Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
ALBERT SAVARUS
By Honore de Balzac
Translated by Ellen Marriage
DEDICATION
To Madame Emile Girardin
ALBERT SAVARUS
One of the few drawing-rooms where, under the Restoration, the
Archbishop of Besancon was sometimes to be seen, was that of the Baronne
de Watteville, to whom he was particularly attached on account of her
religious sentiments.
A word as to this lady, the most important lady of Besancon.
Monsieur de Watteville, a descendant of the famous Watteville, 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 Monsieur de Watteville was as gentle and peaceable
as his ancestor of the _Grand Siecle_ had been passionate and turbulent.
After living in the _Comte_ (La Franche Comte) like a wood-louse in the
crack of a wainscot, he had married the heiress of the celebrated house
of Rupt. Mademoiselle de Rupt brought twenty thousand francs a year in
the funds to add to the ten thousand francs a year in real estate of the
Baron de Watteville. The Swiss gentleman’s 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, devout as a girl, became even more so after her marriage.
She is one of the queens of the saintly brotherhood which gives the
upper circles of Besancon a solemn air and prudish manners in harmony
with the character of the town.
Monsieur le Baron de Watteville, a dry, lean man devoid of intelligence,
looked worn out without any one knowing whereby, for he enjoyed the
profoundest ignorance; but as his wife was a red-haired woman, and of a
stern nature that became proverbial (we still say “as sharp as Madame
de Watteville”), some wits of the legal profession declared that he had
been worn against that 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. Philosophical doctors, devoted to the
study of madness, regard this tendency towards collecting as a first
degree of mental aberration when it is set on small things. The Baron de
Watteville treasured shells and geological fragments of the neighborhood
of Besancon. Some contradictory folk, especially women, would say of
Monsieur de Watteville, “He has a noble soul! He perceived from the
first days of his married life that he would never be his wife’s master,
so he threw himself into a mechanical occupation and good living.”
The house of the Rupts was not devoid of a certain magnificence worthy
of Louis XIV., and bore traces of the nobility of the two families
who had mingled in 1815. The chandeliers of glass cut in the shape of
leaves, the brocades, the damask, the carpets, the gilt furniture, were
all in harmony with the old liveries and the old servants. Though served
in blackened family plate, round a looking-glass tray furnished with
Dresden china, the food was exquisite. The wines selected by Monsieur
de Watteville, who, to occupy his time and vary his employments, was his
own butler, enjoyed a sort of fame throughout the department. Madame
de Watteville’s fortune was a fine one; while her husband’s, which
consisted only of the estate of Rouxey, worth about ten thousand francs
a year, was not increased by inheritance. It is needless to add that
in consequence of Madame de Watteville’s close intimacy with the
Archbishop, the three or four clever or remarkable Abbes of the diocese
who were not averse to good feeding were very much at home at her house.
At a ceremonial dinner given in honor of I know not whose wedding,
at the beginning of September 1834, when the women were standing in
a circle round the drawing-room fire, and the men in groups by the
windows, every one exclaimed with pleasure at the entrance of Monsieur
l’Abbe de Grancey, who was 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 wonderful man--”
“At Besancon?” said Monsieur de Watteville, guilelessly.
“At Besancon,” 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 reappeared at the Hotel de Rupt for
the first time in three weeks. “In short, Monsieur Savaron has just
completely beaten the celebrated lawyer whom our adversaries had sent
for from Paris. This young man is wonderful, the bigwigs say. Thus
the chapter is twice victorious; it has triumphed in law and also
in politics, since it has vanquished Liberalism in the person of the
Counsel of our Municipality.--‘Our adversaries,’ so our advocate
said, ‘must not expect to find readiness on all sides to ruin the
Archbishoprics.’--The President was obliged to enforce silence. All the
townsfolk of Besancon applauded. Thus the possession of the buildings of
the old convent remains with the Chapter of the Cathedral of Besancon.
Monsieur Savaron, however, invited his Parisian opponent to dine with
him as they came out of court. He accepted, saying, ‘Honor to every
conqueror,’ and complimented him 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 Perron; 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 Besancon? It is a strange fancy for a barrister.”
“Very strange!” echoed Amedee de Soulas, whose biography is here
necessary to the understanding of this tale.
* * * * *
In all ages France and England have carried on an exchange of trifles,
which is all the more constant because it evades the tyranny of the
Custom-house. 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 fashions
of dress. _God Save the King_, the national air of England, is a
tune written by Lulli for the Chorus of Esther or of Athalie. Hoops,
introduced at Paris by an Englishwoman, were invented in London, it is
known why, by a Frenchwoman, the notorious Duchess of Portsmouth. They
were at first so jeered at that the first Englishwoman who appeared in
them at the Tuileries narrowly escaped being crushed by the crowd; but
they were adopted. This fashion tyrannized over the ladies of Europe for
half a century. At the peace of 1815, for a year, the long waists of the
English were a standing jest; all Paris went to see Pothier and Brunet
in _Les Anglaises pour rire_; but in 1816 and 1817 the belt of the
Frenchwoman, which in 1814 cut 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 Barcelone
.... C’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 absurdities, the provinces can hardly be
deprived of them. So, as soon as the _lion_ paraded Paris with his mane,
his beard and moustaches, his waistcoats and his eyeglass, maintained
in its place, without the help of his hands, by the contraction of his
cheek, and 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-townsmen.
Thus, in 1834, Besancon 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 Besancon
descended from a Spanish family. Spain sent men to manage her business
in the Comte, but very few Spaniards settled there. The Soulas remained
in consequence of their connection with Cardinal Granvelle. Young
Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leaving Besancon, a dull town,
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 Besancon: four hundred and twenty francs a year to a child
of fifteen, without counting extras! The extras consisted in the price
for which he could sell his turned clothes, a present when Soulas
exchanged one of his horses, and the perquisite of the manure. The
two horses, treated with sordid economy, cost, one with another, eight
hundred francs a year. His bills for articles received from Paris, such
as perfumery, cravats, jewelry, patent blacking, and clothes, ran to
another twelve hundred francs. Add to this the groom, or tiger, the
horses, a very superior style of dress, and six hundred francs a year
for rent, and you will see a grand total of three thousand francs.
Now, Monsieur de Soulas’ father had left him only four thousand francs a
year, the income from some cottage farms which lent painful uncertainty
to the rents. The lion had hardly three francs a day left for food,
amusements, and gambling. He very often dined out, and breakfasted with
remarkable frugality. When he was positively obliged to dine at his own
cost, he sent his tiger to fetch a couple of dishes from a cookshop,
never spending more than twenty-five sous.
Young Monsieur de Soulas was supposed to be a spendthrift, recklessly
extravagant, whereas the poor man made the two ends meet in the year
with a keenness and skill which would have done honor to a thrifty
housewife. At Besancon in those days no one knew how great a tax on a
man’s capital were six francs spent in polish to spread on his boots
or shoes, yellow gloves at fifty sous a pair, cleaned in the deepest
secrecy to make them three times renewed, cravats costing ten francs,
and lasting three months, four waistcoats at 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 advantages, 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 England, where I went...” The dowagers of the town would say to him,
“You, who have been in England...” He had been as far as Lombardy, and
seen the shores of the Italian lakes. He read new books. Finally,
when he was cleaning his gloves, the tiger Babylas replied to callers,
“Monsieur is very busy.” An attempt had been made to withdraw Monsieur
Amedee de Soulas from circulation by pronouncing him “A man of advanced
ideas.” Amedee had the gift of uttering with the gravity of a native the
commonplaces that were in fashion, which gave him the credit of being
one of the most enlightened of the nobility. His person was garnished
with fashionable 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 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 Besancon. 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 attached as much importance
to this exercise as Lord Byron did in his later days. Then, at three
o’clock he came home, admired on horseback by the grisettes and the
ladies who happened to be at their windows. After an affectation of
study or business, which seemed to engage him till four, he dressed to
dine out, spent the evening in the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy of
Besancon playing whist, and went home to bed at eleven. No life could
be more above board, more prudent, or more irreproachable, for he
punctually attended the 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 Besancon. No town
ever offered more deaf and dumb resistance to progress. At Besancon the
officials, the _employes_, the military, in short, every one engaged in
governing it, sent thither from Paris to fill a post of any kind, are
all spoken of by the expressive general name of _the Colony_. The colony
is neutral ground, the only ground where, as in church, the upper rank
and the townsfolk of the place can meet. Here, fired by a word, a look,
or gesture, are started those feuds between house and house, between a
woman of rank and a citizen’s wife, which endure till death, and widen
the impassable gulf which parts the two classes of society. With the
exception of the Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean, the Beauffremont, the de
Scey, and the Gramont families, with a few others who come only to stay
on their estates in the Comte, the aristocracy of Besancon dates no
further back than a couple of centuries, the time of the conquest by
Louis XIV. This little world is essentially of the _parlement_, and
arrogant, stiff, solemn, uncompromising, haughty beyond all comparison,
even with the Court of Vienna, for in this the nobility of Besancon
would put the Viennese drawing-rooms to shame. As to Victor Hugo,
Nodier, Fourier, the glories of the town, they are never mentioned, no
one thinks about them. The marriages in these families are arranged in
the cradle, so rigidly are the greatest things settled as well as the
smallest. No stranger, no intruder, ever finds his way into one of these
houses, and to obtain an introduction for the colonels or officers of
title belonging to the first families in France when quartered there,
requires efforts of diplomacy which Prince Talleyrand would gladly have
mastered to use at a congress.
In 1834 Amedee was the only man in Besancon 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 Besancon.
Some time before the opening of this story, the need arose at the
prefecture for bringing an editor from Paris for the official newspaper,
to enable it to hold its own against the little _Gazette_, dropped at
Besancon by the great _Gazette_, and the _Patriot_, which frisked in the
hands of the Republicans. Paris sent them a young man, knowing nothing
about la Franche Comte, who began by writing them a leading article of
the school of the _Charivari_. The chief of the moderate party, a member
of the municipal council, sent for the journalist and said to him,
“You must understand, monsieur, that we are serious, more than
serious--tiresome; we resent being amused, and are furious at
having been made to laugh. Be as hard of digestion as the toughest
disquisitions in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and you will hardly reach
the level of Besancon.”
The editor took the hint, and thenceforth spoke the most
incomprehensible philosophical lingo. His success was complete.
If young Monsieur de Soulas did not fall in the esteem of Besancon
society, it was out of pure vanity on its part; the aristocracy were
happy to affect a modern air, and to be able to show any Parisians of
rank who 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
Besancon would have been no son of the soil. Amedee wanted to achieve a
good marriage by proving some day that his farms were not mortgaged, and
that he had some savings. He wanted to be the talk of the town, to
be the finest and 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, Rosalie was but fourteen. Hence, in 1834,
Mademoiselle de Watteville had reached the age when young persons are
easily struck by the peculiarities which attracted the attention of
the town to Amedee. There are so many _lions_ who become _lions_ out of
self-interest and speculation. The Wattevilles, who for twelve years had
been drawing an income of fifty thousand francs a year, did not spend
more than four-and-twenty thousand francs a year, while receiving all
the upper circle of Besancon every Monday and Friday. On Monday they
gave a dinner, on Friday an evening party. Thus, in twelve years, what a
sum must have accumulated from twenty-six thousand francs a year, saved
and invested with the judgment that distinguishes those old families! It
was very generally supposed that Madame de Watteville, thinking she had
land enough, had placed her savings in the three per cents, in 1830.
Rosalie’s dowry would therefore, as the best informed opined, amount to
about twenty thousand francs a year. So for the last five years Amedee
had worked like a mole to get into the highest favor of the severe
Baroness, while laying himself out to flatter Mademoiselle de
Watteville’s conceit.
Madame de Watteville was in the secret of the devices by which Amedee
succeeded in keeping up his rank in Besancon, and esteemed him highly
for it. Soulas had placed himself under her wing when she was thirty,
and at that time had dared to admire her and make her his idol; he had
got so far as to be 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 without being caught. Do
you understand why the lion did not allow himself the very smallest
intrigue? He lived a public life, in the street so to speak, on purpose
to play the part of a lover sacrificed to duty by the Baroness, and to
feast her mind with the sins she had forbidden to her senses. A man who
is so privileged as to be allowed to pour light stories into the ear
of a bigot is in her eyes a charming man. If this exemplary youth had
better known the human heart, he might without risk have allowed himself
some flirtations among the grisettes of Besancon who looked up to him
as a king; his affairs might perhaps have been all the more hopeful
with the strict and prudish Baroness. To Rosalie our Cato affected
prodigality; he professed a life of elegance, showing her in perspective
the splendid part played by a woman of fashion in Paris, whither he
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
Besancon quoted Monsieur Amedee de Soulas as the most charming young man
in the town; no one would have dared to dispute his place as cock of the
walk at the Hotel de Rupt, and all Besancon regarded him as Rosalie de
Watteville’s future husband. There had even been some exchange of ideas
on the subject between the Baroness and Amedee, to which the Baron’s
apparent nonentity gave some certainty.
Mademoiselle de Watteville, to whom her enormous prospective fortune at
that time lent considerable importance, had been brought up exclusively
within the precincts of the Hotel de Rupt--which her mother rarely
quitted, so devoted was she to her dear Archbishop--and severely
repressed by an exclusively religious education, and by her mother’s
despotism, which held her rigidly to principles. Rosalie knew absolutely
nothing. Is it knowledge to have learned geography from Guthrie, sacred
history, ancient history, the history of France, and the four rules
all passed through the sieve of an old Jesuit? Dancing and music were
forbidden, as being more likely to corrupt life than to grace it. The
Baroness taught her daughter every conceivable stitch in tapestry and
women’s work--plain sewing, embroidery, netting. At seventeen Rosalie
had never read anything but the _Lettres edifiantes_ and some works on
heraldry. No newspaper had ever defiled her sight. She attended mass
at the Cathedral every morning, taken there by her mother, came back
to breakfast, did needlework after a little walk in the garden, and
received visitors, sitting with the baroness until dinner-time. Then,
after dinner, excepting on Mondays and Fridays, she accompanied Madame
de Watteville to other houses to spend the evening, without being
allowed to talk more than the maternal rule permitted.
At eighteen Mademoiselle de Watteville was a slight, thin girl with a
flat figure, fair, colorless, and insignificant to the last degree. Her
eyes, of a very light blue, borrowed beauty from their lashes, which,
when downcast, threw a shadow on her cheeks. A few freckles marred
the whiteness of her forehead, which was shapely enough. Her face was
exactly like those of Albert Durer’s saints, or those of the painters
before Perugino; the same plump, though slender modeling, the same
delicacy saddened by ecstasy, the same severe guilelessness. Everything
about her, even to her attitude, was suggestive of those virgins, whose
beauty is only revealed in its mystical radiance to the eyes of the
studious connoisseur. She had fine hands though red, and a pretty foot,
the foot of an aristocrat.
She habitually wore simple checked cotton dresses; but on Sundays and in
the evening her mother allowed her silk. The cut of her frocks, made at
Besancon, almost made her ugly, while her mother tried to borrow grace,
beauty, and elegance from Paris fashions; for through Monsieur de Soulas
she procured the smallest trifles of her dress from thence. Rosalie had
never worn a pair of silk stockings or thin boots, but always cotton
stockings and leather shoes. On high days she was dressed in a muslin
frock, her hair plainly dressed, and had bronze kid shoes.
This education, and her own modest demeanor, hid in Rosalie a spirit
of iron. Physiologists and profound observers will tell you, perhaps
to your astonishment, that tempers, characteristics, wit, or genius
reappear in families at long intervals, precisely like what are known
as hereditary diseases. Thus talent, like the gout, sometimes skips over
two generations. We have an illustrious example of this phenomenon in
George Sand, in whom are resuscitated the force, the power, and the
imaginative faculty of the Marechal de Saxe, whose natural granddaughter
she is.
The decisive character and romantic daring of the famous Watteville had
reappeared in the soul of his grand-niece, reinforced by the tenacity
and pride of blood of the Rupts. 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
Rosalie, that she replied one day to the Archbishop, who blamed her for
being too hard on the child, “Leave me to manage her, monseigneur. I
know her! She has 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 Rupt, at this time five-and-thirty, and
as good as widowed, with a husband 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
acquaintance, flirted in strict propriety with Amedee de Soulas. When
this young man was in the house, she alternately dismissed and recalled
her daughter, and tried to detect symptoms of jealousy in that youthful
soul, so as to have occasion to repress them. She imitated the police
in its dealings with the republicans; but she labored in vain. Rosalie
showed no symptoms of rebellion. Then the arid bigot accused her
daughter of perfect insensibility. Rosalie knew her mother well enough
to be sure that if she had thought young Monsieur de Soulas _nice_,
she would have drawn down on herself a smart reproof. Thus, to all her
mother’s incitement she replied merely by such phrases as are wrongly
called Jesuitical--wrongly, because the Jesuits were strong, and such
reservations are the _chevaux de frise_ behind which weakness takes
refuge. Then the mother regarded the girl as a dissembler. If by
mischance a spark of the true nature of the Wattevilles and the Rupts
blazed out, the mother armed herself with the respect due from children
to their parents to reduce Rosalie to passive obedience.
This covert battle was carried on in the most secret seclusion of
domestic life, with closed doors. The Vicar-General, the dear Abbe
Grancey, the friend of the late Archbishop, clever as he was in his
capacity of the chief Father Confessor of the diocese, could not
discover whether the struggle had stirred up some hatred between the
mother and daughter, whether the mother were jealous in anticipation, or
whether the court Amedee was paying to the girl through her mother had
not overstepped its due limits. Being a friend of the family, neither
mother nor daughter, confessed to him. Rosalie, a little too much
harried, morally, about young de Soulas, could not abide him, to use
a homely phrase, and when he spoke to her, trying to take her heart by
surprise, she received him but coldly. This aversion, discerned only by
her mother’s eyes, was a constant subject of admonition.
“Rosalie, I cannot imagine why you affect such coldness towards
Amedee. Is it because he is a friend of the family, and because we like
him--your father and I?”
“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 Watteville. “What is the
meaning of such words? Your mother is unjust, no doubt, and according
to you, would be so in any case! Never let such an answer pass your lips
again to your mother--” and so forth.
This quarrel lasted three hours and three-quarters. Rosalie noted the
time. Her mother, pale with fury, sent her to her room, where Rosalie
pondered on the meaning of this scene without discovering it, so
guileless was she. Thus young Monsieur de Soulas, who was supposed by
every one to be very near the end he was aiming at, all neckcloths set,
and by dint of pots of patent 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 Baroness, while
waiting till his soup was cool enough to swallow, and affecting to
give a romantic turn to his narrative, “one fine morning the mail coach
dropped at the Hotel National a gentleman from Paris, who, after seeking
apartments, made up his mind in favor of the first floor in Mademoiselle
Galard’s house, Rue du Perron. Then the stranger went straight to the
Mairie, and had himself registered as a resident with all political
qualifications. Finally, he had his name entered on the list of the
barristers to the Court, showing his title in due form, and he left
his card on all his new colleagues, the Ministerial officials, the
Councillors of the Court, and the members of the bench, with the name,
‘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.”
“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 Rosalie.
“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 Besancon, Albert Savaron
was received without hesitation by the lawyers of the town. They were
satisfied to say, ‘Here is a man who does not know his Besancon. Who the
devil can have sent him here? What can he hope to do? Sending his card
to the Judges instead of calling in person! What a blunder!’ And so,
three days after, Savaron had ceased to exist. He took as his servant
old Monsieur Galard’s 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 Chavoncourt.
“He goes on Sundays to Saint-Pierre, but to the early service at eight
in the morning. He rises every night between one and two in the morning,
works till eight, has his breakfast, and then goes on working. He walks
in his garden, going round fifty, or perhaps sixty times; then he goes
in, dines, and goes to bed between six 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 Rue du Perron; I look out on the house where this mysterious
personage lodges; then, of course, there are communications between my
tiger and Jerome.”
“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 conversation 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 merchant,
placed a difficult case next day in the hands of Monsieur Savaron, and
he won it. In the position in which we found ourselves, Monsieur Berryer
finding it impossible to come to Besancon, Monsieur de Garcenault
advised him to employ this Monsieur Albert Savaron, foretelling our
success. As soon as I saw him and heard him, I felt faith in him, and I
was not wrong.”
“Is he then so extraordinary?” asked Madame de Chavoncourt.
“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 Galard’s drawing-room--which
he has had painted like old oak, and which I found entirely lined with
law-books, arranged on shelves also painted as old oak. The painting
and the books are the sole decoration of the room, for the furniture
consists of an old writing table of carved wood, six old armchairs
covered with tapestry, window curtains of gray stuff bordered with
green, and a green carpet over the floor. The 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
tied with a red 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 woman’s; a splendid forehead, furrowed
by the strong median line which great schemes, great thoughts, deep
meditations stamp on a great man’s brow; an olive complexion marbled
with red, a square nose, eyes of flame, hollow cheeks, with two long
lines, betraying much suffering, a mouth with a sardonic smile, and a
small chin, narrow, and too short; crow’s feet on his temples; 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 incisive.
“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 informed 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 yet hollow. I saw, too, that he stooped a little, like all men
who have some heavy burden to bear.”
“Why did so eloquent a man leave Paris? For what purpose did he come to
Besancon?” asked pretty Madame de Chavoncourt. “Could no one tell him
how little chance a stranger has of succeeding here? The good folks of
Besancon will make use of him, but they will not allow him to make use
of them. Why, having come, did he make so little effort that it needed a
freak of the President’s to bring him forward?”
“After carefully studying that fine head,” said the Abbe, looking keenly
at the lady who had interrupted him, in such a way as to suggest that
there was something he would not tell, “and especially after hearing
him this morning reply to one of the bigwigs of the Paris Bar, I believe
that this man, who may be five-and-thirty, will by and by make a great
sensation.”
“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 Rosalie because there was a
romance behind it. For the first time in her life she had come
across the marvelous, the exceptional, which smiles on every youthful
imagination, and which curiosity, so eager at Rosalie’s age, goes forth
to meet half-way. What an ideal being was this Albert--gloomy, unhappy,
eloquent, laborious, as compared by Mademoiselle de Watteville to that
chubby fat Count, bursting with health, paying compliments, and talking
of the fashions in the very face of the splendor of the old counts of
Rupt. Amedee had cost her many quarrels and scoldings, and, indeed, she
knew him only too well; while this Albert Savaron offered many enigmas
to be solved.
“Albert Savaron de Savarus,” she repeated to herself.
Now, to see him, to catch sight of him! This was the desire of the girl
to whom desire was hitherto unknown. She pondered in her heart, in her
fancy, in her brain, the least phrases used by the Abbe de Grancey, for
all 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, Rosalie; you are eating nothing?”
“I am not hungry, mamma,” said she. “A prelate’s hands----” she went on
to herself. “I cannot remember our handsome 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 window she had seen from her bed,
gleaming through the trees of the two adjoining gardens, when she had
happened to wake in the night.... “Then that was his light!” thought
she. “I might see him!--I will see him.”
“Monsieur de Grancey, is the Chapter’s lawsuit quite settled?” said
Rosalie point-blank to the Vicar-General, during a moment of silence.
Madame de Watteville exchanged rapid glances with the Vicar-General.
“What can that matter to you, my dear child?” she said to Rosalie, 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 adversaries will
think twice about that,” replied the Abbe.
“I never could have believed that Rosalie would think about a lawsuit
all through a dinner,” remarked Madame de Watteville.
“Nor I either,” said Rosalie, 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-room. All
through the evening Rosalie listened in case Albert Savaron should be
mentioned again; but beyond the congratulations offered by each newcomer
to the Abbe on having gained his suit, to which no one added any praise
of the advocate, no more was said about it. Mademoiselle de Watteville
impatiently looked forward to bedtime. She had promised herself to
wake at between two and three in the morning, and to look at Albert’s
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 University of France long
since set itself the task of having nothing to do with it. Here is one
of these problems: Ought girls to be informed on all points? Ought their
minds to be under restraint? It need not be said that the religious
system is one of restraint. If you enlighten them, you make them demons
before their time; if you keep them from thinking, you end in the sudden
explosion so well shown by Moliere in the character of Agnes, and you
leave this suppressed mind, so fresh and clear-seeing, as swift and
as logical as that of a savage, at the mercy of an accident. This
inevitable crisis was brought on in Mademoiselle de Watteville by the
portrait which one of the most prudent Abbes of the Chapter of Besancon
imprudently 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 Besancon faces
she had hitherto met with, Rosalie at once jumped at the idea of getting
into his house, of ascertaining the reason of so much mystery, of
hearing that eloquent voice, of winning a glance from those fine eyes.
All this she set her heart on, but how could she achieve it?
All that day she drew her needle through her embroidery with the
obtuse concentration of a girl who, like Agnes, seems to be thinking of
nothing, but who is reflecting on things in general so deeply, that her
artifice is unfailing. As a result of this profound meditation, Rosalie
thought she would go to confession. Next morning, after Mass, she had
a brief interview with the Abbe Giroud at Saint-Pierre, and managed so
ingeniously that the hour of her confession was fixed for Sunday morning
at half-past seven, before the eight o’clock Mass. She committed herself
to a dozen fibs in order to find herself, just for once, in the church
at the hour when the lawyer came to Mass. Then she was seized with an
impulse of extreme affection for her father; she went to see him in
his workroom, and asked him for all sorts of information on the art of
turning, ending by advising him to turn larger pieces, columns. After
persuading her father to set to work on some twisted pillars, one of the
difficulties of the turner’s art, she suggested that he should make
use of a large heap of stones that lay in the middle of the garden to
construct a sort of grotto on which he might erect a little temple or
Belvedere in which his twisted pillars could be used and shown off to
all the world.
At the climax of the pleasure the poor unoccupied man derived from this
scheme, Rosalie said, as she kissed him, “Above all, do not tell mamma
who gave you the notion; she would scold me.”
“Do not be afraid!” replied Monsieur de Watteville, who groaned as
bitterly as his daughter under the tyranny of the terrible descendant of
the Rupts.
So Rosalie had a certain prospect of seeing ere long a charming
observatory built, whence her eye would command the lawyer’s private
room. And there are men for whose sake young girls can carry out such
masterstrokes of diplomacy, while, for the most part, like Albert
Savaron, they know it not.
The Sunday so impatiently looked for arrived, and Rosalie dressed with
such carefulness as made Mariette, 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 before Mass, and after a short prayer, went
to see if the Abbe Giroud were in his confessional, simply to pass the
time; and she thus placed herself in such a way as to 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.
Rosalie now understood the Vicar-General’s words in their fullest
extent. Yes, those eyes of tawny brown, shot with golden lights,
covered ardor which revealed itself in sudden flashes. Rosalie, with a
recklessness which Mariette noted, stood in the lawyer’s way, so as
to exchange glances with him; and this glance turned her blood, for it
seethed and boiled as though its warmth were doubled.
As soon as Albert had taken a seat, Mademoiselle de Watteville quickly
found a place whence she could see him perfectly during all the time the
Abbe might leave her. When Mariette said, “Here is Monsieur Giroud,”
it seemed to Rosalie that the interview had lasted no more than a few
minutes. By the time she came out from the 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 everything! But how?”
Under the smart of this new desire Rosalie set the stitches of her
worsted-work with exquisite precision, and hid her meditations under
a little innocent air, which shammed simplicity to deceive Madame de
Watteville.