“Do this one thing,” said the Abbé. “Come to the Hôtel 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 Abbé 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’Abbé, 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 Abbé.
“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 Abbé. “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 Abbé 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 Abbé, 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. Amédée 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 Amédée,” 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 Besançon.”
“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 brokenhearted at seeing that fine piece of the great de Watteville’s work destroyed.”
“The devil!” thought Amédée, 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
