or, if you please, received this baptism of fire--a fine expression of
Napoleon’s which may be well applied to love--she eagerly promoted the
plan for the Belvedere.
“Mamma,” said she one day when two columns were turned, “my father
has taken a singular idea into his head; he is turning columns for a
Belvedere he intends to erect on the heap of stones in the middle of the
garden. Do you approve of it? It seems to me--”
“I approve of everything your father does,” said Madame de Watteville
drily, “and it is a wife’s duty to submit to her husband even if she
does not approve of his ideas. Why should I object to a thing which is
of no importance in itself, if only it amuses Monsieur de Watteville?”
“Well, because from thence we shall see into Monsieur de Soulas’ rooms,
and Monsieur de Soulas will see us when we are there. Perhaps remarks
may be made--”
“Do you presume, Rosalie, to guide your parents, and think you know more
than they do of life and the proprieties?”
“I say no more, mamma. Besides, my father said that there would be
a room in the grotto, where it would be cool, and where we can take
coffee.”
“Your father has had an excellent idea,” said Madame de Watteville, who
forthwith went to look at the columns.
She gave her entire approbation to the Baron de Watteville’s design,
while choosing for the erection of this monument a spot at the bottom
of the garden, which could not be seen from Monsieur de Soulas’ windows,
but whence they could perfectly see into Albert Savaron’s rooms. A
builder was sent for, who undertook to construct a grotto, of which the
top should be reached by a path three feet wide through the rock-work,
where periwinkles would grow, iris, clematis, ivy, honeysuckle, and
Virginia creeper. The Baroness desired that the inside should be lined
with rustic wood-work, such as was then the fashion for flower-stands,
with a looking-glass against the wall, an ottoman forming a box, and a
table of inlaid bark. Monsieur de Soulas proposed that the floor should
be of asphalt. Rosalie suggested a hanging chandelier of rustic wood.
“The Wattevilles are having something charming done in their garden,”
was rumored in Besancon.
“They are rich, and can afford a thousand crowns for a whim--”
“A thousand crowns!” exclaimed Madame de Chavoncourt.
“Yes, a thousand crowns,” cried young Monsieur de Soulas. “A man has
been sent for from Paris to rusticate the interior but it will be very
pretty. Monsieur de Watteville himself is making the chandelier, and has
begun to carve the wood.”
“Berquet is to make a cellar under it,” said an Abbe.
“No,” replied young Monsieur de Soulas, “he is raising the kiosk on a
concrete foundation, that it may not be damp.”
“You know the very least things that are done in that house,” said
Madame de Chavoncourt sourly, as she looked at one of her great girls
waiting to be married for a year past.
Mademoiselle de Watteville, with a little flush of pride in thinking of
the success of her Belvedere, discerned in herself a vast superiority
over every one about her. No one guessed that a little girl, supposed to
be a witless goose, had simply made up her mind to get a closer view of
the lawyer Savaron’s private study.
Albert Savaron’s brilliant defence of the Cathedral Chapter was all
the sooner forgotten because the envy of the other lawyers was aroused.
Also, Savaron, faithful to his seclusion, went nowhere. Having no
friends to cry him up, and seeing no one, he increased the chances of
being forgotten which are common to strangers in Besancon. Nevertheless,
he pleaded three times at the Commercial Tribunal in three knotty cases
which had to be carried to the superior Court. He thus gained as clients
four of the chief merchants of the place, who discerned in him so much
good sense and sound legal purview that they placed their claims in his
hands.
On the day when the Watteville family inaugurated the Belvedere, Savaron
also was founding a monument. Thanks to the connections he had obscurely
formed among the upper class of merchants in Besancon, he was starting
a fortnightly paper, called the _Eastern Review_, with the help of forty
shares of five hundred francs each, taken up by his first ten clients,
on whom he had impressed the necessity for promoting the interests of
Besancon, the town where the traffic should meet between Mulhouse and
Lyons, and the chief centre between Mulhouse and Rhone.
To compete with Strasbourg, was it not needful that Besancon should
become a focus of enlightenment as well as of trade? The leading
questions relating to the interests of Eastern France could only be
dealt with in a review. What a glorious task to rob Strasbourg and Dijon
of their literary importance, to bring light to the East of France, and
compete with the centralizing influence of Paris! These reflections, put
forward by Albert, were repeated by the ten merchants, who believed them
to be their own.
Monsieur Savaron did not commit the blunder of putting his name in
front; he left the finance of the concern to his chief client, Monsieur
Boucher, connected by marriage with one of the great publishers of
important ecclesiastical works; but he kept the editorship, with a share
of the profits as founder. The commercial interest appealed to Dole,
to Dijon, to Salins, to Neufchatel, to the Jura, Bourg, Nantua,
Lous-le-Saulnier. The concurrence was invited of the learning and energy
of every scientific student in the districts of le Bugey, la Bresse,
and Franche Comte. By the influence of commercial interests and common
feeling, five hundred subscribers were booked in consideration of the
low price; the _Review_ cost eight francs a quarter.
To avoid hurting the conceit of the provincials by refusing their
articles, the lawyer hit on the good idea of suggesting a desire for the
literary management of this _Review_ to Monsieur Boucher’s eldest son, a
young man of two-and-twenty, very eager for fame, to whom the snares and
woes of literary responsibilities were utterly unknown. Albert quietly
kept the upper hand and made Alfred Boucher his devoted adherent.
Alfred was the only man in Besancon with whom the king of the bar was on
familiar terms. Alfred came in the morning to discuss the articles for
the next number with Albert in the garden. It is needless to say that
the trial number contained a “Meditation” by Alfred, which Savaron
approved. In his conversations with Alfred, Albert would let drop some
great ideas, subjects for articles of which Alfred availed himself. And
thus the merchant’s son fancied he was making capital out of the great
man. To Alfred, Albert was a man of genius, of profound politics. The
commercial world, enchanted at the success of the _Review_, had to pay
up only three-tenths of their shares. Two hundred more subscribers, and
the periodical would pay a dividend to the share-holders of five per
cent, the editor remaining unpaid. This editing, indeed, was beyond
price.
After the third number the _Review_ was recognized for exchange by all
the papers published in France, which Albert henceforth read at home.
This third number included a tale signed “A. S.,” and attributed to the
famous lawyer. In spite of the small attention paid by the higher circle
of Besancon to the _Review_ which was accused of Liberal views, this,
the first novel produced in the county, came under discussion that
mid-winter at Madame de Chavoncourt’s.
“Papa,” said Rosalie, “a _Review_ is published in Besancon; you ought
to take it in; and keep it in your room, for mamma would not let me read
it, but you will lend it to me.”
Monsieur de Watteville, eager to obey his dear Rosalie, who for the last
five months had given him so many proofs of filial affection,--Monsieur
de Watteville went in person to subscribe for a year to the _Eastern
Review_, and lent the four numbers already out to his daughter. In the
course of the night Rosalie devoured the tale--the first she had ever
read in her life--but she had only known life for two months past. Hence
the effect produced on her by this work must not be judged by ordinary
rules. Without prejudice of any kind as to the greater or less merit of
this composition from the pen of a Parisian who had thus imported
into the province the manner, the brilliancy, if you will, of the new
literary school, it could not fail to be a masterpiece to a young girl
abandoning all her intelligence and her innocent heart to her first
reading of this kind.
Also, from what she had heard said, Rosalie had by intuition conceived
a notion of it which strangely enhanced the interest of this novel. She
hoped to find in it the sentiments, and perhaps something of the life of
Albert. From the first pages this opinion took so strong a hold on her,
that after reading the fragment to the end she was certain that it was
no mistake. Here, then, is this confession, in which, according to the
critics of Madame de Chavoncourt’s drawing-room, Albert had imitated
some modern writers who, for lack of inventiveness, relate their private
joys, their private griefs, or the mysterious events of their own life.
* * * * *
AMBITION FOR LOVE’S SAKE
In 1823 two young men, having agreed as a plan for a holiday to make a
tour through Switzerland, set out from Lucerne one fine morning in
the month of July in a boat pulled by three oarsmen. They started for
Fluelen, intending to stop at every notable spot on the lake of the Four
Cantons. The views which shut in the waters on the way from Lucerne to
Fluelen offer every combination that the most exacting fancy can demand
of mountains and rivers, lakes and rocks, brooks and pastures, trees and
torrents. Here are austere solitudes and charming headlands, smiling and
trimly kept meadows, forests crowning perpendicular granite cliffs,
like plumes, deserted but verdant reaches opening out, and valleys whose
beauty seems the lovelier in the dreamy distance.
As they passed the pretty hamlet of Gersau, one of the friends looked
for a long time at a wooden house which seemed to have been recently
built, enclosed by a paling, and standing on a promontory, almost bathed
by the waters. As the boat rowed past, a woman’s head was raised against
the background of the room on the upper story of this house, to admire
the effect of the boat on the lake. One of the young men met the glance
thus indifferently given by the unknown fair.
“Let us stop here,” said he to his friend. “We meant to make Lucerne
our headquarters for seeing Switzerland; you will not take it amiss,
Leopold, if I change my mind and stay here to take charge of our
possessions. Then you can go where you please; my journey is ended. Pull
to land, men, and put us out at this village; we will breakfast here. I
will go back to Lucerne to fetch all our luggage, and before you leave
you will know in which house I take a lodging, where you will find me on
your return.”
“Here or at Lucerne,” replied Leopold, “the difference is not so great
that I need hinder you from following your whim.”
These two youths were friends in the truest sense of the word. They were
of the same age; they had learned at the same school; and after studying
the law, they were spending their holiday in the classical tour in
Switzerland. Leopold, by his father’s determination, was already pledged
to a place in a notary’s office in Paris. His spirit of rectitude, his
gentleness, and the coolness of his senses and his brain, guaranteed him
to be a docile pupil. Leopold could see himself a notary in Paris; his
life lay before him like one of the highroads that cross the plains
of France, and he looked along its whole length with philosophical
resignation.
The character of his companion, whom we will call Rodolphe, presented
a strong contrast with Leopold’s, and their antagonism had no doubt had
the result of tightening the bond that united them. Rodolphe was the
natural son of a man of rank, who was carried off by a premature
death before he could make any arrangements for securing the means of
existence to a woman he fondly loved and to Rodolphe. Thus cheated by a
stroke of fate, Rodolphe’s mother had recourse to a heroic measure. She
sold everything she owed to the munificence of her child’s father for
a sum of more than a hundred thousand francs, bought with it a life
annuity for herself at a high rate, and thus acquired an income of about
fifteen thousand francs, resolving to devote the whole of it to the
education of her son, so as to give him all the personal advantages that
might help to make his fortune, while saving, by strict economy, a small
capital to be his when he came of age. It was bold; it was counting on
her own life; but without this boldness the good mother would certainly
have found it impossible to live and to bring her child up suitably, and
he was her only hope, her future, the spring of all her joys.
Rodolphe, the son of a most charming Parisian woman, and a man of mark,
a nobleman of Brabant, was cursed with extreme sensitiveness. From his
infancy he had in everything shown a most ardent nature. In him mere
desire became a guiding force and the motive power of his whole
being, the stimulus to his imagination, the reason of his actions.
Notwithstanding the pains taken by a clever mother, who was alarmed when
she detected this predisposition, Rodolphe wished for things as a poet
imagines, as a mathematician calculates, as a painter sketches, as a
musician creates melodies. Tender-hearted, like his mother, he dashed
with inconceivable violence and impetus of thought after the object of
his desires; he annihilated time. While dreaming of the fulfilment of
his schemes, he always overlooked the means of attainment. “When my son
has children,” said his other, “he will want them born grown up.”
This fine frenzy, carefully directed, enabled Rodolphe to achieve his
studies with brilliant results, and to become what the English call an
accomplished gentleman. His mother was then proud of him, though still
fearing a catastrophe if ever a passion should possess a heart at once
so tender and so susceptible, so vehement and so kind. Therefore, the
judicious mother had encouraged the friendship which bound Leopold to
Rodolphe and Rodolphe to Leopold, since she saw in the cold and faithful
young notary, a guardian, a comrade, who might to a certain extent
take her place if by some misfortune she should be lost to her son.
Rodolphe’s mother, still handsome at three-and-forty, had inspired
Leopold with an ardent passion. This circumstance made the two young men
even more intimate.
So Leopold, knowing Rodolphe well, was not surprised to find
him stopping at a village and giving up the projected journey to
Saint-Gothard, on the strength of a single glance at the upper window
of a house. While breakfast was prepared for them at the Swan Inn, the
friends walked round the hamlet and came to the neighborhood of the
pretty new house; here, while gazing about him and talking to the
inhabitants, Rodolphe discovered the residence of some decent folk,
who were willing to take him as a boarder, a very frequent custom in
Switzerland. They offered him a bedroom looking over the lake and
the mountains, and from whence he had a view of one of those immense
sweeping reaches which, in this lake, are the admiration of every
traveler. This house was divided by a roadway and a little creek from
the new house, where Rodolphe had caught sight of the unknown fair one’s
face.
For a hundred francs a month Rodolphe was relieved of all thought for
the necessaries of life. But, in consideration of the outlay the Stopfer
couple expected to make, they bargained for three months’ residence and
a month’s payment in advance. Rub a Swiss ever so little, and you find
the usurer. After breakfast, Rodolphe at once made himself at home by
depositing in his room such property as he had brought with him for
the journey to the Saint-Gothard, and he watched Leopold as he set out,
moved by the spirit of routine, to carry out the excursion for himself
and his friend. When Rodolphe, sitting on a fallen rock on the shore,
could no longer see Leopold’s boat, he turned to examine the new house
with stolen glances, hoping to see the fair unknown. Alas! he went in
without its having given a sign of life. During dinner, in the company
of Monsieur and Madame Stopfer, retired coopers from Neufchatel, he
questioned them as to the neighborhood, and ended by learning all he
wanted to know about the lady, thanks to his hosts’ loquacity; for they
were ready to pour out their budget of gossip without any pressing.
The fair stranger’s name was Fanny Lovelace. This name (pronounced
_Loveless_) is that of an old English family, but Richardson has given
it to a creation whose fame eclipses all others! Miss Lovelace had come
to settle by the lake for her father’s health, the physicians having
recommended him the air of Lucerne. These two English people had arrived
with no other servant than a little girl of fourteen, a dumb child, much
attached to Miss Fanny, on whom she waited very intelligently, and
had settled, two winters since, with monsieur and Madame Bergmann, the
retired head-gardeners of His Excellency Count Borromeo of Isola Bella
and Isola Madre in the Lago Maggiore. These Swiss, who were possessed
of an income of about a thousand crowns a year, had let the top story of
their house to the Lovelaces for three years, at a rent of two hundred
francs a year. Old Lovelace, a man of ninety, and much broken, was too
poor to allow himself any gratifications, and very rarely went out; his
daughter worked to maintain him, translating English books, and writing
some herself, it was said. The Lovelaces could not afford to hire boats
to row on the lake, or horses and guides to explore the neighborhood.
Poverty demanding such privation as this excites all the greater
compassion among the Swiss, because it deprives them of a chance of
profit. The cook of the establishment fed the three English boarders for
a hundred francs a month inclusive. In Gersau it was generally believed,
however, that the gardener and his wife, in spite of their pretensions,
used the cook’s name as a screen to net the little profits of this
bargain. The Bergmanns had made beautiful gardens round their house, and
had built a hothouse. The flowers, the fruit, and the botanical rarities
of this spot were what had induced the young lady to settle on it as she
passed through Gersau. Miss Fanny was said to be nineteen years old; she
was the old man’s youngest child, and the object of his adulation. About
two months ago she had hired a piano from Lucerne, for she seemed to be
crazy about music.
“She loves flowers and music, and she is unmarried!” thought Rodolphe;
“what good luck!”
The next day Rodolphe went to ask leave to visit the hothouses and
gardens, which were beginning to be somewhat famous. The permission was
not immediately granted. The retired gardeners asked, strangely enough,
to see Rodolphe’s passport; it was sent to them at once. The paper was
not returned to him till next morning, by the hands of the cook, who
expressed her master’s pleasure in showing him their place. Rodolphe
went to the Bergmanns’, not without a certain trepidation, known only to
persons of strong feelings, who go through as much passion in a moment
as some men experience in a whole lifetime.
After dressing himself carefully to gratify the old gardeners of the
Borromean Islands, whom he regarded as the warders of his treasure, he
went all over the grounds, looking at the house now and again, but with
much caution; the old couple treated him with evident distrust. But his
attention was soon attracted by the little English deaf-mute, in whom
his discernment, though young as yet, enabled him to recognize a girl of
African, or at least of Sicilian, origin. The child had the golden-brown
color of a Havana cigar, eyes of fire, Armenian eyelids with lashes of
very un-British length, hair blacker than black; and under this almost
olive skin, sinews of extraordinary strength and feverish alertness. She
looked at Rodolphe with amazing curiosity and effrontery, watching his
every movement.
“To whom does that little Moresco belong?” he asked worthy Madame
Bergmann.
“To the English,” Monsieur Bergmann replied.
“But she never was born in England!”
“They may have brought her from the Indies,” said Madame Bergmann.
“I have been told that Miss Lovelace is fond of music. I should be
delighted if, during my residence by the lake to which I am condemned by
my doctor’s orders, she would allow me to join her.”
“They receive no one, and will not see anybody,” said the old gardener.
Rodolphe bit his lips and went away, without having been invited into
the house, or taken into the part of the garden that lay between the
front of the house and the shore of the little promontory. On that side
the house had a balcony above the first floor, made of wood, and covered
by the roof, which projected deeply like the roof of a chalet on all
four sides of the building, in the Swiss fashion. Rodolphe had loudly
praised the elegance of this arrangement, and talked of the view from
that balcony, but all in vain. When he had taken leave of the Bergmanns
it struck him that he was a simpleton, like any man of spirit and
imagination disappointed of the results of a plan which he had believed
would succeed.
In the evening he, of course, went out in a boat on the lake, round
and about the spit of land, to Brunnen and to Schwytz, and came in at
nightfall. From afar he saw the window open and brightly lighted; he
heard the sound of a piano and the tones of an exquisite voice. He made
the boatman stop, and gave himself up to the pleasure of listening to an
Italian air delightfully sung. When the singing ceased, Rodolphe landed
and sent away the boat and rowers. At the cost of wetting his feet, he
went to sit down under the water-worn granite shelf crowned by a thick
hedge of thorny acacia, by the side of which ran a long lime avenue in
the Bergmanns’ garden. By the end of an hour he heard steps and voices
just above him, but the words that reached his ears were all Italian,
and spoken by two women.
He took advantage of the moment when the two speakers were at one end
of the walk to slip noiselessly to the other. After half an hour of
struggling he got to the end of the avenue, and there took up a position
whence, without being seen or heard, he could watch the two women
without being observed by them as they came towards him. What was
Rodolphe’s amazement on recognizing the deaf-mute as one of them; she
was talking to Miss Lovelace in Italian.
It was now eleven o’clock at night. The stillness was so perfect on
the lake and around the dwelling, that the two women must have thought
themselves safe; in all Gersau there could be no eyes open but
theirs. Rodolphe supposed that the girl’s dumbness must be a necessary
deception. From the way in which they both spoke Italian, Rodolphe
suspected that it was the mother tongue of both girls, and concluded
that the name of English also hid some disguise.
“They are Italian refugees,” said he to himself, “outlaws in fear of the
Austrian or Sardinian police. The young lady waits till it is dark to
walk and talk in security.”
He lay down by the side of the hedge, and crawled like a snake to find
a way between two acacia shrubs. At the risk of leaving his coat behind
him, or tearing deep scratches in his back, he got through the hedge
when the so-called Miss Fanny and her pretended deaf-and-dumb maid were
at the other end of the path; then, when they had come within twenty
yards of him without seeing him, for he was in the shadow of the hedge,
and the moon was shining brightly, he suddenly rose.
“Fear nothing,” said he in French to the Italian girl, “I am not a spy.
You are refugees, I have guessed that. I am a Frenchman whom one look
from you has fixed at Gersau.”
Rodolphe, startled by the acute pain caused by some steel instrument
piercing his side, fell like a log.
“_Nel lago con pietra_!” said the terrible dumb girl.
“Oh, Gina!” exclaimed the Italian.