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--Iwon'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.