“You are right, a thousand times right! I ought to write just the opposite!”
He was going to tear up the rough copy, but he noted that in the opening sentence there was a phrase that pleased him, one that might still serve his turn if it were changed a bit, somewhat in this way:
“A Vendean of the South, raised in the belief in the monarchy and a respectful reverence for the past, I feel that I should do violence to my honor and conscience, if I accepted the post which your Majesty—” etc.
This polite but firm refusal published in all the Legitimist papers raised Roumestan to a very different place in public opinion; it made his name a synonym for incorruptibility. “Cannot be rent,” wrote the Charivari under an amusing cartoon which represented the toga of the great jurist resisting the violent tugging of the several political parties.
Shortly after this the Empire went to pieces and when the Assembly of Bordeaux met Numa had the choice between three departments which had elected him their Deputy to the House, entirely on account of his letter to the emperor. His first speeches, delivered with a somewhat forced and turgid eloquence, soon made him leader of all the parties of the Right.
He was only the small change of old Sagnier, but in these days of middle-class races, blue blood rarely came to the front, and so the new leader triumphed on the benches of the Chamber as easily as on the old red divans at Father Malmus’s café.
Councillor-general in his own department, the idol of the entire South, and raised still higher by the position of his father-in-law, who after the fall of the Empire had become first president of the court of appeals, Numa without doubt was marked out to become sooner or later a cabinet minister. In the meantime a great man in the eyes of every one but his own wife, he carried his fresh glories about, from Paris to Versailles and down to Provence, amiable, familiar, jolly and unconventional, bringing his aureola with him, it is true, but only too willing to leave it in its band-box, like an opera hat when no ceremony calls for its presence.
CHAPTER IV.
A SOUTHERN AUNT—REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD.
The Portal mansion in which the great man dwells when he is in Provence is one of the show-places of Aps. It is mentioned by the Joanne guide-book in the same category as the temple of Juno, the amphitheatre, the old theatre and the tower of the Antonines, relics of the old Roman days of which the town is very proud and always keeps well furbished up. But it is not the heavy ancient arched gate of the old provincial residence itself, embossed with immense nails, nor the high windows, bristling with iron bars, spikes and pike-heads of a threatening sort, that they point out to the stranger who comes to see the town. It is only a little balcony with its black iron props on the first floor, corbelled out above the porch. For it is here that Numa shows himself to the crowd when he arrives and it is from here that he speaks. The whole town is witness that the iron balcony, which was once as straight as a rule, has been hammered into such an original shape, into such capricious curves, by the blows showered upon it by the powerful fist of the orator.
“Té, vé! our Numa has molded the iron!”