The Deputy of Arcis (1839)

This work brings together many of the characters and families that have recurred throughout the Comedie Humaine for the last time and takes place in the same region as Balzac's earlier novel "A Historical Mystery" (aka "The Gondreville Mystery" or "A Murky Affair"). The novel is about managed elections like Stendhal's "Lucien Leuwen". Balzac wanted this novel to be to politics what Lost Illusions part two was to journalism. (Hunt, 405)

On the eve of the 1839 election, the banker Keller, who has been the incumbent for the last 20 years, has decided to retire and have his son Charles replace him. Keller has the backing of the government and his powerful father-in-law Malin de Gondreville whose ascension to power in the area around Arcis is depicted in "A Historical Mystery". Charles Keller is challenged by a group of liberals who choose the lawyer Simon Giguet as their candidate.

Giguet makes a weak showing in the maneuverings for position that lead up to the election, but Charles Keller, the government candidate dies and the notorious and aging dandy Maxime Trailles arrives from Paris to manage the election. This is exactly the point in the novel when Balzac himself dies and is replaced by a writer hired by his wife. It is also the point in the novel when the quality declines for good.

Balzac targets for satire meaningless political speeches and the word 'progress' one finds so often in them which he regards as vacuous.

Balzac also targets businessmen for social satire. The empty headed businessman Beauvisage, a successful manufacturer turned mayor of the town, who having no real intellectual capacity or ideas of his own, is easily provided with them by others who want to use him for their own purposes. He eventually becomes Keller's replacement in parliament by 1841 (this fact is found in "Cousine Bette")

The businessman Beauvisage, being a clothing manufacturer, also provides the reader with an interesting historical view into the cottage industry of weaving before the industrial revolution got under way with factories full of mechanized looms. Balzac ironically targets the very group that would be eliminated by the industrial revoution for criticism: the brokers who provided the raw materials to the cottage workers and collected the finished product for distribution.

(Very Long, Le Depute d'Arcis, arcis10.txt)