the comedy of the _stranger_ is not played. Often the stranger is an
adventurer who makes dupes and departs, carrying with him the
reputation of a woman, or the money of a family. Oftener the stranger
is a real stranger, whose life remains mysterious long enough for the
town to busy itself curiously about his words and deeds.

Now the probable accession to power of Simon Giguet was not the only
serious event that was happening in Arcis. For the last two days the
attention of the little town had been focussed on a personage just
arrived, who proved to be the first Unknown of the present generation.
The _stranger_ was at this moment the subject of conversation in every
household in the place. He was the beam fallen from heaven into the
city of the frogs.

The situation of Arcis-sur-Aube explains the effect which the arrival
of a stranger was certain to produce. About eighteen miles from
Troyes, on the high-road to Paris, opposite to a farm called "La Belle
Etoile," a county road branches off from the main road, and leads to
Arcis, crossing the vast plains where the Seine cuts a narrow green
valley bordered with poplars, which stand out upon the whiteness of
the chalk soil of Champagne. The main road from Arcis to Troyes is
eighteen miles in length, and makes the arch of a bow, the extremities
of which are Troyes and Arcis, so that the shortest route from Paris
to Arcis is by the county road which turns off, as we have said, near
the Belle Etoile. The Aube is navigable only from Arcis to its mouth.
Therefore this town, standing eighteen miles from a high-road, and
separated from Troyes by monotonous plains, is isolated more or less,
and has but little commerce or transportation either by land or water.
Arcis is, in fact, a town completely isolated, where no travellers
pass, and is attached to Troyes and La Belle Etoile by stage-coaches