This Achille Pigoult is a malicious fellow, who intentionally brought in the name of Madame Beauvisage to exhibit her conjugal sovereignty.  But the assembly was really too provincial to catch the meaning of that little bit of treachery.  Besides, in the provinces, women take part in the most virile affairs of the men.  The well-known saying of the vicar’s old housekeeper, “We don’t say masses at that price,” would pass without comment in Champagne.

At last came Sallenauve.  I was struck with the ease and quiet dignity of his manner.  That is a very reassuring pledge, madame, of his conduct under more trying circumstances; for when a man rises to speak it makes but little difference who and what his audience are.  To an orator goaded by fear, great lords and porters are precisely the same thing.  They are eyes that look at you, ears that hear you.  Individuals are not there, only one huge being,—­an assembly, felt as a mass, without analyzing the elements.

After enumerating briefly the ties which connected him with this region, slipping in as he did so an adroit and dignified allusion to his birth which “was not like that of others,” Sallenauve stated clearly his political ideas.  A Republic he thought the finest of all governments; but he did not believe it possible to establish one in France; consequently, he did not desire it.  He thought that a truly parliamentary government, in which court influence should be so vigorously muzzled that nothing need be feared from its tendency to interference and caballing would best conduce to the dignity and the welfare of the nation.  Liberty and equality, the two great principles that triumphed in ’89, would obtain from such a government the strongest guarantees.  As to the manoeuvring of the royal power against those principles, it was not for institutions to check it, but for men,—­customs, public opinion, rather than laws; and for himself, Sallenauve, he should ever stand in the breach as a living obstacle.  He declared himself a warm partisan of free education; believed that greater economy might be exercised in the budget; that too many functionaries were attached to the government; and, above all, that the court was too largely represented in the Chamber.  To maintain his independence he was firmly resolved to accept no post and no favors from the government.  Neither ought those who might elect him to expect that he would ever take steps on their behalf which were not warranted by reason and by justice.  It was said that the word impossible was not French.  Yet there was an impossibility by which he took pride in being stopped—­that of injustice, and that of disloyalty, even the faintest, to the Right. [Loud applause.]

Silence being once more restored,—­

“Monsieur,” said one of the electors, after obtaining the floor from the chairman, “you say that you will accept no post under government.  Does not that imply reproach to public functionaries?  My name is Godivet; I am registrar of the archives, but I do not consider that a reason why I should incur the contempt of my fellow-citizens.”