ng
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