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If you can manage to collect fifty ministerial votes you will find yourself master of the coming election," he added, addressing the sub-prefect. "It will do if you produce a candidate of the same calibre as Simon Giguet," said Olivier Vinet.
About two months before the nomination of Simon Giguet, at eleven o'clock one evening, in a mansion of the faubourg Saint-Honore belonging to the Marquise d'Espard, while tea was being served the Chevalier d'Espard, brother-in-law to the marquise, put down his tea-cup, and, looking round the circle, remarked: "Maxime was very melancholy to-night, didn't you think so?"
That sheet of paper did marvels; it completely foiled the efforts of Monsieur de Trailles, who, throwing off the mask, had spent his day in perorating, in white gloves, on the market-place and from the steps of the electoral college. This evening the result is known; namely, two hundred and one votes cast: two for Beauvisage; twenty-nine for Simon Giguet; one hundred and seventy for Sallenauve.
Simon Giguet, the native-born candidate of a little town jealously desirous to elect a son of its own, had, as we have seen, put to profit this desire; and yet, the whole prosperity and fortune of the Giguet family were the work of the Comte de Gondreville. But when it comes to an election, what are sentiments!
Consequently the refusal of the Beauvisage parents to entertain the proposals of the sub-prefect had tightened the bonds of friendship between the two families. "There's an impatient man!" said Ernestine to Cecile, indicating Simon Giguet. "He wants to come and talk with us; but every one who comes in feels bound to congratulate him.
The old man-servant of Colonel Giguet, Madame Marion's older brother, had just finished dusting the room; the chamber-maid and the cook were carrying, with an alacrity that denoted an enthusiasm equal to their attachment, all the chairs of the house, and piling them up in the garden, where the trees were already unfolding their leaves, through which the cloudless blue of the sky was visible.
The question for them was to punish the presumption of Simon Giguet, and any candidate would be acceptable to the viceroy of Arcis. The mere nomination of a man against his grandson was a flagrant act of hostility and ingratitude, and a check to the count's provincial importance which must be removed and punished at any cost.
After the departure of the gendarmes Lechesneau returned to the important question of issuing warrants for the arrest of the Simeuse and d'Hauteserre brothers. According to the Code these warrants would have to contain the charges against the delinquents. Giguet and the justice of peace rode so rapidly to Cinq-Cygne that they met Laurence's servants returning from the festivities at Troyes.
The worthy banker, endowed with great procreative powers, having soothed the worries of business by the pleasures of paternity, favored the families of eleven other children who surrounded him, and who made him believe, with some appearance of justice, that Simon Giguet was already a rich man.
Old Colonel Giguet arrived on this battle-field at the moment when his sister bethought herself of filling the empty spaces on either side of the fireplace with benches from the antechamber, disregarding the baldness of their velvet covers which had done good service for twenty-four years. "We can seat seventy persons," she said to her brother triumphantly.
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