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Title: The Deputy of Arcis

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: August, 1999 [Etext #1871]
Posting Date: March 4, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEPUTY OF ARCIS ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

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 j