“My daughter,” she said, “behave this evening with propriety, like a well-bred girl; and from this day forth be more sedate. Do not chatter heedlessly, and never walk alone with Monsieur Giguet, or Monsieur Olivier Vinet, or the sub-prefect, or Monsieur Martener, — in fact, with any one, not even Achille Pigoult. You will not marry any of the young men of Arcis, or of the department. Your fate is to shine in Paris. Therefore I shall now give you charming dresses, to accustom you to elegance. We can easily find out where the Princesse de Cadignan and the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne get their things. I mean that you shall cease to look provincial. You must practise the piano for three hours every day. I shall send for Monsieur Moise from Troyes until I know what master I ought to get from Paris. Your talents must all be developed, for you have only one year more of girlhood before you. Now I have warned you, and I shall see how you behave this evening. You must manage to keep Simon at a distance, but without coquetting with him.”
“Don’t be uneasy, mamma; I intend to adore the stranger.”
These words, which made Madame Beauvisage laugh, need some explanation.
“Ha! I haven’t seen him yet,” said Phileas, “but everybody is talking about him. When I want to know who he is, I shall send the corporal or Monsieur Groslier to ask him for his passport.”
There is no little town in France where, at a given time, the drama or the comedy of the stranger is not played. Often the stranger is an adventurer who makes dupes and departs, carrying with him the reputation of a woman, or the money of a family. Oftener the stranger is a real stranger, whose life remains mysterious long enough for the town to busy itself curiously about his words and deeds.
Now the probable accession to power of Simon Giguet was not the only serious event that was happening in Arcis. For the last two days the attention of the little town had been focussed on a personage just arrived, who proved to be the first Unknown of the present generation. The stranger was at this moment the subject of conversation in every household in the place. He was the beam fallen from heaven into the city of the frogs.
The situation of Arcis-sur-Aube explains the effect which the arrival of a stranger was certain to produce. About eighteen miles from Troyes, on the high-road to Paris, opposite to a farm called “La Belle Etoile,” a county road branches off from the main road, and leads to Arcis, crossing the vast plains where the Seine cuts a narrow green valley bordered with poplars, which stand out upon the whiteness of the chalk soil of Champagne. The main road from Arcis to Troyes is eighteen miles in length, and makes the arch of a bow, the extremities of which are Troyes and Arcis, so that the shortest route from Paris to Arcis is by the county road which turns off, as we have said, near the Belle Etoile. The Aube is navigable only from Arcis to its mouth. Therefore this town, standing eighteen miles from a high-road, and separated from Troyes by monotonous plains, is isolated more or less, and has but little commerce or transportation either by land or water. Arcis is, in fact, a town completely isolated, where no travellers pass, and is attached to Troyes and La Belle Etoile by stage-coaches only. All the inhabitants know each other; they even know the commercial travellers who come, now and then, on business from the large Parisian houses. Thus, as in all provincial towns in a like position, a stranger, if he stayed two days, would wag the tongues and excite the imaginations of the whole community without his name or his business being known.
Now, Arcis being still in a state of tranquillity three days before the morning when, by the will of the creator of so many histories, the present tale begins, there was seen to arrive by the county road a stranger, driving a handsome tilbury drawn by a valuable horse, and accompanied by a tiny groom, no bigger than my fist, mounted on a saddle-horse. The coach, connecting with the diligences to Troyes, had brought from La Belle Etoile three trunks coming from Paris, marked with no name, but belonging to this stranger, who took up his quarters at the Mulet inn. Every one in Arcis supposed, on the first evening, that this personage had come with the intention of buying the estate of Arcis; and much was said in all households about the future owner of the chateau. The tilbury, the traveller, his horses, his servant, one and all appeared to belong to a man who had dropped upon Arcis from the highest social sphere.
The stranger, no doubt fatigued, did not show himself for a time; perhaps he spent part of the day in arranging himself in the rooms he had chosen, announcing his intention of staying a certain time. He requested to see the stable where his horses were to be kept, showed himself very exacting, and insisted that they should be placed in stalls apart from those of the innkeeper’s horses, and from those of guests who might come later. In consequence of such singular demands, the landlord of the hotel du Mulet considered his guest to be an Englishman.
On the evening of the first day several attempts were made at the Mulet by inquisitive persons to satisfy their curiosity; but no light whatever could be obtained from the little groom, who evaded all inquiries, not by refusals or by silence, but by sarcasms which seemed to be beyond his years and to prove him a corrupt little mortal.
After making a careful toilet and dining at six o’clock, the stranger mounted a horse, and, followed by his groom, rode off along the road to Brienne, not returning till a very late hour to the Mulet. The landlord, his wife, and her maids had meantime gained no information from a careful examination of his trunks, and the articles about his rooms, as to the projects or the condition of their mysterious inmate.
On the stranger’s return the mistress of the house carried up to him the book in which, according to police regulations, he was required to inscribe his name, rank, the object of his journey, and the place from which he came.
“I shall write nothing,” he said to the mistress of the inn. “If any one questions you, you can say I refused; and you may send the sub-prefect to see me, for I have no passport. I dare say that many persons will make inquiries about me, madame, and you can tell them just what you like. I wish you to know nothing about me. If you worry me on this point, I shall go to the Hotel de la Poste on the Place du Pont and remain there for the fortnight I propose to spend here. I should be sorry for that, because I know that you are the sister of Gothard, one of the heroes of the Simeuse affair.”
“Enough, monsieur,” said the sister of the steward of Cinq-Cygne.
After such a beginning, the stranger kept the mistress of the house a whole hour and made her tell him all she knew of Arcis, of its fortunes, its interests, and its functionaries. The next day he disappeared on horseback, followed by his tiger, returning at midnight.
We can now understand Mademoiselle Cecile’s little joke, which Madame Beauvisage thought to be without foundation. Beauvisage and Cecile, surprised by the order of the day promulgated by Severine, were enchanted. While his wife went to dress for Madame Marion’s reception, the father listened to the many conjectures it was natural a girl should make in such a case. Then, fatigued with his day, he went to bed as soon as his wife and daughter had departed.
As may readily be supposed by those who know anything of country towns, a crowd of persons flocked to Madame Marion’s that evening. The triumph of Giguet junior was thought to be a victory won against the Comte de Gondreville, and to insure forever the independence of Arcis in the matter of elections. The news of the death of poor Charles Keller was regarded as a judgment from heaven, intended to silence all rivalries.
Antonin Goulard, Frederic Marest, Olivier Vinet, and Monsieur Martener, the authorities who, until then, had frequented this salon (the prevailing opinions of which did not seem to them contrary to the government created by the popular will in July, 1830), came as usual, possessed by curiosity to see what attitude the Beauvisage family would take under the circumstances.
The salon, restored to its usual condition, showed no signs of the meeting which appeared to have settled the destiny of Simon Giguet. By eight o’clock four card-tables, each with four players, were under way. The smaller salon and the dining-room were full of people. Never, except on grand occ
asions, such as balls and fete-days, had Madame Marion seen such an influx at the door of her salon, forming as it were the tail of a comet.
“It is the dawn of power,” said Olivier Vinet to the mistress of the house, showing her this spectacle, so gratifying to the heart of a person who delighted in receiving company.
“No one knows what there is in Simon,” replied the mother. “We live in times when young men who persevere and are moral and upright can aspire to everything.”
This answer was made, not so much to Vinet as to Madame Beauvisage, who had entered the room with her daughter and was now beginning to offer her congratulations on the event. In order to escape indirect appeals and pointed interpretations of careless words, Madame Beauvisage took a vacant place at a whist-table and devoted her mind to the winning of one hundred fishes. One hundred fishes, or counters, made fifty sous! When a player had lost that sum it was talked of in Arcis for a couple of days.
Cecile went to talk with Mademoiselle Mollot, one of her good friends, appearing to be seized with redoubled affection for her. Mademoiselle Mollot was the beauty of Arcis, just as Cecile was the heiress. Monsieur Mollot, clerk of the court, lived on the Grande-Place in a house constructed in the same manner as that of Beauvisage on the Place du Pont. Madame Mollot, forever seated at the window of her salon on the ground-floor, was attacked (as the result of that situation) by intense, acute, insatiable curiosity, now become a chronic and inveterate disease. The moment a peasant entered the square from the road to Brienne she saw him, and watched to see what business could have brought him to Arcis; she had no peace of mind until that peasant was explained. She spent her life in judging the events, men, things, and households of Arcis.
The ambition of the house of Mollot, father, mother, and daughter, was to marry Ernestine (an only daughter) to Antonin Goulard. Consequently the refusal of the Beauvisage parents to entertain the proposals of the sub-prefect had tightened the bonds of friendship between the two families.
“There’s an impatient man!” said Ernestine to Cecile, indicating Simon Giguet. “He wants to come and talk with us; but every one who comes in feels bound to congratulate him. I’ve heard him say fifty times already: ‘It is, I think, less to me than to my father that this compliment of my fellow-citizens has been paid; but, in any case, pray believe that I shall be devoted not only to our general interests but to yours individually.’ I can guess those words by the motion of his lips, and all the while he is looking at you with an air of martyrdom.”
“Ernestine,” replied Cecile, “don’t leave me the whole evening; I don’t want to listen to his proposals made under cover of ‘alases!’ and mingled with sighs.”
“Don’t you want to be the wife of a Keeper of the Seals?”
“Ah! that’s all nonsense,” said Cecile, laughing.
“But I assure you,” persisted Ernestine, “that just before you came in Monsieur Godivet, the registrar, was declaring with enthusiasm that Simon would be Keeper of the Seals in three years.”
“Do they count on the influence of the Comte de Gondreville?” asked the sub-prefect, coming up to the two girls and guessing that they were making fun of his friend Giguet.
“Ah! Monsieur Antonin,” said the handsome Ernestine, “you who promised my mother to find out all about the stranger, what have you heard about him?”
“The events of to-day, Mademoiselle, are so much more important,” said Antonin, taking a seat beside Cecile, like a diplomat delighted to escape general attention by conversing with two girls. “All my career as sub-prefect or prefect is at stake.”
“What! I thought you allowed your friend Simon to be nominated unanimously.”
“Simon is my friend, but the government is my master, and I expect to do my best to prevent Simon from being elected. And here comes Madame Mollot, who owes me her concurrence as the wife of a man whose functions attach him to the government.”
“I am sure we ask nothing better than to be on your side,” replied the sheriff’s wife. “Mollot has told me,” she continued in a low voice, “what took place here to-day — it is pitiable! Only one man showed talent, and that was Achille Pigoult. Everybody agrees that he would make a fine orator in the Chamber; and therefore, though he has nothing, and my daughter has a dot of sixty thousand francs, not to speak of what, as an only child, she will inherit from us and also from her uncle at Mollot and from my aunt Lambert at Troyes, — well, I declare to you that if Monsieur Achille Pigoult did us the honor to ask her to wife, I should give her to him; yes, I should — provided always she liked him. But the silly little goose wants to marry as she pleases; it is Mademoiselle Beauvisage who puts such notions into her head.”
The sub-prefect received this double broadside like a man who knows he has thirty thousand francs a year, and expects a prefecture.
“Mademoiselle is right,” he said, looking at Cecile; “she is rich enough to make a marriage of love.”
“Don’t let us talk about marriage,” said Ernestine; “it saddens my poor dear Cecile, who was owning to me just now that in order not to be married for her money, but for herself, she should like an affair with some stranger who knew nothing of Arcis and her future expectations as Lady Croesus, and would spin her a romance to end in true love and a marriage.”
“That’s a very pretty idea!” cried Olivier Vinet, joining the group of young ladies in order to get away from the partisans of Simon, the idol of the day. “I always knew that Mademoiselle had as much sense as money.”
“And,” continued Ernestine, “she has selected for the hero of her romance — ”
“Oh!” interrupted Madame Mollot, “an old man of fifty! — fie!”
“How do you know he is fifty?” asked Olivier Vinet, laughing.
“How?” replied Madame Mollot. “Why, this morning I was so puzzled that I got out my opera-glass — ”
“Bravo!” cried the superintendent of ponts et chaussees, who was paying court to the mother to obtain the daughter.
“And so,” continued Madame Mollot, “I was able to see him shaving; with such elegant razors! — mounted in gold, or silver-gilt!”
“Gold! gold, of course!” said Vinet. “When things are unknown they should always be imagined of the finest quality. Consequently I, not having seen this gentleman, am perfectly sure that he is at least a count.”
This speech created a laugh; and the laughing group excited the jealousy of a group of dowagers and the attention of a troop of men in black who surrounded Simon Giguet. As for the latter, he was chafing in despair at not being able to lay his fortune and his future at the feet of the rich Cecile.
“Yes,” continued Vinet, “a man distinguished for his birth, for his manners, his fortune, his equipages, — a lion, a dandy, a yellow-kid-glover!”
“Monsieur Olivier,” said Ernestine, “he drives the prettiest tilbury you ever saw.”
“What? Antonin, you never told me he had a tilbury when we were talking about that conspirator this morning. A tilbury! Why, that’s an extenuating circumstance; he can’t be a republican.”
“Mesdemoiselles, there is nothing that I will not do in the interests of your amusement,” said Antonin Goulard. “I will instantly proceed to ascertain if this individual is a count, and if he is, what kind of count.”
“You can make a report upon him,” said the superintendent of bridges.
“For the use of all future sub-prefects,” added Olivier Vinet.
“How can you do it?” asked Madame Mollot.
“Oh!” replied the sub-prefect, “ask Mademoiselle Beauvisage whom she would accept as her husband among all of us here present; she will not answer. Allow me the same discretion. Mesdemoiselles, restrain your anxiety; in ten minutes you shall know whether the Unknown is a count or a commercial traveller.”
X. THE REVELATIONS OF AN OPERA-GLASS
Antonin Goulard left the little group of young ladies, in which, besides Cecile and Ernestine, were Mademoiselle Berton, daughter of the tax-collector, �
�� an insignificant young person who played the part of satellite to Cecile, — and Mademoiselle Herbelot, sister of the second notary of Arcis, an old maid of thirty, soured, affected, and dressed like all old maids; for she wore, over a bombazine gown, an embroidered fichu, the corners of which, gathered to the front of the bodice, were knotted together after the well-known fashion under the Terror.
“Julien,” said the sub-prefect to his valet, who was waiting in the antechamber, “you who served six years at Gondreville ought to know how a count’s coronet is made.”
“Yes, monsieur; it has pearls on its nine points.”
“Very good. Go to the Mulet, and try to clap your eye on the tilbury of the gentleman who is stopping there, and then come and tell me what is painted on it. Do your business thoroughly, and bring me all the gossip of the inn. If you see the little groom, ask him at what hour to-morrow his master can receive the sub-prefect — in case you find the nine pearls. Don’t drink, don’t gossip yourself, and come back quickly; and as soon as you get back let me know it by coming to the door of the salon.”
“Yes, monsieur.”
The Mulet inn, as we have already said, stands on the square, at the opposite corner to the garden wall of the Marion estate on the other side of the road leading to Brienne. Therefore the solution of the problem could be rapid. Antonin Goulard returned to his place by Cecile to await results.
“We talked so much about the stranger yesterday that I dreamed of him all night,” said Madame Mollot.
“Ha! ha! do you still dream of unknown heroes, fair lady?” said Vinet.
“You are very impertinent; if I chose I could make you dream of me,” she retorted. “So this morning when I rose — ”
It may not be useless to say that Madame Mollot was considered a clever woman in Arcis; that is, she expressed herself fluently and abused that advantage. A Parisian, wandering by chance into these regions, like the Unknown, would have thought her excessively garrulous.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 903