The Deputy of Arcis by Honoré de Balzac (free ebook reader for pc .txt) 📕

the man to whom she introduced you?"

"He an adventurer? No, I think not. At any rate, he did me a great service."

"But he may have designs upon you."

"Yes, people may have designs upon me," replied Luigia, with dignity, "but they cannot execute them: between those designs and me, there is myself."

"But your reputation?"

"That was lost before I left your house. I was said to be your mistress; you had yourself to contradict that charge before the electoral college; you contradicted it, but you could not stop it."

"And my esteem, for which you profess to care?"

"I no longer want it. You did not love me when I wished for it; you shall not love me now that I no longer wish it."

"Who knows?" exclaimed Sallenauve.

"There are two reasons why it cannot be," said the singer. "In the first place, it is too late; and in the second, we are no longer on the same path."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I am an artist and you have ceased to be one. I rise; you fall."

"Do you call it falling to rise, perhaps, to the highest dignities of the State?"

"To whatever height you rise," said Luigia, passionately, "you will ever be below your past and the noble future that was once before you--Ah! stay; I think that I have lied to you; had you remained a sculptor, I believe I should have borne still longer your coldness and your disdain; I should have waited until I entered my vocation, until the halo round a singer's head might have shown you, at last, that I was there beside you. But on the day that you apostatized I would no longer continue my humiliating sacrifice. There is no future possible between us."

"Do you mean," said Sallenauve, holding out his hand, which she did not take, "that we cannot even be friends?"

"No," she replied; "all is over--past and gone. We shall hear of each other; and from afar, as we pass in life, we can wave our hands in recognition, but nothing further."

"So," said Sallenauve, sadly, "this is how it all ends!"

La Luigia looked at him a moment, her eyes shining with tears.

"Listen," she said in a resolute and sincere tone: "this is possible. I have loved you, and after you, no one can enter the heart you have despised. You will hear that I have lovers; believe it not; you will not believe it, remembering the woman that I am. But who knows? Later your life may be swept clean of the other sentiments that have stood in my way; the freedom, the strangeness of the avowal I have just made to you will remain in your memory, and then it is not impossible that after this long rejection you may end by desiring me. If that should happen,--if at the end of many sad deceptions you should return, in sheer remorse, to the religion of art,--then, then, supposing that long years have not made love ridiculous between us, remember this evening. Now, let us part; it is already too late for a _tete-a-tete_."

So saying, she took a light and passed into an inner room, leaving Sallenauve in a state of mind we can readily imagine after the various shocks and surprises of this interview.

On returning to his hotel he found Jacques Bricheteau awaiting him.

"Where the devil have you been?" cried the organist, impatiently. "It is too late now to take the steamboat."

"Well," said Sallenauve, carelessly, "then I shall have a few hours longer to play truant."

"But during that time your enemies are tunnelling their mine."

"I don't care. In that cave called political life one has to be ready for anything."

"I thought as much!" exclaimed Bricheteau. "You have been to see Luigia; her success has turned your head, and the deputy is thinking of his statues."

"How often have I heard you say yourself that Art alone is great?"

"But an orator," replied Bricheteau, "is also an artist, and the greatest of all. Others speak to the heart and the mind, but he to the conscience and the will of others. At any rate, this is no time to look back; you are engaged in a duel with your adversaries. Are you an honest man, or a scoundrel who has stolen a name? There is the question which may, in consequence of your absence, be answered against you in the Chamber."

"I begin to feel that you have led me into a mistaken path; I had in my hands a treasure, and I have flung it away!"

"Happily," said the organist, "that's only an evening mist which the night will dissipate. To-morrow you will remember the engagement you are under to your father, and the great future which is before you."


IX. IN THE CHAMBER

The king had opened the Chamber, but Sallenauve was not present, and his absence was causing a certain sensation in the democratic ranks. The "National" was particularly disturbed. As a stockholder of the paper, coming frequently to its office before the election, and even consenting to write articles for it, how strange that on the eve of the opening of the session the newly elected deputy should not come near it!

"Now that he is elected," said some of the editorial staff, remarking on the total disappearance of the man whom they considered they had done their part to elect, "does monsieur think he can treat us scurvily? It is getting too much the habit of these lordly deputies to be very obsequious as long as they are candidates, and throw us away, after they have climbed the tree, like an old coat."

Less excitable, the editor-in-chief calmed this first ebullition, but Sallenauve's absence from the royal session seemed to him very strange.

The next day, when the bureaus are constituted, presidents and secretaries appointed, and committees named, Sallenauve's absence was still more marked. In the bureau for which his name was drawn, it happened that the election of its president depended on one vote; through the absence of the deputy of Arcis, the ministry gained that advantage and the Opposition lost it. Much discontent was expressed by the newspapers of the latter party; they did not, as yet, openly attack the conduct of the defaulter, but they declared that they could not account for it.

Maxime de Trailles, on the other hand, fully prepared and on the watch, was waiting only until the routine business of the bureaus and the appointment of the committees was disposed of to send in the petition of the Romilly peasant-woman, which had been carefully drawn up by Massol, under whose clever pen the facts he was employed to make the most of assumed that degree of probability which barristers contrive to communicate to their sayings and affirmations. But when Maxime had the joy of seeing that Sallenauve's absence in itself was creating a prejudice against him, he went again to Rastignac and asked him if he did not think it better to hasten the moment of attack, since everything seemed so favorable.

This time Rastignac was much more explicit: Sallenauve's absence abroad seemed to him the conduct of a man who feared exposure and had lost his head. He therefore advised de Trailles to have the petition sent in at once, and he made no difficulty about promising his assistance to a conspiracy which appeared to be taking color, the result of which must be, in any case, a very pretty scandal. The next day the first trace of his subterranean influence was visible. The order of the day in the Chamber was the verification of powers,--that is, the admission of newly elected members. The deputy appointed to report on the elections in the department of the Aube was a strong partisan of the ministry, and, in consequence of a confidential communication made to him that morning, the following paragraph appeared in his report:--

The action of the electoral college of Arcis was regular. Monsieur
de Sallenauve produced in proper time all the necessary papers
proving his eligibility; his admission therefore would seem to
present no difficulty. But rumors of a singular nature have been
current since the election as to the name and identity of the new
deputy; and, in support of these rumors, a petition to authorize a
criminal prosecution has been laid before the president of the
Chamber. This petition states an extremely serious fact, namely:
that Monsieur de Sallenauve has usurped the name he bears; and
this usurpation, being made by means of an official document,
assumes the character of forgery committed by substitution of
person. A most regrettable circumstance,

continued the report,

is the absence of Monsieur de Sallenauve, who instead of instantly
contradicting the accusation made against him, has not appeared
since the opening of the Chamber at any of its sessions, and it is
not even known where he is. Under these circumstances, his
admission, the committee think, cannot be granted; and they feel
it therefore their duty to refer the matter to the Chamber.

Daniel d'Arthez, a deputy of the legitimist opposition, who had been favorable to the election of Sallenauve, hastened, after the reading of this report, to ask for the floor, and entreated the Chamber to remark that its adoption would be wholly unjustifiable.

"The point for the committee to decide," he said, "was the regularity of the election. The report distinctly states that this is not called in question. The Chamber can, therefore, do only one thing; namely, admit by an immediate vote the validity of an election about which no irregularity is alleged. To bring in the question of authorizing a criminal investigation would be an abuse of power; because by not allowing discussion or defence, and by dispensing with the usual forms of procedure which guarantee certain rights to a party implicated, the Chamber would be virtually rejecting the action of the electors in the exercise of their sovereign functions. Every one can see, moreover," added the orator, "that to grant the right of criminal investigation in this connection is to prejudge the merits of the case; the presumption of innocence, which is the right of every man, is ignored--whereas in this case the person concerned is a man whose integrity has never been doubted, and who has just been openly honored by the suffrages of his fellow citizens."

The discussion was prolonged for some time, the ministerial orators, of course, taking the other side, until an unfortunate event occurred. The senior deputy, acting as president (for the Chamber was not yet constituted), was a worn-out old man, very absent-minded, and wholly unaccustomed to the functions which his age devolved upon him. He had duly received Monsieur de Sallenauve's letter requesting leave of absence; and had he recollected to communicate it, as in duty bound, to the Chamber at the proper time, the discussion would probably have been nipped in the bud. But parliamentary matters are apt to go haphazard; when, reminded of the letter by the discussion, he produced it, and when the Chamber learned that the request for leave of absence was made for an indefinite period and for the vague purpose of "urgent affairs," the effect was lamentable.

"It is plain," said all the ministerial party, "that he has gone to England to escape an investigation; he feared the result; he feels himself unmasked."

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