ng and dashing
officer then in Africa, attached to the staff of the prince-royal.

"I think," he said to his father, "that I have the colic; I feel a
warmth at the pit of my stomach that makes me very uneasy."

"Old soldiers," replied the colonel, "have the same feeling when they
hear the cannon beginning to growl at the opening of a battle."

"What will it be in the Chamber!" said the barrister.

"The Comte de Gondreville told me," said the old colonel, "that he has
known more than one orator affected with the qualms which precede, even
with us old fire-eaters, the opening of a battle. But all this is
idle talk. You want to be a deputy," added the old man, shrugging his
shoulders, "then be one!"

"Father, the real triumph will be Cecile! Cecile has an immense fortune.
Now-a-days an immense fortune means power."

"Dear me! how times have changed! Under the Emperor men had to be
brave."

"Each epoch is summed up in a phrase," said Simon, recalling an
observation of the Comte de Gondreville, which paints that personage
well. He remarked: "Under the Empire, when it was desirable to destroy a
man, people said, 'He is a coward.' To-day we say, 'He is a cheat.'"

"Poor France! where are they leading you?" cried the colonel; "I shall
go back to my roses."

"Oh, stay, father! You are the keystone of the arch."

III. OPPOSITION DEFINES ITSELF

The mayor, Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage, was the first to present
himself, accompanied by the successor of his father-in-law, the
busiest notary in town, Achille Pigoult, grandson of an old man who
had continued justice of the peace in Arcis during the Revolution, the
Empire, and the Restoration. Achille Pigoult, thirty-two years of age,
had been eighteen years a clerk in Grevin's office with no means of
becoming himself a notary. His father, son of the justice of peace, had
died of a so-called apoplexy, having gone wrong in business.

The Comte de Gondreville, however, with whom old Pigoult had relations
dating back to 1793, lent money for the necessary security, and thus
enabled the grandson of the judge who made the first examination in the
Simeuse case to buy the practice of his master, Grevin. Achille had
set up his office in the Place de l'Eglise, in a house belonging to the
Comte de Gondreville, which the latter had leased to him at so low a
price that any one could see how desirous that crafty politician was to
hold the leading notary of Arcis in the hollow of hi