have weight in the Chamber, for you will distinguish yourself
there.’
“And so, my beloved angel, say what you will, my perseverance will
be rewarded. Ere long I shall, from the high place of the French
Tribune, come before my country, before Europe. My name will be
flung to you by the hundred voices of the French press.
“Yes, as you tell me, I was old when I came to Besancon, and
Besancon has aged me more; but, like Sixtus V., I shall be young
again the day after my election. I shall enter on my true life, my
own sphere. Shall we not then stand in the same line? Count
Savaron de Savarus, Ambassador I know not where, may surely marry
a Princess Soderini, the widow of the Duc d’Argaiolo! Triumph
restores the youth of men who have been preserved by incessant
struggles. Oh, my Life! with what gladness did I fly from my
library to my private room, to tell your portrait of this progress
before writing to you! Yes, the votes I can command, those of the
Vicar-General, of the persons I can oblige, and of this client,
make my election already sure.
“26th.
“We have entered on the twelfth year since that blest evening
when, by a look, the beautiful Duchess sealed the promises made by
the exile Francesca. You, dear, are thirty-two, I am thirty-five;
the dear Duke is seventy-seven--that is to say, ten years more
than yours and mine put together, and he still keeps well! My
patience is almost as great as my love, and indeed I need a few
years yet to rise to the level of your name. As you see, I am in
good spirits to-day, I can laugh; that is the effect of hope.
Sadness or gladness, it all comes to me through you. The hope of
success always carries me back to the day following that one on
which I saw you for the first time, when my life became one with
yours as the earth turns to the light. _Qual pianto_ are these
eleven years, for this is the 26th of December, the anniversary of
my arrival at your villa on the Lake of Geneva. For eleven years
have I been crying to you, while you shine like a star set too
high for man to reach it.
“27th.
“No, dearest, do not go to Milan; stay at Belgirate. Milan
terrifies me. I do not like that odious Milanese fashion of
chatting at the Scala every evening with a dozen persons, among
whom it is hard if no one says something sweet. To me solitude is
like the lump of amber in whose heart an insect lives for ever in
unchanging beauty. Thus the heart and soul of a woman remains pure
and unaltered in the form of their first youth. Is it the
_Tedeschi_ that you regret?
“28th.
“Is your statue never to be finished? I should wish to have you in
marble, in painting, in miniature, in every possible form, to
beguile my impatience. I still am waiting for the view of
Belgirate from the south, and that of the balcony; these are all
that I now lack. I am so extremely busy that to-day I can only
write you nothing--but that nothing is everything. Was it not of
nothing that God made the world? That nothing is a word, God’s
word: I love you!
“30th.
“Ah! I have received your journal. Thanks for your punctuality.
--So you found great pleasure in seeing all the details of our first
acquaintance thus set down? Alas! even while disguising them I was
sorely afraid of offending you. We had no stories, and a _Review_
without stories is a beauty without hair. Not being inventive by
nature, and in sheer despair, I took the only poetry in my soul,
the only adventure in my memory, and pitched it in the key in
which it would bear telling; nor did I ever cease to think of you
while writing the only literary production that will ever come
from my heart, I cannot say from my pen. Did not the
transformation of your fierce Sormano into Gina make you laugh?
“You ask after my health. Well, it is better than in Paris. Though
I work enormously, the peacefulness of the surroundings has its
effect on the mind. What really tries and ages me, dear angel, is
the anguish of mortified vanity, the perpetual friction of Paris
life, the struggle of rival ambitions. This peace is a balm.
“If you could imagine the pleasure your letter gives me!--the
long, kind letter in which you tell me the most trivial incidents
of your life. No! you women can never know to what a degree a true
lover is interested in these trifles. It was an immense pleasure
to see the pattern of your new dress. Can it be a matter of
indifference to me to know what you wear? If your lofty brow is
knit? If our writers amuse you? If Canalis’ songs delight you? I
read the books you read. Even to your boating on the lake every
incident touched me. Your letter is as lovely, as sweet as your
soul! Oh! flower of heaven, perpetually adored, could I have lived
without those dear letters, which for eleven years have upheld me
in my difficult path like a light, like a perfume, like a steady
chant, like some divine nourishment, like everything which can
soothe and comfort life.
“Do not fail me! If you knew what anxiety I suffer the day before
they are due, or the pain a day’s delay can give me! Is she ill?
Is _he_? I am midway between hell and paradise.
“_O mia cara diva_, keep up your music, exercise your voice,
practise. I am enchanted with the coincidence of employments and
hours by which, though separated by the Alps, we live by precisely
the same rule. The thought charms me and gives me courage. The
first time I undertook to plead here--I forget to tell you this--I
fancied that you were listening to me, and I suddenly felt the
flash of inspiration which lifts the poet above mankind. If I am
returned to the Chamber--oh! you must come to Paris to be present
at my first appearance there!
“30th, Evening.
“Good heavens, how I love you! Alas! I have intrusted too much to
my love and my hopes. An accident which should sink that
overloaded bark would end my life. For three years now I have not
seen you, and at the thought of going to Belgirate my heart beats
so wildly that I am forced to stop.--To see you, to hear that
girlish caressing voice! To embrace in my gaze that ivory skin,
glistening under the candlelight, and through which I can read
your noble mind! To admire your fingers playing on the keys, to
drink in your whole soul in a look, in the tone of an _Oime_ or an
_Alberto_! To walk by the blossoming orange-trees, to live a few
months in the bosom of that glorious scenery!--That is life. What
folly it is to run after power, a name, fortune! But at Belgirate
there is everything; there is poetry, there is glory! I ought to
have made myself your steward, or, as that dear tyrant whom we
cannot hate proposed to me, live there as _cavaliere servente_,
only our passion was too fierce to allow of it.
“Farewell, my angel, forgive me my next fit of sadness in
consideration of this cheerful mood; it has come as a beam of
light from the torch of Hope, which has hitherto seemed to me a
Will-o’-the-wisp.”
“How he loves her!” cried Rosalie, dropping the letter, which seemed
heavy in her hand. “After eleven years to write like this!”
“Mariette,” said Mademoiselle de Watteville to her maid next morning,
“go and post this letter. Tell Jerome that I know all I wish to know,
and that he is to serve Monsieur Albert faithfully. We will confess our
sins, you and I, without saying to whom the letters belonged, nor to
whom they were going. I was in the wrong; I alone am guilty.”
“Mademoiselle has been crying?” said Mariette.
“Yes, but I do not want that my mother should perceive it; give me some
very cold water.”
In the midst of the storms of her passion Rosalie often listened to
the voice of conscience. Touched by the beautiful fidelity of these two
hearts, she had just said her prayers, telling herself that there was
nothing left to her but to be resigned, and to respect the happiness of
two beings worthy of each other, submissive to fate, looking to God for
everything, without allowing themselves any criminal acts or wishes.
She felt a better woman, and had a certain sense of satisfaction after
coming to this resolution, inspired by the natural rectitude of youth.
And she was confirmed in it by a girl’s idea: She was sacrificing
herself for _him_.
“She does not know how to love,” thought she. “Ah! if it were I--I would
give up everything to a man who loved me so.--To be loved!--When, by
whom shall I be loved? That little Monsieur de Soulas only loves my
money; if I were poor, he would not even look at me.”
“Rosalie, my child, what are you thinking about? You are working
beyond the outline,” said the Baroness to her daughter, who was making
worsted-work slippers for the Baron.
* * * * *
Rosalie spent the winter of 1834-35 torn by secret tumults; but in the
spring, in the month of April, when she reached the age of nineteen,
she sometimes thought that it would be a fine thing to triumph over
a Duchesse d’Argaiolo. In silence and solitude the prospect of this
struggle had fanned her passion and her evil thoughts. She encouraged
her romantic daring by making plan after plan. Although such characters
are an exception, there are, unfortunately, too many Rosalies in the
world, and this story contains a moral that ought to serve them as a
warning.
In the course of this winter Albert de Savarus had quietly made
considerable progress in Besancon. Confident of success, he now
impatiently awaited the dissolution of the Chamber. Among the men of
the moderate party he had won the suffrages of one of the makers of
Besancon, a rich contractor, who had very wide influence.
Wherever they settled the Romans took immense pains, and spent enormous
sums to have an unlimited supply of good water in every town of their
empire. At Besancon they drank the water from Arcier, a hill at some
considerable distance from Besancon. The town stands in a horseshoe
circumscribed by the river Doubs. Thus, to restore an aqueduct in order
to drink the same water that the Romans drank, in a town watered by the
Doubs, is one of those absurdities which only succeed in a country place
where the most exemplary gravity prevails. If this whim could be brought
home to the hearts of the citizens, it would lead to considerable
outlay; and this expenditure would benefit the influential contractor.
Albert Savaron de Savarus opined that the water of the river was good
for nothing but to flow under the suspension bridge, and that the only
drinkable water was that from Arcier. Articles were printed in the
_Review_ which merely expressed the views of the commercial interest
of Besancon. The nobility and the citizens, the moderates and the
legitimists, the government party and the opposition, everybody, in
short, was agreed that they must drink the same water as the Romans, and
boast of a suspension bridge. The question of the Arcier water was the
order of the day at Besancon. At Besancon--as in the matter of the two
railways to Versailles--as for every standing abuse--there were
private interests unconfessed which gave vital force to this idea. The
reasonable folk in opposition to this scheme, who were indeed but few,
were regarded as old women. No one talked of anything but of Savaron’s
two projects. And thus, after eighteen months of underground labor,
the ambitious lawyer had succeeded in stirring to its depths the most
stagnant town in France, the most unyielding to foreign influence, in
finding the length of its foot, to use a vulgar phrase, and exerting a
preponderant influence without stirring from his own room. He had solved
the singular problem of how to be powerful without being popular.
In the course of this winter he won seven lawsuits for various priests
of Besancon. At moments he could breathe freely at the thought of
his coming triumph. This intense desire, which made him work so many
interests and devise so many springs, absorbed the last strength of his
terribly overstrung soul. His disinterestedness was lauded, and he took
his clients’ fees without comment. But this disinterestedness was, in
truth, moral usury; he counted on a reward far greater to him than all
the gold in the world.
In the month of October 1834 he had brought, ostensibly to serve
a merchant who was in difficulties, with money lent him by Leopold
Hannequin, a house which gave him a qualification for election. He had
not seemed to seek or desire this advantageous bargain.
“You are really a remarkable man,” said the Abbe de Grancey, who, of
course, had watched and understood the lawyer. The Vicar-General had
come to introduce to him a Canon who needed his professional advice.
“You are a priest who has taken the wrong turning.” This observation
struck Savarus.
Rosalie, on her part, had made up her mind, in her strong girl’s head,
to get Monsieur de Savarus into the drawing-room and acquainted with
the society of the Hotel de Rupt. So far she had limited her desires
to seeing and hearing Albert. She had compounded, so to speak, and a
composition is often no more than a truce.
Les Rouxey, the inherited estate of the Wattevilles, was worth just ten
thousand francs a year; but in other hands it would have yielded a great
deal more. The Baron in his indifference--for his wife was to have, and
in fact had, forty thousand francs a year--left the management of les
Rouxey to a sort of factotum, an old servant of the Wattevilles named
Modinier. Nevertheless, whenever the Baron and his wife wished to go
out of the town, they went to les Rouxey, which is very picturesquely
situated. The chateau and the park were, in fact, created by the famous
Watteville, who in his active old age was passionately attached to this
magnificent spot.
Between two precipitous hills--little peaks with bare summits known
as the great and the little Rouxey--in the heart of a ravine where the
torrents from the heights, with the Dent de Vilard at their head, come
tumbling to join the lovely upper waters of the Doubs, Watteville had a
huge dam constructed, leaving two cuttings for the overflow. Above this
dam he made a beautiful lake, and below it two cascades; and these,
uniting a few yards below the falls, formed a lovely little river
to irrigate the barren, uncultivated valley, and these two hills he
enclosed in a ring fence, and built himself a retreat on the dam, which
he widened to two acres by accumulating above it all the soil which had
to be removed to make a channel for the river and the irrigation canals.
When the Baron de Watteville thus obtained the lake above his dam he
was owner of the two hills, but not of the upper valley thus flooded,
through which there had been at all times a right-of-way to where it
ends in a horseshoe under the Dent de Vilard. But this ferocious old man
was so widely dreaded, that so long as he lived no claim was urged by
the inhabitants of Riceys, the little village on the further side of
the Dent de Vilard. When the Baron died, he left the slopes of the two
Rouxey hills joined by a strong wall, to protect from inundation the two
lateral valleys opening into the valley of Rouxey, to the right and left
at the foot of the Dent de Vilard. Thus he died the master of the Dent
de Vilard.
His heirs asserted their protectorate of the village of Riceys, and so
maintained the usurpation. The old assassin, the old renegade, the old
Abbe Watteville, ended his career by planting trees and making a fine
road over the shoulder of one of the Rouxey hills to join the highroad.
The estate belonging to this park and house was extensive, but badly
cultivated; there were chalets on both hills and neglected forests
of timber. It was all wild and deserted, left to the care of nature,
abandoned to chance growths, but full of sublime and unexpected beauty.
You may now imagine les Rouxey.
It is unnecessary to complicate this story by relating all the
prodigious trouble and the inventiveness stamped with genius, by which
Rosalie achieved her end without allowing it to be suspected. It is
enough to say that it was in obedience to her mother that she left
Besancon in the month of May 1835, in an antique traveling carriage
drawn by a pair of sturdy hired horses, and accompanied her father to
les Rouxey.
To a young girl love lurks in everything. When she rose, the morning
after her arrival, Mademoiselle de Watteville saw from her bedroom
window the fine expanse of water, from which the light mists rose like
smoke, and were caught in the firs and larches, rolling up and along the
hills till they reached the heights, and she gave a cry of admiration.
“They loved by the lakes! _She_ lives by a lake! A lake is certainly
full of love!” she thought.
A lake fed by snows has opalescent colors and a translucency that makes
it one huge diamond; but when it is shut in like that of les Rouxey,
between two granite masses covered with pines, when silence broods over
it like that of the Savannas or the Steppes, then every one must exclaim
as Rosalie did.
“We owe that,” said her father, “to the notorious Watteville.”
“On my word,” said the girl, “he did his best to earn forgiveness. Let
us go in a boat to the further end; it will give us an appetite for
breakfast.”
The Baron called two gardener lads who knew how to row, and took
with him his prime minister Modinier. The lake was about six acres
in breadth, in some places ten or twelve, and four hundred in length.
Rosalie soon found herself at the upper end shut in by the Dent de
Vilard, the Jungfrau of that little Switzerland.
“Here we are, Monsieur le Baron,” said Modinier, signing to the
gardeners to tie up the boat; “will you come and look?”
“Look at what?” asked Rosalie.
“Oh, nothing!” exclaimed the Baron. “But you are a sensible girl; we
have some little secrets between us, and I may tell you what ruffles
my mind. Some difficulties have arisen since 1830 between the village
authorities of Riceys and me, on account of this very Dent de Vilard,
and I want to settle the matter without your mother’s knowing anything
about it, for she is stubborn; she is capable of flinging fire and
flames broadcast, particularly if she should hear that the Mayor of
Riceys, a republican, got up this action as a sop to his people.”
Rosalie had presence of mind enough to disguise her delight, so as to
work more effectually on her father.
“What action?” said she.
“Mademoiselle, the people of Riceys,” said Modinier, “have long enjoyed
the right of grazing and cutting fodder on their side of the Dent de
Vilard. Now Monsieur Chantonnit, the Maire since 1830, declares that the
whole Dent belongs to his district, and maintains that a hundred years
ago, or more, there was a way through our grounds. You understand that
in that case we should no longer have them to ourselves. Then this
barbarian would end by saying, what the old men in the village say,
that the ground occupied by the lake was appropriated by the Abbe de
Watteville. That would be the end of les Rouxey; what next?”
“Indeed, my child, between ourselves, it is the truth,” said Monsieur
de Watteville simply. “The land is an usurpation, with no title-deed but
lapse of time. And, therefore, to avoid all worry, I should wish to come
to a friendly understanding as to my border line on this side of the
Dent de Vilard, and I will then raise a wall.”
“If you give way to the municipality, it will swallow you up. You ought
to have threatened Riceys.”
“That is just what I told the master last evening,” said Modinier.
“But in confirmation of that view I proposed that he should come to see
whether, on this side of the Dent or on the other, there may not be,
high or low, some traces of an enclosure.”
For a century the Dent de Vilard had been used by both parties without
coming to extremities; it stood as a sort of party wall between the
communes of Riceys and les Rouxey, yielding little profit. Indeed, the
object in dispute, being covered with snow for six months in the year,
was of a nature to cool their ardor. Thus it required all the hot blast
by which the revolution of 1830 inflamed the advocates of the people, to
stir up this matter, by which Monsieur Chantonnit, the Maire of Riceys,
hoped to give a dramatic turn to his career on the peaceful frontier of
Switzerland, and to immortalize his term of office. Chantonnit, as his
name shows, was a native of Neuchatel.
“My dear father,” said Rosalie, as they got into the boat again, “I
agree with Modinier. If you wish to secure the joint possession of the
Dent de Vilard, you must act with decision, and get a legal opinion
which will protect you against this enterprising Chantonnit. Why should
you be afraid? Get the famous lawyer Savaron--engage him at once, lest
Chantonnit should place the interests of the village in his hands. The
man who won the case for the Chapter against the town can certainly win
that of Watteville _versus_ Riceys! Besides,” she added, “les Rouxey
will some day be mine--not for a long time yet, I trust.--Well, then
do not leave me with a lawsuit on my hands. I like this place, I shall
often live here, and add to it as much as possible. On those banks,” and
she pointed to the feet of the two hills, “I shall cut flowerbeds and
make the loveliest English gardens. Let us go to Besancon and bring back
with us the Abbe de Grancey, Monsieur Savaron, and my mother, if she
cares to come. You can then make up your mind; but in your place I
should have done so already. Your name is Watteville, and you are afraid
of a fight! If you should lose your case--well, I will never reproach
you by a word!”
“Oh, if that is the way you take it,” said the Baron, “I am quite ready;
I will see the lawyer.”
“Besides a lawsuit is really great fun. It brings some interest into
life, with coming and going and raging over it. You will have a great
deal to do before you can get hold of the judges.--We did not see the
Abbe de Grancey for three weeks, he was so busy!”
“But the very existence of the Chapter was involved,” said Monsieur de
Watteville; “and then the Archbishop’s pride, his conscience, everything
that makes up the life of the priesthood, was at stake. That Savaron
does not know what he did for the Chapter! He saved it!”
“Listen to me,” said his daughter in his ear, “if you secure Monsieur de
Savaron, you will gain your suit, won’t you? Well, then, let me advise
you. You cannot get at Monsieur Savaron excepting through Monsieur de
Grancey. Take my word for it, and let us together talk to the dear
Abbe without my mother’s presence at the interview, for I know a way of
persuading him to bring the lawyer to us.”
“It will be very difficult to avoid mentioning it to your mother!”
“The Abbe de Grancey will settle that afterwards. But just make up your
mind to promise your vote to Monsieur Savaron at the next election, and
you will see!”
“Go to the election! take the oath?” cried the Baron de Watteville.
“What then!” said she.
“And what will your mother say?”
“She may even desire you to do it,” replied Rosalie, knowing as she did
from Albert’s letter to Leopold how deeply the Vicar-General had pledged
himself.
Four days after, the Abbe de Grancey called very early one morning on
Albert de Savarus, having announced his visit the day before. The
old priest had come to win over the great lawyer to the house of the
Wattevilles, a proceeding which shows how much tact and subtlety Rosalie
must have employed in an underhand way.
“What can I do for you, Monsieur le Vicaire-General?” asked Savarus.
The Abbe, who told his story with admirable frankness, was coldly heard
by Albert.
“Monsieur l’Abbe,” said he, “it is out of the question that I should
defend the interests of the Wattevilles, and you shall understand why.
My part in this town is to remain perfectly neutral. I will display no
colors; I must remain a mystery till the eve of my election. Now, to
plead for the Wattevilles would mean nothing in Paris, but here!--Here,
where everything is discussed, I should be supposed by every one to be
an ally of your Faubourg Saint-Germain.”
“What! do you suppose that you can remain unknown on the day of the
election, when the candidates must oppose each other? It must then
become known that your name is Savaron de Savarus, that you have
held the appointment of Master of Appeals, that you are a man of the
Restoration!”
“On the day of the election,” said Savarus, “I will be all I am expected
to be; and I intend to speak at the preliminary meetings.”