She covered his face with kisses, and a beautiful idea occurred to her, which reminded her of the customs of chivalry.
“My dear,” she asked him, “do not municipal councillors wear a scarf? an embroidered scarf, isn’t it? I’ll embroider one for you.”
He was very tired and fell exhausted into a chair, but kneeling at his feet she murmured:
“I love you.”
And only the darkness heard the rest.
The same evening, in his modest apartments—the apartments of “a child of the quarter,” as he called them—Anselme Raimondin heard the result of the election. There were some dozen bottles of wine and a cold pâté on the dining-room table. His failure amazed him.
“It was only what I expected,” he said.
And he swung round in a pirouette, but he was clumsy and twisted his ankle.
“It’s your own fault,” said Dr. Maufle, by way of consolation. The Doctor was president of his Committee, an old Radical, with the face of a Silenus. “You allowed the Nationalists to poison the whole ward; you hadn’t the pluck to stand up against them. You made no attempt to unmask their falsehoods. On the contrary, like them, with them, you told every lie you could think of. You knew the truth, and you dared not undeceive the electors while there was still time. You’ve funked it, and you are beaten, and it serves you right!”