will get a hundred votes in a mass, and far more to be trusted than
those on which you rely. It is always possible to produce division of
interests; convictions are inseparable.”
“The deuce is in it!” said Savarus. “I am attached to you, and I could
do a great deal for you, Father! Perhaps we may compound with the Devil.
Whatever Monsieur de Watteville’s business may be, by engaging Girardet,
and prompting him, it will be possible to drag the proceedings out till
the elections are over. I will not undertake to plead till the day after
I am returned.”
“Do this one thing,” said the Abbe. “Come to the Hotel de Rupt: there
is a young person of nineteen there who, one of these days, will have a
hundred thousand francs a year, and you can seem to be paying your court
to her--”
“Ah! the young lady I sometimes see in the kiosk?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle Rosalie,” replied the Abbe de Grancey. “You are
ambitious. If she takes a fancy to you, you may be everything an
ambitious man can wish--who knows? A Minister perhaps. A man can always
be a Minister who adds a hundred thousand francs a year to your amazing
talents.”
“Monsieur l’Abbe, if Mademoiselle de Watteville had three times her
fortune, and adored me into the bargain, it would be impossible that I
should marry her--”
“You are married?” exclaimed the Abbe.
“Not in church nor before the Maire, but morally speaking,” said
Savarus.
“That is even worse when a man cares about it as you seem to care,”
replied the Abbe. “Everything that is not done, can be undone. Do not
stake your fortune and your prospects on a woman’s liking, any more than
a wise man counts on a dead man’s shoes before starting on his way.”
“Let us say no more about Mademoiselle de Watteville,” said Albert
gravely, “and agree as to the facts. At your desire--for I have a regard
and respect for you--I will appear for Monsieur de Watteville, but
after the elections. Until then Girardet must conduct the case under my
instructions. That is the most I can do.”
“But there are questions involved which can only be settled after
inspection of the localities,” said the Vicar-General.
“Girardet can go,” said Savarus. “I cannot allow myself, in the face
of a town I know so well, to take any step which might compromise the
supreme interests that lie beyond my election.”
The Abbe left Savarus after giving him a keen look, in which he seemed
to be laughing at the young athlete’s uncompromising politics, while
admiring his firmness.
“Ah! I would have dragged my father into a lawsuit--I would have done
anything to get him here!” cried Rosalie to herself, standing in the
kiosk and looking at the lawyer in his room, the day after Albert’s
interview with the Abbe, who had reported the result to her father.
“I would have committed any mortal sin, and you will not enter the
Wattevilles’ drawing-room; I may not hear your fine voice! You make
conditions when your help is required by the Wattevilles and the
Rupts!--Well, God knows, I meant to be content with these small joys;
with seeing you, hearing you speak, going with you to les Rouxey, that
your presence might to me make the place sacred. That was all I asked.
But now--now I mean to be your wife.--Yes, yes; look at _her_ portrait,
at _her_ drawing-room, _her_ bedroom, at the four sides of _her_ villa,
the points of view from _her_ gardens. You expect her statue? I will
make her marble herself towards you!--After all, the woman does not
love. Art, science, books, singing, music, have absorbed half her senses
and her intelligence. She is old, too; she is past thirty; my Albert
will not be happy!”
“What is the matter that you stay here, Rosalie?” asked her
mother, interrupting her reflections. “Monsieur de Soulas is in the
drawing-room, and he observed your attitude, which certainly betrays
more thoughtfulness than is due at your age.”
“Then, is Monsieur de Soulas a foe to thought?” asked Rosalie.
“Then you were thinking?” said Madame de Watteville.
“Why, yes, mamma.”
“Why, no! you were not thinking. You were staring at that lawyer’s
window with an attention that is neither becoming, nor decent, and which
Monsieur de Soulas, of all men, ought never to have observed.”
“Why?” said Rosalie.
“It is time,” said the Baroness, “that you should know what our
intentions are. Amedee likes you, and you will not be unhappy as
Comtesse de Soulas.”
Rosalie, as white as a lily, made no reply, so completely was she
stupefied by contending feelings. And yet in the presence of the man she
had this instant begun to hate vehemently, she forced the kind of smile
which a ballet-dancer puts on for the public. Nay, she could even laugh;
she had the strength to conceal her rage, which presently subsided,
for she was determined to make use of this fat simpleton to further her
designs.
“Monsieur Amedee,” said she, at the moment when her mother was walking
ahead of them in the garden, affecting to leave the young people
together, “were you not aware that Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus is
a Legitimist?”
“A Legitimist?”
“Until 1830 he was Master of Appeals to the Council of State, attached
to the supreme Ministerial Council, and in favor with the Dauphin and
Dauphiness. It would be very good of you to say nothing against him,
but it would be better still if you would attend the election this
year, carry the day, and hinder that poor Monsieur de Chavoncourt from
representing the town of Besancon.”
“What sudden interest have you in this Savaron?”
“Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus, the natural son of the Comte de
Savarus--pray keep the secret of my indiscretion--if he is returned
deputy, will be our advocate in the suit about les Rouxey. Les Rouxey,
my father tells me, will be my property; I intend to live there, it is
a lovely place! I should be broken-hearted at seeing that fine piece of
the great de Watteville’s work destroyed.”
“The devil!” thought Amedee, as he left the house. “The heiress is not
such a fool as her mother thinks her.”
Monsieur de Chavoncourt is a Royalist, of the famous 221. Hence, from
the day after the revolution of July, he always preached the salutary
doctrine of taking the oaths and resisting the present order of things,
after the pattern of the Tories against the Whigs in England. This
doctrine was not acceptable to the Legitimists, who, in their defeat,
had the wit to divide in their opinions, and to trust to the force
of inertia and to Providence. Monsieur de Chavoncourt was not wholly
trusted by his own party, but seemed to the Moderates the best man to
choose; they preferred the triumph of his half-hearted opinions to
the acclamation of a Republican who should combine the votes of the
enthusiasts and the patriots. Monsieur de Chavoncourt, highly respected
in Besancon, was the representative of an old parliamentary family; his
fortune, of about fifteen thousand francs a year, was not an offence
to anybody, especially as he had a son and three daughters. With such
a family, fifteen thousand francs a year are a mere nothing. Now when,
under these circumstances, the father of the family is above bribery,
it would be hard if the electors did not esteem him. Electors wax
enthusiastic over a _beau ideal_ of parliamentary virtue, just as the
audience in the pit do at the representation of the generous sentiments
they so little practise.
Madame de Chavoncourt, at this time a woman of forty, was one of the
beauties of Besancon. While the Chamber was sitting, she lived meagrely
in one of their country places to recoup herself by economy for Monsieur
de Chavoncourt’s expenses in Paris. In the winter she received very
creditably once a week, on Tuesdays, understanding her business as
mistress of the house. Young Chavoncourt, a youth of two-and-twenty, and
another young gentleman, named Monsieur de Vauchelles, no richer than
Amedee and his school-friend, were his intimate allies. They made
excursions together to Granvelle, and sometimes went out shooting;
they were so well known to be inseparable that they were invited to the
country together.
Rosalie, who was intimate with the Chavoncourt girls, knew that the
three young men had no secrets from each other. She reflected that
if Monsieur de Soulas should repeat her words, it would be to his two
companions. Now, Monsieur de Vauchelles had his matrimonial plans,
as Amedee had his; he wished to marry Victoire, the eldest of the
Chavoncourts, on whom an old aunt was to settle an estate worth seven
thousand francs a year, and a hundred thousand francs in hard cash, when
the contract was to be signed. Victoire was this aunt’s god-daughter
and favorite niece. Consequently, young Chavoncourt and his friend
Vauchelles would be sure to warn Monsieur de Chavoncourt of the danger
he was in from Albert’s candidature.
But this did not satisfy Rosalie. She sent the Prefet of the department
a letter written with her left hand, signed “_A friend to Louis
Philippe_,” in which she informed him of the secret intentions of
Monsieur Albert de Savarus, pointing out the serious support a Royalist
orator might give to Berryer, and revealing to him the deeply artful
course pursued by the lawyer during his two years’ residence at
Besancon. The Prefet was a capable man, a personal enemy of the Royalist
party, devoted by conviction to the Government of July--in short, one of
those men of whom, in the Rue de Grenelle, the Minister of the Interior
could say, “We have a capital Prefet at Besancon.”--The Prefet read the
letter, and, in obedience to its instructions, he burnt it.
Rosalie aimed at preventing Albert’s election, so as to keep him five
years longer at Besancon.
At that time an election was a fight between parties, and in order to
win, the Ministry chose its ground by choosing the moment when it would
give battle. The elections were therefore not to take place for three
months yet. When a man’s whole life depends on an election, the
period that elapses between the issuing of the writs for convening the
electoral bodies, and the day fixed for their meetings, is an interval
during which ordinary vitality is suspended. Rosalie fully understood
how much latitude Albert’s absorbed state would leave her during these
three months. By promising Mariette--as she afterwards confessed--to
take both her and Jerome into her service, she induced the maid to bring
her all the letters Albert might sent to Italy, and those addressed
to him from that country. And all the time she was pondering these
machinations, the extraordinary girl was working slippers for her father
with the most innocent air in the world. She even made a greater display
than ever of candor and simplicity, quite understanding how valuable
that candor and innocence would be to her ends.
“My daughter grows quite charming!” said Madame de Watteville.
Two months before the election a meeting was held at the house of
Monsieur Boucher senior, composed of the contractor who expected to get
the work for the aqueduct for the Arcier waters; of Monsieur Boucher’s
father-in-law; of Monsieur Granet, the influential man to whom Savarus
had done a service, and who was to nominate him as a candidate; of
Girardet the lawyer; of the printer of the _Eastern Review_; and of the
President of the Chamber of Commerce. In fact, the assembly consisted
of twenty-seven persons in all, men who in the provinces are regarded as
bigwigs. Each man represented on an average six votes, but in estimating
their values they said ten, for men always begin by exaggerating their
own influence. Among these twenty-seven was one who was wholly devoted
to the Prefet, one false brother who secretly looked for some favor from
the Ministry, either for himself or for some one belonging to him.
At this preliminary meeting, it was agreed that Savaron the lawyer
should be named as candidate, a motion received with such enthusiasm
as no one looked for from Besancon. Albert, waiting at home for Alfred
Boucher to fetch him, was chatting with the Abbe de Grancey, who was
interested in this absorbing ambition. Albert had appreciated the
priest’s vast political capacities; and the priest, touched by the young
man’s entreaties, had been willing to become his guide and adviser
in this culminating struggle. The Chapter did not love Monsieur de
Chavoncourt, for it was his wife’s brother-in-law, as President of the
Tribunal, who had lost the famous suit for them in the lower Court.
“You are betrayed, my dear fellow,” said the shrewd and worthy Abbe, in
that gentle, calm voice which old priests acquire.
“Betrayed!” cried the lover, struck to the heart.
“By whom I know not at all,” the priest replied. “But at the Prefecture
your plans are known, and your hand read like a book. At this moment I
have no advice to give you. Such affairs need consideration. As for this
evening, take the bull by the horns, anticipate the blow. Tell them
all your previous life, and thus you will mitigate the effect of the
discovery on the good folks of Besancon.”
“Oh, I was prepared for it,” said Albert in a broken voice.
“You would not benefit by my advice; you had the opportunity of making
an impression at the Hotel de Rupt; you do not know the advantage you
would have gained--”
“What?”
“The unanimous support of the Royalists, an immediate readiness to go
to the election--in short, above a hundred votes. Adding to these what,
among ourselves, we call the ecclesiastical vote, though you were
not yet nominated, you were master of the votes by ballot. Under such
circumstances, a man may temporize, may make his way--”
Alfred Boucher when he came in, full of enthusiasm, to announce the
decision of the preliminary meeting, found the Vicar-General and the
lawyer cold, calm, and grave.
“Good-night, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said Albert. “We will talk of your
business at greater length when the elections are over.”
And he took Alfred’s arm, after pressing Monsieur de Grancey’s hand
with meaning. The priest looked at the ambitious man, whose face at that
moment wore the lofty expression which a general may have when he hears
the first gun fired for a battle. He raised his eyes to heaven, and left
the room, saying to himself, “What a priest he would make!”
Eloquence is not at the Bar. The pleader rarely puts forth the real
powers of his soul; if he did, he would die of it in a few years.
Eloquence is, nowadays, rarely in the pulpit; but it is found on certain
occasions in the Chamber of Deputies, when an ambitious man stakes all
to win all, or, stung by a myriad darts, at a given moment bursts into
speech. But it is still more certainly found in some privileged beings,
at the inevitable hour when their claims must either triumph or be
wrecked, and when they are forced to speak. Thus at this meeting, Albert
Savarus, feeling the necessity of winning himself some supporters,
displayed all the faculties of his soul and the resources of his
intellect. He entered the room well, without awkwardness or arrogance,
without weakness, without cowardice, quite gravely, and was not dismayed
at finding himself among twenty or thirty men. The news of the meeting
and of its determination had already brought a few docile sheep to
follow the bell.
Before listening to Monsieur Boucher, who was about to deluge him with
a speech announcing the decision of the Boucher Committee, Albert begged
for silence, and, as he shook hands with Monsieur Boucher, tried to warn
him, by a sign, of an unexpected danger.
“My young friend, Alfred Boucher, has just announced to me the honor you
have done me. But before that decision is irrevocable,” said the lawyer,
“I think that I ought to explain to you who and what your candidate is,
so as to leave you free to take back your word if my declaration should
disturb your conscience!”
This exordium was followed by profound silence. Some of the men thought
it showed a noble impulse.
Albert gave a sketch of his previous career, telling them his real name,
his action under the Restoration, and revealing himself as a new man
since his arrival at Besancon, while pledging himself for the future.
This address held his hearers breathless, it was said. These men, all
with different interests, were spellbound by the brilliant eloquence
that flowed at boiling heat from the heart and soul of this ambitious
spirit. Admiration silenced reflection. Only one thing was clear--the
thing which Albert wished to get into their heads:
Was it not far better for the town to have one of those men who are
born to govern society at large than a mere voting-machine? A statesman
carries power with him. A commonplace deputy, however incorruptible, is
but a conscience. What a glory for Provence to have found a Mirabeau,
to return the only statesman since 1830 that the revolution of July had
produced!
Under the pressure of this eloquence, all the audience believed it great
enough to become a splendid political instrument in the hands of their
representative. They all saw in Albert Savaron, Savarus the great
Minister. And, reading the secret calculations of his constituents, the
clever candidate gave them to understand that they would be the first to
enjoy the right of profiting by his influence.
This confession of faith, this ambitious programme, this retrospect of
his life and character was, according to the only man present who was
capable of judging of Savarus (he has since become one of the leading
men of Besancon), a masterpiece of skill and of feeling, of fervor,
interest, and fascination. This whirlwind carried away the electors.
Never had any man had such a triumph. But, unfortunately, speech, a
weapon only for close warfare, has only an immediate effect. Reflection
kills the word when the word ceases to overpower reflection. If the
votes had then been taken, Albert’s name would undoubtedly have come out
of the ballot-box. At the moment, he was conqueror. But he must conquer
every day for two months.
Albert went home quivering. The townsfolk had applauded him, and he had
achieved the great point of silencing beforehand the malignant talk
to which his early career might give rise. The commercial interest of
Besancon had nominated the lawyer, Albert Savaron de Savarus, as its
candidate.
Alfred Boucher’s enthusiasm, at first infectious, presently became
blundering.
The Prefet, alarmed by this success, set to work to count the
Ministerial votes, and contrived to have a secret interview with
Monsieur de Chavoncourt, so as to effect a coalition in their common
interests. Every day, without Albert’s being able to discover how, the
voters in the Boucher committee diminished in number.
Nothing could resist the slow grinding of the Prefecture. Three of four
clever men would say to Albert’s clients, “Will the deputy defend you
and win your lawsuits? Will he give you advice, draw up your contracts,
arrange your compromises?--He will be your slave for five years longer,
if, instead of returning him to the Chamber, you only hold out the hope
of his going there five years hence.”
This calculation did Savarus all the more mischief, because the wives of
some of the merchants had already made it. The parties interested in the
matter of the bridge and that of the water from Arcier could not hold
out against a talking-to from a clever Ministerialist, who proved to
them that their safety lay at the Prefecture, and not in the hands of
an ambitious man. Each day was a check for Savarus, though each day the
battle was led by him and fought by his lieutenants--a battle of words,
speeches, and proceedings. He dared not go to the Vicar-General, and
the Vicar-General never showed himself. Albert rose and went to bed in a
fever, his brain on fire.
At last the day dawned of the first struggle, practically the show of
hands; the votes are counted, the candidates estimate their chances,
and clever men can prophesy their failure or success. It is a decent
hustings, without the mob, but formidable; agitation, though it is
not allowed any physical display, as it is in England, is not the less
profound. The English fight these battles with their fists, the French
with hard words. Our neighbors have a scrimmage, the French try their
fate by cold combinations calmly worked out. This particular political
business is carried out in opposition to the character of the two
nations.
The Radical party named their candidate; Monsieur de Chavoncourt came
forward; then Albert appeared, and was accused by the Chavoncourt
committee and the Radicals of being an uncompromising man of the Right,
a second Berryer. The Ministry had their candidate, a stalking-horse,
useful only to receive the purely Ministerial votes. The votes, thus
divided, gave no result. The Republican candidate had twenty, the
Ministry got fifty, Albert had seventy, Monsieur de Chavoncourt obtained
sixty-seven. But the Prefet’s party had perfidiously made thirty of its
most devoted adherents vote for Albert, so as to deceive the enemy. The
votes for Monsieur de Chavoncourt, added to the eighty votes--the real
number--at the disposal of the Prefecture, would carry the election, if
only the Prefet could succeed in gaining over a few of the Radicals.
A hundred and sixty votes were not recorded: those of Monsieur de
Grancey’s following and the Legitimists.
The show of hands at an election, like a dress rehearsal at a theatre,
is the most deceptive thing in the world. Albert Savarus came home,
putting a brave face on the matter, but half dead. He had had the wit,
the genius, or the good luck to gain, within the last fortnight, two
staunch supporters--Girardet’s father-in-law and a very shrewd old
merchant to whom Monsieur de Grancey had sent him. These two worthy men,
his self-appointed spies, affected to be Albert’s most ardent opponents
in the hostile camp. Towards the end of the show of hands they informed
Savarus, through the medium of Monsieur Boucher, that thirty voters,
unknown, were working against him in his party, playing the same trick
that they were playing for his benefit on the other side.
A criminal marching to execution could not suffer as Albert suffered as
he went home from the hall where his fate was at stake. The despairing
lover could endure no companionship. He walked through the streets
alone, between eleven o’clock and midnight. At one in the morning,
Albert, to whom sleep had been unknown for the past three days, was
sitting in his library in a deep armchair, his face as pale as if he
were dying, his hands hanging limp, in a forlorn attitude worthy of the
Magdalen. Tears hung on his long lashes, tears that dim the eyes, but do
not fall; fierce thought drinks them up, the fire of the soul consumes
them. Alone, he might weep. And then, under the kiosk, he saw a white
figure, which reminded him of Francesca.
“And for three months I have had no letter from her! What has become of
her? I have not written for two months, but I warned her. Is she ill?
Oh, my love! My life! Will you ever know what I have gone through? What
a wretched constitution is mine! Have I an aneurism?” he asked himself,
feeling his heart beat so violently that its pulses seemed audible in
the silence like little grains of sand dropping on a big drum.
At this moment three distinct taps sounded on his door; Albert hastened
to open it, and almost fainted with joy at seeing the Vicar-General’s
cheerful and triumphant mien. Without a word, he threw his arms round
the Abbe de Grancey, held him fast, and clasped him closely, letting his
head fall on the old man’s shoulder. He was a child again; he cried as
he had cried on hearing that Francesca Soderini was a married woman. He
betrayed his weakness to no one but to this priest, on whose face shone
the light of hope. The priest had been sublime, and as shrewd as he was
sublime.
“Forgive me, dear Abbe, but you come at one of those moments when the
man vanishes, for you are not to think me vulgarly ambitious.”
“Oh! I know,” replied the Abbe. “You wrote ‘_Ambition for love’s
sake_!’--Ah! my son, it was love in despair that made me a priest in
1786, at the age of two-and-twenty. In 1788 I was in charge of a parish.
I know life.--I have refused three bishoprics already; I mean to die at
Besancon.”
“Come and see her!” cried Savarus, seizing a candle, and leading the
Abbe into the handsome room where hung the portrait of the Duchesse
d’Argaiolo, which he lighted up.