is Chamber justifies you in
sending a colleague back to his electors. But after all, whatever
is done, whether some persist in thinking me a forger, or a
libertine, or merely a negligent deputy, I feel no anxiety about
the verdict of my electors. I can confidently assert that after a
delay of a few weeks I shall return to you.

_Cries on all sides_.--The vote! the vote!

On leaving the tribune M. de Sallenauve receives many
congratulations.

_The President_.--I put to vote the admission of M. de Sallenauve
as the deputy elected by the arrondissement of Arcis.

Nearly the whole Chamber rises and votes the admission; a few
deputies of the Centre alone abstain from taking part in the
demonstration.

M. de Sallenauve is admitted and takes the oath.

_The President_.--The order of the day calls for the reading of
the Address to the Throne, but the chairman of the committee
appointed to prepare it informs me that the document in question
cannot be communicated to the Chamber before to-morrow. Nothing
else being named in the order of the day, I declare this sitting
adjourned.

The Chamber rose at half-past four o'clock.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Note.--"The Deputy of Arcis," of which Balzac wrote and published
the first part in 1847, was left unfinished at his death. He
designated M. Charles Rabou, editor of the "Revue de Paris," as
the person to take his notes and prepare the rest of the volume
for the press. It is instructive to a student of Balzac to see how
disconnected and out of proportion the story becomes in these
later parts,--showing plainly that the master's hand was in the
habit of pruning away half, if not more, of what it had written,
or--to change the metaphor and give the process in his own
language--that he put _les grands pots dans les petits pots_, the
quarts into the pint pots. "If a thing can be done in one line
instead of two," he says, "I try to do it."

Some parts of this conclusion are evidently added by M. Rabou, and
are not derived from Balzac at all,--especially the unnecessary
reincarnation of Vautrin. There is no trace of the master's hand
here. The character is made so silly and puerile, and is so out of
keeping with Balzac's strong portrait, which never weakens, that
the translator has thought best, in justice to Vautrin, to omit
all that is not absolutely necessary to connect the story.
ADDENDUM

The follow