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:
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.
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