Besangon."
The editor took the hint, and thenceforth spoke the most
incomprehensible philosophical lingo. His success was com-
plete.
280 ALBERT SAVARUS
If young Monsieur de Soulas did not fall in the esteem of
Besangon 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 visited the Comte a young
man who bore some likeness to them.
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 Besangon 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 best-dressed man there, in order to win first the
attention, and then the hand, of Mademoiselle Rosalie
de Watteville.
In 1830, at the time when young Monsieur de Soulas was
setting up in business as a dandy, Eosalie 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 many lions who become lions out of self-interest and spec-
ulation. The Wattevilles, who for twelve years had been
drawing an income of fifty thousand francs, did not spend
more than four-and-twenty thousand francs a year, while
receiving all the upper circle of Besangon every Monday and
Friday. On Monday they gave a dinner, on Friday an even-
ing party. Thus, in twelve years, what a sum must have ac-
cumulated from twenty-six thousand francs a year, saved and
invested with the judgment that distinguishes those old fam-
ilies ! 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
ALBERT SAVARUS 281
which Amedee succeeded in keeping up his rank in Besangon,
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 allowed he alone in the world to 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 with-
out 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 Besangon 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 Eosalie 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 meant to go as Depute.
All these manoeuvres were crowned with complete success.
In 1834 the mothers of the forty noble families composing the
high society of Besangon 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 Eupt, and all Besangon regarded him as Eosalie de
Watteville's future husband. There had even been some ex-
change of ideas on the subject between the Baroness and
Amedee, to which the Baron's apparent nonentity gave some
certainty.
Mademoiselle de Watteville, to whom her enormous pros-
pective fortune at that time lent considerable importance,
had been brought up exclusively within the precincts of the
Hotel de Eupt which her mother rarely quitted, so devoied
282 ALBERT SAVARUS
was she to her dear Archbishop and severely repressed by an
exclusively religious education, and by her mother's despot-
ism, which held her rigidly to principles. Eosalie knew abso-
lutely 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 work plain sewing, embroidery, netting. At seven-
teen 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 morn-
ing, 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 dinner-time. Then,
after dinner, excepting on Mondays and Fridays, she accom-
panied 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 fore-
head, which was shapely enough. Her face was exactly like
those of Albert Diirer'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, and a pretty foot, the foot of an aristo-
crat.
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 Besangon, almost made her ugly,
ALBERT SAVARUS 283
while her mother tried to borrow grace, beauty, and elegance
from Paris fashions ; for through Monsieur de Soulas she pro-
cured the smallest trifles of her dress from thence. Eosalie
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, and
had bronze kid shoes.
This education, and her own modest demeanor, hid in
Eosalie a spirit of iron. Physiologists and profound ob-
servers will tell you, perhaps to your great 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 phe-
nomenon in George Sand, in whom are resuscitated the force,
the power, and the imaginative faculty of the Marechal de
Saxe, whose natural granddaughter she is.
The decisive character and romantic daring of the famous
Watteville had reappeared in the soul of his grand-niece, re-
inforced by the tenacity and pride of blood of the Eupts. But
these qualities or faults, if you will have it so were 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 Eosalie, that she replied one day to the Arch-
bishop, who blamed her for being too hard on the child, "Leave
me to manage her, monseigneur. I know her ! She has more
than one Beelzebub in her skin !"
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 Eupt, at
this time five-and-thirty, and as good as widowed, with a hus-
band who turned egg-cups in every variety of wood, who set
his mind on making wheels with six spokes out of iron-wood,
and manufactured snuff-boxes for everyone of his acquaint-
ance, flirted in strict propriety with Amedee de Soulas. When
284 ALBERT SAVARUS
this young man was in the house, she alternately dismissed and
recalled her daughter, and tried to detect symptoms of jeal-
ousy in that youthful soul, so as to have occasion to repress
them. She imitated the police in its dealings with the repub-
licans ; but she labored in vain. Eosalie 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 Jesuitical wrongly, be-
cause 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 mis-
chance a spark of the true nature of the Wattevilles and the
Eupts blazed out, the mother armed herself with the respect
due from children to their parents to reduce Rosalie to
passive obedience.
This covert battle was carried on in the most secret se-
clusion of domestic life, with closed doors. The Vicar-
General, the dear Abbe Grancey, the friend of the late Arch-
bishop, 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, con-
fessed 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, dis-
cerned only by her mother's eye, was a constant subject of
admonition.
"Rosalie, I cannot imagine why yon affect such coldness
towards Amedee. Is it because he is a friend of the family,
and because we like him your father and I ?"
ALBERT SAVARUS 285
"Well, mamma/' replied the poor child one day, "if I
made him welcome, should I not be still more in the wrong?"
"What do you mean by that?" cried Madame de Watte-
ville. "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 your lips again to
your mother " and so forth.
This quarrel lasted three hours and three-quarters. Eo-
salie noted the time. Her mother, pale with fury, sent her to
her room, where Eosalie 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 blacking an end which required so much
waxing of his moustaches, so many smart waistcoats, wore out
so many horseshoes and stays for he wore a leather vest, the
stays of the lion Amedee, I say, was further away than any
chance comer, although he had on his side the worthy and
noble Abbe de Grancey.
"Madame," said Monsieur de Soulas, addressing the Baron-
ess, 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 Ga-
lard's house, Eue 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 barristers to the Court, showing his title in due
form, and he left his card on all his new colleagues, the Min-
isterial officials, the Councillors of the Court, and the mem-
bers of the bench, with the name, 'ALBERT SAVARON.' ' ;
"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."
286 ALBERT SAVARUS
"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 bar-sinister. There is no one left
of the Brabant family but a Mademoiselle de Savarus, a rich
heiress, and unmarried/'
"The bar-sinister is, of course, the badge of a bastard ; but
the bastard of a Comte de Savarus is noble," answered
Eosalie.
"Enough, that will do, mademoiselle!" said the Baroness.
"You insisted on her learning heraldry," said Monsieur de
Watteville, "and she knows it very well."
"Go on, I beg, Monsieur de Soulas."
"You may suppose that in a town where everything is
classified, known, pigeon-holed, ticketed, and numbered, as
in Besangon, 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 Besangon. 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 man
Galard being dead Jerome, who can cook a little. Albert
Savaron was all the more completely forgotten, because no
one had seen him or met him anywhere."
"Then, does he not go to mass?" asked Madame de Cha-
voncourt.
"He goes on Sundays to Saint-Pierre, but to the early ser-
vice 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 fift) r , or perhaps sixty times ; then he goes in, dines, and
goes to bed between six and seven."
"How did you learn all that?" Madame de Chavoncourt
asked Monsieur de Soulas.
"In the first place, madame, I live in the Rue Neuve, at the
corner of the Eue du Perron ; I look out on the house where
this mysterious personage lodges; then, of course, there are
communications between my tiger and Jerome."
ALBERT SAVARUS 287
"And you gossip with Babylas?"
"What would you have me do out riding ?"
"Well and how was it that you engaged a stranger for
your defence?" asked the Baroness, thus placing the con-
versation in the hands of the Vicar-General.
"The President of the Court played this pleader a trick by
appointing him to defend at the Assizes a half-witted 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 mer-
chant, placed a difficult case next day in the hands of Mon-
sieur Savaron, and he won it. In the position in which we
found ourselves, Monsieur Berryer finding it impossible to
come to Besanc,on, 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 wrong."
"Is he then so extraordinary ?" asked Madame de Chavon-
court.
"Certainly, madame," replied the Vicar-General.
"Well, tell us about it," said Madame de Watteville.
"The first time I saw him," said the Abbe de Grancey, "he
received me in his outer room next the ante-room old Ga-
lard's drawing-room which he has had painted like old oak,
and which I found to be entirely lined with law-books, ar-
ranged 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 arm-
chairs covered with tapestry, window curtains of gray stuff
bordered with green, and a green carpet over the floor. The
ante-room 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
288 ALBERT SAVARUS
tied with a i\ d cord, red slippers, a red flannel waistcoat, and
a red smoking cap."
"The devil's Colors !" exclaimed Madame de Watteville.
"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 wo-
man'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 ; deep-set 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 needful, and lending itself to sarcasm to become in-
cisive.
"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 bed-
room, adjoining the library, and smiled at my astonishment
when I saw there a wretched chest of drawers, a shabby carpet,
a camp-bed, and cotton window-curtains. He came out of
his private room, to which no one is admitted, as Jerome in-
formed me ; the man did not go in, but merely knocked at the
door.
"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 long-winded, 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
ALBERT SAVARUS 289
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 pur-
pose did he come to Besangon?" asked pretty Madame de
Chavoncourt. "Could no one tell him how little chance a
stranger has of succeeding here ? The good folks of Besangon
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 five-and-thirty, will by and by make a great sensa-
tion."
"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 Vicar-General had been
speaking, seemed to hang on his lips.
The conversation changed, and no more was heard of Albert
Savaron.
The portrait sketched by the cleverest of the Vicars-General
of the diocese had all the greater charm for Eosalie 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 half-way. What an
ideal being was this Albert gloomy, unhappy, eloquent, labo-
rious, 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 Albert Savaron offered many enigmas to be solved.
"Albert Savaron de Savarus," she repeated to herself.
290 ALBERT SAVARUS
Now, to see him, to catch sight of him ! This was the de-
sire 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 his words had
told.
"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 hair, it is impossible to
see where his forehead ends."
"What is the matter, Eosalie ; you are eating nothing ?"
"I am not hungry, mamma," said she. "A prelate's hands
" she went on to herself. "I cannot remember our hand-
some Archbishop's hands, though he confirmed me."
Finally, in the midst of her coming and going in the
labyrinth of her meditations, she remembered a lighted win-
dow 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 Eosalie point-blank to the Vicar-General, dur-
ing a moment of silence.
Madame de Watteville exchanged rapid glances with th
Vicar-General.
"What can that matter to you, my dear child ?" she said to
Eosalie, with an affected sweetness which made her daughter
cautious for the rest of her days.
"It might be carried to the Court of Appeal, but our adver-
saries will think twice about that," replied the Abbe.
"I never could have believed that Eosalie would think about
a lawsuit all through a dinner," remarked Madame de Watte-
ville.
"Nor I either," said Eosalie, in a dreamy way that made
every one laugh. "But Monsieur de Grancey was so full of it,
that I was interested."
The company rose from table and returned to the drawing-
ALBERT SAVARTJS 291
room. All through the evening Rosalie listened in case Albert
Savaron should be mentioned again; but beyond the congratu-
lations offered by each newcomer to the Abbe on having
gained his suit, to which no one added any praise of the advo-
cate, 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 dressing-room 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 thought was red. 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 sys-
tem is one of restraint. If you enlighten them, you make
them demons before their time ; if you keep them from think-
ing, you end in the sudden explosion so well shown by Moliere
in the character of Agnes, and you leave this suppressed mind,