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
