The Deputy of Arcis

H >> Honore de Balzac >> The Deputy of Arcis


Protected by the respect that every one bore to his father, and by the
influence exercised by his aunt over a little town whose principal
inhabitants had frequented her salon for many years, Simon Giguet,
possessing already ten thousand francs a year, not counting the fees
of his profession and the fortune his aunt would not fail to leave
him, felt no doubt of his election. Nevertheless, the first sound of
the bell announcing the arrival of the most influential electors
echoed in the heart of the ambitious aspirant and filled it with vague
fears. Simon did not conceal from himself the cleverness and the
immense resources of old Grevin, nor the prestige attending the means
that would surely be employed by the ministry to promote the candidacy
of a young and dashing officer then in Africa, attached to the staff
of the prince-royal.

"I think," he said to his father, "that I have the colic; I feel a
warmth at the pit of my stomach that makes me very uneasy."

"Old soldiers," replied the colonel, "have the same feeling when they
hear the cannon beginning to growl at the opening of a battle."

"What will it be in the Chamber!" said the barrister.

"The Comte de Gondreville told me," said the old colonel, "that he has
known more than one orator affected with the qualms which precede,
even with us old fire-eaters, the opening of a battle. But all this is
idle talk. You want to be a deputy," added the old man, shrugging his
shoulders, "then be one!"

"Father, the real triumph will be Cecile! Cecile has an immense
fortune. Now-a-days an immense fortune means power."

"Dear me! how times have changed! Under the Emperor men had to be
brave."

"Each epoch is summed up in a phrase," said Simon, recalling an
observation of the Comte de Gondreville, which paints that personage
well. He remarked: "Under the Empire, when it was desirable to destroy
a man, people said, 'He is a coward.' To-day we say, 'He is a cheat.'"

"Poor France! where are they leading you?" cried the colonel; "I shall
go back to my roses."

"Oh, stay, father! You are the keystone of the arch."



III

OPPOSITION DEFINES ITSELF

The mayor, Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage, was the first to present
himself, accompanied by the successor of his father-in-law, the
busiest notary in town, Achille Pigoult, grandson of an old man who
had continued justice of the peace in Arcis during the Revolution, the
Empire, and the Restoration. Achille Pigoult, thirty-two years of age,
had been eighteen years a clerk in Grevin's office with no means of
becoming himself a notary. His father, son of the justice of peace,
had died of a so-called apoplexy, having gone wrong in business.

The Comte de Gondreville, however, with whom old Pigoult had relations
dating back to 1793, lent money for the necessary security, and thus
enabled the grandson of the judge who made the first examination in
the Simeuse case to buy the practice of his master, Grevin. Achille
had set up his office in the Place de l'Eglise, in a house belonging
to the Comte de Gondreville, which the latter had leased to him at so
low a price that any one could see how desirous that crafty politician
was to hold the leading notary of Arcis in the hollow of his hand.

Young Pigoult, a short, skinny man, whose eyes seemed to pierce the
green spectacles which could not modify the spitefulness of his
glance, well-informed as to all the interests of the neighborhood,
owing his aptitude in managing affairs to a certain facility of
speech, passed for what is called a _quizzer_, saying things plainly
and with more cleverness than the aborigines could put into their
conversations. Still a bachelor, he was awaiting a rich marriage
through the offices of his two protectors, Grevin and the Comte de
Gondreville. Consequently, barrister Giguet was not a little surprised
on seeing Achille appear at the meeting in company with Monsieur
Phileas Beauvisage.

The notary, whose face was so seamed by the smallpox that it seemed to
be covered with a white net, formed a perfect contrast to the rotund
person of the mayor, whose face resembled a full moon, but a warm and
lively moon; its tones of lily and of rose being still further
brightened by a gracious smile, the result not so much of a
disposition of the soul as of that formation of the lips for which the
word "simpering" seems to have been created. Phileas Beauvisage was
endowed with so great a contentment with himself that he smiled on all
the world and under all circumstances. Those simpering lips smiled at
a funeral. The liveliness that abounded in his infantine blue eyes did
not contradict that perpetual and well-nigh intolerable smile.

This internal satisfaction passed all the more readily for benevolence
and affability, because Phileas had made himself a language of his
own, remarkable for its immoderate use of the formulas of politeness.
He always "had the honor"; to all his inquiries as to the health of
absent persons he added the adjectives "dear," "good," "excellent." He
lavished condoling or congratulatory phrases apropos of all the petty
miseries and all the little felicities of life. He concealed under a
deluge of commonplaces his native incapacity, his total want of
education, and a weakness of character which can only be expressed by
the old word "weathercock." Be not uneasy: the weathercock had for its
axis the beautiful Madame Beauvisage, Severine Grevin, the most
remarkable woman in the arrondissement.

When Severine heard of what she called her husband's "freak" as to the
election, she said to him on the morning of the meeting at Madame
Marion's:--

"It was well enough to give yourself an air of independence; but you
mustn't go to that Giguet meeting unless Achille Pigoult accompanies
you; I've told him to come and take you."

Giving Achille Pigoult as mentor to Beauvisage meant sending a spy
from the Gondreville party to the Giguet assemblage. We may therefore
imagine the grimace which contracted the puritan visage of Simon, who
was forced to welcome graciously an _habitue_ of his aunt's salon and
an influential elector, in whom, nevertheless, he saw an enemy.

"Ah!" he thought to himself, "what a mistake I made in refusing him
that security when he asked for it! Old Gondreville had more sense
than I--Good-day to you, Achille," he said, assuming a jaunty manner;
"I suppose you mean to trip me up."

"Your meeting isn't a conspiracy against the independence of our
votes," replied the notary, smiling. "We are all playing above-board,
I take it."

"Above-board," echoed Beauvisage.

And the mayor began to laugh with that expressionless laugh by which
some persons end all their sentences; which may, perhaps, be called
the _ritornello_ of their conversation. After which he placed himself
in what we must describe as his third position, standing full-front,
his chest expanded, and his hands behind his back. He was dressed in
black coat and trousers, with an effulgent white waistcoat, opened in
such a way as to show two diamond shirt-buttons worth several thousand
francs.

"We shall fight, but we shall not be the less good friends," he said.
"That is the essence of constitutional morals; he! he! he! That is how
_I_ understand the alliance of monarchy with liberty; ha! ha! ha!"

Whereupon the mayor took Simon's hand, saying:

"How are you, my good friend? Your dear aunt and our worthy colonel
are no doubt as well to-day as they were yesterday,--that is, I
presume so,--he! he! he!" adding, with an air of perfect beatitude,
"perhaps a little agitated by the ceremony now about to take place.
Ha! ha! young man; so we intend to enter a political career? Ha! ha!
ha! This is our first step--mustn't step back--it is a great career.
I'd rather it were you than I to rush into the storms and tempests of
the legislative body, hi! hi!--however agreeable it may be to see that
body in our own person, hi! hi! hi!--the sovereign power of France in
one four hundred and fifty-third! Hi! hi! hi!"

The vocal organ of Phileas Beauvisage had an agreeable sonority
altogether in harmony with the leguminous curves of his face (of the
color of a light yellow pumpkin), his solid back, and his broadly
expanded chest. That voice, bass in volume, could soften to a baritone
and utter, in the giggle with which Phileas ended his phrases, a
silvery note. When God desired, in order to place all species of
mankind in this his terrestrial paradise, to create within it a
provincial bourgeois, his hands never made a more perfect and complete
type than Phileas Beauvisage.

"I admire," said that great work, "the devotion of those who fling
themselves into the tumult of political life; he! he! he! It takes
more nerve than I possess. Who could have told us in 1812 or 1813 that
we should come to this? As for me, nothing can surprise me in these
days, when asphalt, India-rubber, railroads, and steam have changed
the ground we tread on, and overcoats, and distances, he, he!"

These last words were seasoned with a prolonged laugh, and accompanied
by a gesture which he had made more especially his own: he closed his
right fist, struck it into the rounded palm of his left hand, and
rubbed it there with joyous satisfaction. This performance coincided
with his laughs on the frequent occasions when he thought he had said
a witty thing. Perhaps it is superfluous to add that Phileas
Beauvisage was regarded in Arcis as an amiable and charming man.

"I shall endeavor," replied Simon Giguet, "to worthily represent--"

"The sheep of Champagne," interpolated Achille Pigoult, interrupting
him.

The candidate swallowed that shaft without reply, for he was forced at
that moment to go forward and receive two more influential electors.

One was the landlord of the Mulet, the best inn in Arcis, standing on
the Grande-Place at the corner of the rue de Brienne. This worthy
landlord, named Poupart, had married the sister of a man-servant
attached to the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, the well-known Gothard, one of
the actors and witnesses in the Simeuse affair.

Poupart, though a most devoted adherent of the Cinq-Cygne family, had
been sounded during the last day or two, by Colonel Giguet's valet,
with so much cleverness and perseverance that he thought he was doing
an ill-turn to the Comte de Gondreville, the enemy of the Cinq-Cygnes,
by giving his influence to the election of Simon Giguet; and he was
now conversing on that point with the man who accompanied him, an
apothecary named Fromaget, who, as he did not furnish his wares to the
chateau de Gondreville, desired nothing better than to cabal against
the Kellers.

These two individuals of the lesser bourgeoisie could, in consequence
of their connections, determine a certain number of floating votes,
for they influenced and advised a number of persons to whom the
political opinions of the candidate were a matter of indifference.
Consequently, Simon took possession of Poupart, and delivered the
apothecary Fromaget to his father, who had just come in to make his
bow to the electors.

The sub-engineer of the arrondissement, the secretary of the mayor's
office, four sheriffs, three solicitors, the clerk of the court, and
the clerk of the justice of the peace, the registry-clerk, and the
tax-collector, all officials under government, two doctors, rivals of
Varlet, Grevin's brother-in-law, a miller named Laurent Goussard, the
head of the republicans of Arcis, the two assistant mayors, the
printer and publisher of Arcis, and about a dozen other bourgeois
arrived in succession, and walked about the garden until the gathering
seemed numerous enough to admit of opening the session.

At length, about mid-day, fifty men, all in their best clothes,--most
of them having come out of curiosity to see the handsome salons which
were much talked of throughout the arrondissement,--were seated on the
chairs Madame Marion had provided for them. The windows were left
open, and presently so deep a silence reigned that the rustle of
Madame Marion's gown was heard,--that good woman not being able to
resist the pleasure of descending to the garden and placing herself in
a corner whence she could listen to what went on in the salon. The
cook, the chamber-maid, and the man-servant stood in the dining-room
and shared the emotions of their masters.

"Messieurs," said Simon Giguet, "some among you desire to honor my
father by asking him to preside at this meeting; but Colonel Giguet
requests me to present his thanks, and express due gratitude for a
desire in which he sees a reward for his services to the country. We
are in his house; he thinks he ought, therefore, to decline those
functions, and he desires to propose in his stead an honorable
merchant on whom your suffrages have already bestowed the chief
magistracy of this town, Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage."

"Bravo! bravo!"

"We are, I think, all of one mind in adopting for this meeting
--essentially friendly, but entirely free, which will prejudice in no
way whatever the great preparatory and primary meeting in which you
will produce your candidates and weigh their merits--in adopting, as I
said, the parliamentary and constitutional--forms--of the--electoral
Chamber."

"Yes, yes!" cried the assembly with one voice.

"Consequently," continued Simon, "I have the honor to request,
according to the wish of all present, that his honor the mayor will
now take the chair."

Phileas rose and crossed the salon, conscious that he was becoming as
red as a cherry. Then, when he stood behind the table, he saw, not a
hundred eyes, but a hundred thousand candles. The sun seemed to him to
be setting fire to the salon, and he had, to use his own expression, a
lump of salt in his throat.

"Return thanks," said Simon, in a low voice.

"Messieurs--"

Such total silence ensued that Phileas had a spasm of colic.

"What must I say, Simon?" he whispered.

"Well, well!" exclaimed Achille Pigoult.

"Messieurs," said Simon, goaded by the sarcastic interjection of the
little notary, "the honor which you have done to Monsieur le Maire may
take him unawares, but it cannot surprise him."

"That's it," said Beauvisage; "I am too sensible of this attention on
the part of my fellow-citizens not to be excessively flattered by it."

"Bravo!" cried the notary alone.

"The devil take me!" thought Beauvisage, "if I am ever caught
haranguing again."

"Will Messieurs Fromaget and Marcelin accept the functions of
inspectors of the ballot?"

"It would be more regular," said Achille Pigoult, rising, "if the
meeting itself nominated those officers,--following, of course, the
parliamentary forms of the Chamber."

"That is best," said the huge Monsieur Mollot, clerk of the court;
"otherwise what is here taking place would be a mere farce; we should
not be free in our action, in which case we might as well continue to
do the will of Monsieur Simon Giguet."

Simon said a few words to Beauvisage, who rose and delivered himself
of a "Messieurs!" in palpitating tones.

"Pardon me, Monsieur le president," said Achille Pigoult, "the
chairman presides, he does not speak."

"Messieurs," continued Beauvisage, prompted by Simon, "if we are--to
conform--to parliamentary usage--I shall beg--the honorable gentleman
--Monsieur Pigoult--to address the meeting--from this table--here
present--"

Pigoult sprang to the table, stood beside it with his fingers resting
lightly on its edge, and gave proof of his boldness by delivering the
following speech without the slightest embarrassment, and somewhat
after the manner of the illustrious Monsieur Thiers.

"Messieurs, it was not I who made that proposal for parliamentary
usage; nevertheless I can conceive that an assemblage of some sixty
notabilities of Champagne needs a chairman to guide it; for no flock
can get on without a shepherd. If we had voted for secret balloting, I
am certain that the name of our excellent mayor would have been
returned unanimously. His opposition to the candidate put forward by
his relations proves to us that he possesses civic courage in the
highest degree, inasmuch as he has dared to free himself from the
closest ties--those of family. Patriotism before family! that is
indeed so great an effort that, to make it, we are forced to believe
that Brutus from his realm of justice still contemplates us after the
lapse of two thousand, five hundred and some years. It seemed natural
to Maitre Giguet, who had the merit of divining our wishes in the
choice of a chairman, to guide us still further in electing
inspectors; but, if I am not mistaken, you think with me that once is
enough--and you are right. Our mutual friend, Simon Giguet, who
intends to offer himself as candidate, would have the air of assuming
mastery, and he might, consequently, lose in our minds the good-will
we should otherwise bestow upon a modest attitude like that of his
venerable father. Now what is our worthy chairman doing at this moment
by accepting the method of presiding suggested to him by the
candidate? He is depriving us of our liberty! I ask you: is it proper
that the chairman of our choice should tell us to nominate, by rising
or sitting, inspectors of the ballot thus forced upon us? Have we any
liberty of choice? If I were proposed, I believe all present would
rise out of politeness; indeed, we should all feel bound to rise for
one another, and I say there can be no choice where there is no
freedom of action."

"He is right," said the sixty auditors.

"Therefore, let us each write two names on a ballot, and the two
gentlemen who are elected will then feel themselves the real choice of
this assembly; they will have the right, conjointly with our honorable
chairman, to pronounce upon the majority when we come to a vote on the
resolutions to be offered. We are here, I think, to promise to a
candidate the fullest support that each can give at the coming primary
meeting of all the electors of the arrondissement. This act is
therefore, and I so declare it, a grave one. Does it not concern one
four-hundredth part of the governing power,--as our excellent mayor
has lately said with the ready wit that characterizes him and for
which we have so high an appreciation?"

During these remarks Colonel Giguet was cutting a sheet of paper into
strips, and Simon had sent for pens and ink.

This preliminary discussion on forms had already made Simon extremely
uneasy, and had also aroused the attention of the sixty assembled
bourgeois. Presently they began to write their ballots, and the wily
Pigoult contrived to obtain a majority for Monsieur Mollot, the clerk
of the court, and Monsieur Godivet, the registrar. These nominations
were naturally very displeasing to Fromaget, the apothecary, and
Marcelin the solicitor.

"You enable us," said Achille Pigoult, "to manifest our independence.
Therefore you may feel more pride in being rejected than you could
have felt in being chosen."

Everybody laughed.

Simon Giguet then produced silence by demanding speech of the
chairman, whose shirt was already wet and became still wetter as he
mustered all his courage to say:--

"Monsieur Simon Giguet has the floor."



IV

THE FIRST PARLIAMENTARY TEMPEST

"Messieurs," said Simon Giguet, "I ask permission to thank Monsieur
Achille Pigoult, who, although our meeting is altogether friendly--"

"It is a meeting preparatory to the great primary meeting," said the
solicitor Marcelin.

"That is what I was about to explain," resumed Simon, "I thank
Monsieur Achille Pigoult for having insisted on the strictness of
parliamentary forms. This is the first time that the arrondissement of
Arcis has been at liberty to use--"

"At liberty!" said Pigoult, interrupting the orator.

"At liberty!" cried the assembly.

"At liberty," continued Simon Giguet, "to use its rights in the great
battle of a general election to the Chamber of Deputies; and as, in a
few days, we shall have a meeting, at which all electors will be
present, to judge of the merits of the candidates, we ought to feel
ourselves most fortunate in becoming accustomed here, in this limited
meeting, to the usages of great assemblies. We shall be all the more
able to decide the political future of the town of Arcis; for the
question now is to substitute a town's interests for family interests,
a whole region for a man."

Simon then reviewed the history of the Arcis elections for the last
twenty years. While approving the constant election of Francois
Keller, he said the moment had now come to shake off the yoke of the
house of Gondreville. Arcis ought to be no more a fief of the liberals
than a fief of the Cinq-Cygnes. Advanced opinions were arising in
France of which the Kellers were not the exponents. Charles Keller,
having become a viscount, belonged to the court; he could have no
independence, because, in presenting him as candidate, his family
thought much more of making him succeed to his father's peerage than
of benefiting his constituency as deputy, etc., etc. And, finally,
Simon presented himself to the choice of his fellow-citizens, pledging
his word to sit on the same bench with the illustrious Odilon Barrot,
and never to desert the glorious flag of Progress.

_Progress_! one of those words behind which more flimsy ambitions than
ideas were trying to group themselves; for, after 1830, it represented
only the pretensions of a few hungry democrats. Nevertheless, this
word had still a great effect upon Arcis, and gave stability to
whosoever might inscribe it on his banner. To call himself a man of
progress was to declare himself a philosopher in all things and a
puritan in politics; it declared him in favor of railroads,
mackintoshes, penitentiaries, wooden pavements, Negro freedom,
savings-banks, seamless shoes, lighting by gas, asphalt pavements,
universal suffrage, and reduction of the civil list. In short, it
meant pronouncing himself against the treaties of 1815, against the
Eldest Branch, against the colossus of the North, perfidious Albion,
against all enterprises, good or bad, of the government. Thus we see
that the word _progress_ might signify "No," as well as "Yes." It was
gilding put upon the word _liberalism_, a new pass-word for new
ambitions.

"If I have rightly understood what this meeting is for," said Jean
Violette, a stocking-maker, who had recently bought the Beauvisage
house, "it is to pledge ourselves to support, by employing every means
in our power, Monsieur Simon Giguet at the elections as deputy in
place of Comte Francois Keller. If each of us intends to coalesce in
this manner we have only to say plainly Yes or No on that point."

"That is going too quickly to the point! Political affairs do not
advance in that way, or there would be no politics at all!" cried
Pigoult, whose old grandfather, eighty-six years old, had just entered
the room. "The last speaker undertakes to decide what seems to me,
according to my feeble lights, the very object we are met to discuss.
I demand permission to speak."

"Monsieur Achille Pigoult has the floor," said Beauvisage, at last
able to pronounce that phrase with all his municipal and
constitutional dignity.

"Messieurs," said the notary, "if there is a house in Arcis in which
no voice should be raised against the influence of the Comte de
Gondreville, it is surely the one we are now in. The worthy Colonel
Giguet is the only person in it who has not sought the benefits of the
senatorial power; he, at least, has never asked anything of the Comte
de Gondreville, who took his name off the list of exiles in 1815 and
caused him to receive the pension which the colonel now enjoys without
lifting a finger to obtain it."

A murmur, flattering to the old soldier, greeted this observation.

"But," continued the orator, "the Marions are covered with the count's
benefits. Without that influence, the late Colonel Giguet would not
have commanded the gendarmerie of the Aube. The late Monsieur Marion
would not have been chief-justice of the Imperial court without the
protection of the count, to whom I myself have every reason to be
thankful. You will therefore think it natural that I should be his
advocate within these walls. There are, indeed, few persons in this
arrondissement who have not received benefits from that family."

[Murmurs.]

"A candidate puts himself in the stocks," continued Achille Pigoult,
warming up. "I have the right to scrutinize his life before I invest
him with my powers. I do not desire ingratitude in the delegate I may
help to send to the Chamber, for ingratitude is like misfortune--one
ingratitude leads to others. We have been, he tells us, the
stepping-stone of the Kellers; well, from what I have heard here, I am
afraid we may become the stepping-stone of the Giguets. We live in a
practical age, do we not? Well, then, let us examine into what will be
the results to the arrondissement of Arcis if Simon Giguet is elected.
They talk to you of independence! Simon, whom I thus maltreat as
candidate, is my personal friend, as he is that of all who hear me,
and I should myself be charmed to see him the orator of the Left,
seated between Garnier-Pages and Lafitte; but how would that benefit
the arrondissement? The arrondissement would lose the support of the
Comte de Gondreville and the Kellers. We all, in the course of five
years, have had and shall have need of the one and of the others. Some
have gone to the Marechale de Carigliano to obtain the release of a
young fellow who had drawn a bad number. Others have had recourse to
the influence of the Kellers in many matters which are decided
according to their recommendation. We have always found the old Comte
de Gondreville ready to do us service. It is enough to belong to Arcis
to obtain admission to him without being forced to kick our heels in
his antechamber. Those two families know every one in Arcis. Where is
the financial influence of the Giguets, and what power have they with
the ministry? Have they any standing at the Bourse? When we want to
replace our wretched wooden bridge with one of stone can they obtain
from the department and the State the necessary funds? By electing
Charles Keller we shall cement a bond of friendship which has never,
to this day, failed to do us service. By electing my good, my
excellent schoolmate, my worthy friend Simon Giguet, we shall realize
nothing but losses until the far-distant time when he becomes a
minister. I know his modesty well enough to be certain he will not
contradict me when I say that I doubt his election to the post of
deputy." [Laughter.] "I have come to this meeting to oppose a course
which I regard as fatal to our arrondissement. Charles Keller belongs
to the court, they say to me. Well, so much the better! we shall not
have to pay the costs of his political apprenticeship; he knows the
affairs of the country; he knows parliamentary necessities; he is much
nearer being a statesman than my friend Simon, who will not pretend to
have made himself a Pitt or a Talleyrand in a little town like
Arcis--"