



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