Chapter III: Part I: The Election (3)

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.