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
