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.”
“If you have the support of Monsieur de Watteville and his party, you
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.
“She is one of those women who are born to reign!” said the
Vicar-General, understanding how great an affection Albert showed him
by this mark of confidence. “But there is pride on that brow; it is
implacable; she would never forgive an insult! It is the Archangel
Michael, the angel of Execution, the inexorable angel—’All or
nothing’ is the motto of this type of angel. There is something
divinely pitiless in that head.”
“You have guessed well,” cried Savarus. “But, my dear Abbe, for more
than twelve years now she had reigned over my life, and I have not a
thought for which to blame myself—”
“Ah! if you could only say the same of God!” said the priest with
simplicity. “Now, to talk of your affairs. For ten days I have been at
work for you. If you are a real politician, this time you will follow
my advice. You would not be where you are now if you would have gone
to the Wattevilles when I first told you. But you must go there
to-morrow; I will take you in the evening. The Rouxey estates are in
danger; the case must be defended within three days. The election will
not be over in three days. They will take good care not to appoint
examiners the first day. There will be several voting days, and you
will be elected by ballot—”
“How can that be?” asked Savarus.
“By winning the Rouxey lawsuit you will gain eighty Legitimist votes;
add them to the thirty I can command, and you have a hundred and ten.
Then, as twenty remain to you of the Boucher committee, you will have
a hundred and thirty in all.”
“Well,” said Albert, “we must get seventy-five more.”
“Yes,” said the priest, “since all the rest are Ministerial. But, my
son, you have two hundred votes, and the Prefecture no more than a
hundred and eighty.”
“I have two hundred votes?” said Albert, standing stupid with
amazement, after starting to his feet as if shot up by a spring.
“You have those of Monsieur de Chavoncourt,” said the Abbe.
“How?” said Albert.
“You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt.”
“Never!”
“You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt,” the priest
repeated coldly.
“But you see—she is inexorable,” said Albert, pointing to Francesca.
“You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt,” said the Abbe
calmly for the third time.
This time Albert understood. The Vicar-General would not be implicated
in a scheme which at last smiled on the despairing politician. A word
more would have compromised the priest’s dignity and honor.
“To-morrow evening at the Hotel de Rupt you will meet Madame de
Chavoncourt and her second daughter. You can thank her beforehand for
what she is going to do for you, and tell her that your gratitude is
unbounded, that you are hers body and soul, that henceforth your
future is that of her family. You are quite disinterested, for you
have so much confidence in yourself that you regard the nomination as
deputy as a sufficient fortune.
“You will have a struggle with Madame de Chavoncourt; she will want
you to pledge your word. All your future life, my son, lies in that
evening. But, understand clearly, I have nothing to do with it. I am
answerable only for Legitimist voters; I have secured Madame de
Watteville, and that means all the aristocracy of Besancon. Amedee de
Soulas and Vauchelles, who will both vote for you, have won over the
young men; Madame de Watteville will get the old ones. As to my
electors, they are infallible.”
“And who on earth has gained over Madame de Chavoncourt?” asked
Savarus.
“Ask me no questions,” replied the Abbe. “Monsieur de Chavoncourt, who
has three daughters to marry, is not capable of increasing his wealth.
Though Vauchelles marries the eldest without anything from her father,
because her old aunt is to settle something on her, what is to become
of the two others? Sidonie is sixteen, and your ambition is as good as
a gold mine. Some one has told Madame de Chavoncourt that she will do
better by getting her daughter married than by sending her husband to
waste his money in Paris. That some one manages Madame de Chavoncourt,
and Madame de Chavoncourt manages her husband.”
“That is enough, my dear Abbe. I understand. When once I am returned
as deputy, I have somebody’s fortune to make, and by making it large
enough I shall be released from my promise. In me you have a son, a
man who will owe his happiness to you. Great heavens! what have I done
to deserve so true a friend?”
“You won a triumph for the Chapter,” said the Vicar-General, smiling.
“Now, as to all this, be as secret as the tomb. We are nothing, we
have done nothing. If we were known to have meddled in election
matters, we should be eaten up alive by the Puritans of the Left—who
do worse—and blamed by some of our own party, who want everything.
Madame de Chavoncourt has no suspicion of my share in all this. I have
confided in no one but Madame de Watteville, whom we may trust as we
trust ourselves.”
“I will bring the Duchess to you to be blessed!” cried Savarus.
After seeing out the old priest, Albert went to bed in the swaddling
clothes of power.
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