w pumpkin), his solid back, and his broadly
expanded chest. That voice, bass in volume, could soften to a baritone
and utter, in the giggle with which Phileas ended his phrases, a silvery
note. When God desired, in order to place all species of mankind in this
his terrestrial paradise, to create within it a provincial bourgeois,
his hands never made a more perfect and complete type than Phileas
Beauvisage.

"I admire," said that great work, "the devotion of those who fling
themselves into the tumult of political life; he! he! he! It takes more
nerve than I possess. Who could have told us in 1812 or 1813 that we
should come to this? As for me, nothing can surprise me in these days,
when asphalt, India-rubber, railroads, and steam have changed the ground
we tread on, and overcoats, and distances, he, he!"

These last words were seasoned with a prolonged laugh, and accompanied
by a gesture which he had made more especially his own: he closed his
right fist, struck it into the rounded palm of his left hand, and rubbed
it there with joyous satisfaction. This performance coincided with his
laughs on the frequent occasions when he thought he had said a witty
thing. Perhaps it is superfluous to add that Phileas Beauvisage was
regarded in Arcis as an amiable and charming man.

"I shall endeavor," replied Simon Giguet, "to worthily represent--"

"The sheep of Champagne," interpolated Achille Pigoult, interrupting
him.

The candidate swallowed that shaft without reply, for he was forced at
that moment to go forward and receive two more influential electors.

One was the landlord of the Mulet, the best inn in Arcis, standing
on the Grande-Place at the corner of the rue de Brienne. This worthy
landlord, named Poupart, had married the sister of a man-servant
attached to the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, the well-known Gothard, one of
the actors and witnesses in the Simeuse affair.

Poupart, though a most devoted adherent of the Cinq-Cygne family, had
been sounded during the last day or two, by Colonel Giguet's valet,
with so much cleverness and perseverance that he thought he was doing an
ill-turn to the Comte de Gondreville, the enemy of the Cinq-Cygnes, by
giving his influence to the election of Simon Giguet; and he was now
conversing on that point with the man who accompanied him, an apothecary
named Fromaget, who, as he did not furnish his wares to the chateau de
Gondreville, desired nothing better than to cabal against the Kell