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
