absence last
+night to kill himself."
+
+"The Englishman must have suspected his intention, and carried him
+off to divert him from it. If that is so, he won't let him out of his
+sight."
+
+"And we may also count on Monsieur Sallenauve, who has probably joined
+them by this time."
+
+"Then I don't see that there is anything so terrible in the letter"; and
+again he offered to take it.
+
+"No," said Madame de l'Estorade, drawing back, "if I ask you not to read
+it. Why give yourself painful emotions? The letter not only expresses
+the intention of suicide, but it shows that our poor friend is
+completely out of his mind."
+
+At this instant piercing screams from Rene, her youngest child, put
+Madame de l'Estorade into one of those material agitations which she
+less than any other woman was able to control.
+
+"My God!" she cried, as she rushed from the study, "what has happened?"
+
+Less ready to be alarmed, Monsieur de l'Estorade contented himself by
+going to the door and asking a servant what was the matter.
+
+"Oh, nothing, Monsieur le comte," replied the man. "Monsieur Rene in
+shutting a drawer pinched his finger; that is all."
+
+The peer of France thought it unnecessary to convey himself to the scene
+of action; he knew, by experience in like cases, that he must let his
+wife's exaggerated maternal solicitude have free course, on pain of
+being sharply snubbed himself. As he returned to his desk, he noticed
+lying on the ground the famous letter, which Madame de l'Estorade
+had evidently dropped in her hasty flight. Opportunity and a certain
+fatality which appears to preside over the conduct of all human affairs,
+impelled Monsieur de l'Estorade, who thought little of the shock his
+wife had dreaded for him, to satisfy his curiosity by reading the
+letter.
+
+Marie-Gaston wrote as follows:--
+
+  Madame,--This letter will seem to you less amusing than those I
+  addressed to you from Arcis-sur-Aube. But I trust you will not be
+  alarmed by the decision which I now announce. I am going to rejoin
+  my wife, from whom I have been too long separated; and this
+  evening, shortly after midnight, I shall be with her, never to
+  part again.
+
+  You have, no doubt, said to yourselves--you and Sallenauve--that I
+  was acting strangely in not visiting her grave; that is a remark
+  that two of my servants made the other day, not being aware that I
+  overheard them. I should certainly be a great fool to go and look
+  at a stone in the cemetery which can make me no response, when
+  every night, at twelve o'clock, I hear a little rap on the door of
+  my room, and our dear Louise comes in, not changed at all, except,
+  as I think, more plump and beautiful. She has had great trouble in
+  obtaining permission from Marie, queen of angels, to withdraw me
+  from earth. But last night she brought me formal leave, sealed
+  with green wax; and she also gave me a tiny vial of hydrocyanic
+  acid. A single drop of that acid puts us to sleep, and on waking
+  up we find ourselves on the other side.
+
+  Louise desired me to give you a message from her. I am to tell you
+  that Monsieur de l'Estorade has a disease of the liver and will
+  not live long, and that after his death you are to marry
+  Sallenauve, because, on the _other side_, husbands and wives who
+  really love each other are reunited; and she thinks we shall all
+  four--she and I and you and Sallenauve--be much happier together
+  than if we had your present husband, who is very dull, and whom
+  you married reluctantly.
+
+  My message given, nothing remains for me, madame, but to wish you
+  all the patience you need to continue for your allotted time in
+  this low world, and to subscribe myself
+Your very affectionately devoted
+
+Marie-Gaston.
+
+
+If, after reading this letter, it had occurred to Monsieur de l'Estorade
+to look at himself in the glass, he would have seen, in the sudden
+convulsion and discoloration of his face, the outward and visible signs
+of the terrible blow which his unfortunate curiosity had brought down
+upon him. His heart, his mind, his self-respect staggered under one and
+the same shock; the madness evident in the sort of prediction made about
+him only added to his sense of its horror. Presently convincing himself,
+like a mussulman, that madmen have the gift of second sight, he believed
+he was a lost man, and instantly a stabbing pain began on his liver
+side, while in the direction of Sallenauve, his predicted successor,
+an awful hatred succeeded to his mild good-will. But at the same time,
+conscious of the total want of reason and even of the absurdity of the
+impression which had suddenly surged into his mind, he was afraid lest
+its existence should be suspected, and he looked about him to see in
+what way he could conceal from his wife his fatal indiscretion, the
+consequences of which must forever weigh upon his life. It was certain,
+he thought, that if she found the paper in his study she would deduce
+therefrom the fact that he had read it. Rising from his desk, he softly
+opened the door leading from the study to the salon, crossed the latter
+room on tiptoe, and dropped the letter at the farther end of it, as
+Madame de l'Estorade might suppose she had herself done in her hasty
+departure. Then returning to his study, he scattered his papers over his
+desk, like a school-boy up to mischief, who wants to mislead his master
+by a show of application, intending to appear absorbed in his accounts
+when his wife returned. Useless to add that he listened with keen
+anxiety lest some other person than she should come into the salon; in
+which case he determined to rush out and prevent other eyes from reading
+the dreadful secrets contained in that paper.
+
+Presently, however, the voice of Madame de l'Estorade, speaking to some
+one at the door of the salon, reassured him as to the success of his
+trick, and a moment later she entered the study accompanied by Monsieur
+Octave de Camps. Going forward to receive his visitor, he was able
+to see through the half-opened door the place where he had thrown the
+letter. Not only had it disappeared, but he detected a movement which
+assured him that Madame de l'Estorade had tucked it away in that part
+of her gown where Louis XIV. did not dare to search for the secrets of
+Mademoiselle d'Hautefort.
+
+"I have come, my dear friend," said Monsieur de Camps, "to get you to go
+with me to Rastignac's, as agreed on last night."
+
+"Very good," said the peer, putting away his papers with a feverish
+haste that plainly indicated he was not in his usual state of mind.
+
+"Don't you feel well?" asked Madame de l'Estorade, who knew her husband
+by heart too well not to be struck by the singular stupefaction of his
+manner, while at the same time, looking in his face, she saw the signs
+of internal convulsion.
+
+"True," said Monsieur de Camps, "you certainly do not look so well as
+usual. If you prefer it, we will put off this visit."
+
+"No, not at all," replied Monsieur de l'Estorade. "I have tired myself
+with this work, and I need the air. But what was the matter with Rene?"
+he inquired of his wife, whose attention he felt was unpleasantly fixed
+upon him. "What made him cry like that?"
+
+"Oh, a mere nothing!" she replied, not relaxing her attention.
+
+"Well, my dear fellow," said the peer, trying to take an easy tone,
+"just let me change my coat and I'll be with you."
+
+When the countess was alone with Monsieur de Camps, she said, rather
+anxiously,--
+
+"Don't you think Monsieur de l'Estorade seems very much upset?"
+
+"Yes; as I said just now, he does not look like himself. But the
+explanation he gave seems sufficient. This office life is bad for the
+health. I have never been as well as since I am actively engaged about
+my iron-works."
+
+"Yes, certainly," said Madame de l'Estorade, with a heavy sigh; "he
+ought to have a more active life. It seems plain that there is something
+amiss with his liver."
+
+"What! because he is so yellow? He has been so ever since I have known
+him."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, I can't be mistaken! There is something seriously the
+matter with him; and if you would kindly do me a service--"
+
+"Madame, I am always at your orders."
+
+"When Monsieur de l'Estorade returns, speak of the injury to Rene's
+finger, and tell me that little wounds like that sometimes have serious
+consequences if not attended to at once, and that will give me an excuse
+to send for Doctor Bianchon."
+
+"Certainly," replied Monsieur de Camps; "but I really don't think a
+physician is necessary. Still, if it reassures you--"
+
+At this moment Monsieur de l'Estorade reappeared. He had almost
+recovered his usual expression of face, but he exhaled a strong odor of
+_melisse des Carmes_, which indicated that he had felt the need of that
+tonic. Monsieur de Camps played his part admirably, and as for Madame
+de l'Estorade it did not cost her much trouble to simulate maternal
+anxiety.
+
+"My dear," she said to her husband, when Monsieur de Camps had delivered
+himself of his medical opinion, "as you return from Monsieur de
+Rastignac's, please call on Doctor Bianchon and ask him to come here."
+
+"Pooh!" said Monsieur de l'Estorade, shrugging his shoulders, "the idea
+of disturbing a busy man like him for what you yourself said was a mere
+nothing!"
+
+"If you won't go, I shall send Lucas; Monsieur de Camps' opinion has
+completely upset me."
+
+"If it pleases you to be ridiculous," said the peer of France, crossly,
+"I have no means of preventing it; but I beg you to remark one thing: if
+people disturb physicians for mere nonsense, they often can't get them
+when they are really wanted."
+
+"Then you won't go for the doctor?"
+
+"Not I," replied Monsieur de l'Estorade; "and if I had the honor of
+being anything in my own house, I should forbid you to send anybody in
+my place."
+
+"My dear, you are the master here, and since you put so much feeling
+into your refusal, let us say no more; I will bear my anxiety as best I
+can."
+
+"Come, de Camps," said Monsieur de l'Estorade; "for if this goes on, I
+shall be sent to order that child's funeral."
+
+"But, my dear husband," said the countess, taking his hand, "you must be
+ill, to say such dreadful things in that cool way. Where is your usual
+patience with my little maternal worries, or your exquisite politeness
+for every one, your wife included?"
+
+"But," said Monsieur de l'Estorade, getting more excited instead of
+calmer, under this form of studied though friendly reproach, "your
+maternal feelings are turning into monomania, and you make life
+intolerable to every one but your children. The devil! suppose they are
+your children; I am their father, and, though I am not adored as
+they are, I have the right to request that my house be not made
+uninhabitable!"
+
+While Monsieur de l'Estorade, striding about the room, delivered himself
+of this philippic, the countess made a despairing sign to Monsieur de
+Camps, as if to ask him whether he did not see most alarming symptoms in
+such a scene. In order to cut short the quarrel of which he had been the
+involuntary cause, the latter said, as if hurried,--
+
+"Come, let us go!"
+
+"Yes," replied Monsieur de l'Estorade, passing out first and neglecting
+to say good-bye to his wife.
+
+"Ah! stay; I have forgotten a message my wife gave me," said Monsieur
+de Camps, turning back to Madame de l'Estorade. "She told me to say she
+would come for you at two o'clock to go and see the spring things at the
+'Jean de Paris,' and she has arranged that after that we shall all four
+go to the flower-show. When we leave Rastignac, l'Estorade and I will
+come back here, and wait for you if you have not returned before us."
+
+Madame de l'Estorade paid little attention to this programme, for a
+flash of light had illumined her mind. As soon as she was alone, she
+took Marie-Gaston's letter from her gown, and, finding it folded in the
+proper manner, she exclaimed,--
+
+"Not a doubt of it! I remember perfectly that I folded it with the
+writing outside, as I put it back into the envelope; he must have read
+it!"
+
+An hour later, Madame de l'Estorade and Madame de Camps met in the same
+salon where they had talked of Sallenauve a few days earlier.
+
+"Good heavens! what is the matter with you?" cried Madame de Camps,
+seeing tears on the face of her friend, who was finishing a letter she
+had written.
+
+Madame de l'Estorade told her all that had happened, and showed her
+Marie-Gaston's letter.
+
+"Are you very sure," asked Madame de Camps, "that your husband has read
+the luckless scrawl?"
+
+"How can I doubt it?" returned Madame de l'Estorade. "The paper can't
+have turned of itself; besides, in recalling the circumstances, I have a
+dim recollection that at the moment when I started to run to Rene I felt
+something drop,--fate willed that I should not stop to pick it up."
+
+"Often, when people strain their memories in that way they fasten on
+some false indication."
+
+"But, my dear friend, the extraordinary change in the face and behavior
+of Monsieur de l'Estorade, coming so suddenly as it did, must have
+been the result of some sudden shock. He looked like a man struck by
+lightning."
+
+"But if you account for the change in his appearance in that way, why
+look for symptoms of something wrong with his liver?"
+
+"Ah! this is not the first time I have seen symptoms of that," replied
+Madame de l'Estorade. "But you know when sick people don't complain, we
+forget about their illness. See," and she pointed to a volume lying open
+beside her; "just before you came in, I found in this medical dictionary
+that persons who suffer from diseases of the liver are apt to be morose,
+irritable, impatient. Well, for some time past, I have noticed a great
+change in my husband's disposition. You yourself mentioned it to me
+the other day. Besides, the scene Monsieur de Camps has just
+witnessed--which is, I may truly say, unprecedented in our household--is
+enough to prove it."
+
+"My dear love, you are like those unpleasant persons who are resolved
+to torture themselves. In the first place, you have looked into medical
+books, which is the very height of imprudence. I defy you to read a
+description of any sort of disease without fancying that either you or
+some friends of yours have the symptoms of it. In the next place, you
+are mixing up things; the effects of fear and of a chronic malady are
+totally different."
+
+"No, I am not mixing them up; I know what I am talking about. You don't
+need to be told that if in our poor human machine some one part gets out
+of order, it is on _that_ that any strong emotion will strike."
+
+"Well," said Madame de Camps, not pursuing the medical discussion, "if
+the letter of that unhappy madman has really fallen into the hands of
+your husband, the peace of your home is seriously endangered; that is
+the point to be discussed."
+
+"There are not two ways to be followed as to that," said Madame de
+l'Estorade. "Monsieur de Sallenauve must never set foot in this house
+again."
+
+"That is precisely what I came to speak about to-day. Do you know that
+last night I did not think you showed the composure which is so marked a
+trait in your character?"
+
+"When?" asked Madame de l'Estorade.
+
+"Why, when you expressed so effusively your gratitude to Monsieur de
+Sallenauve. When I advised you not to avoid him, for fear it would
+induce him to keep at your heels, I never intended that you should
+shower your regard upon his head in a way to turn it. The wife of so
+zealous a dynastic partisan as Monsieur de l'Estorade ought to know what
+the _juste milieu_ is by this time."
+
+"Ah! my dear, I entreat you, don't make fun of my poor husband."
+
+"I am not talking of your husband, I am talking of you. Last night you
+so surprised me that I have come here to take back my words. I like
+people to follow my advice, but I don't like them to go beyond it."
+
+"At any other time I should make you explain what horrible impropriety
+I have committed under your counsel; but fate has interposed and settled
+everything. Monsieur de Sallenauve will, at any cost, disappear from our
+path, and therefore why discuss the degree of kindness one might have
+shown him?"
+
+"But," said Madame de Camps, "since I must tell you all, I have come
+to think him a dangerous acquaintance,--less for you than for some one
+else."
+
+"Who?" asked Madame de l'Estorade.
+
+"Nais. That child, with her passion for her 'preserver,' makes me really
+uneasy."
+
+"Oh!" said the countess, smiling rather sadly, "are you not giving too
+much importance to childish nonsense?"
+
+"Nais is, of course, a child, but a child who will ripen quickly into a
+woman. Did you not tell me yourself that you were sometimes frightened
+at the intuition she showed in matters beyond her years?"
+
+"That is true. But what you call her passion for Monsieur de Sallenauve,
+besides being perfectly natural, is expressed by the dear little thing
+with such freedom and publicity that the sentiment is, it seems to me,
+obviously childlike."
+
+"Well, don't trust to that; especially not after this troublesome being
+ceases to come to your house. Suppose that when the time comes to
+marry your daughter, this fancy should have smouldered in her heart and
+increased; imagine your difficulty!"
+
+"Oh! between now and then, thank Heaven! there's time enough," replied
+Madame de l'Estorade, in a tone of incredulity.
+
+"Between now and then," said Madame de Camps, "Monsieur de Sallenauve
+may have reached a distinction which will put his name on every lip; and
+Nais, with her lively imagination, is more likely than other girls to be
+dazzled by it."
+
+"But, my dear love, look at the disproportion in their ages."
+
+"Monsieur de Sallenauve is thirty, and Nais will soon be fourteen; that
+is precisely the difference between you and Monsieur de l'Estorade."
+
+"Well, you may be right," said Madame de l'Estorade, "and the sort of
+marriage I made from reason Nais may want to make from folly. But you
+needn't be afraid; I will ruin that idol in her estimation."
+
+"But there again, as in the comedy of hatred you mean to play for
+Monsieur de l'Estorade's benefit, you need moderation. If you do not
+manage it by careful transitions, you may miss your end. Never allow
+the influence of circumstances to appear when it is desirable than an
+impulse or an action should seem spontaneous."
+
+"But," said Madame de l'Estorade, excitedly, "do you think that my
+hatred, as you call it, will be acted? I do hate him, that man; he is
+our evil genius!"
+
+"Come, come, my dear, be calm! I don't know you--you, you have always
+been Reason incarnate."
+
+At this moment Lucas entered the room and asked his mistress if she
+would receive _a_ Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau. Madame de l'Estorade
+looked at her friend, as if to consult her.
+
+"He is that organist who was so useful to Monsieur de Sallenauve during
+the election. I don't know what he can want of me."
+
+"Never mind," said Madame de Camps, "receive him. Before beginning
+hostilities it is always well to know what is going on in the enemy's
+camp."
+
+"Show him in," said the countess.
+
+Jacques Bricheteau entered. Expecting to be received in a friendly
+country, he had not taken any particular pains with his dress. An old
+maroon frock-coat to the cut of which it would have been difficult to
+assign a date, a plaid waistcoat buttoned to the throat, surmounted by a
+black cravat worn without a collar and twisted round the neck, yellowish
+trousers, gray stockings, and laced shoes,--such was the more than
+negligent costume in which the organist allowed himself to appear in a
+countess's salon.
+
+Requested briefly to sit down, he said,--
+
+"Madame, I hope I am not indiscreet in thus presenting myself without
+having the honor of being known to you, but Monsieur Marie-Gaston told
+me of your desire that I should give music-lessons to your daughter. At
+first I replied that it was impossible, for all my time was occupied;
+but the prefect of police has just afforded me some leisure by
+dismissing me from a place I filled in his department; therefore I am
+now happy to place myself at your disposal."
+
+"Your dismissal, monsieur, was caused by your activity in Monsieur de
+Sallenauve's election, was it not?" asked Madame de Camps.
+
+"As no reason was assigned for it, I think your conjecture is probably
+correct; especially as in twenty years I have had no trouble whatever
+with my chiefs."
+
+"It can't be denied," said Madame de l'Estorade, sharply, "that you have
+opposed the views of the government by this proceeding."
+
+"Consequently, madame, I have accepted this dismissal as an expected
+evil. What interest, after all, had I in retaining my paltry post,
+compared to that of Monsieur de Sallenauve's election?"
+
+"I am very sorry," resumed Madame de l'Estorade, "to be unable to accept
+the offer you are good enough to make me. But I have not yet considered
+the question of a music-master for my daughter; and, in any case, I
+fear that, in view of your great and recognized talent, your instruction
+would be too advanced for a little girl of fourteen."
+
+"Well," said Jacques Bricheteau, smiling, "no one has recognized my
+talent, madame. Monsieur de Sallenauve and Monsieur Marie-Gaston have
+only heard me once or twice. Apart from that I am the most obscure of
+professors, and perhaps the dullest. But setting aside the question
+of your daughter's master, I wish to speak of a far more important
+interest, which has, in fact, brought me here. I mean Monsieur de
+Sallenauve."
+
+"Has Monsieur de Sallenauve," said Madame de l'Estorade, with marked
+coldness of manner, "sent you here with a message to my husband?"
+
+"No, madame," replied Jacques Bricheteau, "he has unfortunately given me
+no message. I cannot find him. I went to Ville d'Avray this morning, and
+was told that he had started on a journey with Monsieur Marie-Gaston.
+The servant having told me that the object and direction of this journey
+were probably known to you--"
+
+"Not in any way," interrupted Madame de l'Estorade.
+
+Not as yet perceiving that his visit was unacceptable and that
+no explanation was desired, Jacques Bricheteau persisted in his
+statement:--
+
+"This morning, I received a letter from the notary at Arcis-sur-Aube,
+who informs me that my aunt, Mother Marie-des-Anges, desires me to be
+told of a scandalous intrigue now being organized for the purpose of
+ousting Monsieur de Sallenauve from his post as deputy. The absence of
+our friend will seriously complicate the matter. We can take no steps
+without him; and I cannot understand why he should disappear without
+informing those who take the deepest interest in him."
+
+"That he has not informed you is certainly singular," replied Madame
+de l'Estorade, in the same freezing tone; "but as for my husband or me,
+there is nothing to be surprised about."
+
+The meaning of this discourteous answer was too plain for Jacques
+Bricheteau not to perceive it. He looked straight at the countess,
+who lowered her eyes; but the whole expression of her countenance, due
+north, confirmed the meaning he could no longer mistake in her words.
+
+"Pardon me, madame," he said, rising. "I was not aware that the future
+and the reputation of Monsieur de Sallenauve had become indifferent to
+you. Only a moment ago, in your antechamber, when your servant hesitated
+to take in my name, Mademoiselle, your daughter, as soon as she heard I
+was the friend of Monsieur de Sallenauve, took my part warmly; and I
+had the stupidity to suppose that such friendliness was the tone of the
+family."
+
+After this remark, which gave Madame de l'Estorade the full change for
+her coin, Jacques Bricheteau bowed ceremoniously and was about to
+leave the room, when a sudden contradiction of the countess's comedy of
+indifference appeared in the person of Nais, who rushed in exclaiming
+triumphantly,--
+
+"Mamma, a letter from Monsieur de Sallenauve!"
+
+The countess turned crimson.
+
+"What do you mean by running in here like a crazy girl?" she said
+sternly; "and how do you know that this letter is from the person you
+mention?"
+
+"Oh!" replied Nais, twisting the knife in the wound, "when he wrote you
+those letters from Arcis-sur-Aube, I saw his handwriting."
+
+"You are a silly, inquisitive little girl," said her mother, driven by
+these aggravating circumstances quite outside of her usual habits of
+indulgence. "Go to your room." Then she added to Jacques Bricheteau, who
+lingered after the arrival of the letter,--
+
+"Permit me, monsieur."
+
+"It is for me, madame, to ask permission to remain until you have
+read that letter. If _by chance_ Monsieur de Sallenauve gives you any
+particulars about his journey, you will, perhaps, allow me to profit by
+them."
+
+"Monsieur de Sallenauve," said the countess, after reading the letter,
+"requests me to inform my husband that he has gone to Hanwell, county of
+Middlesex, England. You can address him there, monsieur, to the care of
+Doctor Ellis."
+
+Jacques Bricheteau made a second ceremonious bow and left the room.
+
+"Nais has just given you a taste of her quality," said Madame de Camps;
+"but you deserved it,--you really treated that poor man too harshly."
+
+"I could not help it," replied Madame de l'Estorade; "the day began
+wrong, and all the rest follows suit."
+
+"Well, about the letter?"
+
+"It is dreadful; read it yourself."
+
+  Madame,--I was able to overtake Lord Lewin, the Englishman of whom
+  I spoke to you, a few miles out of Paris. Providence sent him to
+  Ville d'Avray to save us from an awful misfortune. Possessing an
+  immense fortune, he is, like so many of his countrymen, a victim
+  to _spleen_, and it is only his natural force of character which
+  has saved him from the worst results of that malady. His
+  indifference to life and the perfect coolness with which he spoke
+  of suicide won him Marie-Gaston's friendship in Florence. Lord
+  Lewin, having studied the subject of violent emotions, is very
+  intimate with Doctor Ellis, a noted alienist, and it not
+  infrequently happens that he spends two or three weeks with him at
+  Hanwell, Middlesex Co., one of the best-managed lunatic asylums in
+  England,--Doctor Ellis being in charge of it.
+
+  When he arrived at Ville d'Avray, Lord Lewin saw at once that
+  Marie-Gaston had all the symptoms of incipient mania. Invisible to
+  other eyes, they were apparent to those of Lord Lewin. In speaking
+  to me of our poor friend, he used the word _chiffonait_,--meaning
+  that he picked up rubbish as he walked, bits of straw, scraps of
+  paper, rusty nails, and put them carefully into his pocket. That,
+  he informed me, is a marked symptom well known to those who study
+  the first stages of insanity. Enticing him to the subject of their
+  conversations in Florence, he obtained the fact that the poor
+  fellow meditated suicide, and the reason for it. Every night,
+  Gaston told him, his wife appeared to him, and he had now resolved
+  to _rejoin_ her, to use his own expression. Instead of opposing
+  this idea, Lord Lewin took a tone of approval. "But," he said,
+  "men such as we ought not to die in a common way. I myself have
+  always had the idea of going to South America, where, not far from
+  Paraguay, there is one of the greatest cataracts in the world,
+  --the Saut de Gayra. The mists rising from it can be seen at a
+  distance of many miles. An enormous volume of water is suddenly
+  forced through a narrow channel, and rushes with terrific force
+  and the noise of a hundred thunder-claps into the gulf below.
+  There, indeed, one could find a noble death."
+
+  "Let us go there," said Gaston.
+
+  "Yes," said Lord Lewin, "I am ready to go at once; we must sail
+  from England; it will take a few weeks to get there."
+
+  In this way, madame, he enticed our poor friend to England, where,
+  as you will already have supposed, he has placed him in charge of
+  Doctor Ellis, who, they say, has not his equal in Europe for the
+  treatment of this particular form of mental aberration.
+
+  I joined them at Beauvais, and have followed them to Hanwell,
+  taking care not to be seen by Marie-Gaston. Here I shall be
+  detained until the doctor is able to give a decided opinion as to
+  the probable results of our friend's condition. I greatly fear,
+  however, that I cannot possibly return to Paris in time for the
+  opening of the session. But I shall write to the president of the
+  Chamber, and in case any questions regarding my absence should
+  arise, may I ask Monsieur de l'Estorade to do me the favor of
+  stating that, to his knowledge, I have been absolutely forced by
+  sufficient reasons to absent myself? He will, of course,
+  understand that I ought not to explain under any circumstances the
+  nature of the affair which has taken me out of the country at this
+  unlucky time; but I am certain it will be all-sufficient if a man
+  of Monsieur de l'Estorade's position and character guarantees the
+  necessity of my absence.
+
+  I beg you to accept, madame, etc., etc.
+
+As Madame de Camps finished reading the letter, the sound of a carriage
+entering the courtyard was heard.
+
+"There are the gentlemen," said the countess. "Now, had I better show
+this letter to my husband or not?"
+
+"You can't avoid doing so," replied Madame de Camps. "In the first
+place, Nais will chatter about it. Besides, Monsieur de Sallenauve
+addresses you in a most respectful manner, and there is nothing in the
+letter to feed your husband's notion."
+
+"Who is that common-looking man I met on the stairs talking with Nais?"
+said Monsieur de l'Estorade to his wife, as he entered the salon.
+
+As Madame de l'Estorade did not seem to understand him, he added,--
+
+"He is pitted with the small-pox, and wears a maroon coat and shabby
+hat."
+
+"Oh!" said Madame de Camps, addressing her friend; "it must be the man
+who was here just now. Nais has seized the occasion to inquire about her
+idol."
+
+"But who is he?" repeated Monsieur de l'Estorade.
+
+"I think his name is Bricheteau; he is a friend of Monsieur de
+Sallenauve," replied Madame de Camps.
+
+Seeing the cloud on her husband's brow, Madame de l'Estorade hastened to
+explain the double object of the organist's visit, and she gave him the
+letter of the new deputy. While he was reading it, Madame de l'Estorade
+said, aside, to Monsieur de Camps,--
+
+"He seems to me much better, don't you think so?"
+
+"Yes; there's scarcely a trace left of what we saw this morning. He was
+too wrought up about his work. Going out did him good; and yet he met
+with a rather unpleasant surprise at Rastignac's."
+
+"What was it?" asked Madame de l'Estorade, anxiously.
+
+"It seems that the affairs of your friend Sallenauve are going wrong."
+
+"Thanks for the commission!" said Monsieur de l'Estorade, returning the
+letter to his wife. "I shall take very good care not to guarantee his
+conduct in any respect."
+
+"Have you heard anything disagreeable about him?" asked Madame de
+l'Estorade, endeavoring to give a tone of indifference to her question.
+
+"Yes; Rastignac has just told me of letters received from Arcis, where
+they have made the most compromising discoveries."
+
+"Well, what did I tell you?" cried Madame de l'Estorade.
+
+"How do you mean? What _did_ you tell me?"
+
+"I told you some time ago that the acquaintance was one that had better
+be allowed to die out. I remember using that very expression."
+
+"But _I_ didn't draw him here."
+
+"Well, you can't say that I did; and just now, before I knew of these
+discoveries you speak of, I was telling Madame de Camps of another
+reason why it was desirable to put an end to the acquaintance."
+
+"Yes," said Madame de Camps, "your wife and I were just discussing, as
+you came in, the sort of frenzy Nais has taken for what she calls her
+'preserver.' We agreed in thinking there might be future danger in that
+direction."
+
+"From all points of view," said Monsieur de l'Estorade, "it is an
+unwholesome acquaintance."
+
+"It seems to me," said Monsieur de Camps, who was not in the secret of
+these opinions, "that you go too fast. They may have made what they call
+compromising discoveries about Monsieur de Sallenauve; but what is
+the value of those discoveries? Don't hang him till a verdict has been
+rendered."
+
+"My husband can do as he likes," said Madame de l'Estorade; "but as for
+me, I shall drop the acquaintance at once. I want my friends to be, like
+Caesar's wife, beyond suspicion."
+
+"Unfortunately," said Monsieur de l'Estorade, "there's that unfortunate
+obligation--"
+
+"But, my dear," cried Madame de l'Estorade, "if a galley-slave saved my
+life, must I admit him to my salon?"
+
+"Oh! dearest," exclaimed Madame de Camps, "you are going too far."
+
+"At any rate," said the peer of France, "there is no need to make an
+open rupture; let things end quietly between us. The dear man is now in
+foreign parts, and who knows if he means to return?"
+
+"What!" exclaimed Monsieur de Camps, "has he left the country for a mere
+rumor?"
+
+"Not precisely for that reason," said Monsieur de l'Estorade; "he found
+a pretext. But once out of France, you know--"
+
+"I don't believe in that conclusion," said Madame de l'Estorade; "I
+think he will return, and if so, my dear, you really must take your
+courage in both hands and cut short his acquaintance."
+
+"Is that," said Monsieur de l'Estorade, looking attentively at his wife,
+"your actual desire?"
+
+"Mine?" she replied; "if I had my way, I should write to him and say
+that he would do us a favor by not reappearing in our house. As that
+would be rather a difficult letter to write, let us write it together,
+if you are willing."
+
+"We will see about it," said Monsieur de l'Estorade, brightening up
+under this suggestion; "there's no danger in going slow. The most
+pressing thing at this moment is the flower-show; I think it closes at
+four o'clock; if so, we have only an hour before us."
+
+Madame de l'Estorade, who had dressed before the arrival of Madame de
+Camps, rang for her maid to bring her a bonnet and shawl. While she
+was putting them on before a mirror, her husband came up behind her and
+whispered in her ear,--
+
+"Then you really love me, Renee?"
+
+"Are you crazy, to ask me such a question as that?" she answered,
+looking at him affectionately.
+
+"Well, then, I must make a confession: that letter, which Philippe
+brought--I read it."
+
+"Then I am not surprised at the change in your looks and manner," said
+his wife. "I, too, will make you a confession: that letter to Monsieur
+de Sallenauve, giving him his dismissal,--I have written it; you will
+find it in my blotting-book. If you think it will do, send it."
+
+Quite beside himself with delight at finding his proposed successor
+so readily sacrificed, Monsieur de l'Estorade did not control his joy;
+taking his wife in his arms, he kissed her effusively.
+
+"Well done!" cried Monsieur de Camps, laughing; "you have improved since
+morning."
+
+"This morning I was a fool," said the peer of France, hunting in the
+blotting-book for the letter, which he might have had the grace to
+believe in without seeing.
+
+"Hush!" said Madame de Camps, in a low voice to her husband, to prevent
+further remarks. "I'll explain this queer performance to you by and by."
+
+Rejuvenated by ten years at least, the peer of France offered his arm
+to Madame de Camps, while the amateur iron-master offered his to the
+countess.
+
+"But Nais!" said Monsieur de l'Estorade, noticing the melancholy face of
+his daughter, who was looking over the stairs at the party. "Isn't she
+going too?"
+
+"No," said the countess; "I am displeased with her."
+
+"Ah, bah!" said the father, "I proclaim an amnesty. Get your hat," he
+added, addressing his daughter.
+
+Nais looked at her mother to obtain a ratification, which her knowledge
+of the hierarchy of power in that establishment made her judge to be
+necessary.
+
+"You can come," said her mother, "if your father wishes it."
+
+While they waited in the antechamber for the child, Monsieur de
+l'Estorade noticed that Lucas was standing up beside a half-finished
+letter.
+
+"Whom are you writing to?" he said to his old servant.
+
+"To my son," replied Lucas, "who is very impatient to get his sergeant's
+stripes. I am telling him that Monsieur le comte has promised to speak
+to his colonel for him."
+
+"True, true," said the peer of France; "it slipped my memory. Remind me
+of it to-morrow morning, and I'll do it the first thing after I am up."
+
+"Monsieur le comte is very good--"
+
+"And here," continued his master, feeling in his waistcoat pocket, and
+producing three gold pieces, "send that to the corporal, and tell him to
+drink a welcome to the stripes."
+
+Lucas was stupefied. Never had he seen his master so expansive or so
+generous.
+
+When Nais returned, Madame de l'Estorade, who had been admiring herself
+for her courage in showing displeasure to her daughter for half an hour,
+embraced her as if they were meeting after an absence of two years;
+after which they started for the Luxembourg, where in those days the
+Horticultural Society held its exhibitions.
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE WAY TO MANAGE POLITICAL INTRIGUES
+
+Toward the close of the audience given by the minister of Public
+Works to Monsieur Octave de Camps, who was presented by the Comte de
+l'Estorade, an usher entered the room, and gave the minister the card
+of the attorney-general, Monsieur Vinet, and that of Monsieur Maxime de
+Trailles.
+
+"Very good," said Rastignac; "say to those gentlemen that I will receive
+them in a few moments."
+
+Shortly after, Monsieur de l'Estorade and Monsieur de Camps rose to take
+leave; and it was then that Rastignac very succinctly let the peer know
+of the danger looming on the horizon of his friend Sallenauve. Monsieur
+de l'Estorade exclaimed against the word _friend_.
+
+"I don't know, my dear minister," he said, "why you insist on giving
+that title to a man who is, really and truly, a mere acquaintance, and,
+I may add, a passing acquaintance, if the rumors you have just mentioned
+to us take actual shape."
+
+"I am glad to hear you say that," said the minister, "because the
+friendly relations which I supposed you to hold towards him would have
+embarrassed me a good deal in the hostilities which I foresee must break
+out between him and the government."
+
+"Most grateful, I am sure, for that sentiment," replied the peer of
+France; "but be kind enough to remember that I give you _carte blanche_.
+You are free to handle Monsieur de Sallenauve as your political enemy,
+without a moment's fear of troubling me."
+
+Thereupon they parted, and Messieurs Vinet and de Trailles were
+introduced.
+
+The attorney-general, Vinet, was the most devoted and the most consulted
+champion of the government among its various officials. In a possible
+reconstitution of the ministry he was obviously the candidate for the
+portfolio of justice. Being thoroughly initiated into all the business
+of that position, and versed in its secret dealings, nothing was hatched
+in that department on which he was not consulted, if not actually
+engaged. The electoral matters of Arcis-sur-Aube had a double claim to
+his interest, partly on account of his wife, a Chargeboeuf of Brie, and
+a relative of the Cinq-Cygnes, but chiefly because of the office held
+by his son in the local administration. So that when, earlier in the
+morning, Monsieur de Trailles carried to Rastignac a letter from
+Madame Beauvisage, wife of the defeated governmental candidate, full
+of statements injurious to the new deputy, the minister had replied,
+without listening to any explanations,--
+
+"See Vinet about it; and tell him, from me, to come here with you."
+
+Notified by de Trailles, who offered to fetch him in his carriage, Vinet
+was ready enough to go to the minister; and now that we find the three
+together in Rastignac's study, we shall be likely to obtain some better
+knowledge of the sort of danger hanging over Sallenauve's head than
+we gained from Jacques Bricheteau's or Monsieur de l'Estorade's very
+insufficient information.
+
+"You say, my dear friends," said the minister, "that we can win a game
+against that puritan, who seemed to me, when I met him at l'Estorade's
+last evening, to be an out-and-out enemy to the government?"
+
+Admitted to this interview without official character, Maxime de
+Trailles knew life too well to take upon himself to answer this query.
+The attorney-general, on the contrary, having a most exalted sense
+of his own political importance, did not miss the opportunity to put
+himself forward.
+
+"When Monsieur de Trailles communicated to me this morning a letter from
+Madame Beauvisage," he hastened to say, "I had just received one from my
+son, conveying to me very much the same information. I am of Monsieur
+de Trailles' opinion, that the affair may become very serious for our
+adversary, provided, however, that it is well managed."
+
+"I know, as yet, very little about the affair," remarked the minister.
+"As I wished for your opinion in the first place, my dear Vinet, I
+requested Monsieur de Trailles to postpone his explanation of its
+details until you could be present at the discussion."
+
+This time Maxime was plainly authorized and even required to speak, but
+again Vinet stole the opportunity.
+
+"Here is what my son Olivier writes me, and it is confirmed by the
+letter of Madame Beauvisage, in whom, be it said in passing, my dear
+minister, you have lost a most excellent deputy. It appears that on the
+last market-day Maitre Achille Pigoult, who is left in charge of the
+affairs of the new deputy, received a visit from a peasant-woman of
+Romilly, a large village in the neighborhood of Arcis. The mysterious
+father of the deputy, the so-called Marquis de Sallenauve, declared
+himself to be the last remaining scion of the family; but it seems
+that this woman produced papers in due form, which show her to be
+a Sallenauve in the direct line, and within the degree of parentage
+required to constitute her an heir."
+
+"Was she as ignorant of the existence of the Marquis de Sallenauve as
+the marquis seems to have been of hers?" asked Rastignac.
+
+"That does not clearly appear from what she says," replied the
+attorney-general; "but it might so happen among relations so curiously
+placed."
+
+"Go on, if you please," said Rastignac; "before we draw conclusions we
+must know the facts, which, as you are aware, is not always done in the
+Chamber of deputies."
+
+"Fortunately, sometimes, for the ministers," remarked Maxime, laughing.
+
+"Monsieur is right," said Vinet; "hail to the man who can muddle
+questions. But to return to our peasant-woman. Not being satisfied,
+naturally, with Maitre Pigoult's reception of her news, she went into
+the market-square, and there by the help of a legal practitioner from
+her village, who seems to have accompanied her, she spread about reports
+which are very damaging to my worthy colleague in the Chamber. She said,
+for instance, that it was not true that the Marquis de Sallenauve was
+his father; that it was not even true that the Marquis de Sallenauve was
+still living; and moreover that the spurious Sallenauve was a man of no
+heart, who had repudiated his real parents,--adding that she could, by
+the help of the able man who accompanied her, compel him to disgorge the
+Sallenauve property and 'clear out' of the place."
+
+"I have no objection to that," said Rastignac; "but this woman must, of
+course, have papers to prove her allegations?"
+
+"That is the weak point of the matter," replied Vinet. "But let me go
+on with my story. The government has at Arcis a most intelligent and
+devoted functionary in the commissary of police. Circulating among the
+groups, as he usually does on market days, he heard these statements
+of the peasant-woman, and reported them at once, not to the mayor, who
+might not have heeded them, but to Madame Beauvisage."
+
+"_Ah ca_!" said Rastignac, addressing Maxime; "was the candidate you
+gave us such a dolt as that?"
+
+"Just the man you needed," replied Maxime,--"silly to the last degree,
+and capable of being wound round anybody's finger. I'll go any lengths
+to repair that loss."
+
+"Madame Beauvisage," continued Vinet, "wished to speak with the woman
+herself, and she ordered Groslier--that's the commissary of police--to
+fetch her with a threatening air to the mayor's office, so as to give
+her an idea that the authorities disapproved of her conduct."
+
+"Did Madame Beauvisage concoct that plan?" asked Rastignac.
+
+"Yes," replied Maxime, "she is a very clever woman."
+
+"Questioned closely by the mayoress," continued Vinet, "who took care to
+have the mayor present, the peasant-woman was far from categorical. Her
+grounds for asserting that the new deputy could not be the son of the
+marquis, and the assurance with which she stated that the latter had
+long been dead were not, as it appears, very clearly established; vague
+rumors and the deductions drawn by the village practitioner seem to be
+all there was to them."
+
+"Then," said Rastignac, "what does all this lead to?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing from a legal point of view," replied the
+attorney-general; "for supposing the woman were able to establish the
+fact that this recognition of the said Dorlange was a mere pretence, she
+has no status on which to proceed farther. By Article 339 of the Civil
+Code direct heirship alone has the right to attack the recognition of
+natural children."
+
+"Your balloon is collapsing fast," said the minister.
+
+"So that the woman," continued Vinet, "has no object in proceeding, for
+she can't inherit; it belongs to the government to pursue the case of
+supposition of person; she can do no more than denounce the fact."
+
+"From which you conclude?" said Rastignac, with that curtness of speech
+which to a prolix speaker is a warning to be concise.
+
+"From which I conclude, judicially speaking, that the Romilly
+peasant-woman, so far as she is concerned, will have her trouble for her
+pains; but, speaking politically, the thing takes quite another aspect."
+
+"Let us see the political side," said the minister; "up to this point, I
+see nothing."
+
+"In the first place," replied the attorney-general, "you will admit that
+it is always possible to bring a bad case?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And I don't suppose it would signify much to you if the woman did
+embark in a matter in which she can lose nothing but her costs?"
+
+"No, I assure you I am wholly indifferent."
+
+"In any case, I should have advised you to let things take their course.
+The Beauvisage husband and wife have engaged to pay the costs and also
+the expense of keeping the peasant-woman and her counsel in Paris during
+the inquiry."
+
+"Then," said Rastignac, still pressing for a conclusion, "the case is
+really begun. What will be the result?"
+
+"What will be the result?" cried the attorney-general, getting excited;
+"why, anything you please if, _before the case comes for trial_,
+your newspapers comment upon it, and your friends spread reports
+and insinuations. What will result? why, an immense fall in public
+estimation for our adversary suspected of stealing a name which does
+not belong to him! What will result? why, the opportunity for a fierce
+challenge in the Chamber."
+
+"Which you will take upon yourself to make?" asked Rastignac.
+
+"Ah! I don't know about that. The matter would have to be rather
+more studied, and the turn the case might take more certain, if I had
+anything to do with it."
+
+"So, for the present," remarked the minister, "the whole thing amounts
+to an application of Basile's famous theory about calumny: 'good to set
+a-going, because some of it will always stick.'"
+
+"Calumny!" exclaimed Vinet, "that remains to be seen. Perhaps a good
+round of gossip is all that can be made of it. Monsieur de Trailles,
+here, knows better than I do the state of things down there. He can
+tell you that the disappearance of the father immediately after the
+recognition had a bad effect upon people's minds; and every one in
+Arcis has a vague impression of secret plotting in this affair of the
+election. You don't know, my dear minister, all that can be made in the
+provinces of a judicial affair when adroitly manipulated,--cooked, as I
+may say. In my long and laborious career at the bar I saw plenty of that
+kind of miracle. But a parliamentary debate is another thing. In that
+there's no need of proof; one can kill one's man with probabilities and
+assertions, if hotly maintained."
+
+"But, to come to the point," said Rastignac, "how do you think the
+affair ought to be managed?"
+
+"In the first place," replied Vinet, "I should leave the Beauvisage
+people to pay all costs of whatever kind, inasmuch as they propose to do
+so."
+
+"Do I oppose that?" said the minister. "Have I the right or the means to
+do so?"
+
+"The affair," continued Vinet, "should be placed in the hands of some
+capable and wily solicitor, like Desroches, for example, Monsieur de
+Trailles' lawyer. He'll know how to put flesh on the bones of a case you
+justly consider rather thin."
+
+"Well, it is certainly not my place to say to Monsieur de Trailles
+or any other man, 'I forbid you to employ whom you will as your
+solicitor.'"
+
+"Then we need some pleader who can talk in a moving way about that
+sacred thing the Family, and put himself into a state of indignation
+about these surreptitious and furtive ways of entering its honored
+enclosure."
+
+"Desroches can point out some such person to you. The government cannot
+prevent a man from saying what he pleases."
+
+"But," interposed Maxime, who was forced out of his passive role by the
+minister's coldness, "is _not preventing_ all the help we are to expect
+in this affair from the government?"
+
+"You don't expect us, I hope, to take this matter upon ourselves?"
+
+"No, of course not; but we have certainly supposed that you would take
+some interest in the matter."
+
+"But how?--in what way?"
+
+"Well, as Monsieur le procureur said just now, by giving a hint to the
+subsidized newspapers, by stirring up your friends to spread the news,
+by using a certain influence which power always exerts on the minds of
+magistrates."
+
+"Thank you, no!" replied Rastignac. "When you want the government for
+an accomplice, my dear Maxime, you must provide a better-laid plot
+than that. From your manner this morning I supposed there was really
+something in all this, and so I ventured to disturb our excellent
+attorney-general, who knows how I value his advice. But really, your
+scheme seems to me too transparent and also too narrow not to be doomed
+to inevitable defeat. If I were not married, and could pretend to the
+hand of Mademoiselle Beauvisage, perhaps I should feel differently; of
+course you will do as you think best. I do not say that the government
+will not wish you well in your attempt, but it certainly cannot descend
+to make it with you."
+
+"But see," said Vinet, interposing to cut off Maxime's reply, which
+would doubtless have been bitter; "suppose we send the affair to the
+criminal courts, and the peasant-woman, instigated by the Beauvisage
+couple, should denounce the man who had sworn before a notary, and
+offered himself for election falsely, as a Sallenauve: the question is
+one for the court of assizes."
+
+"But proofs? I return to that, you must have proof," said Rastignac.
+"Have you even a shadow of it?"
+
+"You said yourself, just now," remarked Maxime, "that it was always
+possible to bring a bad case."
+
+"A civil case, yes; but to fail in a criminal case is a far more serious
+matter. It would be a pretty thing if you were shown not to have a
+leg to stand on, and the case ended in a decision of _non-lieu_. You
+couldn't find a better way to put our enemy on a pedestal as high as the
+column of July."
+
+"So," said Maxime, "you see absolutely nothing that can be done?"
+
+"For us, no. For you, my dear Maxime, who have no official character,
+and who, if need be, can support the attack on Monsieur de Sallenauve
+pistol in hand, as it were, nothing hinders you from proceeding in the
+matter."
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Maxime, bitterly, "I'm a sort of free lance."
+
+"Not at all; you are a man intuitively convinced of facts impossible
+to prove legally, and you do not give way before the judgment of God or
+man."
+
+Monsieur de Trailles rose angrily. Vinet rose also, and, shaking hands
+with Rastignac as he took leave of him, he said,--
+
+"I don't deny that your course is a prudent one, and I don't say that in
+your place I should not do the same thing."
+
+"Adieu, Maxime; without bitterness, I hope," said Rastignac to Monsieur
+de Trailles, who bowed coldly and with dignity.
+
+When the two conspirators were alone in the antechamber, Maxime turned
+to his companion.
+
+"Do you understand such squeamishness?" he asked.
+
+"Perfectly," replied Vinet, "and I wonder to see a clever man like you
+so duped."
+
+"Yes, duped to make you lose your time and I mine by coming here to
+listen to a lecture on virtue!"
+
+"That's not it; but I do think you guileless to be taken in by that
+refusal to co-operate."
+
+"What! do you think--"
+
+"I think that this affair is risky; if it succeeds, the government, arms
+folded, will reap the benefit. But if on the contrary we fail, it will
+not take a share in the defeat. But you may be sure of this, for I
+know Rastignac well: without seeming to know anything, and without
+compromising himself in any way, he will help us, and perhaps more
+usefully than by open connivance. Think! did he say a single word on
+the morality of the affair? Didn't he say, again and again, 'I don't
+oppose--I have no right to prevent'? And as to the venom of the case,
+the only fault he found was that it wasn't sure to kill. But in truth,
+my dear monsieur, this is going to be a hard pull, and we shall want all
+the cleverness of that fellow Desroches to get us through."
+
+"Then you think I had better see him?"
+
+"Better see him! why, my good friend, you ought to go to him at once."
+
+"Wouldn't it be better if he talked with you?"
+
+"Oh! no, no!" exclaimed Vinet. "I may be the man to put the question
+in the Chamber; and if Desroches were seen with me, I should lose my
+virginity."
+
+So saying, he took leave of Maxime with some haste, on the ground that
+he ought then to be at the Chamber.
+
+"But I," said Maxime, running after him,--"suppose I want to consult you
+in the matter?"
+
+"I leave to-night for my district, to get things into order before the
+opening of the new session."
+
+"But about bringing up the question which you say may devolve on you?"
+
+"I or another. I will hasten back as soon as I can; but you understand,
+I must put my department in order for a six months' absence."
+
+"A good journey to you, then, Monsieur le procureur-general," replied
+Maxime, sarcastically.
+
+Left to himself, Monsieur de Trailles had a period of discouragement,
+resulting from the discovery that these two political Bertrands meant
+that his paw should pull the chestnuts from the fire. Rastignac's
+behavior particularly galled him. His mind went back to their first
+interview at Madame Restaud's, twenty years earlier, when he himself
+held the sceptre of fashion, and Rastignac, a poor student, neither knew
+how to come into a room nor how to leave it. [See "Pere Goriot."] And
+now Rastignac was peer of France and minister, while he, Maxime, become
+his agent, was obliged with folded arms to hear himself told that his
+plot was weak and he must carry it out alone, if at all.
+
+But this discouragement did not last.
+
+"Yes!" he cried to himself, "I _will_ carry it out; my instinct tells
+me there is something in it. What nonsense!--a Dorlange, a nobody, to
+attempt to checkmate Maxime de Trailles and make a stepping-stone of my
+defeat! To my solicitor's," he said to the coachman, opening the door of
+the carriage himself.
+
+Desroches was at home; and Monsieur de Trailles was immediately admitted
+into his study.
+
+Desroches was a lawyer who had had, like Raffaelle, several manners.
+First, possessor of a practice without clients, he had made fish of
+every case that came into his net; and he felt himself, in consequence,
+little respected by the court. But he was a hard worker, well versed in
+all the ins and outs of chicanery, a keen observer, and an intelligent
+reader of the movements of the human heart. Consequently he had made for
+himself, in course of time, a very good practice; he had married a rich
+woman, and the moment that he thought himself able to do without crooked
+ways he had seriously renounced them. In 1839 Desroches had become an
+honest and skilful solicitor: that is to say, he assumed the interests
+of his clients with warmth and ability; he never counselled an openly
+dishonorable proceeding, still less would he have lent a hand to it.
+As to that fine flower of delicacy to be met with in Derville and some
+others like him, besides the sad fact that it is difficult to keep its
+fragrance from evaporating in this business world of which Monsieur de
+Talleyrand says, "Business means getting the property of others," it is
+certain that it can never be added to any second state of existence.
+The loss of that bloom of the soul, like that of other virginities, is
+irreparable. Desroches had not aspired to restore it to himself. He
+no longer risked anything ignoble or dishonest, but the good tricks
+admitted the code of procedure, the good traps, the good treacheries
+which could be legitimately played off upon an adversary, he was very
+ready to undertake.
+
+Desroches was moreover a man of parts and witty; loving the pleasures of
+the table, and like all men perpetually the slaves of imperious toil,
+he felt the need of vigorous amusement, taken on the wing and highly
+spiced. While purifying after a fashion his judicial life, he still
+continued the legal adviser of artists, men of letters, actresses,
+courtesans, and elegant bohemians like Maxime de Trailles, because he
+liked to live their life; they were sympathetic to him as he to them.
+Their witty _argot_, their easy morals, their rather loose adventures,
+their expedients, their brave and honorable toil, in a word, their
+greatness and their weakness,--he understood it all marvellously well;
+and, like an ever-indulgent providence, he lent them his aid whenever
+they asked for it. But in order to conceal from his dignified and more
+valuable clients whatever might be compromising in the _clientele_ he
+really preferred, Desroches had his days of domesticity when he was
+husband and father, especially on Sundays. He appeared in the Bois de
+Boulogne in a modest caleche beside his wife (whose ugliness revealed
+the size of her _dot_), with three children on the front seat, who were
+luckless enough to resemble their mother. This family picture, these
+virtuous Dominical habits, recalled so little the week-day Desroches,
+dining in cafes with all the male and female _viveurs_ of renown,
+that one of them, Malaga, a circus-rider, famous for her wit and vim,
+remarked that lawyers ought not to be allowed to masquerade in that way
+and deceive the public with fictitious family joys.
+
+It was to this relative integrity that de Trailles now went for counsel,
+as he never failed to do in all the many difficulties he encountered in
+life. Following a good habit, Desroches listened, without interrupting,
+to the long explanation of the case submitted to him. As Maxime hid
+nothing from this species of confessor, he gave his reasons for wishing
+to injure Sallenauve, representing him, in all good faith, as having
+usurped the name under which he was elected to the Chamber,--his hatred
+making him take the possibility for positive evidence.
+
+In his heart, Desroches did not want to take charge of an affair in
+which he saw not the slightest chance of success; but he showed his lax
+integrity by talking over the affair with his client as if it were an
+ordinary case of legal practice, instead of telling him frankly his
+opinion that this pretended "case" was a mere intrigue. The number
+of things done in the domain of evil by connivance in speech, without
+proceeding to the actual collusion of action, are incalculable.
+
+"In the first place," said Desroches, when the matter was all explained,
+"a civil suit is not to be thought of. Your Romilly peasant-woman might
+have her hands full of proofs, but she has no ground herself to stand
+upon; she has no legal interest in contesting the rights of this
+recognized natural son."
+
+"Yes, that is what Vinet said just now."
+
+"As for the criminal case, you could, no doubt, compel it by giving
+information to the police authorities of this alleged imposture--"
+
+"Vinet," interrupted Maxime, "inclined to the criminal proceeding."
+
+"Yes, but there are a great many objections to it. In the first place,
+in order that the complaint be received at all, you must produce
+a certain amount of proof; then, supposing it is received, and the
+authorities are determined to pursue the case, you must have more
+evidence of criminality than you have now; and, moreover, supposing that
+you can show that the so-called Marquis de Sallenauve committed a fraud,
+how will you prove that the so-called son was privy to it? He might have
+been the dupe of some political schemer."
+
+"But what interest could such a schemer have in giving Dorlange the many
+advantages he has derived from the recognition?"
+
+"Ah! my dear fellow, in political manners all queer proceedings are
+possible; there is no such fertile source for compilers of _causes
+celebres_ and novelists. In the eyes of the law, you must remember, the
+counterfeiting of a person is not always a crime."
+
+"How so?" asked Maxime.
+
+"Here," said Desroches, taking up the Five Codes; "do me the favor to
+read Article 5 of the Penal Code, the only one which gives an opening to
+the case you have in mind."
+
+Maxime read aloud the article, which was as follows:--
+
+"'Any functionary or public officer who, in the exercise of his
+function, shall commit forgery--either by false signatures, by
+alterations of deeds, writings, or signatures, or by counterfeiting
+persons--' There, you see," said Maxime, interrupting himself,--"'by
+counterfeiting persons--'"
+
+"Go on," insisted Desroches.
+
+"'--by counterfeiting persons,'" resumed de Trailles, "'either by
+writings made or intercalated in the public records or other documents,
+shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labor for life.'"
+
+Maxime lingered lovingly over the last words, which gave his revenge a
+foretaste of the fate that awaited Sallenauve.
+
+"My dear count," said Desroches, "you do as the barristers do; they read
+to the jury only so much of a legal document as suits their point of
+view. You pay no attention to the fact that the only persons affected by
+this article are _functionaries_ or _public officers_."
+
+Maxime re-read the article, and convinced himself of the truth of that
+remark.
+
+"But," he objected, "there must be something elsewhere about such a
+crime when committed by private individuals."
+
+"No, there is not; you can trust my knowledge of jurisprudence,--the
+Code is absolutely silent in that direction."
+
+"Then the crime we wish to denounce can be committed with impunity?"
+
+"Its repression is always doubtful," replied Desroches. "Judges do
+sometimes make up for the deficiency of the Code in this respect. Here,"
+he added, turning over the leaves of a book of reference,--"here are two
+decisions of the court of assizes, reported in Carnot's Commentary on
+the Penal Code: one of July 7, 1814, the other April 24, 1818,--both
+confirmed by the court of appeals, which condemn for forgery, by
+'counterfeiting persons,' individuals who were neither functionaries
+nor public officers: but these decisions, unique in law, rest on the
+authority of an article in which the crime they punish is not even
+mentioned; and it is only by elaborate reasoning that they contrived to
+make this irregular application of it. You can understand, therefore,
+how very doubtful the issue of such a case would be, because in the
+absence of a positive rule you can never tell how the magistrates might
+decide."
+
+"Consequently, your opinion, like Rastignac's, is that we had better
+send our peasant-woman back to Romilly and drop the whole matter?"
+
+"There is always something to be done if one knows how to set about it,"
+replied Desroches. "There is a point that neither you nor Rastignac nor
+Vinet seems to have thought of; and that is, to proceed in a criminal
+case against a member of the national representation, except for
+flagrant crime, requires the consent and authority of the Chamber."
+
+"True," said Maxime, "but I don't see how a new difficulty is going to
+help us."
+
+"You wouldn't be sorry to send your adversary with the galleys," said
+Desroches, laughing.
+
+"A villain," added Maxime, "who may make me lose a rich marriage; a
+fellow who poses for stern virtue, and then proceeds to trickery of this
+kind!"
+
+"Well, you must resign yourself to a less glorious result; but you can
+make a pretty scandal, and destroy the reputation of your man; and that
+ought, it seems to me, to serve your ends."
+
+"Of course,--better that than nothing."
+
+"Well, then, here's what I advise. Don't let your peasant-woman lodge
+her complaint before the criminal court, but make her place in the
+hands of the president of the Chamber of deputies a simple request for
+permission to proceed. Probably the permission will not be granted, and
+the affair will have to stop at that stage; but the matter being once
+made known will circulate through the Chambers, the newspapers will get
+hold of it and make a stir, and the ministry, _sub rosa_, can envenom
+the vague accusation through its friends."
+
+"_Parbleu_! my dear fellow," cried Maxime, delighted to find a way
+open to his hatred, "you've a strong head,--stronger than that of these
+so-called statesmen. But this request for permission addressed to the
+president of the Chamber, who is to draw it up?"
+
+"Oh! not I," said Desroches, who did not wish to mix himself up any
+farther in this low intrigue. "It isn't legal assistance that you
+want; this is simply firing your first gun, and I don't undertake that
+business. But you can find plenty of briefless barristers always ready
+to put their finger in the political pie. Massol, for instance, can draw
+it up admirably. But you must not tell him that the idea came from me."
+
+"Oh! as for that," said Maxime, "I'll take it all on my own shoulders.
+Perhaps in this form Rastignac may come round to the project."
+
+"Yes, but take care you don't make an enemy of Vinet, who will think you
+very impertinent to have an idea which ought, naturally, to have come
+into the head of so great a parliamentary tactician as himself."
+
+"Well, before long," said Maxime, rising, "I hope to bring the Vinets
+and Rastignacs, and others like them, to heel. Where do you dine this
+evening?" he added.
+
+"In a cave," replied Desroches, "with a band."
+
+"Where's that?"
+
+"I suppose, in the course of your erotic existence, you have had
+recourse to the good offices of a certain Madame de Saint-Esteve?"
+
+"No," replied Maxime, "I have always done my own business in that line."
+
+"True," said Desroches, "you conquer in the upper ranks, where, as a
+general thing, they don't use go-betweens. But, at any rate, you have
+heard of Madame de Saint-Esteve?"
+
+"Of course; her establishment is in the rue Neuve-Saint-Marc, and it was
+she who got that pot of money out of Nucingen for La Torpille. Isn't she
+some relation to the chief of detective police, who bears the same name,
+and used to be one of the same kind as herself?"
+
+"I don't know about that," said Desroches, "but what I can tell you
+is that in her business as procuress--as it was called in days less
+decorous than our own--the worthy woman has made a fortune, and now,
+without any serious change of occupation, she lives magnificently in
+the rue de Provence, where she carries on the business of a matrimonial
+agency."
+
+"Is that where you are going to dine?" asked Maxime.
+
+"Yes, with the director of the London opera-house, Emile Blondet, Finot,
+Lousteau, Felicien Vernon, Theodore Gaillard, Hector Merlin, and Bixiou,
+who was commissioned to invite me, as it seems they are in want of my
+_experience_ and _capacity for business_!"
+
+"_Ah ca_! then there's some financial object in this dinner?"
+
+"No; it merely concerns a theatrical venture,--the engagement of a prima
+donna; and they want to submit the terms of the contract to my judgment.
+You understand that the rest of the guests are invited to trumpet the
+affair as soon as the papers are signed."
+
+"Who is the object of all this preparation?"
+
+"Oh! a _star_,--destined, they say, to European success; an Italian,
+discovered by a Swedish nobleman, Comte Halphertius, through the
+medium of Madame de Saint-Esteve. The illustrious manager of the London
+opera-house is negotiating this treaty in order that she shall make her
+first appearance at his theatre."
+
+"Well, adieu, my dear fellow; a pleasant dinner," said Maxime, preparing
+to depart. "If your star shines in London, it will probably appear
+in our firmament next winter. As for me, I must go and attend to the
+sunrise in Arcis. By the bye, where does Massol live?"
+
+"Faith! I couldn't tell you that. I never myself trust him with a case,
+for I will not employ barristers who dabble in politics. But you can
+get his address from the 'Gazette des Tribuneaux'; he is one of their
+reporters."
+
+Maxime went to the office of that newspaper; but, probably on account
+of creditors, the office servant had express orders not to give the
+barrister's address, so that, in spite of his arrogant, imperious
+manner, Monsieur de Trailles obtained no information. Happily, he
+bethought him that he frequently saw Massol at the Opera, and he
+resolved to seek him there that evening. Before going to dinner, he
+went to the lodgings in the rue Montmartre, where he had installed
+the Romilly peasant-woman and her counsel, whom Madame Beauvisage had
+already sent to Paris. He found them at dinner, making the most of the
+Beauvisage funds, and he gave them an order to come to his apartment the
+next day at half-past eleven without breakfasting.
+
+In the evening he found Massol, as he expected, at the opera-house.
+Going up to the lawyer with the slightly insolent manner which was
+natural to him, he said,--
+
+"Monsieur, I have an affair, half legal, half political, which I desire
+to talk over with you. If it did not demand a certain amount of secrecy,
+I would go to your office, but I think we could talk with more safety
+in my own apartment; where, moreover, I shall be able to put you in
+communication with other persons concerned in the affair. May I hope
+that to-morrow morning, at eleven o'clock, you will do me the favor to
+take a cup of tea with me?"
+
+If Massol had had an office, he might possibly not have consented, for
+the sake of his legal dignity, to reverse the usual order of things; but
+as he perched rather than lodged in any particular place, he was glad of
+an arrangement which left his abode, if he had any, incognito.
+
+"I shall have the honor to be with you at the hour named," he replied
+ceremoniously.
+
+"Rue Pigalle," said Maxime, "No. 6."
+
+"Yes, I know," returned Massol,--"a few steps from the corner of the rue
+de la Rochefoucauld."
+
+
+
+
+VIII. SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES
+
+A few evenings after the one on which Sallenauve and Marie-Gaston had
+taken Jacques Bricheteau to Saint-Sulpice to hear the Signora Luigia's
+voice, the church was the scene of a curious little incident that
+passed by almost wholly unperceived. A young man entered hastily by a
+side-door; he seemed agitated, and so absorbed in some anxiety that he
+forgot to remove his hat. The beadle caught him by the arm, and his face
+became livid, but, turning round, he saw at once that his fears were
+causeless.
+
+"Is your hat glued on your head, young man?" said the beadle, pompously.
+
+"Oh, pardon me, monsieur," he replied, snatching it off; "I forgot
+myself."
+
+Then he slipped into the thickest of the crowd and disappeared.
+
+A few seconds after the irruption of this youth the same door gave
+access to a man around whose powerful, seamed face was the collar of a
+white beard, which, combined with a thick shock of hair, also white but
+slightly reddish in tone and falling almost to his shoulders, gave him
+very much the air of an old Conventional, or a Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
+who had had the small-pox. His face and his hair placed him in the
+sixties, but his robust figure, the energetic decision of his movements,
+and, above all, the piercing keenness of the glance which he cast about
+him on entering the church, showed a powerful organization on which the
+passage of years had made little or no impression. No doubt, he was in
+search of the young fellow who had preceded him; but he did not commit
+the mistake of entering the crowd, where he knew of course that the
+youth had lost himself. Like a practised hunter, he saw that pursuit was
+useless, and he was just about to leave the church when, after a short
+organ prelude, the contralto of the signora delivering its solemn notes
+gave forth that glorious harmony to which is sung the Litany of the
+Virgin. The beauty of the voice, the beauty of the chant, the beauty
+of the words of the sacred hymn, which the fine method of the singer
+brought out distinctly, made a singular impression on the stalwart
+stranger. Instead of leaving the church, he put himself in the shadow of
+a column, against which he leaned as he stood; but as the last notes of
+the divine canticle died away among the arches of the church, he knelt
+on the pavement, and whoever had chanced to look that way would have
+seen two heavy tears rolling slowly down his cheeks. The benediction
+given, and the crowd dispersing, he rose, wiped his eyes, and,
+muttering, "What a fool I am!" left the church. Then he went to the
+Place Saint-Sulpice, and, beckoning to a coach on the stand, he said to
+the driver,--
+
+"Rue de Provence, my man, quick! there's fat in it."
+
+Reaching the house, he went rapidly up the stairway, and rang at the
+door of an apartment on the first floor.
+
+"Is my aunt at home?" he inquired of the Negro who opened it. Then he
+followed the man, and was presently ushered into a salon where the Negro
+announced,--
+
+"Monsieur de Saint-Esteve."
+
+The salon which the famous chief of the detective police now entered was
+remarkable for the luxury, but still more for the horribly bad taste,
+of its appointments. Three women of advanced age were seated round a
+card-table earnestly employed in a game of dominoes. Three glasses and
+an empty silver bowl which gave forth a vinous odor showed that the
+worship of double-sixes was not without its due libations.
+
+"Good evening, mesdames," said the chief of police, sitting down; "for I
+have something to say to each of you."
+
+"We'll listen presently," said his aunt; "you can't interrupt the game.
+It won't be long; I play for four."
+
+"White all round!" said one of the hags.
+
+"Domino!" cried the Saint-Esteve. "I win; you have four points between
+you two, and the whites are all out. Well, my dear, what is it?" she
+said, turning to her nephew, after a rather stormy reckoning among the
+witches was over.
+
+"You, Madame Fontaine," said the chief of police, addressing one of the
+venerable beings, whose head was covered with disorderly gray hair and
+a battered green bonnet,--"you neglect your duty; you have sent me no
+report, and, on the contrary, I get many complaints of you. The prefect
+has a great mind to close your establishment. I protect you on account
+of the services you are supposed to render us; but if you don't render
+them, I warn you, without claiming any gifts of prediction, that your
+fate-shop will be shut up."
+
+"There now!" replied the pythoness, "you prevented me from hiring
+Mademoiselle Lenormand's apartment in the rue de Tournon, and how can
+you expect me to make reports about the cooks and clerks and workmen and
+grisettes who are all I get where I am? If you had let me work among the
+great folks, I'd make you reports and plenty of them."
+
+"I don't see how you can say that, Madame Fontaine," said Madame de
+Saint-Esteve. "I am sure I send you all my clients. It was only the
+other day," continued the matrimonial agent, "I sent you that Italian
+singer, living with a deputy who is against the government; why didn't
+you report about that?"
+
+"There's another thing," said the chief of police, "which appears
+in several of the complaints that I received about you,--that nasty
+animal--"
+
+"What, Astaroth?" said Madame Fontaine.
+
+"Yes, that batrachian, that toad, to come down to his right name. It
+seems he nearly killed a woman who was pregnant--"
+
+"Well, well," interrupted the sorceress, "if I am to tell fortunes
+alone, you might as well guillotine me at once. Because a fool of a
+woman lay-in with a dead child, must toads be suppressed in nature? Why
+did God make them?"
+
+"My dear woman," said the chief, "did you never hear that in 1617 a
+learned man was put to death for having a toad in a bottle?"
+
+"Yes, I know that; but we are not in those light ages," replied Madame
+Fontaine, facetiously.
+
+"As for you, Madame Nourrisson, the complaint is that you gather your
+fruit unripe. You ought to know by this time the laws and regulations,
+and I warn you that everything under twenty-one years of age is
+forbidden. I wonder I have to remind you of it. Now, aunt, what I have
+to say to you is confidential."
+
+Thus dismissed, two of the Fates departed.
+
+Since the days when Jacques Collin had abdicated his former kingship
+and had made himself, as they say, a new skin in the police force,
+Jacqueline Collin, though she had never put herself within reach of
+the law, had certainly never donned the robe of innocence. But having
+attained, like her nephew, to what might fairly be called opulence, she
+kept at a safe and respectful distance from the Penal Code, and under
+cover of an agency that was fairly avowable, she sheltered practices
+more or less shady, on which she continued to bestow an intelligence and
+an activity that were really infernal.
+
+"Aunt," said Vautrin, "I have so many things to say to you that I don't
+know where to begin."
+
+"I should think so! It is a week since I've seen you."
+
+"In the first place, I must tell you that I have just missed a splendid
+chance."
+
+"What sort of chance?" asked Jacqueline.
+
+"In the line of my odious calling. But this time the capture was worth
+making. Do you remember that little Prussian engraver about whom I sent
+you to Berlin?"
+
+"The one who forged those Vienna bank bills in that wonderful way?"
+
+"Yes. I just missed arresting him near Saint-Sulpice. But I followed him
+into the church, where I heard your Signora Luigia."
+
+"Ah!" said Jacqueline, "she has made up her mind at last, and has left
+that imbecile of a sculptor."
+
+"It is about her that I have come to talk to you," said Vautrin.
+"Here are the facts. The Italian opera season in London has begun
+badly,--their prima donna is taken ill. Sir Francis Drake, the
+impresario, arrived in Paris yesterday, at the Hotel des Princes, rue
+de Richelieu, in search of a prima donna, at any rate _pro tem_. I have
+been to see him in the interests of the signora. Sir Francis Drake is
+an Englishman, very bald, with a red nose, and long yellow teeth. He
+received me with cold politeness, and asked in very good French what my
+business was."
+
+"Did you propose to him Luigia?"
+
+"That was what I went for,--in the character, be it understood, of
+a Swedish nobleman. He asked if her talent was known. 'Absolutely
+unknown,' I replied. 'It is risky,' said Sir Francis; 'nevertheless
+arrange to let me hear her.' I told him that she was staying with her
+friend Madame de Saint-Esteve, at whose house I could take the liberty
+to invite him to dinner."
+
+"When?" asked Jacqueline.
+
+"To-day is the 19th; I said the 21st. Order the dinner from Chevet for
+fifteen persons, and send for your client Bixiou to make you out the
+list. Tell him you want the chief men of the press, a lawyer to settle
+the terms of the contract, and a pianist to accompany the signora. Let
+her know what hangs upon it. Sir Francis Drake and I will make up the
+number. Useless to tell you that I am your friend Comte Halphertius,
+who, having no house in Paris, gives this dinner at yours. Mind that
+everything is done in the best taste."
+
+In designating Bixiou to his aunt as the recruiting-officer of the
+dinner, Vautrin knew that through the universality of his relations with
+writing, singing, designing, eating, living, and squirming Paris, no one
+was as capable as he of spreading the news of the dinner broadcast.
+
+At seven o'clock precisely all the guests named by Desroches to Maxime,
+plus Desroches himself, were assembled in the salon of the rue de
+Provence, when the Negro footman opened the door and announced Sir
+Francis Drake and his Excellency the Comte Halphertius. The dress of
+the Swedish nobleman was correct to the last degree,--black coat, white
+cravat, and white waistcoat, on which glowed the ribbon of an order
+hanging from his neck; the rest of his decorations were fastened to his
+coat by chainlets. At the first glance which he cast upon the company,
+Vautrin had the annoyance of beholding that Jacqueline's habits and
+instincts had been more potent than his express order,--for a species of
+green and yellow turban surmounted her head in a manner which he felt to
+be ridiculous; but thanks to the admirable manner in which the rest of
+his programme had been carried out, the luckless coiffure was forgiven.
+
+As for Signora Luigia, dressed in black, which was customary with her,
+and having had the good sense to reject the services of a _coiffeur_,
+she was royally beautiful. An air of melancholy gravity, expressed by
+her whole person, inspired a sentiment of respect which surprised the
+men who on Bixiou's invitation were there to judge of her. The only
+special presentation that was made among the guests was that of
+Desroches to Vautrin, which Bixiou made in the following lively
+formula:--
+
+"Maitre Desroches, the most intelligent solicitor of modern times--Comte
+Halphertius of Sweden."
+
+As for Sir Francis Drake, he seemed at first inclined to disdain the
+influence of the dramatic newspapers, whose representatives were there
+assembled; but presently recognizing Felicien Vernou and Lousteau, two
+noted men of that secondary press, he greeted them heartily and shook
+them by the hand.
+
+Before dinner was announced, Comte Halphertius judged it advisable to
+make a little speech.
+
+"Dear madame," he said to his aunt, "you are really a fairy godmother.
+This is the first time I have ever been in a Parisian salon, and here
+you have assembled to meet me all that literature, the arts, and the
+legal profession can offer of their best. I, who am only a
+northern barbarian,--though our country, too, can boast of its
+celebrities,--Linnaeus, Berzelius, Thorwaldsen, Tegner, Franzen, Geier,
+and the charming novelist Frederika Bremer,--I find myself a cipher in
+such company."
+
+"But in Bernadotte France and Sweden clasped hands," replied Madame de
+Saint-Esteve, whose historical erudition went as far as that.
+
+"It is very certain," said Vautrin, "that our beloved sovereign, Charles
+XIV.--"
+
+The announcement of dinner by a majordomo, who threw open the double
+doors of the salon, put an end to this remark. Jacqueline took Vautrin's
+arm, saying in a whisper as they walked along,--
+
+"Have I done things all right?"
+
+"Yes," replied Vautrin, "it is all in good style, except that devil of a
+turban of yours, which makes you look like a poll-parrot."
+
+"Why, no," said Jacqueline, "not at all; with my Javanese face" (she was
+born on the island of Java), "oriental things set me off."
+
+Madame de Saint-Esteve placed Sir Francis Drake upon her right, and
+Desroches on her left; Vautrin sat opposite, flanked on either side by
+Emile Blondet, of the "Debats," and the Signoria Luigia; the rest of the
+company placed themselves as they pleased. The dinner, on the whole, was
+dull; Bixiou, at Madame de Saint-Esteve's request, had warned the party
+to risk nothing that might offend the chaste ears of the pious Italian.
+Forced to mind their morals, as a celebrated critic once observed, these
+men of wit and audacity lost their spirit; and, taking refuge in the
+menu, which was excellent, they either talked together in a low voice,
+or let the conversation drag itself along in bourgeois commonplaces.
+They ate and they drank, but they did not dine. Bixiou, incapable of
+bearing this state of things during a whole dinner, determined to
+create a reaction. The appearance of this Swedish magnate, evidently on
+intimate terms with the Saint-Esteve, puzzled him. He noticed a certain
+insufficiency in Vautrin, and thought to himself that if he were really
+a great nobleman, he would be more equal to the occasion, and give
+a tone to the feast. He determined, therefore, to test him, and thus
+provide amusement, at any rate, for himself. So, at the end of the
+second course, he suddenly said from his end of the table,--
+
+"Monsieur le comte, you are too young, of course, to have known Gustavus
+III., whom Scribe and Auber have set in opera, while the rest of us
+glorify him in a _galop_."
+
+"I beg your pardon," replied Vautrin, jumping at the chance thus given
+him, "I am nearly sixty years of age, which makes me thirteen in 1792,
+when our beloved sovereign was killed by the assassin Ankarstroem, so
+that I can well remember that period."
+
+Thus, by means of a little volume entitled "Characters and Anecdotes of
+the Court of Sweden," printed in 1808, and bought on the quays in the
+interests of his Swedish incarnation, the chief of the detective police
+evaded the trap. He did better. The faucet being open, he poured forth
+such an abundance of erudition and detailed circumstances, he related
+so many curious and secret anecdotes, especially relating to the _coup
+d'etat_ by which, in 1772, Gustavus III. had freed his crown,--in short,
+he was so precise and so interesting that as they left the table Emile
+Blondet said to Bixiou,--
+
+"I thought, as you did, that a foreign count in the hands of a marriage
+agent was a very suspicious character; but he knows the court of
+Sweden in a way that it was quite impossible to get out of books. He is
+evidently a man well born; one might make some interesting articles out
+of the stories he has just told."
+
+"Yes," said Bixiou, "and I mean to cultivate his acquaintance; I could
+make a good deal out of him in the Charivari."
+
+"You have better find out first," said Desroches, "whether he has enough
+French humor to like being caricatured."
+
+Presently the first notes of the piano gave notice that the Signora
+Luigia was about to mount the breach. She first sang the romance in
+"Saul" with a depth of expression which moved the whole company, even
+though that areopagus of judges were digesting a good dinner, as to
+which they had not restrained themselves. Emile Blondet, who was more
+of a political thinker than a man of imagination, was completely carried
+away by his enthusiasm. As the song ended, Felicien Vernou and Lousteau
+went up to Sir Francis Drake and reproached him for wishing to take
+such a treasure from France, at the same time flattering him for his
+cleverness as an impresario.
+
+La Luigia then sang an air from the "Nina" of Paesiello; and in
+that--the part being very dramatic--she showed a talent for comedy
+second only to her vocal gift. It was received with truly genuine
+applause; but what assured and completed her success with these trained
+judges was her modesty and the sort of ignorance in which she still
+remained of her amazing talent,--in the midst, too, of praises which
+might have turned her head. Accustomed to frenzied self-love and
+the insolent pretensions of the veriest sparrow of the opera, these
+journalists were amazed and touched by the humility, the simplicity of
+this empress, who seemed quite astonished at the effect she produced.
+
+The success of the trial passed all expectation. There was but one voice
+as to the desirability of immediately engaging her; and Sir Francis
+Drake, Vautrin, and Desroches presently passed into an adjoining room
+to draw up the terms of the contract. As soon as that was done, Vautrin
+returned to the salon for _la diva_, requesting her to hear the contract
+read and to affix her signature. Her departure for London without
+further delay was fixed for the following day in company with Sir
+Francis Drake.
+
+A few days later the packet-boat from Boulogne conveyed to England
+another personage of this history. Jacques Bricheteau, having obtained
+Sallenauve's present address from Madame de l'Estorade, and considering
+the danger which threatened the new deputy extremely urgent, decided not
+to write, but to go himself to England and confer with him in person.
+When he reached London, he was surprised to learn that Hanwell was the
+most celebrated insane asylum in Great Britain. Had he reflected on the
+mental condition of Marie-Gaston, he might have guessed the truth. As
+it was, he felt completely bewildered; but not committing the blunder
+of losing his time in useless conjectures, he went on without a moment's
+delay to Hanwell, which establishment is only about nine miles from
+London, pleasantly situated at the foot of a hill on the borders of
+Middlesex and Surrey.
+
+After a long detention in the waiting-room, he was at last enabled
+to see his friend at a moment when Marie-Gaston's insanity, which for
+several days had been in the stages of mania, was yielding to the care
+of the doctor, and showed some symptoms of a probable recovery. As soon
+as Sallenauve was alone with the organist, he inquired the reason that
+led him to follow him; and he heard, with some emotion, the news of the
+intrigues which Maxime de Trailles had apparently organized against him.
+Returning to his original suspicions, he said to Jacques Bricheteau,--
+
+"Are you really sure that that person who declared himself my father was
+the Marquis de Sallenauve, and that I am truly his son?"
+
+"Mother Marie-des-Anges and Achille Pigoult, by whom I was warned
+of this plot, have no more doubt than I have of the existence of the
+Marquis de Sallenauve; this gossip with which they threaten you has, in
+my judgment, but one dangerous aspect. I mean that by your absence you
+are giving a free field to your adversaries."
+
+"But," replied the deputy, "the Chamber will not condemn me without a
+hearing. I wrote to the president and asked for leave of absence, and I
+took the precaution to request de l'Estorade, who knows the reason of my
+absence, to be kind enough to guarantee me, should my absence be called
+in question."
+
+"I think you also wrote to Madame de l'Estorade, didn't you?"
+
+"I wrote only to her," replied Sallenauve. "I wanted to tell her about
+the great misfortune of our mutual friend, and, at the same time, I
+asked her to explain to her husband the kind service I requested him to
+do for me."
+
+"If that is so," said Bricheteau, "you need not count for one moment
+on the l'Estorades. A knowledge of this trick which is being organized
+against you has reached their ears and affected their minds, I am very
+sure."
+
+He then related the reception he had met with from Madame de l'Estorade,
+and the uncivil remarks she had made about Sallenauve, from which he
+concluded that in the struggle about to take place no assistance could
+be relied on from that direction.
+
+"I have every reason to be surprised," said Sallenauve, "after the warm
+assurances Madame de l'Estorade has given me of an unfailing good-will.
+However," he added, philosophically, "everything is possible in this
+world; and calumny has often undermined friendship."
+
+"You understand, therefore," said Bricheteau, "that it is all-important
+to start for Paris, without a moment's delay. Your stay here, all things
+considered, is only relatively necessary."
+
+"On the contrary," said Sallenauve, "the doctor considers that my
+presence here may be of the utmost utility. He has not yet let me see
+the patient, because he expects to produce some great result when I do
+see him."
+
+"That is problematical," returned Jacques Bricheteau; "whereas by
+staying here you are compromising your political future and your
+reputation in the most positive manner. Such a sacrifice no friendship
+has the right to demand of you."
+
+"Let us talk of it with the doctor," said Sallenauve, unable to deny the
+truth of what Bricheteau said.
+
+On being questioned, the doctor replied that he had just seen symptoms
+in the patient which threatened another paroxysm.
+
+"But," cried Sallenauve, eagerly, "you are not losing hope of a cure,
+are you, doctor?"
+
+"Far from that. I have perfect faith in the ultimate termination of the
+case; but I see more delay in reaching it than at first I expected,"
+replied the doctor.
+
+"I have recently been elected to our Chamber of deputies," said
+Sallenauve, "and I ought to be in my seat at the opening of the session;
+in fact, my interests are seriously concerned, and my friend Monsieur
+Bricheteau has come over to fetch me. If therefore I can be sure that my
+presence here is not essential--"
+
+"By all means go," said the doctor. "It may be a long time before I
+could allow you to see the patient; therefore you can leave without
+the slightest self-reproach. In fact, you can really do nothing here at
+present. Trust him to Lord Lewin and me; I assure you that I shall make
+his recovery, of which I have no doubt, a matter of personal pride and
+self-love."
+
+Sallenauve pressed the doctor's hand gratefully, and started for London
+without delay. Arriving there at five o'clock, the travellers were
+unable to leave before midnight; meantime their eyes were struck at
+every turn by those enormous posters which English _puffism_ alone
+is able to produce, announcing the second appearance in Her Majesty's
+theatre of the Signora Luigia. The name alone was enough to attract
+the attention of both travellers; but the newspapers to which they had
+recourse for further information furnished, as is customary in England,
+so many circumstantial details about the prima donna that Sallenauve
+could no longer doubt the transformation of his late housekeeper into an
+operatic star of the first magnitude.
+
+Going to the box-office, which he found closed, every seat having been
+sold before mid-day, Sallenauve considered himself lucky to obtain two
+seats from a speculator, at the enormous cost of five pounds apiece.
+The opera was "La Pazza d'Amore" of Paesiello. When the curtain rose,
+Sallenauve, who had spent the last two weeks at Hanwell, among the
+insane, could all the more appreciate the remarkable dramatic talent his
+late housekeeper displayed in the part of Nina. Even Bricheteau, though
+annoyed at Sallenauve's determination to be present, was so carried
+away by the power of the singer that he said to his companion rather
+imprudently,--
+
+"Politics have no triumphs as that. Art alone is deity--"
+
+"And Luigia is its prophet!" added Sallenauve.
+
+Never, perhaps, had the Italian opera-house in London presented a more
+brilliant sight; the whole audience was in a transport of enthusiasm,
+and bouquets fairly rained upon the stage.
+
+As they left the theatre, Bricheteau looked at his watch; it was a
+quarter to eleven; they had thus ample time to take the steamer leaving,
+as the tide served, at midnight. But when the organist turned to make
+this remark to Sallenauve, who was behind him, he saw nothing of his
+man; the deputy had vanished!
+
+Ten minutes later the maid of the Signora Luigia entered her mistress's
+dressing-room, which was filled with distinguished Englishmen presented
+by Sir Francis Drake to the new star, and gave her a card. On reading
+the name the prima donna turned pale and whispered a few words to the
+waiting-woman; then she seemed so anxious to be rid of the crowd who
+were pressing round her that her budding adorers were inclined to be
+angry. But a great singer has rare privileges, and the fatigue of the
+part into which the _diva_ had just put so much soul seemed so good
+an excuse for her sulkiness that her court dispersed without much
+murmuring.
+
+Left alone, the signora rapidly resumed her usual dress, and the
+directors' carriage took her back to the hotel where she had stayed
+since arriving in London. On entering her salon she found Sallenauve,
+who had preceded her.
+
+"You in London, monsieur!" she said; "it is like a dream!"
+
+"Especially to me," replied Sallenauve, "who find you here, after
+searching hopelessly for you in Paris--"
+
+"Did you take that pains?--why?"
+
+"You left me in so strange a manner, and your nature is so rash,
+you knew so little of Paris, and so many dangers might threaten your
+inexperience, that I feared for you."
+
+"Suppose harm did happen to me; I was neither your wife, nor your
+sister, nor your mistress; I was only your--"
+
+"I thought," said Sallenauve, hastily, "that you were my friend."
+
+"I was--under obligation to you," she replied. "I saw that I was
+becoming an embarrassment in your new situation. What else could I do
+but release you from it?"
+
+"Who told you that you were an embarrassment to me? Have I ever said
+or intimated anything of the kind? Could I not speak to you, as I
+did, about your professional life without wounding so deeply your
+sensibility?"
+
+"People feel things as they feel them," replied Luigia. "I had the
+inward consciousness that you would rather I were out of your house than
+in it. My future you had already given me the means to secure; you see
+for yourself it is opening in a manner that ought to reassure you."
+
+"It seems to me so brilliant that I hope you will not think me
+indiscreet if I ask whose hand, more fortunate than mine, has produced
+this happy result."
+
+"That of a great Swedish nobleman," replied Luigia, without hesitation.
+"Or rather, I should say, as the friend of a lady who took an interest
+in me, he procured me an engagement at Her Majesty's Theatre; the kind
+encouragement of the public has done the rest."
+
+"Say, rather, your own talent; I was present at the performance this
+evening."
+
+Making him a coquettish courtesy, Luigia said,--
+
+"I hope you were satisfied with your humble servant."
+
+"Your musical powers did not surprise me, for those I knew already; but
+those transports of dramatic passion, your powerful acting, so sure of
+itself, did certainly astonish me."
+
+"It comes from having suffered much," replied Luigia; "suffering is a
+great teacher."
+
+"Suffered? Yes, I know you did, in Italy. But I have liked to feel that
+after your arrival in France--"
+
+"Always; I have always suffered," she said in a voice of emotion. "I was
+not born under a happy star."
+
+"That 'always' seems like a reproach to me," said Sallenauve, "and yet I
+do not know what wrong I can have done you."
+
+"You have done me no wrong; the harm was there!" she cried, striking her
+breast,--"within me!"
+
+"Probably some foolish fancy, such as that of leaving my house suddenly,
+because your mistaken sense of honor made you think yourself in my way."
+
+"Not mistaken," she replied. "I know what was in your thoughts. If only
+on account of what you had done for me, I knew I could never aspire to
+your esteem."
+
+"But, my dear Luigia, I call such ideas absurd. Have I ever shown you
+any want of consideration? How could I? Your conduct has always been
+exemplary."
+
+"Yes, I tried to do everything that would give you a good opinion of me;
+but I was none the less the widow of Benedetto."
+
+"What! can you suppose that that misfortune, the result of a just
+vengeance--"
+
+"Ah! no, it is not the death of that man that lowered me in your eyes;
+on the contrary. But I had been the wife of a buffoon, of a police-spy,
+of a base man, ready to sell me to any one who would give him money."
+
+"As long as that situation lasted, I thought you deeply to be pitied;
+but despised, never!"
+
+"And," continued the Italian, more excitedly, "we had lived two years
+under the same roof, you and I alone."
+
+"Yes, and I found my comfort in it."
+
+"Did you think me ugly?"
+
+"You know better than that, for I made my finest statue from you."
+
+"Foolish?"
+
+"No one was ever foolish who could act such a part as you did to-night."
+
+"Then you must see that you despised me."
+
+Sallenauve seemed wholly surprised by this deduction; he thought himself
+very clever in replying,--
+
+"It seems to me that if I had behaved to you in any other manner you
+would have the right to say that I despised you."
+
+But he had to do with a woman who in everything, in her friendships, her
+hatreds, her actions, as in her words, went straight to her point. As if
+she feared not to be fully understood, she went on:--
+
+"To-day, monsieur, I can tell you all, for I speak of the past; the
+future has opened before me, as you see. From the day you were good to
+me and by your generous protection I escaped an infamous outrage, my
+heart has been wholly yours."
+
+Sallenauve, who had never suspected that feeling, and, above all, was
+unable to understand how so artlessly crude an avowal of it could be
+made, knew not what to answer.
+
+"I am not ignorant," continued the strange woman, "that I should have
+difficulty in rising from the degradation in which I appeared to you at
+our first meeting. If, at the time you consented to take me with you to
+Paris, I had seen you incline to treat me with gallantry, had you shown
+any sign of turning to your profit the dangerous situation in which I
+had placed myself, my heart would instantly have retired; you would have
+seemed to me an ordinary man--"
+
+"So," remarked Sallenauve, "to love you would have been insulting; not
+to love you was cruel! What sort of woman are you, that either way you
+are displeased?"
+
+"You ought not to have loved me," she replied, "while the mud was still
+on my skirts and you scarcely knew me; because then your love would have
+been the love of the eyes and not of the soul. But when, after two years
+passed beside you, you had seen by my conduct that I was an honorable
+woman; when, without ever accepting a pleasure, I devoted myself to the
+care of the house and your comfort without other relaxation than the
+study of my art; and when, above all, I sacrificed to you that modesty
+you had seen me defend with such energy,--then you were cruel not to
+comprehend, and never, never will your imagination tell you what I have
+suffered, and all the tears you have made me shed."
+
+"But, my dear Luigia, I was your host, and even had I suspected what you
+now reveal to me, my duty as an honorable man would have commanded me to
+see nothing of it, and to take no advantage of you."
+
+"Ah! that is not the reason; it is simpler than that. You saw nothing
+because your fancy turned elsewhere."
+
+"Well, and if it were so?"
+
+"It ought not to be so," replied Luigia, vehemently. "That woman is not
+free; she has a husband and children, and though you did make a saint of
+her, I presume to say, ridiculous as it may seem, that she is not worth
+me!"
+
+Sallenauve could not help smiling, but he answered very seriously,--
+
+"You are totally mistaken as to your rival. Madame de l'Estorade was
+never anything to me but a model, without other value than the fact that
+she resembled another woman. That one I knew in Rome before I knew you.
+She had beauty, youth, and a glorious inclination for art. To-day she
+is confined in a convent; like you, she has paid her tribute to sorrow;
+therefore, you see--"
+
+"What, three hearts devoted to you," cried Luigia, "and not one
+accepted? A strange star is yours! No doubt I suffer from its fatal
+influence, and therefore I must pardon you."
+
+"You are good to be merciful; will you now let me ask you a question?
+Just now you spoke of your future, and I see it with my own eyes. Who
+are the friends who have suddenly advanced you so far and so splendidly
+in your career? Have you made any compact with the devil?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Luigia, laughing.
+
+"Don't laugh," said Sallenauve; "you chose to rush alone and unprotected
+into that hell called Paris, and I dread lest you have made some fatal
+acquaintance. I know the immense difficulties and the immense dangers
+that a woman placed as you are now must meet. Who is this lady that you
+spoke of? and how did you ever meet her while living under my roof?"
+
+"She is a pious and charitable woman, who came to see me during your
+absence at Arcis. She had noticed my voice at Saint-Sulpice, during the
+services of the Month of Mary, and she tried to entice me away to her
+own parish church of Notre-Dame de Lorette,--it was for that she came to
+see me."
+
+"Tell me her name."
+
+"Madame de Saint-Esteve."
+
+Though far from penetrating the many mysteries that surrounded
+Jacqueline Collin, Sallenauve knew Madame de Saint-Esteve to be a woman
+of doubtful character and a matrimonial agent, having at times heard
+Bixiou tell tales of her.
+
+"But that woman," he said, "has a shocking notoriety in Paris. She is an
+adventuress of the worst kind."
+
+"I suspected it," said Luigia. "But what of that?"
+
+"And the man to whom she introduced you?"
+
+"He an adventurer? No, I think not. At any rate, he did me a great
+service."
+
+"But he may have designs upon you."
+
+"Yes, people may have designs upon me," replied Luigia, with dignity,
+"but they cannot execute them: between those designs and me, there is
+myself."
+
+"But your reputation?"
+
+"That was lost before I left your house. I was said to be your mistress;
+you had yourself to contradict that charge before the electoral college;
+you contradicted it, but you could not stop it."
+
+"And my esteem, for which you profess to care?"
+
+"I no longer want it. You did not love me when I wished for it; you
+shall not love me now that I no longer wish it."
+
+"Who knows?" exclaimed Sallenauve.
+
+"There are two reasons why it cannot be," said the singer. "In the first
+place, it is too late; and in the second, we are no longer on the same
+path."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I am an artist and you have ceased to be one. I rise; you fall."
+
+"Do you call it falling to rise, perhaps, to the highest dignities of
+the State?"
+
+"To whatever height you rise," said Luigia, passionately, "you will ever
+be below your past and the noble future that was once before you--Ah!
+stay; I think that I have lied to you; had you remained a sculptor, I
+believe I should have borne still longer your coldness and your disdain;
+I should have waited until I entered my vocation, until the halo round
+a singer's head might have shown you, at last, that I was there beside
+you. But on the day that you apostatized I would no longer continue my
+humiliating sacrifice. There is no future possible between us."
+
+"Do you mean," said Sallenauve, holding out his hand, which she did not
+take, "that we cannot even be friends?"
+
+"No," she replied; "all is over--past and gone. We shall hear of each
+other; and from afar, as we pass in life, we can wave our hands in
+recognition, but nothing further."
+
+"So," said Sallenauve, sadly, "this is how it all ends!"
+
+La Luigia looked at him a moment, her eyes shining with tears.
+
+"Listen," she said in a resolute and sincere tone: "this is possible.
+I have loved you, and after you, no one can enter the heart you have
+despised. You will hear that I have lovers; believe it not; you will not
+believe it, remembering the woman that I am. But who knows? Later your
+life may be swept clean of the other sentiments that have stood in my
+way; the freedom, the strangeness of the avowal I have just made to you
+will remain in your memory, and then it is not impossible that
+after this long rejection you may end by desiring me. If that should
+happen,--if at the end of many sad deceptions you should return, in
+sheer remorse, to the religion of art,--then, then, supposing that long
+years have not made love ridiculous between us, remember this evening.
+Now, let us part; it is already too late for a _tete-a-tete_."
+
+So saying, she took a light and passed into an inner room, leaving
+Sallenauve in a state of mind we can readily imagine after the various
+shocks and surprises of this interview.
+
+On returning to his hotel he found Jacques Bricheteau awaiting him.
+
+"Where the devil have you been?" cried the organist, impatiently. "It is
+too late now to take the steamboat."
+
+"Well," said Sallenauve, carelessly, "then I shall have a few hours
+longer to play truant."
+
+"But during that time your enemies are tunnelling their mine."
+
+"I don't care. In that cave called political life one has to be ready
+for anything."
+
+"I thought as much!" exclaimed Bricheteau. "You have been to see Luigia;
+her success has turned your head, and the deputy is thinking of his
+statues."
+
+"How often have I heard you say yourself that Art alone is great?"
+
+"But an orator," replied Bricheteau, "is also an artist, and the
+greatest of all. Others speak to the heart and the mind, but he to the
+conscience and the will of others. At any rate, this is no time to look
+back; you are engaged in a duel with your adversaries. Are you an honest
+man, or a scoundrel who has stolen a name? There is the question which
+may, in consequence of your absence, be answered against you in the
+Chamber."
+
+"I begin to feel that you have led me into a mistaken path; I had in my
+hands a treasure, and I have flung it away!"
+
+"Happily," said the organist, "that's only an evening mist which the
+night will dissipate. To-morrow you will remember the engagement you are
+under to your father, and the great future which is before you."
+
+
+
+
+IX. IN THE CHAMBER
+
+The king had opened the Chamber, but Sallenauve was not present, and
+his absence was causing a certain sensation in the democratic ranks. The
+"National" was particularly disturbed. As a stockholder of the paper,
+coming frequently to its office before the election, and even consenting
+to write articles for it, how strange that on the eve of the opening of
+the session the newly elected deputy should not come near it!
+
+"Now that he is elected," said some of the editorial staff, remarking
+on the total disappearance of the man whom they considered they had done
+their part to elect, "does monsieur think he can treat us scurvily?
+It is getting too much the habit of these lordly deputies to be very
+obsequious as long as they are candidates, and throw us away, after they
+have climbed the tree, like an old coat."
+
+Less excitable, the editor-in-chief calmed this first ebullition, but
+Sallenauve's absence from the royal session seemed to him very strange.
+
+The next day, when the bureaus are constituted, presidents and
+secretaries appointed, and committees named, Sallenauve's absence
+was still more marked. In the bureau for which his name was drawn,
+it happened that the election of its president depended on one vote;
+through the absence of the deputy of Arcis, the ministry gained that
+advantage and the Opposition lost it. Much discontent was expressed by
+the newspapers of the latter party; they did not, as yet, openly attack
+the conduct of the defaulter, but they declared that they could not
+account for it.
+
+Maxime de Trailles, on the other hand, fully prepared and on the watch,
+was waiting only until the routine business of the bureaus and the
+appointment of the committees was disposed of to send in the petition of
+the Romilly peasant-woman, which had been carefully drawn up by Massol,
+under whose clever pen the facts he was employed to make the most
+of assumed that degree of probability which barristers contrive to
+communicate to their sayings and affirmations. But when Maxime had
+the joy of seeing that Sallenauve's absence in itself was creating a
+prejudice against him, he went again to Rastignac and asked him if he
+did not think it better to hasten the moment of attack, since everything
+seemed so favorable.
+
+This time Rastignac was much more explicit: Sallenauve's absence abroad
+seemed to him the conduct of a man who feared exposure and had lost his
+head. He therefore advised de Trailles to have the petition sent in
+at once, and he made no difficulty about promising his assistance to a
+conspiracy which appeared to be taking color, the result of which must
+be, in any case, a very pretty scandal. The next day the first trace
+of his subterranean influence was visible. The order of the day in the
+Chamber was the verification of powers,--that is, the admission of newly
+elected members. The deputy appointed to report on the elections in the
+department of the Aube was a strong partisan of the ministry, and, in
+consequence of a confidential communication made to him that morning,
+the following paragraph appeared in his report:--
+
+  The action of the electoral college of Arcis was regular. Monsieur
+  de Sallenauve produced in proper time all the necessary papers
+  proving his eligibility; his admission therefore would seem to
+  present no difficulty. But rumors of a singular nature have been
+  current since the election as to the name and identity of the new
+  deputy; and, in support of these rumors, a petition to authorize a
+  criminal prosecution has been laid before the president of the
+  Chamber. This petition states an extremely serious fact, namely:
+  that Monsieur de Sallenauve has usurped the name he bears; and
+  this usurpation, being made by means of an official document,
+  assumes the character of forgery committed by substitution of
+  person. A most regrettable circumstance,
+
+continued the report,
+
+  is the absence of Monsieur de Sallenauve, who instead of instantly
+  contradicting the accusation made against him, has not appeared
+  since the opening of the Chamber at any of its sessions, and it is
+  not even known where he is. Under these circumstances, his
+  admission, the committee think, cannot be granted; and they feel
+  it therefore their duty to refer the matter to the Chamber.
+
+Daniel d'Arthez, a deputy of the legitimist opposition, who had been
+favorable to the election of Sallenauve, hastened, after the reading of
+this report, to ask for the floor, and entreated the Chamber to remark
+that its adoption would be wholly unjustifiable.
+
+"The point for the committee to decide," he said, "was the regularity
+of the election. The report distinctly states that this is not called in
+question. The Chamber can, therefore, do only one thing; namely,
+admit by an immediate vote the validity of an election about which
+no irregularity is alleged. To bring in the question of authorizing
+a criminal investigation would be an abuse of power; because by not
+allowing discussion or defence, and by dispensing with the usual forms
+of procedure which guarantee certain rights to a party implicated, the
+Chamber would be virtually rejecting the action of the electors in the
+exercise of their sovereign functions. Every one can see, moreover,"
+added the orator, "that to grant the right of criminal investigation in
+this connection is to prejudge the merits of the case; the presumption
+of innocence, which is the right of every man, is ignored--whereas in
+this case the person concerned is a man whose integrity has never been
+doubted, and who has just been openly honored by the suffrages of his
+fellow citizens."
+
+The discussion was prolonged for some time, the ministerial orators, of
+course, taking the other side, until an unfortunate event occurred.
+The senior deputy, acting as president (for the Chamber was not yet
+constituted), was a worn-out old man, very absent-minded, and wholly
+unaccustomed to the functions which his age devolved upon him. He
+had duly received Monsieur de Sallenauve's letter requesting leave of
+absence; and had he recollected to communicate it, as in duty bound, to
+the Chamber at the proper time, the discussion would probably have been
+nipped in the bud. But parliamentary matters are apt to go haphazard;
+when, reminded of the letter by the discussion, he produced it, and when
+the Chamber learned that the request for leave of absence was made for
+an indefinite period and for the vague purpose of "urgent affairs," the
+effect was lamentable.
+
+"It is plain," said all the ministerial party, "that he has gone to
+England to escape an investigation; he feared the result; he feels
+himself unmasked."
+
+This view, setting aside political prejudices, was shared by the sterner
+minds of all parties, who refused to conceive of a man not hastening to
+defend himself from such a blasting accusation. In short, after a very
+keen and able argument from the attorney-general, Vinet, who had taken
+heart on finding that the accused was likely to be condemned by default,
+the question of adjournment was put to the vote and passed, but by a
+very small majority; eight days being granted to the said deputy to
+appear and defend himself.
+
+The day after the vote was passed Maxime de Trailles wrote to Madame
+Beauvisage as follows:--
+
+  Madame,--The enemy received a severe check yesterday. In the
+  opinion of my friend Rastignac, a very intelligent and experienced
+  judge in parliamentary matters, Dorlange can never recover from
+  the blow, no matter what may happen later. If we cannot succeed in
+  producing positive proof to support the statement of our good
+  peasant-woman, it is possible that this rascal, supposing always
+  that he ventures to return to France, may be admitted to the
+  Chamber. But if he is, he can only drag on a despised and
+  miserable existence; he will be driven to resign, and then the
+  election of Monsieur Beauvisage is beyond all doubt; for the
+  electors, ashamed to have forsaken him for such a rascal, will be
+  only too glad to reinstate themselves in public opinion by the
+  choice of an honorable man--who was, in fact, their first choice.
+
+  It is to your rare sagacity, madame, that this result is due; for
+  without that species of second sight which showed you the chances
+  hidden in the revelation of that woman, we should have missed our
+  best weapon. I must tell you though you may think this vanity,
+  that neither Rastignac nor the attorney-general, in spite of their
+  great political acumen, perceived the true value of your
+  discovery; and I myself, if I had not had the good fortune of your
+  acquaintance, and thus been enabled to judge of the great value of
+  all ideas emanating from you, even I might have shared the
+  indifference of the two statesmen to the admirable weapon which
+  you have placed in our hands. I have now succeeded in proving to
+  Rastignac the shrewdness and perspicacity you have shown in this
+  matter, and he sincerely admires you for them. Therefore, madame,
+  when I have the happiness of belonging to you by the tie we
+  proposed, I shall not have to initiate you into politics, for you
+  have already found your way there.
+
+  Nothing further can take place for a week, which is the period of
+  delay granted by the Chamber. If the defaulter does not then
+  appear, I am confident his election will be annulled. You can
+  easily believe that between now and then all my efforts will be
+  given to increase the feeling in the Chamber against him, both by
+  arguments in the press and by private conversations. Rastignac has
+  also given orders among the ministerial adherents to that effect.
+  We may feel confident, therefore, that by the end of another week
+  our enemy will find public opinion solidly against him.
+
+  Will you permit me, madame, to recall myself to the memory of
+  Mademoiselle Cecile, and accept yourself, together with Monsieur
+  Beauvisage, the assurance of my most respectful sentiments.
+
+A hint from certain quarters given to the ministerial journals now
+began to surround Sallenauve's name with an atmosphere of disrespect and
+ridicule; insulting insinuations colored his absence with an appearance
+of escaping the charges. The effect of these attacks was all the
+greater because Sallenauve was very weakly defended by his political
+co-religionists, which was scarcely surprising. Not knowing how to
+explain his conduct, the Opposition papers were afraid to commit
+themselves in favor of a man whose future was daily becoming more
+nebulous.
+
+On the evening before the day on which the time granted for an
+explanation would expire, Sallenauve being still absent, a ministerial
+paper published, under the heading of "A Lost Deputy," a very witty
+and insolent article, which was read by every one and created a great
+sensation. During that evening Madame de l'Estorade went to see Madame
+de Camps, whom she found alone with her husband. She was greatly
+agitated, and said, as soon as she entered the room,--
+
+"Have you read that infamous article?"
+
+"No," replied Madame Octave, "but Monsieur de Camps was just telling
+me about it. It is really shameful that the ministry should not only
+countenance, but instigate such villanies."
+
+"I am half crazy," said Madame de l'Estorade; "the whole blame rests on
+us."
+
+"That is saying too much," said Madame Octave.
+
+"No," said her husband, "I agree with madame; all the venom of this
+affair could have been destroyed by one action of de l'Estorade's, and
+in refusing to make it he is, if not the author, at least the accomplice
+of this slander."
+
+"Your wife has told you--" began Madame de l'Estorade in a reproachful
+tone.
+
+"Yes," said Madame de Camps; "it was necessary to explain to my husband
+the sort of madness that seemed to have taken possession of M. de
+l'Estorade; but what I said to him was not unfaithful to any secret that
+concerned you personally."
+
+"Ah! you are such a united pair," said Madame de l'Estorade, with a
+heavy sigh. "I don't regret that you have told all that to your husband;
+in fact, two heads are better than one to advise me in the cruel
+position in which I am placed."
+
+"What has happened?" asked Madame de Camps.
+
+"My husband is losing his head," replied the countess. "I don't see a
+trace of his old moral sense left in him. Far from understanding that he
+is, as Monsieur de Camps said just now, the accomplice of the shameful
+attack which is going on, and that he has not, like those who started
+it, the excuse of ignorance, he actually seems to take delight in this
+wickedness. Just now he brought me that vile paper triumphantly, and
+I could scarcely prevent his being very angry with me for not agreeing
+with his opinion that it was infinitely witty and amusing."
+
+"That letter of Monsieur Gaston's was a terrible shock to him," said
+Madame de Camps,--"a shock not only to his heart but to his body."
+
+"I admit that," said her husband; "but, hang it! a man is a man, and he
+ought to take the words of a maniac for what they are worth."
+
+"It is certainly very singular that Monsieur de Sallenauve does not
+return," said Madame Octave; "for that Joseph Bricheteau, to whom you
+gave his address, must have written to him."
+
+"Oh!" cried the countess, "there's fatality in the whole thing.
+To-morrow the question of confirming the election or not comes up in
+the Chamber; and if Monsieur de Sallenauve is not here by that time, the
+ministry expects to annul it."
+
+"It is infamous," said Monsieur de Camps, "and I have a great mind to go
+to the president of the Chamber, and tell him how matters are."
+
+"I would have asked you to do so at the risk of my husband suspecting
+my interference, but one thing restrained me. Monsieur de Sallenauve
+particularly desires that Monsieur Gaston's mental condition be not made
+public."
+
+"It is evident," said Madame de Camps, "that do defend him in any way
+would go against his wishes. After all, the decision against him in
+the Chamber is very doubtful, whereas Monsieur Gaston's madness, if
+mentioned publicly, would never be forgotten."
+
+"But I have not told you the worst so far as I am concerned," said
+Madame de l'Estorade. "Just before dinner my husband imparted to me an
+absolutely Satanic desire of his--order, I might call it."
+
+"What was it?" asked Madame de Camps, anxiously.
+
+"He wishes me to go with him to the Chamber to-morrow,--to the gallery
+reserved for the peers of France,--and listen to the discussion."
+
+"He is actually, as you say, losing his head," cried Monsieur de Camps;
+"he is like Thomas Diafoirus, proposing to take his fiance to enjoy a
+dissection--"
+
+Madame de Camps made her husband a sign which meant, "Don't pour oil on
+the fire." Then she asked the countess whether she had tried to show M.
+de l'Estorade the impropriety of that step.
+
+"The moment I began to object," replied the countess, "he was angry, and
+said I must be very anxious to keep up our intimacy with 'that man'
+when I rejected such a natural opportunity to show publicly that the
+acquaintance was at an end."
+
+"Well, my dear, you will have to go," said Madame de Camps. "The peace
+of your home before everything else! Besides, considering all things,
+your presence at the discussion may be taken as a proof of kindly
+interest."
+
+"For sixteen years," remarked Monsieur de Camps, "you have ruled and
+governed in your home; and here, at last, is a revolution which cruelly
+overturns your power."
+
+"Ah, monsieur, I beg you to believe that that sovereignty--which I
+always sought to conceal--I never used arbitrarily."
+
+"As if I did not know that!" replied Monsieur de Camps, taking Madame de
+l'Estorade's hand and pressing it affectionately. "I am, nevertheless,
+of my wife's opinion: you will have to drink this cup."
+
+"But I shall die of shame in listening to the ministerial infamies; I
+shall feel that they are cutting the throat of a man whom two words from
+me could save."
+
+"True," said Monsieur de Camps, "and a man, too, who has done you a
+vast service. But you must choose: do you prefer to bring hell into your
+home, and exasperate the unhealthy condition of your husband's mind?"
+
+"Listen to me, dearest," said Madame de Camps. "Tell Monsieur de
+l'Estorade that I want to go to this session, and ask him for a permit;
+don't yield the point to any objections. I shall then be there to take
+care of you, and perhaps protect you from yourself."
+
+"I did not dare ask it of you," replied Madame de l'Estorade. "We don't
+usually invite friends to see us commit bad actions; but since you are
+so kind as to offer, I can truly say I shall be less wretched if you are
+with me. Now good-bye; I don't want my husband to find me out when he
+comes home. He is dining with Monsieur de Rastignac, where, no doubt,
+they are plotting for to-morrow."
+
+"Yes, go; and I will write you a note in the course of an hour, as if I
+had not seen you, asking you to get me a permit for to-morrow's session,
+which I am told will be very interesting."
+
+"To be reduced to conspiracy!" cried Madame de l'Estorade, kissing her
+friend.
+
+"My dear love," said Madame de Camps, "they say the life of a Christian
+is a struggle, but that of a woman married in a certain way is a pitched
+battle. Have patience and courage."
+
+So saying, the two friends separated.
+
+The next day, about two o'clock, Madame de l'Estorade, accompanied by
+her husband and Madame Octave de Camps, took their places in the gallery
+reserved for the members of the peerage. She seemed ill, and answered
+languidly the bows and salutations that were addressed to her from all
+parts of the Chamber. Madame de Camps, who was present for the first
+time in the parliamentary precincts, made two observations: first,
+she objected strongly to the slovenly costume of a great many of the
+"honorable gentlemen"; and she was also amazed at the number of bald
+heads she looked down upon from the gallery. Monsieur de l'Estorade took
+pains to point out to her all the notabilities present: first, the great
+men whom we need not mention, because their names are in everybody's
+memory; next, the poet Canalis, whose air she thought Olympian;
+d'Arthez, who pleased her by his modesty and absence of assumption;
+Vinet, of whom she remarked that he was like a viper in spectacles;
+Victorin Hulot, a noted orator of the Left Centre. It was some
+time before she could accustom herself to the hum of the various
+conversations, which seemed to her like the buzzing of bees around their
+hive; but the thing that most amazed her was the general aspect of this
+assemblage of legislators, where a singular _laisser-aller_ and a total
+absence of dignity would never have led her to suppose she was in the
+hall of the representatives of a great people.
+
+It was written that on this day no pain or unpleasantness should be
+spared to Madame de l'Estorade. Just before the sitting began, the
+Marquise d'Espard, accompanied by Monsieur de Ronquerolles, entered the
+peers' gallery and took her seat beside the countess. Though meeting
+constantly in society, the two women could not endure each other.
+Madame de l'Estorade despised the spirit of intrigue, the total lack of
+principle, and the sour, malevolent nature which the marquise covered
+with an elegant exterior; and the marquise despised, to a still
+greater degree, what she called the _pot-au-feu_ virtues of Madame de
+l'Estorade. It must also be mentioned that Madame de l'Estorade was
+thirty-two years old and her beauty was still undimmed, whereas Madame
+d'Espard was forty-four, and, in spite of the careful dissimulations of
+the toilet, her beauty was fairly at an end.
+
+"You do not often come here, I think," said Madame d'Espard, after the
+usual conventional phrases about the _pleasure_ of their meeting had
+passed.
+
+"I never come," replied Madame de l'Estorade.
+
+"And I am most assiduous," said Madame d'Espard.
+
+Then, pretending to a sudden recollection, she added,--
+
+"Ah! I forgot; you have a special interest, I think, on this occasion. A
+friend of yours is to be _judged_, is he not?"
+
+"Yes; Monsieur de Sallenauve has been to our house several times."
+
+"How sad it is," said the marquise, "to see a man who, Monsieur de
+Ronquerolles tells me, had the making of a hero in many ways, come down
+to the level of the correctional police."
+
+"His crime so far," said Madame de l'Estorade, dryly, "consists solely
+in his absence."
+
+"At any rate," continued the marquise, "he seems to be a man eaten up
+by ambition. Before his parliamentary attempt, he made, as you doubtless
+know, a matrimonial attempt upon the Lantys, which ended in the
+beautiful heiress of that family, into whose good graces he had
+insinuated himself, being sent to a convent."
+
+Madame de l'Estorade was not much surprised at finding that this
+history, which Sallenauve had told her as very secret, had reached the
+knowledge of Madame d'Espard. The marquise was one of the best
+informed women in Paris; her salon, as an old academician had said
+mythologically, was the Temple of Fame.
+
+"I think the sitting is about to begin," said Madame de l'Estorade;
+fearing some blow from the claws of the marquise, she was eager to put
+an end to the conversation.
+
+The president had rung his bell, the deputies were taking their seats,
+the curtain was about to rise. As a faithful narrator of the session we
+desire our readers to attend, we think it safer and better in every
+way to copy _verbatim_ the report of the debate as given in one of the
+morning papers of the following day.
+
+
+Chamber of Deputies.
+
+  In the chair, M. Cointet (vice-president).
+
+(Sitting of May 28.)
+
+  At two o'clock the president takes his seat.
+
+  M. the Keeper of the Seals, M. the minister of the Interior, M.
+  the minister of Public Works, are on the ministerial bench.
+
+  The minutes of the last session are read, approved, and accepted.
+
+  The order of the day is the verification of the powers and the
+  admission of the deputy elected by the arrondissement of
+  Arcis-sur-Aube.
+
+  _The President_.--M. the reporter, from the Committee on the
+  elections of the department of the Aube, has the floor.
+
+  _The Reporter_.--Gentlemen, the singular and regrettable situation
+  in which Monsieur de Sallenauve has placed himself has not
+  terminated in the manner that was hoped and expected last week.
+  The period of delay expired yesterday; Monsieur de Sallenauve
+  continues to absent himself from your sittings, and no letter has
+  reached M. le president asking for further leave of absence. This
+  indifference to the functions which Monsieur de Sallenauve
+  appeared to have solicited with so much eagerness [slight
+  agitation on the Left] would be, in any case, a grave mistake; but
+  when connected with an accusation that seriously compromises the
+  deputy elect, it must be regarded as altogether unfortunate for
+  his reputation. [Murmurs on the Left. Approbation from the
+  Centre.] Compelled to search for the solution of a difficulty
+  which may be said to be without precedent in parliamentary annals,
+  your committee, in the adoption of suitable measures, finds itself
+  divided into two very distinct opinions. The minority whom I
+  represent--the committee consisting of but three members--thinks
+  that it ought to submit to you a resolution which I shall call
+  radical, and which has for its object the cutting short of the
+  difficulty by returning the question to its natural judges. Annul
+  _hic et nunc_ the election of Monsieur de Sallenauve, and send him
+  back to the voters by whom he was elected and of whom he is so
+  unfaithful a representative. Such is one of the solutions I have
+  the honor to present to you. [Agitation on the Left.] The
+  majority, on the contrary, are of opinion that the will of the
+  electors cannot be too highly respected, and that the faults of a
+  man honored by their confidence ought not to be discussed until
+  the utmost limits of forbearance and indulgence have been passed.
+  Consequently your committee instruct me to suggest that you grant
+  to Monsieur de Sallenauve a further delay of fifteen days [murmurs
+  from the Centre; "Very good! very good!" from the Left]; being
+  satisfied that if after that delay Monsieur de Sallenauve does not
+  present himself or give any other sign of existence, it will be
+  sufficient proof that he has thrown up his election, and the
+  Chamber need not be dragged on his account into irritating and
+  useless debates. [Murmurs of various kinds.]
+
+  M. le Colonel Franchessini, who during the foregoing speech was
+  sitting on the ministers' bench in earnest conversation with the
+  minister of Public Works, here demanded the floor.
+
+  _The President_.--M. de Canalis has already asked for it.
+
+  _M. de Canalis_.--Gentlemen, M. de Sallenauve is one of those bold
+  men who, like myself, are convinced that politics are not
+  forbidden fruit to any form of intellect, and that in the poet, in
+  the artist, as well as in the magistrate, the administrator, the
+  lawyer, the physician, and the property-holder, may be found the
+  stuff that makes a statesman. In virtue of this community of
+  opinion, M. de Sallenauve has my entire sympathy, and no one can
+  be surprised to see me mount this tribune to support the proposal
+  of the majority of your committee. I cannot, however, agree to
+  their final conclusion; and the idea of our colleague being
+  declared, without discussion, dismissed from this Chamber through
+  the single fact of his absence, prolonged without leave, is
+  repugnant to my reason and also to my conscience. You are told:
+  "The absence of M. de Sallenauve is all the more reprehensible
+  because he is under the odium of a serious accusation." But
+  suppose this accusation is the very cause of his absence--["Ha!
+  ha!" from the Centre, and laughter.] Allow me to say, gentlemen,
+  that I am not, perhaps, quite so artless as Messieurs the laughers
+  imagine. I have one blessing, at any rate: ignoble interpretations
+  do not come into my mind; and that M. de Sallenauve, with the
+  eminent position he has filled in the world of art, should seek to
+  enter the world of politics by means of a crime, is a supposition
+  which I cannot admit _a priori_. Around a birth like his two
+  hideous spiders called slander and intrigue have every facility to
+  spread their toils; and far from admitting that he has fled before
+  the accusation that now attacks him, I ask myself whether his
+  absence does not mean that he is now engaged in collecting the
+  elements of his defence. [Left: "Very good!" "That's right."
+  Ironical laughter in the Centre.] Under that supposition--in my
+  opinion most probable--so far from arraigning him in consequence
+  of this absence, ought we not rather to consider it as an act of
+  deference to the Chamber whose deliberations he did not feel
+  worthy to share until he found himself in a position to confound
+  his calumniators?
+
+  _A Voice_.--He wants leave of absence for ten years, like
+  Telemachus, to search for his father. [General laughter.]
+
+  _M. de Canalis_.--I did not expect so poetical an interruption;
+  but since the memory of the Odyssey has been thus evoked, I shall
+  ask the Chamber to kindly remember that Ulysses, though disguised
+  as a beggar and loaded with insults, was yet able to string his
+  bow and easily get the better of his enemies. [Violent murmurs from
+  the Centre.] I vote for leave of absence for fifteen days, and
+  that the Chamber be again consulted at the expiration of that
+  time.
+
+  _M. le Colonel Franchessini_.--I do not know if the last speaker
+  intended to intimidate the Chamber, but, for my part, such
+  arguments have very little power upon me, and I am always ready to
+  send them back whence they came. [Left: "Come! come!"]
+
+  _The President_.--Colonel, no provocations!
+
+  _M. le Colonel Franchessini_.--I am, however, of the opinion of
+  the speaker who preceded me; I do not think that the delinquent
+  has fled to escape the accusation against him. Neither that
+  accusation, nor the effect it will produce upon your minds, nor
+  even the quashing of his election would be able at this moment to
+  occupy his mind. Do you wish to know what M. de Sallenauve is
+  doing in England? Then read the English papers. For the last week
+  they have rung with the praises of a new prima donna who has just
+  made her first appearance at the London opera-house. [Violent
+  murmurs; interruption.]
+
+  _A Voice_.--Such gossip is unworthy of this Chamber!
+
+  _M. le Colonel Franchessini_.--Gentlemen, being more accustomed to
+  the frankness of camps than to the reticence of these precincts, I
+  may perhaps have committed the impropriety of thinking aloud. The
+  preceding speaker said to you that he believed M. de Sallenauve
+  was employed in collecting his means of defence; well, I do not
+  say to you "I believe," I tell you I _know_ that a rich stranger
+  succeed in substituting his protection for what which Phidias, our
+  colleague, was bestowing on his handsome model, an Italian woman
+  --[Fresh interruption. "Order! order!" "This is intolerable!"]
+
+  _A Voice_.--M. le president, silence the speaker!
+
+  Colonel Franchessini crosses his arms and waits till the tumult
+  subsides.
+
+  _The President_.--I request the speaker to keep to the question.
+
+  _M. le Colonel Franchessini_.--The question! I have not left it.
+  But, inasmuch as the Chamber refuses to hear me, I declare that I
+  side with the minority of the committee. It seems to me very
+  proper to send M. de Sallenauve back to his electors in order to
+  know whether they intended to send a deputy or a lover to this
+  Chamber--["Order! order!" Loud disturbance on the Left. The tumult
+  increases.]
+
+  M. de Canalis hurries to the tribune.
+
+  _The President_.--M. le ministre of Public Works has asked for the
+  floor; as minister of the king he has the first right to be heard.
+
+  _M. de Rastignac_.--It has not been without remonstrance on my
+  part, gentlemen, that this scandal has been brought to your
+  notice. I endeavored, in the name of the long friendship which
+  unites me to Colonel Franchessini, to persuade him not to speak on
+  this delicate subject, lest his parliamentary inexperience,
+  aggravated in a measure by his witty facility of speech, should
+  lead him to some very regrettable indiscretion. Such, gentleman,
+  was the subject of the little conversation you may have seen that
+  he held with me on my bench before he asked for the floor; and I
+  myself have asked for the same privilege only in order to remove
+  from your minds all idea of my complicity in the great mistake he
+  has just, as I think, committed by condescending to the private
+  details he has thought fit to relate to this assembly. But as,
+  against my intention, and I may add against my will, I have
+  entered the tribune, the Chamber will permit me, perhaps,
+  --although no ministerial interest is here concerned,--to say a
+  few words. [Cries from the Centre: "Go on!" "Speak!"]
+
+  M. le ministre then went on to say that the conduct of the absent
+  deputy showed contempt for the Chamber; he was treating it lightly
+  and cavalierly. M. de Sallenauve had asked for leave of absence;
+  but how or where had he asked for it? From a foreign country! That
+  is to say, he began by taking it, and then asked for it! Did he
+  trouble himself, as is usual in such cases, to give a reason for
+  the request? No; he merely says, in his letter to your president,
+  that he is forced to absent himself on "urgent business,"--a very
+  convenient excuse, on which the Chamber might be depopulated of
+  half its members. But, supposing that M. de Sallenauve's business
+  was really urgent, and that he thought it of a nature not to be
+  explained in a letter that would necessarily be made public, why
+  had he not written confidentially to the president, or even
+  requested a friend in some responsible position, whose simple word
+  would have sufficed, to assure the Chamber of the necessity of the
+  deputy's absence without requiring any statement of private
+  reasons?
+
+  At this point M. de Rastignac's remarks were interrupted by a
+  commotion in the corridor to the right. Several deputies left
+  their seats; others jumped upon the benches, apparently
+  endeavoring to see something. The minister, after turning to the
+  president, from whom he seemed to be asking an explanation, went
+  back to the ministerial bench, where he was immediately surrounded
+  by a number of the deputies of the Centre, among whom, noticeable
+  for the vehemence of his gestures, was M. le procureur-general
+  Vinet. Groups formed in the audience chamber; the sitting was, in
+  fact, informally suspended.
+
+  After a few moments' delay M. le president rings his bell.
+
+  _The Ushers_.--Take your seats, gentlemen.
+
+  The deputies hasten on all sides to do so.
+
+  _The President_.--M. de Sallenauve has the floor.
+
+  M. de Sallenauve, who, during the few moments that the sitting was
+  interrupted by his entrance, has been talking with M. de Canalis
+  and M. d'Arthez, goes to the tribune. His manner is modest, but he
+  shows no sign of embarrassment. Every one is struck by his
+  resemblance to the portraits of one of the most fiery of the
+  revolutionary orators.
+
+  _A Voice_.--It is Danton--without the small-pox!
+
+  _M. de Sallenauve_.--[Profound silence.] Gentlemen, I do not
+  misjudge my parliamentary value; I know that the persecution
+  directed apparently against me personally is, in point of fact,
+  aimed at the political opinions I have the honor to represent.
+  But, however that may be, my election seems to have been viewed by
+  the ministry as a matter of some importance. In order to oppose
+  it, a special agent and special journalists were sent to Arcis;
+  and a humble employe under government, with a salary of fifteen
+  hundred francs, was dismissed, after twenty years of faithful and
+  honorable service, for having aided in my success. [Loud murmurs
+  from the Centre.] I thank my honorable interrupters, feeling sure
+  that their loud disapprobation is given to this strange dismissal,
+  which is not open to the slightest doubt. [Laughter on the Left.]
+  As for me, gentlemen, who could not be dismissed, I have been
+  attacked with another weapon,--sagacious calumny, combined with my
+  fortunate absence--
+
+  _The Minister of Public Works_.--Of course the government sent you
+  out of the country.
+
+  _M. de Sallenauve_.--No, Monsieur le ministre. I do not attribute
+  my absence to either your influence or your suggestions; it was
+  necessitated by imperious duty, and it had no other instigation or
+  motive. But, as to the part you have really taken in the
+  denunciation set on foot against me, I am about to tell the facts,
+  and the Chamber will consider them. [Close attention.] The law, in
+  order to protect the independence of the deputy, directs that no
+  criminal prosecution can be begun against a member of the national
+  representation without the preliminary consent of the Chamber;
+  this fact has been turned with great adroitness against me. If the
+  complaint had been laid before the magistrates, it could not have
+  been admitted even for an instant; it is simply a bare charge, not
+  supported by evidence of any kind; and I have never heard that the
+  public authorities are in the habit of prosecuting citizens on the
+  mere allegation of the first-comer. We must therefore admire the
+  subtlety of mind which instantly perceived that, by petitioning
+  you for leave to prosecute, all the benefits of the accusation,
+  politically speaking, would be obtained without encountering the
+  difficulty I have mentioned in the courts. [Excitement.] Now, to
+  what able parliamentary tactician must we ascribe the honor of
+  this invention? You know already, gentleman, that it is due
+  ostensibly to a woman, a peasant-woman, one who labors for her
+  living; hence the conclusion is that the peasant-women of
+  Champagne have an intellectual superiority of which, up to this
+  time, neither you nor I were at all aware. [Laughter.] It must be
+  said, however, that before coming to Paris to lodge her complaint,
+  this woman had an interview with the mayor of Arcis, my opponent
+  on the ministerial side in the late election. From this conference
+  she obtained certain lights. To which we must add that the mayor,
+  taking apparently much interest in the charge to be brought
+  against me, agreed to pay the costs, not only of the
+  peasant-woman's trip to Paris, but also those of the village
+  practitioner by whom she was accompanied. [Left: "Ha! ha!"] This
+  superior woman having arrived in Paris, with whom did she
+  immediately communicate? With the special agent sent down to Arcis
+  by the government to ensure the success of the ministerial
+  candidate. And who drew up the petition to this honorable Chamber
+  for the necessary authority to proceed to a criminal prosecution?
+  Not precisely the special ministerial agent himself, but a
+  barrister under his dictation, and after a breakfast to which the
+  peasant-woman and her adviser were invited in order to furnish the
+  necessary information. [Much excitement. "Hear! hear!"]
+
+  _The Minister of Public Works from his seat_.--Without discussing
+  the truth of these statements, as to which I have personally no
+  knowledge, I affirm upon my honor that the government is
+  completely ignorant of the proceedings now related, which it
+  blames and disavows in the most conclusive manner.
+
+  _M. de Sallenauve_.--After the formal declaration which I have had
+  the good fortune to evoke it would ill become me, gentlemen, to
+  insist on tracing the responsibility for this intrigue back to the
+  government. But what I have already said will seem to you natural
+  when you remember that, as I entered this hall, the minister of
+  Public Works was in the tribune, taking part, in a most unusual
+  manner, in a discussion on discipline wholly outside of his
+  department, and endeavoring to persuade you that I had conducted
+  myself towards this honorable body with a total want of reverence.
+
+  The minister of Public Works said a few words which did not reach
+  us. Great disturbance.
+
+  _M. Victorin Hulot_.--M. le president, have the goodness to
+  request the minister of Public Works not to interrupt the speaker.
+  He can answer.
+
+  _M. de Sallenauve_.--According to M. le comte de Rastignac, I
+  showed essential disrespect to the Chamber by asking, in a foreign
+  country, for leave of absence, which it was obvious I had already
+  taken before making my request. But, in his extreme desire to find
+  me to blame, the minister lost sight of the fact that at the time
+  I left France the Chamber had not met, no president existed, and
+  therefore in making my request at that time to the president of
+  this assembly I should simply have addressed a pure abstraction.
+  [Left: "True!"] As for the insufficiency of the motives with which
+  I supported my request, I regret to have to say to the Chamber
+  that I cannot be more explicit even now; because in revealing the
+  true cause of my absence I should betray the secret of an
+  honorable man, and not my own. I did not conceal from myself that
+  by this reticence I exposed my proceedings to mistaken
+  interpretations,--though I certainly did not expect it to give
+  rise to accusations as burlesque as they are odious. [Much
+  excitement.] In point of fact, I was so anxious not to neglect any
+  of the duties of my new position that I did precisely what the
+  minister of Public Works reproaches me for not doing. I selected a
+  man in a most honorable position, who was, like myself, a
+  repository of the secret I am unable to divulge, and I requested
+  him to make all necessary explanations to the president of this
+  Chamber. But, calumny having no doubt worked upon his mind, that
+  honorable person must have thought it compromising to his name and
+  dignity to do me this service. The danger to me being now over, I
+  shall not betray his prudent incognito. Though I was far indeed
+  from expecting this calculating selfishness, which has painfully
+  surprised and wounded me, I shall be careful to keep this betrayal
+  of friendship between myself and his own conscience, which alone
+  shall reproach him for the wrong he has done me.
+
+  At this moment a disturbance occurred in the peers' gallery; a
+  lady had fainted; and several deputies, among them a physician,
+  left the hall hastily. The sitting was momentarily suspended.
+
+  _The President_.--Ushers, open the ventilators. It is want of air
+  that has caused this unfortunate accident. M. de Sallenauve, be
+  good enough to resume your speech.
+
+  _M. de Sallenauve_.--Two words, gentleman, and I have finished. I
+  think the petition to authorize a criminal prosecution has already
+  lost something of its weight in the minds of my least cordial
+  colleagues. But I have here a letter from the Romilly
+  peasant-woman, my relation, duly signed and authenticated,
+  withdrawing her charge and confirming all the explanations I have
+  just had the honor to give you. I might read this letter aloud to
+  you, but I think it more becoming to place it in the hands of M. le
+  president. ["Very good! very good!"] As for my illegal absence, I
+  returned to Paris early this morning, and I could have been in my
+  seat at the opening of the Chamber; but, as M. de Canalis has told
+  you, I had it much at heart not to appear in this hall until I
+  could disperse the cloud which has so strangely appeared around my
+  reputation. It has taken me the whole morning to obtain these
+  papers. And now, gentlemen, you have to decide whether a few
+  hours' delay in taking his seat in this Chamber justifies you in
+  sending a colleague back to his electors. But after all, whatever
+  is done, whether some persist in thinking me a forger, or a
+  libertine, or merely a negligent deputy, I feel no anxiety about
+  the verdict of my electors. I can confidently assert that after a
+  delay of a few weeks I shall return to you.
+
+  _Cries on all sides_.--The vote! the vote!
+
+  On leaving the tribune M. de Sallenauve receives many
+  congratulations.
+
+  _The President_.--I put to vote the admission of M. de Sallenauve
+  as the deputy elected by the arrondissement of Arcis.
+
+  Nearly the whole Chamber rises and votes the admission; a few
+  deputies of the Centre alone abstain from taking part in the
+  demonstration.
+
+  M. de Sallenauve is admitted and takes the oath.
+
+  _The President_.--The order of the day calls for the reading of
+  the Address to the Throne, but the chairman of the committee
+  appointed to prepare it informs me that the document in question
+  cannot be communicated to the Chamber before to-morrow. Nothing
+  else being named in the order of the day, I declare this sitting
+  adjourned.
+
+  The Chamber rose at half-past four o'clock.
+TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
+
+  Note.--"The Deputy of Arcis," of which Balzac wrote and published
+  the first part in 1847, was left unfinished at his death. He
+  designated M. Charles Rabou, editor of the "Revue de Paris," as
+  the person to take his notes and prepare the rest of the volume
+  for the press. It is instructive to a student of Balzac to see how
+  disconnected and out of proportion the story becomes in these
+  later parts,--showing plainly that the master's hand was in the
+  habit of pruning away half, if not more, of what it had written,
+  or--to change the metaphor and give the process in his own
+  language--that he put _les grands pots dans les petits pots_, the
+  quarts into the pint pots. "If a thing can be done in one line
+  instead of two," he says, "I try to do it."
+
+  Some parts of this conclusion are evidently added by M. Rabou, and
+  are not derived from Balzac at all,--especially the unnecessary
+  reincarnation of Vautrin. There is no trace of the master's hand
+  here. The character is made so silly and puerile, and is so out of
+  keeping with Balzac's strong portrait, which never weakens, that
+  the translator has thought best, in justice to Vautrin, to omit
+  all that is not absolutely necessary to connect the story.
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Arthez, Daniel d'       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+
+     Beauvisage (tenant)
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Beauvisage, Phileas
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Bixiou, Jean-Jacques
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       The Government Clerks
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       The Muse of the Department
+       Cousin Betty
+       Beatrix
+       A Man of Business
+       Gaudissart II.
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Blondet, Virginie
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       The Peasantry
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Another Study of Woman
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Brandon, Lady Marie Augusta
+       The Lily of the Valley
+       La Grenadiere
+
+     Bridau, Joseph
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Start in Life
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Pierre Grassou
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Cadine, Jenny
+       Cousin Betty
+       Beatrix
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Camps, Octave de
+       Madame Firmiani
+
+     Camps, Madame Octave de
+       Madame Firmiani
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Magic Skin
+       Another Study of Woman
+       A Start in Life
+       Beatrix
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Carigliano, Duchesse de
+       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       The Peasantry
+
+     Chargeboeuf, Melchior-Rene, Vicomte de
+       The Muse of the Department
+
+     Chocardelle, Mademoiselle
+       Beatrix
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+       A Man of Business
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Cinq-Cygne, Laurence, Comtesse (afterwards Marquise de)
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       The Seamy Side of History
+
+     Cointet, Boniface
+       Lost Illusions
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+
+     Collin, Jacques
+       Father Goriot
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+     Dionis
+       Ursule Mirouet
+
+     Estorade, Louis, Chevalier, then Vicomte and Comte de l'
+       Letters of Two Brides
+
+     Estorade, Madame de l'
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Ursule Mirouet
+
+     Estorade, Armand de l'
+       Letters of Two Brides
+
+     Fontanon, Abbe
+       A Second Home
+       The Government Clerks
+       Honorine
+
+     Franchessini, Colonel
+       Father Goriot
+
+     Gaston, Marie
+       La Grenadiere
+       Letters of Two Brides
+
+     Giguet, Colonel
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Gobseck, Sarah Van
+       Gobseck
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Maranas
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+     Gondreville, Malin, Comte de
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       A Start in Life
+       Domestic Peace
+
+     Gothard
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Goujet, Abbe
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Grevin
+       A Start in Life
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Hauteserre, D'
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Hortense
+       A Man of Business
+
+     Hulot, Victorin
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Keller, Francois
+       Domestic Peace
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Eugenie Grandet
+       The Government Clerks
+
+     Keller, Madame Francois
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Thirteen
+
+     La Bastie la Briere, Madame Ernest de
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Lanty, Comte de
+       Sarrasine
+
+     Lanty, Comtesse de
+       Sarrasine
+
+     Lanty, Marianina de
+       Sarrasine
+
+     Lanty, Filippo de
+       Sarrasine
+
+     La Roche-Hugon, Martial de
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Peasantry
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Lenoncourt-Givry, Duc de
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Marest, Frederic
+       A Start in Life
+       The Seamy Side of History
+
+     Marion (of Arcis)
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Marion (brother)
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Mary
+       Letters of Two Brides
+
+     Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       The Muse of the Department
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Maufrigneuse, Georges de
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Beatrix
+
+     Maufrigneuse, Berthe de
+       Beatrix
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Michu, Francois
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+
+     Michu, Madame Francois
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Montriveau, General Marquis Armand de
+       The Thirteen
+       Father Goriot
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Pierrette
+
+     Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
+       Father Goriot
+       The Thirteen
+       Eugenie Grandet
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Melmoth Reconciled
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       Another Study of Woman
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Philippe
+       Letters of Two Brides
+
+     Rastignac, Eugene de
+       Father Goriot
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Ball at Sceaux
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       A Study of Woman
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Magic Skin
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Rastignac, Laure-Rose and Agathe de
+       Father Goriot
+       Lost Illusions
+
+     Restaud, Ernest de
+       Gobseck
+
+     Restaud, Madame Ernest de
+       Gobseck
+
+     Restaud, Felix-Georges de
+       Gobseck
+
+     Rhetore, Duc Alphonse de
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Albert Savarus
+
+     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Peasantry
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Thirteen
+
+     Saint-Hereen, Comtesse Moina de
+       A Woman of Thirty
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Sallenauve, Comtesse de
+       Letters of Two Brides
+
+     Sarrasine, Ernest-Jean
+       Sarrasine
+
+     Stidmann
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Beatrix
+       Cousin Betty
+       Cousin Pons
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Suzon
+       A Man of Business
+
+     Tillet, Ferdinand du
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       The Middle Classes
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Pierrette
+       Melmoth Reconciled
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Trailles, Comte Maxime de
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Father Goriot
+       Gobseck
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Man of Business
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       Cousin Betty
+       Beatrix
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Troubert, Abbe Hyacinthe
+       The Vicar of Tours
+
+     Varlet
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Vien, Joseph-Marie
+       Sarrasine
+
+     Vinet
+       Pierrette
+       The Middle Classes-
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Vinet, Olivier
+       Cousin Pons
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Zambinella
+       Sarrasine
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Deputy of Arcis, by Honore de Balzac
+
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