is
very nervous. It is queer that, though he is in the habit of speaking in
court, he dreads this meeting as if he were certain to meet enemies."

"Faith! I have often had to face masked batteries, and my soul--I won't
say my body--never quailed; but if I had to stand there," said the old
soldier, pointing to the tea-table, "and face forty bourgeois gaping
at me, their eyes fixed on mine, and expecting sonorous and correct
phrases, my shirt would be wringing wet before I could get out a word."

"And yet, my dear father," said Simon Giguet, entering from the smaller
salon, "you really must make that effort for me; for if there is a
man in the department of the Aube whose voice is all-powerful it is
assuredly you. In 1815--"

"In 1815," said the little old man, who was wonderfully well preserved,
"I did not have to speak; I simply wrote out a little proclamation
which brought us two thousand men in twenty-four hours. But it is a
very different thing putting my name to a paper which is read by a
department, and standing up before a meeting to make a speech. Napoleon
himself failed there; at the 18th Brumaire he talked nothing but
nonsense to the Five Hundred."

"But, my dear father," urged Simon, "it concerns my life, my fortune, my
happiness. Fix your eyes on some one person and think you are talking to
him, and you'll get through all right."

"Heavens!" cried Madame Marion, "I am only an old woman, but under
such circumstances and knowing what depends on it, I--oh! I should be
eloquent!"

"Too eloquent, perhaps," said the colonel. "To go beyond the mark is not
attaining it. But why make so much of all this?" he added, looking at
his son. "It is only within the last two days you have taken up this
candidacy of ideas; well, suppose you are not nominated,--so much the
worse for Arcis, that's all."

These words were in keeping with the whole life of him who said them.
Colonel Giguet was one of the most respected officers in the Grand
Army, the foundation of his character being absolute integrity joined to
extreme delicacy. Never did he put himself forward; favors, such as he
received, sought him. For this reason he remained eleven years a mere
captain of the artillery of the Guard, not receiving the rank of major
until 1814. His almost fanatical attachment to Napoleon forbade his
taking service under the Bourbons after the first abdication. In fact,
his devotion in 1815 was such that he would have been banished with