ect any
government favors under the Restoration. Even if Simon had not been the
son of an ardent Bonapartist, he belonged to a family whose members had
justly incurred the animosity of the Cinq-Cygne family, owing to
the part which Giguet, the colonel of gendarmerie, and the Marions,
including Madame Marion, had taken as witnesses on the famous trial of
the Messieurs de Simeuse, unjustly condemned in 1805 for the abduction
of the Comte de Gondreville, then senator, and formerly representative
of the people, who had despoiled the Cinq-Cygne family of their
property. [See "An Historical Mystery."]

Grevin was not only one of the most important witnesses at that trial,
but he was one of the chief promoters of the prosecution. That affair
divides to this day the arrondissement of Arcis into two parties; one of
which declares the innocence of the condemned; the other standing by the
Comte de Gondreville and his adherents. Though, under the Restoration,
the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne used all the influence the return of the
Bourbons gave her to arrange things as she wished in the department
of the Aube, the Comte de Gondreville contrived to counterbalance this
Cinq-Cygne royalty by the secret authority he wielded over the liberals
of the town through the notary Grevin, Colonel Giguet, his son-in-law
Keller (always elected deputy in spite of the Cinq-Cygnes), and also by
the credit he maintained, as long as Louis XVIII. lived, in the counsels
of the crown. It was not until after the death of that king that the
Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne was able to get Michu appointed judge of the
court of assizes in Arcis. She desired of all things to obtain this
place for the son of the steward who had perished on the scaffold
at Troyes, the victim of his devotion to the Simeuse family, whose
full-length portrait always hung in her salon, whether in Paris or at
Cinq-Cygne. Until 1823 the Comte de Gondreville had possessed sufficient
power over Louis XVIII. to prevent this appointment of Michu.

It was by the advice of the Comte de Gondreville that Colonel Giguet
made his son a lawyer. Simon had all the more opportunity of shining
at the bar in the arrondissement of Arcis because he was the only
barrister, solicitors pleading their own cases in these petty
localities. The young man had really secured certain triumphs in the
court of assizes of the Aube, but he was none the less an object of
derision to Frederic Marest, _procureur-du-roi_, Olivier Vi