The Deputy of Arcis | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and
Dagny, [email protected]

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