Albert Savarus .....................................................................................................................................................1

One of the few drawingrooms where, under the Restoration, the Archbishop of Besancon was sometimes to

be seen, was that of the Baronne de Watteville, to whom he was particularly attached on account of her

Monsieur de Watteville, a descendant of the famous Watteville, the most successful and illustrious of

murderers and renegadeshis extraordinary adventures are too much a part of history to be related

herethis nineteenth century Monsieur de Watteville was as gentle and peaceable as his ancestor of the

Grand Siecle had been passionate and turbulent. After living in the Comte (La Franche Comte) like a

woodlouse in the crack of a wainscot, he had married the heiress of the celebrated house of Rupt.

Mademoiselle de Rupt brought twenty thousand francs a year in the funds to add to the ten thousand francs a

year in real estate of the Baron de Watteville. The Swiss gentleman's coatofarms (the Wattevilles are

Swiss) was then borne as an escutcheon of pretence on the old shield of the Rupts. The marriage, arranged in

1802, was solemnized in 1815 after the second Restoration. Within three years of the birth of a daughter all

Madame de Watteville's grandparents were dead, and their estates wound up. Monsieur de Watteville's house

was then sold, and they settled in the Rue de la Prefecture in the fine old mansion of the Rupts, with an

immense garden stretching to the Rue du Perron. Madame de Watteville, devout as a girl, became even more

so after her marriage. She is one of the queens of the saintly brotherhood which gives the upper circles of

Besancon a solemn air and prudish manners in harmony with the character of the town.

Monsieur le Baron de Watteville, a dry, lean man devoid of intelligence, looked worn out without any one

knowing whereby, for he enjoyed the profoundest ignorance; but as his wife was a redhaired woman, and of

a stern nature that became proverbial (we still say "as sharp as Madame de Watteville"), some wits of the

legal profession declared that he had been worn against that rockRupt is obviously derived from rupes.

Scientific students of social phenomena will not fail to have observed that Rosalie was the only offspring of

Monsieur de Watteville spent his existence in a handsome workshop with a lathe; he was a turner! As

subsidiary to this pursuit, he took up a fancy for making collections. Philosophical doctors, devoted to the

study of madness, regard this tendency towards collecting as a first degree of mental aberration when it is set

on small things. The Baron de Watteville treasured shells and geological fragments of the neighborhood of

Besancon. Some contradictory folk, especially women, would say of Monsieur de Watteville, "He has a noble

soul! He perceived from the first days of his married life that he would never be his wife's master, so he threw

The house of the Rupts was not devoid of a certain magnificence worthy of Louis XIV., and bore traces of

the nobility of the two families who had mingled in 1815. The chandeliers of glass cut in the shape of leaves,

the brocades, the damask, the carpets, the gilt furniture, were all in harmony with the old liveries and the old

servants. Though served in blackened family plate, round a lookingglass tray furnished with Dresden china,

the food was exquisite. The wines selected by Monsieur de Watteville, who, to occupy his time and vary his

employments, was his own butler, enjoyed a sort of fame throughout the department. Madame de Watteville's

fortune was a fine one; while her husband's, which consisted only of the estate of Rouxey, worth about ten

thousand francs a year, was not increased by inheritance. It is needless to add that in consequence of Madame

de Watteville's close intimacy with the Archbishop, the three or four clever or remarkable Abbes of the

diocese who were not averse to good feeding were very much at home at her house.

At a ceremonial dinner given in honor of I know not whose wedding, at the beginning of September 1834,

when the women were standing in a circle round the drawingroom fire, and the men in groups by the

windows, every one exclaimed with pleasure at the entrance of Monsieur l'Abbe de Grancey, who was

"Won!" replied the VicarGeneral. "The verdict of the Court, from which we had no hope, you know

This was an allusion to the members of the First Court of Appeal of 1830; the Legitimists had almost all

"The verdict is in our favor on every point, and reverses the decision of the Lower Court."

"And we should have been, but for me. I told our advocate to be off to Paris, and at the crucial moment I was

"Oh yes, Savaron," said a handsome young man sitting near the Baroness, and named de Soulas.

"He spent five or six nights over it; he devoured documents and briefs; he had seven or eight interviews of

several hours with me," continued Monsieur de Grancey, who had just reappeared at the Hotel de Rupt for the

first time in three weeks. "In short, Monsieur Savaron has just completely beaten the celebrated lawyer whom

our adversaries had sent for from Paris. This young man is wonderful, the bigwigs say. Thus the chapter is

twice victorious; it has triumphed in law and also in politics, since it has vanquished Liberalism in the person

of the Counsel of our Municipality.'Our adversaries,' so our advocate said, 'must not expect to find

readiness on all sides to ruin the Archbishoprics.'The President was obliged to enforce silence. All the

townsfolk of Besancon applauded. Thus the possession of the buildings of the old convent remains with the

Chapter of the Cathedral of Besancon. Monsieur Savaron, however, invited his Parisian opponent to dine

with him as they came out of court. He accepted, saying, 'Honor to every conqueror,' and complimented him

"And where did you unearth this lawyer?" said Madame de Watteville. "I never heard his name before."

"Why, you can see his windows from hence," replied the VicarGeneral. "Monsieur Savaron lives in the Rue

"So little is he a native of any place, that no one knows where he comes from," said Madame de Chavoncourt.

"But who is he?" asked Madame de Watteville, taking the Abbe's arm to go into the diningroom. "If he is a

stranger, by what chance has he settled at Besancon? It is a strange fancy for a barrister."

"Very strange!" echoed Amedee de Soulas, whose biography is here necessary to the understanding of this

In all ages France and England have carried on an exchange of trifles, which is all the more constant because

it evades the tyranny of the Customhouse. The fashion that is called English in Paris is called French in

London, and this is reciprocal. The hostility of the two nations is suspended on two pointsthe uses of

words and the fashions of dress. God Save the King, the national air of England, is a tune written by Lulli for

the Chorus of Esther or of Athalie. Hoops, introduced at Paris by an Englishwoman, were invented in

London, it is known why, by a Frenchwoman, the notorious Duchess of Portsmouth. They were at first so

jeered at that the first Englishwoman who appeared in them at the Tuileries narrowly escaped being crushed

by the crowd; but they were adopted. This fashion tyrannized over the ladies of Europe for half a century. At

the peace of 1815, for a year, the long waists of the English were a standing jest; all Paris went to see Pothier

and Brunet in Les Anglaises pour rire; but in 1816 and 1817 the belt of the Frenchwoman, which in 1814 cut

Within ten years England has made two little gifts to our language. The Incroyable, the Merveilleux, the

Elegant, the three successes of the petitmaitre of discreditable etymology, have made way for the "dandy"

and the "lion." The lion is not the parent of the lionne. The lionne is due to the famous song by Alfred de

There has been a fusionor, if you prefer it, a confusionof the two words and the leading ideas. When an

absurdity can amuse Paris, which devours as many masterpieces as absurdities, the provinces can hardly be

deprived of them. So, as soon as the lion paraded Paris with his mane, his beard and moustaches, his

waistcoats and his eyeglass, maintained in its place, without the help of his hands, by the contraction of his

cheek, and eyesocket, the chief towns of some departments had their sublions, who protested by the

smartness of their trouserstraps against the untidiness of their fellowtownsmen.

Thus, in 1834, Besancon could boast of a lion, in the person of Monsieur AmedeeSylvain de Soulas, spelt

Souleyas at the time of the Spanish occupation. Amedee de Soulas is perhaps the only man in Besancon

descended from a Spanish family. Spain sent men to manage her business in the Comte, but very few

Spaniards settled there. The Soulas remained in consequence of their connection with Cardinal Granvelle.

Young Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leaving Besancon, a dull town, churchgoing, and not

literary, a military centre and garrison town, of which the manners and customs and physiognomy are worth

describing. This opinion allowed of his lodging, like a man uncertain of the future, in three very scantily

furnished rooms at the end of the Rue Neuve, just where it opens into the Rue de la Prefecture.

Young Monsieur de Soulas could not possibly live without a tiger. This tiger was the son of one of his

farmers, a small servant aged fourteen, thickset, and named Babylas. The lion dressed his tiger very

smartlya short tuniccoat of irongray cloth, belted with patent leather, bright blue plush breeches, a red

waistcoat, polished leather topboots, a shiny hat with black lacing, and brass buttons with the arms of

Soulas. Amedee gave this boy white cotton gloves and his washing, and thirtysix francs a month to keep

himselfa sum that seemed enormous to the grisettes of Besancon: four hundred and twenty francs a year to

a child of fifteen, without counting extras! The extras consisted in the price for which he could sell his turned

clothes, a present when Soulas exchanged one of his horses, and the perquisite of the manure. The two

horses, treated with sordid economy, cost, one with another, eight hundred francs a year. His bills for articles

received from Paris, such as perfumery, cravats, jewelry, patent blacking, and clothes, ran to another twelve

hundred francs. Add to this the groom, or tiger, the horses, a very superior style of dress, and six hundred

francs a year for rent, and you will see a grand total of three thousand francs.

Now, Monsieur de Soulas' father had left him only four thousand francs a year, the income from some cottage

farms which lent painful uncertainty to the rents. The lion had hardly three francs a day left for food,

amusements, and gambling. He very often dined out, and breakfasted with remarkable frugality. When he

was positively obliged to dine at his own cost, he sent his tiger to fetch a couple of dishes from a cookshop,

Young Monsieur de Soulas was supposed to be a spendthrift, recklessly extravagant, whereas the poor man

made the two ends meet in the year with a keenness and skill which would have done honor to a thrifty

housewife. At Besancon in those days no one knew how great a tax on a man's capital were six francs spent

in polish to spread on his boots or shoes, yellow gloves at fifty sous a pair, cleaned in the deepest secrecy to

make them three times renewed, cravats costing ten francs, and lasting three months, four waistcoats at

twentyfive francs, and trousers fitting close to the boots. How could he do otherwise, since we see women

in Paris bestowing their special attention on simpletons who visit them, and cut out the most remarkable men

by means of these frivolous advantages, which a man can buy for fifteen louis, and get his hair curled and a

If this unhappy youth should seem to you to have become a lion on very cheap terms, you must know that

Amedee de Soulas had been three times to Switzerland, by coach and in short stages, twice to Paris, and once

from Paris to England. He passed as a wellinformed traveler, and could say, "In England, where I went . . ."

The dowagers of the town would say to him, "You, who have been in England . . ." He had been as far as

Lombardy, and seen the shores of the Italian lakes. He read new books. Finally, when he was cleaning his

gloves, the tiger Babylas replied to callers, "Monsieur is very busy." An attempt had been made to withdraw

Monsieur Amedee de Soulas from circulation by pronouncing him "A man of advanced ideas." Amedee had

the gift of uttering with the gravity of a native the commonplaces that were in fashion, which gave him the

credit of being one of the most enlightened of the nobility. His person was garnished with fashionable

In 1834 Amedee was a young man of fiveandtwenty, of medium height, dark, with a very prominent

thorax, wellmade shoulders, rather plump legs, feet already fat, white dimpled hands, a beard under his chin,

moustaches worthy of the garrison, a goodnatured, fat, rubicund face, a flat nose, and brown expressionless

eyes; nothing Spanish about him. He was progressing rapidly in the direction of obesity, which would be fatal

to his pretensions. His nails were well kept, his beard trimmed, the smallest details of his dress attended to

with English precision. Hence Amedee de Soulas was looked upon as the finest man in Besancon. A

hairdresser who waited upon him at a fixed houranother luxury, costing sixty francs a yearheld him up

Amedee slept late, dressed and went out towards noon, to go to one of his farms and practise pistolshooting.

He attached as much importance to this exercise as Lord Byron did in his later days. Then, at three o'clock he

came home, admired on horseback by the grisettes and the ladies who happened to be at their windows. After

an affectation of study or business, which seemed to engage him till four, he dressed to dine out, spent the

evening in the drawingrooms of the aristocracy of Besancon playing whist, and went home to bed at eleven.

No life could be more above board, more prudent, or more irreproachable, for he punctually attended the

To enable you to understand how exceptional is such a life, it is necessary to devote a few words to an

account of Besancon. No town ever offered more deaf and dumb resistance to progress. At Besancon the

officials, the employes, the military, in short, every one engaged in governing it, sent thither from Paris to fill

a post of any kind, are all spoken of by the expressive general name of the Colony. The colony is neutral

ground, the only ground where, as in church, the upper rank and the townsfolk of the place can meet. Here,

fired by a word, a look, or gesture, are started those feuds between house and house, between a woman of

rank and a citizen's wife, which endure till death, and widen the impassable gulf which parts the two classes

of society. With the exception of the ClermontMontSaintJean, the Beauffremont, the de Scey, and the

Gramont families, with a few others who come only to stay on their estates in the Comte, the aristocracy of

Besancon dates no further back than a couple of centuries, the time of the conquest by Louis XIV. This little

world is essentially of the parlement, and arrogant, stiff, solemn, uncompromising, haughty beyond all

comparison, even with the Court of Vienna, for in this the nobility of Besancon would put the Viennese

drawingrooms to shame. As to Victor Hugo, Nodier, Fourier, the glories of the town, they are never

mentioned, no one thinks about them. The marriages in these families are arranged in the cradle, so rigidly

are the greatest things settled as well as the smallest. No stranger, no intruder, ever finds his way into one of

these houses, and to obtain an introduction for the colonels or officers of title belonging to the first families in

France when quartered there, requires efforts of diplomacy which Prince Talleyrand would gladly have

In 1834 Amedee was the only man in Besancon who wore trouserstraps; this will account for the young

man's being regarded as a lion. And a little anecdote will enable you to understand the city of Besancon.

Some time before the opening of this story, the need arose at the prefecture for bringing an editor from Paris

for the official newspaper, to enable it to hold its own against the little Gazette, dropped at Besancon by the

great Gazette, and the Patriot, which frisked in the hands of the Republicans. Paris sent them a young man,

knowing nothing about la Franche Comte, who began by writing them a leading article of the school of the

Charivari. The chief of the moderate party, a member of the municipal council, sent for the journalist and

said to him, "You must understand, monsieur, that we are serious, more than serioustiresome; we resent

being amused, and are furious at having been made to laugh. Be as hard of digestion as the toughest

disquisitions in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and you will hardly reach the level of Besancon."

The editor took the hint, and thenceforth spoke the most incomprehensible philosophical lingo. His success

If young Monsieur de Soulas did not fall in the esteem of Besancon society, it was out of pure vanity on its

part; the aristocracy were happy to affect a modern air, and to be able to show any Parisians of rank who

All this hidden labor, all this dust thrown in people's eyes, this display of folly and latent prudence, had an

object, or the lion of Besancon would have been no son of the soil. Amedee wanted to achieve a good

marriage by proving some day that his farms were not mortgaged, and that he had some savings. He wanted

to be the talk of the town, to be the finest and bestdressed man there, in order to win first the attention, and

In 1830, at the time when young Monsieur de Soulas was setting up in business as a dandy, Rosalie was but

fourteen. Hence, in 1834, Mademoiselle de Watteville had reached the age when young persons are easily

struck by the peculiarities which attracted the attention of the town to Amedee. There are so many lions who

become lions out of selfinterest and speculation. The Wattevilles, who for twelve years had been drawing an

income of fifty thousand francs a year, did not spend more than fourandtwenty thousand francs a year,

while receiving all the upper circle of Besancon every Monday and Friday. On Monday they gave a dinner,

on Friday an evening party. Thus, in twelve years, what a sum must have accumulated from twentysix

thousand francs a year, saved and invested with the judgment that distinguishes those old families! It was

very generally supposed that Madame de Watteville, thinking she had land enough, had placed her savings in

the three per cents, in 1830. Rosalie's dowry would therefore, as the best informed opined, amount to about

twenty thousand francs a year. So for the last five years Amedee had worked like a mole to get into the

highest favor of the severe Baroness, while laying himself out to flatter Mademoiselle de Watteville's conceit.

Madame de Watteville was in the secret of the devices by which Amedee succeeded in keeping up his rank in

Besancon, and esteemed him highly for it. Soulas had placed himself under her wing when she was thirty,

and at that time had dared to admire her and make her his idol; he had got so far as to be allowedhe alone

in the worldto pour out to her all the unseemly gossip which almost all very precise women love to hear,

being authorized by their superior virtue to look into the gulf without falling, and into the devil's snares

without being caught. Do you understand why the lion did not allow himself the very smallest intrigue? He

lived a public life, in the street so to speak, on purpose to play the part of a lover sacrificed to duty by the

Baroness, and to feast her mind with the sins she had forbidden to her senses. A man who is so privileged as

to be allowed to pour light stories into the ear of a bigot is in her eyes a charming man. If this exemplary

youth had better known the human heart, he might without risk have allowed himself some flirtations among

the grisettes of Besancon who looked up to him as a king; his affairs might perhaps have been all the more

hopeful with the strict and prudish Baroness. To Rosalie our Cato affected prodigality; he professed a life of

elegance, showing her in perspective the splendid part played by a woman of fashion in Paris, whither he

All these manoeuvres were crowned with complete success. In 1834 the mothers of the forty noble families

composing the high society of Besancon quoted Monsieur Amedee de Soulas as the most charming young

man in the town; no one would have dared to dispute his place as cock of the walk at the Hotel de Rupt, and

all Besancon regarded him as Rosalie de Watteville's future husband. There had even been some exchange of

ideas on the subject between the Baroness and Amedee, to which the Baron's apparent nonentity gave some

Mademoiselle de Watteville, to whom her enormous prospective fortune at that time lent considerable

importance, had been brought up exclusively within the precincts of the Hotel de Ruptwhich her mother

rarely quitted, so devoted was she to her dear Archbishopand severely repressed by an exclusively

religious education, and by her mother's despotism, which held her rigidly to principles. Rosalie knew

absolutely nothing. Is it knowledge to have learned geography from Guthrie, sacred history, ancient history,

the history of France, and the four rules all passed through the sieve of an old Jesuit? Dancing and music

were forbidden, as being more likely to corrupt life than to grace it. The Baroness taught her daughter every

conceivable stitch in tapestry and women's workplain sewing, embroidery, netting. At seventeen Rosalie

had never read anything but the Lettres edifiantes and some works on heraldry. No newspaper had ever

defiled her sight. She attended mass at the Cathedral every morning, taken there by her mother, came back to

breakfast, did needlework after a little walk in the garden, and received visitors, sitting with the baroness until

dinnertime. Then, after dinner, excepting on Mondays and Fridays, she accompanied Madame de Watteville

to other houses to spend the evening, without being allowed to talk more than the maternal rule permitted.

At eighteen Mademoiselle de Watteville was a slight, thin girl with a flat figure, fair, colorless, and

insignificant to the last degree. Her eyes, of a very light blue, borrowed beauty from their lashes, which, when

downcast, threw a shadow on her cheeks. A few freckles marred the whiteness of her forehead, which was

shapely enough. Her face was exactly like those of Albert Durer's saints, or those of the painters before

Perugino; the same plump, though slender modeling, the same delicacy saddened by ecstasy, the same severe

guilelessness. Everything about her, even to her attitude, was suggestive of those virgins, whose beauty is

only revealed in its mystical radiance to the eyes of the studious connoisseur. She had fine hands though red,

She habitually wore simple checked cotton dresses; but on Sundays and in the evening her mother allowed

her silk. The cut of her frocks, made at Besancon, almost made her ugly, while her mother tried to borrow

grace, beauty, and elegance from Paris fashions; for through Monsieur de Soulas she procured the smallest

trifles of her dress from thence. Rosalie had never worn a pair of silk stockings or thin boots, but always

cotton stockings and leather shoes. On high days she was dressed in a muslin frock, her hair plainly dressed,

This education, and her own modest demeanor, hid in Rosalie a spirit of iron. Physiologists and profound

observers will tell you, perhaps to your astonishment, that tempers, characteristics, wit, or genius reappear in

families at long intervals, precisely like what are known as hereditary diseases. Thus talent, like the gout,

sometimes skips over two generations. We have an illustrious example of this phenomenon in George Sand,

in whom are resuscitated the force, the power, and the imaginative faculty of the Marechal de Saxe, whose

The decisive character and romantic daring of the famous Watteville had reappeared in the soul of his

grandniece, reinforced by the tenacity and pride of blood of the Rupts. But these qualitiesor faults, if you

will have it sowere as deeply buried in this young girlish soul, apparently so weak and yielding, as the

seething lavas within a hill before it becomes a volcano. Madame de Watteville alone, perhaps, suspected this

inheritance from two strains. She was so severe to her Rosalie, that she replied one day to the Archbishop,

who blamed her for being too hard on the child, "Leave me to manage her, monseigneur. I know her! She has

The Baroness kept all the keener watch over her daughter, because she considered her honor as a mother to

be at stake. After all, she had nothing else to do. Clotilde de Rupt, at this time fiveandthirty, and as good as

widowed, with a husband who turned eggcups in every variety of wood, who set his mind on making wheels

with six spokes out of ironwood, and manufactured snuffboxes for everyone of his acquaintance, flirted in

strict propriety with Amedee de Soulas. When this young man was in the house, she alternately dismissed

and recalled her daughter, and tried to detect symptoms of jealousy in that youthful soul, so as to have

occasion to repress them. She imitated the police in its dealings with the republicans; but she labored in vain.

Rosalie showed no symptoms of rebellion. Then the arid bigot accused her daughter of perfect insensibility.

Rosalie knew her mother well enough to be sure that if she had thought young Monsieur de Soulas nice, she

would have drawn down on herself a smart reproof. Thus, to all her mother's incitement she replied merely by

such phrases as are wrongly called Jesuiticalwrongly, because the Jesuits were strong, and such

reservations are the chevaux de frise behind which weakness takes refuge. Then the mother regarded the girl

as a dissembler. If by mischance a spark of the true nature of the Wattevilles and the Rupts blazed out, the

mother armed herself with the respect due from children to their parents to reduce Rosalie to passive

This covert battle was carried on in the most secret seclusion of domestic life, with closed doors. The

VicarGeneral, the dear Abbe Grancey, the friend of the late Archbishop, clever as he was in his capacity of

the chief Father Confessor of the diocese, could not discover whether the struggle had stirred up some hatred

between the mother and daughter, whether the mother were jealous in anticipation, or whether the court

Amedee was paying to the girl through her mother had not overstepped its due limits. Being a friend of the

family, neither mother nor daughter, confessed to him. Rosalie, a little too much harried, morally, about

young de Soulas, could not abide him, to use a homely phrase, and when he spoke to her, trying to take her

heart by surprise, she received him but coldly. This aversion, discerned only by her mother's eyes, was a

"Rosalie, I cannot imagine why you affect such coldness towards Amedee. Is it because he is a friend of the

"Well, mamma," replied the poor child one day, "if I made him welcome, should I not be still more in the

"What do you mean by that?" cried Madame de Watteville. "What is the meaning of such words? Your

mother is unjust, no doubt, and according to you, would be so in any case! Never let such an answer pass

This quarrel lasted three hours and threequarters. Rosalie noted the time. Her mother, pale with fury, sent

her to her room, where Rosalie pondered on the meaning of this scene without discovering it, so guileless was

she. Thus young Monsieur de Soulas, who was supposed by every one to be very near the end he was aiming

at, all neckcloths set, and by dint of pots of patent blackingan end which required so much waxing of his

moustaches, so many smart waistcoats, wore out so many horseshoes and staysfor he wore a leather vest,

the stays of the lionAmedee, I say, was further away than any chance comer, although he had on his side

"Madame," said Monsieur de Soulas, addressing the Baroness, while waiting till his soup was cool enough to

swallow, and affecting to give a romantic turn to his narrative, "one fine morning the mail coach dropped at

the Hotel National a gentleman from Paris, who, after seeking apartments, made up his mind in favor of the

first floor in Mademoiselle Galard's house, Rue du Perron. Then the stranger went straight to the Mairie, and

had himself registered as a resident with all political qualifications. Finally, he had his name entered on the

list of the barristers to the Court, showing his title in due form, and he left his card on all his new colleagues,

the Ministerial officials, the Councillors of the Court, and the members of the bench, with the name,

"The name of Savaron is famous," said Mademoiselle de Watteville, who was strong in heraldic information.

"The Savarons of Savarus are one of the oldest, noblest, and richest families in Belgium."

"He is a Frenchman, and no man's son," replied Amedee de Soulas. "If he wishes to bear the arms of the

Savarons of Savarus, he must add a barsinister. There is no one left of the Brabant family but a

"The barsinister is, of course, the badge of a bastard; but the bastard of a Comte de Savarus is noble,"

"You insisted on her learning heraldry," said Monsieur de Watteville, "and she knows it very well."

"You may suppose that in a town where everything is classified, known, pigeonholed, ticketed, and

numbered, as in Besancon, Albert Savaron was received without hesitation by the lawyers of the town. They

were satisfied to say, 'Here is a man who does not know his Besancon. Who the devil can have sent him here?

What can he hope to do? Sending his card to the Judges instead of calling in person! What a blunder!' And so,

three days after, Savaron had ceased to exist. He took as his servant old Monsieur Galard's manGalard

being deadJerome, who can cook a little. Albert Savaron was all the more completely forgotten, because

"He goes on Sundays to SaintPierre, but to the early service at eight in the morning. He rises every night

between one and two in the morning, works till eight, has his breakfast, and then goes on working. He walks

in his garden, going round fifty, or perhaps sixty times; then he goes in, dines, and goes to bed between six

"In the first place, madame, I live in the Rue Neuve, at the corner of the Rue du Perron; I look out on the

house where this mysterious personage lodges; then, of course, there are communications between my tiger

"Welland how was it that you engaged a stranger for your defence?" asked the Baroness, thus placing the

"The President of the Court played this pleader a trick by appointing him to defend at the Assizes a

halfwitted peasant accused of forgery. But Monsieur Savaron procured the poor man's acquittal by proving

his innocence and showing that he had been a tool in the hands of the real culprits. Not only did his line of

defence succeed, but it led to the arrest of two of the witnesses, who were proved guilty and condemned. His

speech struck the Court and the jury. One of these, a merchant, placed a difficult case next day in the hands of

Monsieur Savaron, and he won it. In the position in which we found ourselves, Monsieur Berryer finding it

impossible to come to Besancon, Monsieur de Garcenault advised him to employ this Monsieur Albert

Savaron, foretelling our success. As soon as I saw him and heard him, I felt faith in him, and I was not

"The first time I saw him," said the Abbe de Grancey, "he received me in his outer room next the

anteroomold Galard's drawingroomwhich he has had painted like old oak, and which I found entirely

lined with lawbooks, arranged on shelves also painted as old oak. The painting and the books are the sole

decoration of the room, for the furniture consists of an old writing table of carved wood, six old armchairs

covered with tapestry, window curtains of gray stuff bordered with green, and a green carpet over the floor.

The anteroom stove heats this library as well. As I waited there I did not picture my advocate as a young

man. But this singular setting is in perfect harmony with his person; for Monsieur Savaron came out in a

black merino dressing gown tied with a red cord, red slippers, a red flannel waistcoat, and a red

"Yes," said the Abbe; "but a magnificent head. Black hair already streaked with a little gray, hair like that of

Saint Peter and Saint Paul in pictures, with thick shining curls, hair as stiff as horse hair; a round white

throat like a woman's; a splendid forehead, furrowed by the strong median line which great schemes, great

thoughts, deep meditations stamp on a great man's brow; an olive complexion marbled with red, a square

nose, eyes of flame, hollow cheeks, with two long lines, betraying much suffering, a mouth with a sardonic

smile, and a small chin, narrow, and too short; crow's feet on his temples; deepset eyes, moving in their

sockets like burning balls; but, in spite of all these indications of a violently passionate nature, his manner

was calm, deeply resigned, and his voice of penetrating sweetness, which surprised me in Court by its easy

flow; a true orator's voice, now clear and appealing, sometimes insinuating, but a voice of thunder when

"Monsieur Albert Savaron is of middle height, neither stout nor thin. And his hands are those of a prelate.

"The second time I called on him he received me in his bedroom, adjoining the library, and smiled at my

astonishment when I saw there a wretched chest of drawers, a shabby carpet, a campbed, and cotton

windowcurtains. He came out of his private room, to which no one is admitted, as Jerome informed me; the

"The third time he was breakfasting in his library on the most frugal fare; but on this occasion, as he had

spent the night studying our documents, as I had my attorney with me, and as that worthy Monsieur Girardet

is longwinded, I had leisure to study the stranger. He certainly is no ordinary man. There is more than one

secret behind that face, at once so terrible and so gentle, patient and yet impatient, broad and yet hollow. I

saw, too, that he stooped a little, like all men who have some heavy burden to bear."

"Why did so eloquent a man leave Paris? For what purpose did he come to Besancon?" asked pretty Madame

de Chavoncourt. "Could no one tell him how little chance a stranger has of succeeding here? The good folks

of Besancon will make use of him, but they will not allow him to make use of them. Why, having come, did

he make so little effort that it needed a freak of the President's to bring him forward?"

"After carefully studying that fine head," said the Abbe, looking keenly at the lady who had interrupted him,

in such a way as to suggest that there was something he would not tell, "and especially after hearing him this

morning reply to one of the bigwigs of the Paris Bar, I believe that this man, who may be fiveandthirty,

"Why should we discuss him? You have gained your action, and paid him," said Madame de Watteville,

watching her daughter, who, all the time the VicarGeneral had been speaking, seemed to hang on his lips.

The portrait sketched by the cleverest of the VicarsGeneral of the diocese had all the greater charm for

Rosalie because there was a romance behind it. For the first time in her life she had come across the

marvelous, the exceptional, which smiles on every youthful imagination, and which curiosity, so eager at

Rosalie's age, goes forth to meet halfway. What an ideal being was this Albertgloomy, unhappy,

eloquent, laborious, as compared by Mademoiselle de Watteville to that chubby fat Count, bursting with

health, paying compliments, and talking of the fashions in the very face of the splendor of the old counts of

Rupt. Amedee had cost her many quarrels and scoldings, and, indeed, she knew him only too well; while this

Now, to see him, to catch sight of him! This was the desire of the girl to whom desire was hitherto unknown.

She pondered in her heart, in her fancy, in her brain, the least phrases used by the Abbe de Grancey, for all

"A fine forehead!" said she to herself, looking at the head of every man seated at the table; "I do not see one

fine one.Monsieur de Soulas' is too prominent; Monsieur de Grancey's is fine, but he is seventy, and has no

"I am not hungry, mamma," said she. "A prelate's hands" she went on to herself. "I cannot remember

Finally, in the midst of her coming and going in the labyrinth of her meditations, she remembered a lighted

window she had seen from her bed, gleaming through the trees of the two adjoining gardens, when she had

happened to wake in the night. . . . "Then that was his light!" thought she. "I might see him!I will see him."

"Monsieur de Grancey, is the Chapter's lawsuit quite settled?" said Rosalie pointblank to the VicarGeneral,

"What can that matter to you, my dear child?" she said to Rosalie, with an affected sweetness which made her

"It might be carried to the Court of Appeal, but our adversaries will think twice about that," replied the Abbe.

"I never could have believed that Rosalie would think about a lawsuit all through a dinner," remarked

"Nor I either," said Rosalie, in a dreamy way that made every one laugh. "But Monsieur de Grancey was so

The company rose from table and returned to the drawingroom. All through the evening Rosalie listened in

case Albert Savaron should be mentioned again; but beyond the congratulations offered by each newcomer to

the Abbe on having gained his suit, to which no one added any praise of the advocate, no more was said

about it. Mademoiselle de Watteville impatiently looked forward to bedtime. She had promised herself to

wake at between two and three in the morning, and to look at Albert's dressingroom windows. When the

hour came, she felt almost pleasure in gazing at the glimmer from the lawyer's candles that shone through the

trees, now almost bare of their leaves. By the help of the strong sight of a young girl, which curiosity seems

to make longer, she saw Albert writing, and fancied she could distinguish the color of the furniture, which she

The education of girls brings with it such serious problemsfor the future of a nation is in the motherthat

the University of France long since set itself the task of having nothing to do with it. Here is one of these

problems: Ought girls to be informed on all points? Ought their minds to be under restraint? It need not be

said that the religious system is one of restraint. If you enlighten them, you make them demons before their

time; if you keep them from thinking, you end in the sudden explosion so well shown by Moliere in the

character of Agnes, and you leave this suppressed mind, so fresh and clearseeing, as swift and as logical as

that of a savage, at the mercy of an accident. This inevitable crisis was brought on in Mademoiselle de

Watteville by the portrait which one of the most prudent Abbes of the Chapter of Besancon imprudently

Next morning, Mademoiselle de Watteville, while dressing, necessarily looked out at Albert Savaron walking

"What would have become of me," thought she, "if he had lived anywhere else? Here I can, at any rate, see

Having seen this extraordinary man, though at a distance, the only man whose countenance stood forth in

contrast with crowds of Besancon faces she had hitherto met with, Rosalie at once jumped at the idea of

getting into his house, of ascertaining the reason of so much mystery, of hearing that eloquent voice, of

winning a glance from those fine eyes. All this she set her heart on, but how could she achieve it?

All that day she drew her needle through her embroidery with the obtuse concentration of a girl who, like

Agnes, seems to be thinking of nothing, but who is reflecting on things in general so deeply, that her artifice

is unfailing. As a result of this profound meditation, Rosalie thought she would go to confession. Next

morning, after Mass, she had a brief interview with the Abbe Giroud at SaintPierre, and managed so

ingeniously that the hour of her confession was fixed for Sunday morning at halfpast seven, before the eight

o'clock Mass. She committed herself to a dozen fibs in order to find herself, just for once, in the church at the

hour when the lawyer came to Mass. Then she was seized with an impulse of extreme affection for her father;

she went to see him in his workroom, and asked him for all sorts of information on the art of turning, ending

by advising him to turn larger pieces, columns. After persuading her father to set to work on some twisted

pillars, one of the difficulties of the turner's art, she suggested that he should make use of a large heap of

stones that lay in the middle of the garden to construct a sort of grotto on which he might erect a little temple

or Belvedere in which his twisted pillars could be used and shown off to all the world.

At the climax of the pleasure the poor unoccupied man derived from this scheme, Rosalie said, as she kissed

him, "Above all, do not tell mamma who gave you the notion; she would scold me."

"Do not be afraid!" replied Monsieur de Watteville, who groaned as bitterly as his daughter under the tyranny

So Rosalie had a certain prospect of seeing ere long a charming observatory built, whence her eye would

command the lawyer's private room. And there are men for whose sake young girls can carry out such

masterstrokes of diplomacy, while, for the most part, like Albert Savaron, they know it not.

The Sunday so impatiently looked for arrived, and Rosalie dressed with such carefulness as made Mariette,

"It is the first time I ever knew mademoiselle to be so fidgety," said Mariette.

"It strikes me," said Rosalie, with a glance at Mariette, which brought poppies to her cheeks, "that you too are

As she went down the steps, across the courtyard, and through the gates, Rosalie's heart beat, as everybody's

does in anticipation of a great event. Hitherto, she had never known what it was to walk in the streets; for a

moment she had felt as though her mother must read her schemes on her brow, and forbid her going to

confession, and she now felt new blood in her feet, she lifted them as though she trod on fire. She had, of

course, arranged to be with her confessor at a quarterpast eight, telling her mother eight, so as to have about

a quarter of an hour near Albert. She got to church before Mass, and after a short prayer, went to see if the

Abbe Giroud were in his confessional, simply to pass the time; and she thus placed herself in such a way as to

The man must have been atrociously ugly who did not seem handsome to Mademoiselle de Watteville in the

frame of mind produced by her curiosity. And Albert Savaron, who was really very striking, made all the

more impression on Rosalie because his mien, his walk, his carriage, everything down to his clothing, had the

He came in. The church, till now gloomy, seemed to Rosalie to be illuminated. The girl was fascinated by his

slow and solemn demeanor, as of a man who bears a world on his shoulders and whose deep gaze, whose

very gestures, combine to express a devastating or absorbing thought. Rosalie now understood the

VicarGeneral's words in their fullest extent. Yes, those eyes of tawny brown, shot with golden lights,

covered ardor which revealed itself in sudden flashes. Rosalie, with a recklessness which Mariette noted,

stood in the lawyer's way, so as to exchange glances with him; and this glance turned her blood, for it seethed

As soon as Albert had taken a seat, Mademoiselle de Watteville quickly found a place whence she could see

him perfectly during all the time the Abbe might leave her. When Mariette said, "Here is Monsieur Giroud,"

it seemed to Rosalie that the interview had lasted no more than a few minutes. By the time she came out from

"The VicarGeneral was right," thought she. "He is unhappy. Why should this eaglefor he has the eyes of

Under the smart of this new desire Rosalie set the stitches of her worstedwork with exquisite precision, and

hid her meditations under a little innocent air, which shammed simplicity to deceive Madame de Watteville.

From that Sunday, when Mademoiselle de Watteville had met that look, or, if you please, received this

baptism of firea fine expression of Napoleon's which may be well applied to loveshe eagerly promoted

"Mamma," said she one day when two columns were turned, "my father has taken a singular idea into his

head; he is turning columns for a Belvedere he intends to erect on the heap of stones in the middle of the

"I approve of everything your father does," said Madame de Watteville drily, "and it is a wife's duty to submit

to her husband even if she does not approve of his ideas. Why should I object to a thing which is of no

"Well, because from thence we shall see into Monsieur de Soulas' rooms, and Monsieur de Soulas will see us

"Do you presume, Rosalie, to guide your parents, and think you know more than they do of life and the

"I say no more, mamma. Besides, my father said that there would be a room in the grotto, where it would be

"Your father has had an excellent idea," said Madame de Watteville, who forthwith went to look at the

She gave her entire approbation to the Baron de Watteville's design, while choosing for the erection of this

monument a spot at the bottom of the garden, which could not be seen from Monsieur de Soulas' windows,

but whence they could perfectly see into Albert Savaron's rooms. A builder was sent for, who undertook to

construct a grotto, of which the top should be reached by a path three feet wide through the rockwork,

where periwinkles would grow, iris, clematis, ivy, honeysuckle, and Virginia creeper. The Baroness desired

that the inside should be lined with rustic woodwork, such as was then the fashion for flowerstands, with a

lookingglass against the wall, an ottoman forming a box, and a table of inlaid bark. Monsieur de Soulas

proposed that the floor should be of asphalt. Rosalie suggested a hanging chandelier of rustic wood.

"The Wattevilles are having something charming done in their garden," was rumored in Besancon.

"Yes, a thousand crowns," cried young Monsieur de Soulas. "A man has been sent for from Paris to rusticate

the interior but it will be very pretty. Monsieur de Watteville himself is making the chandelier, and has begun

"No," replied young Monsieur de Soulas, "he is raising the kiosk on a concrete foundation, that it may not be

"You know the very least things that are done in that house," said Madame de Chavoncourt sourly, as she

Mademoiselle de Watteville, with a little flush of pride in thinking of the success of her Belvedere, discerned

in herself a vast superiority over every one about her. No one guessed that a little girl, supposed to be a

witless goose, had simply made up her mind to get a closer view of the lawyer Savaron's private study.

Albert Savaron's brilliant defence of the Cathedral Chapter was all the sooner forgotten because the envy of

the other lawyers was aroused. Also, Savaron, faithful to his seclusion, went nowhere. Having no friends to

cry him up, and seeing no one, he increased the chances of being forgotten which are common to strangers in

Besancon. Nevertheless, he pleaded three times at the Commercial Tribunal in three knotty cases which had

to be carried to the superior Court. He thus gained as clients four of the chief merchants of the place, who

discerned in him so much good sense and sound legal purview that they placed their claims in his hands.

On the day when the Watteville family inaugurated the Belvedere, Savaron also was founding a monument.

Thanks to the connections he had obscurely formed among the upper class of merchants in Besancon, he was

starting a fortnightly paper, called the Eastern Review, with the help of forty shares of five hundred francs

each, taken up by his first ten clients, on whom he had impressed the necessity for promoting the interests of

Besancon, the town where the traffic should meet between Mulhouse and Lyons, and the chief centre

To compete with Strasbourg, was it not needful that Besancon should become a focus of enlightenment as

well as of trade? The leading questions relating to the interests of Eastern France could only be dealt with in a

review. What a glorious task to rob Strasbourg and Dijon of their literary importance, to bring light to the

East of France, and compete with the centralizing influence of Paris! These reflections, put forward by

Monsieur Savaron did not commit the blunder of putting his name in front; he left the finance of the concern

to his chief client, Monsieur Boucher, connected by marriage with one of the great publishers of important

ecclesiastical works; but he kept the editorship, with a share of the profits as founder. The commercial

interest appealed to Dole, to Dijon, to Salins, to Neufchatel, to the Jura, Bourg, Nantua, LousleSaulnier.

The concurrence was invited of the learning and energy of every scientific student in the districts of le Bugey,

la Bresse, and Franche Comte. By the influence of commercial interests and common feeling, five hundred

subscribers were booked in consideration of the low price; the Review cost eight francs a quarter.

To avoid hurting the conceit of the provincials by refusing their articles, the lawyer hit on the good idea of

suggesting a desire for the literary management of this Review to Monsieur Boucher's eldest son, a young

man of twoandtwenty, very eager for fame, to whom the snares and woes of literary responsibilities were

utterly unknown. Albert quietly kept the upper hand and made Alfred Boucher his devoted adherent. Alfred

was the only man in Besancon with whom the king of the bar was on familiar terms. Alfred came in the

morning to discuss the articles for the next number with Albert in the garden. It is needless to say that the trial

number contained a "Meditation" by Alfred, which Savaron approved. In his conversations with Alfred,

Albert would let drop some great ideas, subjects for articles of which Alfred availed himself. And thus the

merchant's son fancied he was making capital out of the great man. To Alfred, Albert was a man of genius, of

profound politics. The commercial world, enchanted at the success of the Review, had to pay up only

threetenths of their shares. Two hundred more subscribers, and the periodical would pay a dividend to the

shareholders of five per cent, the editor remaining unpaid. This editing, indeed, was beyond price.

After the third number the Review was recognized for exchange by all the papers published in France, which

Albert henceforth read at home. This third number included a tale signed "A. S.," and attributed to the famous

lawyer. In spite of the small attention paid by the higher circle of Besancon to the Review which was accused

of Liberal views, this, the first novel produced in the county, came under discussion that midwinter at

"Papa," said Rosalie, "a Review is published in Besancon; you ought to take it in; and keep it in your room,

Monsieur de Watteville, eager to obey his dear Rosalie, who for the last five months had given him so many

proofs of filial affection, Monsieur de Watteville went in person to subscribe for a year to the Eastern

Review, and lent the four numbers already out to his daughter. In the course of the night Rosalie devoured the

talethe first she had ever read in her lifebut she had only known life for two months past. Hence the

effect produced on her by this work must not be judged by ordinary rules. Without prejudice of any kind as to

the greater or less merit of this composition from the pen of a Parisian who had thus imported into the

province the manner, the brilliancy, if you will, of the new literary school, it could not fail to be a masterpiece

to a young girl abandoning all her intelligence and her innocent heart to her first reading of this kind.

Also, from what she had heard said, Rosalie had by intuition conceived a notion of it which strangely

enhanced the interest of this novel. She hoped to find in it the sentiments, and perhaps something of the life

of Albert. From the first pages this opinion took so strong a hold on her, that after reading the fragment to the

end she was certain that it was no mistake. Here, then, is this confession, in which, according to the critics of

Madame de Chavoncourt's drawing room, Albert had imitated some modern writers who, for lack of

inventiveness, relate their private joys, their private griefs, or the mysterious events of their own life.

In 1823 two young men, having agreed as a plan for a holiday to make a tour through Switzerland, set out

from Lucerne one fine morning in the month of July in a boat pulled by three oarsmen. They started for

Fluelen, intending to stop at every notable spot on the lake of the Four Cantons. The views which shut in the

waters on the way from Lucerne to Fluelen offer every combination that the most exacting fancy can demand

of mountains and rivers, lakes and rocks, brooks and pastures, trees and torrents. Here are austere solitudes

and charming headlands, smiling and trimly kept meadows, forests crowning perpendicular granite cliffs, like

plumes, deserted but verdant reaches opening out, and valleys whose beauty seems the lovelier in the dreamy

As they passed the pretty hamlet of Gersau, one of the friends looked for a long time at a wooden house

which seemed to have been recently built, enclosed by a paling, and standing on a promontory, almost bathed

by the waters. As the boat rowed past, a woman's head was raised against the background of the room on the

upper story of this house, to admire the effect of the boat on the lake. One of the young men met the glance

"Let us stop here," said he to his friend. "We meant to make Lucerne our headquarters for seeing Switzerland;

you will not take it amiss, Leopold, if I change my mind and stay here to take charge of our possessions.

Then you can go where you please; my journey is ended. Pull to land, men, and put us out at this village; we

will breakfast here. I will go back to Lucerne to fetch all our luggage, and before you leave you will know in

"Here or at Lucerne," replied Leopold, "the difference is not so great that I need hinder you from following

These two youths were friends in the truest sense of the word. They were of the same age; they had learned at

the same school; and after studying the law, they were spending their holiday in the classical tour in

Switzerland. Leopold, by his father's determination, was already pledged to a place in a notary's office in

Paris. His spirit of rectitude, his gentleness, and the coolness of his senses and his brain, guaranteed him to be

a docile pupil. Leopold could see himself a notary in Paris; his life lay before him like one of the highroads

that cross the plains of France, and he looked along its whole length with philosophical resignation.

The character of his companion, whom we will call Rodolphe, presented a strong contrast with Leopold's,

and their antagonism had no doubt had the result of tightening the bond that united them. Rodolphe was the

natural son of a man of rank, who was carried off by a premature death before he could make any

arrangements for securing the means of existence to a woman he fondly loved and to Rodolphe. Thus cheated

by a stroke of fate, Rodolphe's mother had recourse to a heroic measure. She sold everything she owed to the

munificence of her child's father for a sum of more than a hundred thousand francs, bought with it a life

annuity for herself at a high rate, and thus acquired an income of about fifteen thousand francs, resolving to

devote the whole of it to the education of her son, so as to give him all the personal advantages that might

help to make his fortune, while saving, by strict economy, a small capital to be his when he came of age. It

was bold; it was counting on her own life; but without this boldness the good mother would certainly have

found it impossible to live and to bring her child up suitably, and he was her only hope, her future, the spring

Rodolphe, the son of a most charming Parisian woman, and a man of mark, a nobleman of Brabant, was

cursed with extreme sensitiveness. From his infancy he had in everything shown a most ardent nature. In him

mere desire became a guiding force and the motive power of his whole being, the stimulus to his imagination,

the reason of his actions. Notwithstanding the pains taken by a clever mother, who was alarmed when she

detected this predisposition, Rodolphe wished for things as a poet imagines, as a mathematician calculates, as

a painter sketches, as a musician creates melodies. Tenderhearted, like his mother, he dashed with

inconceivable violence and impetus of thought after the object of his desires; he annihilated time. While

dreaming of the fulfilment of his schemes, he always overlooked the means of attainment. "When my son has

This fine frenzy, carefully directed, enabled Rodolphe to achieve his studies with brilliant results, and to

become what the English call an accomplished gentleman. His mother was then proud of him, though still

fearing a catastrophe if ever a passion should possess a heart at once so tender and so susceptible, so

vehement and so kind. Therefore, the judicious mother had encouraged the friendship which bound Leopold

to Rodolphe and Rodolphe to Leopold, since she saw in the cold and faithful young notary, a guardian, a

comrade, who might to a certain extent take her place if by some misfortune she should be lost to her son.

Rodolphe's mother, still handsome at threeandforty, had inspired Leopold with an ardent passion. This

So Leopold, knowing Rodolphe well, was not surprised to find him stopping at a village and giving up the

projected journey to Saint Gothard, on the strength of a single glance at the upper window of a house. While

breakfast was prepared for them at the Swan Inn, the friends walked round the hamlet and came to the

neighborhood of the pretty new house; here, while gazing about him and talking to the inhabitants, Rodolphe

discovered the residence of some decent folk, who were willing to take him as a boarder, a very frequent

custom in Switzerland. They offered him a bedroom looking over the lake and the mountains, and from

whence he had a view of one of those immense sweeping reaches which, in this lake, are the admiration of

every traveler. This house was divided by a roadway and a little creek from the new house, where Rodolphe

For a hundred francs a month Rodolphe was relieved of all thought for the necessaries of life. But, in

consideration of the outlay the Stopfer couple expected to make, they bargained for three months' residence

and a month's payment in advance. Rub a Swiss ever so little, and you find the usurer. After breakfast,

Rodolphe at once made himself at home by depositing in his room such property as he had brought with him

for the journey to the SaintGothard, and he watched Leopold as he set out, moved by the spirit of routine, to

carry out the excursion for himself and his friend. When Rodolphe, sitting on a fallen rock on the shore, could

no longer see Leopold's boat, he turned to examine the new house with stolen glances, hoping to see the fair

unknown. Alas! he went in without its having given a sign of life. During dinner, in the company of Monsieur

and Madame Stopfer, retired coopers from Neufchatel, he questioned them as to the neighborhood, and ended

by learning all he wanted to know about the lady, thanks to his hosts' loquacity; for they were ready to pour

The fair stranger's name was Fanny Lovelace. This name (pronounced Loveless) is that of an old English

family, but Richardson has given it to a creation whose fame eclipses all others! Miss Lovelace had come to

settle by the lake for her father's health, the physicians having recommended him the air of Lucerne. These

two English people had arrived with no other servant than a little girl of fourteen, a dumb child, much

attached to Miss Fanny, on whom she waited very intelligently, and had settled, two winters since, with

monsieur and Madame Bergmann, the retired headgardeners of His Excellency Count Borromeo of Isola

Bella and Isola Madre in the Lago Maggoire. These Swiss, who were possessed of an income of about a

thousand crowns a year, had let the top story of their house to the Lovelaces for three years, at a rent of two

hundred francs a year. Old Lovelace, a man of ninety, and much broken, was too poor to allow himself any

gratifications, and very rarely went out; his daughter worked to maintain him, translating English books, and

writing some herself, it was said. The Lovelaces could not afford to hire boats to row on the lake, or horses

Poverty demanding such privation as this excites all the greater compassion among the Swiss, because it

deprives them of a chance of profit. The cook of the establishment fed the three English boarders for a

hundred francs a month inclusive. In Gersau it was generally believed, however, that the gardener and his

wife, in spite of their pretensions, used the cook's name as a screen to net the little profits of this bargain. The

Bergmanns had made beautiful gardens round their house, and had built a hothouse. The flowers, the fruit,

and the botanical rarities of this spot were what had induced the young lady to settle on it as she passed

through Gersau. Miss Fanny was said to be nineteen years old; she was the old man's youngest child, and the

object of his adulation. About two months ago she had hired a piano from Lucerne, for she seemed to be

"She loves flowers and music, and she is unmarried!" thought Rodolphe; "what good luck!"

The next day Rodolphe went to ask leave to visit the hothouses and gardens, which were beginning to be

somewhat famous. The permission was not immediately granted. The retired gardeners asked, strangely

enough, to see Rodolphe's passport; it was sent to them at once. The paper was not returned to him till next

morning, by the hands of the cook, who expressed her master's pleasure in showing him their place. Rodolphe

went to the Bergmanns', not without a certain trepidation, known only to persons of strong feelings, who go

After dressing himself carefully to gratify the old gardeners of the Borromean Islands, whom he regarded as

the warders of his treasure, he went all over the grounds, looking at the house now and again, but with much

caution; the old couple treated him with evident distrust. But his attention was soon attracted by the little

English deafmute, in whom his discernment, though young as yet, enabled him to recognize a girl of

African, or at least of Sicilian, origin. The child had the goldenbrown color of a Havana cigar, eyes of fire,

Armenian eyelids with lashes of very unBritish length, hair blacker than black; and under this almost olive

skin, sinews of extraordinary strength and feverish alertness. She looked at Rodolphe with amazing curiosity

"I have been told that Miss Lovelace is fond of music. I should be delighted if, during my residence by the

lake to which I am condemned by my doctor's orders, she would allow me to join her."

Rodolphe bit his lips and went away, without having been invited into the house, or taken into the part of the

garden that lay between the front of the house and the shore of the little promontory. On that side the house

had a balcony above the first floor, made of wood, and covered by the roof, which projected deeply like the

roof of a chalet on all four sides of the building, in the Swiss fashion. Rodolphe had loudly praised the

elegance of this arrangement, and talked of the view from that balcony, but all in vain. When he had taken

leave of the Bergmanns it struck him that he was a simpleton, like any man of spirit and imagination

In the evening he, of course, went out in a boat on the lake, round and about the spit of land, to Brunnen and

to Schwytz, and came in at nightfall. From afar he saw the window open and brightly lighted; he heard the

sound of a piano and the tones of an exquisite voice. He made the boatman stop, and gave himself up to the

pleasure of listening to an Italian air delightfully sung. When the singing ceased, Rodolphe landed and sent

away the boat and rowers. At the cost of wetting his feet, he went to sit down under the waterworn granite

shelf crowned by a thick hedge of thorny acacia, by the side of which ran a long lime avenue in the

Bergmanns' garden. By the end of an hour he heard steps and voices just above him, but the words that

He took advantage of the moment when the two speakers were at one end of the walk to slip noiselessly to

the other. After half an hour of struggling he got to the end of the avenue, and there took up a position

whence, without being seen or heard, he could watch the two women without being observed by them as they

came towards him. What was Rodolphe's amazement on recognizing the deafmute as one of them; she was

It was now eleven o'clock at night. The stillness was so perfect on the lake and around the dwelling, that the

two women must have thought themselves safe; in all Gersau there could be no eyes open but theirs.

Rodolphe supposed that the girl's dumbness must be a necessary deception. From the way in which they both

spoke Italian, Rodolphe suspected that it was the mother tongue of both girls, and concluded that the name of

"They are Italian refugees," said he to himself, "outlaws in fear of the Austrian or Sardinian police. The

He lay down by the side of the hedge, and crawled like a snake to find a way between two acacia shrubs. At

the risk of leaving his coat behind him, or tearing deep scratches in his back, he got through the hedge when

the socalled Miss Fanny and her pretended deafanddumb maid were at the other end of the path; then,

when they had come within twenty yards of him without seeing him, for he was in the shadow of the hedge,

"Fear nothing," said he in French to the Italian girl, "I am not a spy. You are refugees, I have guessed that. I

Rodolphe, startled by the acute pain caused by some steel instrument piercing his side, fell like a log.

"She has missed me," said Rodolphe, pulling from his wound a stiletto, which had been turned by one of the

false ribs. "But a little higher up it would have been deep in my heart.I was wrong, Francesca," he went on,

remembering the name he had heard little Gina repeat several times; "I owe her no grudge, do not scold her.

The happiness of speaking to you is well worth the prick of a stiletto. Only show me the way out; I must get

Francesca, recovering from her astonishment, helped Rodolphe to rise, and said a few words to Gina, whose

eyes filled with tears. The two girls made him sit down on a bench and take off his coat, his waistcoat and

cravat. Then Gina opened his shirt and sucked the wound strongly. Francesca, who had left them, returned

Each took an arm, and Rodolphe was conducted to a side gate, of which the key was in Francesca's apron

"Let me look at you," said Rodolphe pathetically, "for it may be long before I am able to come again"

He leaned against one of the gateposts contemplating the beautiful Italian, who allowed him to gaze at her

for a moment under the sweetest silence and the sweetest night which ever, perhaps, shone on this lake, the

Francesca was quite of the Italian type, and such as imagination supposes or pictures, or, if you will, dreams,

that Italian women are. What first struck Rodolphe was the grace and elegance of a figure evidently powerful,

though so slender as to appear fragile. An amber paleness overspread her face, betraying sudden interest, but

it did not dim the voluptuous glance of her liquid eyes of velvety blackness. A pair of hands as beautiful as

ever a Greek sculptor added to the polished arms of a statue grasped Rodolphe's arm, and their whiteness

gleamed against his black coat. The rash Frenchman could but just discern the long, oval shape of her face,

and a melancholy mouth showing brilliant teeth between the parted lips, full, fresh, and brightly red. The

exquisite lines of this face guaranteed to Francesca permanent beauty; but what most struck Rodolphe was

the adorable freedom, the Italian frankness of this woman, wholly absorbed as she was in her pity for him.

Francesca said a word to Gina, who gave Rodolphe her arm as far as the Stopfers' door, and fled like a

"These patriots do not play at killing!" said Rodolphe to himself as he felt his sufferings when he found

himself in his bed. " 'Nel lago!' Gina would have pitched me into the lake with a stone tied to my neck."

Next day he sent to Lucerne for the best surgeon there, and when he came, enjoined on him absolute secrecy,

Leopold returned from his excursion on the day when his friend first got out of bed. Rodolphe made up a

story, and begged him to go to Lucerne to fetch their luggage and letters. Leopold brought back the most

fatal, the most dreadful news: Rodolphe's mother was dead. While the two friends were on their way from

Bale to Lucerne, the fatal letter, written by Leopold's father, had reached Lucerne the day they left for

In spite of Leopold's utmost precautions, Rodolphe fell ill of a nervous fever. As soon as Leopold saw his

friend out of danger, he set out for France with a power of attorney, and Rodolphe could thus remain at

Gersau, the only place in the world where his grief could grow calmer. The young Frenchman's position, his

despair, the circumstances which made such a loss worse for him than for any other man, were known, and

secured him the pity and interest of every one in Gersau. Every morning the pretended dumb girl came to see

As soon as Rodolphe could go out he went to the Bergmanns' house, to thank Miss Fanny Lovelace and her

father for the interest they had taken in his sorrow and his illness. For the first time since he had lodged with

the Bergmanns the old Italian admitted a stranger to his room, where Rodolphe was received with the

cordiality due to his misfortunes and to his being a Frenchman, which excluded all distrust of him. Francesca

looked so lovely by candlelight that first evening that she shed a ray of brightness on his grieving heart. Her

smiles flung the roses of hope on his woe. She sang, not indeed gay songs, but grave and solemn melodies

At about eight o'clock the old man left the young people without any sign of uneasiness, and went to his

room. When Francesca was tired of singing, she led Rodolphe on to the balcony, whence they perceived the

sublime scenery of the lake, and signed to him to be seated by her on a rustic wooden bench.

"Am I very indiscreet in asking how old you are, cara Francesca?" said Rodolphe.

"If anything in the world could soothe my sorrow," he went on, "it would be the hope of winning you from

your father, whatever your fortune may be. So beautiful as you are, you seem to be richer than a prince's

daughter. And I tremble as I confess to you the feelings with which you have inspired me; but they are

"Zitto!" said Francesca, laying a finger of her right hand on her lips. "Say no more; I am not free. I have been

For a few minutes utter silence reigned. When the Italian girl, alarmed at Rodolphe's stillness, went close to

"Married!" said Rodolphe, looking at Francesca. And then his tears flowed freely.

"No," said she with a smile, "but sixtyfive. He has disguised himself as much older to mislead the police."

"Dearest," said Rodolphe, "a few more shocks of this kind and I shall die. Only when you have known me

twenty years will you understand the strength and power of my heart, and the nature of its aspirations for

happiness. This plant," he went on, pointing to the yellow jasmine which covered the balustrade, "does not

climb more eagerly to spread itself in the sunbeams than I have clung to you for this month past. I love you

with unique passion. That love will be the secret fount of my lifeI may possibly die of it."

"Oh! Frenchman, Frenchman!" said she, emphasizing her exclamation with a little incredulous grimace.

"Shall I not be forced to wait, to accept you at the hands of time?" said he gravely. "But know this: if you are

in earnest in what you have allowed to escape you, I will wait for you faithfully, without suffering any other

"None," said he, "not even a passing fancy. I have my fortune to make; you must have a splendid one, nature

At this word Francesca could not repress a faint smile, which gave her face the most bewildering expression,

something subtle, like what the great Leonardo has so well depicted in the Gioconda. This smile made

Rodolphe pause. "Ah yes!" he went on, "you must suffer much from the destitution to which exile has

brought you. Oh, if you would make me happy above all men, and consecrate my love, you would treat me as

a friend. Ought I not to be your friend?My poor mother has left sixty thousand francs of savings; take

Francesca looked steadily at him. This piercing gaze went to the bottom of Rodolphe's soul.

"We want nothing; my work amply supplies our luxuries," she replied in a grave voice.

"And can I endure that a Francesca should work?" cried he. "One day you will return to your country and find

all you left there." Again the Italian girl looked at Rodolphe. "And you will then repay me what you may

have condescended to borrow," he added, with an expression full of delicate feeling.

"Let us drop the subject," said she, with incomparable dignity of gesture, expression, and attitude. "Make a

splendid fortune, be one of the remarkable men of your country; that is my desire. Fame is a drawbridge

which may serve to cross a deep gulf. Be ambitious if you must. I believe you have great and powerful

talents, but use them rather for the happiness of mankind than to deserve me; you will be all the greater in my

In the course of this conversation, which lasted two hours, Rodolphe discovered that Francesca was an

enthusiast for Liberal ideas, and for that worship of liberty which had led to the three revolutions in Naples,

Piemont, and Spain. On leaving, he was shown to the door by Gina, the socalled mute. At eleven o'clock no

one was astir in the village, there was no fear of listeners; Rodolphe took Gina into a corner, and asked her in

a low voice and bad Italian, "Who are your master and mistress, child? Tell me, I will give you this fine new

"Monsieur," said the girl, taking the coin, "my master is the famous bookseller Lamparini of Milan, one of

the leaders of the revolution, and the conspirator of all others whom Austria would most like to have in the

"A bookseller's wife! Ah, so much the better," thought he; "we are on an equal footing.And what is her

Emboldened by Francesca's modest rank, Rodolphe had an awning fitted to his boat and cushions in the stern.

When this was done, the lover came to propose to Francesca to come out on the lake. The Italian accepted, no

doubt to carry out her part of a young English Miss in the eyes of the villagers, but she brought Gina with her.

Francesca Colonna's lightest actions betrayed a superior education and the highest social rank. By the way in

which she took her place at the end of the boat Rodolphe felt himself in some sort cut off from her, and, in the

face of a look of pride worthy of an aristocrat, the familiarity he had intended fell dead. By a glance

Francesca made herself a princess, with all the prerogatives she might have enjoyed in the Middle Ages. She

seemed to have read the thoughts of this vassal who was so audacious as to constitute himself her protector.

Already, in the furniture of the room where Francesca had received him, in her dress, and in the various

trifles she made use of, Rodolphe had detected indications of a superior character and a fine fortune. All these

observations now recurred to his mind; he became thoughtful after having been trampled on, as it were, by

Francesca's dignity. Gina, her halfgrownup confidante, also seemed to have a mocking expression as she

gave a covert or a side glance at Rodolphe. This obvious disagreement between the Italian lady's rank and her

manners was a fresh puzzle to Rodolphe, who suspected some further trick like Gina's assumed dumbness.

"Good!" said Rodolphe to himself, "she is not startled by hearing me speak her name; she had, no doubt,

foreseen that I should ask Gina she is so cunning.What is your quarrel with me?" he went on, going at

last to sit down by her side, and asking her by a gesture to give him her hand, which she withdrew. "You are

"It is true," she replied with a smile. "I am wrong. It is not good manners; it is vulgar. In French you would

call it inartistic. It is better to be frank than to harbor cold or hostile feelings towards a friend, and you have

already proved yourself my friend. Perhaps I have gone too far with you. You must take me to be a very

ordinary woman." Rodolphe made many signs of denial."Yes," said the bookseller's wife, going on

without noticing this pantomime, which, however, she plainly saw. "I have detected that, and naturally I have

reconsidered my conduct. Well! I will put an end to everything by a few words of deep truth. Understand this,

Rodolphe: I feel in myself the strength to stifle a feeling if it were not in harmony with my ideas or

anticipation of what true love is. I could loveas we can love in Italy, but I know my duty. No intoxication

can make me forget it. Married without my consent to that poor old man, I might take advantage of the liberty

he so generously gives me; but three years of married life imply acceptance of its laws. Hence the most

vehement passion would never make me utter, even involuntarily, a wish to find myself free.

"Emilio knows my character. He knows that without my heart, which is my own, and which I might give

away, I should never allow anyone to take my hand. That is why I have just refused it to you. I desire to be

loved and waited for with fidelity, nobleness, ardor, while all I can give is infinite tenderness of which the

expression may not overstep the boundary of the heart, the permitted neutral ground. All this being

thoroughly understoodOh!" she went on with a girlish gesture, "I will be as coquettish, as gay, as glad, as a

This plain and frank declaration was made in a tone, an accent, and supported by a look which gave it the

"Is that," she answered with some haughtiness, "a reflection on the humbleness of my birth? Must your love

flaunt a coatofarms? At Milan the noblest names are written over shopdoors: Sforza, Canova, Visconti,

Trivulzio, Ursini; there are Archintos apothecaries; but, believe me, though I keep a shop, I have the feelings

"Ah, once for all," said he, "not to torture me if my words should ill express my feelings, understand that my

"Yes," said he. "I can understand that in a rich and powerful feminine nature the faculty of loving ought not

to be wasted, and that you, out of delicacy, wished to restrain it. Ah! Francesca, at my age tenderness

requited, and by so sublime, so royally beautiful a creature as you arewhy, it is the fulfilment of all my

wishes. To love you as you desire to be lovedis not that enough to make a young man guard himself

against every evil folly? Is it not to concentrate all his powers in a noble passion, of which in the future he

may be proud, and which can leave none but lovely memories? If you could but know with what hues you

"I want to know," said she, with the Italian artlessness which has always a touch of artfulness.

"And you allow me to love you nobly, looking to heaven for the utmost fulfilment?" he asked.

"I have now no mother whom I can tell of my happiness; she left this earth without seeing what would have

"Povero mio!" exclaimed the Italian, much touched. "Believe me," she went on after a pause, "it is a very

sweet thing, and to a woman, a strong element of fidelity to know that she is all in all on earth to the man she

loves; to find him lonely, with no family, with nothing in his heart but his lovein short, to have him wholly

When two lovers thus understand each other, the heart feels delicious peace, supreme tranquillity. Certainty is

the basis for which human feelings crave, for it is never lacking to religious sentiment; man is always certain

of being fully repaid by God. Love never believes itself secure but by this resemblance to divine love. And

the raptures of that moment must have been fully felt to be understood; it is unique in life; it can never return

no more, alas! than the emotions of youth. To believe in a woman, to make her your human religion, the

fount of life, the secret luminary of all your least thoughts!is not this a second birth? And a young man

Rodolphe and Francesca for some time remained in perfect silence, answering each other by sympathetic

glances full of thoughts. They understood each other in the midst of one of the most beautiful scenes of

Nature, whose glories, interpreted by the glory in their hearts, helped to stamp on their minds the most

fugitive details of that unique hour. There had not been the slightest shade of frivolity in Francesca's conduct.

It was noble, large, and without any second thought. This magnanimity struck Rodolphe greatly, for in it he

recognized the difference between the Italian and the Frenchwoman. The waters, the land, the sky, the

woman, all were grandiose and suave, even their love in the midst of this picture, so vast in its expanse, so

rich in detail, where the sternness of the snowy peaks and their hard folds standing clearly out against the

blue sky, reminded Rodolphe of the circumstances which limited his happiness; a lovely country shut in by

This delightful intoxication of soul was destined to be disturbed. A boat was approaching from Lucerne;

Gina, who had been watching it attentively, gave a joyful start, though faithful to her part as a mute. The bark

came nearer; when at length Francesca could distinguish the faces on board, she exclaimed, "Tito!" as she

perceived a young man. She stood up, and remained standing at the risk of being drowned. "Tito! Tito!" cried

Tito desired the boatmen to slacken, and the two boats pulled side by side. The Italian and Tito talked with

such extreme rapidity, and in a dialect unfamiliar to a man who hardly knew even the Italian of books, that

Rodolphe could neither hear nor guess the drift of this conversation. But Tito's handsome face, Francesca's

familiarity, and Gina's expression of delight, all aggrieved him. And indeed no lover can help being ill

pleased at finding himself neglected for another, whoever he may be. Tito tossed a little leather bag to Gina,

full of gold no doubt, and a packet of letters to Francesca, who began to read them, with a farewell wave of

"Get quickly back to Gersau," she said to the boatmen, "I will not let my poor Emilio pine ten minutes longer

"What has happened?" asked Rodolphe, as he saw Francesca finish reading the last letter.

"Yes," said Francesca, "no more poverty! For more than eleven months have I been working, and I was

"The Secretary of State to the financial department of the humble shop of the Colonnas, in other words, the

son of our ragionato. Poor boy! he could not come by the SaintGothard, nor by the MontCenis, nor by the

Simplon; he came by sea, by Marseilles, and had to cross France. Well, in three weeks we shall be at Geneva,

and living at our ease. Come, Rodolphe," she added, seeing sadness overspread the Parisian's face, "is not the

"But allow me to bestow a regret on the Bergmanns' delightful house," said Rodolphe, pointing to the little

"Come and dine with us to add to your associations, povero mio," said she. "This is a great day; we are out of

danger. My mother writes that within a year there will be an amnesty. Oh! la cara patria!"

These three words made Gina weep. "Another winter here," said she, "and I should have been dead!"

"Poor little Sicilian kid!" said Francesca, stroking Gina's head with an expression and an affection which

The boat grounded; Rodolphe sprang on to the sand, offered his hand to the Italian lady, escorted her to the

When he joined the librarian and his wife, who were sitting on the balcony, Rodolphe could scarcely repress

an exclamation of surprise at seeing the prodigious change which the good news had produced in the old

man. He now saw a man of about sixty, extremely well preserved, a lean Italian, as straight as an I, with hair

still black, though thin and showing a white skull, with bright eyes, a full set of white teeth, a face like

Caesar, and on his diplomatic lips a sardonic smile, the almost false smile under which a man of good

"Quite," said the librarian; "I have played many a part, and know well how to make up. Ah! I played one in

Paris under the Empire, with Bourrienne, Madame Murat, Madame d'Abrantis e tutte quanti. Everything we

take the trouble to learn in our youth, even the most futile, is of use. If my wife had not received a man's

educationan unheardof thing in ItalyI should have been obliged to chop wood to get my living here.

As he listened to this worthy bookseller, so easy, so affable, so hale, Rodolphe scented some mystification,

"Che avete, signor?" Francesca asked with simplicity. "Does our happiness sadden you?"

She broke into such a frank, infectious laugh that Rodolphe was still more puzzled.

"He is but sixtyfive, at your service," said she; "but I can assure you that even that is somethingto be

"I do not like to hear you jest about an affection so sacred as this, of which you yourself prescribed the

"Zitto!" said she, stamping her foot, and looking whether her husband were listening. "Never disturb the

peace of mind of that dear man, as simple as a child, and with whom I can do what I please. He is under my

protection," she added. "If you could know with what generosity he risked his life and fortune because I was

a Liberal! for he does not share my political opinions. Is not that love, Monsieur Frenchman?But they are

like that in his family. Emilio's younger brother was deserted for a handsome youth by the woman he loved.

He thrust his sword through his own heart ten minutes after he had said to his servant, 'I could of course kill

This mixture of dignity and banter, of haughtiness and playfulness, made Francesca at this moment the most

fascinating creature in the world. The dinner and the evening were full of cheerfulness, justified, indeed, by

"Can she be fickle?" he asked himself as he returned to the Stopfers' house. "She sympathized in my sorrow,

"She has no taint of hypocrisy, and is carried away by impulse," thought he, "and I want her to be like a

Next day and the following days, in fact, for twenty days after, Rodolphe spent all his time at the Bergmanns',

watching Francesca without having determined to watch her. In some souls admiration is not independent of

a certain penetration. The young Frenchman discerned in Francesca the imprudence of girlhood, the true

nature of a woman as yet unbroken, sometimes struggling against her love, and at other moments yielding

and carried away by it. The old man certainly behaved to her as a father to his daughter, and Francesca

treated him with a deeply felt gratitude which roused her instinctive nobleness. The situation and the woman

were to Rodolphe an impenetrable enigma, of which the solution attracted him more and more.

These last days were full of secret joys, alternating with melancholy moods, with tiffs and quarrels even more

delightful than the hours when Rodolphe and Francesca were of one mind. And he was more and more

fascinated by this tenderness apart from wit, always and in all things the same, an affection that was jealous

"You care very much for luxury?" said he one evening to Francesca, who was expressing her wish to get

"I!" cried she. "I love luxury as I love the arts, as I love a picture by Raphael, a fine horse, a beautiful day, or

the Bay of Naples. Emilio," she went on, "have I ever complained here during our days of privation."

"After all, is it not in the nature of plain folks to aspire to grandeur?" she asked, with a mischievous glance at

Rodolphe and at her husband. "Were my feet made for fatigue?" she added, putting out two pretty little feet.

"My hands"and she held one out to Rodolphe "were those hands made to work?Leave us," she said to

The old man went into the drawingroom with sublime good faith; he was sure of his wife.

"I will not have you come with us to Geneva," she said to Rodolphe. "It is a gossiping town. Though I am far

above the nonsense the world talks, I do not choose to be calumniated, not for my own sake, but for his. I

make it my pride to be the glory of that old man, who is, after all, my only protector. We are leaving; stay

here a few days. When you come on to Geneva, call first on my husband, and let him introduce you to me.

Let us hide our great and unchangeable affection from the eyes of the world. I love you; you know it; but this

is how I will prove it to you you shall never discern in my conduct anything whatever that may arouse

She drew him into a corner of the balcony, kissed him on the forehead, and fled, leaving him in amazement.

Next day Rodolphe heard that the lodgers at the Bergmanns' had left at daybreak. It then seemed to him

intolerable to remain at Gersau, and he set out for Vevay by the longest route, starting sooner than was

necessary. Attracted to the waters of the lake where the beautiful Italian awaited him, he reached Geneva by

the end of October. To avoid the discomforts of the town he took rooms in a house at EauxVives, outside

the walls. As soon as he was settled, his first care was to ask his landlord, a retired jeweler, whether some

"Not so far as I know," replied the man. "Prince and Princess Colonna of Rome have taken Monsieur

Jeanrenaud's place for three years; it is one of the finest on the lake. It is situated between the Villa Diodati

and that of Monsieur LafindeDieu, let to the Vicomtesse de Beauseant. Prince Colonna has come to see his

daughter and his sonin law Prince Gandolphini, a Neopolitan, or if you like, a Sicilian, an old adherent of

King Murat's, and a victim of the last revolution. These are the last arrivals at Geneva, and they are not

Milanese. Serious steps had to be taken, and the Pope's interest in the Colonna family was invoked, to obtain

permission from the foreign powers and the King of Naples for the Prince and Princess Gandolphini to live

here. Geneva is anxious to do nothing to displease the Holy Alliance to which it owes its independence.

Our part is not to ruffle foreign courts; there are many foreigners here, Russians and English."

"Yes, monsieur, our lake is so fine! Lord Byron lived here about seven years at the Villa Diodati, which every

"You cannot tell me whether within a week or so a bookseller from Milan has come with his wifenamed

Rodolphe's first walk was very naturally to the Villa Diodati, the residence of Lord Byron, whose recent

The road to EauxVives follows the shore of the lake, and, like all the roads in Switzerland, is very narrow;

in some spots, in consequence of the configuration of the hilly ground, there is scarcely space for two

At a few yards from the Jeanrenauds' house, which he was approaching without knowing it, Rodolphe heard

the sound of a carriage behind him, and, finding himself in a sunk road, he climbed to the top of a rock to

leave the road free. Of course he looked at the approaching carriagean elegant English phaeton, with a

splendid pair of English horses. He felt quite dizzy as he beheld in this carriage Francesca, beautifully

dressed, by the side of an old lady as hard as a cameo. A servant blazing with gold lace stood behind.

Francesca recognized Rodolphe, and smiled at seeing him like a statue on a pedestal. The carriage, which the

lover followed with his eyes as he climbed the hill, turned in at the gate of a country house, towards which he

In that instant a veil fell from Rodolphe's eyes; he saw clearly the meaning of the past.

"If only this is her last piece of trickery!" thought the thunder struck lover to himself.

He trembled lest he should have been the plaything of a whim, for he had heard what a capriccio might mean

in an Italian. But what a crime had he committed in the eyes of a womanin accepting a born princess as a

citizen's wife! in believing that a daughter of one of the most illustrious houses of the Middle Ages was the

wife of a bookseller! The consciousness of his blunders increased Rodolphe's desire to know whether he

would be ignored and repelled. He asked for Prince Gandolphini, sending in his card, and was immediately

received by the false Lamparini, who came forward to meet him, welcomed him with the best possible grace,

and took him to walk on a terrace whence there was a view of Geneva, the Jura, the hills covered with villas,

"My wife is faithful to the lakes, you see," he remarked, after pointing out the details to his visitor. "We have

a sort of concert this evening," he added, as they returned to the splendid Villa Jeanrenaud. "I hope you will

do me and the Princess the pleasure of seeing you. Two months of poverty endured in intimacy are equal to

Though he was consumed by curiosity, Rodolphe dared not ask to see the Princess; he slowly made his way

back to EauxVives, looking forward to the evening. In a few hours his passion, great as it had already been,

was augmented by his anxiety and by suspense as to future events. He now understood the necessity for

making himself famous, that he might some day find himself, socially speaking, on a level with his idol. In

his eyes Francesca was made really great by the simplicity and ease of her conduct at Gersau. Princess

Colonna's haughtiness, so evidently natural to her, alarmed Rodolphe, who would find enemies in Francesca's

father and motherat least so he might expect; and the secrecy which Princess Gandolphini had so strictly

enjoined on him now struck him as a wonderful proof of affection. By not choosing to compromise the

At last nine o'clock struck; Rodolphe could get into a carriage and say with an emotion that is very

At last he saw Francesca, but without being seen by her. The Princess was standing quite near the piano. Her

beautiful hair, so thick and long, was bound with a golden fillet. Her face, in the light of wax candles, had the

brilliant pallor peculiar to Italians, and which looks its best only by artificial light. She was in full evening

dress, showing her fascinating shoulders, the figure of a girl and the arms of an antique statue. Her sublime

beauty was beyond all possible rivalry, though there were some charming women of Geneva, and other

Italians, among them the dazzling and illustrious Princess Varese, and the famous singer Tinti, who was at

Rodolphe, leaning against the doorpost, looked at the Princess, turning on her the fixed, tenacious, attracting

gaze, charged with the full, insistent will which is concentrated in the feeling called desire, and thus assumes

the nature of a vehement command. Did the flame of that gaze reach Francesca? Was Francesca expecting

each instant to see Rodolphe? In a few minutes she stole a glance at the door, as though magnetized by this

current of love, and her eyes, without reserve, looked deep into Rodolphe's. A slight thrill quivered through

that superb face and beautiful body; the shock to her spirit reacted: Francesca blushed! Rodolphe felt a whole

life in this exchange of looks, so swift that it can only be compared to a lightning flash. But to what could his

happiness compare? He was loved. The lofty Princess, in the midst of her world, in this handsome villa, kept

the pledge given by the disguised exile, the capricious beauty of Bergmanns' lodgings. The intoxication of

such a moment enslaves a man for life! A faint smile, refined and subtle, candid and triumphant, curled

Princess Gandolphini's lips, and at a moment when she did not feel herself observed she looked at Rodolphe

with an expression which seemed to ask his pardon for having deceived him as to her rank.

When the song was ended Rodolphe could make his way to the Prince, who graciously led him to his wife.

Rodolphe went through the ceremonial of a formal introduction to Princess and Prince Colonna, and to

Francesca. When this was over, the Princess had to take part in the famous quartette, Mi manca la voce,

which was sung by her with Tinti, with the famous tenor Genovese, and with a wellknown Italian Prince

then in exile, whose voice, if he had not been a Prince, would have made him one of the Princes of Art.

"Take that seat," said Francesca to Rodolphe, pointing to her own chair. "Oime! I think there is some mistake

It was said with the artless grace which revived, in this avowal hidden beneath a jest, the happy days at

Gersau. Rodolphe reveled in the exquisite sensation of listening to the voice of the woman he adored, while

sitting so close to her that one cheek was almost touched by the stuff of her dress and the gauze of her scarf.

But when, at such a moment, Mi manca la voce is being sung, and by the finest voices in Italy, it is easy to

In love, as perhaps in all else, there are certain circumstances, trivial in themselves, but the outcome of a

thousand little previous incidents, of which the importance is immense, as an epitome of the past and as a link

with the future. A hundred times already we have felt the preciousness of the one we love; but a triflethe

perfect touch of two souls united during a walk perhaps by a single word, by some unlookedfor proof of

affection, will carry the feeling to its supremest pitch. In short, to express this truth by an image which has

been preeminently successful from the earliest ages of the world, there are in a long chain points of

attachment needed where the cohesion is stronger than in the intermediate loops of rings. This recognition

between Rodolphe and Francesca, at this party, in the face of the world, was one of those intense moments

which join the future to the past, and rivet a real attachment more deeply in the heart. It was perhaps of these

incidental rivets that Bossuet spoke when he compared to them the rarity of happy moments in our liveshe

Next to the pleasure of admiring the woman we love, comes that of seeing her admired by every one else.

Rodolphe was enjoying both at once. Love is a treasury of memories, and though Rodolphe's was already

full, he added to it pearls of great price; smiles shed aside for him alone, stolen glances, tones in her singing

which Francesca addressed to him alone, but which made Tinti pale with jealousy, they were so much

applauded. All his strength of desire, the special expression of his soul, was thrown over the beautiful Roman,

who became unchangeably the beginning and the end of all his thoughts and actions. Rodolphe loved as

every woman may dream of being loved, with a force, a constancy, a tenacity, which made Francesca the

very substance of his heart; he felt her mingling with his blood as purer blood, with his soul as a more perfect

soul; she would henceforth underlie the least efforts of his life as the golden sand of the Mediterranean lies

beneath the waves. In short, Rodolphe's lightest aspiration was now a living hope.

At the end of a few days, Francesca understood this boundless love; but it was so natural, and so perfectly

"What is there that is strange?" said she to Rodolphe, as they walked on the garden terrace, when he had been

betrayed into one of those outbursts of conceit which come so naturally to Frenchmen in the expression of

their feelings"what is extraordinary in the fact of your loving a young and beautiful woman, artist enough

to be able to earn her living like Tinti, and of giving you some of the pleasures of vanity? What lout but

would then become an Amadis? This is not in question between you and me. What is needed is that we both

love faithfully, persistently; at a distance from each other for years, with no satisfaction but that of knowing

"Alas!" said Rodolphe, "will you not consider my fidelity as devoid of all merit when you see me absorbed in

the efforts of devouring ambition? Do you imagine that I can wish to see you one day exchange the fine name

of Gandolphini for that of a man who is a nobody? I want to become one of the most remarkable men of my

country, to be rich, greatthat you may be as proud of my name as of your own name of Colonna."

"I should be grieved to see you without such sentiments in your heart," she replied, with a bewitching smile.

"But do not wear yourself out too soon in your ambitious labors. Remain young. They say that politics soon

One of the rarest gifts in women is a certain gaiety which does not detract from tenderness. This combination

of deep feeling with the lightness of youth added an enchanting grace at this moment to Francesca's charms.

This is the key to her character; she laughs and she is touched; she becomes enthusiastic, and returns to arch

raillery with a readiness, a facility, which makes her the charming and exquisite creature she is, and for which

her reputation is known outside Italy. Under the graces of a woman she conceals vast learning, thanks to the

excessively monotonous and almost monastic life she led in the castle of the old Colonnas.

This rich heiress was at first intended for the cloister, being the fourth child of Prince and Princess Colonna;

but the death of her two brothers, and of her elder sister, suddenly brought her out of her retirement, and

made her one of the most brilliant matches in the Papal States. Her elder sister had been betrothed to Prince

Gandolphini, one of the richest landowners in Sicily; and Francesca was married to him instead, so that

nothing might be changed in the position of the family. The Colonnas and Gandolphinis had always

From the age of nine till she was sixteen, Francesca, under the direction of a Cardinal of the family, had read

all through the library of the Colonnas, to make weight against her ardent imagination by studying science,

art, and letters. But in these studies she acquired the taste for independence and liberal ideas, which threw

her, with her husband, into the ranks of the revolution. Rodolphe had not yet learned that, besides five living

languages, Francesca knew Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. The charming creature perfectly understood that, for a

Rodolphe spent the whole winter at Geneva. This winter passed like a day. When spring returned,

notwithstanding the infinite delights of the society of a clever woman, wonderfully well informed, young and

lovely, the lover went through cruel sufferings, endured indeed with courage, but which were sometimes

legible in his countenance, and betrayed themselves in his manners or speech, perhaps because he believed

that Francesca shared them. Now and again it annoyed him to admire her calmness. Like an Englishwoman,

she seemed to pride herself on expressing nothing in her face; its serenity defied love; he longed to see her

agitated; he accused her of having no feeling, for he believed in the tradition which ascribes to Italian women

"I am a Roman!" Francesca gravely replied one day when she took quite seriously some banter on this subject

There was a depth of tone in her reply which gave it the appearance of scathing irony, and which set

Rodolphe's pulses throbbing. The month of May spread before them the treasures of her fresh verdure; the

sun was sometimes as powerful as at midsummer. The two lovers happened to be at a part of the terrace

where the rock arises abruptly from the lake, and were leaning over the stone parapet that crowns the wall

above a flight of steps leading down to a landingstage. From the neighboring villa, where there is a similar

stairway, a boat presently shot out like a swan, its flag flaming, its crimson awning spread over a lovely

woman comfortably reclining on red cushions, her hair wreathed with real flowers; the boatman was a young

man dressed like a sailor, and rowing with all the more grace because he was under the lady's eye.

"They are happy!" exclaimed Rodolphe, with bitter emphasis. "Claire de Bourgogne, the last survivor of the

"Did not hesitate, you would say, to bury herself here with Monsieur Gaston de Nueil, you would say,"

replied the daughter of the Colonnas. "She is only a Frenchwoman; I am an Italian, my dear sir!"

Francesca turned away from the parapet, leaving Rodolphe, and went to the further end of the terrace, whence

there is a wide prospect of the lake. Watching her as she slowly walked away, Rodolphe suspected that he

had wounded her soul, at once so simple and so wise, so proud and so humble. It turned him cold; he

followed Francesca, who signed to him to leave her to herself. But he did not heed the warning, and detected

"Francesca," said he, taking her hand, "is there a single regret in your heart?"

She was silent, disengaged her hand which held her embroidered handkerchief, and again dried her eyes.

"Forgive me!" he said. And with a rush, he kissed her eyes to wipe away the tears.

Francesca did not seem aware of his passionate impulse, she was so violently agitated. Rodolphe, thinking

she consented, grew bolder; he put his arm round her, clasped her to his heart, and snatched a kiss. But she

freed herself by a dignified movement of offended modesty, and, standing a yard off, she looked at him

On his return to Paris Rodolphe found in his rooms a portrait of Princess Gandolphini painted by Schinner, as

Schinner can paint. The artist had passed through Geneva on his way to Italy. As he had positively refused to

paint the portraits of several women, Rodolphe did not believe that the Prince, anxious as he was for a portrait

of his wife, would be able to conquer the great painter's objections; but Francesca, no doubt, had bewitched

him, and obtained from himwhich was almost a miraclean original portrait for Rodolphe, and a

duplicate for Emilio. She told him this in a charming and delightful letter, in which the mind indemnified

itself for the reserve required by the worship of the proprieties. The lover replied. Thus began, never to cease,

a regular correspondence between Rodolphe and Francesca, the only indulgence they allowed themselves.

Rodolphe, possessed by an ambition sanctified by his love, set to work. First he longed to make his fortune,

and risked his all in an undertaking to which he devoted all his faculties as well as his capital; but he, an

inexperienced youth, had to contend against duplicity, which won the day. Thus three years were lost in a

The Villele ministry fell just when Rodolphe was ruined. The valiant lover thought he would seek in politics

what commercial industry had refused him; but before braving the storms of this career, he went, all wounded

and sick at heart, to have his bruises healed and his courage revived at Naples, where the Prince and Princess

had been reinstated in their place and rights on the King's accession. This, in the midst of his warfare, was a

respite full of delights; he spent three months at the Villa Gandolphini, rocked in hope.

Rodolphe then began again to construct his fortune. His talents were already known; he was about to attain

the desires of his ambition; a high position was promised him as the reward of his zeal, his devotion, and his

past services, when the storm of July 1830 broke, and again his bark was swamped.

She, and God! These are the only witnesses of the brave efforts, the daring attempts of a young man gifted

with fine qualities, but to whom, so far, the protection of luckthe god of foolshas been denied. And this

indefatigable wrestler, upheld by love, comes back to fresh struggles, lighted on his way by an always

As she finished this narrative, Mademoiselle de Watteville's cheeks were on fire; there was a fever in her

blood. She was cryingbut with rage. This little novel, inspired by the literary style then in fashion, was the

first reading of the kind that Rosalie had ever had the chance of devouring. Love was depicted in it, if not by

a master hand, at any rate by a man who seemed to give his own impressions; and truth, even if unskilled,

could not fail to touch a virgin soul. Here lay the secret of Rosalie's terrible agitation, of her fever and her

She never for an instant doubted the sincerity of this poetical flight; Albert had taken pleasure in telling the

story of his passion, while changing the names of persons and perhaps of places. Rosalie was possessed by

infernal curiosity. What woman but would, like her, have wanted to know her rival's namefor she too

loved! As she read these pages, to her really contagious, she had said solemnly to herself, "I love him!"She

loved Albert, and felt in her heart a gnawing desire to fight for him, to snatch him from this unknown rival.

This conclusion aggravated her anxiety to know whether she might not be mistaken, whether Albert really

loved an Italian Princess, and was loved by her. In the course of this fateful night, the power of swift

decision, which had characterized the famous Watteville, was fully developed in his descendant. She devised

those whimsical schemes, round which hovers the imagination of most young girls when, in the solitude to

which some injudicious mothers confine them, they are roused by some tremendous event which the system

of repression to which they are subjected could neither foresee nor prevent. She dreamed of descending by a

ladder from the kiosk into the garden of the house occupied by Albert; of taking advantage of the lawyer's

being asleep to look through the window into his private room. She thought of writing to him, or of bursting

the fetters of Besancon society by introducing Albert to the drawingroom of the Hotel de Rupt. This

enterprise, which to the Abbe de Grancey even would have seemed the climax of the impossible, was a mere

"Ah!" said she to herself, "my father has a dispute pending as to his land at les Rouxey. I will go there! If

there is no lawsuit, I will manage to make one, and he shall come into our drawingroom!" she cried, as she

sprang out of bed and to the window to look at the fascinating gleam which shone through Albert's nights.

At this instant Mademoiselle de Watteville was witness to an incident which promised to place in her power

the means of knowing Albert's secrets. By the light of the moon she saw a pair of arms stretched out from the

kiosk to help Jerome, Albert's servant, to get across the coping of the wall and step into the little building. In

"Mariette and Jerome!" said she to herself. "Mariette, such an ugly girl! Certainly they must be ashamed of

Though Mariette was horribly ugly and sixandthirty, she had inherited several plots of land. She had been

seventeen years with Madame de Watteville, who valued her highly for her bigotry, her honesty, and long

service, and she had no doubt saved money and invested her wages and perquisites. Hence, earning about ten

louis a year, she probably had by this time, including compound interest and her little inheritance, not less

In Jerome's eyes ten thousand francs could alter the laws of optics; he saw in Mariette a neat figure; he did

not perceive the pits and seams which virulent smallpox had left on her flat, parched face; to him the crooked

mouth was straight; and ever since Savaron, by taking him into his service, had brought him so near to the

Wattevilles' house, he had laid siege systematically to the maid, who was as prim and sanctimonious as her

mistress, and who, like every ugly old maid, was far more exacting than the handsomest.

If the nightscene in the kiosk is thus fully accounted for to all perspicacious readers, it was not so to Rosalie,

though she derived from it the most dangerous lesson that can be given, that of a bad example. A mother

brings her daughter up strictly, keeps her under her wing for seventeen years, and then, in one hour, a servant

girl destroys the long and painful work, sometimes by a word, often indeed by a gesture! Rosalie got into bed

Next morning, as she went to Mass accompanied by Marietteher mother was not wellRosalie took the

"Do not play the innocent with me," said Mademoiselle de Watteville drily. "You let him kiss you last night

under the kiosk; I no longer wonder that you so warmly approved of my mother's ideas for the improvements

"I wish you no ill," Rosalie went on. "Be quite easy; I shall not say a word to my mother, and you can meet

"But, mademoiselle," said Mariette, "it is perfectly respectable; Jerome honestly means to marry me"

"Listen, Mariette; I am in love too! In secret and without any return. I am, after all, my father's and mother's

only child. You have more to hope for from me than from any one else in the world"

"Certainly, mademoiselle, and you may count on us for life or death," exclaimed Mariette, rejoiced at the

"In the first place, silence for silence," said Rosalie. "I will not marry Monsieur de Soulas; but one thing I

"Oh! merely to read them, and you yourself shall post them afterwards. It will cause a little delay; that is all."

At this moment they went into church, and each of them, instead of reading the order of Mass, fell into her

Rosalie, whose soul, brain, and heart were completely upset by reading the story, by this time regarded it as

history, written for her rival. By dint of thinking of nothing else, like a child, she ended by believing that the

"Oh!" said she to herself, her head buried in her hands in the attitude of a person lost in prayer; "oh! how can

After breakfast she took a turn in the garden with her father, coaxing and cajoling him, and brought him to

"I was right; there is not one foreign subscriber as yet. They hope to get some at Neufchatel, at Berne, and at

Geneva. One copy, is in fact, sent to Italy, but it is not paid forto a Milanese lady at her country house at

"I have heard about her. She was by birth a Princess Soderini, a Florentine, a very great lady, and quite as

rich as her husband, who has one of the largest fortunes in Lombardy. Their villa on the Lago Maggiore is

Two days after, Mariette placed the following letter in Mademoiselle de Watteville's hand:

"Yes, 'tis so, my dear friend; I am at Besancon, while you thought I was traveling. I would not tell you

anything till success should begin, and now it is dawning. Yes, my dear Leopold, after so many abortive

undertakings, over which I have shed the best of my blood, have wasted so many efforts, spent so much

courage, I have made up my mind to do as you have doneto start on a beaten path, on the highroad, as the

longest but the safest. I can see you jump with surprise in your lawyer's chair!

"But do not suppose that anything is changed in my personal life, of which you alone in the world know the

secret, and that under the reservations she insists on. I did not tell you, my friend; but I was horribly weary of

Paris. The outcome of the first enterprise, on which I had founded all my hopes, and which came to a bad end

in consequence of the utter rascality of my two partners, who combined to cheat and fleece meme, though

everything was done by my energymade me give up the pursuit of a fortune after the loss of three years of

my life. One of these years was spent in the law courts, and perhaps I should have come worse out of the

"I made up my mind to go into politics solely, to the end that I may some day find my name on a list for

promotion to the Senate under the title of Comte Albert Savaron de Savarus, and so revive in France a good

name now extinct in Belgiumthough indeed I am neither legitimate nor legitimized."

"You know how conscientiously I studied, how faithful and useful I was as an obscure journalist, and how

excellent a secretary to the statesman who, on his part, was true to me in 1829. Flung to the depths once more

by the revolution of July just when my name was becoming known, at the very moment when, as Master of

Appeals, I was about to find my place as a necessary wheel in the political machine, I committed the blunder

of remaining faithful to the fallen, and fighting for them, without them. Oh! why was I but threeandthirty,

and why did I not apply to you to make me eligible? I concealed from you all my devotedness and my

"Ten months ago, when you saw me so gay and contented, writing my political articles, I was in despair; I

foresaw my fate, at the age of thirtyseven, with two thousand francs for my whole fortune, without the

smallest fame, just having failed in a noble undertaking, the founding, namely, of a daily paper answering

only to a need of the future instead of appealing to the passions of the moment. I did not know which way to

turn, and I felt my own value! I wandered about, gloomy and hurt, through the lonely places of ParisParis

which had slipped through my fingers thinking of my crushed ambitions, but never giving them up. Oh,

what frantic letters I wrote at that time to her, my second conscience, my other self! Sometimes I would say

to myself, 'Why did I sketch so vast a programme of life? Why demand everything? Why not wait for

"I then looked about me for some modest appointment by which I might live. I was about to get the editorship

of a paper under a manager who did not know much about it, a man of wealth and ambition, when I took

fright. 'Would she ever accept as her husband a man who had stooped so low?' I wondered.

"This reflection made me twoandtwenty again. But, oh, my dear Leopold, how the soul is worn by these

perplexities! What must not the caged eagles suffer, and imprisoned lions!They suffer what Napoleon

suffered, not at Saint Helena, but on the Quay of the Tuileries, on the 10th of August, when he saw Louis

XVI. defending himself so badly while he could have quelled the insurrection; as he actually did, on the same

spot, a little later, in Vendemiaire. Well, my life has been a torment of that kind, extending over four years.

How many a speech to the Chamber have I not delivered in the deserted alleys of the Bois de Boulogne!

These wasted harangues have at any rate sharpened my tongue and accustomed my mind to formulate its

ideas in words. And while I was undergoing this secret torture, you were getting married, you had paid for

your business, you were made lawclerk to the Maire of your district, after gaining a cross for a wound at

"Now, listen. When I was a small boy and tortured cockchafers, the poor insects had one form of struggle

which used almost to put me in a fever. It was when I saw them making repeated efforts to fly but without

getting away, though they could spread their wings. We used to say, 'They are marking time.' Now was this

sympathy? Was it a vision of my own future?Oh! to spread my wings and yet be unable to fly! That has

been my predicament since that fine undertaking by which I was disgusted, but which has now made four

"At last, seven months ago, I determined to make myself a name at the Paris Bar, seeing how many vacancies

had been left by the promotion of several lawyers to eminent positions. But when I remembered the rivalry I

had seen among men of the press, and how difficult it is to achieve anything of any kind in Paris, the arena

where so many champions meet, I came to a determination painful to myself, but certain in its results, and

perhaps quicker than any other. In the course of our conversations you had given me a picture of the society

of Besancon, of the impossibility for a stranger to get on there, to produce the smallest effect, to get into

society, or to succeed in any way whatever. It was there that I determined to set up my flag, thinking, and

rightly, that I should meet with no opposition, but find myself alone to canvass for the election. The people of

the Comte will not meet the outsider? The outsider will meet them! They refuse to admit him to their

drawingrooms, he will never go there! He never shows himself anywhere, not even in the streets! But there

is one class that elects the deputiesthe commercial class. I am going especially to study commercial

questions, with which I am already familiar; I will gain their lawsuits, I will effect compromises, I will be the

greatest pleader in Besancon. By and by I will start a Review, in which I will defend the interests of the

country, will create them, or preserve them, or resuscitate them. When I shall have won a sufficient number

of votes, my name will come out of the urn. For a long time the unknown barrister will be treated with

contempt, but some circumstance will arise to bring him to the frontsome unpaid defence, or a case which

"Well, my dear Leopold, I packed up my books in eleven cases, I bought such lawbooks as might prove

useful, and I sent everything off, furniture and all, by carrier to Besancon. I collected my diplomas, and I

went to bid you goodbye. The mail coach dropped me at Besancon, where, in three days' time, I chose a

little set of rooms looking out over some gardens. I sumptuously arranged the mysterious private room where

I spend my nights and days, and where the portrait of my divinity reignsof her to whom my life is dedicate,

who fills it wholly, who is the mainspring of my efforts, the secret of my courage, the cause of my talents.

Then, as soon as the furniture and books had come, I engaged an intelligent manservant, and there I sat for

"My name had, however, been entered on the list of lawyers in the town. At last I was called one day to

defend an unhappy wretch at the Assizes, no doubt in order to hear me speak for once! One of the most

influential merchants of Besancon was on the jury; he had a difficult task to fulfil; I did my utmost for the

man, and my success was absolute and complete. My client was innocent; I very dramatically secured the

arrest of the real criminals, who had come forward as witnesses. In short, the Court and the public were

united in their admiration. I managed to save the examining magistrate's pride by pointing out the

"Then I had to fight a case for my merchant, and won his suit. The Cathedral Chapter next chose me to

defend a tremendous action against the town, which had been going on for four years; I won that. Thus, after

"But I bury my life in the deepest mystery, and so hide my aims. I have adopted habits which prevent my

accepting any invitations. I am only to be consulted between six and eight in the morning; I go to bed after

my dinner, and work at night. The VicarGeneral, a man of parts, and very influential, who placed the

Chapter's case in my hands after they had lost it in the lower Court, of course professed their gratitude.

'Monsieur,' said I, 'I will win your suit, but I want no fee; I want more' (start of alarm on the Abbe's part).

'You must know that I am a great loser by putting myself forward in antagonism to the town. I came here

only to leave the place as deputy. I mean to engage only in commercial cases, because commercial men

return the members; they will distrust me if I defend "the priests"for to them you are simply priests. If I

undertake your defence, it is because I was, in 1828, private secretary to such a Minister' (again a start of

surprise on the part of my Abbe), 'and Master of Appeals, under the name of Albert de Savarus' (another

start). 'I have remained faithful to monarchical opinions; but, as you have not the majority of votes in

Besancon, I must gain votes among the citizens. So the fee I ask of you is the votes you may be able secretly

to secure for me at the opportune moment. Let us each keep our own counsel, and I will defend, for nothing,

every case to which a priest of this diocese may be a party. Not a word about my previous life, and we will be

"When he came to thank me afterwards, he gave me a note for five hundred francs, and said in my ear, 'The

votes are a bargain all the same.'I have in the course of five interviews made a friend, I think, of this

"Now I am overwhelmed with business, and I undertake no cases but those brought to me by merchants,

saying that commercial questions are my specialty. This line of conduct attaches business men to me, and

allows me to make friends with influential persons. So all goes well. Within a few months I shall have found

a house to purchase in Besancon, so as to secure a qualification. I count on your lending me the necessary

capital for this investment. If I should die, if I should fail, the loss would be too small to be any consideration

between you and me. You will get the interest out of the rental, and I shall take good care to look out for

something cheap, so that you may lose nothing by this mortgage, which is indispensable.

"Oh! my dear Leopold, no gambler with the last remains of his fortune in his pocket, bent on staking it at the

Cercle des Etrangers for the last time one night, when he must come away rich or ruined, ever felt such a

perpetual ringing in his ears, such a nervous moisture on his palms, such a fevered tumult in his brain, such

inward qualms in his body as I go through every day now that I am playing my last card in the game of

ambition. Alas! my dear and only friend, for nearly ten years now I have been struggling. This battle with

men and things, in which I have unceasingly poured out my strength and energy, and so constantly worn the

springs of desire, has, so to speak, undermined my vitality. With all the appearance of a strong man of good

health, I feel myself a wreck. Every day carries with it a shred of my inmost life. At every fresh effort I feel

that I should never be able to begin again. I have no power, no vigor left but for happiness; and if it should

never come to crown my head with roses, the me that is really me would cease to exist, I should be a ruined

thing. I should wish for nothing more in the world. I should want to cease from living. You know that power

and fame, the vast moral empire that I crave, is but secondary; it is to me only a means to happiness, the

"To reach the goal and die, like the runner of antiquity! To see fortune and death stand on the threshold hand

in hand! To win the beloved woman just when love is extinct! To lose the faculty of enjoyment after earning

"But there surely is a moment when Tantalus rebels, crosses his arms, and defies hell, throwing up his part of

the eternal dupe. That is what I shall come to if anything should thwart my plan; if, after stooping to the dust

of provincial life, prowling like a starving tiger round these tradesmen, these electors, to secure their votes; if,

after wrangling in these squalid cases, and giving them my timethe time I might have spent on Lago

Maggiore, seeing the waters she sees, basking in her gaze, hearing her voice if, after all, I failed to scale

the tribune and conquer the glory that should surround the name that is to succeed to that of Argaiolo! Nay,

more than this, Leopold; there are days when I feel a heady languor; deep disgust surges up from the depths

of my soul, especially when, abandoned to long daydreams, I have lost myself in anticipation of the joys of

blissful love! May it not be that our desire has only a certain modicum of power, and that it perishes, perhaps,

of a too lavish effusion of its essence? For, after all, at this present, my life is fair, illuminated by faith, work,

"Farewell, my friend; I send love to your children, and beg you to remember me to your excellent

Rosalie read this letter twice through, and its general purport was stamped on her heart. She suddenly saw the

whole of Albert's previous existence, for her quick intelligence threw light on all the details, and enabled her

to take it all in. By adding this information to the little novel published in the Review, she now fully

understood Albert. Of course, she exaggerated the greatness, remarkable as it was, of this lofty soul and

potent will, and her love for Albert thenceforth became a passion, its violence enhanced by all the strength of

her youth, the weariness of her solitude, and the unspent energy of her character. Love is in a young girl the

effect of a natural law; but when her craving for affection is centered in an exceptional man, it is mingled

with the enthusiasm which overflows in a youthful heart. Thus Mademoiselle de Watteville had in a few days

reached a morbid and very dangerous stage of enamored infatuation. The Baroness was much pleased with

her daughter, who, being under the spell of her absorbing thoughts, never resisted her will, seemed to be

devoted to feminine occupations, and realized her mother's ideal of a docile daughter.

The lawyer was now engaged in Court two or three times a week. Though he was overwhelmed with

business, he found time to attend the trials, call on the litigious merchants, and conduct the Review; keeping

up his personal mystery, from the conviction that the more covert and hidden was his influence, the more real

it would be. But he neglected no means of success, reading up the list of electors of Besancon, and finding

out their interests, their characters, their various friendships and antipathies. Did ever a Cardinal hoping to be

One evening Mariette, on coming to dress Rosalie for an evening party, handed to her, not without many

groans over this treachery, a letter of which the address made Mademoiselle de Watteville shiver and redden

In her eyes this direction blazed as the words Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, did in the eyes of Belshazzar. After

concealing the letter, Rosalie went downstairs to accompany her mother to Madame de Chavoncourt's; and as

long as the endless evening lasted, she was tormented by remorse and scruples. She had already felt shame at

having violated the secrecy of Albert's letter to Leopold; she had several times asked herself whether, if he

knew of her crime, infamous inasmuch as it necessarily goes unpunished, the highminded Albert could

She had expiated her sin by selfimposed penances; she fasted, she mortified herself by remaining on her

knees, her arms outstretched for hours, and repeating prayers all the time. She had compelled Mariette to

similar sets of repentance; her passion was mingled with genuine asceticism, and was all the more dangerous.

"Shall I read that letter, shall I not?" she asked herself, while listening to the Chavoncourt girls. One was

sixteen, the other seventeen and a half. Rosalie looked upon her two friends as mere children because they

were not secretly in love."If I read it," she finally decided, after hesitating for an hour between Yes and

No, "it shall, at any rate, be the last. Since I have gone so far as to see what he wrote to his friend, why should

I not know what he says to her? If it is a horrible crime, is it not a proof of love? Oh, Albert! am I not your

When Rosalie was in bed she opened the letter, dated from day to day, so as to give the Duchess a faithful

"My dear Soul, all is well. To my other conquests I have just added an invaluable one: I have done a service

to one of the most influential men who work the elections. Like the critics, who make other men's reputations

but can never make their own, he makes deputies though he never can become one. The worthy man wanted

to show his gratitude without loosening his pursestrings by saying to me, 'Would you care to sit in the

" 'If I ever make up my mind to enter on a political career,' replied I hypocritically, 'it would be to devote

" 'Well,' he said, 'we will persuade you, and through you we shall have weight in the Chamber, for you will

"And so, my beloved angel, say what you will, my perseverance will be rewarded. Ere long I shall, from the

high place of the French Tribune, come before my country, before Europe. My name will be flung to you by

"Yes, as you tell me, I was old when I came to Besancon, and Besancon has aged me more; but, like Sixtus

V., I shall be young again the day after my election. I shall enter on my true life, my own sphere. Shall we not

then stand in the same line? Count Savaron de Savarus, Ambassador I know not where, may surely marry a

Princess Soderini, the widow of the Duc d'Argaiolo! Triumph restores the youth of men who have been

preserved by incessant struggles. Oh, my Life! with what gladness did I fly from my library to my private

room, to tell your portrait of this progress before writing to you! Yes, the votes I can command, those of the

VicarGeneral, of the persons I can oblige, and of this client, make my election already sure.

"We have entered on the twelfth year since that blest evening when, by a look, the beautiful Duchess sealed

the promises made by the exile Francesca. You, dear, are thirtytwo, I am thirtyfive; the dear Duke is

seventyseventhat is to say, ten years more than yours and mine put together, and he still keeps well! My

patience is almost as great as my love, and indeed I need a few years yet to rise to the level of your name. As

you see, I am in good spirits today, I can laugh; that is the effect of hope. Sadness or gladness, it all comes

to me through you. The hope of success always carries me back to the day following that one on which I saw

you for the first time, when my life became one with yours as the earth turns to the light. Qual pianto are

these eleven years, for this is the 26th of December, the anniversary of my arrival at your villa on the Lake of

Geneva. For eleven years have I been crying to you, while you shine like a star set too high for man to reach

"No, dearest, do not go to Milan; stay at Belgirate. Milan terrifies me. I do not like that odious Milanese

fashion of chatting at the Scala every evening with a dozen persons, among whom it is hard if no one says

something sweet. To me solitude is like the lump of amber in whose heart an insect lives for ever in

unchanging beauty. Thus the heart and soul of a woman remains pure and unaltered in the form of their first

"Is your statue never to be finished? I should wish to have you in marble, in painting, in miniature, in every

possible form, to beguile my impatience. I still am waiting for the view of Belgirate from the south, and that

of the balcony; these are all that I now lack. I am so extremely busy that today I can only write you

nothingbut that nothing is everything. Was it not of nothing that God made the world? That nothing is a

"Ah! I have received your journal. Thanks for your punctuality. So you found great pleasure in seeing all

the details of our first acquaintance thus set down? Alas! even while disguising them I was sorely afraid of

offending you. We had no stories, and a Review without stories is a beauty without hair. Not being inventive

by nature, and in sheer despair, I took the only poetry in my soul, the only adventure in my memory, and

pitched it in the key in which it would bear telling; nor did I ever cease to think of you while writing the only

literary production that will ever come from my heart, I cannot say from my pen. Did not the transformation

"You ask after my health. Well, it is better than in Paris. Though I work enormously, the peacefulness of the

surroundings has its effect on the mind. What really tries and ages me, dear angel, is the anguish of mortified

vanity, the perpetual friction of Paris life, the struggle of rival ambitions. This peace is a balm.

"If you could imagine the pleasure your letter gives me!the long, kind letter in which you tell me the most

trivial incidents of your life. No! you women can never know to what a degree a true lover is interested in

these trifles. It was an immense pleasure to see the pattern of your new dress. Can it be a matter of

indifference to me to know what you wear? If your lofty brow is knit? If our writers amuse you? If Canalis'

songs delight you? I read the books you read. Even to your boating on the lake every incident touched me.

Your letter is as lovely, as sweet as your soul! Oh! flower of heaven, perpetually adored, could I have lived

without those dear letters, which for eleven years have upheld me in my difficult path like a light, like a

perfume, like a steady chant, like some divine nourishment, like everything which can soothe and comfort

"Do not fail me! If you knew what anxiety I suffer the day before they are due, or the pain a day's delay can

"O mia cara diva, keep up your music, exercise your voice, practise. I am enchanted with the coincidence of

employments and hours by which, though separated by the Alps, we live by precisely the same rule. The

thought charms me and gives me courage. The first time I undertook to plead hereI forget to tell you

thisI fancied that you were listening to me, and I suddenly felt the flash of inspiration which lifts the poet

above mankind. If I am returned to the Chamberoh! you must come to Paris to be present at my first

"Good heavens, how I love you! Alas! I have intrusted too much to my love and my hopes. An accident

which should sink that overloaded bark would end my life. For three years now I have not seen you, and at

the thought of going to Belgirate my heart beats so wildly that I am forced to stop.To see you, to hear that

girlish caressing voice! To embrace in my gaze that ivory skin, glistening under the candlelight, and through

which I can read your noble mind! To admire your fingers playing on the keys, to drink in your whole soul in

a look, in the tone of an Oime or an Alberto! To walk by the blossoming orangetrees, to live a few months in

the bosom of that glorious scenery!That is life. What folly it is to run after power, a name, fortune! But at

Belgirate there is everything; there is poetry, there is glory! I ought to have made myself your steward, or, as

that dear tyrant whom we cannot hate proposed to me, live there as cavaliere servente, only our passion was

"Farewell, my angel, forgive me my next fit of sadness in consideration of this cheerful mood; it has come as

a beam of light from the torch of Hope, which has hitherto seemed to me a Willo'thewisp."

"How he loves her!" cried Rosalie, dropping the letter, which seemed heavy in her hand. "After eleven years

"Mariette," said Mademoiselle de Watteville to her maid next morning, "go and post this letter. Tell Jerome

that I know all I wish to know, and that he is to serve Monsieur Albert faithfully. We will confess our sins,

you and I, without saying to whom the letters belonged, nor to whom they were going. I was in the wrong; I

"Yes, but I do not want that my mother should perceive it; give me some very cold water."

In the midst of the storms of her passion Rosalie often listened to the voice of conscience. Touched by the

beautiful fidelity of these two hearts, she had just said her prayers, telling herself that there was nothing left to

her but to be resigned, and to respect the happiness of two beings worthy of each other, submissive to fate,

looking to God for everything, without allowing themselves any criminal acts or wishes. She felt a better

woman, and had a certain sense of satisfaction after coming to this resolution, inspired by the natural

rectitude of youth. And she was confirmed in it by a girl's idea: She was sacrificing herself for him.

"She does not know how to love," thought she. "Ah! if it were II would give up everything to a man who

loved me so.To be loved! When, by whom shall I be loved? That little Monsieur de Soulas only loves

"Rosalie, my child, what are you thinking about? You are working beyond the outline," said the Baroness to

Rosalie spent the winter of 183435 torn by secret tumults; but in the spring, in the month of April, when she

reached the age of nineteen, she sometimes thought that it would be a fine thing to triumph over a Duchesse

d'Argaiolo. In silence and solitude the prospect of this struggle had fanned her passion and her evil thoughts.

She encouraged her romantic daring by making plan after plan. Although such characters are an exception,

there are, unfortunately, too many Rosalies in the world, and this story contains a moral that ought to serve

In the course of this winter Albert de Savarus had quietly made considerable progress in Besancon. Confident

of success, he now impatiently awaited the dissolution of the Chamber. Among the men of the moderate party

he had won the suffrages of one of the makers of Besancon, a rich contractor, who had very wide influence.

Wherever they settled the Romans took immense pains, and spent enormous sums to have an unlimited

supply of good water in every town of their empire. At Besancon they drank the water from Arcier, a hill at

some considerable distance from Besancon. The town stands in a horseshoe circumscribed by the river

Doubs. Thus, to restore an aqueduct in order to drink the same water that the Romans drank, in a town

watered by the Doubs, is one of those absurdities which only succeed in a country place where the most

exemplary gravity prevails. If this whim could be brought home to the hearts of the citizens, it would lead to

considerable outlay; and this expenditure would benefit the influential contractor.

Albert Savaron de Savarus opined that the water of the river was good for nothing but to flow under the

suspension bridge, and that the only drinkable water was that from Arcier. Articles were printed in the

Review which merely expressed the views of the commercial interest of Besancon. The nobility and the

citizens, the moderates and the legitimists, the government party and the opposition, everybody, in short, was

agreed that they must drink the same water as the Romans, and boast of a suspension bridge. The question of

the Arcier water was the order of the day at Besancon. At Besanconas in the matter of the two railways to

Versaillesas for every standing abusethere were private interests unconfessed which gave vital force to

this idea. The reasonable folk in opposition to this scheme, who were indeed but few, were regarded as old

women. No one talked of anything but of Savaron's two projects. And thus, after eighteen months of

underground labor, the ambitious lawyer had succeeded in stirring to its depths the most stagnant town in

France, the most unyielding to foreign influence, in finding the length of its foot, to use a vulgar phrase, and

exerting a preponderant influence without stirring from his own room. He had solved the singular problem of

In the course of this winter he won seven lawsuits for various priests of Besancon. At moments he could

breathe freely at the thought of his coming triumph. This intense desire, which made him work so many

interests and devise so many springs, absorbed the last strength of his terribly overstrung soul. His

disinterestedness was lauded, and he took his clients' fees without comment. But this disinterestedness was, in

truth, moral usury; he counted on a reward far greater to him than all the gold in the world.

In the month of October 1834 he had brought, ostensibly to serve a merchant who was in difficulties, with

money lent him by Leopold Hannequin, a house which gave him a qualification for election. He had not

"You are really a remarkable man," said the Abbe de Grancey, who, of course, had watched and understood

the lawyer. The VicarGeneral had come to introduce to him a Canon who needed his professional advice.

"You are a priest who has taken the wrong turning." This observation struck Savarus.

Rosalie, on her part, had made up her mind, in her strong girl's head, to get Monsieur de Savarus into the

drawingroom and acquainted with the society of the Hotel de Rupt. So far she had limited her desires to

seeing and hearing Albert. She had compounded, so to speak, and a composition is often no more than a

Les Rouxey, the inherited estate of the Wattevilles, was worth just ten thousand francs a year; but in other

hands it would have yielded a great deal more. The Baron in his indifferencefor his wife was to have, and

in fact had, forty thousand francs a yearleft the management of les Rouxey to a sort of factotum, an old

servant of the Wattevilles named Modinier. Nevertheless, whenever the Baron and his wife wished to go out

of the town, they went to les Rouxey, which is very picturesquely situated. The chateau and the park were, in

fact, created by the famous Watteville, who in his active old age was passionately attached to this magnificent

Between two precipitous hillslittle peaks with bare summits known as the great and the little Rouxeyin

the heart of a ravine where the torrents from the heights, with the Dent de Vilard at their head, come tumbling

to join the lovely upper waters of the Doubs, Watteville had a huge dam constructed, leaving two cuttings for

the overflow. Above this dam he made a beautiful lake, and below it two cascades; and these, uniting a few

yards below the falls, formed a lovely little river to irrigate the barren, uncultivated valley, and these two hills

he enclosed in a ring fence, and built himself a retreat on the dam, which he widened to two acres by

accumulating above it all the soil which had to be removed to make a channel for the river and the irrigation

When the Baron de Watteville thus obtained the lake above his dam he was owner of the two hills, but not of

the upper valley thus flooded, through which there had been at all times a rightofway to where it ends in a

horseshoe under the Dent de Vilard. But this ferocious old man was so widely dreaded, that so long as he

lived no claim was urged by the inhabitants of Riceys, the little village on the further side of the Dent de

Vilard. When the Baron died, he left the slopes of the two Rouxey hills joined by a strong wall, to protect

from inundation the two lateral valleys opening into the valley of Rouxey, to the right and left at the foot of

His heirs asserted their protectorate of the village of Riceys, and so maintained the usurpation. The old

assassin, the old renegade, the old Abbe Watteville, ended his career by planting trees and making a fine road

over the shoulder of one of the Rouxey hills to join the highroad. The estate belonging to this park and house

was extensive, but badly cultivated; there were chalets on both hills and neglected forests of timber. It was all

wild and deserted, left to the care of nature, abandoned to chance growths, but full of sublime and unexpected

It is unnecessary to complicate this story by relating all the prodigious trouble and the inventiveness stamped

with genius, by which Rosalie achieved her end without allowing it to be suspected. It is enough to say that it

was in obedience to her mother that she left Besancon in the month of May 1835, in an antique traveling

carriage drawn by a pair of sturdy hired horses, and accompanied her father to les Rouxey.

To a young girl love lurks in everything. When she rose, the morning after her arrival, Mademoiselle de

Watteville saw from her bedroom window the fine expanse of water, from which the light mists rose like

smoke, and were caught in the firs and larches, rolling up and along the hills till they reached the heights, and

"They loved by the lakes! She lives by a lake! A lake is certainly full of love!" she thought.

A lake fed by snows has opalescent colors and a translucency that makes it one huge diamond; but when it is

shut in like that of les Rouxey, between two granite masses covered with pines, when silence broods over it

like that of the Savannas or the Steppes, then every one must exclaim as Rosalie did.

"On my word," said the girl, "he did his best to earn forgiveness. Let us go in a boat to the further end; it will

The Baron called two gardener lads who knew how to row, and took with him his prime minister Modinier.

The lake was about six acres in breadth, in some places ten or twelve, and four hundred in length. Rosalie

soon found herself at the upper end shut in by the Dent de Vilard, the Jungfrau of that little Switzerland.

"Here we are, Monsieur le Baron," said Modinier, signing to the gardeners to tie up the boat; "will you come

"Oh, nothing!" exclaimed the Baron. "But you are a sensible girl; we have some little secrets between us, and

I may tell you what ruffles my mind. Some difficulties have arisen since 1830 between the village authorities

of Riceys and me, on account of this very Dent de Vilard, and I want to settle the matter without your

mother's knowing anything about it, for she is stubborn; she is capable of flinging fire and flames broadcast,

particularly if she should hear that the Mayor of Riceys, a republican, got up this action as a sop to his

Rosalie had presence of mind enough to disguise her delight, so as to work more effectually on her father.

"Mademoiselle, the people of Riceys," said Modinier, "have long enjoyed the right of grazing and cutting

fodder on their side of the Dent de Vilard. Now Monsieur Chantonnit, the Maire since 1830, declares that the

whole Dent belongs to his district, and maintains that a hundred years ago, or more, there was a way through

our grounds. You understand that in that case we should no longer have them to ourselves. Then this

barbarian would end by saying, what the old men in the village say, that the ground occupied by the lake was

appropriated by the Abbe de Watteville. That would be the end of les Rouxey; what next?"

"Indeed, my child, between ourselves, it is the truth," said Monsieur de Watteville simply. "The land is an

usurpation, with no titledeed but lapse of time. And, therefore, to avoid all worry, I should wish to come to a

friendly understanding as to my border line on this side of the Dent de Vilard, and I will then raise a wall."

"If you give way to the municipality, it will swallow you up. You ought to have threatened Riceys."

"That is just what I told the master last evening," said Modinier. "But in confirmation of that view I proposed

that he should come to see whether, on this side of the Dent or on the other, there may not be, high or low,

For a century the Dent de Vilard had been used by both parties without coming to extremities; it stood as a

sort of party wall between the communes of Riceys and les Rouxey, yielding little profit. Indeed, the object in

dispute, being covered with snow for six months in the year, was of a nature to cool their ardor. Thus it

required all the hot blast by which the revolution of 1830 inflamed the advocates of the people, to stir up this

matter, by which Monsieur Chantonnit, the Maire of Riceys, hoped to give a dramatic turn to his career on

the peaceful frontier of Switzerland, and to immortalize his term of office. Chantonnit, as his name shows,

"My dear father," said Rosalie, as they got into the boat again, "I agree with Modinier. If you wish to secure

the joint possession of the Dent de Vilard, you must act with decision, and get a legal opinion which will

protect you against this enterprising Chantonnit. Why should you be afraid? Get the famous lawyer

Savaronengage him at once, lest Chantonnit should place the interests of the village in his hands. The man

who won the case for the Chapter against the town can certainly win that of Watteville versus Riceys!

Besides," she added, "les Rouxey will some day be minenot for a long time yet, I trust. Well, then do

not leave me with a lawsuit on my hands. I like this place, I shall often live here, and add to it as much as

possible. On those banks," and she pointed to the feet of the two hills, "I shall cut flowerbeds and make the

loveliest English gardens. Let us go to Besancon and bring back with us the Abbe de Grancey, Monsieur

Savaron, and my mother, if she cares to come. You can then make up your mind; but in your place I should

have done so already. Your name is Watteville, and you are afraid of a fight! If you should lose your

"Oh, if that is the way you take it," said the Baron, "I am quite ready; I will see the lawyer."

"Besides a lawsuit is really great fun. It brings some interest into life, with coming and going and raging over

it. You will have a great deal to do before you can get hold of the judges.We did not see the Abbe de

"But the very existence of the Chapter was involved," said Monsieur de Watteville; "and then the

Archbishop's pride, his conscience, everything that makes up the life of the priesthood, was at stake. That

"Listen to me," said his daughter in his ear, "if you secure Monsieur de Savaron, you will gain your suit,

won't you? Well, then, let me advise you. You cannot get at Monsieur Savaron excepting through Monsieur

de Grancey. Take my word for it, and let us together talk to the dear Abbe without my mother's presence at

"The Abbe de Grancey will settle that afterwards. But just make up your mind to promise your vote to

"She may even desire you to do it," replied Rosalie, knowing as she did from Albert's letter to Leopold how

Four days after, the Abbe de Grancey called very early one morning on Albert de Savarus, having announced

his visit the day before. The old priest had come to win over the great lawyer to the house of the Wattevilles,

a proceeding which shows how much tact and subtlety Rosalie must have employed in an underhand way.

The Abbe, who told his story with admirable frankness, was coldly heard by Albert.

"Monsieur l'Abbe," said he, "it is out of the question that I should defend the interests of the Wattevilles, and

you shall understand why. My part in this town is to remain perfectly neutral. I will display no colors; I must

remain a mystery till the eve of my election. Now, to plead for the Wattevilles would mean nothing in Paris,

but here! Here, where everything is discussed, I should be supposed by every one to be an ally of your

"What! do you suppose that you can remain unknown on the day of the election, when the candidates must

oppose each other? It must then become known that your name is Savaron de Savarus, that you have held the

"On the day of the election," said Savarus, "I will be all I am expected to be; and I intend to speak at the

"If you have the support of Monsieur de Watteville and his party, you will get a hundred votes in a mass, and

far more to be trusted than those on which you rely. It is always possible to produce division of interests;

"The deuce is in it!" said Savarus. "I am attached to you, and I could do a great deal for you, Father! Perhaps

we may compound with the Devil. Whatever Monsieur de Watteville's business may be, by engaging

Girardet, and prompting him, it will be possible to drag the proceedings out till the elections are over. I will

"Do this one thing," said the Abbe. "Come to the Hotel de Rupt: there is a young person of nineteen there

who, one of these days, will have a hundred thousand francs a year, and you can seem to be paying your court

"Yes, Mademoiselle Rosalie," replied the Abbe de Grancey. "You are ambitious. If she takes a fancy to you,

you may be everything an ambitious man can wishwho knows? A Minister perhaps. A man can always be

"Monsieur l'Abbe, if Mademoiselle de Watteville had three times her fortune, and adored me into the bargain,

"That is even worse when a man cares about it as you seem to care," replied the Abbe. "Everything that is not

done, can be undone. Do not stake your fortune and your prospects on a woman's liking, any more than a

"Let us say no more about Mademoiselle de Watteville," said Albert gravely, "and agree as to the facts. At

your desirefor I have a regard and respect for youI will appear for Monsieur de Watteville, but after the

elections. Until then Girardet must conduct the case under my instructions. That is the most I can do."

"But there are questions involved which can only be settled after inspection of the localities," said the

"Girardet can go," said Savarus. "I cannot allow myself, in the face of a town I know so well, to take any step

The Abbe left Savarus after giving him a keen look, in which he seemed to be laughing at the young athlete's

"Ah! I would have dragged my father into a lawsuitI would have done anything to get him here!" cried

Rosalie to herself, standing in the kiosk and looking at the lawyer in his room, the day after Albert's interview

with the Abbe, who had reported the result to her father. "I would have committed any mortal sin, and you

will not enter the Wattevilles' drawingroom; I may not hear your fine voice! You make conditions when

your help is required by the Wattevilles and the Rupts!Well, God knows, I meant to be content with these

small joys; with seeing you, hearing you speak, going with you to les Rouxey, that your presence might to me

make the place sacred. That was all I asked. But nownow I mean to be your wife.Yes, yes; look at

her portrait, at her drawingroom, her bedroom, at the four sides of her villa, the points of view from

her gardens. You expect her statue? I will make her marble herself towards you!After all, the woman does

not love. Art, science, books, singing, music, have absorbed half her senses and her intelligence. She is old,

"What is the matter that you stay here, Rosalie?" asked her mother, interrupting her reflections. "Monsieur de

Soulas is in the drawing room, and he observed your attitude, which certainly betrays more thoughtfulness

"Why, no! you were not thinking. You were staring at that lawyer's window with an attention that is neither

becoming, nor decent, and which Monsieur de Soulas, of all men, ought never to have observed."

"It is time," said the Baroness, "that you should know what our intentions are. Amedee likes you, and you

Rosalie, as white as a lily, made no reply, so completely was she stupefied by contending feelings. And yet in

the presence of the man she had this instant begun to hate vehemently, she forced the kind of smile which a

balletdancer puts on for the public. Nay, she could even laugh; she had the strength to conceal her rage,

which presently subsided, for she was determined to make use of this fat simpleton to further her designs.

"Monsieur Amedee," said she, at the moment when her mother was walking ahead of them in the garden,

affecting to leave the young people together, "were you not aware that Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus

"Until 1830 he was Master of Appeals to the Council of State, attached to the supreme Ministerial Council,

and in favor with the Dauphin and Dauphiness. It would be very good of you to say nothing against him, but

it would be better still if you would attend the election this year, carry the day, and hinder that poor Monsieur

"Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus, the natural son of the Comte de Savaruspray keep the secret of my

indiscretionif he is returned deputy, will be our advocate in the suit about les Rouxey. Les Rouxey, my

father tells me, will be my property; I intend to live there, it is a lovely place! I should be brokenhearted at

"The devil!" thought Amedee, as he left the house. "The heiress is not such a fool as her mother thinks her."

Monsieur de Chavoncourt is a Royalist, of the famous 221. Hence, from the day after the revolution of July,

he always preached the salutary doctrine of taking the oaths and resisting the present order of things, after the

pattern of the Tories against the Whigs in England. This doctrine was not acceptable to the Legitimists, who,

in their defeat, had the wit to divide in their opinions, and to trust to the force of inertia and to Providence.

Monsieur de Chavoncourt was not wholly trusted by his own party, but seemed to the Moderates the best

man to choose; they preferred the triumph of his halfhearted opinions to the acclamation of a Republican

who should combine the votes of the enthusiasts and the patriots. Monsieur de Chavoncourt, highly respected

in Besancon, was the representative of an old parliamentary family; his fortune, of about fifteen thousand

francs a year, was not an offence to anybody, especially as he had a son and three daughters. With such a

family, fifteen thousand francs a year are a mere nothing. Now when, under these circumstances, the father of

the family is above bribery, it would be hard if the electors did not esteem him. Electors wax enthusiastic

over a beau ideal of parliamentary virtue, just as the audience in the pit do at the representation of the

Madame de Chavoncourt, at this time a woman of forty, was one of the beauties of Besancon. While the

Chamber was sitting, she lived meagrely in one of their country places to recoup herself by economy for

Monsieur de Chavoncourt's expenses in Paris. In the winter she received very creditably once a week, on

Tuesdays, understanding her business as mistress of the house. Young Chavoncourt, a youth of two

andtwenty, and another young gentleman, named Monsieur de Vauchelles, no richer than Amedee and his

schoolfriend, were his intimate allies. They made excursions together to Granvelle, and sometimes went out

shooting; they were so well known to be inseparable that they were invited to the country together.

Rosalie, who was intimate with the Chavoncourt girls, knew that the three young men had no secrets from

each other. She reflected that if Monsieur de Soulas should repeat her words, it would be to his two

companions. Now, Monsieur de Vauchelles had his matrimonial plans, as Amedee had his; he wished to

marry Victoire, the eldest of the Chavoncourts, on whom an old aunt was to settle an estate worth seven

thousand francs a year, and a hundred thousand francs in hard cash, when the contract was to be signed.

Victoire was this aunt's god daughter and favorite niece. Consequently, young Chavoncourt and his friend

Vauchelles would be sure to warn Monsieur de Chavoncourt of the danger he was in from Albert's

But this did not satisfy Rosalie. She sent the Prefet of the department a letter written with her left hand,

signed "A friend to Louis Philippe," in which she informed him of the secret intentions of Monsieur Albert de

Savarus, pointing out the serious support a Royalist orator might give to Berryer, and revealing to him the

deeply artful course pursued by the lawyer during his two years' residence at Besancon. The Prefet was a

capable man, a personal enemy of the Royalist party, devoted by conviction to the Government of Julyin

short, one of those men of whom, in the Rue de Grenelle, the Minister of the Interior could say, "We have a

capital Prefet at Besancon." The Prefet read the letter, and, in obedience to its instructions, he burnt it.

Rosalie aimed at preventing Albert's election, so as to keep him five years longer at Besancon.

At that time an election was a fight between parties, and in order to win, the Ministry chose its ground by

choosing the moment when it would give battle. The elections were therefore not to take place for three

months yet. When a man's whole life depends on an election, the period that elapses between the issuing of

the writs for convening the electoral bodies, and the day fixed for their meetings, is an interval during which

ordinary vitality is suspended. Rosalie fully understood how much latitude Albert's absorbed state would

leave her during these three months. By promising Marietteas she afterwards confessedto take both her

and Jerome into her service, she induced the maid to bring her all the letters Albert might sent to Italy, and

those addressed to him from that country. And all the time she was pondering these machinations, the

extraordinary girl was working slippers for her father with the most innocent air in the world. She even made

a greater display than ever of candor and simplicity, quite understanding how valuable that candor and

Two months before the election a meeting was held at the house of Monsieur Boucher senior, composed of

the contractor who expected to get the work for the aqueduct for the Arcier waters; of Monsieur Boucher's

fatherinlaw; of Monsieur Granet, the influential man to whom Savarus had done a service, and who was to

nominate him as a candidate; of Girardet the lawyer; of the printer of the Eastern Review; and of the

President of the Chamber of Commerce. In fact, the assembly consisted of twentyseven persons in all, men

who in the provinces are regarded as bigwigs. Each man represented on an average six votes, but in

estimating their values they said ten, for men always begin by exaggerating their own influence. Among these

twenty seven was one who was wholly devoted to the Prefet, one false brother who secretly looked for some

At this preliminary meeting, it was agreed that Savaron the lawyer should be named as candidate, a motion

received with such enthusiasm as no one looked for from Besancon. Albert, waiting at home for Alfred

Boucher to fetch him, was chatting with the Abbe de Grancey, who was interested in this absorbing ambition.

Albert had appreciated the priest's vast political capacities; and the priest, touched by the young man's

entreaties, had been willing to become his guide and adviser in this culminating struggle. The Chapter did not

love Monsieur de Chavoncourt, for it was his wife's brotherinlaw, as President of the Tribunal, who had

"You are betrayed, my dear fellow," said the shrewd and worthy Abbe, in that gentle, calm voice which old

"By whom I know not at all," the priest replied. "But at the Prefecture your plans are known, and your hand

read like a book. At this moment I have no advice to give you. Such affairs need consideration. As for this

evening, take the bull by the horns, anticipate the blow. Tell them all your previous life, and thus you will

"You would not benefit by my advice; you had the opportunity of making an impression at the Hotel de Rupt;

"The unanimous support of the Royalists, an immediate readiness to go to the electionin short, above a

hundred votes. Adding to these what, among ourselves, we call the ecclesiastical vote, though you were not

yet nominated, you were master of the votes by ballot. Under such circumstances, a man may temporize, may

Alfred Boucher when he came in, full of enthusiasm, to announce the decision of the preliminary meeting,

"Goodnight, Monsieur l'Abbe," said Albert. "We will talk of your business at greater length when the

And he took Alfred's arm, after pressing Monsieur de Grancey's hand with meaning. The priest looked at the

ambitious man, whose face at that moment wore the lofty expression which a general may have when he

hears the first gun fired for a battle. He raised his eyes to heaven, and left the room, saying to himself, "What

Eloquence is not at the Bar. The pleader rarely puts forth the real powers of his soul; if he did, he would die

of it in a few years. Eloquence is, nowadays, rarely in the pulpit; but it is found on certain occasions in the

Chamber of Deputies, when an ambitious man stakes all to win all, or, stung by a myriad darts, at a given

moment bursts into speech. But it is still more certainly found in some privileged beings, at the inevitable

hour when their claims must either triumph or be wrecked, and when they are forced to speak. Thus at this

meeting, Albert Savarus, feeling the necessity of winning himself some supporters, displayed all the faculties

of his soul and the resources of his intellect. He entered the room well, without awkwardness or arrogance,

without weakness, without cowardice, quite gravely, and was not dismayed at finding himself among twenty

or thirty men. The news of the meeting and of its determination had already brought a few docile sheep to

Before listening to Monsieur Boucher, who was about to deluge him with a speech announcing the decision

of the Boucher Committee, Albert begged for silence, and, as he shook hands with Monsieur Boucher, tried

"My young friend, Alfred Boucher, has just announced to me the honor you have done me. But before that

decision is irrevocable," said the lawyer, "I think that I ought to explain to you who and what your candidate

is, so as to leave you free to take back your word if my declaration should disturb your conscience!"

This exordium was followed by profound silence. Some of the men thought it showed a noble impulse.

Albert gave a sketch of his previous career, telling them his real name, his action under the Restoration, and

revealing himself as a new man since his arrival at Besancon, while pledging himself for the future. This

address held his hearers breathless, it was said. These men, all with different interests, were spellbound by the

brilliant eloquence that flowed at boiling heat from the heart and soul of this ambitious spirit. Admiration

silenced reflection. Only one thing was clearthe thing which Albert wished to get into their heads:

Was it not far better for the town to have one of those men who are born to govern society at large than a

mere votingmachine? A statesman carries power with him. A commonplace deputy, however incorruptible,

is but a conscience. What a glory for Provence to have found a Mirabeau, to return the only statesman since

Under the pressure of this eloquence, all the audience believed it great enough to become a splendid political

instrument in the hands of their representative. They all saw in Albert Savaron, Savarus the great Minister.

And, reading the secret calculations of his constituents, the clever candidate gave them to understand that

This confession of faith, this ambitious programme, this retrospect of his life and character was, according to

the only man present who was capable of judging of Savarus (he has since become one of the leading men of

Besancon), a masterpiece of skill and of feeling, of fervor, interest, and fascination. This whirlwind carried

away the electors. Never had any man had such a triumph. But, unfortunately, speech, a weapon only for

close warfare, has only an immediate effect. Reflection kills the word when the word ceases to overpower

reflection. If the votes had then been taken, Albert's name would undoubtedly have come out of the

ballotbox. At the moment, he was conqueror. But he must conquer every day for two months.

Albert went home quivering. The townsfolk had applauded him, and he had achieved the great point of

silencing beforehand the malignant talk to which his early career might give rise. The commercial interest of

The Prefet, alarmed by this success, set to work to count the Ministerial votes, and contrived to have a secret

interview with Monsieur de Chavoncourt, so as to effect a coalition in their common interests. Every day,

without Albert's being able to discover how, the voters in the Boucher committee diminished in number.

Nothing could resist the slow grinding of the Prefecture. Three of four clever men would say to Albert's

clients, "Will the deputy defend you and win your lawsuits? Will he give you advice, draw up your contracts,

arrange your compromises?He will be your slave for five years longer, if, instead of returning him to the

This calculation did Savarus all the more mischief, because the wives of some of the merchants had already

made it. The parties interested in the matter of the bridge and that of the water from Arcier could not hold out

against a talkingto from a clever Ministerialist, who proved to them that their safety lay at the Prefecture,

and not in the hands of an ambitious man. Each day was a check for Savarus, though each day the battle was

led by him and fought by his lieutenantsa battle of words, speeches, and proceedings. He dared not go to

the VicarGeneral, and the VicarGeneral never showed himself. Albert rose and went to bed in a fever, his

At last the day dawned of the first struggle, practically the show of hands; the votes are counted, the

candidates estimate their chances, and clever men can prophesy their failure or success. It is a decent

hustings, without the mob, but formidable; agitation, though it is not allowed any physical display, as it is in

England, is not the less profound. The English fight these battles with their fists, the French with hard words.

Our neighbors have a scrimmage, the French try their fate by cold combinations calmly worked out. This

particular political business is carried out in opposition to the character of the two nations.

The Radical party named their candidate; Monsieur de Chavoncourt came forward; then Albert appeared, and

was accused by the Chavoncourt committee and the Radicals of being an uncompromising man of the Right,

a second Berryer. The Ministry had their candidate, a stalking horse, useful only to receive the purely

Ministerial votes. The votes, thus divided, gave no result. The Republican candidate had twenty, the Ministry

got fifty, Albert had seventy, Monsieur de Chavoncourt obtained sixtyseven. But the Prefet's party had

perfidiously made thirty of its most devoted adherents vote for Albert, so as to deceive the enemy. The votes

for Monsieur de Chavoncourt, added to the eighty votesthe real numberat the disposal of the Prefecture,

would carry the election, if only the Prefet could succeed in gaining over a few of the Radicals. A hundred

and sixty votes were not recorded: those of Monsieur de Grancey's following and the Legitimists.

The show of hands at an election, like a dress rehearsal at a theatre, is the most deceptive thing in the world.

Albert Savarus came home, putting a brave face on the matter, but half dead. He had had the wit, the genius,

or the good luck to gain, within the last fortnight, two staunch supportersGirardet's fatherinlaw and a

very shrewd old merchant to whom Monsieur de Grancey had sent him. These two worthy men, his

selfappointed spies, affected to be Albert's most ardent opponents in the hostile camp. Towards the end of

the show of hands they informed Savarus, through the medium of Monsieur Boucher, that thirty voters,

unknown, were working against him in his party, playing the same trick that they were playing for his benefit

A criminal marching to execution could not suffer as Albert suffered as he went home from the hall where his

fate was at stake. The despairing lover could endure no companionship. He walked through the streets alone,

between eleven o'clock and midnight. At one in the morning, Albert, to whom sleep had been unknown for

the past three days, was sitting in his library in a deep armchair, his face as pale as if he were dying, his hands

hanging limp, in a forlorn attitude worthy of the Magdalen. Tears hung on his long lashes, tears that dim the

eyes, but do not fall; fierce thought drinks them up, the fire of the soul consumes them. Alone, he might

weep. And then, under the kiosk, he saw a white figure, which reminded him of Francesca.

"And for three months I have had no letter from her! What has become of her? I have not written for two

months, but I warned her. Is she ill? Oh, my love! My life! Will you ever know what I have gone through?

What a wretched constitution is mine! Have I an aneurism?" he asked himself, feeling his heart beat so

violently that its pulses seemed audible in the silence like little grains of sand dropping on a big drum.

At this moment three distinct taps sounded on his door; Albert hastened to open it, and almost fainted with

joy at seeing the Vicar General's cheerful and triumphant mien. Without a word, he threw his arms round

the Abbe de Grancey, held him fast, and clasped him closely, letting his head fall on the old man's shoulder.

He was a child again; he cried as he had cried on hearing that Francesca Soderini was a married woman. He

betrayed his weakness to no one but to this priest, on whose face shone the light of hope. The priest had been

"Forgive me, dear Abbe, but you come at one of those moments when the man vanishes, for you are not to

"Oh! I know," replied the Abbe. "You wrote 'Ambition for love's sake!'Ah! my son, it was love in despair

that made me a priest in 1786, at the age of twoandtwenty. In 1788 I was in charge of a parish. I know

"Come and see her!" cried Savarus, seizing a candle, and leading the Abbe into the handsome room where

"She is one of those women who are born to reign!" said the Vicar General, understanding how great an

affection Albert showed him by this mark of confidence. "But there is pride on that brow; it is implacable;

she would never forgive an insult! It is the Archangel Michael, the angel of Execution, the inexorable

angel'All or nothing' is the motto of this type of angel. There is something divinely pitiless in that head."

"You have guessed well," cried Savarus. "But, my dear Abbe, for more than twelve years now she had

"Ah! if you could only say the same of God!" said the priest with simplicity. "Now, to talk of your affairs.

For ten days I have been at work for you. If you are a real politician, this time you will follow my advice.

You would not be where you are now if you would have gone to the Wattevilles when I first told you. But

you must go there tomorrow; I will take you in the evening. The Rouxey estates are in danger; the case must

be defended within three days. The election will not be over in three days. They will take good care not to

appoint examiners the first day. There will be several voting days, and you will be elected by ballot"

"By winning the Rouxey lawsuit you will gain eighty Legitimist votes; add them to the thirty I can command,

and you have a hundred and ten. Then, as twenty remain to you of the Boucher committee, you will have a

"Yes," said the priest, "since all the rest are Ministerial. But, my son, you have two hundred votes, and the

"I have two hundred votes?" said Albert, standing stupid with amazement, after starting to his feet as if shot

"You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt," the priest repeated coldly.

"You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt," said the Abbe calmly for the third time.

This time Albert understood. The VicarGeneral would not be implicated in a scheme which at last smiled on

the despairing politician. A word more would have compromised the priest's dignity and honor.

"Tomorrow evening at the Hotel de Rupt you will meet Madame de Chavoncourt and her second daughter.

You can thank her beforehand for what she is going to do for you, and tell her that your gratitude is

unbounded, that you are hers body and soul, that henceforth your future is that of her family. You are quite

disinterested, for you have so much confidence in yourself that you regard the nomination as deputy as a

"You will have a struggle with Madame de Chavoncourt; she will want you to pledge your word. All your

future life, my son, lies in that evening. But, understand clearly, I have nothing to do with it. I am answerable

only for Legitimist voters; I have secured Madame de Watteville, and that means all the aristocracy of

Besancon. Amedee de Soulas and Vauchelles, who will both vote for you, have won over the young men;

Madame de Watteville will get the old ones. As to my electors, they are infallible."

"Ask me no questions," replied the Abbe. "Monsieur de Chavoncourt, who has three daughters to marry, is

not capable of increasing his wealth. Though Vauchelles marries the eldest without anything from her father,

because her old aunt is to settle something on her, what is to become of the two others? Sidonie is sixteen,

and your ambition is as good as a gold mine. Some one has told Madame de Chavoncourt that she will do

better by getting her daughter married than by sending her husband to waste his money in Paris. That some

one manages Madame de Chavoncourt, and Madame de Chavoncourt manages her husband."

"That is enough, my dear Abbe. I understand. When once I am returned as deputy, I have somebody's fortune

to make, and by making it large enough I shall be released from my promise. In me you have a son, a man

who will owe his happiness to you. Great heavens! what have I done to deserve so true a friend?"

"You won a triumph for the Chapter," said the VicarGeneral, smiling. "Now, as to all this, be as secret as

the tomb. We are nothing, we have done nothing. If we were known to have meddled in election matters, we

should be eaten up alive by the Puritans of the Leftwho do worseand blamed by some of our own party,

who want everything. Madame de Chavoncourt has no suspicion of my share in all this. I have confided in no

After seeing out the old priest, Albert went to bed in the swaddling clothes of power.

Next evening, as may well be supposed, by nine o'clock Madame la Baronne de Watteville's rooms were

crowded by the aristocracy of Besancon in convocation extraordinary. They were discussing the exceptional

step of going to the poll, to oblige the daughter of the Rupts. It was known that the former Master of Appeals,

the secretary of one of the most faithful ministers under the Elder Branch, was to be presented that evening.

Madame de Chavoncourt was there with her second daughter Sidonie, exquisitely dressed, while her elder

sister, secure of her lover, had not indulged in any of the arts of the toilet. In country towns these little things

are remarked. The Abbe de Grancey's fine and clever head was to be seen moving from group to group,

listening to everything, seeming to be apart from it all, but uttering those incisive phrases which sum up a

"If the Elder Branch were to return," said he to an old statesman of seventy, "what politicians would they

find?""Berryer, alone on his bench, does not know which way to turn; if he had sixty votes, he would often

scotch the wheels of the Government and upset Ministries!" "The Duc de FitzJames is to be nominated at

Toulouse.""You will enable Monsieur de Watteville to win his lawsuit.""If you vote for Monsieur

Savarus, the Republicans will vote with you rather than with the Moderates!" etc., etc.

At nine o'clock Albert had not arrived. Madame de Watteville was disposed to regard such delay as an

"My dear Baroness," said Madame de Chavoncourt, "do not let such serious issues turn on such a trifle. The

varnish on his boots is not dryor a consultation, perhaps, detains Monsieur de Savarus."

"You see," said the Baroness with a smile, "there is a question of a marriage between Sidonie and Monsieur

Mademoiselle de Watteville hastily went to a window looking out over the garden.

At ten o'clock Albert de Savarus had not yet appeared. The storm that threatened now burst. Some of the

gentlemen sat down to cards, finding the thing intolerable. The Abbe de Grancey, who did not know what to

think, went to the window where Rosalie was hidden, and exclaimed aloud in his amazement, "He must be

The VicarGeneral stepped out into the garden, followed by Monsieur de Watteville and his daughter, and

they all three went up to the kiosk. In Albert's rooms all was dark; not a light was to be seen.

"Jerome!" cried Rosalie, seeing the servant in the yard below. The Abbe looked at her with astonishment.

"Where in the world is your master?" she asked the man, who came to the foot of the wall.

The joy of triumph was not so effectually concealed on Rosalie's face that the VicarGeneral could not detect

They all three returned to the drawingroom, where Monsieur de Watteville announced the strange, the

extraordinary, the prodigious news of the lawyer's departure, without any reason assigned for his evasion. By

halfpast eleven only fifteen persons remained, among them Madame de Chavoncourt and the Abbe de

Godenars, another VicarGeneral, a man of about forty, who hoped for a bishopric, the two Chavoncourt

girls, and Monsieur de Vauchelles, the Abbe de Grancey, Rosalie, Amedee de Soulas, and a retired

magistrate, one of the most influential members of the upper circle of Besancon, who had been very eager for

Albert's election. The Abbe de Grancey sat down by the Baroness in such a position as to watch Rosalie,

At this moment a servant in livery brought in a letter for the Abbe de Grancey on a silver tray.

The VicarGeneral read the letter; he saw Rosalie suddenly turn as white as her kerchief.

"She recognizes the writing," said he to himself, after glancing at the girl over his spectacles. He folded up

the letter, and calmly put it in his pocket without a word. In three minutes he had met three looks from

He rose and took leave. He was going towards the door when, in the next room, he was overtaken by Rosalie,

The girl's reply, caught as she was in the toils of her impatience and rage, seemed to the Abbe sublime.

"I ask you to be as secret as if it were a confession," said she before returning to the drawingroom. "If there

In the morning, on her way to Mass, Mademoiselle de Watteville heard from Mariette some of the

circumstances which had prompted Albert's disappearance at the most critical moment of his life.

"Mademoiselle, an old gentleman from Paris arrived yesterday morning at the Hotel National; he came in his

own carriage with four horses, and a courier in front, and a servant. Indeed, Jerome, who saw the carriage

"I do not know," said Mariette. "Just as two was striking he came to call on Monsieur Savarus, and sent in his

card; and when he saw it, Jerome says Monsieur turned as pale as a sheet, and said he was to be shown in. As

he himself locked the door, it is impossible to tell what the old gentleman and the lawyer said to each other;

but they were together above an hour, and then the old gentleman, with the lawyer, called up his servant.

Jerome saw the servant go out again with an immense package, four feet long, which looked like a great

painting on canvas. The old gentleman had in his hand a large parcel of papers. Monsieur Savaron was paler

than death, and he, so proud, so dignified, was in a state to be pitied. But he treated the old gentleman so

respectfully that he could not have been politer to the King himself. Jerome and Monsieur Albert Savaron

escorted the gentleman to his carriage, which was standing with the horses in. The courier started on the

"Monsieur Savaron went straight to the Prefecture, and from that to Monsieur Gentillet, who sold him the old

traveling carriage that used to belong to Madame de SaintVier before she died; then he ordered post horses

for six o'clock. He went home to pack; no doubt he wrote a lot of letters; finally, he settled everything with

Monsieur Girardet, who went to him and stayed till seven. Jerome carried a note to Monsieur Boucher, with

whom his master was to have dined; and then, at halfpast seven, the lawyer set out, leaving Jerome with

"He left his keys with Monsieur Girardet, whom he took home, and at his house, Jerome says, he took a plate

of soup, for at halfpast seven Monsieur Girardet had not yet dined. When Monsieur Savaron got into the

carriage he looked like death. Jerome, who, of course, saw his master off, heard him tell the postilion 'The

"As the old gentleman did not mean to stay, he was not asked for it. The servant, by his orders no doubt,

"It was Monsieur Girardet, no doubt, who ought to have delivered it; but Jerome says that poor Monsieur

Girardet, who was much attached to lawyer Savaron, was as much upset as he was. So he who came so

After hearing this narrative, Mademoiselle de Watteville fell into a brooding and absent mood, which

everybody could see. It is useless to say anything of the commotion that arose in Besancon on the

disappearance of Monsieur Savaron. It was understood that the Prefect had obliged him with the greatest

readiness by giving him at once a passport across the frontier, for he was thus quit of his only opponent. Next

day Monsieur de Chavoncourt was carried to the top by a majority of a hundred and forty votes.

"Jack is gone by the way he came," said an elector on hearing of Albert Savaron's flight.

This event lent weight to the prevailing prejudice at Besancon against strangers; indeed, two years previously

they had received confirmation from the affair of the Republican newspaper. Ten days later Albert de Savarus

was never spoken of again. Only three personsGirardet the attorney, the VicarGeneral, and

Rosaliewere seriously affected by his disappearance. Girardet knew that the whitehaired stranger was

Prince Soderini, for he had seen his card, and he told the Vicar General; but Rosalie, better informed than

either of them, had known for three months past that the Duc d'Argaiolo was dead.

In the month of April 1836 no one had had any news from or of Albert de Savarus. Jerome and Mariette were

to be married, but the Baroness confidentially desired her maid to wait till her daughter was married, saying

"It is time that Rosalie should be married," said the Baroness one day to Monsieur de Watteville. "She is

"When fathers do not know what ails their daughters, mothers can guess," said the Baroness; "we must get

"I am quite willing," said the Baron. "I shall give her les Rouxey now that the Court has settled our quarrel

with the authorities of Riceys by fixing the boundary line at three hundred feet up the side of the Dent de

Vilard. I am having a trench made to collect all the water and carry it into the lake. The village did not appeal,

"It has never occurred to you," said Madame de Watteville, "that this decision cost me thirty thousand francs

handed over to Chantonnit. That peasant would take nothing else; he sold us peace.If you give away les

"We will marry Rosalie to Monsieur de Soulas; if you give her les Rouxey, keep the life interest. I will give

them fifteen thousand francs a year in the funds. Our children can live here; I do not see that they are much to

"You are a queer man with your daughter! It does not occur to you to ask me if I am fond of les Rouxey."

Rosalie, at once sent for, was informed that she was to marry Monsieur de Soulas one day early in the month

"I am very much obliged to you, mother, and to you too, father, for having thought of settling me; but I do not

"Mere speeches!" said the Baroness. "You are not in love with Monsieur de Soulas, that is all."

"Oh! the never of a girl of nineteen!" retorted her mother, with a bitter smile.

"The never of Mademoiselle de Watteville," said Rosalie with firm decision. "My father, I imagine, has no

"Very well!" said the Baroness, sternly controlling the rage of a bigot startled at finding herself unexpectedly

defied, "you yourself, Monsieur de Watteville, may take the responsibility of settling your daughter. Consider

well, mademoiselle, for if you do not marry to my mind you will get nothing out of me!"

The quarrel thus begun between Madame de Watteville and her husband, who took his daughter's part, went

so far that Rosalie and her father were obliged to spend the summer at les Rouxey; life at the Hotel de Rupt

was unendurable. It thus became known in Besancon that Mademoiselle de Watteville had positively refused

After their marriage Mariette and Jerome came to les Rouxey to succeed to Modinier in due time. The Baron

restored and repaired the house to suit his daughter's taste. When she heard that these improvements had cost

about sixty thousand francs, and that Rosalie and her father were building a conservatory, the Baroness

understood that there was a leaven of spite in her daughter. The Baron purchased various outlying plots, and a

little estate worth thirty thousand francs. Madame de Watteville was told that, away from her, Rosalie showed

masterly qualities, that she was taking steps to improve the value of les Rouxey, that she had treated herself to

a riding habit and rode about; her father, whom she made very happy, who no longer complained of his

health, and who was growing fat, accompanied her in her expeditions. As the Baroness' nameday grew

nearher name was Louisethe Vicar General came one day to les Rouxey, deputed, no doubt, by

Madame de Watteville and Monsieur de Soulas, to negotiate a peace between mother and daughter.

After handsomely paying up the ninety thousand francs spent on les Rouxey, the Baroness allowed her

husband a thousand francs a month to live on; she would not put herself in the wrong. The father and

daughter were perfectly willing to return to Besancon for the 15th of August, and to remain there till the end

When, after dinner, the VicarGeneral took Mademoiselle de Watteville apart, to open the question of the

marriage, by explaining to her that it was vain to think any more of Albert, of whom they had had no news

for a year past, he was stopped at once by a sign from Rosalie. The strange girl took Monsieur de Grancey by

the arm, and led him to a seat under a clump of rhododendrons, whence there was a view of the lake.

"Listen, dear Abbe," said she. "You whom I love as much as my father, for you had an affection for my

Albert, I must at last confess that I committed crimes to become his wife, and he must be my

She held out to him a number of the Gazette which she had in her apron pocket, pointing out the following

"The wedding of Monsieur le Duc de Rhetore, eldest son of the Duc de Chaulieu, the former Ambassador, to

Madame la Duchesse d'Argaiolo, nee Princess Soderini, was solemnized with great splendor. Numerous

entertainments given in honor of the marriage are making Florence gay. The Duchess' fortune is one of the

Rosalie was about to reply, when she was interrupted by a loud cry from two of the gardeners, following on

the sound of a body falling into the water; she started, and ran off screaming, "Oh! father!"The Baron had

In trying to reach a piece of granite on which he fancied he saw the impression of a shell, a circumstance

which would have contradicted some system of geology, Monsieur de Watteville had gone down the slope,

lost his balance, and slipped into the lake, which, of course, was deepest close under the roadway. The men

had the greatest difficulty in enabling the Baron to catch hold of a pole pushed down at the place where the

water was bubbling, but at last they pulled him out, covered with mud, in which he had sunk; he was getting

deeper and deeper in, by dint of struggling. Monsieur de Watteville had dined heavily, digestion was in

When he had been undressed, washed, and put to bed, he was in such evident danger that two servants at once

set out on horseback: one to ride to Besancon, and the other to fetch the nearest doctor and surgeon. When

Madame de Watteville arrived, eight hours later, with the first medical aid from Besancon, they found

Monsieur de Watteville past all hope, in spite of the intelligent treatment of the Rouxey doctor. The fright had

produced serious effusion on the brain, and the shock to the digestion was helping to kill the poor man.

This death, which would never have happened, said Madame de Watteville, if her husband had stayed at

Besancon, was ascribed by her to her daughter's obstinacy. She took an aversion for Rosalie, abandoning

herself to grief and regrets that were evidently exaggerated. She spoke of the Baron as "her dear lamb!"

The last of the Wattevilles was buried on an island in the lake at les Rouxey, where the Baroness had a little

Gothic monument erected of white marble, like that called the tomb of Heloise at PereLachaise.

A month after this catastrophe the mother and daughter had settled in the Hotel de Rupt, where they lived in

savage silence. Rosalie was suffering from real sorrow, which had no visible outlet; she accused herself of

her father's death, and she feared another disaster, much greater in her eyes, and very certainly her own work;

neither Girardet the attorney nor the Abbe de Grancey could obtain any information concerning Albert. This

silence was appalling. In a paroxysm of repentance she felt that she must confess to the VicarGeneral the

horrible machinations by which she had separated Francesca and Albert. They had been simple, but

formidable. Mademoiselle de Watteville had intercepted Albert's letters to the Duchess as well as that in

which Francesca announced her husband's illness, warning her lover that she could write to him no more

during the time while she was devoted, as was her duty, to the care of the dying man. Thus, while Albert was

wholly occupied with election matters, the Duchess had written him only two letters; one in which she told

him that the Duc d'Argaiolo was in danger, and one announcing her widowhoodtwo noble and beautiful

After several nights' labor she succeeded in imitating Albert's writing very perfectly. She had substituted

three letters of her own writing for three of Albert's, and the rough copies which she showed to the old priest

made him shudderthe genius of evil was revealed in them to such perfection. Rosalie, writing in Albert's

name, had prepared the Duchess for a change in the Frenchman's feelings, falsely representing him as

faithless, and she had answered the news of the Duc d'Argaiolo's death by announcing the marriage ere long

of Albert and Mademoiselle de Watteville. The two letters, intended to cross on the road, had, in fact, done

so. The infernal cleverness with which the letters were written so much astonished the VicarGeneral that he

read them a second time. Francesca, stabbed to the heart by a girl who wanted to kill love in her rival, had

"Purely moral crimes, which give no hold to human justice, are the most atrocious and detestable," said the

Abbe severely. "God often punishes them on earth; herein lies the reason of the terrible catastrophes which to

us seem inexplicable. Of all secret crimes buried in the mystery of private life, the most disgraceful is that of

breaking the seal of a letter, or of reading it surreptitiously. Every one, whoever it may be, and urged by

whatever reason, who is guilty of such an act has stained his honor beyond retrieving.

"Do you not feel all that is touching, that is heavenly in the story of the youthful page, falsely accused, and

carrying the letter containing the order for his execution, who sets out without a thought of ill, and whom

Providence protects and savesmiraculously, we say! But do you know wherein the miracle lies? Virtue has

"I say these things not meaning to admonish you," said the old priest, with deep grief. "I, alas! am not your

spiritual director; you are not kneeling at the feet of God; I am your friend, appalled by dread of what your

punishment may be. What has become of that unhappy Albert? Has he, perhaps, killed himself? There was

tremendous passion under his assumption of calm. I understand now that old Prince Soderini, the father of the

Duchess d'Argaiolo, came here to take back his daughter's letters and portraits. This was the thunderbolt that

fell on Albert's head, and he went off, no doubt, to try to justify himself. But how is it that in fourteen months

"Happy?He does not love you. Besides, you have no great fortune to give him. Your mother detests you;

you made her a fierce reply which rankles, and which will be your ruin. When she told you yesterday that

obedience was the only way to repair your errors, and reminded you of the need for marrying, mentioning

Amedee'If you are so fond of him, marry him yourself, mother!'Did you, or did you not, fling these

"Well, I know her," Monsieur de Grancey went on. "In a few months she will be Comtesse de Soulas! She

will be sure to have children; she will give Monsieur de Soulas forty thousand francs a year; she will benefit

him in other ways, and reduce your share of her fortune as much as possible. You will be poor as long as she

lives, and she is but eightandthirty! Your whole estate will be the land of les Rouxey, and the small share

left to you after your father's legal debts are settled, if, indeed, your mother should consent to forego her

claims on les Rouxey. From the point of view of material advantages, you have done badly for yourself; from

the point of view of feeling, I imagine you have wrecked your life. Instead of going to your mother"

"To your mother," the priest went on, "and to religion, where you would, at the first impulse of your heart,

have found enlightenment, counsel, and guidance, you chose to act in your own way, knowing nothing of life,

"Well, I will write to the only man who can know anything of Albert's fate, Monsieur Leopold Hannequin, a

"Write no more, unless to do honor to truth," said the VicarGeneral. "Place the real and the false letters in

my hands, confess everything in detail as though I were the keeper of your conscience, asking me how you

may expiate your sins, and doing as I bid you. I shall see for, above all things, restore this unfortunate man

to his innocence in the eyes of the woman he had made his divinity on earth. Though he has lost his

Rosalie promised to obey the Abbe, hoping that the steps he might take would perhaps end in bringing Albert

Not long after Mademoiselle de Watteville's confession a clerk came to Besancon from Monsieur Leopold

Hannequin, armed with a power of attorney from Albert; he called first on Monsieur Girardet, begging his

assistance in selling the house belonging to Monsieur Savaron. The attorney undertook to do this out of

friendship for Albert. The clerk from Paris sold the furniture, and with the proceeds could repay some money

owed by Savaron to Girardet, who on the occasion of his inexplicable departure had lent him five thousand

francs while undertaking to collect his assets. When Girardet asked what had become of the handsome and

noble pleader, to whom he had been so much attached, the clerk replied that no one knew but his master, and

that the notary had seemed greatly distressed by the contents of the last letter he had received from Monsieur

On hearing this, the VicarGeneral wrote to Leopold. This was the worthy notary's reply:

"Alas, monsieur, it is in nobody's power to restore Albert to the life of the world; he has renounced it. He is a

novice in the monastery of the Grand Chartreuse near Grenoble. You know, better than I who have but just

learned it, that on the threshold of that cloister everything dies. Albert, foreseeing that I should go to him,

placed the General of the Order between my utmost efforts and himself. I know his noble soul well enough to

be sure that he is the victim of some odious plot unknown to us; but everything is at an end. The Duchesse

d'Argaiolo, now Duchesse de Rhetore, seems to me to have carried severity to an extreme. At Belgirate,

which she had left when Albert flew thither, she had left instructions leading him to believe that she was

living in London. From London Albert went in search of her to Naples, and from Naples to Rome, where she

was now engaged to the Duc de Rhetore. When Albert succeeded in seeing Madame d'Argaiolo, at Florence,

"Our poor friend swooned in the church, and even when he was in danger of death he could never obtain any

explanation from this woman, who must have had I know not what in her heart. For seven months Albert had

traveled in pursuit of a cruel creature who thought it sport to escape him; he knew not where or how to catch

"I saw him on his way through Paris; and if you had seen him, as I did, you would have felt that not a word

might be spoken about the Duchess, at the risk of bringing on an attack which might have wrecked his reason.

If he had known what his crime was, he might have found means to justify himself; but being falsely accused

of being married!what could he do? Albert is dead, quite dead to the world. He longed for rest; let us hope

that the deep silence and prayer into which he has thrown himself may give him happiness in another guise.

You, monsieur, who have known him, must greatly pity him; and pity his friends also.

As soon as he received this letter the good VicarGeneral wrote to the General of the Carthusian order, and

"Brother Albert to Monsieur l'Abbe de Grancey, VicarGeneral of the Diocese of Besancon.

"I recognized your tender soul, dear and wellbeloved Vicar General, and your still youthful heart, in all

that the reverend Father General of our Order has just told me. You have understood the only wish that lurks

in the depths of my heart so far as the things of the world are concernedto get justice done to my feelings

by her who has treated me so badly! But before leaving me at liberty to avail myself of your offer, the

General wanted to know that my vocation was sincere; he was so kind as to tell me his idea, on finding that I

was determined to preserve absolute silence on this point. If I had yielded to the temptation to rehabilitate the

man of the world, the friar would have been rejected by this monastery. Grace has certainly done her work,

but, though short, the struggle was not the less keen or the less painful. Is not this enough to show you that I

"Hence my forgiveness, which you ask for the author of so much woe, is entire and without a thought of

vindictiveness. I will pray to God to forgive that young lady as I forgive her, and as I shall beseech Him to

give Madame de Rhetore a life of happiness. Ah! whether it be death, or the obstinate hand of a young girl

madly bent on being loved, or one of the blows ascribed to chance, must we not all obey God? Sorrow in

some souls makes a vast void through which the Divine Voice rings. I learned too late the bearings of this life

on that which awaits us; all in me is worn out; I could not serve in the ranks of the Church Militant, and I lay

"This is the last time I shall ever write. You alone, who loved me, and whom I loved so well, could make me

break the law of oblivion I imposed on myself when I entered these headquarters of Saint Bruno, but you are

When he showed this letter to Rosalie, who, with a pious impulse, kissed the lines which contained her

"Well, now that he is lost to you, will you not be reconciled to your mother and marry the Comte de Soulas?"

"But you see it is impossible to consult him. The General of the Order would not allow it."

"No Carthusian sees any visitor. Besides, no woman but the Queen of France may enter a Carthusian

monastery," said the Abbe. "So you have no longer any excuse for not marrying young Monsieur de Soulas."

Towards the end of that winter the worthy Abbe de Grancey died. This good friend no longer stood between

Madame de Watteville and her daughter, to soften the impact of those two iron wills.

The event he had foretold took place. In the month of August 1837 Madame de Watteville was married to

Monsieur de Soulas in Paris, whither she went by Rosalie's advice, the girl making a show of kindness and

sweetness to her mother. Madame de Watteville believed in this affection on the part of her daughter, who

simply desired to go to Paris to give herself the luxury of a bitter revenge; she thought of nothing but

Mademoiselle de Watteville had been declared legally of age; she was, in fact, not far from oneandtwenty.

Her mother, to settle with her finally, had resigned her claims on les Rouxey, and the daughter had signed a

release for all the inheritance of the Baron de Watteville. Rosalie encouraged her mother to marry the Comte

Madame de Soulas, who had been uneasy as to her daughter's intentions, was touched by this liberality, and

made her a present of six thousand francs a year in the funds as conscience money. As the Comtesse de

Soulas had an income of fortyeight thousand francs from her own lands, and was quite incapable of

alienating them in order to diminish Rosalie's share, Mademoiselle de Watteville was still a fortune to marry,

of eighteen hundred thousand francs; les Rouxey, with the Baron's additions, and certain improvements,

might yield twenty thousand francs a year, besides the value of the house, rents, and preserves. So Rosalie

and her mother, who soon adopted the Paris style and fashions, easily obtained introductions to the best

society. The golden keyeighteen hundred thousand francs embroidered on Mademoiselle de Watteville's

stomacher, did more for the Comtesse de Soulas than her pretensions a la de Rupt, her inappropriate pride, or

In the month of February 1838 Rosalie, who was eagerly courted by many young men, achieved the purpose

which had brought her to Paris. This was to meet the Duchesse de Rhetore, to see this wonderful woman, and

to overwhelm her with perennial remorse. Rosalie gave herself up to the most bewildering elegance and

They first met at a ball given annually after 1830 for the benefit of the pensioners on the old Civil List. A

"There is a very remarkable young person, a strongminded young lady too! She drove a clever man into a

monasterythe Grand Chartreusea man of immense capabilities, Albert de Savarus, whose career she

The Duchess turned pale. Rosalie's eyes met hers with one of those flashes which, between woman and

woman, are more fatal than the pistol shots of a duel. Francesca Soderini, who had suspected that Albert

might be innocent, hastily quitted the ballroom, leaving the speaker at his wits' end to guess what terrible

"If you want to hear more about Albert, come to the Opera ball on Tuesday with a marigold in your hand."

This anonymous note, sent by Rosalie to the Duchess, brought the unhappy Italian to the ball, where

Mademoiselle de Watteville placed in her hand all Albert's letters, with that written to Leopold Hannequin by

the VicarGeneral, and the notary's reply, and even that in which she had written her confession to the Abbe

"I do not choose to be the only sufferer," she said to her rival, "for one has been as ruthless as the other."

After enjoying the dismay stamped on the Duchess' beautiful face, Rosalie went away; she went out no more,

Mademoiselle de Watteville, who lived alone on her estate of les Rouxey, riding, hunting, refusing two or

three offers a year, going to Besancon four or five times in the course of the winter, and busying herself with

improving her land, was regarded as a very eccentric personage. She was one of the celebrities of the Eastern

Madame de Soulas has two children, a boy and a girl, and she has grown younger; but Monsieur de Soulas

"My fortune has cost me dear," said he to young Chavoncourt. "Really to know a bigot it is unfortunately

Mademoiselle de Watteville behaves in the most extraordinary manner. "She has vagaries," people say. Every

year she goes to gaze at the walls of the Grande Chartreuse. Perhaps she dreams of imitating her granduncle

by forcing the walls of the monastery to find a husband, as Watteville broke through those of his monastery

She left Besancon in 1841, intending, it was said, to get married; but the real reason of this expedition is still

unknown, for she returned home in a state which forbids her ever appearing in society again. By one of those

chances of which the Abbe de Grancey had spoken, she happened to be on the Loire in a steamboat of which

the boiler burst. Mademoiselle de Watteville was so severely injured that she lost her right arm and her left

leg; her face is marked with fearful scars, which have bereft her of her beauty; her health, cruelly upset,

leaves her few days free from suffering. In short, she now never leaves the Chartreuse of les Rouxey, where

Rhetore, Duc Alphonse de A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a

Schinner, Hippolyte The Purse A Bachelor's Establishment Pierre Grassou A Start in Life The Government