This internal satisfaction passed all the more readily for benevolence and affability, because Phileas had made himself a language of his own, remarkable for its immoderate use of the formulas of politeness. He always “had the honor”; to all his inquiries as to the health of absent persons he added the adjectives “dear,” “good,” “excellent.” He lavished condoling or congratulatory phrases apropos of all the petty miseries and all the little felicities of life. He concealed under a deluge of commonplaces his native incapacity, his total want of education, and a weakness of character which can only be expressed by the old word “weathercock.” Be not uneasy: the weathercock had for its axis the beautiful Madame Beauvisage, Severine Grevin, the most remarkable woman in the arrondissement.
When Severine heard of what she called her husband’s “freak” as to the election, she said to him on the morning of the meeting at Madame Marion’s:—
“It was well enough to give yourself an air of independence; but you mustn’t go to that Giguet meeting unless Achille Pigoult accompanies you; I’ve told him to come and take you.”
Giving Achille Pigoult as mentor to Beauvisage meant sending a spy from the Gondreville party to the Giguet assemblage. We may therefore imagine the grimace which contracted the puritan visage of Simon, who was forced to welcome graciously an habitue of his aunt’s salon and an influential elector, in whom, nevertheless, he saw an enemy.
“Ah!” he thought to himself, “what a mistake I made in refusing him that security when he asked for it! Old Gondreville had more sense than I—Good-day to you, Achille,” he said, assuming a jaunty manner; “I suppose you mean to trip me up.”
“Your meeting isn’t a conspiracy against the independence of our votes,” replied the notary, smiling. “We are all playing above-board, I take it.”
“Above-board,” echoed Beauvisage.
And the mayor began to laugh with that expressionless laugh by which some persons end all their sentences; which may, perhaps, be called the ritornello of their conversation. After which he placed himself in what we must describe as his third position, standing full-front, his chest expanded, and his hands behind his back. He was dressed in black coat and trousers, with an effulgent white waistcoat, opened in such a way as to show two diamond shirt-buttons worth several thousand francs.
“We shall fight, but we shall not be the less good friends,” he said. “That is the essence of constitutional morals; he! he! he! That is how I understand the alliance of monarchy with liberty; ha! ha! ha!”
Whereupon the mayor took Simon’s hand, saying: