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 true to each other.'

"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 vicar-general.

" Now I am overwhelmed with business, and I understand
no cases but those brought me by merchants, saying that com-
mercial 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 Besan^on,
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 considera-



368 ALBERT S AVAR ON.

tion between you and me. You will get the interest out of
the rental, and I shall take good care to lookout for some-
thing 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 have 1 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 in-
most 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
pedestal for my idol.

" 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 the right to be
happy ! Of how many men has this been the fate !

" 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



ALBERT SAVARON. 359

my plan ; if, after stooping to the dust of provincial life, prowl-
ing like a starving tiger round these tradesmen, these electors,
to secure their votes ; if, after wrangling in these squalid
cases, and giving them my time the 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 heavy languor ; deep
disgust surges up from the depths of my soul, especially when,
abandoned to long day-dreams, I have lost myself in anticipa-
tion of the joys of blissful love ! May it not be that our de-
sire 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,
and love.

"Farewell, my friend; I send love to your children, and
beg you to remember me to your excellent wife. Yours,

"ALBERT."

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 centred
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



360 ALBERT S AVAR ON.

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 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 made pope give himself more trouble ?

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 and turn pale again as she
read the address :

To Madame la Duchess e (f Argaiolo
(n&e Princesse Soderini),

At Belgirate,

Lago Maggiore, Italy.

In her eyes this direction blazed as the words Mene, 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 her-
self whether, if he knew of her crime, infamous inasmuch as-
it necessarily goes unpunished, the high-minded Albert could



ALBERT S AVAR ON. 361

esteem her. Her conscience answered an uncompromising
"No."

She had expiated her sin by self-imposed 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 acts 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
love?"

When Rosalie was in bed she opened the letter, dated from
day to day, so as to give the Duchess a faithful picture of
Albert's life and feelings.



" 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 can never become one.
The worthy man wanted to show his gratitude without loosen-
ing his purse-strings by saying to me, ' Would you care to sit
in the Chamber ? I can get you returned as deputy.'

" ' If I ever made up my mind to enter on a political
career,' replied I hypocritically, ' it would be to devote
myself to the Comte, which I love, and where I am appre-
ciated.'

" 'Well,' he said, ' we will persuade you, and through you



362 ALBERT SAVAROM.

we shall have weight in the Chamber, for you will distinguish
yourself there.'

" And so, my beloved angel, say what you will, my perse-
verance 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 the hundred voices
of the French press.

"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 Due 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 vicar-general, of the persons I can oblige, and of this
client, make my election already sure.

" 26^.

" 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 thirty-
two, I am thirty-five; the dear Duke is seventy-seven that 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 to-day, 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 on which I saw you for
the first time, when my life became one with yours as the
earth turns to the light. Qua/ pianto are these eleven years,
for this is the z6th of December, the anniversary of my arrival



ALBERT S AVAR ON. 363

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 it.

" -2.1th.

" 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 remain pure and unaltered in the form of their
first youth. Is it the Tedeschi that you regret ?

2%th.

"Is your statue never to be finished? I should wish to
have you in marble, in painting, in miniature, in every pos-
sible 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
to-day I can only write you nothing but that nothing is
everything. Was it not of nothing that God made the world?
That nothing is a word, God's word : I love you !



"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 trans-
formation of your fierce Sormano into Gina cause you to
laugh ?



364 ALBERT S AVAR ON.

" You ask after my health. Well, it is better than in Paris.
Though I work enormously, the peacefulness of the surround-
ings has its effect on the mind. What really tries and ages
me, dear angel, is the anguish of mortified vanity, the per-
petual 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 life.

" 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 give
me! Is she ill? Is he? I am midway between hell and
paradise.

" O mia cara diva, keep up your music, exercise your voice,
practice. I am enchanted with the -coincidence of employ-
ments 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 here
I forgot to tell you this I 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 Chamber oh !
you must come to Paris to be present at my first appearance
there !



ALBERT SAVARON. 365

" 3oM, Evening,

" Good heavens, how I love you ! Alas ! I have in-
trusted 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 Oimk
or an Alberto ! To walk by the blossoming orange trees, 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 too fierce
to allow of it.

" 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 will-o'-the-wisp."

"How he loves her! " cried Rosalie, dropping the letter,
which seemed heavy in her hand. "After eleven years, to
write like this ! "

"Mariette," said Mademoiselle de Watteville to her maid
next morning, " go and post this letter. Tell Jerome that I
know all I wished 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 alone am guilty."

" Mademoiselle has been crying?" said Mariette, noticing
Rosalie's eyes.



366 ALBERT S AVAR ON.

" 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 lis-
tened 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 every-
thing, without allowing themselves any criminal acts or wishes.
She felt a better woman, and had a certain sense of satisfac-
tion 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 I I 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 my money; if I
were poor, he would not even look at me."

"Rosalie, my child, what are you thinking about? You
are working beyond the outline," said the Baroness to her
daughter, who was making worsted-work slippers for the Baron.

Rosalie spent the winter of 1834-35 torn by secret tumult;
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 pas-
sion 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 which ought to
serve them as a warning.

In the course of this winter Albert Savaron had quietly made
considerable progress in Besancon. Most confident of suc-
cess, he now impatiently awaited the dissolution of the



ALBERT S AVAR ON. 367

Chamber. Among the men of the moderate party he had
won the suffrages of one of the makers of Besan^on, 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 Bensacon they
drank the water from Arcier, a hill at some considerable dis-
tance from Besancon. The town stands in a horseshoe circum-
scribed 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 a 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 legiti-
mists, 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
Besanon as in the matter of the two railways to Versailles
as for every standing abuse there were private interests un-
confessed 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



368 ALBERT S AVAR ON.

influence without stirring from his own room. He had
solved the singular problem of how to be powerful without
being popular.

In the course of this winter he won seven lawsuits for vari-
ous priests of Besan9on. 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 bought, ostensibly
to serve a merchant who was in difficulties, with money loaned
him by Leopold Hannequin, a house which gave him a quali-
fication for election. He had not seemed to seek or desire
this advantageous bargain.

"You are really a remarkable man," said the Abbe de
Grancey, who, of course, had watched and understood the
lawyer. The vicar-general 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
Savaron.

Rosalie, on her part, had made up her mind, in her strong
girl's head, to get Monsieur de Savaron into the drawing-room
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 truce.

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
indifference for his wife was to have, and in fact had, forty
thousand francs a year left the management of Les Rouxey to
a sort of factotum, an old servant of the Wattevilles named



ALBERT S AVAR ON. 369

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 spot.

Between two precipitous hills little peaks with bare sum-
mits known as the great and the little Rouxey in 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,
hitherto devastated by the torrent. This lake, this valley,
and these two hills he enclosed in a ring fence, and built him-
self 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 canals.

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 right-of-way 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 farther 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 the
Dent de Vilard. Thus he died the master of the Dent de
Vilard.

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
24



370 ALBERT S AVAR ON.

by planting trees and making a fine road over the shoulder of
one of the Rouxey hills to join the high-road. 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 sub-