sacrifice of the mass to implore His mercy for the sinner after
so grand a repentance."
The office was finished. Veronique followed all that was
said with an expression of such inward peace that she no
longer seemed to be the same woman. Her face wore a look
of frank innocence, such as it might have worn in the days
when, a pure and ingenuous girl, she dwelt under her father's
roof. Her brows grew white in the dawn of eternity, her face
glowed golden in the light of Heaven. Doubtless she caught
something of its mystic harmonies; and in her longing to be
made one with God on earth for the last time, she exerted all
her powers of vitality to live. M. Bonnet came to the bedside
and gave her absolution; the Archbishop anointed her with
the holy oil, with a fatherly tenderness that revealed to those
who stood about how dear he held this sheep that had been
lost and was found. With that holy anointing the eyes that
had wrought such mischief on earth were closed to the things
of earth, the seal of the Church was set on those too eloquent
THE COUNTRY PARSON 267
lips, and the ears that had listened to the inspirations of evil
were closed for ever. All the senses, mortified by penitence,
were thus sanctified; the spirit of evil could have no power
over this soul.
Never had all the grandeur and deep meaning of a sacra-
ment been apprehended more thoroughly than by those who
saw the Church's care thus justified by the dying woman's
confession. After that preparation, Veronique received the
Body of Christ with a look of hope and joy that melted the
icy barrier of unbelief at which the cure had so often knocked
in vain. Roubaud, confounded, became a Catholic from that
moment.
Awful as this scene was, it was no less touching; and in
its solemnity, as of the culminating-point of a drama, it
might have given some painter the subject of a masterpiece.
When the mournful episode was over, and the words of the
Gospel of St. John fell on the ears of the dying woman, she
beckoned to her mother to bring Francis back again. (The
tutor had taken the boy out of the room.) When Francis
knelt on the step by the bedside, the mother whose sins had
been forgiven felt free to lay her hands in blessing on his
head, and so she drew her last breath, La Sauviat standing at
the post she had filled for twenty years, faithful to the end.
It was she, a heroine after her manner, who closed the eyes
of the daughter who had suffered so much, and laid a kiss on
them.
Then all the priests and assistants came round the bed,
and intoned the dread chant De profundis by the light of
the flaming torches; and from those sounds the people of the
whole countryside kneeling without, together with the friends
and all the servants praying in the hall, knew that the mother
of the canton had passed away. Groans and sobs mingled
with the chanting. The noble woman's confession had not
passed beyond the threshold of the drawing-room; it had
reached none but friendly ears. When the peasants came
from Montegnac, and all the district round about came in,
each with a green spray, to bid their benefactress a supreme
268 THE COUNTRY PARSON
farewell mingled with tears and prayers, they saw a repre-
sentative of man's justice, bowed down with anguish, holding
the cold hand of the woman to whom all unwittingly he had
meted out such a cruel but just punishment.
Two days later, and the public prosecutor, with Grossetete,
the Archbishop, and the mayor, bore the pall when Mme.
Graslin was carried to her last resting-place. Amid deep
silence they laid her in the grave; no one uttered a word,
for no one had the heart to speak, and all eyes were full of
tears.
"She is a saint !" Everywhere the words were repeated
along the roads which she had made, in the canton which
owed its prosperity to her. It was as if the words were sown
abroad across her fields to quicken the life in them. It struck
nobody as a strange thing that Mme. Graslin should be buried
beside Jean-Frangois Tascheron. She had not asked this;
but a trace of pitying tenderness in the old mother prompted
her to bid the sacristan put those together whom earth had
separated by a violent death, whom one repentance should
unite in Purgatory.
Mme. Graslin's will fulfilled all expectations. She founded
scholarships in the school at Limoges, and beds in the hos-
pital, intended for the working classes only. A considerable
sum (three hundred thousand francs in a period of six years)
was left to purchase that part of the village called "Tasche-
ron's," and for building an almshouse there. It was to serve
as an asylum for the sick and aged poor of the district, a
lying-in hospital for destitute women, and a home for found-
ling children, and was to be known by the name of Tasche-
ron's Almshouse. Veronique directed that it was to be placed
in the charge of the Franciscan Sisters, and fixed the salary of
the head physician and house surgeon at four thousand francs.
Mme. Graslin begged Roubaud to be the first head physician,
and to superintend the execution of the sanitary arrange-
ments and plans to be made by the architect, M. Gerard. She
also endowed the commune of Montegnac with sufficient land
to pay the taxes. A certain fund was put in the hands of the
THE COUNTRY PARSON 269
Church to be used as determined in some exceptional cases 1 ,
for the Church was to be the guardian of the young; and if
any of the children in Montegnac should show a special apti-
tude for art or science or industrial pursuits, the far-sighted
benevolence of the testatrix provided thus for their encour-
agement.
The tidings of her death were received as the news of a
calamity "to the whole country, and no word that reflected on
her memory went with it. This silence was the homage paid
to her virtues by a devoutly Catholic and hardworking popula-
tion, which is about to repeat the miracles of the Lettres
edifiantes in this corner of France.
Gerard, appointed Francis Graslin's guardian, was required
by the terms of the will to live at the chateau, and thither he
went ; but not until three months after Veronique's death did
he marry Denise Tascheron, in whom Francis found, as it
were, a second mother.
ALBERT SAVARUS
To Madame Emile Girardin.
ONE of the few drawing-rooms where, under the Restoration,
the Archbishop of Besangon was sometimes to be seen, was
that of the Baronne de Watteville, to whom he was particu-
larly attached on account of her religious sentiments.
A word as to this lady, the most important lady of
Besangon.
Monsieur de Watteville, a descendant of the famous Watte-
ville, the most successful and illustrious of murderers and
renegades his extraordinary adventures are too much a part
of history to be related here this nineteenth century Mon-
sieur de Watteville was as gentle and peaceable as his ancestor
of the Grand Siecle had been passionate and turbulent. After
living in the Comte* like a wood-louse in the crack of a wain-
scot, 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
coat-of-arms (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, de-
vout as a girl, became even more so after her marriage. She
* La Franche Comtfe.
(271)
272 ALBERT SAVARUS
is one of the queens of the saintly brotherhood which gives the
upper circles of Besangon 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 red-haired woman, and of a stern nature that be-
came proverbial (we still say "as sharp as Madame de Watte-
ville"), some wits of the legal profession declared that he had
been worn against that rock Rupt is obviously derived from
rupes. Scientific students of social phenomena will not fail
to have observed that Rosalie was the only offspring of the
union between the Wattevilles and the Rupts.
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. Philo-
sophical doctors, devoted to the study of madness, regard this
tendency towards collecting as a first degree of mental aberra-
tion when it is set on small things. The Baron de Watteville
treasured shells and geological fragments of the neighborhood
of Besangon. 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 himself into a
mechanical occupation and good living."
The house of the Rupts was not devoid of a certain magnifi-
cence worthy of Louis XIV., and bore traces of the nobility
of the two families who had mingled in 1815. The chande-
liers 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 looking-glass tray furnished
with Dresden china, the food was exquisite. The wines se-
lected 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
ALBERT SAVARUS 273
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 drawing-room
fire, and the men in groups by the windows, every one ex-
claimed with pleasure at the entrance of Monsieur 1'Abbe de
Grancey, who was announced.
"Well, and the lawsuit ?" they all cried.
"Won !" replied the Vicar-General. "The verdict of the
Court, from which we had no hope, you know why "
This was an allusion to the members of the First Court of
Appeal of 1830; the Legitimists had almost all withdrawn.
"The verdict is in our favor on every point, and reverses the
decision of the Lower Court."
"Everybody thought you were done for/'
"And we should have been, but for me. I told our advocate
to be off to Paris, and at the crucial moment I was able to
secure a new pleader, to whom we owe our victory, a wonder-
ful man
"At Besangon ?" said Monsieur de Watteville, guilelessly.
"At Besangon," replied the Abbe de Grancey.
"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 re-
appeared 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
274 ALBERT SAVARUS
in the person of the Counsel of our Municipality. 'Our ad-
versaries/ so our advocate said, 'must not expect to find readi-
ness on all sides to ruin the Archbishoprics.' The President
was obliged to enforce silence. All the townsfolk of Besangon
applauded. Thus the possession of the buildings of the old
convent remains with the Chapter of the Cathedral of Be-
sangon. Monsieur Savaron, however, invited his Parisian
opponent to dine with him as they came out of court. He ac-
cepted, saying, 'Honor to every conqueror/ and complimented
him on his success without bitterness."
"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
Vicar-General. "Monsieur Savaron lives in the Rue du Per-
ron ; the garden of his house joins on to yours."
"But he is not a native of the Comte," said Monsieur de
Watteville.
"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 dining-room. "If he is a stranger,
by what chance has he settled, at Besangon? It is ? strange
fancy for a barrister."
"Very strange !" echoed Amedee de Soulas, whose biography
is here necessary to the understanding of this tale.
In all ages France and England have carried on an ex-
change of trifles, which is all the more constant because it
evades the tyrann}' of the Custom-houpe. 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 points the uses of words and the fashion 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 in-
vented in London, it is known why, by a Frenchwoman, the
notorious Duchess of Portsmouth. They were at first so jeered
ALBERT SAVARUS 275
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 her across the bosom, gradually descended till it
reached the hips.
Within ten years England has made two little gifts to our
language. The Incroyable, the Merveilleux, the Elegant, the
three successes of the petit-maitre 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 Musset :
Avez vous vu dans Barcelona
G'est ma maitresse et ma lionne.
There has been a fusion or, if you prefer it, a confusion
of the two words and the leading ideas. When an absurdity
can amuse Paris, which devours as many masterpieces as ab-
surdities, 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 eye-socket, the chief towns of some departments
had their sub-lions, who protested by the smartness of their
trouser-straps against the untidiness of their fellow-towns-
men.
Thus, in 1834, Besangon could boast of a lion, in the person
of Monsieur Amedee-Sylvain de Soulas, spelt Souleyas at the
time of the Spanish occupation. Amedee de Soulas is perhaps
the only man in Besangon descended from a Spanish family.
Spain sent men to manage her business in the Cotnte, but very
few Spaniards settled there. The Soulas remained in conse-
276 ALBERT SAVARUS
quence of their connection with Cardinal Granvelle. Young
Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leaving Besangon, a
dull town, church-going, 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, thick-set, and named Babylas. The
lion dressed his tiger very smartly a short tunic-coat of iron-
gray cloth, belted with patent leather, bright blue plush
breeches, a red waistcoat, polished leather top-boots, 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 thirty-six francs a month to keep himself a
sum that seemed enormous to the grisettes of Besangon : 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 ex-
changed 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, pat-
ent 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
in rather bad repair, which required keeping up, a charge
which lent painful uncertainty to the rents. The lion had
hardly three francs a day left for food, amusements, and gam-
bling. He very often dined out, and breakfasted with remark-
able frugality. When he was positively obliged to dine at his
own cost, he sent his tigor to fetch a couple of dishes from a
cookshop, never spending more than twenty-five sous.
ALBERT SAVARUS 277
Young Monsieur de Soulas was supposed to be a spend-
thrift, 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 Besangon
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 twenty-five
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 advan-
tages, which a man can buy for fifteen louis, and get his hair
curled and a fine linen shirt into the bargain ?
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 well-informed traveler, and could say, "In Eng-
land, 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, "Mon-
sieur 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 ut-
tering 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 trinkets, and his head furnished with ideas
hall-marked by the press.
In 1834 Amedee was a young man of five-and-twenty, of
medium height, dark, with a very prominent thorax, well-
made shoulders, rather plump legs, feet already fat, white
dimpled hands, a beard under his chin, moustaches worthy of
278 ALBERT SAVARUS
the garrison, a good-natured, 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 Besanc/m. A hairdresser who
waited upon him at a fixed hour another luxury, costing
sixty francs a year held him up as the sovereign authority in
matters of fashion and elegance.
Amedee slept late, dressed and went out towards noon, to
go to one of his farms and practise pistol-shooting. He at-
tached as much importance to this exercise as Lord Byron did
in his later days. Then, at three o'clock he came home, ad-
mired on horseback by the grisettes and the ladies who hap-
pened 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 drawing-rooms of the
aristocracy of Besangon 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 services
at church on Sundays and holy days.
To enable you to understand how exceptional is such a life,
it is necessary to devote a few words to an account of Besangon.
No town ever offered more deaf and dumb resistance to prog-
ress. At Besangon 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 expres-
sive 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 Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean, the Boauffremont, the de
Scey, and the Gramont families, with a few others who come
ALBERT SAVARUS 279
only to stay on their estates in the Comte, the aristocracy of
Besangon 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, un-
compromising, haughty beyond all comparison, even with the
Court of Vienna, for in this the nobility of Besangon would
put the Viennese drawing-rooms to shame. As to Victor Hugo,
Nodier, Fourier, the glories of the town, they are never men-
tioned, 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 in-
truder, 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 mastered to use at a congress.
In 1834 Amedee was the only man in Besangon who wore
trouser-straps ; 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 Besangon.
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 Besangon by the great Gazette, and
the Patriot, which frisked in the hands of the Kepublicans.
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 chiet of the moderate
party, a member of the municipal council, sent for the journal-
ist and said to him, "You must understand, monsieur, that we
are serious, more than serious tiresome; we resent being
amused, and are furious at having been made to laugh. B<
as hard of digestion as the toughest disquisitions in the Revue
des Deux Mondes, and you will hardly reach the level of