“My dear friend,” said Maxime, “if we were in the middle ages, I should explain by magic and sorcery the utter discomfiture of my candidate, and the election of the stone-man, whom you are fated to have for your colleague.  How is it possible to believe, what is however the fact, that an old tricoteuse, a former friend of Danton, and now the abbess of a convent of Ursulines, should actually, by the help of her nephew, an obscure organist in Paris, have so bewitched the whole electoral college that this upstart has been elected by a large majority?”

“But I suppose he had some friends and acquaintances in the town?”

“Not the ghost of one,—­unless it might be that nun.  Fortune, relations, father, even a name, he never had until the day of his arrival at Arcis two weeks ago; and now, if you please, the Comte Charles de Sallenauve, seigneur of the chateau of Arcis, is elected to the Chamber of deputies!  God only knows how it was done!  The pretended head of a former great family, representing himself as absent in foreign lands for many years, suddenly appears with this schemer before a notary in Arcis, recognizes him at a gallop as his son, buys the chateau of Arcis and presents it to him, and is off during the night before any one could even know what road he took.  The trick thus played, the abbess and her aide-de-camp, the organist, launched the candidate, and at once republicans, legitimists, conservatives, clergy, nobility, bourgeoisie, in fact everybody, as if by some spell cast upon that region, all did the bidding of that old witch of a nun, and without the stalwart battalion of the functionaries (who under my eye stood firm and did not flinch), his election would have been, like yours, unanimous.”

“Then, my poor friend, good-bye to the dot.”

“Not precisely; though it must certainly be adjourned.  The father grumbles because the blessed tranquillity of his life was disturbed and he himself covered with ridicule, though the poor dear man had already enough of that!  The daughter still wants to be a countess, but the mother takes it hard that her political salon should be floating away from her, and God knows how far I shall be led in order to comfort her.  Besides all this, I myself am goaded by the necessity of having to find the solution of my own problem pretty soon.  I had found it there:  I intended to marry, and take a year to settle my affairs; at the next session I should have made my father-in-law resign and stepped into his seat in the Chamber; then, you understand, what an horizon before me!”

“But, my dear fellow, political horizon apart, don’t let that million slip through your fingers.”

“Oh, heavens! as for that, except for the delay, I feel safe enough.  My future family is about to remove to Paris.  After this mortifying defeat, life in Arcis will not be endurable.  Beauvisage (forgive the name, it is that of my adopted family)—­Beauvisage is like Coriolanus, ready if he can to bring fire and slaughter on his ungrateful birthplace.  Besides, in transplanting themselves hither, these unfortunate exiles know where to lay their heads, being the owners of the hotel Beauseant.”