s opportunities."

"Quite easy in mind as to that," said the colonel, getting up to open a
window and let out the smoke of their two cigars.

"I was on the point," continued Maxime, "of pocketing both daughter and
_dot_, when there fell from the skies, or rather there rose from the
nether regions, a Left candidate, the stone-cutter, as you call him, a
man with two names,--in short, a natural son--"

"Ha!" said the colonel, "those fellows do have lucky stars, to be sure.
I am not surprised if one of them mowed the grass from under your feet."

"My dear friend," said Maxime, "if we were in the middle ages, I should
explain by magic and sorcery the utter discomfiture of my candidate,
and the election of the stone-man, whom you are fated to have for your
colleague. How is it possible to believe, what is however the fact, that
an old _tricoteuse_, a former friend of Danton, and now the abbess of
a convent of Ursulines, should actually, by the help of her nephew, an
obscure organist in Paris, have so bewitched the whole electoral college
that this upstart has been elected by a large majority?"

"But I suppose he had some friends and acquaintances in the town?"

"Not the ghost of one,--unless it might be that nun. Fortune, relations,
father, even a name, he never had until the day of his arrival at Arcis
two weeks ago; and now, if you please, the Comte Charles de Sallenauve,
seigneur of the chateau of Arcis, is elected to the Chamber of deputies!
God only knows how it was done! The pretended head of a former great
family, representing himself as absent in foreign lands for many years,
suddenly appears with this schemer before a notary in Arcis, recognizes
him at a gallop as his son, buys the chateau of Arcis and presents it
to him, and is off during the night before any one could even know what
road he took. The trick thus played, the abbess and her aide-de-camp,
the organist, launched the candidate, and at once republicans,
legitimists, conservatives, clergy, nobility, bourgeoisie, in fact
everybody, as if by some spell cast upon that region, all did the
bidding of that old witch of a nun, and without the stalwart battalion
of the functionaries (who under my eye stood firm and did not flinch),
his election would have been, like yours, unanimous."

"Then, my poor friend, good-bye to the _dot_."

"Not precisely; though it must certainly be adjourned. The father
grumbles because the blessed tranquillity of his life was di