From the chimney above the roof rose a thick column of
smoke.

*' While all the world is sleeping, he is awake like God ! "
thought she.

The education of girls brings with it such serious problems
for the future of a nation is in the mother that the Uni-
versity of France long since set itself the task of having noth-
ing 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 Agns, and you leave this suppressed mind, so
fresh and clear-seeing, as swift and as logical as that of a sav-



ALBERT SAVARON. 307

age, 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 abbds of the Chapter of
Besangon imprudently allowed himself to sketch at a dinner
party.

Next morning, Mademoiselle de Watteville, while dressing,
necessarily looked out at Albert Savaron walking in the garden
adjoining that of the Hotel de Rupt.

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

Having seen this extraordinary man, though at a distance,
the only man whose countenance stood forth in contrast with
crowds of Besanc.on faces she had hitherto met with, Rosalie
at once jumped at the idea of getting into his hpme, of ascer-
taining the reasons of so much mystery, of hearing that elo-
quent 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 inter-
view with the Abbe Giroud at Saint-Pierre, and managed
so ingeniously that the hour for her confession was fixed for
Sunday morning at half-past seven, before 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 turn-
ing, 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



808 ALBERT SAVARON.

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 I " replied Monsieur de Watteville, who
groaned as bitterly as his daughter under the tyranny of the
terrible descendant of the Rupts.

So Rosalie had a certain prospect of seeing ere long a
charming observatory built, whence her eyes would command
the lawyer's private room. And there are men for whose
sake young girls can carry out such master-strokes of di-
plomacy, 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, the ladies'
maid, smile.

"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 more
particular on some days than on others."

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 quarter-past eight, telling her mother eight, so as to have
about a quarter of an hour near Albert. She got to church



ALBER T SAVAR ON. 309

before mass, and after a short prayer, went to see if the Abb6
Giroud were in his confessional, simply to pass the time ; and
she thus placed herself in such a way as to see Albert as he
came into church.

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 indescribable stamp which can
only be expressed by the word mystery.

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. Ro-
salie now understood the vicar-general's words in their fullest
extent. Yes, those eyes of tawny brown, shot with golden
lights, covered an 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 and boiled as
though its warmth were doubled.

As soon as Albert had taken a seat, Mademoiselle de Watte-
ville 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 interval had lasted no more than a few minutes. By
the time she came out from the confessional, mass was over.
Albert had left the church.

"The vicar-general was right," thought she. "He is
unhappy. Why should this eagle for he has the eyes of an
eagle swoop down on Besancon ? Oh ! I must know every-
thing ! But how?"

Under the smart of this new desire Rosalie set the stitches



310 ALBERT SAVARON.

of her worsted-work with exquisite precision, and hid her
meditations under a little innocent air, which shammed sim-
plicity to deceive Madame de Watteville.

From that Sunday, when Mademoiselle de Watteville had
met that look, or, if you please, received this baptism of fire
a fine expression of Napoleon's which may be well applied to
love she eagerly promoted the plan for the Belvedere.

''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 garden. Do you
approve of it ? It seems to me "

" 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 importance in itself,
if it only amuses Monsieur de Watteville ? "

" Well, because from thence we shall see into Monsieur de
Soulas' rooms, and Monsieur de Soulaswill see us when we are
there. Perhaps remarks may be made "

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

"I say no more, mamma. Besides, my father said that
there would be a room in the grotto, where it would be cool,
and where we can take coffee."

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

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



ALBERT SAVARON. 3H

rock-work, 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 flower-stands, with a looking-glass 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 Besangon.

" They are rich, and can afford a thousand crowns for a

whim "

''A thousand crowns!" exclaimed Madame de Chavon-
court.

" 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 to carve the wood."
" Berquet is to make a cellar under it," said an abb.
" No," replied young Monsieur de Soulas, " he is raising
the kiosk on a concrete foundation, that it may not be
damp."

" You know the very least things that are done in that
house," said Madame de Chavoncourt sourly, as she looked at
one of her great girls waiting to be married for a year past.

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 defense of the Cathedral Chapter
was all the sooner forgotten because the envy of other lawyers
was aroused. Also, Savaron, faithful to his seclusion, went
nowhere. Having no friends to cry him up, and seeing no



312 ALBERT S AVAR ON.

one, he increased the chances of being forgotten which are
common to strangers in such a town as Besancon. Neverthe-
less, 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 discernment 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 ten first
clients, on whom he had impressed the necessity for promo-
ting the interests of Besancon, the town where the traffic
should meet between Mulhouse and Lyons, and the chief
centre between Mulhouse and the Rhone.

To compete with Strasbourg, was it not needful that Besan-
con 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 Albert, were repeated by the ten merchants,
who believed them to be their own.

Monsieur Savaron did not commit the blunder of putting his
name in front ; he left the finances 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, Lous-le-
Saulnier. The concurrence was invited of the learning and



ALBERT S AVAR ON. 313

energy of every scientific student in the districts of le Bugey,
la Bresse, and Franche Comt6. By the influence of com-
mercial interests and common feeling, five hundred sub-
scribers 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 two-and-twenty, 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 num-
ber 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 com-
mercial world, enchanted at the success of the Review, had to
pay up only three-tenths 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 ex-
change 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 dis-
cussion that mid-winter at Madame de Chavoncourt's.



314 ALBERT S AVAR ON.

"Papa," said Rosalie, " a Review is published in Besan-
gon ; you ought to take it in ; and keep it in your room,
for mamma would not let me read it, but you will lend it to
me."

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 loaned
the four numbers already out to his daughter. In the course
of the night Rosalie devoured the tale the first she had ever
read in her life but 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 inventive-
ness, relate their private joys, their private griefs, or the mys-
terious events of their own life:

AMBITION FOR LOVE'S SAKE.

In 1823 two young men, having agreed as a plan for a holi-
day to make a tour through Switzerland, set out from Lucerne



ALBERT SAVARON. 315

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 distance.

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 stand-
ing 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 thus indifferently given by the unknown fair one.

" 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 which house I take a lodging, where
you will find me on your return."

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

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,



316 ALBERT S AVAR ON.

by his father's determination, was already pledged to a place
in a notary's office in Paris. His spirit of rectitude, his gen-
tleness, and the coolness of his senses and his brain, guaran-
teed him to be a docile pupil. Leopold could see himself a
notary in Paris : his life lay before him like one of the high-
roads 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 Ro-
dolphe, 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 re-
course 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 with-
out 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 of all her joys.

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 every-
thing shown a most ardent nature. In him mere desire be-
came 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



ALBERT SAVARON. 317

wished for things as a poet imagines, as a mathematician cal-
culates, as a painter sketches, as a musician creates melodies.
Tender-hearted, 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 fulfillment of
his schemes, he always overlooked the means of attainment.
"When my son has children," said his mother, "he will
want them born grown up."

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 judi-
cious 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 com-
rade, 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 three-and- forty, had inspired Leopold with
an ardent passion. This circumstance made the two young
men even more intimate.

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 pre-
pared 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 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



318 ALBERT S AVAR ON.

a roadway and a little creek from the new house, where Ro-
dolphe had caught sight of the unknown fair one's face.

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 bar-
gained 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 Saint-Gothard, 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 din-
ner, in the company of Monsieur and Madame Stopfer,
retired coopers from Neufch&tel, 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 out their budget of gossip without any
pressing.

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 head-gardeners
of his excellency Count Borromeo of Isola Bella and Isola
Madre in the Lago Maggiore. These Swiss, who were pos-
sessed of an income of about a thousand crowns a year, had



ALBERT S AVAR ON. 319

let the top story of their house to the Lovelaces for three