d his hearty congratulations
to the author of Poems from Nature, leading him out upon the boulevard
and giving him the key to the mystery.

All the old parties were united against the Empire, in view of the coming
elections; Orleanists and Republicans were, for the time being, close
friends. He, Papillon, had just taken his degree, and had attached
himself to the fortunes of an old wreck of the July government; who,
having rested in oblivion since 1852, had consented to run as candidate
for the Liberal opposition in Seine-et-Oise. Papillon was flying around
like a hen with her head cut off, to make his companion win the day. He
came to the Seville to assure himself of the neutral goodwill of the
unreconciled journalists, and he was full of hope.

"Oh! my dear friend, how difficult it is to struggle against an official
candidate! But our candidate is an astonishing man. He goes about all day
upon the railroads in our department, unfolding his programme before the
travelling countrymen and changing compartments at each station. What a
stroke of genius! a perambulating public assembling. This idea came to
him from seeing a harpist make the trip from Havre to Honfleur, playing
'Il Bacio' all the time. Ah, one must look alive! The prefect does not
shrink from any way of fighting us. Did he not spread through one of our
most Catholic cantons the report that we were Voltairians, enemies to
religion and devourers of priests? Fortunately, we have yet four Sundays
before us, from now until the voting-day, and the patron will go to high
mass and communion in our four more important parishes. That will be a
response! If such a man is not elected, universal suffrage is hopeless!"

Amedee was not at that time so disenchanted with political matters as he
became later, and he asked himself with an uneasy feeling whether this
model candidate, who was perhaps about to give himself sacrilgious
indigestion, and who showed his profession of faith as a cutler shows
his knives, was not simply a quack.

Arthur Papillon did not give him time to devote himself to such
unpleasant reflections, but said to him, in a frank, protecting tone:

"And you, my boy, let us see, where do you stand? You have been very
successful, have you not? The other evening at the house of Madame la
Comtesse Fontaine, you know--the widow of one of Louis Philippe's
ministers and daughter of Marshal Lefievre--Jocquelet recited your
'Sebastopol' with enormous success. W