rcis-sur-Aube.

"Monsieur le maire," said everybody, "gives noble proof of his firmness
of character."

Nothing progresses so rapidly as a legal revolt. That evening
Madame Marion and her friends organized for the morrow a meeting of
"independent electors" in the interests of Simon Giguet, the colonel's
son. The morrow had now come and had turned the house topsy-turvy to
receive the friends on whose independence the leaders of the movement
counted. Simon Giguet, the native-born candidate of a little town
jealously desirous to elect a son of its own, had, as we have seen, put
to profit this desire; and yet, the whole prosperity and fortune of the
Giguet family were the work of the Comte de Gondreville. But when it
comes to an election, what are sentiments!

This Scene is written for the information of countries so unfortunate
as not to know the blessings of national representation, and which are,
therefore, ignorant by what intestinal convulsions, what Brutus-like
sacrifices, a little town gives birth to a deputy. Majestic but natural
spectacle, which may, indeed, be compared with that of childbirth,--the
same throes, the same impurities, the same lacerations, the same final
triumph!

It may be asked why an only son, whose fortune was sufficient, should
be, like Simon Giguet, an ordinary barrister in a little country town
where barristers are pretty nearly useless. A word about the candidate
is therefore necessary.

Colonel Giguet had had, between 1806 and 1813, by his wife who died in
1814, three children, the eldest of whom, Simon, alone survived. Until
he became an only child, Simon was brought up as a youth to whom the
exercise of a profession would be necessary. And about the time he
became by the death of his brothers the family heir, the young man met
with a serious disappointment. Madame Marion had counted much, for her
nephew, on the inheritance of his grandfather the banker of Hamburg. But
when that old German died in 1826, he left his grandson Giguet a paltry
two thousand francs a year. The worthy banker, endowed with great
procreative powers, having soothed the worries of business by the
pleasures of paternity, favored the families of eleven other children
who surrounded him, and who made him believe, with some appearance of
justice, that Simon Giguet was already a rich man.

Besides all this, the colonel was bent on giving his son an independent
position, and for this reason: the Giguets could not exp