“Madame,” said Monsieur de Soulas, addressing the Baroness, while
waiting till his soup was cool enough to swallow, and affecting to
give a romantic turn to his narrative, “one fine morning the mail
coach dropped at the Hotel National a gentleman from Paris, who, after
seeking apartments, made up his mind in favor of the first floor in
Mademoiselle Galard’s house, Rue du Perron. Then the stranger went
straight to the Mairie, and had himself registered as a resident with
all political qualifications. Finally, he had his name entered on the
list of the barristers to the Court, showing his title in due form,
and he left his card on all his new colleagues, the Ministerial
officials, the Councillors of the Court, and the members of the bench,
with the name, ‘ALBERT SAVARON.'”
“The name of Savaron is famous,” said Mademoiselle de Watteville, who
was strong in heraldic information. “The Savarons of Savarus are one
of the oldest, noblest, and richest families in Belgium.”
“He is a Frenchman, and no man’s son,” replied Amedee de Soulas. “If
he wishes to bear the arms of the Savarons of Savarus, he must add a
bar-sinister. There is no one left of the Brabant family but a
Mademoiselle de Savarus, a rich heiress, and unmarried.”
“The bar-sinister is, of course, the badge of a bastard; but the
bastard of a Comte de Savarus is noble,” answered Rosalie.
“Enough, that will do, mademoiselle!” said the Baroness.
“You insisted on her learning heraldry,” said Monsieur de Watteville,
“and she knows it very well.”
“Go on, I beg, Monsieur de Soulas.”
“You may suppose that in a town where everything is classified, known,
pigeon-holed, ticketed, and numbered, as in Besancon, Albert Savaron
was received without hesitation by the lawyers of the town. They were
satisfied to say, ‘Here is a man who does not know his Besancon. Who
the devil can have sent him here? What can he hope to do? Sending his
card to the Judges instead of calling in person! What a blunder!’ And
so, three days after, Savaron had ceased to exist. He took as his
servant old Monsieur Galard’s man—Galard being dead—Jerome, who can
cook a little. Albert Savaron was all the more completely forgotten,
because no one had seen him or met him anywhere.”
“Then, does he not go to mass?” asked Madame de Chavoncourt.
“He goes on Sundays to Saint-Pierre, but to the early service at eight
in the morning. He rises every night between one and two in the
morning, works till eight, has his breakfast, and then goes on
working. He walks in his garden, going round fifty, or perhaps sixty
times; then he goes in, dines, and goes to bed between six and seven.”
“How did you learn all that?” Madame de Chavoncourt asked Monsieur de
Soulas.
“In the first place, madame, I live in the Rue Neuve, at the corner of
the Rue du Perron; I look out on the house where this mysterious
personage lodges; then, of course, there are communications between my
tiger and Jerome.”
“And you gossip with Babylas?”
“What would you have me do out riding?”
“Well—and how was it that you engaged a stranger for your defence?”
asked the Baroness, thus placing the conversation in the hands of the
Vicar-General.
“The President of the Court played this pleader a trick by appointing
him to defend at the Assizes a half-witted peasant accused of forgery.
But Monsieur Savaron procured the poor man’s acquittal by proving his
innocence and showing that he had been a tool in the hands of the real
culprits. Not only did his line of defence succeed, but it led to the
arrest of two of the witnesses, who were proved guilty and condemned.
His speech struck the Court and the jury. One of these, a merchant,
placed a difficult case next day in the hands of Monsieur Savaron, and
he won it. In the position in which we found ourselves, Monsieur
Berryer finding it impossible to come to Besancon, Monsieur de
Garcenault advised him to employ this Monsieur Albert Savaron,
foretelling our success. As soon as I saw him and heard him, I felt
faith in him, and I was not wrong.”
“Is he then so extraordinary?” asked Madame de Chavoncourt.
“Certainly, madame,” replied the Vicar-General.
“Well, tell us about it,” said Madame de Watteville.
“The first time I saw him,” said the Abbe de Grancey, “he received me
in his outer room next the ante-room—old Galard’s drawing-room—which
he has had painted like old oak, and which I found entirely lined with
law-books, arranged on shelves also painted as old oak. The painting
and the books are the sole decoration of the room, for the furniture
consists of an old writing table of carved wood, six old armchairs
covered with tapestry, window curtains of gray stuff bordered with
green, and a green carpet over the floor. The ante-room stove heats
this library as well. As I waited there I did not picture my advocate
as a young man. But this singular setting is in perfect harmony with
his person; for Monsieur Savaron came out in a black merino
dressing-gown tied with a red cord, red slippers, a red flannel
waistcoat, and a red smoking-cap.”
“The devil’s colors!” exclaimed Madame de Watteville.
“Yes,” said the Abbe; “but a magnificent head. Black hair already
streaked with a little gray, hair like that of Saint Peter and Saint
Paul in pictures, with thick shining curls, hair as stiff as
horse-hair; a round white throat like a woman’s; a splendid forehead,
furrowed by the strong median line which great schemes, great
thoughts, deep meditations stamp on a great man’s brow; an olive
complexion marbled with red, a square nose, eyes of flame, hollow
cheeks, with two long lines, betraying much suffering, a mouth with a
sardonic smile, and a small chin, narrow, and too short; crow’s feet
on his temples; deep-set eyes, moving in their sockets like burning
balls; but, in spite of all these indications of a violently
passionate nature, his manner was calm, deeply resigned, and his voice
of penetrating sweetness, which surprised me in Court by its easy
flow; a true orator’s voice, now clear and appealing, sometimes
insinuating, but a voice of thunder when needful, and lending itself
to sarcasm to become incisive.
“Monsieur Albert Savaron is of middle height, neither stout nor thin.
And his hands are those of a prelate.
“The second time I called on him he received me in his bed-room,
adjoining the library, and smiled at my astonishment when I saw there
a wretched chest of drawers, a shabby carpet, a camp-bed, and cotton
window-curtains. He came out of his private room, to which no one is
admitted, as Jerome informed me; the man did not go in, but merely
knocked at the door.
“The third time he was breakfasting in his library on the most frugal
fare; but on this occasion, as he had spent the night studying our
documents, as I had my attorney with me, and as that worthy Monsieur
Girardet is long-winded, I had leisure to study the stranger. He
certainly is no ordinary man. There is more than one secret behind
that face, at once so terrible and so gentle, patient and yet
impatient, broad and yet hollow. I saw, too, that he stooped a little,
like all men who have some heavy burden to bear.”
“Why did so eloquent a man leave Paris? For what purpose did he come
to Besancon?” asked pretty Madame de Chavoncourt. “Could no one tell
him how little chance a stranger has of succeeding here? The good
folks of Besancon will make use of him, but they will not allow him to
make use of them. Why, having come, did he make so little effort that
it needed a freak of the President’s to bring him forward?”
“After carefully studying that fine head,” said the Abbe, looking
keenly at the lady who had interrupted him, in such a way as to
suggest that there was something he would not tell, “and especially
after hearing him this morning reply to one of the bigwigs of the
Paris Bar, I believe that this man, who may be five-and-thirty, will
by and by make a great sensation.”
“Why should we discuss him? You have gained your action, and paid
him,” said Madame de Watteville, watching her daughter, who, all the
time the Vicar-General had been speaking, seemed to hang on his lips.
The conversation changed, and no more was heard of Albert Savaron.
The portrait sketched by the cleverest of the Vicars-General of the
diocese had all the greater charm for Rosalie because there was a
romance behind it. For the first time in her life she had come across
the marvelous, the exceptional, which smiles on every youthful
imagination, and which curiosity, so eager at Rosalie’s age, goes
forth to meet half-way. What an ideal being was this Albert—gloomy,
unhappy, eloquent, laborious, as compared by Mademoiselle de
Watteville to that chubby fat Count, bursting with health, paying
compliments, and talking of the fashions in the very face of the
splendor of the old counts of Rupt. Amedee had cost her many quarrels
and scoldings, and, indeed, she knew him only too well; while this
Albert Savaron offered many enigmas to be solved.
“Albert Savaron de Savarus,” she repeated to herself.
Now, to see him, to catch sight of him! This was the desire of the
girl to whom desire was hitherto unknown. She pondered in her heart,
in her fancy, in her brain, the least phrases used by the Abbe de
Grancey, for all his words had told.
“A fine forehead!” said she to herself, looking at the head of every
man seated at the table; “I do not see one fine one.—Monsieur de
Soulas’ is too prominent; Monsieur de Grancey’s is fine, but he is
seventy, and has no hair, it is impossible to see where his forehead
ends.”
“What is the matter, Rosalie; you are eating nothing?”
“I am not hungry, mamma,” said she. “A prelate’s hands——” she went
on to herself. “I cannot remember our handsome Archbishop’s hands,
though he confirmed me.”
Finally, in the midst of her coming and going in the labyrinth of her
meditations, she remembered a lighted window she had seen from her
bed, gleaming through the trees of the two adjoining gardens, when she
had happened to wake in the night. . . . “Then that was his light!”
thought she. “I might see him!—I will see him.”
“Monsieur de Grancey, is the Chapter’s lawsuit quite settled?” said
Rosalie point-blank to the Vicar-General, during a moment of silence.
Madame de Watteville exchanged rapid glances with the Vicar-General.
“What can that matter to you, my dear child?” she said to Rosalie,
with an affected sweetness which made her daughter cautious for the
rest of her days.
“It might be carried to the Court of Appeal, but our adversaries will
think twice about that,” replied the Abbe.
“I never could have believed that Rosalie would think about a lawsuit
all through a dinner,” remarked Madame de Watteville.
“Nor I either,” said Rosalie, in a dreamy way that made every one
laugh. “But Monsieur de Grancey was so full of it, that I was
interested.”
The company rose from table and returned to the drawing-room. All
through the evening Rosalie listened in case Albert Savaron should be
mentioned again; but beyond the congratulations offered by each
newcomer to the Abbe on having gained his suit, to which no one added
any praise of the advocate, no more was said about it. Mademoiselle de
Watteville impatiently looked forward to bedtime. She had promised
herself to wake at between two and three in the morning, and to look
at Albert’s dressing-room windows. When the hour came, she felt almost
pleasure in gazing at the glimmer from the lawyer’s candles that shone
through the trees, now almost bare of their leaves. By the help of the
strong sight of a young girl, which curiosity seems to make longer,
she saw Albert writing, and fancied she could distinguish the color of
the furniture, which she thought was red. From the chimney above the
roof rose a thick column of smoke.
“While all the world is sleeping, he is awake—like God!” thought she.
The education of girls brings with it such serious problems—for the
future of a nation is in the mother—that the University of France
long since set itself the task of having nothing to do with it. Here
is one of these problems: Ought girls to be informed on all points?
Ought their minds to be under restraint? It need not be said that the
religious system is one of restraint. If you enlighten them, you make
them demons before their time; if you keep them from thinking, you end
in the sudden explosion so well shown by Moliere in the character of
Agnes, and you leave this suppressed mind, so fresh and clear-seeing,
as swift and as logical as that of a savage, at the mercy of an
accident. This inevitable crisis was brought on in Mademoiselle de
Watteville by the portrait which one of the most prudent Abbes of the
Chapter of Besancon imprudently allowed himself to sketch at a dinner
party.
Next morning, Mademoiselle de Watteville, while dressing, necessarily
looked out at Albert Savaron walking in the garden adjoining that of
the Hotel de Rupt.
“What would have become of me,” thought she, “if he had lived anywhere
else? Here I can, at any rate, see him.—What is he thinking about?”
Having seen this extraordinary man, though at a distance, the only man
whose countenance stood forth in contrast with crowds of Besancon
faces she had hitherto met with, Rosalie at once jumped at the idea of
getting into his house, of ascertaining the reason of so much mystery,
of hearing that eloquent voice, of winning a glance from those fine
eyes. All this she set her heart on, but how could she achieve it?
All that day she drew her needle through her embroidery with the
obtuse concentration of a girl who, like Agnes, seems to be thinking
of nothing, but who is reflecting on things in general so deeply, that
her artifice is unfailing. As a result of this profound meditation,
Rosalie thought she would go to confession. Next morning, after Mass,
she had a brief interview with the Abbe Giroud at Saint-Pierre, and
managed so ingeniously that the hour of her confession was fixed for
Sunday morning at half-past seven, before the eight o’clock Mass. She
committed herself to a dozen fibs in order to find herself, just for
once, in the church at the hour when the lawyer came to Mass. Then she
was seized with an impulse of extreme affection for her father; she
went to see him in his workroom, and asked him for all sorts of
information on the art of turning, ending by advising him to turn
larger pieces, columns. After persuading her father to set to work on
some twisted pillars, one of the difficulties of the turner’s art, she
suggested that he should make use of a large heap of stones that lay
in the middle of the garden to construct a sort of grotto on which he
might erect a little temple or Belvedere in which his twisted pillars
could be used and shown off to all the world.
At the climax of the pleasure the poor unoccupied man derived from
this scheme, Rosalie said, as she kissed him, “Above all, do not tell
mamma who gave you the notion; she would scold me.”
“Do not be afraid!” replied Monsieur de Watteville, who groaned as
bitterly as his daughter under the tyranny of the terrible descendant
of the Rupts.
So Rosalie had a certain prospect of seeing ere long a charming
observatory built, whence her eye would command the lawyer’s private
room. And there are men for whose sake young girls can carry out such
masterstrokes of diplomacy, while, for the most part, like Albert
Savaron, they know it not.
The Sunday so impatiently looked for arrived, and Rosalie dressed with
such carefulness as made Mariette, the ladies’-maid, smile.
“It is the first time I ever knew mademoiselle to be so fidgety,” said
Mariette.
“It strikes me,” said Rosalie, with a glance at Mariette, which
brought poppies to her cheeks, “that you too are more particular on
some days than on others.”
As she went down the steps, across the courtyard, and through the
gates, Rosalie’s heart beat, as everybody’s does in anticipation of a
great event. Hitherto, she had never known what it was to walk in the
streets; for a moment she had felt as though her mother must read her
schemes on her brow, and forbid her going to confession, and she now
felt new blood in her feet, she lifted them as though she trod on
fire. She had, of course, arranged to be with her confessor at a
quarter-past eight, telling her mother eight, so as to have about a
quarter of an hour near Albert. She got to church before Mass, and
after a short prayer, went to see if the Abbe Giroud were in his
confessional, simply to pass the time; and she thus placed herself in
such a way as to see Albert as he came into church.
The man must have been atrociously ugly who did not seem handsome to
Mademoiselle de Watteville in the frame of mind produced by her
curiosity. And Albert Savaron, who was really very striking, made all
the more impression on Rosalie because his mien, his walk, his
carriage, everything down to his clothing, had the indescribable stamp
which can only be expressed by the word Mystery.
He came in. The church, till now gloomy, seemed to Rosalie to be
illuminated. The girl was fascinated by his slow and solemn demeanor,
as of a man who bears a world on his shoulders and whose deep gaze,
whose very gestures, combine to express a devastating or absorbing
thought. Rosalie now understood the Vicar-General’s words in their
fullest extent. Yes, those eyes of tawny brown, shot with golden
lights, covered ardor which revealed itself in sudden flashes.
Rosalie, with a recklessness which Mariette noted, stood in the
lawyer’s way, so as to exchange glances with him; and this glance
turned her blood, for it seethed and boiled as though its warmth were
doubled.
As soon as Albert had taken a seat, Mademoiselle de Watteville quickly
found a place whence she could see him perfectly during all the time
the Abbe might leave her. When Mariette said, “Here is Monsieur
Giroud,” it seemed to Rosalie that the interview had lasted no more
than a few minutes. By the time she came out from the confessional,
Mass was over. Albert had left the church.
“The Vicar-General was right,” thought she. “He is unhappy. Why
should this eagle—for he has the eyes of an eagle—swoop down on
Besancon? Oh, I must know everything! But how?”
Under the smart of this new desire Rosalie set the stitches of her
worsted-work with exquisite precision, and hid her meditations under a
little innocent air, which shammed simplicity to deceive Madame de
Watteville.
From that Sunday, when Mademoiselle de Watteville had met that look,
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.
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