Deputy of Arcis

De Balzac Honore

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. 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.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819935308
• Langue: English

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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 theprovinces, it is proper to state that the town of Arcis-sur-Aubewas 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 deputyfrom Arcis in the Chamber.
Discretion, required in a history of contemporaneousmanners and morals, dictates this precautionary word. It is ratheran ingenious contrivance to make the description of one town theframe for events which happened in another; and several timesalready in the course of the Comedy of Human Life, this means hasbeen employed in spite of its disadvantages, which consist chieflyin making the frame of as much importance as the canvas.
Toward the end of the month of April, 1839, aboutten o'clock in the morning, the salon of Madame Marion, widow of aformer receiver-general of the department of the Aube, presented asingular appearance. All the furniture had been removed except thecurtains to the windows, the ornaments on the fireplace, thechandelier, and the tea-table. An Aubusson carpet, taken up twoweeks before the usual time, obstructed the steps of the portico,and the floor had been violently rubbed and polished, thoughwithout increasing its usual brightness. All this was a species ofdomestic premonition concerning the result of the elections whichwere about to take place over the whole surface of France. Oftenthings are as spiritually intelligent as men, — an argument infavor of the occult sciences.
The old man-servant of Colonel Giguet, MadameMarion's older brother, had just finished dusting the room; thechamber-maid and the cook were carrying, with an alacrity thatdenoted an enthusiasm equal to their attachment, all the chairs ofthe house, and piling them up in the garden, where the trees werealready unfolding their leaves, through which the cloudless blue ofthe sky was visible. The springlike atmosphere and sun of Mayallowed the glass door and the two windows of the oblong salon tobe kept open.
An old lady, Madame Marion herself, now ordered thetwo maids to place the chairs at one end of the salon, four rowsdeep, leaving between the rows a space of about three feet. Whenthis was done, each row presented a front of ten chairs, all ofdivers species. A line of chairs was also placed along the wall,under the windows and before the glass door. At the other end ofthe salon, facing the forty chairs, Madame Marion placed threearm-chairs behind the tea-table, which was covered with a greencloth, on which she placed a bell.
Old Colonel Giguet arrived on this battle-field atthe moment when his sister bethought herself of filling the emptyspaces on either side of the fireplace with benches from theantechamber, disregarding the baldness of their velvet covers whichhad done good service for twenty-four years.
“We can seat seventy persons, ” she said to herbrother triumphantly.
“God grant that we may have seventy friends! ”replied the colonel.
“If, after receiving every night, for twenty-fouryears, the whole society of Arcis-sur-Aube, a single one of myregular visitors fails us on this occasion— ” began the old lady,in a threatening manner.
“Pooh, pooh! ” replied the colonel, interrupting hissister, “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-holdersto come to a meeting the object of which is to give another deputyto the Opposition. For all that, Antonin Goulard, Simon's comradeand schoolmate, would be very well pleased to see him a deputybecause— ”
“Come, sister, leave our own business of politics tous men. Where is Simon? ”
“He is dressing, ” she answered. “He was wise not tobreakfast, for he is very nervous. It is queer that, though he isin the habit of speaking in court, he dreads this meeting as if hewere 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 tostand 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 bewringing 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 effortfor me; for if there is a man in the department of the Aube whosevoice is all-powerful it is assuredly you. In 1815— ”
“In 1815, ” said the little old man, who waswonderfully well preserved, “I did not have to speak; I simplywrote out a little proclamation which brought us two thousand menin twenty-four hours. But it is a very different thing putting myname to a paper which is read by a department, and standing upbefore a meeting to make a speech. Napoleon himself failed there;at the 18th Brumaire he talked nothing but nonsense to the FiveHundred. ”
“But, my dear father, ” urged Simon, “it concerns mylife, my fortune, my happiness. Fix your eyes on some one personand think you are talking to him, and you'll get through all right.”
“Heavens! ” cried Madame Marion, “I am only an oldwoman, but under such circumstances and knowing what depends on it,I— oh! I should be eloquent! ”
“Too eloquent, perhaps, ” said the colonel. “To gobeyond the mark is not attaining it. But why make so much of allthis? ” he added, looking at his son. “It is only within the lasttwo days you have taken up this candidacy of ideas; well, supposeyou are not nominated, — so much the worse for Arcis, that's all.”
These words were in keeping with the whole life ofhim who said them. Colonel Giguet was one of the most respectedofficers in the Grand Army, the foundation of his character beingabsolute integrity joined to extreme delicacy. Never did he puthimself forward; favors, such as he received, sought him. For thisreason he remained eleven years a mere captain of the artillery ofthe Guard, not receiving the rank of major until 1814. His almostfanatical attachment to Napoleon forbade his taking service underthe Bourbons after the first abdication. In fact, his devotion in1815 was such that he would have been banished with so many othersif the Comte de Gondreville had not contrived to have his nameeffaced from the ordinance and put on the retired list with apension, and the rank of colonel.
Madame Marion, nee Giguet, had anotherbrother who was colonel of gendarmerie at Troyes, whom she followedto that town at an earlier period. It was there that she marriedMonsieur Marion, receiver-general of the Aube, who also had had abrother, the chief-justice of an imperial court. While a merebarrister at Arcis this young man had lent his name during theTerror to the famous Malin de l'Aube, the representative of thepeople, in order to hold possession of the estate of Gondreville. [See “An Historical Mystery. ”] Consequently, allthe support and influence of Malin, now become count and senator,was at the service of the Marion family. The barrister's brotherwas made receiver-general of the department, at a period when, farfrom having forty applicants for one place, the government wasfortunate in getting any one to accept such a slippery office.
Marion, the receiver-general, inherited the fortuneof his brother the chief-justice, and Madame Marion that of herbrother the colonel of gendarmerie. In 1814, the receiver-generalmet with reverses. He died when the Empire died; but his widowmanaged to gather fifteen thousand francs a year from the wreck ofhis accumulated fortunes. The colonel of gendarmerie had left hisproperty to his sister on learning the marriage of his brother theartillery officer to the daughter of a rich banker of Hamburg. Itis well known what a fancy all Europe had for the splendid troopersof Napoleon!
In 1814, Madame Marion, half-ruined, returned toArcis, her native place, where she bought, on the Grande-Place, oneof the finest houses in the town. Accustomed to receive muchcompany at Troyes, where the receiver-general reigned supreme, shenow opened her salon to the notabilities of the liberal party inArcis. A woman accustomed to the advantages of salon royalty doesnot easily renounce them. Vanity is the most tenacious of allhabits.
Bonapartist, and afterwards a liberal— for, by thestrangest of metamorphoses, the soldiers of Napoleon became almostto a man enamoured of the constitutional system— Colonel Giguetwas, during the Restoration, the natural president of the governingcommittee of Arcis, which consisted of the notary Grevin, hisson-in-law Beauvisage, and Varlet junior, the chief physician ofArcis, brother-in-law of Grevin, and a few other liberals.
“If our dear boy is not nominated, ” said MadameMarion, having first looked into the antechamber and garden to makesure that no one overheard her, “he cannot have MademoiselleBeauvisage; his success in this election means a marriage withCecile. ”
“Cecile! ” exclaimed the old man, opening his eyesvery wide and looking at his sister in stupefaction.
“There is no one but you in the whole department whowould forget the dot and the expectations of MademoiselleBeauvisage, ” said his sister.
“She is the richest heiress in the department of theAube, ” said Simon Giguet.
“But it seems to me, ” said the old soldier, “thatmy son is not to be despised as a match; he is your heir, healready has something from his mother, and I expect to leave himsomething better than a dry name. ”
“All that put together won't make thirty thousand ayear, and suitors are already coming forward who have as much