As he worked at the report on the Deux-Sevres election, as he examined the numerous protests, the accusations of electioneering trickery, meals given, money spent, casks of wine broached at the doors of the mayors’ houses, the usual accompaniments of an election in those days, Jansoulet used to shudder on his own account.  “Why, I did all that myself,” he would say to himself, terrified.  Ah!  M. Sarigue need not be afraid; never could he have put his hand on an examiner with kinder intentions or more indulgent, for the Nabob, taking pity on the sufferer, knowing by experience how painful is the anguish of waiting, had made haste through his labour; and the enormous portfolio which he carried under his arm, as he left the Mora mansion, contained his report ready to be sent in to the bureau.

Whether it were this first essay in a public function, the kind words of the duke, or the magnificent weather out of doors, keenly enjoyed by this southerner, with his susceptibility to wholly physical impressions and accustomed to life under a blue sky and the warmth of the sunshine—­however that may have been, certain it is that the attendants of the legislative body beheld that day a proud and haughty Jansoulet whom they had not previously known.  The fat Hemerlingue’s carriage, caught sight of at the gate, recognisable by the unusual width of its doors, completed his reinstatement in the possession of his true nature of assurance and bold audacity.  “The enemy is there.  Attention!” As he crossed the Salle des Pas-Perdus, he caught sight of the financier chatting in a corner with Le Merquier, the examiner; he passed quite near them, and looked at them with a triumphant air which made people wonder: 

“What is the meaning of this?”

Then, highly pleased at his own coolness, he passed on towards the committee-rooms, big and lofty apartments opening right and left on a long corridor, and having large tables covered with green baize, and heavy chairs all of a similar pattern and bearing the impress of a dull solemnity.  People were beginning to come in.  Groups were taking up their positions, discussing matters, gesticulating, with bows, shakings of hands, inclinations of the head, like Chinese shadows against the luminous background of the windows.

Men were there who walked about with bent back, solitary, as it were crushed down beneath the weight of the thoughts which knitted their brow.  Others whispering in their neighbour’s ears, confiding to each other exceedingly mysterious and terribly important pieces of news, finger on lip, eyes opened wide in silent recommendation to discretion.  A provincial flavour characterized it all, varieties of intonation, the violence of southern speech, drawling accents of the central districts, the sing-song of Brittany, fused into one and the same imbecile self-conceit, frock-coats as they cut them at Landerneau, mountain shoes, home-spun linen, and a self-assurance begotten in a village or in the club of some insignificant town, local expressions, provincialisms abruptly introduced into the speech of the political and administrative world, that flabby and colourless phraseology which has invented such expressions as “burning questions that come again to the surface” and “individualities without mandate.”