“Pah! the Left, pure and simple, is hardly worse.  But take a cigar; these are excellent.  The princes smoke them.”

The colonel rose and rang the bell, saying to the servant when he came, “A light!”

The cigars lighted, Monsieur de Trailles endeavored to prevent another interruption by declaring before he was questioned that he had never smoked anything more exquisite.  Comfortably ensconced in his arm-chair, the colonel seemed to offer the hope of a less fugacious attention, and Monsieur de Trailles resumed:—­

“All went well at first.  To crush the candidate the ministry wanted to be rid of,—­a lawyer, and the worst sort of cad,—­I unearthed a stocking-maker, a fearful fool, whom I persuaded to offer himself as candidate.  The worthy man was convinced that he belonged to the dynastic opposition.  That is the opinion which, for the time being, prevails in that region.  The election, thanks to me, was as good as made; and, our man once in Paris, the great Seducer in the Tuileries had only to say five words to him, and this dynastic opposer could have been turned inside out like one of this own stockings, and made to do whatever was wanted of him.”

“Pretty well played that!” said the colonel.  “I recognize my Maxime.”

“You will recognize him still farther when he tells you that he was able, without recourse to perquisites, to make his own little profit out of the affair.  In order to graft a little parliamentary ambition upon my vegetable, I addressed myself to his wife,—­a rather appetizing provincial, though past her prime.”

“Yes, yes, I see; very good!” said Franchessini; “husband made deputy —­satisfied—­shut his mouth.”

“You are all wrong, my dear fellow; the pair have an only daughter, a spoilt child, nineteen years old, very agreeable face, and something like a million in her pocket.”

“But, my dear Maxime, I passed your tailor’s house last night, and it was not illuminated.”

“No; that would have been premature.  However, here was the situation:  two women frantic to get to Paris; gratitude to the skies for the man who would get them an introduction to the Palais-Bourbon; the little one crazy for the title of countess; the mother transported at the idea, carefully insinuated by me, of holding a political salon,—­you must see all that such a situation offers, and you know me too well, I fancy, to suppose that I should fall below any of its opportunities.”

“Quite easy in mind as to that,” said the colonel, getting up to open a window and let out the smoke of their two cigars.

“I was on the point,” continued Maxime, “of pocketing both daughter and dot, when there fell from the skies, or rather there rose from the nether regions, a Left candidate, the stone-cutter, as you call him, a man with two names,—­in short, a natural son—­”

“Ha!” said the colonel, “those fellows do have lucky stars, to be sure.  I am not surprised if one of them mowed the grass from under your feet.”