THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES H. DE BALZAC THE COMEDIE HUMAINE WHEN VERONIQUE WAS LEARNING TO WALK, HER FATHER SQUATTED ON HIS HEELS FOUR PACES AWAY. H. DE BALZAC THE COUNTRY PARSON (LE CURE DE VILLAGE) AND ALBERT SAVARON (DE SAVARUS) TRANSLATED BY ELLEN MARRIAGE AND CLARA BELL WITH A PREFACB BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY PHILADELPHIA THE GEBBIE PUBLISHING Co., Ltd. 1898 CONTENTS PASB PREFACE ix THE COUNTRY PARSON I. VERONIQUE I II. TASCHERON ......... $2 III. THE CUR.6 OF MONTEGNAC 82 IV. MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC 136 V. VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB 242 ALBERT SAVARON (De Savarui) 285 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. WHEN VERONIQUE WAS LEARNING TO WALK, HER FATHER SQUATTED ON HIS HEELS FOUR PACES AWAY (p. 8.) Frontispiece FACE " DO YOU WANT MONEY FOR SOME OF YOUR POOR PEOPLE ? " . 50 " AH ! SAVE HIS SOUL AT LEAST !".... . IO7 FARRABESCHE LED THE WAY, AND VERONIQUE FOLLOWED . 174 "SHE IS ONE OF THOSE WOMEN WHO ARE BORN TO REIGN!" . 387 Drawn by D. Murray- Smith. PREFACE. PERHAPS in no instance of Balzac's work is his singular fancy for pulling that work about more remarkably instanced and illustrated than in the case of " The Country Parson." The double date, 1837-1845, which the author attached to it, in his usual conscientious manner, to indicate these revisions, has a greater signification than almost anywhere else. When the book, or rather its constituent parts, first appeared in the Presse for 1839, having been written the winter before, not only was it very different in detail, but the order of the parts was altogether dissimilar. Balzac here carried out his favorite plan a plan followed by many other authors no doubt, but always, as it seems to me, of questionable wisdom that of beginning in the middle and then "throwing back" with a long retrospective and explanatory digression. In this version the story of Tascheron's crime and its pun- ishment came first ; and it was not till after the execution that the early history of Veronique (who gave her name to this part as to a " Suite du Cure de Village ") was introduced. This history ceased at the crisis of her life ; and when it was taken up in a third part, called " Veronique au Tombeau," only the present conclusion of the 'book, with her confession, was given. The long account of her sojourn at Montegnac, of her labors there, of the episode of Farrabesche, and so forth, did not appear till 1841, when the whole book, with the in- versions and insertions just indicated, appeared in such a changed form that even the indefatigable M. de Lovenjoul dismisses as "impossible" the idea of exhibiting a complete picture of the various changes made. Nor was the author even yet contented; for in 1845, before establishing it in its (ix) x PREFACE. place in the " Comedie," he not only, as was his wont, took out the chapter-headings, leaving five divisions only, but intro- duced other alterations, resulting in the present condition of the book. As the book stands it may be said to consist of three parts united rather by identity of the personages who act in them than by exact dramatic connection. There is, to take the title-part first (though it is by no means the most really impor- tant or pervading) the picture of "The Country Parson," which is almost an exact, and beyond doubt a designed, pen- dant to that of " The Country Doctor." The Abbe Bonnet indeed is not able to carry out economic ameliorations, as Dr. Benassis is, personally, but by inducing Veronique to do so he brings about the same result, and on an even larger scale. His personal action (with the necessary changes for his profession) is also tolerably identical, and on the whole the two portraits may fairly be hung together as Balzac's ideal representations of the good man in soul-curing and body-cur- ing respectively. Both are largely conditioned by his eigh- teenth century fancy for " playing Providence," and by his delight in extensive financial-commercial schemes. But the beauty of the portraiture of the " Cure " is nearly, if not quite equal, to that of the doctor, though the institution of celibacy has prevented Balzac from giving a key to the conduct of Bonnet quite as sufficient as that which he furnished for the conduct of Benassis. The second part of the book is the crime episodic as re- gards the criminal, cardinal as regards other points of Tas- cheron. Balzac was very fond of "his crimes;" and it is quite worth while in connection with his handling of the mur- der here to study the curious story of his actual interference in the famous Peytel case, which also interested Thackeray so much in his Paris days. The Tascheron case itself (which from a note appears to have been partly suggested by some actual affair) no doubt has interests for those who like such PREFACE. xi things, and the picture of the criminal in prison is very strik- ing. But we see and know so very little of Tascheron him- self, and even to the very last (which is long afterwards) we are left so much in the dark as to his love for Veronique, that the thing has an extraneous air. It is like a short story foisted in. This objection connects itself at once with a similar one to the delineation of Veronique. There is nothing in her con- duct intrinsically impossible, or even improbable. A girl of her temperament, at once, as often happens, strongly sensual and strongly devotional, deprived of her good looks by illness, thrown into the arms of a husband physically repulsive, and after a short time not troubling himself to be amiable in any other way, might very well take refuge in the substantial, if not ennobling, consolations offered by a good-looking and amiable young fellow of the lower class. Her conduct at the time of the crime (her exact complicity in which is, as we have said, rather imperfectly indicated) is also fairly prob- able, and to her repentance and amendment of life no excep- tion can be taken. But only in this last stage do we really see anything of the inside of Vdronique's nature; and even then we do not see it completely. The author's silence on the details of the actual liaison with Tascheron has its advan- tages, but it also has its defects. Still, the book is one of great attraction and interest, and takes, if I may judge by my own experience, a high rank for enchaining power among that class of Balzac's books which cannot be put exactly highest. If the changes made in it by its author have to some extent dislocated it as a whole, they have resulted in very high excellence for almost all the parts. As something has necessarily been said already about the book-history of the " Country Parson," little remains but to give exact dates and places of appearance. The Presse pub- lished the (original) first part in December-January, 1838-39, the original second (" Veronique ") six months later, and the xii PREFACE. third ("Veronique au Tombeau") in August. All had chapters and chapter-titles. As a book it was in its first com- plete form published by Souverain in 1841, and was again altered when it took rank in the " Comedie " six years later. "Albert Savaron," with its enshrined story of "L'Ambi- tieuxpar Amour" (something of an oddity for Balzac, who often puts a story within a story, but less formally than this) contains various appeals, and shows not a few of its author's well-known interests in politics, in affairs, in newspapers, not to mention the enumerations of dots and fortunes which he never could refuse himself. The affection of Savaron for the Duchesse d'Argaiolo may interest different persons differently. It seems to me a little fade. But the character of Rosalie de Watteville is in a very different rank. Here only, except, perhaps, in the case of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose un- lucky experiences had emancipated her, has Balzac depicted a girl full of character, individuality, and life. It was appar- ently necessary that Rosalie should be made not wholly amiable in order to obtain this accession of wits and force, and to be freed from the fatal gift of candeur, the curse of the French ingenue. Her creator has also thought proper to punish her further, and cruelly, at the end of the book. Nevertheless, though her story may be less interesting than either of theirs, it is impossible not to put her in a much higher rank as a heroine than either Eugenie or Ursule, and not to wish that Balzac had included the conception of her in a more impor- tant structure of fiction. Albert Savaron appeared in sixty headed chapters in the Steclc for May and June, 1842, and then assumed its place in the "Comedie." But though left there, it also formed part of a two-volume issue by Souverain in 1844, in company with "La Muse du Department." " Rosalie " was at first named "Philomene." G. S. THE COUNTRY PARSON. ( ARSON. for the asking, go to him instead of helping themselves and damaging your woods. So if he still 'warms people's feet,' as you may say, it does them good now. Farrabesche is fond of your forest ; he looks after it as if it were his own." "And yet he lives! quite alone." Mme. Graslin hastily added the last two words. "Asking your pardon, madame, no. He is bringing up a little lad; going fifteen now he is," said Maurice Champion. "Faith, yes, that he is," Colorat remarked, "for La Curieux had that child a good while before Farrabesche gave himself up." "Is it his son ? " asked Mme. Graslin. " Well, every one thinks so." " And why did he not marry the girl ? " "Why? Because they would have caught him! And, besides, when La Curieux knew that he was condemned, she left the neighborhood, poor thing." "Was she pretty?" " Oh, my mother says that she was very much like dear me ! another girl who left the place too very much like Denise Tascheron." " Was he loved ? " asked Mme. Graslin. "Bah! yes, because he was a chauffeur!" said Colorat. " The women always fall in love with anything out of the way. But for all that, nothing astonished people hereabouts so much as this love affair. Catherine Curieux was a good girl who lived like a virgin saint ; she was looked on as a par- agon of virtue in her neighborhood over at Vizay, a large village in the Correze, on the boundary of two departments. Her father and mother were tenants of M. Brezac's. Cathe- rine Curieux was quite seventeen years old at the time of Farrabesche's sentence. The Farrabesches were an old family out of the same district, but they settled on the Montegnac lands; they had the largest farm in the village. Farrabesche's father and mother are dead now, and La Curieux's three MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 163 sisters are married ; one lives at Aubusson, one at Limoges, and one at Saint-Leonard." " Do you think that Farrabesche knows where Catherine is?" asked Mme. Graslin. " If he knew, he would break his bounds. Oh ! he would go to her As soon as he came back he asked her father and mother (through M. Bonnet) for the child. La Curieux's father and mother were taking care of the child ; M. Bonnet persuaded them to give him up to Farrabesche." " Does nobody know what became of her ? " " Bah ! " said Colorat. " The lass thought herself ruined, she was afraid to stop in the place ! She went to Paris. What does she do there ? That is the rub. As for looking for her in Paris, you might as well try to find a marble among the flints there in the plain." Colorat pointed to the plain of Montegnac as he spoke. By this time Mme. Graslin was only a few paces from the great gateway of the chateau. Mme. Sauviat, in anxiety, was waiting there for her with Aline and the servants; they did not know what to think of so long an absence. " Well," said Mme. Sauviat, as she helped her daughter to dismount, "you must be horribly tired." " No, dear mother," Mme. Graslin answered, in an un- steady voice, and Mme. Sauviat, looking at her daughter, saw that she had been weeping for a long time. Mme. Graslin went into the house with Aline, her confiden- tial servant, and shut herself into her room. She would not see her mother ; and when Mme. Sauviat tried to enter, Aline met the old Auvergnate with " Madame is asleep." The next morning Veronique set out on horseback, with Maurice as her sole guide. She took the way by which they had returned the evening before, so as to reach the Living Rock as quickly as might be. As they climbed up the ravine which separates the last ridge in the forest from the actual 164 THE CO I, N TRY PARSON. summit of the mountain (for the Living Rock, seen from the plain, seems to stand alone), Veronique bade Maurice show her the way to Farrabesche's cabin and wait with the horses until she came back. She meant to go alone. Maurice went with her as far as a pathway which turned off towards the opposite side of the Living Rock, farthest from the plain, and pointed out the thatched roof of a cottage half-hidden on the mountain side ; below it lay the nursery-ground of which Colorat had spoken. It was almost noon. A thin streak of smoke rising from the cottage chimney guided Veronique, who soon reached the place, but would not show herself at first. At the sight of the little dwelling, and the garden about it, with its fence of dead thorns, she stood for a few moments lost in thoughts known to her alone. Several acres of grass land, enclosed by a quickset hedge, wound away beyond the garden ; the low- spreading branches of apple and pear and plum trees were visible here and there in the field. Above the house, on the sandier soil of the high mountain slopes, there rose a splendid grove of tall chestnut trees, their topmost leaves turned yellow and sere. Mme. Graslin pushed open the crazy wicket which did duty as a gate, and saw before her the shed, the little yard, and all the picturesque and living details of the dwellings of the poor. Something surely of the grace of the open fields hovers about them. Who is there that is not moved by the revelation of lowly, almost vegetative lives the clothes drying on the hedge, the rope of onions hanging from the roof, the iron cooking pots set out in the sun, the wooden bench hidden among the honeysuckle leaves, the houseleeks that grow on the ridges of almost every thatched hovel in France? Veronique found it impossible to appear unannounced in her keeper's cottage, for two fine hunting-dogs began to bark as soon as they heard the rustle of her riding habit on the dead leaves ; she gathered up her skirts on her arm, and went MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 165 towards the house. Farrabesche and the boy were sitting on a wooden bench outside. Both rose to their feet and uncov- ered respectfully, but without a trace of servility. " I have been told that you are seeing after my interests," said Veronique, with her eyes fixed on the lad ; " so I deter- mined to see your cottage and nursery of saplings for myself, and to ask you about some improvements." "I am at your service, madame," replied Farrabesche. Veronique was admiring the lad. It was a charming face ; somewhat sunburned and brown, but in shape a faultless oval ; the outlines of the forehead were delicately fine, the orange- colored eyes exceedingly bright and alert ; the long dark hair, parted on the forehead, fell upon either side of the brow. Taller than most boys of his age, he was very nearly five feet high. His trousers were of the same coarse brown linen as his shirt ; he wore a threadbare waistcoat of rough blue cloth with horn buttons, a short jacket of the material facetiously described as " Maurienne velvet," in which Savoyards are wont to dress, and a pair of iron-bound shoes on his otherwise bare feet to complete the costume. His father was dressed in the same fashion ; but instead of the little lad's brown woolen cap, Farrabesche wore the wide-brimmed peasant's hat. In spite of its quick intelligence, the child's face bore the look of gravity (evidently unforced) peculiar to young creatures brought up in solitude ; he must have put himself in harmony with the silence and the life of the forest. Indeed, jn both Farrabesche and his son the physical side of their natures seemed to be the most highly developed ; they possessed the peculiar faculties of the savage the keen sight, the alertness, the complete mastery of the body as an instrument, the quick hearing, the signs of activity and intelligent skill. No sooner did the boy's eyes turn to his father than Mme. Graslin divined that here was the limitless affection in which the promptings of natural instinct and deliberate thought were confirmed by the most effectual happiness. 166 THE COUNTRY PARSON. " Is this the child of whom I have heard ? " asked V6ron- ique, indicating the lad. /' Yes, madame." Veronique signed to Farrabesche to come a few paces away. "But have you taken no steps towards finding his mother? " she asked. " Madame does not know, of course, that I am not allowed to go beyond the bounds of the commune where I am liv- ing " " And have you never heard of her? " " When my time was out," he said, " the commissary paid over to me the sum of a thousand francs, which had been sent me, a little at a time, every quarter ; the rules would not allow me to have it until I came out. I thought that no one but Catherine would have thought of me, as it was not M. Bonnet who sent it ; so I am keeping the money for Benja- min." "And how about Catherine's relations?" " They thought no more about her after she went away. Be- sides, they did their part by looking after the child." Veronique turned to go towards the house. "Very well, Farrabesche," she said ; " I will have inquiry made, so as to make sure that Catherine is still living, and where she is, and what kind of life she is leading " " Madame, whatever she may be, I shall look upon it as good fortune to have her for my wife," the man cried in a softened tone. "It is for her to show reluctance, not for me. Our marriage will legitimate the poor boy, who has no suspi- cion yet of how he stands." The look in the father's eyes told the tale of the life these two outcasts led in their voluntary exile ; they were all in all to each other, like two fellow-countrymen in the midst of a desert. " So you love Catherine? " asked Veronique. " It is not so much that I love her, madame," he answered, MADAME GKASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 167 " as that, placed as I am, she is the one woman in the world for me." Mme..Graslin turned swiftly, and went as far as the chestnut trees, as if some pang had shot through her. The keeper thought that this was some whim of hers, and did not ven- ture to follow. For nearly a quarter of an hour she sat, apparently engaged in looking out over the landscape. She could see all that part of the forest which lay along the side of the valley, with the torrent in the bottom ; it was dry now, and full of boulders, a sort of huge ditch shut in between the forest-covered mountains above Montegnac and another parallel range, these last hills being steep though low, and so bare that there was scarcely so much as a starveling tree here and there to crown the slopes, where a few rather melancholy- looking birches, juniper bushes, and briars were trying to grow. This second range belonged to a neighboring estate, and lay in the department of the Correze ; indeed, the cross- road which meanders along the winding valley is the bound- ary line of the arrondissement of Montegnac, and also of the two estates. The opposite side of the valley beyond the tor- rent was quite unsheltered and barren enough. It was a sort of long wall with a slope of fine woodland behind it, and a complete contrast in its bleakness to the side of the mountain on which Farrabesche's cottage stood. Gnarled and twisted forms on the one side, and on the other shapely growths and delicate curving lines; on the one side the dreary, unchanging silence of a sloping desert, held in place by blocks of stone and bare, denuded rocks, and on the other, the contrasts of green among the trees. Many of them were leafless now, but the fine variegated tree-trunks stood up straight and tall on each ledge, and the branches waved as the wind stirred through them. A few of them, the oaks, elms, beeches, and chestnuts which held out longer against the autumn than the rest, still retained their leaves golden, or bronze, or purple. In the direction of Montegnac the valley opens out so 168 THE COUNTRY PARSON. widely that the two sides describe a vast horsehoe. Veronique, with her back against a chestnut tree, could see glen after glen arranged like the stages of an amphitheatre, the topmost crests of the trees rising one above the other in rows like the heads of spectators. On the other side of the ridge lay her own park, in which, at a later time, this beautiful hillside was included. Near Farrabesche's cottage the valley grew nar- rower and narrower, till it closed in as a gully scarce a hun- dred feet across. The beauty of the view over which Mme. Graslin's eyes wandered, heedlessly at first, soon recalled her to herself. She went back to the cottage, where the father and son were standing in silence, making no attempt to explain the strange departure of their mistress. Veronique looked at the house. It was more solidly built than the thatched roof had led her to suppose ; doubtless it had been left to go to ruin at the time when the Navarreins ceased to trouble themselves about the estate. No sport, no gamekeepers. But though no one had lived in it for a century, the walls held good in spite of the ivy and climbing plants which clung about them on every side. Farrabesche himself had thatched the roof when he received permission to live there ; he had laid the stone-flags on the floor, and brought in such furniture as there was. Veronique went inside the cottage. Two beds, such as the peasants use, met her eyes; there was a large cupboard of walnut-wood, a hutch for bread, a dresser, a table, three chairs, a few brown earthen platters on the shelves of the dresser ; in fact, all the necessary household gear. A couple of guns and a game-bag hung above the mantle-shelf. It went to Veronique's heart to see how many things the father had made for the little one ; there was a toy man-of-war, a fishing smack, and a carved wooden cup, a chest wonderfully orna- mented, a little box decorated with mosaic work in straw, a beautifully-wrought crucifix and rosary. The rosary was made of plum-stones ; on each a head had been carved with wonder- MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 169 ful skill Jesus Christ, the Apostles, the Madonna, St. John the Baptist, St. Anne, the two Magdalens. " I did it to amuse the child during the long winter even- ings," he said, with something of apology in his tone. Jessamine and climbing roses covered the front of the house, and broke into blossom about the upper windows. Farrabesche used the first floor as a storeroom; he kept poultry, ducks, and a couple of pigs, and bought nothing but bread, salt, sugar, and such groceries as they needed. Neither he nor the lad drank wine. "Everything that I have seen and heard of you," Mme. Graslin said at last, turning to Farrabesche, "has led me to take an interest in you which shall not come to nothing." "This is M. Bonnet's doing, I know right well !" cried Farrabesche with touching fervor. " You are mistaken ; M. le Cure has said nothing to me of you as yet ; chance or God, it may be, has brought it all about." "Yes, madame, it is God's doing; God alone can work wonders for such a wretch as I." " If your life has been a wretched one," said Mme. Graslin, in tones so low that they did not reach the boy (a piece of womanly feeling which touched Farrabesche), " your repent- ance, your conduct, and M. Bonnet's good opinion should go far to retrieve it. I have given orders that the buildings on the large farm near the chateau which M. Graslin planned are to be finished; you shall be my steward there; you will find scope for your energies and employment for your son. The public prosecutor at Limoges shall be informed of your case, and I will engage that the humiliating restrictions which make your life a burden to you shall be removed." Farrabesche dropped down on his knees as if thunderstruck at the words which opened out a prospect of the realization of hopes hitherto cherished in vain. He kissed the hem of Mme. Graslin's riding habit ; he kissed her feet. Benjamin saw the 170 THE COUNTRY PARSON. tears in his father's eyes, and began to sob without knowing why. "Do not kneel, Farrabesche," said Mme. Graslin ; "you do not know how natural it is that I should do for you these things that I have promised to do Did you not plant those trees?" she added, pointing to one or two pitch-pines, Norway pines, firs, and larches at the base of the arid, thirsty hillside opposite. "Yes, madame." "Then is the soil better just there?" " The water is always wearing the rocks away, so there is a little light soil washed down on to your land, and I took ad- vantage of it, for all the valley down below the road belongs to you ; the road is the boundary line." " Then does a good deal of water flow down the length of the valley?" " Oh ! in a few days, madame, if the weather sets in rainy, you will maybe hear the roaring of the torrent over at the chateau ! but even then it is nothing compared with what it will be when the snow melts. All the water from the whole mountain side there at the back of your park and gardens flows into it ; in fact, all the streams hereabouts flow down to the torrent, and the water comes down like a deluge. Luckily for you, the tree-roots on your side of the valley bind the soil together, and the water slips off the leaves, for the fallen leaves here in autumn are like an oilcloth cover for the land, or it would all be washed down into the valley bottom, and the bed of the torrent is so steep that I doubt whether the soil would stop there." "What becomes of all the water?" asked Mme. Graslin. Farrabesche pointed to the gully which seemed to shut in the valley below his cottage. " It pours out over a chalky bit of level ground that sepa- rates Limousin from the Correze, and there it lies for several months in stagnant green pools, sinking slowly down into the MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 171 soil. That is how the common came to be so unhealthy that no one lives there, and nothing can be done with it. No kind of cattle will pasture on the reeds and rushes in those brackish pools. Perhaps there are three thousand acres of it altogether; it is the common land of three parishes ; but it is just like the plain of Montegnac, you can do nothing with it. And down in your plain there is a certain amount of sand and a little soil among the flints, but here there is nothing but the bare tufa." " Send for the horses ; I mean to see all this for myself." Mme. Graslin told Benjamin where she had left Maurice, and the lad went forthwith. " They tell me that you know every yard of this country," Mme. Graslin continued; "can you explain to me how it happens that no water flows into the plain of Montegnac from my side of the ridge ? there is not the smallest torrent there even in rainy weather or in the time of the melting of the snows." " Ah ! madame," Farrabesche answered, " M. le Cure, who is always thinking of the prosperity of Montegnac, guessed the cause, but had not proof of it. Since you came here, he told me to mark the course of every runnel in every little valley. I had been looking at the lay of the land yesterday, and was on my way back when I had the honor of meeting you at the base of the Living Rock. I heard the sound of horsehoofs, and I wanted to know who was passing this way. Madame, M. Bonnet is not only a saint, he is a man of science. ' Far- rabesche,' said he (I being at work at the time on the road which the commune finished up to the chateau for you) ' Farrabesche, if no water from this side of the hill reaches the plain below, it must be because nature has some sort of drainage arrangement for carrying it off elsewhere. 1 Well, madame, the remark is so simple that it looks downright trite, as if any child might have made it. But nobody since Mon- tegnac was Montegnac, neither great lords, nor stewards, nor 172 THE COUNTRY PARSON. keepers, nor rich, nor poor, though the plain lay there before their eyes with nothing growing on it for want of water, not one of them ever thought of asking what became of the water in the Gabou. The stagnant water gives them the fever in three communes, but they never thought of looking for the remedy ; and I myself never dreamed of it ; it took a man of God to see that " Farrabesche's eyes filled with tears as he spoke. " The discoveries of men of genius are all so simple, that every one thinks he could have found them out," said Mme. Graslin; and to herself she added, "But there is this grand thing about genius, that while it is akin to all others, no one resembles it." "At once I saw what M. Bonnet meant," Farrabesche went on. " He had not to use a lot of long words to explain my job to me. To make the thing all the queerer, madame, all the ridge above your plain (for it all belongs to you) is full of pretty deep cracks, ravines, and gullies, and whatnot ; but all the water that flows down the valleys, clefts, ravines, and gorges, every channel, in fact, empties itself into a little valley a few feet lower than the level of your plain, madame. I know the cause of this state of things to-day, and here it is : There is a sort of embankment of rock (schist, M. Bonnet calls it) twenty or thirty feet thick, which runs in an unbroken line all round the bases of the hills between Montegnac and the Living Rock. The earth being softer than the stone, has been worn away and been hollowed out ; so, naturally the water all flows round into the Gabou, eating its passage out of each valley. The trees and thickets and brushwood hide the lay of the land ; but when you follow the streams and track their passage, it is easy to convince yourself of the facts. In this way both hillsides drain into the Gabou, all the water from this side that we see, and the other over the ridge where your park lies, as well as from the rocks opposite. M. le Cure thinks that this state of things would work its own cure when MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 173 the water-courses on your side of the ridge are blocked up at the mouth by the rocks and soil washed down from above, so that they raise barriers between themselves and the Gabou. When that time comes your plain will be flooded in turn like the common land you are just about to see ; but it would take hundreds of years to bring that about. And, besides, is it a thing to wish for, madame? Suppose that your plain of Montegnac should not suck up all that water, like the common land here, there would be some more standing pools there to poison the whole country." " So the places M. le Cure pointed out to me a few days ago, where the trees are still green, must mark the natural channels through which the water flows down into the Gabou?" "Yes, madame. There are three hills between the Living Rock and Montegnac, and consequently there are three water- courses, and the streams that flow down them, banked in by the schist barrier, turn to the Gabou. That belt of wood still green, round the base of the hills, looks as if it were part of your plain, but it marks the course of the channel which was there, as M. le Cure guessed it would be." " The misfortune will soon turn to a blessing for Mon- tegnac," said Mme. Graslin, with deep conviction in her tones. "And since you have been the first instrument, you shall share in the work ; you shall find active and willing workers, for hard work and perseverance must make up for the /money which we lack." Mme. Graslin had scarcely finished the sentence when Ben- jamin and Maurice came up ; she caught at her horse's bridle, and, by a gesture, bade Farrabesche mount Maurice's horse. "Now bring me to the place where the water drowns the common land," she said. " It will be so much the better that you should go, madame, since that the late M. Graslin, acting on M. Bonnet's advice, bought about three hundred acres of land at the mouth of the gully where the mud has been deposited by the torrent, so 174 THE COUNTRY PARSON. that over a certain area there is some depth of rich soil. Madame will see the other side of the Living Rock ; there is some magnificent timber there, and doubtless M. Graslin would have had a farm on the spot. The best situation would be a place where the little stream that rises near my house sinks into the ground again ; it might be turned to advan- tage." Farrabesche led the way, and Veronique followed down a steep path towards a spot where the two sides of the gully drew in, and then separated sharply to east and west, as if divided by some earthquake shock. The gully was about sixty feet across. Tall grasses were growing among the huge boulders in the bottom. On the one side the Living Rock, cut to the quick, stood up a solid surface of granite without the slightest flaw in it ; but the height of the uncompromising rock-wall was crowned with the overhanging roots of trees, for the pines clutched the soil with their branching roots, seeming to grasp the granite as a bird clings to a bough ; but on the other side the rock was yellow and sandy, and hollowed out by the weather : there was no depth in the caverns, no boldness in the hollows of the soft crumbling ochre-tinted rock. A few prickly-leaved plants, burdocks, reeds, and water-plants at its base were sufficient signs of a north aspect and poor soil. Evidently the two ranges, though parallel, and as it were blended at the time of the great cataclysm which changed the surface of the globe, were composed of entirely different materials an inexplicable freak of nature, or the result of some unknown cause which waits for genius to dis- cover it. In this place the contrast between them was most strikingly apparent. Veronique saw in front of her a vast dry plateau. There was no sign of plant-life anywhere; the chalky soil explained the infiltration of the water, only a few stagnant pools remained here and there where the surface was incrusted. To the right stretched the mountains of the Correze, and to the MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 175 left the eye was arrested by the huge mass of the Living Rock, the tall it st trees that clothed its sides, and two hundred acres of grass below the forest, in strong contrast with the ghastly solitude about them. " My son and I made the ditch that you see down yonder," said Farrabesche ; " you can see it by the line of tall grass ; it will be connected shortly with the ditch that marks the edge of your forest. Your property is bounded on this side by a desert, for the first village lies a league away." Veronique galloped into the hideous plain, and her keeper followed. She cleared the ditch and rode at full speed across the dreary waste, seeming to take a kind of wild delight in the vast picture of desolation before her. Farrabesche was right. No skill, no human power could turn that soil to account, the ground rang hollow beneath the horse's hoofs. This was a result of the porous nature of the tufa, but there were cracks and fissures no less through which the flood-water sank out of sight, doubtless to feed some far-off springs. "And yet there are souls like this ! " Veronique exclaimed within herself as she reined in her horse, after a quarter of an hour's gallop. She mused a while with the desert all about her ; there was no living creature, no animal, no insect ; birds never crossed the plateau. In the plain of Montegnac there were at any rate the flints, a little sandy or clayey soil, and crumbled rock to make a thin crust of earth a few inches deep as a begin- ning for cultivation ; but here the ungrateful tufa, which had ceased to be earth, and had not become stone, wearied the eyes so cruelly that they were absolutely forced to turn for relief to the illimitable ether of space. Veronique looked along the boundary of her forests and at the meadow which her husband had added to the estate, then she went slowly back towards the mouth of the Gabou. She came suddenly upon Farrabesche, and found him looking into a hole, which might have suggested that some one of a specu- 176 THE COUNTRY PARSON. lative turn had been probing this unlikely spot, imagining that nature had hidden some treasure there. " What is it ? " asked Veronique, noticing the deep sadness of the expression on the manly face. " Madame, I owe my life to this trench here, or, more properly, I owe to it a space for repentance and time to re- deem my faults in the eyes of men " The effect of this explanation of life was to nail Mme. Graslin to the spot. She reined in her horse. "I used to hide here, madame. The ground is so full of echoes, that if I laid my ear to the earth I could catch the sound of the horses of the gendarmerie or the tramp of sol- diers (an unmistakable sound that !) more than a league away. Then I used to escape by way of the Gabou. I had a horse ready in a place there, and I always put five or six leagues between myself and them that were after me. Catherine used to bring me food of a night. If she did not find any sign of me, I always found bread and wine left in a hole covered over by a stone." These recollections of his wild vagrant life, possibly un- wholesome recollections for Farrabesche, stirred Veronique's most indulgent pity, but she rode rapidly on towards the Gabou, followed by the keeper. While she scanned the gap, looking down the long valley, so fertile on one side, so forlorn on the other, and saw, more than a league away, the hillside ridges, tier on tier, at the back of Montegnac, Farrabesche said, "There will be famous waterfalls here in a few days." "And by the same day next year, not a drop of water will ever pass that way again. I am on my own property on either side, so I shall build a wall solid enough and high enough to keep the water in. Instead of a valley which is doing nothing, I shall have a lake, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty feet deep, and about a league across a vast reservoir for the irrigation channels that shall fertilize the whole plain of Montegnac." MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 177 "M. le Cure was right, madame, when he told us, as we were finishing your road, that we were working for our mother; may God give his blessing to such an enter- prise." "Say nothing about it, Farrabesche, " said Mme. Graslin; " it is M. Bonnet's idea." Veronique returned to Farrabesche's cottage, found Mau- rice, and went back at once to the chateau. Her mother and Aline were surprised at the change in her face ; the hope of doing good to the country had given it a look of something like happiness. Mme. Graslin wrote to M. Grossetete ; she wanted him to ask M. de Granville for complete liberty for the poor convict, giving particulars as to his good conduct, which was further vouched for by the mayor's certificate and a letter from M. Bonnet. She also sent other particulars con- cerning Catherine Curieux, and entreated Grossetete to interest the public prosecutor in her kindly project, and to cause a letter to be written to the prefecture of police in Paris with a view to discovering the girl. The mere fact that Catherine had remitted sums of money to the convict in prison should be a sufficient clue by which to trace her. Veronique had set her heart on knowing the reason why Catherine had failed to come back to her child and to Farrabesche. Then she told her old friend of her discoveries in the torrent bed of the Gabou, and laid stress on the necessity of finding the clever man for whom she had already asked him. The next day was Sunday. For the first time since Vero- nique took up her abode in Montegnac, she felt able to go to church for mass. She went and took possession of her pew in the Lady Chapel. Looking round her, she saw how bare the poverty-stricken church was, and determined to set by a certain sum every year for repairs and the decoration of the altars. She heard the words of the priest, tender, gracious, and divine ; for the sermon, couched in such simple language that all present could understand it, was in truth sublime. 12 178 THE COUNTRY r ARSON. The sublime comes from the heart ; it is not to be found by effort of the intellect ; and religion is an inexhaustible source of sublime thoughts with no false glitter of brilliancy, for the Catholicism which penetrates and changes hearts is wholly of the heart. M. Bonnet found in the epistle a text for his sermon, to the effect that soon or late God fulfills his prom- ises, watches over his own, and encourages the good. He made it clear that great things would be the result of the presence of a rich and charitable resident in the parish, by pointing out that the duties of the poor towards the beneficent rich were as extensive as those of the rich towards the poor, and that the relation should be one of mutual help. Farrabesche had spoken to some of those who were glad to see him (one consequence of the spirit of Christian charity which M. Bonnet had infused into practical action in his parish), and had told them of Mme. Graslin's kindness to him. All the commune had talked this over in the square below the church, where, according to country custom, they gathered together before mass. Nothing could more com- pletely have won the good-will of these folk, who are so readily touched by any kindness shown to them ; and when Veron- ique came out of church she found almost all the parish standing in a double row. All hats went off respectfully and in deep silence as she passed. This welcome touched her, though she did not know the real reason of it. Among the last of all she saw Farrabesche, and spoke to him. " You are a good sportsman ; do not forget to send us some game." A few days after this Veronique walked with the cure in that part of the forest nearest her chateau ; she determined to descend the ridges which she had seen from the Living Rock, ranged tier on tier on the other side of the hill. With the cure's assistance she would ascertain the exact position of the higher affluents of the Gabou. The result was the discovery by the cure of the fact that the streams which water Upper MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 179 Montegnac really rose in the mountains of the Correze. These ranges were united to the mountain by the arid rib of hill which ran parallel to the chain of the Living Rock. The cure came back from that walk with boyish glee ; he saw, with the naivete of a poet, the prosperity of the village that he loved. And what is a poet but a man who realizes his dreams before the time ? M. Bonnet reaped his harvests as he looked down from the terrace at the barren plain. Farrabesche and his son came up to the chateau next morn- ing loaded with game. The keeper had brought a cup for Francis Graslin ; it was nothing less than a masterpiece a battle-scene carved on a cocoanut shell. Mme. Graslin happened to be walking on the terrace, on the side that over- looked " Tascherons." She sat down on a garden seat, and looked long at that fairy's work. Tears came into her eyes from time to time. "You must have been very unhappy," she said, addressing Farrabesche after a silence. "What could I do, madame ? " he answered. "I was there without the hope of escape, which makes life bearable to almost all the convicts " " It is an appalling life ! " she said, and her look and com- passionate tones invited Farrabesche to speak. In Mme. Graslin's convulsive tremor and evident emotion Farrabesche saw nothing but the overwrought interest excited by pitying curiosity. Just at that moment Mme. Sauviat appeared in one of the garden walks, and seemed about to join them, but Veronique drew out her handkerchief and motioned her away. " Let me be, mother," she cried, in sharper tones than she had ever before used to the old Auvergnate. " For five years I wore a chain riveted here to a heavy iron ring, madame," Farrabesche said, pointing to his leg. "I was fastened to another man. I have had to live like that with three convicts first and last. I used to lie on a wooden 180 THE COUNTRY PARSON, camp bedstead, and I had to work uncommonly hard to get a thin mattress, called a serpentin. There were eight hundred men in each ward. Each of the beds (tolards, they called them) held twenty-four men, all chained together two and two, and nights and mornings they passed a long chain called the ' bilboes string/ in and out of the chains that bound each couple together, and made it fast to the tolard, so that all of us were fastened down by the feet. Even after a couple of years of it, ,1 could not get used to the clank of those chains ; every moment they said, ' You are in a convicts' prison ! ' If you dropped off to sleep for a minute, some rogue or other would begin to wrangle or turn himself round, and put you in mind of your plight. You had to serve an apprenticeship to learn how to sleep. I could not sleep at all, in fact, unless I was utterly exhausted with a heavy day's work. " After I managed to sleep, I had, at any rate, the night when I could forget things. Forgetfulness that is something, madame ! Once a man is there, he must learn to satisfy his needs after a manner fixed by the most pitiless rules. You can judge, madame, what sort of effect this life was like to have on me, a young fellow who had always lived in the woods, like the wild goats and the birds ! Ah ! if I had not eaten my bread cooped up in the four walls of a prison for six months beforehand, I should have thrown myself into the sea at the sight of my mates, for all the beautiful things M. Bonnet said, and (I may say it) he has been the father of my soul. I did pretty well in the open air ; but when once I was shut up in the ward to sleep or eat (for we ate our food there out of troughs, three couples to each trough), it took all the life out of me ; the dreadful faces and the language of the others always sickened me. Luckily, at five o'clock in the summer, and half-past seven in winter, out we went in spite of heat or cold or wind or rain, in the 'jail gang' that means to work. So we were out of doors most of our time, and the open air seems very good to you when you come out MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 181 of a place where eight hundred convicts herd together. The air, you must always remember, is sea-air ! You enjoy the breeze, the sun is like a friend, and you watch the clouds pass over, and look for hopeful signs of a beautiful day. For my own part, I took an interest in my work." Farrabesche stopped, for two great tears rolled down Ver- oniqtie's cheeks. " Oh ! madame, these are only the roses of that exist- ence !" he cried, taking the expression on Mme. Graslin's face for pity of his lot. " These are the dreadful precautions the government takes to make sure of us, the inquisition kept up by the warders, the inspection of fetters morning and evening, the coarse food, the hideous clothes that humiliate you at every moment, the constrained position while you sleep, the frightful sound of four hundred double chains clanking in an echoing ward, the prospect of being mowed down with grapeshot if half-a-dozen scoundrels take it into their heads to rebel all these horrible things are nothing, they are the roses of that life, as I said before. Any respect- able man unlucky enough to be sent there must die of disgust before very long. You have to live day and night with another convict ; you have to endure the company of five more at every meal, and twenty-three at night ; you have to listen to their talk. " The convicts have secret laws among themselves, madame ; if you make an outlaw of yourself, they will murder you; if you submit, you become a murderer. You have your choice you must be either victim or executioner. After all, if you die at a blow, that would put an end to you and your troubles ; but they are too cunning in wickedness, it is impossible to hold out against their hatred : any one whom they dislike is completely at their mercy, they can make every moment of his life one constant torture worse than death. Any man who repents and tries to behave well is the common enemy, and more particularly they suspect him of tale-telling. 182 THE COUNTRY PARSON. They will take a man's life on a mere suspicion of tale-telling. Every ward has its tribunal, where they try crimes against the convicts' laws. It is an offense not to conform to their customs, and a man may be punished for that. For instance, everybody is bound to help the escape of a convict ; every convict has his chance of escape in turn, when the whole prison is bound to give him help and protection. It is a crime to reveal anything done by a convict to further his escape. I will not speak of the horrible moral tone of the prison ; strictly speaking, it has nothing to do with the sub- ject. The prison authorities chain men of opposite disposi- tions together, so as to neutralize any attempt at escape or re- bellion ; and always put those who either could not endure each other, or were suspicious of each other, on the same chain." "What did you do?" asked Mme. Graslin. "Oh! it was like this, I had luck," said Farrabesche ; " the lot never fell to me to kill a doomed man ; I never voted the death of anybody, no matter whom ; I was never punished, no one took a dislike to me, and I lived comfort- ably with the three mates they gave me one after another all three of them feared and liked me. But then I was well known in the prison before I got there, madame. A chauffeur ! for I was supposed to be one of those brigands. I have seen them do it," Farrabesche went on in a low voice, after a pause, " but I never would help to torture folk, nor take any of the stolen money. I was a ' refractory conscript,' that was all. I used to help the rest, I was scout for them, I fought, I was forlorn sentinel, rearguard, what you will, but I never shed blood except in self-defense. Oh ! I told M. Bonnet and my lawyer everything, and the judges knew quite well that I was not a murderer. But, all the same, I am a great criminal ; the things that I have done are all against the law. "Two of my old comrades had told them about me before I came. I was a man of whom the greatest things might be MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 183 expected, they said. In the convicts' prison, you see, madame, there is nothing like a character of that kind ; it is worth even more than money. A murder is a passport in this republic of wretchedness ; they leave you in peace. I did nothing to destroy their opinion of me. I looked gloomy and resigned ; it was possible to be misled by my face, and they were misled. My sullen manner and my silence were taken for signs of ferocity. Every one there, convicts and warders, young and old, respected me. I was president of my ward. I was never tormented at night, nor suspected of tale-telling. I lived honestly according to their rules ; I never refused to do any one a good turn ; I never showed a sign of disgust ; in short, I 'howled with the wolves,' to all appearance, and in my secret soul I prayed to God. My last mate was a soldier, a lad of two-and-twenty, who had stolen something, and then deserted in consequence ; I had him for four years. We were friends, and wherever I may be I can reckon on him when he comes out. The poor wretch, Guepin they called him, was not a rascal, he was only a harebrained boy ; his ten years will sober him down. Oh ! if the rest had known that it was religion that reconciled me to my fate ; that when my time was up I meant to live in some corner without letting them know where I was, to forget those fearful creatures, and never to be in the way of meeting one of them again, they would very likely have driven me mad." " But, then, suppose that some unhappy, sensitive boy had been carried away by passion, and^-pardoned so far as the death penalty is concerned ? " " Madame, a murderer is never fully pardoned. They be- gin by commuting the sentence for twenty years of penal ser- vitude. But for a decent young fellow it is a thing to shudder at ! It is impossible to tell you about the life in store for him ; it would be a hundred times better for him that he should die ! Yes, for such a death on the scaffold is good fortune." " I did not dare to think it," said Mme. Graslin. 184 THE COUNTRY PARSON. Veronique had grown white as wax. She leaned her fore head against the balustrade to hide her face for several mo- ments. Farrabesche did not know whether he ought to go or stay. Then Mme. Graslin rose to her feet, and with an almost queenly look she said, to Farrabesche's great astonish- ment, "Thank you, my friend ! " in tones that went to his heart. Then after a pause ' ' Where did you draw courage to live and suffer as you did ? " she asked. "Ah, madame, M. Bonnet had set a treasure in my soul ! That is why I love him more than I have ever loved any one else in this world." "More than Catherine?" asked Mme. Graslin, with a certain bitterness in her smile. "Ah, madame, almost as much." "How did he do it?" " Madame, the things that he said and the tones of his voice subdued me. It was Catherine who showed him the way to the hiding-place in the chalk-land which I showed you the other day. He came to me quite alone. He was the new cure of Montegnac, he told me ; I was his parishioner, I was dear to him, he knew that I had only strayed from the path, that I was not yet lost ; he did not mean to betray me, but to save me ; in fact, he said things that thrill you to the very depths of your nature. And you see, madame, he can make you do right with all the force that other people take to make you do wrong. He told me, poor dear man, that Catherine was a mother ; I was about to give over two creatures to shame and neglect. 'Very well,' said I, 'then they will be just as I am ; I have no future before me.' He answered that I had two futures before me, and both of them bad one in this world, the other in the next unless I desisted and reformed. Here below I was bound to die on the scaffold. If I were caught, my defense would break down in a court of law. On the other hand, if I took advantage of the mildness of the new government towards ' refractory conscripts ' of many MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 185 years' standing, and gave myself up, he would strain every nerve to save my life. He would find me a clever advocate who would pull me through with ten years' penal servitude. After that M. Bonnet talked to me of another life. Catherine cried like a Magdalen at that. There, madame," said Farra- besche, holding out his right hand, "she laid her face against this, and I felt it quite wet with her tears. She prayed me to live ! M. le Cure promised to contrive a quiet and happy lot for me and my child, even in this district, and undertook that no one should cast up the past to me. In short, he lec- tured me as if I had been a little boy. After three of those nightly visits I was as pliant as a glove. Do you care to know why, madame ? " Farrabesche and Mme. Graslin looked at each other, and neither of them to their secret souls explained the real motive of their mutual curiosity. " Very well," the poor ticket-of-leave man continued, " the first time when he had gone away, and Catherine went, too, to show him the way back, and I was left alone, I felt a kind of freshness and calm happiness such as I had not known since I was a child. It was something like the happiness I had felt with poor Catherine. The love of this dear man, who had come to seek me out, the interest that he took in me, in my future, in my soul it all worked upon me and changed me. It was as if a light arose in me. So long as he was with me and talked, I held out. How could I help it? He was a priest, and we bandits do not eat their bread. But when the sound of his footsteps and Catherine's died away oh ! I was, as he said two days later, ' enlightened by grace.' "From that time forwards God gave me strength to endure everything the jail, the sentence, the putting on of the irons, the journey, the life in the convicts' prison. I reckoned upon M. Bonnet's promise as upon the truth of the Gospel ; I looked on my sufferings as a payment of arrears. Whenever things grew unbearable, I used to see, at the end 186 THE COUNTRY PARSON. of the ten years, this house in the woods, and my little Ben- jamin and Catherine there. Good M. Bonnet, he kept his promise ; but some one else failed me. Catherine was not at the prison-door when I came out, nor yet at the trysting-place on the common lands. She must have died of grief. That is why I am always sad. Now, thanks to you, madame, I shall have work to do that needs doing ; I shall put myself into it body and soul, so will my boy for whom I live ''You have shown me how it was that M. le Cure could bring about the changes in his parish " "Oh ! nothing can resist him," said Farrabesche. "No, no. I know that," Veronique answered briefly, and she very kindly dismissed the grateful Farrabesche with a sign of farewell. Farrabesche went. Most of that day Veronique spent in pacing to and fro along the terrace, in spite of the drizzling rain that fell till evening came on. She was gloomy and sad. When Veronique's brows were thus contracted, neither her mother nor Aline dared to break in on her mood ; she did not see her mother talking in the dusk with M. Bonnet, who, seeing that she must be roused from this- appalling dejection, sent the child to find her. Little Francis went up to his mother and took her hand, and Veronique suffered herself to be led away. At the sight of M. Bonnet she started with something almost like dismay. The cure led the way back to the terrace. " Well, madame," he said, "what can you have been talk- ing about with Farrabesche ? " Veronique did not wish to lie nor to answer the question ; she replied to it by another " Was he your first victory?" "Yes," said M. Bonnet. " If I could win him, I felt sure of Montegnac ; and so it proved." Veronique pressed M. Bonnet's hand. " From to-day I am your penitent, M. le Cure," she said, MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 187 with tears in her voice; ''to-morrow I will make you a general confession." The last words plainly spoke of a great inward struggle and a hardly-won victory over herself. The cure led the way back to the chateau without a word, and stayed with her till dinner, talking over the vast improvements to be made in Montegnac. " Agriculture is a question of time," he said. " The little that I know about it has made me to understand how much may be done by a well-spent winter. Here are the rains beginning, you see; before long the mountains will be covered with snow, and your operations will be impossible ; so hurry M. Grossetete." M. Bonnet exerted himself to talk, and drew Mme. Graslin into the conversation ; gradually her thoughts were forced to take another turn, and by the time he left her she had almost recovered from the day's excitement. But even so, Mme. Sauviat saw that her daughter was so terribly agitated that she spent the night with her. Two days later a messenger sent by M. Grossetete arrived with the following letters for Mme. Graslin : Grossetete to Mme. Graslin. " MY DEAR CHILD: Horses are not easily to be found, but I hope that you are satisfied with the three which I sent you. If you need draught-horses or plough-horses, they must be looked for elsewhere. It is better in any case to use oxen for ploughing and as draught animals. In all districts where they use horses on the land, they lose their capital as soon as the animal is past work, while an ox, instead of being a loss, yields a profit to the farmer. " I approve of your enterprise in every respect, my child ; you will find in it an outlet for the devouring mental energy which was turned against yourself and wearing you out. But when you asked me to find you, over and above the horses, a 188 THE COUNTRY PARSON. man able to second you, and more particularly to enter into your views, you ask me for one of those rare birds that we rear it is true in the provinces, but which we in no case keep among us. The training of the noble animal is too lengthy and too risky a speculation for us to undertake, and, besides, we are afraid of these very clever folk 'eccentrics,' we call them. "As a matter of fact, too, the men who are classed in the scientific category in which you are fain to find a co-operator are, as rule, so prudent and so well provided for, that I hardly liked to write to tell you how impossible it would be to come by such a prize. You ask me for a poet, or, if you prefer it, a madman ; but all our madmen betake themselves to Paris. I did speak to one or two young fellows engaged on the land survey and assessments, contractors for embankments, or fore- men employed on canal cuttings ; but none of them thought it worth their while to entertain your proposals. Chance all at once threw in my way the very man you want, a young man whom I thought to help ; for you will see by his letter that one ought not to set about doing a kindness in a happy-go- lucky fashion, and, indeed, an act of kindness requires more thinking about than anything else on this earth. You can never tell whether what seemed to you to be right at the time may not do harm by and by. By helping others we shape our own destinies; I see that now " As Mme. Graslin read those words, the letter dropped from her hands. For some moments she sat deep in thought. "Oh, God," she cried, "when wilt Thou cease to smite me by every man's hand ? " Then she picked up the letters and read on " Gerard seems to me to have plenty of enthusiasm and a cool head ; the very man for you ! Paris is in a ferment just now with this leaven of new doctrine, and I shall be delighted MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 189 if the young fellow keeps out of the snares spread by ambi- tious spirits, who work upon the instincts of the generous youth of France. The rather torpid existence of the provinces is not altogether what I like for him, but neither do I like the idea of the excitement of the life in Paris, and the enthusiasm for renovating, which urges youngsters into the new ways. You, and you only, know my opinions ; to me it seems that the world of ideas revolves on its axis much as the material world does. Here is this poor protege of mine wanting im- possibilities. No power on earth could stand before ambitions so violent, imperious, and absolute. I have a liking myself for a jog trot ; I like to go slowly in politics, and have but very little taste for the social topsy-turvydom which all these lofty spirits are minded to inflict upon us. To you I confide the principles of an old and trusted supporter of the Monarchy, for you are discreet. I hold my tongue here among these good folk, who believe more and more in progress the farther they get into a mess ; but for all that it hurts me to see the irreparable damage done already to our dear country. " So I wrote and told the young man that a task worthy of him was waiting for him here. He is coming to see you ; for though his letter (which I enclose) will give you a very fair idea of him, you would like to see him as well, would you not ? You women can tell so much from the look of people ; and, besides, you ought not to have any one, however insignificant, in your service unless you like him. If he is not the man you want, you can decline his services ; but if he suits you, dear child, cure him of his flimsily-disguised ambitions, induce him to adopt the happy and peaceful life of the fields, a life in which beneficence is perpetual, where all the qualities of a great and strong nature are continually brought into play, where the products of nature are a daily source of new wonder, and a man finds worthy occupation in making a real advance and practical improvements. I do not in any way overlook the fact that great deeds come of great ideas great theories ; 190 THE COUNTRY PARSON. but as ideas of that kind are seldom met with, I think that, for the most part, practical attainments are worth more than ideas. A man who brings a bit of land into cultivation or a tree or fruit to perfection, who makes grass grow where grass would not grow before, ranks a good deal higher than the seeker after formulas for humanity. In what has Newton's science changed the lot of the worker in the fields ? Ah ! my dear, I loved you before, but to-day, appreciating to the full the task which you have set before you, I love you far more. You are not forgotten here in Limoges, and every one admires your great resolution of improving Montegnac. Give us our little due, in that we have the wit to admire nobility when we see it, and do not forget that the first of your admirers is also your earliest friend. "F. GROSSETETE." Gerard to Grossetite. " I come to you, monsieur, with sad confidences, but you have been like a father to me, when you might have been simply a patron. So to you alone, who have made me any- thing that I am, can I make them. I have fallen a victim to a cruel disease, a disease, moreover, not of the body ; I am conscious that I am completely unfitted by my thoughts, feel- ings, and opinions, and by the whole bent of my mind, to do what is expected of me by the government and by society. Perhaps this will seem to you to be a piece of ingratitude, but it is simply and solely an indictment that I address to you. " When I was twelve years old you saw the signs of a certain aptitude for the exact sciences, and a precocious ambition to succeed, in a workingman's son, and it was through you, my generous godfather, that I took my flight towards higher spheres ; but for you I should be following out my original destiny, I should be a carpenter like my poor father, who did not live to rejoice in my success. And most surely, monsieur, you did me a kindness ; there is no day on which I do not MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 191 bless you ; and so, perhaps, it is I who am in the wrong. But whether right or wrong, I am unhappy ; and does not the fact that I pour out my complaints to you set you very high ? Is it not as if I made of you a supreme judge, like God ? In any case, I trust to your indulgence. " I studied the exact sciences so hard between the ages of sixteen and eighteen that I made myself ill, as you know. My whole future depended on my admission to the Ecole Polytechnique. The work I did at that time was a dispropor- tionate training for the intellect; I all but killed myself; I studied day and night ; I exerted myself to do more than I was perhaps fit for. I was determined to pass my examina- tions so well that I should be sure not only of admittance into the Ecole, but of a free education there, for I wanted to spare you the expense, and I succeeded ! " It makes me shudder now to think of that appalling con- scription of brains yearly made over to the government by family ambition ; a conscription which demands such severe study at a time when a lad is almost a man, and growing fast in every way, cannot but do incalculable mischief; many precious faculties which later would have developed and grown strong and powerful are extinguished by the light of the student's lamp. Nature's laws are inexorable ; they are not to be thrust aside by the schemes nor at the pleasure of society ; and the laws of the physical world, the laws which govern the nature without, hold good no less of human nature every abuse must be paid for. If you must have fruit out of season, you have it from a forcing house either at the expense of the tree or of the quality of the fruit. La Quintinie killed the orange trees that Louis XIV. might have a bouquet of orange blossoms every morning throughout the year. Any heavy demand made on a still- growing intellect is a draft on its future. "The pressing and special need of our age is the spirit of the lawgiver. Europe has so far seen no lawgiver since Jesus 192 THE COUNTRY PARSON. Christ; and Christ, who gave us no vestige of a political code, left His work incomplete. For example, before tech- nical schools were established, and the present means of filling them with scholars was adopted, did they call in one of the great thinkers who hold in their heads the immensity of the sum of the relations of the institution to human brain-power ; who can balance the advantages and disadvantages, and study in the past the laws of the future ? Was any inquiry made into the after-lives of men who, for their misfortune, knew the circle of the sciences at too early an age ? Was any esti- mate of their rarity attempted ? Was their fate ascertained ? Was it discovered how they contrived to endure the continual strain of thought? How many of them died like Pascal, prematurely, worn out by science ? Some, again, lived to old age ; when did these begin their studies ? Was it known then, is it known now as I write, what conformation of the brain is best fitted to stand the strain and to cope prematurely with knowledge ? Is it so much as suspected that this is before all things a physiological question? "Well, I think myself that the general rule is that the vegetative period of adolescence should be prolonged. There are exceptions ; there are some so constituted that they are capable of this effort in youth, but the result is the shortening of life in most cases. Clearly the man of genius who can stand the precocious exercise of his faculties is bound to be an exception among exceptions. If medical testimony and social data bear me out, our way of recruiting for the technical schools in France works as much havoc among the best human specimens of each generation as La Quintinie's process among the orange trees. "But to continue (for I will append my doubts to each series of facts), I began my work anew at the Ecole, and with more enthusiasm than ever. I meant to leave it as success- fully as I had entered it. Between the ages of nineteen and one-and-twenty I worked with all my might, and developed MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 193 my faculties by their constant exercise. Those two years set the crown on the three which came before them, when I was only preparing to do great things. And then, what pride did I not feel when I had won the privilege of choosing the career most to my mind ? I might be a military or marine engineer, might go on the staff of the artillery, into the mines depart- ment, or the roads and bridges. I took your advice, and became a civil engineer. "Yet where I triumphed, how many fell out of the ranks ! You know that from year to year the government raises the standard of the Ecole. The work grows harder and more trying from time to time. The course of preparatory study through which I went was nothing compared with the work at fever-heat in the Ecole, to the end that every physical science mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry, and the terminologies of each may be packed into the heads of so many young men between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. The govern- ment here in France, which in so many ways seems to aim at taking the place of the paternal authority, has in this respect no bowels no father's pity for its children ; it makes its experiments in anima vili. The ugly statistics of the mischief it has wrought have never been asked for; no one has troubled to inquire how many cases of brain fever there have been during the last thirty-six years ; how many explosions of de- spair among those young lads; no one takes account of the moral destruction which decimates the victims. I lay stress on this painful aspect of the problem because it occurs by the way and before the final result ; for a few weaklings the result comes soon instead of late. You know, besides, that these victims, whose minds work slowly, or who, it may be, are temporarily stupefied with overwork, are allowed to stay for three years instead of two at the Ecole, but the way these are regarded there has no very favorable influence on their capacity. In fact, it may chance that young men, who at a later day will show that they have something in them, may 13 194 THE COUNTRY PARSON. leave the Ecole without an appointment at all, because at the final examination they do not exhibit the amount of knowledge required of them. These are 'plucked,' as they say, and Napoleon used to make sub-lieutenants of them. In these days the ' plucked ' candidate represents a vast loss of capital invested by families, and a loss of time for the lad himself. " But, after all, I myself succeeded ! At the age of one- and-twenty I had gone over all the ground discovered in mathematics by men of genius, and I was impatient to dis- tinguish myself by going farther. The desire is so natural that almost every student when he leaves the Ecole fixes his eyes on the sun called glory in an invisible heaven. The first thought in all our minds was to be a Newton, a Laplace, or a Vauban. Such are the efforts which France requires of young men who leave the famous Ecole Polytechnique ! "And now let us see what becomes of the men sorted and sifted with such care out of a whole generation. At one-and- twenty we dream dreams, a whole lifetime lies before us, we expect wonders. I entered the School of Roads and Bridges, and became a civil engineer. I studied construction, and with what enthusiasm ! You must remember it. In 1826, when I left the school, at the age of twenty-four, I was still only a civil engineer on my promotion, with a government grant of a hundred and fifty francs a month. The worst-paid book-keeper in Paris will earn as much by the time he is eigh- teen, and with four hours' work in the day. By unhoped-for good luck, it may be because my studies had brought me dis- tinction, I received an appointment as a surveyor in 1828. I was twenty-six years old. They sent me, you know where, into a sub-prefecture with a salary of two thousand five hun- dred francs. The money matters nothing. My lot is at any rate more brilliant than a carpenter's son has a right to expect ; but what journeyman grocer put into a shop at the age of six- teen will not be fairly on the way to an independence by the time he is six-and-twenty ? MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 195 "Then I found out the end to which these terrible displays of intelligence were directed, and why the gigantic efforts, required of us by the government, were made. The govern- ment sent me to count paving-stones and measure the heaps of road-material by the waysides. I must repair, keep in order, and occasionally construct runnels and culverts, maintain the ways, clean out, and occasionally open ditches. At the office I must answer all questions relating to the alignment or the planting and felling of trees. These are, in fact, the principal and often the only occupations of an ordinary surveyor. Perhaps from time to time there is some bit of leveling to be done, and that we are obliged to do ourselves, though any of the foremen with his practical experience could do the work a good deal better than we can with all our science. " There are nearly four hundred of us altogether ordinary surveyors and assistants and as there are only some hundred- odd engineers-in-chief, all the subordinates cannot hope for promotion ; there is practically no higher rank to absorb the engineers-in-chief, for twelve or fifteen inspectors-general or divisionaries scarcely count, and their posts are almost as much of sinecures in our corps as colonelcies in the artillery when the battery is united with it. An ordinary civil engi- neer, like a captain of artillery, knows all that is known about his work ; he ought not to need any one to look after him except an administrative head to connect the eighty-six engi- neers with each other and the government, for a single engineer with two assistants is quite enough for a department. A hierarchy in such a body as ours works in this way. Ener- getic minds are subordinated to old effete intelligences, who think themselves bound to distort and alter (they think for the better) the drafts submitted to them ; perhaps they do this simply to give some reason for their existence ; and this, it seems to me, is the only influence exerted on public works in France by the General Council of Roads and Bridges. " Let us suppose, however, that between the ages of thirty 196 THE COUNTRY PARSON. and forty I become an engineer of the first-class, and am an engineer-in-chief by the time I am fifty. Alas ! I foresee my future ; it lies before my eyes. My engineer-in-chief is a man of sixty. He left the famous Ecole with distinction, as I did ; he has grown gray in two departments over such work as I am doing; he has become the most commonplace man imaginable, has fallen from the heights of attainment he once reached ; nay, more than that, he is not even abreast of sci- ence. Science has made progress, and he has remained stationary ; worse still, has forgotten what he once knew ! The man who came to the front at the age of twenty-two with every sign of real ability has nothing of it left now but the appearance. At the very outset of his career his education was especially directed to mathematics and the exact sciences, and he took no interest in anything that was not ' in his line.' You would scarcely believe it, but the man knows absolutely nothing of other branches of learning. Mathe- matics have dried up his heart and brain. I cannot tell any one but you what a nullity he really is, screened by the name of the Ecole Polytechnique. The label is impressive ; and people, being prejudiced in his favor, do not dare to throw any doubt on his ability. But to you I may say that his be- fogged intellects have cost the department in one affair a million francs, where two hundred thousand should have been ample. I was for protesting, for opening the prefect's eyes, and whatnot ; but a friend of mine, another surveyor, told me about a man in the corps who became a kind of black sheep in the eyes of the administration by doing something of this sort. ' Would you yourself be very much pleased, when you are engineer-in-chief, to have your mistakes shown up by a subordinate ? ' asked he. ' Your engineer-in-chief will be a divisionary inspector before very long. As soon as one of us makes some egregious blunder, the administration (which, of course, must never be in the wrong) withdraws the perpetrator from active service and makes him an inspector.' That is MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 197 how the reward due to a capable man becomes a sort of pre- mium on stupidity. "All France saw one disaster in the heart of Paris, the miserable collapse of the first suspension bridge which an engineer (a member of the Academic des Sciences, moreover) endeavored to construct, a collapse caused by blunders which would not have been made by the constructor of the Canal de Briare in the time of Henri IV., nor by the monk who built the Pont Royal. Him, too, the administration consoled by a summons to the Board of the General Council. "Are the technical schools really manufactories of incom- petence ? The problem requires prolonged observation. If there is anything in what I say, a reform is needed, at any rate in the way in which they are carried on, for I do not venture to question the usefulness of the Ecoles. Still, look- ing back over the past, does it appear that France has ever lacked men of great ability at need, or the talent she tries to hatch as required in these days by Monge's method ? What school turned out Vauban save the great school called ' voca- tion ? ' Who was Riquet's master ? When genius has raised itself above the social level, urged upwards by a vocation, it is almost always fully equipped ; and in that case your man is no 'specialist,' but has something universal in his gift. I do not believe that any engineer who ever left the Ecole could build one of the miracles of architecture which Leonardo da Vinci reared ; Leonardo at once mechanician, architect, and painter, one of the inventors of hydraulic science, the inde- fatigable constructor of canals. They are so accustomed while yet in their teens to the bald simplicity of geometry, that by the time they leave the Ecole they have quite lost all feeling for grace or ornament ; a column to their eyes is a useless waste of material ; they return to the point where art begins on utility they take their stand, and stay there. "But this is as nothing compared with the disease which is consuming me. I feel that a most terrible change is being 198 THE COUNTRY PARSON. wrought in me ; I feel that my energy and faculties, after the exorbitant strain put upon them, are dwindling and growing feeble. The influence of my humdrum life is creeping over me. After such efforts as mine, I feel that I am destined to do great things, and I am confronted by the most trivial task work, such as verifying yards of road-material, inspecting high- ways, checking inventories of stores. I have not enough to do to fill two hours in the day. " I watch my colleagues marry and fall out of touch with modern thought. Is my ambition really immoderate? I should like to serve my country. My country required me to give proof of no ordinary powers, and bade me become an encyclopedia of the sciences and here I am, folding my arms in an obscure corner of a province. I am not allowed to leave the place where I am penned up, to exercise my wits by trying new and useful experiments elsewhere. A vague indefinable grudge is the certain reward awaiting any one of us who follows his own inspirations, and does more than the department requires of him. The most that such a man ought to hope for is that his overweening presumption may be passed over, his talent neglected, while his project receives decent burial in the pigeon-holes at headquarters. What will Vicat's reward be, I wonder ? (Between ourselves, Vicat is the only man among us who has made any real advance in the science of construction.) " The General Council of Roads and Bridges is partly made up of men worn out by long and sometimes honorable service, but whose remaining brain-power only exerts itself negatively ; these gentlemen erase anything that they cannot understand at their age, and act as a sort of extinguisher to be put when required on audacious innovations. The Council might have been created for the express purpose of paralyzing the arm of the generous younger generation, which only asks for leave to work, and would fain serve France. " Monstrous things happen in Paris. The future of a MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 199 province hangs on the signature of these bureaucrats. I have not time to tell you all about the intrigues which balk the best schemes ; for them the best schemes are, as a matter of fact, those which open up the best prospects of money-making to the greed of speculators and companies, which knock most abuses on the head, for abuses ar,e always stronger than the spirit of improvement in France. In five years' time my old self-will has ceased to rule. I shall see my ambitions die out in me, and my noble desire to use the faculties which my country bade me display, and then left to rust in my obscure corner. " Taking the most favorable view possible, my outlook seems to me to be very poor. I took advantage of leave of absence to come to Paris. I want to change my career, to find scope for my energies, knowledge, and activity. I shall send in my resignation, and go to some country where men with my special training are needed, where great things may be done. If none of all this is possible, I will throw in my lot with some of these new doctrines which seem as if they must make some great change in the present order of things, by directing the workers to better purpose. For what are we but laborers without work, tools lying idle in the warehouse? We are organized as if it was a question of shaking the globe, and we are required to do nothing. " I am conscious that there is something great in me which is pining away and will perish ; I tell you this with mathe- matical explicitness. But 1 should like to have your advice before I make a change in my condition. I lool^ on myself as your son, and should never take any important step without consulting you, for your experience is as great as your good- ness. I know, of course, that when the goverhment has ob- tained its specially trained men, it can no more set its en- gineers to construct public monuments than it can declare war to give the army an opportunity of winning great battles and of finding out which are its great captains. But, then, as the 200 THE COUNTRY PARSON. man has never failed to appear when circumstances called for him ; as, at the moment when there is much money to be spent and great things to be done, one of these unique men of genius springs up from the crowd ; and as, particularly in matters of this kind, one Vauban is enough at a time, nothing could better demonstrate the utter uselessness of the institu- tion. In conclusion, when a picked man's mental energies have been stimulated by all this preparation, how can the government help seeing that he will make any amount of struggle before he allows himself to be effaced? Is it wise policy? What is it but a way of kindling burning ambition? Would they bid all those perfervid heads learn to calculate anything and everything but the probabilities of their own futures ? " There are, no doubt, exceptions among some six hundred young men, some firm and unbending characters, who decline to be withdrawn in this way from circulation. I know some of them ; but if the story of their struggles with men and things could be told in full ; if it were known how that, while full of useful projects and ideas which would put life and wealth into stagnant country districts, they meet with hin- drances put in their way by the very men who (so the govern- ment led them to believe) would give them help and counte- nance, the strong man, the man of talent, the man whose nature is a miracle, would be thought a hundred times more unfortunate and more to be pitied than the man whose de- generate nature tamely resigns himself to the atrophy of his faculties. "So I would prefer to direct some private commercial or industrial enterprise, and live on very little, while trying to find a solutioR of some one of the many unsolved problems of industry and modern life, rather than remain where I am. You will say that there is nothing to prevent me from employ- ing my powers as it is ; that in the silence of this humdrum life I might set myself to find the solution of one of those MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 201 problems which presses on humanity. Ah ! monsieur, do you not understand what the influence of the provinces is ; the enervating effect of a life just sufficiently busy to fill the days with all but futile work, but yet not full enough to give occu- pation to the powers so fully developed by such a training as ours ? You will not think, my dear guardian, that I am eaten up with the ambition of money-making or consumed with a mad desire for fame. I have not learned to calculate to so little purpose that I cannot measure the emptiness of fame. The inevitable activity of life has led me not to think of mar- riage ; and looking at my present prospects, I have not so good an opinion of existence as to give such a sorry present to another self. Although I look upon money as one of the most powerful instruments that can be put in the hands of a civilized man, money is, after all, only a means. My sole pleasure lies in the assurance that I am serving my country. To have employment for my faculties in a congenial atmo- sphere would be the height of enjoyment for me. Perhaps among your acquaintance in your part of the world, in the circle on which you shine, you might hear of something which requires some of the aptitude which you know that I possess; I will wait six months for an answer from you. " These things which I am writing to you, dear patron and friend, others are thinking. I have seen a good many of my colleagues or old scholars at the Ecole caught, as I was, in the snare of a special training ; ordnance surveyors, captain- professors, captains in the artillery, doomed (as they see) to be captains for the rest of their days, bitterly regretting that they did not go into the regular army. Again and again, in fact, we have admitted to each other in confidence that we are victims of a long mystification, which we only discover when it is too late to draw back, when the mill-horse is used to the round and the sick man accustomed to his disease. "After looking carefully into these melancholy results, I have asked myself the following questions, which I send to 202 THE COUNTRY PARSON. you, as a man of sense, whose mature wisdom will see all that lies in them, knowing that they are fruit of thought refined by the fires of painful experience. " What end has the government in view? To obtain the best abilities ? If so, the government sets to work to obtain a directly opposite result : if it had hated talent, it could not have had better success in producing respectable mediocri- ties. Or does it intend to open out a career to selected intelligence? It could not well have given it a more mediocre position. There is not a man sent out by the Ecolas who does not regret between fifty and sixty that he fell into the snare concealed by the offers of the government. Does it mean to secure men of genius? What really great man have the Ecoles turned out since 1790? Would Cachin, the genius to whom we owe Cherbourg, have existed but for Napoleon ? It was imperial despotism which singled him out ; the Con- stitutional Administration would have stifled him. Does the Academic des Sciences number many members who have passed through the technical schools ? Two or three, it may be ; but the man of genius invariably appears from outside. In the particular sciences which are studied at these schools, genius obeys no laws but its own ; it only develops under circum- stances over which we have no control ; and neither the government nor anthropology knows the conditions. Riquet, Perronet, Leonardo da Vinci, Cachin, Palladio, Brunelleschi, Michel Angelo, Bramante, Vauban, and Vicat all derived their genius from unobserved causes and preparation to which we give the name of chance the great word for fools to fall back upon. Schools or no schools, these sublime workers have never been lacking in every age. And now, does the govern- ment, by means of organizing, obtain works of public utility better done or at a cheaper rate ? "In the first place, private enterprise does very well with- out professional engineers; and, in the second, state-directed works are the most expensive of all ; and besides the actual MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 203 outlay, there is the cost of the maintenance of the great staff of the Roads and Bridges Department. Finally, in other countries where they have no institutions of this kind, in Ger- many, England, and Italy, such public works are carried out quite as well, and cost less than ours in France. Each of the three countries is well known for new and useful inventions of this kind. I know it is the fashion to speak of our Ecoles as if they were the envy of Europe ; but Europe has been watching us these fifteen years, and nowhere will you find the like instituted elsewhere. The English, those shrewd men of business, have better schools among their working classes, where they train practical men, who become conspicuous at once when they rise from practical work to theory. Stephen- son and Macadam were not pupils in these famous institutions of ours. " But where is the use ? When young and clever engineers, men of spirit and enthusiasm, have solved at the outset of their career the problem of the maintenance of the roads of France, which requires hundreds of millions of francs every twenty-five years, which roads are in a deplorable state, it is in vain for them to publish learned treatises and memo- rials ; everything is swallowed down by the board of direction, everything goes in and nothing comes out of a central bureau in Paris, where the old men are jealous of their juniors, and high-places are refuges for superannuated blunderers. "This is how, with a body of educated men distributed all over France, a body which is part of the machinery of admin- istrative government, and to whom the country looks for direction and enlightenment on the great questions within their department, it will probably happen that we in France shall still be talking about railways when other countries have finished theirs. Now, if ever France ought to demonstrate the excellence of her technical schools as an institution, should it not be in a magnificent public work of this special kind, destined to change the face of many countries, and to 204 THE COUNTRY PARSON. double the length of human life by modifying the laws of time and space ? Belgium, the United States, Germany, and England, without an Ecole Polytechnique, will have a network of railways while our engineers are still tracing out the plans, and hideous jobbery lurking behind the projects will check their execution. You cannot lay a stone in France until half a score of scribblers in Paris have drawn up a driveling report that nobody wants. The government, therefore, gets no good of its technical schools ; and as for the individual he is tied down to a mediocre career, his life is a cruel delusion. Certain it is that with the abilities which he dis- played between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five he would have gained more reputation and riches if he had been left to shift for himself than he will acquire in the career to which government condemns him. As a merchant, a scientific man, or a soldier, this picked man would have a wide field before him, his precious faculties and enthusiasm would not have been prematurely and stupidly exhausted. Then where is the advance ? Assuredly the individual and the state both lose by the present system. Does not an experiment carried on for half a century show that changes are needed in the way the institution is worked ? What priesthood qualifies a man for the task of selecting from a whole generation those who shall hereafter be the learned class of France? What studies should not these high-priests of destiny have made ? A knowledge of mathematics is, perhaps, scarcely so necessary as physiological knowledge ; and does it not seem to you that something of that clairvoyance which is the wizardry of great men might be required too ? As a matter of fact, the exam- iners are old professors, men worthy of all honor, grown old in harness ; their duty it is to discover the best memories, and there is an end of it ; they can do nothing but what is required of them. Truly, their functions should be the most important ones in the state, and call for extraordinary men to fulfill them. MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 205 " Do not think, my dear friend and patron, that my censure is confined to the Ecole through which I myself passed ; it applies not only to the institution itself, but also and still more to the methods by which lads are admitted ; that is to say, to the system of competitive examination. Competition is a modern invention, and essentially bad. It is bad not only in learning, but in every possible connection, in the arts, in every election made of men, projects, or things. It is unfortunate that our famous schools should not have turned out better men than any other chance assemblage of lads; but it is still more disgraceful that among the prizemen at the institute there has been no great painter, musician, architect, or sculptor ; even as for the past twenty years the general elections have swept no single great statesman to the front out of all the shoals of mediocrities. My remarks have a bearing upon an error which is vitiating both politics and education in France. This cruel error is based on the following principle, which organizers have overlooked : " ' Nothing in experience or in the nature of things can war- rant the assumption that the intellectual qualities of early man- hood will be those of maturity. ' " At the present time I have been brought in contact with several distinguished men who are studying the many moral maladies which prey upon France. They recognize, as I do, the fact that secondary education forces a sort of temporary capacity in those who have neither present work nor future prospects ; and that the enlightenment diffused by primary education is of no advantage to the state, because it is bereft of belief and sentiment. " Our whole educational system calls for sweeping reform, which should be carried out under the direction of a man of profound knowledge, a man with a strong will, gifted with that legislative faculty which, possibly, is found in Jean- Jacques Rousseau alone of all moderns. " Then, perhaps, the superfluous specialists might find em- 206 THE COUNTRY PARSON. ployment in elementary teaching ; it is badly needed by the mass of the people. We have not enough patient and devoted teachers for the training of these classes. The deplorable preva- lence of crimes and misdemeanors points to a weak spot in our social system the one-sided education which tends to weaken the fabric of society, by teaching the masses to think suffi- ciently to reject the religious beliefs necessary for their govern- ment, yet not enough to raise them to a conception of the theory of obedience and duty, which is the last word of transcendental philosophy. It is impossible to put a whole nation through a course of Kant ; and belief and use and wont are more wholesome for the people than study and argu- ment. " If I had to begin again from the very beginning, I dare say I might enter a seminary and incline to the life of a simple country parson or a village schoolmaster. But now I have gone too far to be a mere elementary teacher ; and, besides, a wider field of action is open to me than the schoolhouse or the parish. I cannot go the whole way with the Saint-Simon- ians, with whom I am tempted to throw in my lot ; but with all their mistakes, they have laid a finger on many weak points in our social system, the results of our legislation, which will be palliated rather than remedied simply putting off the evil day for France. Good-bye, dear sir ; in spite of these ob- servations of mine, rest assured of my respectful and faithful friendship, a friendship which can only grow with time. "GREGOIRE GERARD." Acting on old business habit, Grossetete had indorsed the letter with the rough draft of a reply, and written beneath it the sacramental word " Answered." " MY DEAR GERARD : It is the more unnecessary to enter upon any discussion of the observations contained in your letter, since that chance (to make use of the word for fools) MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 207 enables me to make you an offer which will practically extricate you from a position in which you find yourself so ill at ease. Mme. Graslin, who owns the forest of Montegnac, and a good deal of barren land below the long range of hills on which the forest lies, has a notion of turning her vast estates to some account, of exploiting the woods and bringing the stony land into cultivation. Small pay and plenty of work ! A great result to be brought about by insignificant means, a district to be transformed ! Abundance made to spring up on the barest rock ! Is not this what you wished to do, you who would fain realize a poet's dream? From the sincere ring of your letter, I do not hesitate to ask you to come to Limoges to see me, but do not send in your resignation, my I'riend, only sever your connection with your corps, explain to the authorities that you are about to make a study of some prob- lems that lie within your province, but outside the limits of your work for the government. In that way you will lose none of your privileges, and you will gain time in which to decide whether this scheme of the cure's at Montegnac, which fuids favor in Mme. Graslin's eyes, is a feasible one. If these vast changes should prove to be practicable, I will lay the possible advantages before you by word of mouth, and not by letter. Believe me to be always sincerely your friend, " GROSSETETE. " For all reply Mme. Graslin wrote : "Thank you, my friend; I am waiting to see your protege." She showed the letter to M. Bonnet, with the remark, 11 Here is one more wounded creature seeking the great hospital ! " The cure read the letter and re-read it, took two or three turns upon the terrace, and handed the paper back to Mme. Graslin. 208 THE COUNTRY PARSON. " It comes from a noble nature, the man has something in him," he said. " He writes that the schools, invented by the spirit of the Revolution, manufacture inaptitude ; for my own part, I call them manufactories of unbelief; for if M. Gerard is not an atheist, he is a Protestant " "We will ask him," she said, struck with the cure's answer. A fortnight later, in the month of December, M. Gros- setete came to Montegnac, in spite of the cold, to introduce his protege. Veronique and M. Bonnet awaited his arrival with impatience. "One must love you very much, my child," said the old man, taking both of Veronique's hands, and kissing them with the old-fashioned elderly gallantry which a woman never takes amiss ; " yes, one must love you very much indeed to stir out of Limoges in such weather as this; but I had made up my mind that I must come in person to make you a present of M. Gregoire Gerard. Here he is. A man after your own heart, M. Bonnet," the old banker added with an affectionate greeting to the cure. Gerard's appearance was not very prepossessing. He was a thick-set man of middle height ; his neck was lost in his shoulders, to use the common expression ; he had the golden hair and red eyes of an Albino ; and his eyelashes and eye- brows were almost white. Although, as often happens in these cases, his complexion was dazzlingly fair, its original beauty was destroyed by the very apparent pits and seams left by an attack of smallpox ; much reading had doubtless injured his eyesight, for he wore colored spectacles. Nor when he divested himself of a thick overcoat, like a gendarme's, did his dress redeem these personal defects. The way in which his clothes were put on and buttoned, like his untidy cravat and crumpled shirt, were distinctive signs of that personal carelessness, laid to the charge of learned men, who are all, more or less, oblivious of their sur- MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 209 roundings. His face and bearing, the great development of chest and shoulders, as compared with his thin legs, suggested a sort of physical deterioration produced by meditative habits, not uncommon in those who think much; but the stout heart and eager intelligence of the writer of the letter were plainly visible on a forehead which might have been chiseled in Carrara marble. Nature seemed to have reserved her seal of greatness for the brow, and stamped it with the steadfastness and goodness of the man. The nose was of the true Gallic type, and blunted. The firm, straight lines of the mouth indicated an absolute discretion and the sense of economy ; but the whole face looked old before its time, and worn with study. Mme. Graslin turned to speak to the inventor. "We already owe you thanks, monsieur," she said, "for being so good as to come to superintend engineering work in a country which can hold out no inducements to you save the satisfac- tion of knowing that you can do good." " M. Grossetete told me enough about you on our way here, madame," he answered, " to make me feel very glad to be of any use to you. The prospect of living near to you and M. Bonnet seemed to be charming. Unless I am driven away, I look to spend my life here." " We will try to give you no cause for changing your opinion," said Mme. Graslin. Grossetete took her aside. " Here are the papers which the public prosecutor gave me," he said. "He seemed very much surprised that you did not apply directly to him. All that you have asked has been done promptly and with good- will. In the first place, your protege will be reinstated in all his rights as a citizen ; and, in the second, Catherine Curieux will be sent to you in three months' time." " Where is she ? " asked Veronique. " At the Hopital Saint-Louis," Grossetete answered. " She cannot leave Paris until she is recovered." 210 THE COUNTRY PARSON. " Ah ! is she ill, poor thing? " "You will find all that you want to know here," said Grossetete, holding out a packet. Veronique went back to her guests, and led the way to the magnificent din ing-hall on the ground floor, walking between Grossetete and Gerard. She presided over the dinner with- out joining them, for she had "made it a rule to take her meals alone since she had come to Montegnac. No one but Aline was in the secret, which the girl kept scrupulously until her mistress was in danger of her life. The mayor of Montegnac, the justice of the peace, and the doctor had naturally been invited to meet the newcomer. The doctor, a young man of seven-and-twenty, Roubaud by name, was keenly desirous of making the acquaintance of the great lady of Limousin. The cure was the better pleased to introduce him at the chateau since it was M. Bonnet's wish that Veronique should gather some sort of society about her, to distract her thoughts from herself, and to find some mental food. Roubaud was one of the young doctors perfectly equipped in his science, such as the Ecole de Medecine turns out in Paris, a man who might, without doubt, have looked to a brilliant future in the vast theatre of the capital ; but he had seen something of the strife of ambitions there, and took fright, conscious that he had more knowledge than capacity for scheming, more aptitude than greed ; his gentle nature had inclined him to the narrower theatre of provincial life, where he hoped to win appreciation sooner than in Paris. At Limoges Roubaud had come into collision with old- fashioned ways and patients not to be shaken in their preju- dices ; he had been won over by M. Bonnet, who at sight of the kindly and prepossessing face had thought that here was a worker to co-operate with him. Roubaud was short and fair-haired, and would have been rather uninteresting looking but for the gray eyes, which revealed the physiologist's sagacity and the perseverance of the student. Hitherto v/ MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 211 Montegnac was fain to be content with an old army surgeon, who found his cellars a good deal more interesting than his patients, and who, moreover, was past the hard work of a country doctor. He happened to die just at that time. Roubaud had been in Montegnac for some eighteen months, and was very popular there; but Desplein's young disciple, one of the followers of Cabanis, was no Catholic in his beliefs. In fact, as to religion, he had lapsed into a fatal indifference, from which he was not to be roused. He was the despair of the cure, not that there was any harm whatever in him, his invariable absence from church was excused by his profession, he never talked on religious topics, he was incapa- ble of making proselytes, no good Catholic could have be- haved better than he, but he declined to occupy himself with a problem which, to his thinking, was beyond the scope of the human mind ; and the cure once hearing him let fall the remark that Pantheism was the religion of all great thinkers, fancied that Roubaud inclined to the Pythagorean doctrine of the transformation of souls. Roubaud, meeting Mme. Graslin for the first time, felt vio- lently startled at the sight of her. His medical knowledge enabled him to divine in her face and bearing and worn fea- tures unheard-of suffering of mind and body, a preternatural strength of character, and the great faculties which can endure the strain of very different vicissitudes. He, in a manner, read her inner history, even the dark places deliberately hid- den away ; and more than this, he saw the disease that preyed upon the secret heart of this fair woman ; for there are certain tints in human faces that indicate a poison working in the thoughts, even as the color of fruit will 'betray the presence of the worm at its core. From that time forward M. Roubaud felt so strongly attracted to Mme. Graslin, that he feared to be drawn beyond the limit where friendship ends. There was an eloquence, which men always understand, in Veroniqtie's brows and attitude, and, above all, in her eyes ; it was suffi- 212 THE COUNTRY PARSON. . ciently unmistakable that she was dead to love, even as other women with a like eloquence proclaim the contrary. The doctor became her chivalrous worshiper on the spot. He exchanged a swift glance with the cure, and M. Bonnet said within himself "Here is the flash from heaven that will change this poor unbeliever? Mme. Graslin will have more eloquence than I." The mayor, an old countryman, overawed by the splendor of the dining-room, and surprised to be asked to meet one of the richest men in the department, had put on his best clothes for the occasion ; he felt somewhat uneasy in them, and scarcely more at ease with his company. Mine. Graslin, too, in her mourning dress was an awe-inspiring figure ; the worthy mayor was dumb. He had once been a farmer at Saint- Leonard, had bought the one habitable house in the township, and cultivated the land that belonged to it himself. He could read and write, but only managed to acquit himself in his official capacity with the help of the justice's clerk, who pre- pared his work for him ; so he ardently desired the advent of a notary, meaning to lay the burden of his public duties on official shoulders when that day should come ; but Montegnac was so poverty-stricken that a resident notary was ' hardly needed, and the notaries of the principal place in the arron- dissement found clients in Montegnac. The justice of the peace, Clousier by name, was a retired barrister from Limoges. Briefs had grown scarce with the learned gentleman, owing to a tendency on his part to put in practice the noble maxim that a barrister is the first judge of the client and the case. About the year 1809 he obtained this appointment ; the salary was a meagre pittance, but enough to live upon. In this way he had reached the most honorable but the most complete penury. Twenty-two years of residence in the poor commune had transformed the worthy lawyer into a countryman, scarcely to be distinguished from MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 213 any of the small farmers round about, whom he resembled even in the cut of his coat. But beneath Clousier's homely exterior dwelt a clairvoyant spirit, a philosophical politician whose Gallio's attitude was due to his perfect knowledge of human nature and of men's motives. For a long time he had baffled M. Bonnet's perspicacity. The man who, in a higher sphere, might have played the active part of a L'Hopital, in- capable of intrigue, like all deep thinkers, had come at last to -lead the contemplative life of a hermit of olden time. Rich without doubt with all the gains of privation, he was swayed by no personal considerations ; he knew the law, and judged impartially. His life, reduced to the barest neces- saries, was regular and pure. The peasants loved and re- spected M. Clousier for the fatherly disinterestedness with which he settled their disputes and gave advice in even their smallest difficulties. For the last two years "Old Clousier," as every one called him in Montegnac, had had one of his nephews to help him, a rather intelligent young man, who, at a later day, contributed not a little to the prosperity of the commune. The most striking thing about the old man's face w; broad vast forehead. Two bushy masses of white hair *Sto out on either side of it. A florid complexion and magiste- rial portliness might give the impression that (in spite of his real sobriety) he was as earnest a disciple of Bacchus as of Troplong and Toullier. His scarcely audible voice indicated asthmatic oppression of breathing ; possibly the dry air of Montegnac had counted for something in his decision when he made up his mind to accept the post. His little house had been fitted up for him by the well-to-do sabot-maker, his land- lord. Clousier had already seen Veronique at the church, and had formed his own opinion of her, which opinion he kept to himself; he had not even spoken of her to M. Bonnet, with whom he was beginning to feel at home. For the first time in 214 THE COUNTRY PARSON. his life, the justice of the peace found himself in the company of persons able to understand him. When the six guests had taken their places round a hand- somely-appointed table (for Veronique had brought all her furniture with her to Montegnac), there was a brief embar- rassed pause. The doctor, the mayor, and the justice were none of them acquainted with Grossetete or with Gerard. But during the first course the banker's geniality thawed the ice, Mme. Graslin graciously encouraged M. Roubaud and drew out Gerard ; under her influence all these different natures, full of exquisite qualities, recognized their kinship. It was not long before each felt himself to be in a congenial atmosphere. So that by the time dessert was put on the table, and the crystal and the gilded edges of the porcelain sparkled, when choice wines were set in circulation, handed to the guests by Aline, Maurice Champion, and Grossetete's man, the conversation had become more confidential, so that the four noble natures thus brought together by chance felt free to speak their real minds on the great subjects that men love to discuss in good faith. " Your leave of absence coincided with the Revolution of July," Grossetete said, looking at Gerard in a way that asked his opinion. "Yes," answered the engineer. "I was in Paris during the three famous days ; I saw it all ; I drew some disheart- ening conclusions." "What were they?" M. Bonnet asked quickly. "There is no patriotism left except under the workman's shirt," answered Gerard. " Therein lies the ruin of France. The Revolution of July is the defeat of men who are notable for birth, fortune, and talent, and a defeat in which they acquiesce. The enthusiastic zeal of the masses has gained a victory over the rich and intelligent classes, to whom zeal and enthusiasm are antipathetic." "To judge by last year's events," added M. Clousier, "the MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 215 change is a direct encouragement to the evil which is devour- ing us to individualism. In fifty years' time every generous question will be replaced by a ' What is that to me?' the watchword of independent opinion descended from the spiri- tual heights where Luther, Calvin, Zwingle, and Knox inau- gurated it, till even in political economy each has a right to his own opinion. Each for himself ! Let each man mind his own business ! these two terrible phrases, together with What is that to me ? complete a trinity of doctrine for the bour- geoisie and the peasant proprietors. This egoism is the result of defects in our civil legislation, somewhat too hastily accom- plished in the first instance, and now confirmed by the terrible consecration of the Revolution of July." The justice relapsed into his wonted silence again with this speech, which gave the guests plenty to think over. Then M. Bonnet ventured yet further, encouraged by Clousier's re- marks, and by a glance exchanged between Gerard and Grosset6te. -' Good King Charles X.," said he, " has just failed in the most provident and salutary enterprise that king ever under- took for the happiness of a nation intrusted to him. The Church should be proud of the share she had in his councils. But it was the heart and brain of the upper classes which failed him, as they had failed before over the great question of the law with regard to the succession of the eldest son, the eternal honor of the one bold statesman of the Restoration the Comte de Peyronnet. To reconstruct the nation on the basis of the family, to deprive the press of its power to do harm without restricting its usefulness, to confine the elective cham- ber to the functions for which it was really intended, to give back to religion its influence over the people such were the four cardinal points of the domestic policy of the House of Bourbon. Well, in twenty years' time all France will see the necessity of that great and salutary course. King Charles X. was, moreover, more insecure in the position which he decided 216 THE COUNTRY PARSON. to quit than in the position in which his paternal authority came to an end. The future history of our fair country, when everything shall be periodically called in question, when cease- less discussion shall take the place of action, when the press shall become the sovereign power and the tool of the basest ambitions, will prove the wisdom of the king who has just taken with him the real principles of government. History will render to him his due for the courage with which he with- stood his best friends, when once he had probed the wound, seen its extent, and the pressing necessity for the treatment, which has not been continued by those for whom he threw himself into the breach." " Well, M. le Cure, you go straight to the point without the slightest disguise," cried M. Gerard, "but I do not say nay. When Napoleon made his Russian campaign he was forty years ahead of his age ; he was misunderstood. Russia and England, in 1830, can explain the campaign of 1812. Charles X. was in the same unfortunate position ; twenty-five years hence his ordinances may perhaps become law." " France, too eloquent a country not to babble, too vain- glorious to recognize real ability, in spite of the sublime good sense of her language and the mass of her people, is the very last country in which to introduce the system of two deliber- ating chambers," the justice of the peace remarked. "At any rate, not without the admirable safeguards against these elements in the national character, devised by Napoleon's experience. The representative system may work in a country like England, where its action is circumscribed by the nature of the soil ; but the right of primogeniture, as applied to real estate, is a necessary part of it ; without this factor, the repre- sentative system becomes sheer nonsense. England owes its existence to the quasi-feudal law which transmitted the house and lands to the oldest son. Russia is firmly seated on the feudal system of autocracy. For these reasons, both nations at the present day are making alarming progress. Austria MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 217 could not have resisted our invasions as she did, nor declared a second war against Napoleon, had it not been for the law of primogeniture, which preserves the strength of the family and maintains production on the large scale necessary to the state. The House of Bourbon, conscious that liberalism had relegated France to the rank of a third-rate power in Europe, deter- mined to regain and keep their place, and the country shook off the Bourbons when they had all but saved the country. I do not know how deep the present state of things will sink us." "If there should be a war," cried Grossette, "France will be without horses, as Napoleon was in 1813, when he was reduced to the resources of France alone, and could not make use of the victories of Lutzen and Bautzen, and was crushed at Leipsic ! If peace continues, the evil will grow worse : twenty years hence the number of horned cattle and horses in France will be diminished by one-half." " M. GrossetSte is right," said Gerard. "So the work which you have decided to attempt here is a service done to your country, madame," he added, turning to Veronique. "Yes," said the justice of the peace, "because Mme. Graslin has but one son. But will this chance in the succes- sion repeat itself? For a certain time, let us hope, the great and magnificent scheme of cultivation which you are to carry into effect will be in the hands of one owner, and there- fore will continue to provide grazing land for horses and cattle. But, in spite of all, a day will come when forest and field will be either divided up or sold in lots. Division and subdivision will follow, until the six thousand acres of plain will count ten or twelve hundred owners ; and when that time comes there will be no more horses nor prize cattle." " Oh ! when that time comes " said the mayor. "There is a IVhat is that to me?" cried M. Grosset&e, " and M. Clousier sounded the signal for it ; he is caught in the act. But, monsieur," the banker went on gravely, addressing the bewildered mayor, " the time has come ! 218 THE COUNTRY PARSON. Round about Paris for a ten-league radius, the land is divided up into little patches that will hardly pasture sufficient milch cows. The commune of Argenteuil numbers thirty-eight thousand eight hundred and eighty-five plots of land, a good many of them bringing in less than fifteen centimes a year ! If it were not for high farming and manure from Paris, which give heavy crops of fodder of different kinds, I do not know how cow-keepers and dairymen would manage. As it is, the animals are peculiarly subject to inflammatory diseases con- sequent on the heating diet and confinement to cow-sheds. They wear out their cows round about Paris just as they wear out horses in the streets. Then market-gardens, orchards, nurseries, and vineyards pay so much better than pasture, that the grazing land is gradually diminishing. A few years more, and milk will be sent in by express to Paris, like saltfish, and what is going on round Paris is happening also about all large towns. The evils of the minute subdivision of landed prop- erty are extending round a hundred French cities ; some day all France will be ^aten up by them. "In 1800, according to Chaptal, there were about five million acres of vineyard ; exact statistics would show fully five times as much to-day. When Normandy is split up into an infinitude of small holdings, by our system of inheritance fifty per cent, of the horse and cattle trade there will fall off; still Normandy will have the monopoly of the Paris miik trade, for luckily the climate will not permit vine culture. Another curious thing to notice is the steady rise in the price of butcher meat. In 1814, prices ranged from seven to eleven sous per pound ; in 1850, twenty years hence, Paris will pay twenty sous, unless some genius is raised up to carry out the theories of Charles X." "You have pointed out the greatest evil in France," said the justice of the peace. " The cause of it lies in the chapter Des Successions in the Civil Code, wherein the equal division of real estate among the children of the family is required. MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 219 That is the pestle which is constantly grinding the country to powder, gives to every one but a life-interest in property which cannot remain as it is after his death. A continuous process of decomposition (for the reverse process is never set up) will end by ruining France. The French Revolution generated a deadly virus, and the Days of July have set the poison working afresh ; this dangerous germ of disease is the acquisition of land by peasants. If the chapter Des Successions is the origin of the evil, it is through the peasant that it reaches its worst phase. The peasant never relinquishes the land he has won. Let a bit of land once get between the ogre's ever-hungry jaws, he divides and subdivides it until there are but strips of three furrows left. Nay, even there he does not stop ! he will divide the three furrows in lengths. The commune of Argenteuil, which M. Grossette instanced just now, is a case in point. The preposterous value which the peasants set on the smallest scraps of land makes it quite im- possible to reconstruct an estate. The law and procedure are made a dead letter at once by this division, and ownership is reduced to absurdity. But it is a comparatively trifling matter that the minute subdivision of the law should paralyze the treasury and the law by making it impossible to carry out its wisest regulations. There are far greater evils than even these. There are actually landlords of property bringing in fifteen and twenty centimes per annum 1 " Monsieur has just said something about the falling off of cattle and horses," Clousier continued, looking at Gros- sette ; "the system of inheritance counts for much in that matter. The peasant proprietor keeps cows, and cows only, because milk enters into his diet; he sells the calves; he even sells butter. He has no mind to raise oxen, still less to breed horses; he has only just sufficient fodder for a year's consump- tion ; and when a dry spring comes and hay is scarce, he is forced to take his cow to market ; he cannot afford to keep her. If it should fall out so unluckily that two bad hay 220 THE COUNTRY PARSON. harvests came in succession, you would see some strange fluctuations in the price of beef in Paris, and, above all, in veal, when the third year came." "And how would they do for patriotic banquets then?" asked the doctor, smiling. "Ah!" exclaimed Mme. Graslin, glancing at Roubaud, "so even here, as everywhere else, politics must be served up with journalistic items." "In this bad business the bourgeoisie play the part of American pioneers," continued Clousier. " They buy up the large estates, too large for the peasant to meddle with, and divide them. After the bulk has been cut up and triturated, a forced sale or an ordinary sale in lots hands it over sooner or later to the peasant. Everything nowadays is reduced to figures, and I know of none more eloquent than these: France possesses forty-nine million hectares of land, for the sake of convenience, let us say forty, deducting something for roads and high-roads, dunes, canals, land out of cultivation, and wastes like the plain of Montegnac, which need capital. Now, out of forty million hectares to a population of thirty- two millions, there are a hundred and twenty-five million parcels of land, according to the land-tax returns. I have not taken the fractions into account. So we have outrun the agrarian law, and yet neither poverty nor discord are at an end. Then the next thing will be that those who are turning the land into crumbs and diminishing the output of produce will find mouthpieces for the cry that true social justice only permits the usufruct of the land to each. They will say that ownership in perpetuity is robbery. The Saint-Simonians have begun already." "There spoke the magistrate," said Grossette, "and this is what the banker adds to his bold reflections. When landed property became tenable by peasants and small shopkeepers, a great wrong was done to France, though the government does not so much as suspect it. Suppose that we set down the MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGXAC. 221 whole mass of the peasants at three million families, after deducting the paupers. Those families all belong to the wage- earning class. Their wages are paid in money instead of in kind " "There is another immense blunder in our legislation," Clousier cried, breaking in on the banker. "In 1790 it might still have been possible to pass a law empowering employers to pay wages in kind, but now to introduce such a measure would be to risk a revolution." "In this way," Grossetete continued, "the money of the country passes into the pockets of the proletariat. Now, the peasant has one passion, one desire, one determination, one aim in life to die a landed proprietor. This desire, as M. Clousier has very clearly shown, is one result of the Revolu- tion a direct consequence of the sale of the national lands. Only those who have no idea of the state of things in country districts could refuse to admit that each of those three million families annually buries fifty francs as a regular thing, and in this way a hundred and fifty millions of francs are withdrawn from circulation every year. The science of political econ- omy has reduced to an axiom the statement that a five-franc piece, if it passes through a hundred hands in the course of a day, does duty for five hundred francs. Now, it is certain for some of us old observers of the state of things in country districts that the peasant fixes his eyes on a bit of land, keeps ready to pounce upon it, and bides his time meanwhile he never invests his capital. The intervals in the peasant's land- purchases should, therefore, be reckoned at periods of seven years. For seven years, consequently, a capital of eleven hundred million francs is lying idle in the peasants' hands; and as the lower middle classes do the same thing to quite the same extent, and behave in the same way with regard to land on too large a scale for the peasant to nibble at, in forty- two years France loses the interest on two milliards of francs at least that is to say, on something like a hundred millions 222 \THE COUNTRY PARSON. every seven years, or six hundred millions in forty-two years. But this is not the only loss. France has failed to create the worth of six hundred millions in agricultural or industrial produce. And this failure to produce may be taken as a loss of twelve hundred million francs ; for if the market price of a product were not double the actual cost of production, com- merce would be at a standstill. The proletariat deprives itself of six hundred million francs of wages. These six hundred millions of initial loss that represent, for an economist, twelve hundred millions of loss of benefit derived from circu- lation, explain how it is that our commerce, shipping trade, and agriculture compare so badly with the state of things in England. In spite of the differences between the two countries (a good two-thirds of them, moreover, in our favor), England could mount our cavalry twice over, and every one there eats meat. But then, under the English system of land- tenure, it is almost impossible for the working classes to buy land, and so all the money is kept in constant circulation. So besides the evils of the comminution of the land, and the decay of the trade in cattle, horses, and sheep, the chapter Des Successions costs us a further loss of six hundred million francs of interest on the capital buried by the peasants and trades-people, or twelve hundred million francs' worth of produce (at the least) that is to say, a total loss of three milliards of francs withdrawn from circulation every half- century." " The moral effect is worse than the material effect ! " cried the cure. "We are turning the peasantry into pauper landowners, and half educating the lower middle classes. It will not be long before the canker of Each for himself .' Let each mind his own business ! which did its work last July among the upper classes, will spread to the middle classes. A pro- letariat of hardened materialists, knowing no God but envy, no zeal but the despair of hunger, with no faith nor belief left, will come to the front, and trample the heart of the MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 223 country under foot. The foreigner, waxing great under a monarchical government, will find us under the shadow of royalty without the reality of a king, without law under the cover of legality, owners of property but not proprietors, with the right of election but without a government, listless holders of free and independent opinions, equal but equally unfor- tunate. Let us hope that between now and then God will raise up in France the man for the time, one of those elect who breathe a new spirit into a nation, a man who, whether he is a Sylla or a Marius, whether he comes from the heights or rises from the depths, will reconstruct society." "The first thing to do will be to send him to the assizes or to the police court," said Gerard. "The judgment of Socrates or of Christ will be given to him, here in 1831, as of old in Attica and at Jerusalem. To-day, as of old, jealous mediocrity allows the thinker to starve. If the great political physicians who have studied the diseases of France, and are opposed to the spirit of the age, should resist to the starva- , tion-point, we ridicule them, and treat them as visionaries. Here in France we revolt against the sovereign thinker, the great man of the future, just as we rise in revolt against the political sovereign." " But in those old times the Sophists had a very limited , audience," cried the justice of the peace; "while to-day, / through the medium of the periodical press, they can lead I a whole nation astray ; and the press which pleads for com-] mon-sense finds no echo ! " The mayor looked at M. Clousier with intense astonish- ment. Mme. Graslin, delighted to find a simple justice of the peace interested in such grave problems, turned to her neigh- bor, M. Roubaud, with, " Do you know M. Clousier? " "Not till to-day! Madame, you are working miracles," he added in her ear. "And yet look at his forehead, how finely shaped it is ! It is like the classical or traditional brow that sculptors gave to Lycurgus and the wise men of 224 THE COUNTRY PARSON. Greece, is it not ? Clearly there was an impolitic side to the Revolution of July," he added aloud, after going through Gros- setdte's reasonings. He had been a medical student, and perhaps would have lent a hand at a barricade. " 'Twas trebly impolitic," said Clousier. " We have con- cluded the case for law and finance, now for the government. The royal power, weakened by the dogma of the national sovereignty, in virtue of which the election was made on the 9th of August, 1830, will strive to overcome its rival, a prin- ciple which gives the people the right of changing a dynasty every time they fail to apprehend the intentions of their king ; so there is a domestic struggle before us which will check progress in France for a long while yet." " England has wisely steered clear of all these sunken rocks," said Gerard. "I have been in England. I admire the hive which sends swarms over the globe to. settle and civilize. In England political debate is a comedy intended to satisfy the people and to hide the action of authority which moves untrammeled in its lofty sphere; election there is not, as in France, the referring of a question to a stupid bourgeoisie. If the land were divided up, England would cease to exist at once. The great landowners and the lords control the machinery of government. They have a navy which takes possession of whole quarters of the globe (and under the very eyes of Europe) to fulfill the exigencies of their trade, and form colonies for the discontented and unsatisfactory. Instead of waging war on men of ability, annihilating and underrating them, the English aristocracy continually seeks them out, rewards and assimilates them. The English are prompt to act in all that concerns the govern- ment, and in the choice of men and material, while with us action of any kind is slow ; and yet they are slow, and we impatient. Capital with them is adventurous, and always moving ; with us it is shy and suspicious. Here is corrobora- tion of M. Grossette's statements about the loss to industry MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 225 of the peasants' capital ; I can sketch the difference in a few words. English capital, which is constantly circulating, has created ten milliards of wealth in the shape of expanded manufactures and joint-stock companies paying dividends; while here in France, though we have more capital, it has not yielded one-tenth part of the profit." "It is all the more extraordinary," said Roubaud, "since they are lymphatic, and we are generally either sanguine or nervous." " Here is a great problem for you to study, monsieur," said Clousier. " Given a national temperament, to find the institutions best adapted to counteract it. Truly, Cromwell was a great legislator. He, one man, made England what she is by promulgating the Act of Navigation, which made the English the enemy of all other nations, and infused into them a fierce pride, that has served them as a lever. But in spite of their garrison at Malta, as soon as France and Russia fully understand the part to be played in politics by the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, the discovery of a new route to Asia by way of Egypt or the Euphrates valley will be a death- blow to England, just as the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope was the ruin of Venice." " And nothing of God in all this ! " cried the cure. " M. Clousier and M. Roubaud are quite indifferent in matters of religion and you, monsieur?" he asked questioningly, turning to Gerard. "A Protestant," said Grossetgte. "You guessed rightly!" exclaimed Veronique, with a glance at the cure as she offered her hand to Clousier to return to her apartments. All prejudices excited by M. Gerard's appearance quickly vanished, and the three notables of Montegnac congratulated themselves on such an acquisition. " Unluckily," said M. Bonnet, " there is a cause for an- tagonism between Russia and the Catholic countries on the 15 226 THE COUNTRY PARSON. shores of the Mediterranean ; a schism of little real impor- tance divides the Greek Church from the Latin, to the great misfortune of humanity." " Each preaches for his saint," said Mme. Graslin, smiling. " M. Grossetdte thinks of lost milliards ; M. Clousier of law in confusion ; the doctor sees in legislation a question of temperaments ; M. le Cure sees in religion an obstacle in the way of a good understanding between France and Russia." "Please add, madame," said Gerard, "that in the seques- tration of capital by the peasant and small tradesman, I see the delay of the completion of railways in France " " Then what would you have ? " asked she. " Oh ! The admirable Councilors of State who devised laws in the time of the Emperor and the Corps legislatif, when those who had brains as well as those who had property had a voice in the election, a body whose sole function it was to oppose unwise laws or capricious wars. The present Chamber of Deputies is like to end, as you will see, by becoming the governing body, and legalized anarchy it will be." "Great heavens! " cried the cure in an excess of lofty patriotism, "how is it that minds so enlightened" he in- dicated Clousier, Roubaud, and Gerard "see the evil, and point out the remedy, and do not begin by applying it to themselves ? All of you represent the classes attacked ; all of you recognize the necessity of passive obedience on the part of the great masses in the state, an obedience like that of the soldier in time of war ; all of you desire the unity of authority, and wish that it shall never be called in question. But that consolidation to which England has attained through the de- velopment of pride and material interests (which are a sort of belief) can only be attained here by sentiments induced by Catholicism, and you are not Catholics ! I the priest drop my character, and reason with rationalists. "How can you expect the masses to become religious and to obey if they see irreligion and relaxed discipline around MADAME GKASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 227 them ? A people united by any faith will easily get the better of men- without belief. The law of the interest of all, which underlies patriotism, is at once annulled by the law of indi- vidual interest, which authorizes and implants selfishness. Nothing is solid and durable but that which is natural, and the natural basis of politics is the family. The family should be the basis of all institutions. A universal effect denotes a coextensive cause. These things that you notice proceed from the social principle itself, which has no force, because it is based on independent opinion, and the right of private judgment is the forerunner of individualism. There is less wisdom in looking for the blessing of security from the intel- ligence and capacity of the majority than in depending upon the intelligence of institutions and the capacity of one single man for the blessing of security. It is easier to find wisdom in one man than in a whole nation. The peoples have but a blind heart to guide them ; they feel, but they do not see. A government must see, and must not be swayed by senti- ments. There is therefore an evident contradiction between the first impulses of the masses and the action of authority which must direct their energy and give it unity. To find a great prince is a great chance (to use your language), but to trust your destinies to any assembly of men, even if they are honest, is madness. " France is mad at this moment ! Alas ! you are as thor- oughly convinced of this as I. If all men who really be- lieve what they say, as you do, would set the example in their own circle; if every intelligent thinker would set his hand to raising once more the altars of the great spiritual republic, of the one Church which has directed humanity, we might see once more in France the miracles wrought there by our fathers." " What would you have, M. le Cure ? " said Gerard, " if one must speak to you as in the confessional I look on faith as a lie which you consciously tell yourself, on hope as a lie about 228 THE COUNTRY PARSON. the future, and on this charity of yours as a child's trick ; one is a good boy, for the sake of the jam. ' ' "And yet, monsieur, when hope rocks us we sleep well," said Mme. Graslin. Roubaud, who was about to speak, supported by a glance from Grossetlte and the cur6, stopped short, however, at the words. "Is it any fault of ours," said Clousier, "if Jesus Christ had not time to formulate a system of government in ac- cordance with His teaching, as Moses did and Confucius the two greatest legislators whom the world has seen, for the Jews and the Chinese still maintain their national exist- ence, though the first are scattered all over the earth, and the second an isolated people ? " "Ah! you are giving me a task indeed," said the cur6 candidly, "but I shall triumph, I shall convert all of you. You are much nearer the faith than you think. Truth lurks beneath the lie; come forward but a step, and you re- turn ! " And with this cry from the cure the conversation took a fresh direction. The next morning before M. Grossetgte went, he promised to take an active share in Veronique's schemes so soon as they should be judged practicable. Mme. Graslin and Gerard rode beside his traveling carriage as far as the point where the cross- road joined the high-road from Bordeaux to Lyons. Gerard was so eager to see the place, and Veronique so anxious to show it to him, that this ride had been planned overnight. After they took leave of the kind old man, they galloped down into the great plain and skirted the hillsides that lay between the chateau and the Living Rock. The surveyor recognized the rock embankment which Farrabesche had pointed out ; it stood up like the lowest course of masonry under the founda- tions of the hills, in such a manner that when the bed of this indestructible canal of nature's making should be cleared out, MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 229 and the water-courses regulated so as not to choke it, irrigation would actually be facilitated by that long channel which lay about ten feet above the surface of the plain. The first thing to be done was to estimate the volume of water in the Gabou, and to make certain that the sides of the valley could hold it ; no decision could be made till this was known. Veronique gave a horse to Farrabesche, who was to accom- pany Gerard and acquaint him with the least details which he himself had observed. After some days of consideration Gerard thought the base of either parallel chains of hill solid enough (albeit of different material) to hold the water. In the January of the following year, a wet season, Gerard calculated the probable amount of water discharged by the Gabou, and found that, when the three water-courses had been diverted into the torrent, the total amount would be sufficient to water an area three times as great as the plain of Montdgnac. The dams across the Gabou, the masonry and engineering works needed to bring the water-supply of the three little valleys into the plain, should not cost more than sixty thou- sand francs ; for the surveyor discovered a quantity of chalky deposit on the common, so that lime would be cheap, and the forest being so near at hand, stone and timber would cost nothing even for transport. All the preparations could be made before the Gabou ran dry, so that when the important work should be begun it should quickly be finished. But the plain was another matter. Gerard considered that there the first preparation would cost at least two hundred thousand francs, sowing and planting apart. The plain was to be divided into four squares of two hun- dred and fifty acres each. There was no question of breaking up the waste ; the first thing to do was to remove the largest flints. Navvies would be employed to dig a great number of trenches and to line the channels with stone to keep the water in, for the water must be made to flow or to stand as required. All this work called for active, devoted, and painstaking 230 THE COUNTRY PARSON. workers. Chance so ordered it that the plain was a straight- forward piece of work, a level stretch, and the water with a ten-foot fall could be distributed at will. There was nothing to prevent the finest results in farming the land ; here there might be just such a splendid green carpet as in North Italy, a source of wealth and of pride to Lombardy. Gerard sent to his late district for an old and experienced foreman, Fres- quin by name. Mme. Graslin, therefore, wrote to ask Grossetete to negotiate for her a loan of two hundred and fifty thousand francs on the security of her government stock ; the interest of six years, Gerard calculated, should pay off the debt, capital and in- terest. The loan was concluded in the course of the month of March ; and by that time Gerard, with Fresquin's assist- ance, had finished all the preliminary operations, leveling, bor- ing, observations, and estimates. The news of the great scheme had spread through the country and roused the poor people ; and the indefatigable Farrabesche, Colorat, Clousier, Roubaud, and the Mayor of Montegnac, all those, in fact, who were interested in the enterprise for its own sake or for Mme. Graslin's, chose the workers or gave the names of the poor who deserved to be employed. Gerard bought partly for M. Grossetete, partly on his own account, some thousand acres of land on the other side of the road through Montegnac. Fresquin, his foreman, also took five hundred acres, and sent for his wife and children. In the early days of April, 1833, M. Grossetete came to Mont6gnac to see the land purchased for him by Gerard ; but the principal motive of his journey was the arrival of Catherine Curieux. She had come by the diligence from Paris to Limoges, and Mme. Graslin was expecting her. Grossetgte found Mme. Graslin about to start for the church. M. Bonnet was to say a mass to ask the blessing of heaven on the work about to begin. All the men, women, and children were present. MADAME GRASLIX AT MONT&GNAC. 231 M. Grossetete brought forward a woman of thirty or there- abouts, who looked weak and out of health. " Here is your protege," he said, addressing V6ronique. "Are you Catherine Curieux?" Mme. Graslin asked. " Yes, raadame." For a moment Veronique looked at her; Catherine was rather tall, shapely, and pale ; the exceeding sweetness of her features was not belied by the beautiful soft gray eyes. In the shape of her face and the outlines of her forehead there was a nobleness, a sort of grave and simple majesty, sometimes seen in very young girls' faces in the country, a kind of flower of beauty, which field-work, and the constant wear of household cares, and sunburn, and neglect of appearance, wither with alarming rapidity. From her attitude as she stood it was easy to discern that she would move with the ease of a daughter of the fields and something of an added grace, un- consciously learned in Paris. If Catherine had never left the Correze, she would no doubt have been by this time a wrinkled and withered woman, the bright tints in her face would have grown hard ; but Paris, which had toned down the high color, had preserved her beauty; and ill-health, weariness, and sor- row had given to her the mysterious gifts of melancholy and of that inner life of thought denied to poor toilers in the field who lead an almost animal existence. Her dress likewise marked a distinction between her and the peasants; for it abundantly displayed the Parisian taste which even the least coquettish women are so quick to acquire. Catherine Curieux, not knowing what might await her, and unable to judge the lady in whose presence she stood, seemed somewhat embarrassed. "Do you still love Farrabesche ?" asked Mme. Graslin, when Grossetete left the two women together for a moment. "Yes, madame," she answered, flushing red. "But if you sent him a thousand francs while he was in prison, why did you not come to him when he came out ? 232 THE COUNTRY PARSON. Do you feel any repugnance for him ? Speak to me as you would to your own mother. Were you afraid that he had gone utterly to the bad ? that he cared for you no longer ? " "No, madame; but I can neither read nor write. I was living with a very exacting old lady ; she fell ill ; we sat up with her of a night, and I had to nurse her. I knew the time was coming near when Jacques would be out of prison, but I could not leave Paris until the lady died. She left me nothing, after all my devotion to her and her interests. I had made myself ill with sitting up with her and the hard work of nurs- ing, and I wanted to get well again before I came back. I spent all my savings, and then I made up my mind to go into the Hopital Saint-Louis, and have just been discharged as cured. ' ' Mme. Graslin was touched by an explanation so simple. "Well, but, my dear," she said, "tell me why you left your people so suddenly ; what made you leave your child ? why did you not send them news of you, or get some one to write " For all answer, Catherine wept. "Madame," she said at last, reassured by the pressure of Veronique's hand, " I daresay I was wrong, but it was more than I could do to stop in the place. It was not that I felt I had done wrong ; it was the rest of them ; I was afraid of their gossip and talk. So long as Jacques was here in danger, he could not do without me ; but when he was gone, I felt as if I could not stop. There was I, a girl with a child and no husband ! The lowest creature would have been better than I. If I had heard them say the least word about Ben- jamin or his father, I do not know what I should have done. I should have killed myself perhaps or gone out of my mind. My own father or mother might have said something hasty in a moment of anger. Meek as I am, I am too irritable to bear hasty words or insult. I have been well punished ; I could not see my child, and never a day passed but I thought MADAME GRASLIX AT MONTEGNAC. 233 of him ! I wanted to be forgotten, and forgotten I am. Nobody has given me a thought. They thought I was dead, and yet many and many a time I felt I could like to leave everything to have one day here and see my little boy " " Your little boy see, Catherine, here he is ! " replied Madame Graslin. Catherine looked up and saw Benjamin, and something like a feverish shiver ran through her. "Benjamin," said Mme. Graslin, "come and kiss your mother." "My mother?" cried Benjamin in amazement. He flung his arms round Catherine's neck, and she clasped him to her with wild energy. But the boy escaped, and ran away crying, "I will find him!" Mme. Graslin, seeing that Catherine's strength was failing, made her sit down ; and as she did so her eyes met M. Bonnet's look, her color rose, for in that keen glance her confessor read her heart. She spoke tremulously. "I hope, M. le Cure," she said, "that you will marry Catherine and Farrabesche at once. Do you not remember M. Bonnet, my child ? He will tell you that Farrabesche has behaved himself like an honest man since he came back. Every one in the countryside respects him ; if there is a place in the world where you may live happily with the good opinion of every one about you, it is here in Montegnac. With God's will, you will make your fortune here, for you shall be my tenants. Farrabesche has all his citizen's rights again." "This is all true, my daughter," said the cure. As he spoke, Farrabesche came in, led by his eager son. Face to face with Catherine in Mme. Graslin's presence, his face grew white, and he was mute. He saw how active the kindness of the one had been for him, and guessed all that the other had suffered in her enforced absence. Veronique turned to go with M. Bonnet, and the cure for his part wished to take Veronique aside. As soon as they were out of hearing, 234 THE COUNTRY PARSON. Veronique's confessor looked full at her and saw her color rise ; she lowered her eyes like a guilty creature. "You are degrading charity," he said severely. " And how? " she asked, raising her head. "Charity," said M. Bonnet, "is a passion as far greater than love, as humanity, madame, is greater than one human creature. All this is not the spontaneous work of disinter- ested virtue. You are falling from the grandeur of the service of man to the service of a single creature. In your kindness to Catherine and Farrabesche there is an alloy of memories and after-thoughts which spoils it in the sight of God. Pluck out the rest of the dart of the spirit of evil from your heart. Do not spoil the value of your good deeds in this way. Will you ever attain at last to that holy ignorance of the good that you do, which is the supreme grace of man's actions? " Mme. Graslin turned away to dry her eyes. Her tears told the cure that his words had reached and probed some unhealed wound in her heart. Farrabesche, Catherine, and Benjamin came to thank their benefactress, but she made a sign to them to go away and leave her with M. Bonnet. "You see how I have hurt them," she said, bidding him see their disappointed faces. And the tender-hearted cure beckoned to them to come back. "You must be completely happy," she said. "Here is the patent which gives you back all your rights as a citizen, and exempts you from the old humiliating formalities," she added, holding out to Farrabesche a paper which she had kept. Farrabesche kissed Veronique's hand. There was an expres- sion of submissive affection and quiet devotion in his eyes, the devotion which nothing could change, the fidelity of a dog for his master. " If Jacques has suffered much, madame, I hope that it will be possible for me to make up to him in happiness for the trouble he has been through," said Catherine; "for whatever he may have done, he is not bad." MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 235 Mme. Graslin turned away her head. The sight of their happiness seemed to crush her. M. Bonnet left her to go to the church, and she dragged herself thither on M. Grosset&e's arm. After breakfast, every one went to see the work begun. All the old people of Montegnac were likewise present. Veron- ique stood between M. Grossetete and M. Bonnet on the top of the steep slope which the new road ascended, whence they could see the alignment of the four new roads, which served as a deposit for the stones taken off the land. Five navvies were clearing a space of eighteen feet (the width of each road), and throwing up a sort of embankment of good soil as they worked. Four men on either side were engaged in making a ditch, and these also made a bank of fertile earth along the edge of the field. Behind them came two men, who dug holes at intervals, and planted trees. In each division, thirty laborers (chosen from among the poor), twenty women, and forty girls and children, eighty-six workers in all, were busy piling up the stones which the workmen riddled out along the bank so as to measure the quantity produced by each group. In this way all went abreast, and with such picked and enthu- siastic workers rapid progress was being made. Grossetete promised to send some trees, and to ask for more, among Mme. Graslin's friends. It was evident that there would not be enough in the nursery plantations at the chateau to supply such a demand. Towards the end of the day, which was to finish with a great dinner at the chateau, Farrabesche begged to speak with Mme. Graslin for a moment. Catherine came with him. "Madame," he said, "you were so kind as to promise me the home farm. You meant to help me to a fortune when you granted me such a favor, but I have come round to Catherine's ideas about our future. If I did well there, there would be jealousy; a word is soon said; I might find things unpleasant, I am afraid, and, besides, Catherine would never 236 THE COUNTRY PARSON. feel comfortable; it would be better for us to keep to ourselves, in fact. So I have come just to ask you if you will give us the land about the mouth of the Gabou, near the common, to farm instead, and a little bit of the wood yonder under the Living Rock. You will have a lot of workmen thereabouts in July, and it would be easy then to build a farmhouse on a knoll in a good situation. We should be very happy. I would send for Guepin, poor fellow, when he comes out of prison ; he would work like a horse, and it is likely I might find a wife for him. My man is no do-nothing. No one will come up there to stare at us; we will colonize that bit of land, and it will be my great ambition to make a famous farm for you there. Besides, I have come to suggest a tenant for your great farm a cousin of Catherine's, who has a little money of his own ; he will be better able than I to look after such a big concern as that. In five years' time, please God, you will have five or six thousand head of cattle or horses down there in the plain that they are breaking up, and it will really take a good head to look after it all." Mme. Graslin recognized the good sense of Farrabesche's request, and granted it. As soon as a beginning was made in the plain, Mme. Graslin fell into the even ways of a country life. She went to mass in the morning, watched over the education of the son whom she idolized, and went to see her workmen. After dinner she was at home to her friends in the little drawing- room on the first floor of the centre tower. She taught Rou- baud, Clousier, and the cure whist Gerard knew the game already and when the party broke up towards nine o'clock, every one went home. The only events in the pleasant life were the successes of the different parts of the great enterprise. June came, the bed of the Gabou was dry, Gerard had taken up his quarters in the old keeper's cottage ; for Farra- besche's farmhouse was finished by this time, and fifty masons, obtained from Paris, were building a wall across the valley MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 237 from side to side. The masonry was twenty feet thick at the base, gradually sloping away to half that thickness at the top, and the whole length of it was embedded in twelve feet of solid concrete. On the side of the valley Gerard added a course of concrete with a sloping surface iwelve feet thick at the base, and a similar support on the side nearest the com- mons, covered with leaf-mold several feet deep, made a sub- stantial barrier which the flood-water could not break through. In case of a very wet season, Gerard contrived a channel at a suitable height for the overflow. Everywhere the masonry was carried down on the solid rock (granite, or tufa), that the water might not escape at the sides. By the middle of August the dam was finished. Meanwhile, Gerard also prepared three channels in the three principal valleys, and all of the undertakings cost less than the estimate. In this way the farm by the chateau could be put in working order. The irrigation channels in the plain under Fresquin's super- intendence corresponded with the natural canal at the base of the hills ; all the water-courses departed thence. The great abundance of flints enabled him to pave all the channels, and sluices were constructed so that the water might be kept at the required height in them. Every Sunday after mass Veronique went down through the park with Gerard and the cure, the doctor, and the mayor, to see how the system of water-supply was working. The winter of 1833-1834 was very wet. The water from the three streams had been turned into the torrent, and the flood had made the valley of the Gabou into three lakes, arranged of set design one above the other, so as to form a reserve for times of great drought. In places where the valley widened out, Gerard had taken advantage of one or two knolls to make an island here and there, and to plant them with different -trees. This vast engineering operation had completely altered the appearance of the landscape, but it would still be five or six years before it would take its true character. 238 THE COUNTRY PARSON. " The land was quite naked," Farrabesche used to say, "and now madame has clothed it." After all these great changes, every one spoke of Veronique as " madame " in the countryside. When the rains ceased in June, 1834, trial was made of the irrigation system in the part of the plain where seed had been sown ; and the green growth thus watered was of the same fine quality as in an Italian marcita, or a Swiss meadow. The method in use on farms in Lombardy had been employed ; the whole surface was kept evenly moist, and the plain was as even as a carpet. The nitre in the snow, dis- solved in the water, doubtless contributed not a little to the fineness of the grass. Gerard hoped that the produce would be something like that of Switzerland, where, as is well known, this substance is an inexhaustible source of riches. The trees planted along the roadsides, drawing water sufficient from the ditches, made rapid progress. So it came to pass that in 1838, five years after Mme. Graslin came to Montegnac, the waste land, condemned as sterile by twenty genera- tions, was a green and fertile plain, the whole of it under cultivation. Gerard had built houses for five farms, besides the large one at the chateau ; Gerard's farm, like Grossette's and Fresquin's, received the overflow from Mme. Graslin's estate ; they were conducted on the same methods, and laid out on the same lines. G6rard built a charming lodge on his own property. When all was finished, the township of Montegnac acted on the suggestion of its mayor, who was delighted to resign his office to G6rard, and the surveyor became mayor in his stead. In 1840 the departure of the first herd of fat cattle sent from Montegnac to the Paris markets was an occasion for a rural fgte. Cattle and horses were raised on the farms in the plain; for when the ground was cleared, seven inches of mold were usually found, which were manured by pasturing MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 239 cattle on them, and continually enriched by the leaves that fell every autumn from trees, and, first and foremost, by the melted snow-water from the reservoirs in the Gabou. It was in this year that Mme. Graslin decided that a tutor must be found for her son, now eleven years old. She was unwilling to part with him, and yet desired to make a well- educated man of her boy. M. Bonnet wrote to the seminary. Mme. Graslin, on her side, let fall a few words concerning her wishes and her difficulty to Monseigneur Dutheil, recently appointed to an archbisopric. It was a great and serious matter to make choice of a man who must spend at least nine months out of twelve at the chateau. Gerard had offered already to ground his friend Francis in mathematics, but it was impossible to do without a tutor ; and this choice that she must make was the more formidable to Mme. Graslin because she knew that her health was giving way. As the value of the land in her beloved Montegnac increased, she redoubled the secret austerities of her life. Monseigneur Dutheil, with whom Mme. Graslin still cor- responded, found her the man for whom she wished. He sent a schoolmaster named Ruffin from his own diocese. Ruffin was a young man of five-and-twenty with a genius for private teaching; he was widely read ; in spite of an excessive sensi- bility, could, when necessary, show himself sufficiently severe for the education of a child, nor was his piety in any way prejudicial to his knowledge; finally, he was patient and pleasant-looking. "This is a real gift which I am sending you, my dear daughter," so the archbishop wrote; "the young man is worthy to be the tutor of a prince, so I count upon you to secure his future, for he will be your son's spiritual father." M. Ruffin was so much liked by Mme. Graslin's little circle of faithful friends that his coming made no change in the 240 THE COUNTRY PARSON. various intimacies of those who grouped about their idol, seized with a sort of jealousy on the hours and moments spent with her. The year 1843 saw l ^ e prosperity of Montegnac increasing beyond all hopes. The farm on the Gabou rivaled the farms on the plain, and the chateau led the way in all improvements. The five other farms, which by the terms of the lease paid an increasing rent, and would each bring in the sum of thirty thousand francs in twelve years' time, then brought in sixty thousand francs a year all told. The farmers were just begin- ning to reap the benefits of their self-denial and Mme. Graslin's sacrifices, and could afford to manure the meadows in the plain where the finest crops grew without fear of dry seasons. The Gabou farm paid its first rent of four thousand francs joyously. It was in this year that a man in Montegnac started a dili- gence between the chief town in the arrondissement and Lim- oges ; a coach ran either way daily. M. Clousier's nephew sold his clerkship and obtained permission to practice as a notary, and Fresquin was appointed to be tax-collector in the canton. Then the new notary built himself a pretty house in tipper Monte'gnac, planted mulberry trees on his land, and became Gerard's deputy. And Gerard himself, grown bold with success, thought of a plan which was 'to bring Mme. Graslin a colossal fortune ; for this year she paid off her loan, and began to receive interest from her investment in the funds. This was Gerard's scheme : He would turn the little river into a canal by diverting the abundant water of the Gabou into it. This canal should effect a junction with the Vienne, and in this way it would be possible to exploit twenty thou- sand acres of the vast forest of Montegnac. The woods were admirably superintended by Cblorat, but hitherto had brought in nothing on account of the difficulty of transport. With this arrangement it would be possible to fell a thousand acres every year (thus dividing the forest into twenty strips for sue- MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 241 cessive cuttings), and the valuable timber for building pur- poses could be sent by water to Limoges. This had been Graslin's plan ; he had scarcely listened to the cure's projects for the plain, he was far more interested in the scheme for making a canal of the little river. V. VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. In the beginning of the following year, in spite of Mme. Graslin's bearing, her friends saw warning signs that death was near. To all Roubaud's observations, as to the utmost ingenuity of the most keen-sighted questioners, Veronique gave but one answer, " She felt wonderfully well." Yet that spring, when she revisited forest and farms and her rich meadows, it was with a childlike joy that plainly spoke of sad forebodings. Gerard had been obliged to make a low wall of concrete from the dam across the Gabou to the park at Montegnac along the base of the lower slope of the hill of the Correze ; this had suggested an idea to him. He would enclose the whole forest of Montegnac, and throw the park into it. Mme. Graslin put by thirty thousand francs a year for this purpose. It would take seven years to complete the wall ; but when it was finished, the splendid forest would be exempted from the dues claimed by the government over unenclosed woods and lands, and the three ponds in the Gabou valley would lie within the circuit of the park. Each of the ponds, proudly dubbed "a lake," had its island. This year, too, Gerard, in concert with Grossetete, prepared a surprise for Mme. Graslin's birthday; he had built on the second and largest island a little Chartreuse a summer-house, satisfactorily rustic without and perfectly elegant within. The old banker was in the plot, so were Farrabesche, Fresquin, and Clousier's nephew, and most of the well-to-do folk in Montegnac. Gros- setSte sent the pretty furniture. The bell tower, copied from the tower of Vevay, produced a charming effect in the land- scape. Six boats (two for each lake) had been secretly built, (242) VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 243 rigged, and painted during the winter by Farrabesche and Guepin, with some help from the village carpenter at Mon- tegnac. So one morning in the middle of May, after Mme. Graslin's friends had breakfasted with her, they led her out into the park, which Gerard had managed for the last five years as architect and naturalist. It had been admirably laid out, sloping down towards the pleasant meadows in the Gabou valley, where below, on the first lake, two boats were in readi- ness for them. The meadowland, watered by several clear streams, had been taken in at the base of the great amphi- theatre at the head of the Gabou valley. The woods round about them had been carefully thinned and disposed with a view to the effect ; here the shapeliest masses of trees, there a charming inlet of meadow ; there was an air of loneliness about the forest-surrounded place which soothed the soul. On a bit of rising ground by the lake Gerard had carefully reproduced the chalet which all travelers see and admire on the road to Brieg, through the Rhone valley. This was to be the ch&teau, dairy, and cow-shed. From the balcony there was a view over this landscape created by the engineer's art, a view comparable, since the lakes had been made, to the loveliest Swiss scenery. It was a glorious day. Not a cloud in the blue sky, and on the earth beneath, the myriad gracious chance effects that the fair May month can give. Light wreaths of mist, risen from the lake, still hung like a thin smoke about the trees by the water's edge willows and weeping willows, ash and alder and abeles, Lombard and Canadian poplars, white and pink hawthorn, birch and acacia, had been grouped about the lake, as the nature of the ground and the trees themselves (all finely grown specimens now ten years old) suggested. The high green wall of forest trees was reflected in the sheet of water, clear as a mirror, and serene as the sky ; their topmost crests, clearly outlined in that limpid atmosphere, stood out in con- 244 THE COUNTRY PARSON. trast with the thicket below them, veiled in delicate green undergrowth. The lakes, divided by strongly-built embank- ments with a causeway along them that served as a short cut from side to side of the valley, lay like three mirrors, each with a different reflecting surface, the water trickling from one to another in musical cascades. And beyond this, from the chalet you caught a glimpse of the bleak and barren com- mon lands, the pale chalky soil (seen from the balcony) looked like a wide sea, and supplied a contrast with the fresh greenery about the lake. Veronique saw the gladness in her friends' faces as their hands were held out to assist her to enter the larger boat, tears rose to her eyes, and they rowed on in silence until they reached the first causeway. Here they landed, to embark again on the second lake ; and Vero- nique, looking up, saw the summer-house on the island, and Grossette and his family sitting on a bench before it. "They are determined to make me regret life, it seems," she said, turning to the cure. "We want to keep you among us," Clousier said. "There is no putting life into the dead," she answered; but at M. Bonnet's look of rebuke, she withdrew into herself again. "Simply let me have the charge of your health," pleaded Roubaud in a gentle voice; " I am sure that I could preserve her who is the living glory of the canton, the common bond that unites the lives of all our friends." Veronique bent her head, while Gerard rowed slowly out towards the island in the middle of the sheet of water, the largest of the three. The upper lake chanced to be too full ; the distant murmur of the weir seemed to find a voice for the lovely landscape. "You did well indeed to bring me here to bid farewell to this entrancing view ! " she said, as she saw the beauty of the trees so full of leaves that they hid the bank on either side. VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 245 The only sign of disapprobation which Veronique's friends permitted themselves was a gloomy silence ; and, at a second glance from M. Bonnet, she sprang lightly from the boat with an apparent gaiety, which she sustained. Once more she be- came the lady of the manor, and so charming was she that the GrossetSte family thought that they saw in her the beauti- ful Mme. Graslin of old days. "Assuredly, you may live yet," her mother said in Veron- ique's ear. On that pleasant festival day, in the midst of a scene sub- limely transformed by the use of nature's own resources, how should anything wound Veronique ? Yet then and there she received her death-blow. It had been arranged that the party should return home towards nine o'clock by way of the meadows ; for the roads, quite as fine as any in England or Italy, were the pride of their engineer. There were flints in abundance ; as the stones were taken off the land they had been piled in heaps by the roadside ; and with such plenty of road-material, it was so easy to keep the ways in good order that in five years' time they were in a manner macadamized. Carriages were waiting for the party at the lower end of the valley nearest the plain, almost under the Living Rock. The horses had all been bred in Montegnac. Their trial formed part of the pro- gramme for the day ; for these were the first that were ready for sale, the manager of the stud having just sent ten of them up to the stables of the chateau. Four handsome animals in light and plain harness were to draw Mme. Graslin's caleche, a present from Grossetdte. After dinner the joyous company went to take coffee on a promontory where a little wooden kiosk had been erected, a copy of one on the shores of the Bosphorus. From this point there was a wide outlook over the lowest lake, stretch- ing away to the great barrier across the Gabou, now covered thickly with a luxuriant growth of green, a charming spot for 246 THE COUNTRY PARSON. the eyes to rest upon. Colorat's house and the old cottage, now restored, were the only buildings in the landscape ; Colorat's capacities were scarcely adequate for the difficult post of head forester in Montegnac, so he had succeeded to Farrabesche's office. From this point Mine. Graslin fancied that she could see Francis near Farrabesche's nursery of saplings ; she looked for the child, and could not find him, till M. Ruffin pointed him out playing on the brink of the lake with M. Grosset6te's great-grandchildren. Veronique felt afraid that some acci- dent might happen, and, without listening to remonstrances, sprang into one of the boats, landed on the causeway, and herself hurried away in search of her son. This little inci- dent broke up the party on the island. GrossetSte, now a venerable great-grandfather, was the first to suggest a walk along the beautiful field-path that wound up and down by the side of the lower lakes. Mme. Graslin saw Francis a long way off. He was with a woman in mourning, who had thrown her arms about him. She seemed to be from a foreign country, judging by her dress and the shape of her hat. Veronique in dismay called her son to her. " Who is that woman?" she asked of the other children; "and why did Francis go away from you?" "The lady called him by his name," said one of the little girls. Mme. Sauviat and Gerard, who were ahead of the others, came up at that moment. "Who is that woman, dear? " said Mme. Graslin, turning to Francis. " I do not know," he said, " but no one kisses me like that except you and grandmamma. She was crying," he added in his mother's ear. "Shall I run and fetch her?" asked Gerard. "No!" said Mine. Graslin, with a curtness very unusual with her. VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 247 With kindly tact, which Veronique appreciated, Gerard took the little ones with him and went back to meet the others; so that Mme. Sauviat, Mme. Graslin, and Francis were left together. "What did she say to you?" asked Mme. Sauviat, ad- dressing her grandson. "I don't know. She did not speak French." "Did you not understand anything she said?" asked Veronique. " Oh, yes; one thing she said over and over again, that is how I can remember it dear brother ! she said." Veronique leaned on her mother's arm and took her child's hand, but she could scarcely walk, and her strength failed her. "What is it? What has happened?" everyone asked of Mme. Sauviat. A cry broke from the old Auvergnate : " Oh ! my daughter is in danger ! ' ' she exclaimed, in her guttural accent and deep voice. Mme. Graslin had to be carried to her carriage. She or- dered Aline to keep beside Francis, and beckoned to Gerard. "You have been in England, I believe," she said, when she had recovered herself; "do you understand English? What do these words mean dear brother? " " That is very simple," said Gerard, and he explained. Veronique exchanged glances with Aline and Mme. Sauviat ; the two women shuddered, but controlled their feelings. Mme. Graslin sank into a torpor from which nothing roused her; she did not heed the gleeful voices as the carriages started, nor the splendor of the sunset light on the meadows, the even pace of the horses, nor the laughter of the friends who followed them on horseback at a gallop. Her mother bade the man drive faster, and her carriage was the first to reach the chateau. When the rest arrived they were told that Veronique had gone to her room, and would see no one. 248 THE COUNTRY PARSON. "I am afraid that Mme. Graslin must have received a fatal wound," Gerard began, speaking to his friends. < < Where ? How ? ' ' asked they. "In the heart," answered Gerard. Two days later Roubaud set out for Paris. He had seen that Mme. Graslin's life was in danger, and to save her he had gone to summon the first doctor in Paris to give his opin- ion of the case. But Veronique had only consented to see Roubaud to put an end to the importunities of Aline and her mother, who begged her to be more careful of herself; she knew that she was dying. She declined to see M. Bonnet, saying that the time had not yet come ; and although all the friends who had come from Limoges for her birthday festival were anxious to stay with her, she entreated them to pardon her if she could not fulfill the duties of hospitality, but she needed the most profound solitude. So, after Roubaud's sud- den departure, the guests left the chateau of Mont6gnac and went back to Limoges, not so much in disappointment as in despair, for all who had come with Grossetete adored Veron- ique, and were utterly at a loss as to the cause of this mysteri- ous disaster. One evening, two days after Grossette's large family party had left the chateau, Aline brought a visitor to Mme. Graslin's room. It was Catherine Farrabesche. At first Catherine stood glued to the spot, so astonished was she at this sudden change in her mistress, the features so drawn. " Good God ! madame, what harm that poor girl has done ! If only we could have known, Farrabesche and I, we would never have taken her in. She has just heard that madame is ill, and sent me to tell Mme. Sauviat that she should like to speak to .her. ' ' "Here.'" cried Veronique. "Where is she at this mo- ment?" "My husband took her over to the chalet." "Good," said Mme. Graslin; "leave us, and tell Farra- V&JtONIQUE LAW IN THE TOMB. 249 besche to go. Tell the lady to wait, and my mother will go to see her." At nightfall Veronique, leaning on her mother's arm, crept slowly across the park to the chalet. The moon shone with its most brilliant glory, the night air was soft ; the two women, both shaken with emotion that they could not conceal, received in some sort the encouragement of nature. From moment to moment Mme. Sauviat stopped and made her daughter rest ; for Veronique's sufferings were so poignant that it was nearly midnight before they reached the path that turned down through the wood to the meadows, where the chalet roof sparkled like silver. The moonlight on the surface of the still water lent it a pearly hue. The faint noises of the night, which travel so far in the silence, made up a delicate harmony of sound. Veronique sat down on the bench outside the chalet in the midst of the glorious spectacle beneath the starry skies. The murmur of two voices and footfalls on the sands made by two persons still some distance away was borne to 'her by the water, which transmits every sound in the stillness as faith- fully as it reflects everything in its calm surface. There was an exquisite quality in the intonation of one of the voices, by which Veronique recognized the cur, and with the rustle of his cassock was blended the light sound of a silk dress. Evidently there was a woman. "Let us go in," she said to her mother. Mme. Sauviat and Veronique sat down on a manger in the low, large room built for a cow-shed. "I am not blaming you at all, my child," the cur was saying; "but you may be the innocent cause of an irrepara- ble misfortune, for she is the life and soul of this wide coun- tryside." " Oh, monsieur ! I will go to-night," the stranger woman's voice answered ; "but I can say this to you it will be like death to me to leave my country a second time. If I had 260 THE COUNTRY PARSON. stayed a day longer in that horrible New York or in the United States, where there is neither hope nor faith nor charity, I should have died without any illness. The air I was breath- ing hurt my chest, the food did me no good, I was dying though I looked full of life and health. When I stepped on board the suffering ceased ; I felt as if I were in France. Ah, monsieur ! I have seen my mother and my brother's wife die of grief. And then my grandfather and grandmother Tascheron died died, dear M. Bonnet, in spite of the un- heard-of prosperity of Tascheronville Yes. Our father began a settlement, a village in Ohio, and now the village is almost a town. One-third of the land thereabouts belongs to our family, for God has watched over us all along, and the farms have done well, our crops are magnificent, and we are rich so rich that we managed to build a Catholic church. The whole town is Catholic ; we will not allow any other worship, and we hope to convert all the endless sects about us by our example. The true faith is in a minority in that dreary, mercenary land of the dollar, a land which chills one to the soul. Still I would go back to die there sooner than to do the least harm here or give the slightest pain to the mother of our dear Francis. Only take me to the parsonage house to-night, dear M. Bonnet, so that I can pray awhile on his grave; it was just that that drew me here, for as I came nearer and nearer the place where he lies I felt quite a different being: No, I did not believe I should feel so happy here " "Very well," said the cure; "come, let us go. If at some future day you can come back without evil consequences, I will write to tell you, Denise; but perhaps after this visit to your old home you may feel able to live yonder without suffer- ing " " Leave this country now when it is so beautiful here ! Just see what Mme. Graslin has made of the Gabou ! " she added, pointing to the moonlit lake. " And then all this will belong to our dear Francis " VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 251 "You shall not go, Denise," said Mme. Graslin, appear- ing in the stable doorway. Jean-Francois Tascheron's sister clasped her hands at the sight of this ghost who spoke to her; for Veronique's white face in the moonlight looked unsubstantial as a shadow against the dark background of the open stable-door. Her eyes glittered like two stars. " No, child, you shall not leave the country you have traveled so far to see, and you shall be happy here, unless God should refuse to second my efforts ; for God, no doubt, has sent you here, Denise." She took the astonished girl's hand in hers, and went with her down the path towards the opposite shore of the lake. Mme. Sauviat and the cure, left alone, sat down on the bench. " Let her have her way," murmured Mme. Sauviat. A few minutes later Veronique returned alone; her mother and the cure brought her back to the chateau. Doubtless she had thought of some plan of action which suited the mystery, for nobody saw Denise, no one knew that she had come back. Mme. Graslin took to her bed, nor did she leave it. Every day she grew worse. It seemed to vex her that she could not rise, for again and again she made vain efforts to get up and take a walk in the park. One morning in early June, some days after that night at the chalet, she made a violent effort and rose and tried to dress herself, as if for a festival. She begged Gerard to lend her his arm ; for her friends came daily for news of her, and when Aline said that her mistress meant to go out they all hurried up to the chateau. Mme. Graslin had summoned all her remaining strength to spend it on this last walk. She gained her object by a violent spasmodic effort of the will, inevitably followed by a deadly reaction. "Let us go to the chalet and alone," she said to Gerard. The tones of her voice were soft, and there was something 252 THE COUNTRY PARSON. like coquetry in her glance. "This is my last escapade, for I dreamed last night that the doctors had come." " Would you like to see your woods ? " asked Gerard. "For the last time. But," she added, in coaxing tones, "I have some strange proposals to make to you." Gerard, by her direction, rowed her across the second lake, when she had reached it on foot. He was at a loss to understand such a journey, but she indicated the summer- house as their destination, and he plied his oars. There was a long pause. Her eyes wandered over the hill- sides, the water, and the sky ; then she spoke. " My friend, it is a strange request that I am about to make to you, but I think that you are the man to obey me." " In everything," he said, " sure as I am that you cannot will anything but good." "I want you to marry," she said; "you will fulfill the wishes of a dying woman, who is certain that she is securing your happiness." "I am too ugly ! " said Gerard. "She is pretty, she is young, she wants to live in Mon- legnac ; and if you marry her, you will do something towards making my last moments easier. We need not discuss her qualities. I tell you this, that she is a woman of a thousand ; and as for her charms, youth, and beauty, the first sight will suffice, we shall see her in a moment in the summer-house. On our way back you shall give me your answer, a ' Yes ' or a ' No,' in sober earnest." Mme. Graslin smiled as she saw the oars move more swiftly after this confidence. Denise, who was living out of sight in the island sanctuary, saw Mme. Graslin, and hurried to the door. V6ronique and Gerard came in. In spite of herself, the poor girl flushed as she met the eyes that Gerard turned upon her ; Denise's beauty was an agreeable surprise to him. " La Curieux does not let you want for anything, does she ? ' ' asked Veronique. VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 253 "Look, madame," said Denise, pointing to the breakfast table. " This is M. Gerard, of whom I have spoken to you," Veronique went on. " He will be my son's guardian, and when I am dead you will all live together at the chateau until Francis comes of age." " Oh, madame ! don't talk like that." "Just look at me, child ! " said Veronique, and all at once she saw tears in the girl's eyes. " She comes from New York," she added, turning to Gerard. This by way of putting both on a footing of acquaintance. Gerard asked questions of Denise, and Mme. Graslin left them to chat, going to look out over the view of the last lake on the Gabou. At six o'clock Gerard and Veronique rowed back to the chalet. " Well ? " queried she, looking at her friend. " You have my word." " You may be without prejudices," Veronique began, " but you ought to know how it was that she was obliged to leave the country, poor child, brought back by a home-sick longing." "A slip?" " Oh, no," said Veronique, "or should I introduce her to you? She is the sister of a workman who died on the scaffold " " Oh ! Tascheron, who murdered old Pingret " "Yes. She is a murderer's sister," said Mme. Graslin, with inexpressible irony in her voice; " you can take back your word." She went no further. Gerard was compelled to carry her to the bench at the chalet, and for some minutes she lay there unconscious. Gerard, kneeling beside her, said, as soon as she opened her eyes "I will marry Denise." Mme. Graslin made him rise, she took his head in her 254 THE COUNTRY PARSON. hands, and set a kiss on his forehead. Then, seeing that he was astonished to be thus thanked, she grasped his hand and said " You will soon know the meaning of this puzzle. Let us try to reach the terrace again, our friends are there. It is very late, and I feel very weak, and yet I should like to bid farewell from afar to this dear plain of mine." The weather had been intolerably hot all day ; and though the storms, which did so much damage that year in different parts of Europe and in France itself, respected the Limousin, there had been thunder along the Loire, and the air began to grow fresher. The sky was so pure that the least details on the horizon were sharp and clear. What words can describe the delicious concert of sounds, the smothered hum of the township, now alive with workers returning from the fields ? It would need the combined work of a great landscape painter and a painter of figures to do justice to such a picture. Is there not, in fact, a subtle connection between the lassitude of nature and the laborer's weariness, an affinity of mood hardly to be rendered ? In the tepid twilight of the dog days, the rarefied air gives its full significance to the least sound made by every living thing. The women sit chatting at their doors with a bit of work even then in their hands, as they wait for the good man who, probably, will bring the children home. The smoke going up from the roofs is the sign of the last meal of the day and the gayest for the peasants ; after it they will sleep. The stir at that hour is the expression of happy and tranquil thoughts in those who have finished their day's work. There is a very distinct difference between their evening and morning snatches of song; for in this the village-folk are like the birds, the last twitterings at night are utterly unlike their notes at dawn. All nature joins in the hymn of rest at the end of the day, as in the hymn of gladness at sunrise ; all things take the softly- blended hues that the sunset throws across the fields, tingeing VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 255 the dusty roads with mellow light. If any should be bold enough to deny the influences of the fairest hour of the day, the very flowers would convict him of falsehood, intoxicating him with their subtlest scents,' mingled with the tenderest sounds of insects the amorous faint twitter of birds. Thin films of mist hovered above the " water-lanes" that furrowed the plain below the township. The poplars and acacias and sumach trees, planted in equal numbers along the roads, had grown so tall already that they shaded it, and in the wide fields on either side the large and celebrated herds of cattle were scattered about in groups, some still browsing, others chewing the cud. Men, women, and children were busy getting in the last of the hay, the most picturesque of all field-work. The evening air, less languid since the sudden breath of coolness after the storms, brought the wholesome scents of mown grass and swathes of hay. The least details in the beautiful landscape stood out perfectly sharp and clear. There was some fear for the weather. The ricks were being finished in all haste ; men hurried about them with loaded forks, raked the heaps together, and loaded the carts. Out in the distance the scythes were still busy, the women were turn- ing the long swathes that looked like hatched lines across the fields into dotted rows of haycocks. Sounds of laughter came up from the hayfields, the workers frolicked over their work, the children shouted as they buried each other in the heaps. Every figure was distinct, the women's petticoats, pink, red, or blue, their kerchiefs, their bare arms and legs, the wide-brimmed straw hats of field- workers, the men's shirts, the white trousers that nearly all of them wore. The last rays of sunlight fell like a bright dust over the long lines of poplar trees by the channels which divided up the plain into fields of various sizes, and lingered caressingly over the groups of men, women, and children, horses and carts and cattle. The shepherds and herdsmen began to gather their 256 THE COUNTRY PARSON. flocks together with the sound of their horns. The plain seemed so silent and so full of sound, a strange antithesis, but only strange to those who do not know the splendors of the fields. Loads of green fodder came into the township from every side. There was something indescribably somnolent in the influence of the scene, and Veronique, between the cure and Gerard, uttered no word. At last they came to a gap made by a rough track that led from the houses ranged below the terrace to the parsonage house and the church ; and, looking down into Montegnac, Gerard and M. Bonnet saw the upturned faces of the women, men, and children, all looking at them. Doubtless it was Mme. Graslin more particularly whom they followed with their eyes. And what affection and gratitude there were in their way of doing this ! With what blessings did they not greet Veronique's appearance ! With what devout intentness they watched the three benefactors of a whole countryside ! It was as if man added a hymn of gratitude to all the songs of evening. While Mme. Graslin walked with her eyes set on the magnificent distant expanse of green, her dearest crea- tion, the mayor and the cur6 watched the groups below. There was no mistake about their expression ; grief, melan- choly, and regret, mingled with hope, were plainly visible in them all. There was not a soul in Montegnac but knew how that M. Roubaud had gone to Paris to fetch some great doctors, and that the beneficent lady of the canton was nearing the end of a fatal illness. On market-days, in every place for thirty miles round, the peasants asked the Montegnac folk, " How is your mistress ? " And so the great thought of death hovered over this countryside, amid the fair picture of the hayfields. Far off in the plain, more than one mower sharpening his scythe, more than one girl leaning on her rake, or farmer among his stacks of hay, looked up and paused thoughtfully to watch Mme. Graslin, 'their great lady, the pride of the VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 257 Correze. They tried to discover some hopeful sign, or watched her admiringly, prompted by a feeling which put work out of their minds. " She is out of doors, so she must be better ! " The simple phrase was on all lips. Mme. Graslin's mother was sitting at the end of the terrace. Veronique had placed a cast-iron garden-seat in the corner, so that she might sit there and look down into the churchyard through the balustrade. Mme. Sauviat watched her daughter as she walked along the terrace, and her eyes filled with tears. She knew something of the preternatural effort which Veron- ique was making; she knew that even at that moment her daughter was suffering fearful pain, and that it was only a heroic effort of will that enabled her to stand. Tears, almost like tears of blood, found their way down among the sun- burned wrinkles of a face like parchment, that seemed as if it could not alter one crease for any emotion any more. Little Graslin, standing between M. Ruffin's knees, cried for sym- pathy. "What is the matter, child?" the tutor asked sharply. " Grandmamma is crying " M. Ruffin's eyes had been fixed on Mme. Graslin, who was coming towards them ; he looked at Mme. Sauviat ; the Roman matron's face, stony with sorrow and wet with tears, gave him a great shock. That dumb grief had invested the old woman with a certain grandeur and sacredness. "Madame, why did you let her go out?" asked the tutor. Veronique was coming nearer. She walked like a queen, with admirable grace in her whole bearing. And Mme. Sauviat knew that she should outlive her daughter, and in the cry of despair that broke from her a secret escaped that re- vealed many things which roused curiosity. " To think of it ! She walks and wears a horrible hair shirt always pricking her skin ! " The young man's blood ran cold at her words ; he could not be insensible to the exquisite grace of Veronique's move- 17 258 THE COUNTRY PARSON. ments, and shuddered as he thought of the cruel, unrelenting mastery that the soul must have gained over the body. A Parisienne famed for her graceful figure, the ease of her car- riage and bearing, might perhaps have feared comparison with Veronique at that moment. " She has worn it for thirteen years, ever since the child was weaned," the old woman said, pointing to young Graslin. " She has worked miracles here ; and if they but knew her life, they might put her among the saints. Nobody has seen her eat since she came here, do you know why ? Aline brings her a bit of dry bread three times a day on a great platter full of ashes, and vegetables cooked in water without any salt, on a red earthenware dish that they put a dog's food in ! Yes. That is the way she lives who has given life to the canton. She says her prayers kneeling on the hem of her cilice. She says that if she did not practice these austerities she could not wear the smiling face you see. I am telling you this " (and the old woman's voice dropped lower) " for you to tell it to the doctor that M. Roubaud has gone to fetch from Paris. If he will prevent my daughter from continuing these penances, they might save her yet (who knows?), though the hand of death is on her head. Look ! Ah, I must be very strong to have borne all these things for fifteen years." The old woman took her grandson's hand, raised it, and passed it over her forehead and cheeks as if some restorative balm communicated itself in the touch of the little hand ; then she set a kiss upon it, a kiss full of the love which is the secret of grandmothers no less than mothers. By this time Veronique was only a few paces distant, Clousier was with her, and the cure and Gerard. Her face, lit up by the setting sun, was radiant with awful beauty. One thought, steadfast amid many inward troubles, seemed to be written in the lines that furrowed the sallow forehead in long folds piled one above the other, like clouds. The outlines of her face, now completely colorless, entirely white VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 259 with the dead olive-tinged whiteness of plants grown without sunlight, were thin but not withered, and showed traces of great physical suffering produced by mental anguish. She had quelled the body through the soul, and the soul through the body. So completely worn out was she that she resem- bled her past self only as an old woman resembles her portrait painted in girlhood. The glowing expression of her eyes spoke of the absolute domination of a Christian will over a body reduced to the subjection required by religion, for in this woman the flesh was at the mercy of the spirit. As in profane poetry Achilles dragged the dead body of Hector, victoriously she dragged it over the stormy ways of life ; and thus for fifteen years she had compassed the heavenly Jerusa- lem which she had hoped to enter, not as a thief, but amid triumphant acclamations. Never was anchorite amid the parched and arid deserts of Africa more master of his senses than Veronique in her splendid chateau in a rich land of soft and luxurious landscape, nestling under the mantle of the great forest where science, heir to Moses' rod, had caused plenty to spring forth and the prosperity and the welfare of a whole countryside. Veronique was looking out over the results of twelve years of patience, on the accomplishment of a task on which a man of ability might have prided himself; but with the gentle modesty which Pontorno's brush had depicted in the expression of his symbolical " Christian Chastity " with her arms about the unicorn. Her two com- panions respected her silent mood when they saw that she was gazing over the vast plain, once sterile, and now fertile ; the devout lady of the manor went with folded arms and eyes fixed on the point where the road reached the horizon. Suddenly she stopped when but two paces away from Mme. Sauviat, who watched her as Christ's mother must have gazed at her Son upon the cross. Veronique raised her hand and pointed to the spot where the road turned off to Mon- tegnac. 260 THE COUNTRY PARSON. "Do you see that caleche and the four post-horses ?" she asked, smiling. " That is M. Roubaud. He is coming back. We shall soon know now how many hours I have to live." " Hours /" echoed Gerard. " Did I not tell you that this was my last walk? " she said. " Did I not come to see this beautiful view in all its glory for the last time ? ' ' She indicated the fair meadow land, lit up by the last rays of the sun, and the township below. All the village had come out and stood in the square in front of the church. "Ah!" she went on, "let me think that there is God's benediction in the strange atmospheric conditions that have favored our hay-harvest. Storms all about us, rain and hail and thunder have laid waste pitilessly and incessantly, but not here. The people think so; why should not I follow their example? I need so much to find some good augury on earth for that which awaits me when my eyes shall be closed!" Her child came to her, took his mother's hand, and laid it on his hair. The great eloquence of that movement touched Veronique ; with preternatural strength she caught him up, held him on her left arm a moment as she used to hold him as a child at the breast, and kissed him. " Do you see this land, my boy?" she said. "You must go on with your mother's work when you are a man." Then the cure spoke sadly : " There are a very few strong and privileged natures who are permitted to see death face to face, to fight a long duel with him, and to show courage and skill that strike others with admiration ; this is the dreadful spectacle that you give us, madame ; but, perhaps, you are somewhat wanting in pity for us. Leave us at least the hope that you are mistaken, that God will permit you to finish all that you have begun." V&RONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 261 "I have done nothing save through you, my friend," said she. " It was in my power to be useful to you ; it is so no longer. Everything about us is green ; there is no desolate waste here now, save my own heart. You know it, dear cur6, you know that I can only find peace and pardon there " She held out her hand over the churchyard. She had never said so much since the day when she first came to Montegnac and fainted away on that very spot. The cure gazed at his penitent; and, accustomed as he had been for long to read her thoughts, he knew from those simple words that he had won a fresh victory. It must have cost Veronique a terrible effort over herself to break a twelve years' silence with such pregnant words ; and the cure clasped his hands with the devout fervor familiar to him, and looked with deep religious emotion on the family group about him. All their secrets had passed through his heart. Gerard looked bewildered ; the words " peace and pardon " seemed to sound strangely in his ears ; M. Ruffin's eyes were fixed in a sort of dull amazement on Mme. Graslin. And meanwhile the caleche sped rapidly along the road, threading its way from tree to tree. "There are five of them ! " said the cur, who could see and count the travelers. " Five ! " exclaimed M. Gerard. " Will five of them know more than two? " " Ah ! " murmured Mme. Graslin, who leaned on the curb's arm, "there is the public prosecutor. " What does he come to do here? " " And papa Grossetgte too ! " cried Francis. "Madame, take courage, be worthy of yourself," said the cure. He drew Mme. Graslin, who was leaning heavily on him, a few paces aside. "What does he want?" she said for all answer, and she went to lean against the balustrade. "Mother!" she ex- claimed, despairingly. 262 THE COUNTRY PARSON. Mme. Sauviat sprang forward with an activity that belied her years. " I shall see him again " said Veronique. "If he is coming with M. GrossetSte," said the cure, "it can only be with good intentions, of course." " Ah ! sir, my daughter is dying ! " cried Mme. Sauviat, seeing the change that passed over Mme. Graslin's face at the words. "How will she endure such cruel agitations? M. Grossetete has always prevented that man from coming to see Veronique ' ' Veronique's face flamed. "So you hate him, do you?" the Abbe Bonnet asked, turning to his penitent. " She left Limoges lest all Limoges should know her secrets," said Mme. Sauviat, terrified by that sudden change wrought in Mme. Graslin's drawn features. " Do you not see that his presence will poison the hours that remain to me, when heaven alone should be in my thoughts? He is nailing me down to earth ! " cried Veron- ique. The cure took Mme. Graslin's arm once more, and con- strained her to walk a few paces; when they were alone, he looked full at her with one of those angelic looks which calm the most violent tumult in the soul. "If it is thus," he said, "I, as your confessor, bid you to receive him, to be kind and gracious to him, to lay aside this garment of anger, and to forgive him as God will forgive you. Can there be a taint of passion in the soul that I deemed purified? Burn this last grain of incense on the altar of penitence, lest all shall be one lie in you." " There was still this last struggle to make, and it is made," she said, drying her eyes. " The evil one was lurking in the last recess in my heart, and doubtless it was God who put into M. de Granville's heart the thought that sends him here. How many times will He smite me yet? " she cried. VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 263 She stopped as if to put up an inward prayer ; then she turned to Mme. Sauviat, and said in a low voice : " Mother dear, be nice and kind to M. le Procureur general." In spite of herself, the old Auvergnate shuddered feverishly. "There is no hope left," she said, as sne caught at the cure's hand. As she spoke, the cracking of the postillion's whip announced that the caleche was climbing the avenue ; the great gateway stood open, the carriage turned in the courtyard, and in another moment the travelers came out upon the terrace. Beside the public prosecutor and M. Grossetete, the arch- bishop had come (M. Dutheil was in Limoges for Gabriel de Rastignac's consecration as bishop), and M. Roubaud came arm in arm with Horace Bianchon, one of the greatest doctors in Paris. " You are welcome," said Veronique, addressing her guests, " and you " (holding out a hand to the public prosecutor and grasping his) "especially welcome." M. Grossetete, the archbishop, and Mme. Sauviat ex- changed glances at this; so great was their astonishment that it overcame the profound discretion of old age. "And I thank him who brought you here," Veronique went on, as she looked on the Comte de Granville's face for the first time in fifteen years. "I have borne you a grudge for a long time, but now I know that I have done you an injustice ; you shall know the reason of all this if you will stay here in Montegnac for two days." She turned to Horace Bianchon " This gentleman will confirm my apprehensions, no doubt." Then to the archbishop " It is God surely who sends you to me, my lord," she said with a bow. "For our old friendship's sake you will not refuse to be with me in my last moments. By what grace, I wonder, have I all those who have loved me and sustained me all my life about me now?" 264 THE COUNTRY PARSON. At the word " love " she turned with graceful, deliberate intent towards M. de Granville ; the kindness in her manner brought tears into his eyes. There was a deep silence. The two doctors asked themselves what witchcraft it was that enabled the woman before them to stand upright while endur- ing the agony which she must suffer. The other three were so shocked at the change that illness had wrought in her that they could only communicate their thoughts by the eyes. "Permit me to go with these gentlemen," she said, with her unvarying grace of manner ; " it is an urgent question." She took leave of her guests, and, leaning upon the two doctors, went towards the chateau so slowly and painfully that it was evident that the end was at hand. The archbishop looked at the cure. " M. Bonnet," he said, " you have worked wonders ! " " Not I, but God, my lord," answered the other. "They said that she was dying," exclaimed M. GrossetSte ; "why, she is dead ! There is nothing left but a spirit " "A soul," said M. Gerard. " She is the same as ever," cried the public prosecutor. "She is a Stoic after the manner of the old Greek Zeno," said the tutor. Silently they went along the terrace and looked out over the landscape that glowed a most glorious red color in the light shed abroad by the fires of the sunset. "It is thirteen years since I saw this before," said the arch- bishop, indicating the fertile fields, the valley, and the hill above Montegnac, "so for me this miracle is as extraordi- nary as another which I have just witnessed ; for how can you let Mme. Graslin stand upright? She ought to be lying in bed " "So she was," said Mme. Sauviat. "She never left her bed for ten days, but she was determined to get up to see this place for the last time." "I understand," said M. de Granville. "She wished to VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 265 say farewell to all that she had called into being, but she ran the risk of dying here on the terrace." " M. Roubaud said that she was not to be thwarted," said Mme. Sauviat. "What a marvelous thing!" exclaimed the archbishop, whose eyes never wearied of wandering over the view. " She has made the waste into sown fields. But we know, mon- sieur," he added, turning to Gerard, " that your skill and your labors have been a great factor in this." " We have only been her laborers," the mayor said. " Yes ; we are only the hands, she was the head." Mme. Sauviat left the group, and went to hear what the opinion of the doctor from Paris was. " We shall stand in need of heroism to be present at this death-bed," said the public prosecutor, addressing the arch- bishop and the cure. "Yes," said M. Grossetdte ; " but for such a friend, great things should be dqne." While they waited and came and went, oppressed by heavy thoughts, two of Mme. Graslin's tenants came up. They had come, they said, on behalf of a whole township waiting in painful suspense to hear the verdict of the doctor from Paris. " They are in consultation, we know nothing as yet, my friends," said the archbishop. M. Roubaud came hurrying towards them, and at the sound of his quick footsteps the others hastened to meet him. " Well ? " asked the mayor. "She has not forty-eight hours to live," answered M. Rou- baud. " The disease has developed while I was away. M. Bianchon cannot understand how she could walk. These sel- dom seen phenomena are always the result of great exaltation of mind. And so, gentlemen," he added, speaking to the churchmen, "she has passed out of our hands and into yours; science is powerless ; my illustrious colleague thinks that there is scarcely time for the ceremonies of the church." 266 THE COUNTRY PARSON. " Let us put up the prayers appointed for times of great calamity," said the cure, and he went away with his parish- ioners. " His lordship will no doubt condescend to admin- ister the last sacraments." The archbishop bowed his head in reply ; he could not say a word, his eyes were full of tears. The group sat down or leaned against the balustrade, and each was deep in his own thoughts. The church bells peeled mournfully, the sound of many footsteps came up from below, the whole village was flocking to the service. The light of the altar candles gleamed through the trees in M. Bonnet's garden, and then began the sounds of chanting. A faintly flushed twilight overspread the fields, the birds had ceased to sing, and the only sound in the plain was the shrill, melancholy, long-drawn note of the frogs. " Let us do our duty," said the archbishop at last, and he went slowly towards the house, like a man who carries a burden greater than he can bear. The consultation had taken place in the great drawing- room, a vast apartment which communicated with a state bedroom, draped with crimson damask. Here Graslin had exhibited to the full the self-made man's taste for display. Veronique had not entered the room half-a-dozen times in fourteen years ; the great suite of apartments was completely useless to her ; she had never received visitors in them, but the effort she had made to discharge her last obligations and to quell her revolted physical nature had left her powerless to reach her own rooms. The great doctor had taken his patient's hand and felt her pulse, then he looked significantly at M. Roubaud, and the two men carried her into the adjoining room and laid her on the bed, Aline hastily flinging open the doors for them. There were, of course, no sheets on the state bed ; the two doctors laid Mme. Graslin at full length on the crimson quilt, Roubaud opened the windows, flung back the Venetian shutters, and VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 267 summoned help. La Sauviat and the servants came hurrying to the room ; they lighted the wax-candles (yellow with age) in the sconces. Then the dying woman smiled. " It is decreed that my death shall be a festival, as a Christian's death should be." During the consultation she spoke again " The public prosecutor has done his work : I was going ; he has despatched me sooner ' ' The old mother laid a finger on her lips with a warning glance. "Mother, I will speak now," Veronique said in answer. " Look ! the finger of God is in all this ; I shall die very soon in this room hung with red " La Sauviat went out in dismay at the words. "Aline ! " she cried, "she is speaking out ! " "Ah! madame's mind is wandering," said the faithful waiting- woman, coming in with the sheets. " Send for M. le Cure, madame." " You must undress your mistress," said Bianchon, as soon as Aline entered the room. " It will be very difficult ; madame wears a hair shirt next her skin." "What?" the great doctor cried, "are such horrors still practiced in this nineteenth century? " " Mme. Graslin has never allowed me to touch the stomach," said M. Roubaud. " I could learn nothing of her complaint save from her face and her pulse, and from what I could learn from her mother and her maid." Veronique was laid on a sofa while they made the great bed ready for her at the farther end of the room. The doctors spoke together with lowered voices as La Sauviat and Aline made the bed. There was a look terrible to see in the two women's faces; the same thought was wringing both their hearts. " We are making her bed for the last time this will be her bed of death." 268 THE COUNTRY PARSON. The consultation was brief. In the first place, Bianchon insisted that Aline and La Sauviat must cut the patient out of the cilice and put her in a nightdress. The two doctors waited in the great drawing-room while this was done. Aline came out with the terrible instrument of penance wrapped in a towel. " Madame is just one wound," she told them. "Madame, you have a stronger will than Napoleon had," said Bianchon, when the two doctors had come in again, and Veronique had given clear answers to the questions put to her. " You are preserving your faculties in the last stage of a dis- ease in which the Emperor's brilliant intellect sank. From what I know of you, I feel that I owe it to you to tell you the truth." " I implore you, with clasped hands, to tell it me," she said ; " you can measure the strength that remains to me, and I have need of all the life that is in me for a few hours yet." "You must think of nothing but your salvation," said Bianchon. "If God grants that body and mind die together," she said, with a divinely sweet smile, "believe that the favor is vouchsafed for the glory of His Church on earth. My mind is still needed to carry out a thought from God, while Napoleon had accomplished his destiny." The two doctors looked at each other in amazement ; the words were spoken as easily as if Mme. Graslin had been in her drawing-room. " Ah ! here is the doctor who will heal me," she added, as the archbishop entered. She summoned all her strength to sit upright to take leave of M. Bianchon, speaking graciously, and asking him to accept something beside money for the good news which he had just brought her ; then she whispered a few words to her mother, who went out with the doctor. She asked the arch- bishop to wait until the cure should come, and seemed to wish to rest for a little while. Aline sat by her mistress' bedside. VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 269 At midnight Mme. Graslin woke and asked for the arch- bishop and the cure. Aline told her that they were in the room engaged in prayer for her. With a sign she dismissed her mother and the maid, and beckoned the two priests to her bed. " Nothing of what I shall say is unknown to you, my lord, nor to you, M. le Cure. You, my lord archbishop, were the first to look into my conscience ; at a glance you read almost the whole past, and that which you saw was enough for you. My confessor, an angel sent by heaven to be near me, knows something more ; I have confessed all to him, as in duty bound. And now I wish to consult you whose minds are enlightened by the spirit of the church ; I want to ask you how such a woman as I should take leave of this life as a true Christian. You, spirits holy and austere, do you think that if heaven vouchsafes pardon to the most complete and pro- found repentance ever made by a guilty soul, I shall have accomplished my whole task here on earth ? " "Yes; yes, my daughter," said the archbishop. "No, my father, no!" she cried, sitting upright, and lightnings flashed from her eyes. " Yonder lies an unhappy man in his grave, not many steps away, under the sole weight of a hideous crime ; here, in this sumptuous house, there is a woman crowned with the aureola of good deeds and a virtu- ous life. They bless the woman ; they curse him, poor boy. On the criminal they heap execrations, I enjoy the good opinion of all ; yet most of the blame of his crime is mine, and a great part of the good for which they praise me so and are grateful to me is his ; cheat that I am ! I have the credit. of it, and he, a martyr to his loyalty to me, is covered with shame. In a few hours I shall die, and a whole canton will weep for me, a whole department will praise my good deeds, my piety, and my virtues ; and he died reviled and scorned, a whole town crowding about to see him die, for hate of the murderer ! You, my judges, are indulgent to me, but I hear 270 THE COUNTRY PARSON. an imperious voice within me that will not let me rest. Ah ! God's hand, more heavy than yours, has been laid upon me day by day, as if to warn me that all was not expiated yet. My sin shall be redeemed by public confession. Oh ! he was happy, that criminal who went to a shameful death in the face of earth and heaven ! But as for me, I cheated justice, and I am still a cheat ! All the respect shown to me has been like mockery, not a word of praise but has scorched my heart like fire. And now the public prosecutor has come here. Do you not see that the will of heaven is in accordance with this voice that cries ' Confess ? ' " Both priests, the prince of the church and the simple country parson, the two great luminaries, remained silent, and kept their eyes fixed on the ground. So deeply moved were the judges by the greatness and the submission of the sinner that they could not pass sentence. After a pause, the archbishop raised his noble face, thin and worn with the daily practice of austerity in a devout life. "My child," he said, " you are going beyond the command- ments of the church. It is the glory of the church that she adapts her dogmas to the conditions of life in every age ; for the church is destined to make the pilgrimage of the centuries side by side with humanity. According to the decision of the church, private confession has replaced public confession. This substitution has made the new rule of life. The suffer- ings which you have endured suffice. Depart in peace. God has heard you indeed." "But is not this wish of a criminal in accordance with the rule of the early church, which filled heaven with as many saints and martyrs and confessors as there are stars in heaven?" Veronique cried earnestly. "Who was it that wrote 'Con- fess your faults one to another?' Was it not one of our Saviour's own immediate disciples? Let me confess my shame publicly upon my knees. That will be an expiation of the wrong that I have done to the world, and to a family VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 271 exiled and almost extinct through my sin. The world should know that my good deeds are not an offering to God ; that they are only the just payment of a debt Suppose that, when I am gone, some finger should raise the veil of lies that covers me ? Oh, the thought of it brings the supreme hour nearer. ' ' "I see calculation in this, my child," the archbishop said gravely. "There are still strong passions left in you; that which I deemed extinguished is " " My lord," she cried, breaking in upon the speaker, turn- ing her fixed horror-stricken eyes on him, " I swear to you that my heart is purified so far as it may be in a guilty and repent- ant woman ; there is no thought left in me now but the thought of God." " Let us leave heaven's justice take its course, my lord," the cure said, in a softened voice. " I have opposed this idea for four years. It has caused the only differences of opinion which have risen between my penitent and me. I have seen the very depths of this soul ; earth has no hold left there. When the tears, sighs, and contrition of fifteen years have buried a sin in which two beings shared, do not think that there is the least luxurious taint in the long and dreadful remorse. For a long while memory has ceased to mingle its flames in the most ardent repentance. Yes, many tears have quenched so great a fire. I will answer," he said, stretching his hand out above Mme. Graslin's head and raising his tear-filled eyes, " I will answer for the purity of this arch- angel's soul. I used once to see in this desire a thought of reparation to an absent family ; it seems as if God Himself has sent one member of it here, through one of those acci- dents in which His guidance is unmistakably revealed." Veronique took the cure's trembling hand and kissed it. "You have often been harsh to me, dear pastor," she said ; ''and now, in this moment, I discover where your apostolic sweetness lay hidden. You," she said, turning to the arch- 272 THE COUNTRY PARSON. bishop, " you, the supreme head of this corner of God's earthly kingdom, be my stay in this time of humiliation. I shall prostrate myself as the lowest of women ; you will raise me, a forgiven soul, equal, it may be, with those who have never gone astray." The archbishop was silent for a while, engaged, no doubt, in weighing the considerations visible to his eagle's glance. " My lord," said the cur6, "deadly blows have been aimed at religion. Will not this return to ancient customs, made necessary by the greatness both of the sin and the repentance, be a triumph which will redound to us? " " They will say that we are fanatics ! that we have insisted on this cruel scene ! " and the archbishop fell once more to his meditations. Just at that moment Horace Bianchon and Roubaud came in without knocking at the door. As it opened, Veronique saw her mother, her son, and all the servants kneeling in prayer. The cures of the two neighboring parishes had come to assist M. Bonnet ; perhaps also to pay their respects to the great archbishop, in whom the church of France saw a car- dinal-designate, hoping that some day the Sacred College might be enlightened by the advent of an intellect so thor- oughly Gallican. Horace Bianchon was about to start for Paris ; he came to bid farewell to the dying lady, and to thank her for her mu- nificence. He approached the bed slowly, guessing from the manner of the two priests that the inward wound which had caused the disease of the body was now under consideration. He took Vdronique's hand, laid it on the bed, and felt her pulse. The deepest silence, the silence of the fields in a summer-night, added solemnity to the scene. Lights shone from the great drawing-room, beyond the folding doors, and fell upon the little company of kneeling figures, the cures only were seated, reading their breviaries. About the crimson bed VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 273 of state stood the archbishop, in his violet robes, the curd, and the two men of science. " She is troubled even in death ! " said Horace Bianchon. Like many men of great genius, he not seldom found grand words worthy of the scenes at which he was present. The archbishop rose, as if goaded by some inward impulse. He called M. Bonnet, and went towards the door. They crossed the chamber and the drawing-room, and went out upon the terrace, where they walked up and down for a few min- utes. As they came in after a consideration of this point of ecclesiastical discipline, Roubaud went to meet them. " M. Bianchon sent me to tell you to be quick; Mme. Gras- lin is dying in strange agitation, which is not caused by the severe physical pain which she is suffering." The archbishop hurried back, and in reply to Mme. Gras- lin's anxious eyes, he said, " You shall be satisfied." Bianchon (still with his finger on the dying woman's wrist) made an involuntary start of surprise ; he gave Roubaud a quick look, and then glanced at the priests. " My lord, this body is no longer our province," he said, "your words brought life in the place of death. You make a miracle credible." "Madame has been nothing but soul this long time past," said Roubaud, and Veronique thanked him by a glance. A smile crossed her face as she lay there, and, with the smile that expressed the gladness of a completed expiation, the innocent look of the girl of eighteen returned to her. The appalling lines traced by inward tumult, the dark color- ing, the livid patches, all the details that but lately had con- tributed a certain dreadful beauty to her face, all alterations of all kinds, in short, had vanished ; to those who watched Veronique, it seemed as if she had been wearing a mask and had suddenly dropped it. The wonderful transfiguration by which the inward life and nature of this woman were made 18 274 THE COUNTRY PARSON. visible in her features was wrought for the last time. Her whole being was purified and illuminated, her face might have caught a gleam from the flaming swords of the guardian angels about her. She looked once more as she used to look in Limoges when they called her " the little Virgin." The love of God manifestly was yet stronger in her than the guilty love had been ; the earthly love had brought out all the forces of life in her; the love of God dispelled every trace of the in- roads of death. A smothered cry was heard. La Sauviat appeared ; she sprang to the bed. " So I see my child again at last ! " she exclaimed. Something in the old woman's accent as she uttered the two words, " my child," conjured up such visions of early child- hood and its innocence, that those who watched by this heroic death-bed turned their heads away to hide their emotion. The great doctor took Mine. Graslin's hand, kissed it, and then went his way, and soon the sound of his departing car- riage sent echoes over the countryside, spreading the tidings that he had no hope of saving the life of her who was the life of the country. The archbishop, cure, and doctor, and all who felt tired, went to take a little rest. Mme. Graslin her- self slept for some hours. When she awoke the dawn was breaking ; she asked them to open the windows, she would see her last sunrise. At ten o'clock in the morning the archbishop, in pontifical vestments, came back to Mme. Graslin's room. Both he and M. Bonnet reposed such confidence in her that they made no recommendations as to the limits to be observed in her confes- sion. Veronique saw other faces of other clergy, for some of the cures from neighboring parishes had come. The splendid ornaments which Mme. Graslin had presented to her beloved parish church lent splendor to the ceremony. Eight children, choristers in their red-and-white surplices, stood in a double row between the bed and the door of the great drawing-room, each of them holding one of the great candlesticks of gilded VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 275 bronze which Veronique had ordered from Paris. A white- haired sacristan on either side of the dais held the banner of the church and the crucifix. The servants, in their devotion, had removed the wooden altar from the sacristy and erected it near the drawing-room door ; it was decked and ready for the archbishop to say mass. Mme. Graslin was touched by an attention which the church pays only to crowned heads. The great folding-doors that gave access to the dining-room stood wide open, so that she could see the hall of the chateau filled with people ; nearly all the village was there. Her friends had seen to everything, none but the people of the house stood in the drawing-room; and before them, grouped about the door of her room, she saw her intimate friends and those whose discretion might be trusted. M. Grossetete, M. de Granville, Roubaud, Gerard, Clousier, and Ruffin stood foremost among these. All of them meant to stand upright when the time came, so that the dying woman's confession should not travel beyond them. Other things favored this design, for the sobs of those about her drowned her voice. Two of these stood out dreadfully conspicuous among the rest. The first was Denise Tascheron. In her foreign dress, made with Quakerly simplicity, she was unrecognizable to any of the villagers who might have caught a glimpse of her. Not so for the public prosecutor; she was a figure that he was not likely to forget, and with her reappearance a dreadful light began to dawn on him. Now he had a glimpse of the truth, a suspicion of the part which he had played in Mme. Graslin's life, and then the whole truth flashed upon him. Less over- awed than the rest by the religious influence, the child of the nineteenth century, the man of law felt a cruel sensation of dismay ; the whole drama of Veronique's inner life in the Hotel Graslin during Tascheron's trial opened out before him. The whole of that tragic epoch reconstructed itself in his memory, lighted up by La Sauviat's eyes, which gleamed with 276 THE COUNTR Y PA If SON. hate of him not ten paces away ; those eyes seemed to direct a double stream of molten lead upon him. The old woman had forgiven him nothing. The impersonation of man's jus- tice felt shudders run through his frame. He stood there heart-stricken and pallid, not daring to turn his eyes to the bed where the woman he had loved was lying, lived beneath the shadow of death's hand, drawing strength from the very magnitude of her offense to quell her agony. Vertigo seized on him as he saw Veronique's shrunken profile, a white out- line in sharp relief against the crimson damask. The mass began at eleven o'clock. When the cure of Vizay had read the epistle, the archbishop divested himself of his dalmatic, and took up his station in the doorway " Christians here assembled to witness the administration of extreme unction to the mistress of this house, you who are uniting your prayers to those of the church to make interces- sion with God for the salvation of her soul, learn that she thinks herself unworthy to receive the holy viaticum until she has made, for the edification of others, a public confession of her greatest sin. We withstood her pious desire, although this act of contrition was long in use in the church in the earliest Christian times ; but as the afflicted woman tells us that the confession touches on the rehabilitation of an un- happy child of this parish, we leave her free to follow the inspirations of repentance. " After these words, spoken with the benign dignity of a shepherd of souls, the archbishop turned and gave place to Vronique. The dying woman was seen, supported by her mother and the cure, two great and venerable symbols : did she not owe her double existence to the earthly mother who had borne her, and to the church, the mother of her soul ? Kneeling on a cushion, she clasped her hands and meditated for a moment to gather up and concentrate the strength to speak from some source derived from heaven. There was something unspeakably awful in that silent pause. No one VERONIQUE LAW IN THE TOMB. 277 dared to look at his neighbor. All eyes were fixed on the ground. Yet when Veronique looked up, she met the public prosecutor's glance, and the expression of that white face sent the color to her own. "I should not have died in peace," Veronique began, in a voice unlike her natural tone, " if I had left behind the false impression which each one of you who hears me speak has possibly formed of me. In me you see a great sinner, who beseeches your prayers, and seeks to merit pardon by the public confession of her sin. So deeply has she sinned, so fatal were the consequences of her guilt, that it may be that no repentance will redeem it. And yet the greater my humiliation on earth, the less, doubtless, have I to dread from God's anger in the heavenly kingdom whither I fain would go. "It is nearly twenty years since my father, who had such great belief in me, recommended a son of this parish to my care ; he had seen in him a wish to live rightly, aptitude, and an excellent disposition. This young man was the unhappy Jean-Francois Tascheron, who thenceforward attached himself to me as his benefactress. How was it that my affection for him became a guilty one ? That explanation need not, I think, be required of me. Yet, perhaps, it might be thought that the purest possible motives were imperceptibly transformed by unheard-of self-sacrifice, by human frailty, by a host of causes which might seem to be extenuations of my guilt. But am I the less guilty because our noblest affections were my accomplices? I would rather admit, in spite of the barriers raised by the delicacy natural to our sex between me and the young man whom my father intrusted to me, that I, who by my education and social position might regard myself as his protege's superior, listened, in an evil hour, to the voice of the tempter. I soon found that my maternal position brought me into contact with him so close that I could not but be sensible of his mute and delicate admiration. He was the first and only creature to appreciate me at my just value. 278 THE COUNTRY PARSON. Perhaps, too, I myself was led astray by unworthy considera- tions. I thought that I could trust to the discretion of a young man who owed everything to me, whom chance had placed so far below me, albeit by birth we were equals. In fact, I found a cloak to screen my conduct in my name for charity and good deeds. Alas ! (and this is one of my worst sins) I hid my passion in the shadow of the altar. I made everything conduce to the miserable triumph of a mad passion, the most irreproachable actions, my love for my mother, acts of a devotion that was very real and sincere and through so many errors all these things were so many links in a chain that bound me. My poor mother, whom I love so much, who hears-me even now, was unwittingly and for a long while my accomplice. When her eyes were opened, I was too deeply committed to my dangerous way, and she found strength to keep my secret in the depths of her mother heart. Silence in her has thus become the loftiest of virtues. Love for her daughter overcame the love of God. Ah ! now I solemnly relieve her of the load of secrecy which she has carried. She shall end her days with no lie in her eyes and brow. May her motherhood absolve her, may her noble and sacred old age, crowned with virtues, shine forth in all its radiance, now that the link which bound her indirectly to touch such infamy is severed " Here Veronique's sobs interrupted her words; Aline made her inhale salts. " Only one other has hitherto been in this secret, the faith- ful servant who does me this last service ; she has, at least, feigned not to know what she must have known, but she has been in the secret of the austerities by which I have broken this weak flesh. So I ask pardon of the world for having lived a lie, drawn into that lie by the remorseless logic of the world. " Jean-Francois Tascheron is not as guilty as men may have thought him. Oh, all you who hear me ! I beg of you to VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 279 remember how young he was, and that his frenzy was caused at least as much by the remorse which seized on me, as by the spell of an involuntary attraction. And more, far more, do not forget that it was a sense of honor, if a mistaken sense of honor, which caused the greatest disaster of all. Neither of us could endure that life of continual deceits. He turned from them to my own greatness, and, unhappy that he was, sought to make our fatal love as little of a humiliation as might be to me. So I was the cause of his crime. Driven by necessity, the unhappy man, hitherto only guilty of too great a love for his idol, chose of all evil actions the one most irreparable. I knew nothing of it until the very moment when the deed was done. Even as it was being carried out, God overturned the whole fabric of crooked designs. I heard cries that ring even yet in my ears, and went into the house again. I knew that it was a struggle for life and death, and that I, the object of this mad endeavor, was powerless to interfere. .For Tascheron was mad ; I bear witness that he was mad ! " Here Veronique looked at the public prosecutor, and a deep audible sigh came from Denise. " He lost his head when he saw his happiness (so he be- lieved it to be) destroyed by unforeseen circumstances. Love led him astray, then fate dragged him from a misdemeanor to a crime, and from a crime to a double murder. At any rate, when he left my mother's house he was an innocent man ; when he returned, he was a murderer. I, and I only in the world, knew that the crime was not premeditated, nor accom- panied by the aggravating circumstances which brought the sentence of death on him. A hundred times I determined to give myself up to save him, and a hundred times a terrible but necessary heroism outweighed all other considerations, and the words died on my lips. Surely my presence a few steps away must have contributed to give him the hateful, base, cowardly courage of a murderer. If he had been 280 THE COUNTRY PARSON. alone, he would have fled It was I who had formed his nature, who had given him loftier thoughts and a greater heart ; I knew him ; he was incapable of anything cowardly or base. Do justice to the innocent hand, do justice to him ! God in His mercy lets him sleep in the grave that you, guess- ing doubtless, the real truth, have watered with your tears ! Punish and curse the guilty thing here before you ! When once the deed was done, I was horror-struck ; I did all that I could to hide it. My father had left a charge to me, a childless woman ; I was to bring one child of God's family to God, and I brought him to the scaffold Oh, heap all your reproaches upon me ! The hour has come ! " Her eyes glittered with fierce pride as she spoke. The archbishop, standing behind her, with his pastoral cross held out above her head, no longer maintained his impassive attitude ; he covered his eyes with his right hand, A smoth- ered sound like a dying groan broke the silence, and two men Gerard and Roubaud caught Denise Tascheron in their arms. She had swooned away. The fire died down in Veronique's eyes ; she looked troubled, but the martyr's serenity soon returned to her face. " I deserve no praise, no blessings, for my conduct here, as you know now," she said. " In the sight of heaven I have led a life full of sharp penance, hidden from all other eyes, and heaven will value it at its just worth. My outward life has been a vast reparation of the evil that I have wrought ; I have engraved my repentance in characters ineffaceable upon this wide land, a record that will last for ever. It is written everywhere in the fields grown green, in the growing town- ship, in the mountain streams turned from their courses into the plain, once wild and barren, now fertile and productive. Not a tree shall be felled here for a century but the peasants will tell the tale of the remorse to which they owe its shade. In these ways the repentant spirit which should have inspired a long and useful life will still make its influence felt among VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 281 you for a long time to come. All that you should have owed to his talents and a fortune honorably acquired has been done for you by the executrix of his repentance, by her who caused his crime. All the wrong done socially has been repaired ; I have taken upon myself the work of a life cut short in its flower, the life intrusted to my guidance, the life for which I must shortly give an account " Here once more the burning eyes were quenched in tears. She paused. "There is one among those present," she continued, " whom I have hated with a hate which I thought must be eternal, simply because he did no more than his duty. He was the first instrument of my punishment. I was too close to the deed, my feet were dipped too deep in blood, I was bound to hate justice. I knew that there was a trace of evil passion in my heart, so long as that spark of anger should trouble it ; I have had nothing to forgive, I have simply purged the corner where the evil one lurked. Whatever the victory cost, it is complete." The public prosecutor turned a tear-stained face to V6ron- ique. It was as if man's justice was remorseful in him. Ver- onique, turning her face away to continue her story, met the eyes of an old friend ; GrossetSte, bathed in tears, stretched out his hands entreatingly towards her. "It is enough ! " he seemed to say. The heroic woman heard such a chorus of sobs about her, received so much sympathy, that she broke down ; the balm of the general forgiveness was too much, weakness overcame her. Seeing that the sources of her daughter's strength were exhausted, the old mother seemed to find in herself the vigor of a young woman ; she held out her arms to carry Veronique. "Christians," said the archbishop, "you have heard the penitent's confession ; it confirms the decree of man's justice ; it may lay all scruples and anxiety on that score to rest. In this confession you should find new reasons for uniting your 282 THE COUNTRY PARSON. prayers to those of the church, which offers to God the holy sacrifice of the mass to implore His mercy for the sinner after so grand a repentance." The office was finished. Veronique followed all that was said with an expression of such inward peace that she no longer seemed to be the same woman. Her face wore a look of frank innocence, such as it might have worn in the days when, a pure and ingenuous girl, she dwelt under her father's roof. Her brows grew white in the dawn of eternity, her face glowed golden in the light of heaven. Doubtless she caught something of its mystic harmonies; and in her longing to be made one with God on earth for the last time, she exerted all her powers of vitality to live. M. Bonnet came to the bed- side and gave her absolution ; the archbishop anointed her with the holy oil, with a fatherly tenderness that revealed to those who stood about how dear he held this sheep that had been lost and was found. With that holy anointing the eyes that had wrought such mischief on earth were closed to the things of earth, the seal of the church was set on those two eloquent lips, and the ears that had listened to the inspiration of evil were closed for ever. All the senses, mortified by penitence, were thus sanctified ; the spirit of evil could have no power over this soul. Never had all the grandeur and deep meaning of a sacra- ment been apprehended more thoroughly than by those who saw the church's care thus justified by the dying woman's confession. After that preparation, Veronique received the body of Christ with a look of hope and joy that melted the icy barrier of unbelief at which the cure had so often knocked in vain. Roubaud, confounded, became a Catholic from that moment. Awful as the scene was, it was no less touching ; and in its solemnity, as of the culminating-point of a drama, it might have given some painter the subject of a masterpiece. When the mournful episode was over, and the words of the Gospel VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 283 of St. John fell on the ears of the dying woman, she beck- oned to her mother to bring Francis back again. (The tutor had taken the boy out of the room.) When Francis knelt on the step by the bedside, the mother whose sins had been for- given felt free to lay her hands in blessing on his head, and so she drew her last breath, La Sauviat standing at the post she had filled for twenty years, faithful to the end. It was she, a heroine after her manner, who closed the eyes of the daughter who had suffered so much, and laid a kiss on them. Then all the priests and assistants came round the bed, and intoned the dread chant De prqfundis by the light of the flaming torches ; and from those sounds the people of the whole countryside kneeling without, together with the friends and all the servants praying in the hall, knew that the mother of the canton had passed away. Groans and sobs mingled with the chanting. The noble woman's confession had not passed beyond the threshold of the drawing-room ; it had reached none but friendly ears. When the peasants came from Montegnac, and all the district round about came in, each with a green spray, to bid their benefactress a supreme farewell mingled with tears and prayers, they saw a representative of man's justice, bowed down with anguish, holding the cold hand of the woman to whom all unwittingly he had meted out such a cruel but just punishment. Two days later and the public prosecutor, with GrossetSte, the archbishop, and the mayor, bore the pall when Mme. Graslin was carried to her last resting-place. Amid deep silence they laid her in the grave ; no one uttered a word, for no one had the heart to speak, and all eyes were full of tears. "She is a saint!" Everywhere the words were repeated along the roads which she had made, in the canton which owed its prosperity to her. It was as if the words were sown abroad across her fields to quicken the life in them. It struck nobody as a strange thing that Mme. Graslin should be buried beside Jean-Frangois Tascheron. She had not asked this; 284 THE COUNTRY PARSON. but a trace of pitying tenderness in the old mother prompted her to bid the sacristan put those together whom earth had separated by a violent death, whom one repentance should unite in purgatory. Mme. Graslin's will fulfilled all expectations. She founded scholarships in the school at Limoges, and beds in the hospital, intended for the working classes only. A considerable sum (three hundred thousand francs in a period of six years) was left to purchase that part of the village called " Tascheron's," and for building an almshouse there. It was to serve as an asylum for the sick and aged poor of the district, a lying-in hospital for destitute women, and a home for foundling chil- dren, and was to be known by the name of Tascheron's Alms- house. Veronique directed that it was to be placed in the charge of the Franciscan Sisters, and fixed the salary of the head physician and house surgeon at four thousand francs. Mme. Graslin begged Roubaud to be the first head physician, and to superintend the execution of the sanitary arrangements and plans to be made by the architect, M. Gerard. She also endowed the commune of Montegnac with sufficient land to pay the taxes. A certain fund was put in the hands of the church to be used as determined in some exceptional cases ; for the church was to be the guardian of the young ; and if any of the children in Montegnac should show a special aptitude for art or science or industrial pursuits, the far-sighted benevo- lence of the testatrix provided thus for their encouragement. The tidings of her death were received as the news of a calamity to the whole country, and no word that reflected on her memory went with it. Gerard, appointed Francis Graslin's guardian, was required by the terms of the will to live at the chateau, and thither he went ; but not until three months after Veronique's death did he marry Denise Tascheron, in whom Francis found, as it were, a second mother. ALBERT SAVARON (de Savarus). To Madame Emile Girardin. ONE of the few drawing-rooms where, under the Restora- tion, the archbishop of Besan9on was sometimes to be seen, was that of the Baronne de Watteville, to whom he was par- ticularly attached on account of her religious sentiments. A word as to this lady, the most important lady of Besan- con. Monsieur de Watteville, a descendant of the famous Watte- ville, the most successful and illustrious of murderers and renegades his extraordinary adventures are too much a part of history to be related here this nineteenth-century Mon- sieur de Watteville was as gentle and peaceable as his ancestor of the Grand Siecle had been passionate and turbulent. After living in the Comte* like a wood-louse in the crack of a wainscot, he had married the heiress of the celebrated house of Rupt. Mademoiselle de Rupt brought twenty thousand francs a year in the funds to add to the ten thousand francs a year in real estate of the Baron de Watteville. The Swiss gentleman's coat-of-arms (the Wattevilles are Swiss) was then borne as an escutcheon of pretense on the old shield of the Rupts. The marriage, arranged in 1802, was solemnized in 1815 after the second Restoration. Within three years of the birth of a daughter all Madame de Watteville's grandparents were dead and their estates wound up. Monsieur de Watteville's house was then sold, and they settled in the Rue de la Prefec- ture in the fine old mansion of the Rupts, with an immense garden stretching to the Rue du Perron. Madame de Watte- * La Tranche Comt6. (285) 286 ALBERT SAVARON. ville, devout as a girl, became even more so after her marriage. She was one of the queens of the saintly brotherhood which gives the upper circles of Besancon a solemn air and prudish manners in harmony with the character of the town. Monsieur le Baron de Watteville, a dry, lean man, devoid of intelligence, looked worn out without any one knowing whereby, for he enjoyed the profoundest ignorance ; but as his wife was a red-haired woman, and of a stern nature that became proverbial (we still say " as sharp as Madame de Watte- ville") some wits of the legal profession declared that he had been worn against that rock Rupt is obviously derived from rupes. Scientific students of social phenomena will not fail to have observed that Rosalie was the only offspring of the union between the Wattevilles and the Rupts. Monsieur de Watteville spent his existence in a handsome workshop with a lathe ; he was a turner ! As subsidiary to this pursuit, he took up a fancy for making collections. Philo- sophical doctors, devoted to the study of madness, regard this tendency toward collecting as a first degree of mental aberration when it is set on small things. The Baron de Watteville treasured shells and geological fragments of the neighborhood of Besancon. Some contradictory folk, espe- cially women, would say of Monsieur de Watteville, " He has a noble soul ! He perceived from the first days of his married life that he would never be his wife's master, so he threw himself into a mechanical occupation and good living." The house of the Rupts was not devoid of a certain magnifi- cence worthy of Louis XIV., and bore traces of the nobility of the two families who had mingled in 1815. The chandeliers of glass cut in the shape of leaves, the brocades, the damask, the carpets, the gilt furniture, were all in harmony with the old liveries and the old servants. Though served in blackened family plate, round a looking-glass tray furnished with Dresden china, the food was exquisite. The wines selected by Mon- sieur de Watteville, who, to occupy his time and vary his ALBERT SAVARON. 287 employments, was his own butler, enjoyed a sort of fame throughout the department. Madame de Watteville's fortune was a fine one ; while her husband's, which consisted only of the estate of Rouxey, worth about ten thousand francs a year, was not increased by inheritance. It is needless to add that in consequence of Madame de Watteville's close intimacy with the archbishop, the three or four clever or remarkable abbes of the diocese who were not averse to good feeding were very much at home at her house. At a ceremonial dinner given in honor of I know not whose wedding, at the beginning of September, 1834, when the women were standing in a circle round the drawing-room fire, and the men in groups by the windows, every one exclaimed with pleasure at the entrance of Monsieur 1'Abbe de Grancey, who was announced. " Well, and the lawsuit ? " they all cried. "Won ! " replied the vicar-general. " The verdict of the court, from which we had no hope, you know why " This was an allusion to the members of the First Court of Appeal of 1830 ; the Legitimists had almost all withdrawn. " The verdict is in our favor on every point, and reverses the decision of the lower court." " Everybody thougnt you were done for." " And we should have been, but for me. I told our advo- cate to be off to Paris, and at the crucial moment I was able to secure a new pleader, to whom we owe our victory, a wonderful man " "At Besancon? " said Monsieur de Watteville, guilelessly. "At Besancon," replied the Abbe de Grancey. "Oh yes, Savaron," said a handsome young man sitting near the Baroness, and named de Soulas. " He spent five or six nights over it ; he devoured docu- ments and briefs ; he had seven or eight interviews of several hours with me," continued Monsieur de Grancey, who had just reappeared at the Hotel de Rupt for the first time in 288 ALBERT SA VARON. three weeks. " In short, Monsieur Savaron has just com- pletely beaten the celebrated lawyer whom our adversaries had se'nt for from Paris. This young man is wonderful, the bigwigs say. Thus the chapter is twice victorious ; it has triumphed in law and also in politics, since it has vanquished. Liberalism in the person of the counsel of our municipality. ' Our adversaries,' so our advocate said, 'must not expect to find readiness on all sides to ruin the archbishoprics.' The president was obliged to enforce silence. All the townsfolk of Besancon applauded. Thus the possession of the buildings of the old convent remains with the Chapter of the Cathedral of Besan^on. Monsieur Savaron, however, invited his Parisian opponent to dine with him as they came out of court. He accepted, saying, ' Honor to every conqueror,' and com- plimented him on his success without bitterness." "And where did you unearth this lawyer?" said Madame de Watteville. "I never heard his name before." "Why, you can see his windows from here," replied the vicar-general. " Monsieur Savaron lives in the Rue du Per- ron ; the garden of his house joins on to yours." "But he is not a native of the county," said Monsieur de Watteville. " So little is he a native of any place, that no one knows where he comes from," said Madame de Chavoncourt. "But who is he?" asked Madame de Watteville, taking the abbe's arm to go into the dining-room. " If he is a stran- ger, by what chance has he settled at Besanc.on ? It is a strange fancy for a barrister." " Very strange ! " echoed Amedee de Soulas, whose biog- raphy is here necessary to the understanding of this tale. In all ages France and England have carried on an ex- change 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 ALBERT SAVARON. 289 is reciprocal. The hostility of the two nations is suspended on two points the uses of words and the fashion 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 in- vented 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 Brunei in "The Funny Englishwomen;" 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 successors 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 " Have you seen in Barcelona She that is my mistress and my lionne." 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 ab- surdities, the provinces can hardly be deprived of them. So, as soon as the lion paraded Paris with his mane, his beard and mustaches, 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 depart- ments had their sub-lions, who protested by the smartness of 19 290 ALBERT S AVAR ON. their trousers-straps against the untidiness of their fellow- townsmen. Thus, in 1834, Besancon could boast of a lion, in the per- son of Monsieur Amedee-Sylvain de Soulas, spelt Souleyas at the time of the Spanish occupation. Amedee de Soulas is, perhaps, the only man in Besangon 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 Gran- velle. Young Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leaving Be- san9on, 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, with- out 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 a year. His bills for articles received from Paris, such as perfumery, cravats, jewelry, patent black- ing, and clothes, ran to another twelve hundred francs. Add ALBERT SAVARON. 291 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 in rather bad repair, which required keeping up, a charge 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 bring a couple of dishes from a cook-shop, 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 advan- tages, 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 " 292 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 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 Am6dee 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 common- places that were in fashion, which gave him the credit of be- ing 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 Amed6e 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, mustaches 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 Besanon. 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. Amede slept late, dressed and went out towards noon, to go to one of his farms and practice 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 ALBERT SAVARON. 293 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 pro- gress. 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 impass- able 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 aristoc- racy 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 par -lenient, 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 trousers-straps ; this will account for the young man's being 294 ALBERT SAVARON. 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 Besan^on 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 jour- nalist 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 Besanon." The editor took the hint, and thenceforth spoke the most incomprehensible philosophical lingo. His success was com- plete. If young Monsieur de Soulas did not fall in the esteem of Besan9on 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. ALBERT SAVARON. 295 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 Am6d6e. There are many lions who become lions out of self-interest and specu- lation. The Wattevilles, who for twelve years had been draw- ing an income of fifty thousand francs, 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 with- out 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 296 ALBERT SAVARON. 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 Deputed 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 ex- change 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 pros- pective 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 exclu- sively religious education, and by her mother's despotism, which held her rigidly to principles. Rosalie knew abso- lutely nothing. It is 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, knitting. 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 ALBERT SAVARON. 297 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 Fri- days, 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 fore- head, which was shapely enough. Her face was exactly like those of Albert Diirer's saints, or those of the painters before Perugino ; the same plump, though slender modeling, the same delicacy saddened by ecstasy, the same severe guileless- ness. Everything about her, even to her attitude, was sugges- tive 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 evenings her mother allowed her silk. The cut of her frocks, made at Besangon, also made her ugly, while her mother tried to borrow grace, beauty, and elegance from Paris fashions ; for through Monsieur de Soulas she pro- cured the smallest trifles of her dress from there. 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, tnd 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 great astonishment, that tem- pers, characteristics, wit, or genius reappear in families at long 298 ALBERT S AVAR ON. intervals, precisely like what are known as hereditary diseases. Thus talent, like the gout, sometimes skips over two genera- tions. 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 be- comes a volcano. Madame de Watteville alone, perhaps, sus- pected 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 every one of his acquaintance, flirted in strict propriety with Amedee de Soulas. When this young man was in the house, she alternately dis- missed 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 deal- ings 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 Seulas nice, she would have drawn down ALBERT SAVARON. 299 on herself a smart reproof. Thus, to all her mother's incite- ment she replied merely by such phrases as are wrongly called Jesuitical wrongly, because the Jesuits were strong, and such reservations are the spiked wall behind which weakness takes refuge. Then the mother regarded the girl as a dissem- bler. If by mischance a spark of the true nature of the Watte- villes 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 was 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 eye, was a constant subject of admonition.' " Rosalie, I cannot imagirie 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 Watte- ville. "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 300 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 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 mustaches, so many smart waistcoats, wore out so many horseshoes and stays for he wore a leather vest, the stays of the lion Am6dee, I say, was farther away than any chance comer, although he had on his side the worthy and noble Abbe de Grancey. " Madame," said Monsieur de Soulas, addressing the Baron- ess, 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 barristers to the court, showing his title in due form, and he left his card on all his new colleagues, the ministerial officials, the councilors of the court and the mem- bers 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 ; ALBERT SAVARON. 301 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 Cha- voncourt. " 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 break- fast, 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 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 Baby las !" exclaimed Madame de Chavoncourt. " What would you have me do out riding? " 302 ALBERT S AVAR ON. " Well and how was it that you engaged a stranger for your defense ? " asked the Baroness, thus placing the conversa- tion 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 defense succeed, but it led to the arrest of two of the witnesses, who were proved guilty and con- demned. 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 im- possible to come to Besangon, Monsieur de Garcenault ad- vised 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 Cha- voncourt. " 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 to be 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- ALBERT SAVARON. 303 gown tied with a red cord, red slippers, a red flannel waist- coat, 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 horsehair; around 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; crows' 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 pene- trating sweetness, which surprised me in court by its easy flow; a true orator's voice, now clear and appealing, some- times 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 bedroom, adjoining the library, and smiled at my astonish- ment 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 304 ALBERT SAVARON. 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 pur- pose 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 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 305 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, marnrna," 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 laby- rinth 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?" asked Rosalie point-blank of the vicar-general, dur- ing 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 abb*. " I never could have believed that Rosalie would think 20 306 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 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 congratutations 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 much 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 distin- guish 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 Uni- versity of France long since set itself the task of having noth- ing 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 Agns, and you leave this suppressed mind, so fresh and clear-seeing, as swift and as logical as that of a sav- ALBERT SAVARON. 307 age, 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 abbds of the Chapter of Besangon 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 Besanc.on faces she had hitherto met with, Rosalie at once jumped at the idea of getting into his hpme, of ascer- taining the reasons of so much mystery, of hearing that elo- quent 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 inter- view with the Abbe Giroud at Saint-Pierre, and managed so ingeniously that the hour for her confession was fixed for Sunday morning at half-past seven, before 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 turn- ing, 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 808 ALBERT SAVARON. 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 I " 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 eyes would command the lawyer's private room. And there are men for whose sake young girls can carry out such master-strokes of di- plomacy, 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 ALBER T SAVAR ON. 309 before mass, and after a short prayer, went to see if the Abb6 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. Ro- salie now understood the vicar-general's words in their fullest extent. Yes, those eyes of tawny brown, shot with golden lights, covered an 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 Watte- ville 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 interval 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 every- thing ! But how?" Under the smart of this new desire Rosalie set the stitches 310 ALBERT SAVARON. of her worsted-work with exquisite precision, and hid her meditations under a little innocent air, which shammed sim- plicity 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 it only amuses Monsieur de Watteville ? " " Well, because from thence we shall see into Monsieur de Soulas' rooms, and Monsieur de Soulaswill 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 pro- prieties? " "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 ALBERT SAVARON. 3H rock-work, where periwinkles would grow, iris, clematis, ivy, honeysuckle, and Virginia creeper. The Baroness desired that the inside should be lined with rustic woodwork, 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 Besangon. " They are rich, and can afford a thousand crowns for a whim " ''A thousand crowns!" exclaimed Madame de Chavon- court. " 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 abb. " 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 defense of the Cathedral Chapter was all the sooner forgotten because the envy of other lawyers was aroused. Also, Savaron, faithful to his seclusion, went nowhere. Having no friends to cry him up, and seeing no 312 ALBERT S AVAR ON. one, he increased the chances of being forgotten which are common to strangers in such a town as Besancon. Neverthe- less, 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 discernment 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 ten first clients, on whom he had impressed the necessity for promo- ting the interests of Besancon, the town where the traffic should meet between Mulhouse and Lyons, and the chief centre between Mulhouse and the Rhone. To compete with Strasbourg, was it not needful that Besan- con 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 finances 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 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 313 energy of every scientific student in the districts of le Bugey, la Bresse, and Franche Comt6. By the influence of com- mercial interests and common feeling, five hundred sub- scribers 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 num- ber 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 com- mercial 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 shareholders of five per cent., the editor remaining unpaid. This editing, indeed, was beyond price. After the third number the Review was recognized for ex- change 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 dis- cussion that mid-winter at Madame de Chavoncourt's. 314 ALBERT S AVAR ON. "Papa," said Rosalie, " a Review is published in Besan- gon ; 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 loaned 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 inventive- ness, relate their private joys, their private griefs, or the mys- terious events of their own life: AMBITION FOR LOVE'S SAKE. In 1823 two young men, having agreed as a plan for a holi- day to make a tour through Switzerland, set out from Lucerne ALBERT SAVARON. 315 one fine morning in the month of July in a boat pulled by three oarsmen. They started for Fluelen, intending to stop at every notable spot on the lake of the four cantons. The views which shut in the waters on the way from Lucerne to Fluelen offer every combination that the most exacting fancy can demand of mountains and rivers, lakes and rocks, brooks, and pastures, trees, and torrents. Here are austere solitudes and charming headlands, smiling and trimly kept meadows, forests crowning perpendicular granite cliffs like plumes, deserted but verdant reaches opening out, and valleys whose beauty seems the lovelier in the dreamy distance. As they passed the pretty hamlet of Gersau, one of the friends looked for a long time at a wooden house which seemed to have been recently built, enclosed by a paling, and stand- ing on a promontory, almost bathed by the waters. As the boat rowed past, a woman's head was raised against the background of the room on the upper story of this house, to admire the effect of the boat on the lake. One of the young men met the glance thus indifferently given by the unknown fair one. " Let us stop here," said he to his friend. " We meant to make Lucerne our headquarters for seeing Switzerland ; you will not take it amiss, Leopold, if I change my mind and stay here to take charge of our possessions. Then you can go where you please ; my journey is ended. Pull to land, men, and put us out at this village ; we will breakfast here. I will go back to Lucerne to fetch all our luggage, and before you leave you will know in which house I take a lodging, where you will find me on your return." "Here or at Lucerne," replied Leopold, "the difference is not so great that I need hinder you from following your whim." These two youths were friends in the truest sense of the word. They were of the same age ; they had learned at the same school ; and after studying the law, they were spending their holiday in the classical tour in Switzerland. Leopold, 316 ALBERT S AVAR ON. by his father's determination, was already pledged to a place in a notary's office in Paris. His spirit of rectitude, his gen- tleness, and the coolness of his senses and his brain, guaran- teed him to be a docile pupil. Leopold could see himself a notary in Paris : his life lay before him like one of the high- roads that cross the plains of France, and he looked along its whole length with philosophical resignation. The character of his companion, whom we will call Ro- dolphe, presented a strong contrast with Leopold's, and their antagonism had no doubt had the result of tightening the bond that united them. Rodolphe was the natural son of a man of rank, who was carried off by a premature death before he could make any arrangements for securing the means of existence to a woman he fondly loved and to Rodolphe. Thus cheated by a stroke of fate, Rodolphe' s mother had re- course to a heroic measure. She sold everything she owed to the munificence of her child's father for a sum of more than a hundred thousand francs, bought with it a life annuity for herself at a high rate, and thus acquired an income of about fifteen thousand francs, resolving to devote the whole of it to the education of her son, so as to give him all the personal advantages that might help to make his fortune, while saving, by strict economy, a small capital to be his when he came of age. It was bold ; it was counting on her own life ; but with- out this boldness the good mother would certainly have found it impossible to live and to bring her child up suitably, and he was her only hope, her future, the spring of all her joys. Rodolphe, the son of a most charming Parisian woman, and a man of mark, a nobleman of Brabant, was cursed with extreme sensitiveness. From his infancy he had in every- thing shown a most ardent nature. In him mere desire be- came a guiding force and the motive power of his whole being, the stimulus to his imagination, the reason of his actions. Notwithstanding the pains taken by a clever mother, who was alarmed when she detected this predisposition, Rodolphe ALBERT SAVARON. 317 wished for things as a poet imagines, as a mathematician cal- culates, as a painter sketches, as a musician creates melodies. Tender-hearted, like his mother, he dashed with inconceivable violence and impetus of thought after the object of his desires ; he annihilated time. While dreaming of the fulfillment of his schemes, he always overlooked the means of attainment. "When my son has children," said his mother, "he will want them born grown up." This fine frenzy, carefully directed, enabled Rodolphe to achieve his studies with brilliant results, and to become what the English call an accomplished gentleman. His mother was then proud of him, though still fearing a catastrophe if ever a passion should possess a heart at once so tender and so susceptible, so vehement and so kind. Therefore, the judi- cious mother had encouraged the friendship which bound Leopold to Rodolphe and Rodolphe to Leopold, since she saw in the cold and faithful young notary a guardian, a com- rade, who might to a certain extent take her place if by some misfortune she should be lost to her son. Rodolphe's mother, still handsome at three-and- forty, had inspired Leopold with an ardent passion. This circumstance made the two young men even more intimate. So Leopold, knowing Rodolphe well, was not surprised to find him stopping at a village and giving up the projected journey to Saint-Gothard, on the strength of a single glance at the upper window of a house. While breakfast was pre- pared for them at the Swan Inn, the friends walked round the hamlet and came to the neighborhood of the pretty new house; here, while gazing about him and talking to the inhabitants, Rodolphe discovered the residence of some decent folk, who were willing to take him as a boarder, a very frequent custom in Switzerland. They offered him a bedroom looking over the lake and the mountains, and whence he had a view of one of those immense sweeping reaches which, in this lake, are the admiration of every traveler. This house was divided by 318 ALBERT S AVAR ON. a roadway and a little creek from the new house, where Ro- dolphe had caught sight of the unknown fair one's face. For a hundred francs a month Rodolphe was relieved of all thought for the necessaries of life. But, in consideration of the outlay the Stopfer couple expected to make, they bar- gained for three months' residence and a month's payment in advance. Rub a Swiss ever so little, and you find the usurer. After breakfast, Rodolphe at once made himself at home by depositing in his room such property as he had brought with him for the journey to the Saint-Gothard, and he watched Leopold as he set out, moved by the spirit of routine, to carry out the excursion for himself and his friend. When Rodolphe, sitting on a fallen rock on the shore, could no longer see Leopold's boat, he turned to examine the new house with stolen glances, hoping to see the fair unknown. Alas ! he went in without its having given a sign of life. During din- ner, in the company of Monsieur and Madame Stopfer, retired coopers from Neufch&tel, he questioned them as to the neighborhood, and ended by learning all he wanted to know about the lady, thanks to his hosts' loquacity ; for they were ready to pour out their budget of gossip without any pressing. The fair stranger's name was Fanny Lovelace. This name (pronounced Loveless) is that of an old English family, but Richardson has given it to a creation whose fame eclipses all others ! Miss Lovelace had come to settle by the lake for her father's health, the physicians having recommended him the air of Lucerne. These two English people had arrived with no other servant than a little girl of fourteen, a dumb child, much attached to Miss Fanny, on whom she waited very intelligently, and had settled, two winters since, with Monsieur and Madame Bergmann, the retired head-gardeners of his excellency Count Borromeo of Isola Bella and Isola Madre in the Lago Maggiore. These Swiss, who were pos- sessed of an income of about a thousand crowns a year, had ALBERT S AVAR ON. 319 let the top story of their house to the Lovelaces for three years, at a rent of two hundred francs a year. Old Lovelace, a man of ninety, and much broken, was too poor to allow himself any gratifications, and very rarely went out; his daughter worked to maintain him, translating English books, and writing some herself, it was said. The Lovelaces could not afford to hire boats to row on the lake, or horses and guides to explore the neighborhood. Poverty demanding such privation as this excites all the greater compassion among the Swiss, because it deprives them of a chance of profit. The cook of the establishment fed the three English boarders for a hundred francs a month inclusive. In Gersau it was generally believed, however, that the gardener and his wife, in spite of their pretensions, used the cook's name as a screen to net the little profits of this bargain. The Bergmanns had made beautiful gardens round their house, and had built a hothouse. The flowers, the fruit, and the botanical rarities of this spot were what had induced the young lady to settle on it as she passed through Gersau. Miss Fanny was said to be nineteen years old ; she was the old man's youngest child, and the object of his adula- tion. About two months prior she had hired a piano from Lucerne, for she seemed to be crazy about music, his hosts informed him. "She loves flowers and music, and she is unmarried ! " thought Rodolphe ; " what good luck ! " The next day Rodolphe went to ask leave to visit the hot- houses and gardens, which were beginning to be somewhat famous. The permission was riot immediately granted. The retired gardeners asked, strangely enough, to see Rodolphe's passport ; it was sent to them at once. The paper was not re- turned to him till next morning, by the hands of the cook, who expressed her master's pleasure in showing him their place. Rodolphe went to the Bergmanns, not without a cer- tain trepidation, known only to persons of strong feelings, 320 ALBERT SAVARON. who go through as much passion in a moment as some men experience in a whole lifetime. After dressing himself carefully to gratify the old gardeners of the Borromean Islands, whom he regarded as the warders of his treasure, he went all over the grounds, looking at the house now and again, but with much caution ; the old couple treated him with evident distrust. But his attention was soon attracted by the little English deaf-mute, in whom his discern- ment, though young as yet, enabled him to recognize a girl of African, or at least of Sicilian origin. The child had the golden-brown color of a Havana cigar, eyes of fire, Armenian eyelids with lashes of very un-British length, hair blacker than black ; and under this almost olive skin, sinews of extraordi- nary strength and feverish alertness. She looked at Rodolphe with amazing curiosity and effrontery, watching his every movement. "To whom does that little Moresco belong?" he asked worthy Madame Bergmann. " To the English," Monsieur Bergmann replied. "But she never was born in England ! " "They may have, perhaps, brought her from the Indies," said Madame Bergmann. " I have been told that Miss Lovelace is fond of music. I should be delighted if, during the residence by the lake to which I am condemned by my doctor's orders, she would allow me to join her." "They receive no one, and will not see anybody," said the old gardener. Rodolphe bit his lips and went away, without having been invited into the house, or taken into the part of the garden that lay between the front of the house and the shore of the little promontory. On that side the house had a balcony above the first floor, made of wood, and covered by the roof, which projected deeply like the roof of a chalet on all four sides^of the building, in the Swiss fashion. Rodolphe had ALBERT SAVARON. 321 loudly praised the elegance of this arrangement, and talked of the view from that balcony, but all in vain. When he had taken leave of the Bergmanns it struck him that he was a simpleton, like any man of spirit and imagination disappointed of the result of a plan which he had believed would succeed. In the evening he, of course, went out in a boat on the lake, round and about the spit of land, to Brunnen and to Schwytz, and came in at nightfall. From afar he saw the window open and brightly, lighted ; he heard the sound of a piano and the tones of an exquisite voice. He made the boatmen stop, and gave himself up to the pleasure of listening to an Italian air delightfully sung. When the singing ceased, Rodolphe landed and sent away the boat and rowers. At the cost of wetting his feet, he went to sit down under the water- worn granite shelf crowned by a thick hedge of thorny acacia, by the side of which ran a long lime avenue in the Berg- manns' garden. By the end of an hour he heard steps and voices just above him, but the words that reached his ears were all Italian, and spoken by two women. He took advantage of the moment when the two speakers were at one end of the walk to slip noiselessly to the other. After half an hour of struggling he got to the end of the avenue, and there took up a position whence, without being seen or heard, he could watch the two women without being observed by them as they came towards him. What was Ro- dolphe's amazement on recognizing the deaf-mute as one of them ; she was talking to Miss Lovelace in Italian. It was now eleven o'clock at night. The stillness was so perfect on the lake and around the dwelling that the two women must have thought themselves safe ; in all Gersau there could be no eyes open but theirs. Rodolphe supposed that the girl's dumbness . must be a necessary deception. From the way in which they both spoke Italian, Rodolphe suspected that it was the mother tongue of both girls, and concluded that the English name also hid some disguise. 21 322 ALBERT SAVARON. "They are Italian refugees," said he to himself, "outlaws in fear of the Austrian or Sardinian police. The young lady waits till it is dark to walk and talk in security." He lay down by the side of the hedge, and crawled like a snake to find a way between two acacia shrubs. At the risk of leaving his coat behind him, or tearing deep scratches in his back, he got through the hedge when the so-called Miss Fanny and her pretended deaf-and-dumb maid were at the other end of the path ; then, when they had come within twenty yards of him without seeing him, for he was in the shadow of the hedge, and the moon was shining brightly, he suddenly rose. " Fear nothing," said he in French to the Italian girl, " I am not a spy. You are refugees, I have guessed that. I am a Frenchman whom one look from you has fixed at Gersau." Rodolphe, startled by the acute pain caused by some steel instrument piercing his side, fell like a log. " Net logo con pietra /" said the terrible dumb girl. " Oh, Gina ! " exclaimed the Italian. "She has missed me," said Rodolphe, pulling from the wound a stiletto, which had been turned by one of the false ribs. "But a little higher up it would have been deep in my heart. I was wrong, Francesca," he went on, remembering the name he had heard little Gina repeat several times; "I owe her no grudge, do not scold her. The happiness of speaking to you is well worth the prick of a stiletto. Only show me the way out ; I must get back to the Stopfers' house. Be easy ; I shall tell nothing." Francesca, recovering from her astonishment, helped Ro- dolphe to rise, and said a few words to Gina, whose eyes filled with tears. The two girls made him sit down on a bench and take off his coat, his waistcoat, and his cravat. Then Gina opened his shirt and sucked the wound strongly. Francesca, who had left them, returned with a large piece of sticking- plaster, which she applied to the wound. ALBERT S AVAR ON. 323 " You can walk now as far as your house," she said. Each took an arm, and Rodolphe was conducted to a side gate, of which the key was in Francesca's apron pocket. " Does Gina speak French ? " said Rodolphe to Francesca. "No. But do not excite yourself," replied Francesca with some impatience. " Let me look at you," said Rodolphe pathetically, " for it may be long before I am able to come again " He leaned against one of the gate-posts contemplating the beautiful Italian, who allowed him to gaze at her for a moment under the sweetest silence and the sweetest night that ever, perhaps, shone on this lake, the king of these beautiful Swiss lakes. Francesca was quite of the classic Italian type, and such as imagination supposes or pictures, or, if you will, dreams, that Italian women are. What first struck Rodolphe was the grace and elegance of a figure evidently powerful, though so slender as to appear fragile. An amber paleness overspread her face, betraying sudden interest, but it did not dim the voluptuous glance of her liquid eyes of velvety blackness. A pair of hands as beautiful as ever a Greek sculptor added to the polished arms of a statue grasped Rodolphe's arm, and their whiteness gleamed against his black coat. The rash French- man could but just discern the long, oval shape of her face, and a melancholy mouth showing brilliant teeth between the parted lips, full, fresh, and brightly red. The exquisite lines of this face guaranteed to Francesca permanent beauty ; but what most struck Rodolphe was the adorable freedom, the Italian frankness of this woman, wholly absorbed as she was in her pity for him. Francesca said a word to Gina, who gave Rodolphe her arm as far as the Stopfers' door, and fled like a swallow as soon as she had rung. " These patriots do not play at killing ! " said Rodolphe to himself as he felt his sufferings when he found himself in his 324 ALBERT S AVAR ON. bed. " ' Net logo ! ' Gina would have pitched me into the lake with a stone tied to my neck." Next day he sent to Lucerne for the best surgeon there, and when the surgeon came, enjoined on him absolute secrecy, giving him to understand that his honor strictly depended on such observance. Leopold returned from his excursion on the day when his friend first got out of bed. Rodolphe made up a story, and begged him to go to Lucerne to fetch their luggage and letters, Leopold brought back the most fatal, the most dreadful news : Rodolphe's mother was dead. While the two friends were on their way from B&le to Lucerne, the fatal letter, written by Leopold's father, had reached Lucerne the day they left for Fluelen. In spite of Leopold's utmost precautions, Rodolphe fell ill of a nervous fever. As soon as Leopold saw his friend out of danger, he set out for France with a power of attorney, and Rodolphe could thus remain at Gersau, the only place in the world where his grief could grow calmer. The young Frenchman's position, his despair, the circumstances which made such a loss worse for him than for any other man, were known, and secured him the pity and interest of every one at Gersau. Every morning the pretended dumb girl came to see him and bring him news of her mistress. As soon as Rodolphe could go out he went to the Berg- manns' house, to thank Miss Fanny Lovelace and her father for the interest they had taken in his sorrow and his illness. For the first time since he had lodged with the Bergmanns the old Italian admitted a stranger to his room, where Rodolphe was received with the cordiality due to his misfortunes and to his being a Frenchman, which excluded all distrust of him. Francesca looked so lovely by candlelight that first evening that she shed a ray of brightness on his grieving heart. Her smiles flung the roses of hope on his woe. She sang, not indeed gay songs, but grave and solemn melodies suited to ALBERT S AVAR ON. 325 the state of Rodolphe's heart, and he observed this touching care. At about eight o'clock the old man left the young people without any sign of uneasiness, and went to his room. When Francesca was tired of singing, she led Rodolphe on to the balcony, whence they perceived the sublime scenery of the lake, and signed to him to be seated by her on a rustic wooden bench. "Am I very indiscreet in asking how old you are, cara Francesca?" said Rodolphe. "Nineteen," said she, "well past." " If anything in the world could soothe my sorrow," he went on, " it would be the hope of winning you from your father, whatever your fortune may be. So beautiful as you are, you seem to me richer than a prince's daughter. And I tremble as I confess to you the feelings with which you have inspired me; but they are deep they are eternal." " Zitto /" said Francesca, laying a finger of her right hand on her lips. " Say no more; I am not free. I have been married these three years." For a few minutes utter silence reigned. When the Italian girl, alarmed at Rodolphe's stillness, went close to him, she found that he had fainted. " Povero ! " she said to herself. "And I thought him cold." She fetched some salts, and revived Rodolphe by making him smell at them. " Married ! " said Rodolphe, looking at Francesca. And then his tears flowed freely. "Child!" said she. "But there still is hope. My hus- band is " " Eighty?" Rodolphe put in. " No," said she with a smile, " but sixty-five. He has dis- guised himself as much older to mislead the police." "Dearest," said Rodolphe, "a few more shocks of this kind and I shall die. Only when you have known me 326 ALBERT S AVAR ON. twenty years will you understand the strength and power of my heart, and the nature of its aspirations for happiness. This plant," he went on, pointing to the yellow jasmine which covered the balustrade, " does not climb more eagerly to spread itself in the sunbeams than I have clung to you for this month past. I love you passionately. That love will be the secret fount of my life I may possibly die of it." "Oh! Frenchman, Frenchman!" said she, emphasizing her exclamation with a little incredulous grimace. " Shall I not be forced to wait, to accept you at the hands of time?" said he gravely. " But know this ; if you are in earnest in what you have allowed to escape you, I will wait for you faithfully, without suffering any other attachment to grow up in my heart." She looked at him doubtfully. " None," said he, "not even a passing fancy. ' I have my fortune to make ; you must have a splendid one, nature created you a princess " At this word Francesca could not repress a faint smile, which gave her face the most bewitching expression, some- thing subtle, like what the great Leonardo has so well depicted in the Gioconda. This smile made Rodolphe pause. " Ah, yes ! " he went on, "you must suffer much from the destitu- tion to which exile has brought you. Oh, if you would make me happy above all men, and consecrate my love, you would treat me as a friend. Ought I not to be your friend ? My poor mother has left sixty thousand francs of savings ; take half." Francesca looked steadily at him. This piercing gaze went to the bottom of Rodolphe's soul. " We want nothing ; my work amply supplies our luxuries," she replied in a grave voice. "And can I endure that a Francesca should work?" cried he. " One day you will return to your country and find all you left there." Again the Italian girl looked at Rodolphe. ALBERT S AVAR ON. 327 "And you will then repay me what you may have conde- scended to borrow," he added, with an expression full of delicate feeling. "Let us drop this subject," said she, with incomparable dignity of gesture, expression, and attitude. " Make a splen- did fortune, be one of the remarkable men of your country ; that is my desire. Fame is a drawbridge which may serve to cross a deep gulf. Be ambitious, if you must. I believe you have great and powerful talents, but use them rather for the happiness of mankind than to deserve me ; you will be all the greater in my eyes." In the course of this conversation, which lasted two hours, Rodolphe discovered that Francesca was an enthusiast for liberal ideas, and for that worship of liberty which had led to the three revolutions in Naples, Piedmont, and Spain. On leaving, he was shown to the door by Gina, the so-called mute. At eleven o'clock no one was astir in the village, there was no fear of listeners ; Rodolphe took Gina into a corner, and asked her in a low voice and bad Italian, "Who are your master and mistress, child ? Tell me, I will give you this fine new gold-piece." " Monsieur," said the girl, taking the coin, "my master is the famous bookseller Lamporani of Milan, one of the leaders of the revolution, and the conspirator of all others whom Austria would most like to have in the Spielberg." "A bookseller's wife ! Ah, so much the better," thought he ; "we are on an equal footing. And what is her family ? " he added, " for she looks like a queen." "All Italian women do," replied Gina proudly. "Her father's name is Colonna." Emboldened by Francesca's modest rank, Rodolphe had an awning fitted to his boat and cushions in the stern. When this was done, the lover came to propose to Francesca to come out on the lake. The Italian accepted, no doubt to carry out her part of a young English miss in the eyes of the villagers, 328 ALBERT SAVARON. but she brought Ginawith her. Francesca Colonna's lightest actions betrayed a superior education and the highest social rank. By the way in which she took her place at the end of the boat Rodolphe felt himself in some sort cut off from her, and, in the face of a look of pride worthy of an aristocrat, the familiarity he had intended fell dead. By a glance Fran- cesca made herself a princess, with all the prerogatives she might have enjoyed in the middle ages. She seemed to have read the thoughts of this vassal who was so audacious as to constitute himself her protector. Already, in the furniture of the room where Francesca had received him, in her dress, and in the various trifles she made use of, Rodolphe had detected indications of a superior char- acter and a fine fortune. All these observations now recurred to his mind ; he became thoughtful after having been trampled on, as it were, by Francesca's dignity. Gina, her half-grown-up confidante, also seemed to have a mocking expression as she gave a covert or side glance at Rodolphe. This obvious disa- greement between the Italian lady's rank and her manners was a fresh puzzle to Rodolphe, who suspected some further trick like Gina's assumed dumbness. " Where would you go, Signora Lamporani ? " he asked. " Towards Lucerne," replied Francesca in French. "Good! " said Rodolphe to himself, "she is not startled by hearing me speak her name ; she had, no doubt, foreseen that I should ask Gina she is so cunning. What is your quarrel with me?" he went on, going at last to sit down by her side, and asking her by a gesture to give him her hand, which she withdrew. " You are cold and ceremonious ; what, in colloquial language, we should call short" " It is true," she replied with a smile. "I am wrong. It is not good manners ; it is vulgar. In French you would call it inartistic. It is better to be frank than to harbor cold or hostile feelings towards a friend, and you have already proved yourself my friend. Perhaps I have gone too far with you. ALBERT S AVAR ON. 329 You must have taken me to be a very ordinary woman." Rodolphe made many signs of denial. "Yes," said the bookseller's wife, going on without noticing this pantomime, which, however, she plainly saw. " I have detected that, and naturally I have reconsidered my conduct. Well ! I will put an end to everything by a few words of deep truth. Under- stand this, Rodolphe : I feel in myself the strength to stifle a feeling if it were not in harmony with my ideas or anticipation of what true love is. I could love as we can love in Italy, but I know my duty. No intoxication can make me forget it. Married without my consent to that poor old man, I might take advantage of 'the liberty he so generously gives me; but three years of married life imply acceptance of its laws. Hence the most vehement passion would never make me utter, even involuntarily, a wish to find myself free. "Emilio knows my character. He knows that without my heart, which is my own, and which I might give away, I should never allow any one to take my hand. That is why I have just refused it to you. I desire to be loved and waited for with fidelity, nobleness, ardor, while all I can give is infinite tenderness of which the expression may not overstep the boundary of the heart, the permitted neutral ground. All this being thoroughly understood. Oh ! " she went on with a girlish gesture, " I will be as coquettish, as gay, as glad, as a child who knows comparatively nothing of the dangers of familiarity." This plain and frank declaration was made in a tone, an accent, and supported by a look which gave it the deepest stamp of truth. "A Princess Colonna could not have spoken better," said Rodolphe, smiling. "Is that," she answered with some haughtiness, "a reflec- tion on the humbleness of my birth ? Must your love flaunt a coat-of-arms? At Milan the noblest n?~ js are written over shop-doors: Sforza, Canova, Viscona, Trivulzio, Ursini j 330 ALBERT SAVARON. there are Archintos apothecaries ; but, believe me, though I keep a shop, I have the feelings of a duchess." " A reflection ! Nay, madame, I meant it for praise." " By comparison ? " she said archly. "Ah, once for all," said he, "not to torture me if my words should ill express my feelings, understand that my love is perfect ; it carries with it absolute obedience and respect." She bowed as a woman satisfied, and said, " Then monsieur accepts the treaty ? ' ' "Yes," said he. "I can understand that in a rich and powerful feminine nature the faculty of loving ought not to be wasted, and that you, out of delicacy, wished to restrain it. Ah ! Francesca, at my age tenderness requited, and by so sublime, so royally beautiful a creature as you are why, it is the fulfillment of all my wishes. To love you as you desire to be loved is not that enough to make a young man guard himself against every evil folly ? Is it not to concentrate all his powers in a noble passion, of which in the future he may be proud, and which can leave none but lovely memories? If you could but know with what hues you have clothed the chain of Pilatus, the Rigi, and this superb lake " I want to know," said she, with the Italian artlessness which has always a touch of artfulness. " Well, this hour will shine on all my life like a diamond on a queen's brow." Francesca's only reply was to lay her hand on Rodolphe's. " Oh dearest ! for ever dearest ! Tell me, have you never loved?" "Never." " And you allow me to love you nobly, looking to heaven for the utmost fulfillment ? " he asked. She gently bent her head. Two large tears rolled down Rodolphe's cheeks. "Why! what is the matter?" she cried, abandoning her imperial manner. ALBERT SAVARON. 331 " I have now no mother whom I can tell of my happiness ; she left this earth without seeing what would have mitigated her agony " "What?" said she. "Her tenderness replaced by an equal tenderness " " Povero mw/" exclaimed the Italian, much touched. "Believe me," she went on after a pause, " it is a very sweet thing, and to a woman, a strong element of fidelity to know that she is all in all on earth to the man she loves ; to find him lonely, with no family, with nothing in his heart but his love in short, to have him wholly to herself." When two lovers thus understand each other, the heart feels delicious peace, supreme tranquillity. Certainty is the basis for which human feelings crave, for it is never lacking to religious sentiment ; man is always certain of being fully repaid by God. Love never believes itself secure but by this resemblance to divine love. And the raptures of that moment must have been fully felt to be understood; it is unique in life ; it can never return again, alas ! than the emotions of youth. To believe in a woman, to make her your human re- ligion, the fount of life, the secret luminary of all your least thoughts! is not this a second birth? And a young man m ingles with this love a little of the feeling he had for his mother. Rodolphe and Francesca for some time remained in perfect silence, answering each other by sympathetic glances full of thoughts. They understood each other in the midst of one of the most beautiful scenes of nature, whose glories, inter- preted by the glory in their hearts, helped to stamp on their minds the most fugitive details of that unique hour. There had not been the slightest shade of frivolity in Francesca's conduct. It was noble, large, and without any second thought. This magnanimity struck Rodolphe greatly, for in it he recog- nized the difference between the Italian and the Frenchwoman. The waters, the land, the sky, the woman, all were grandiose 332 ALBERT SAVARON. and suave, even their love in the midst of this picture, so vast in its expanse, so rich in detail, where the sternness of the snowy peaks and their hard folds standing clearly out against the blue sky reminded Rodolphe of the circumstances which limited his happiness : a lovely country shut in by snows. This delightful intoxication of soul was destined to be disturbed. A boat was approaching from Lucerne ; Gina, who had been watching it attentively, gave a joyful start, though faithful to her part as a mute. The bark came nearer; when at length Francesca could distinguish the faces on board, she exclaimed, " Tito ! " as she perceived a young man. She stood up and remained standing at the risk of being drowned. "Tito! Tito! " cried she, impulsively waving her handker- chief. Tito desired the boatmen to slacken, and the two boats pulled side by side. The Italian and Tito talked with such extreme rapidity, and in a dialect unfamiliar to a man who hardly knew even the Italian of books, that Rodolphe could neither hear nor guess the drift of this conversation. But Tito's handsome face, Francesca's familiarity, and Gina's expression of delight, ail aggrieved him. And indeed no lover can help being ill pleased at finding himself neglected for another, whoever he may be. Tito tossed a little leather bag to Gina, full of gold, no doubt, and a packet of letters to Francesca, who began to read them, with a farewell wave of the hand to Tito. "Get quickly back to Gersau," she said to the boatmen. " I will not let my poor Emilio pine ten minutes longer than he need." " What has happened? " asked Rodolphe, as he saw Fran- cesca finish reading the last letter. "Liberty ! " she exclaimed, with an artist's enthusiasm. "And money," added Gina, like an echo, for she had found her tongue. "Yes," said Francesca, "no more poverty! For more ALBERT S AVAR ON. 333 than eleven months have I been working, and I was beginning to be tired of it. I am certainly not a literary woman." " Who is this Tito? " asked Rodolphe. "The secretary of state to the financial department of the humble shop of the Colonnas, in other words the son of our ragionato. Poor boy ! he could not come by the Saint-Goth- ard, nor by the Mont-Cenis, nor by the Simplon ; he came by sea, by Marseilles, and had to cross France. Well, in three weeks w shall be in Geneva, and living at our ease. Come, Rodolphe," she added, seeing sadness overspread the Paris- ian's face, " is not the Lake of Geneva quite as good as the Lake of Lucerne?" "But allow me to bestow a regret on the Bergmanns 1 de- lightful house," said Rodolphe, pointing to the little pro- montory. " Come and dine with us to add to your associations, povero nn'0," said she. "This is a great day; we are out of danger. My mother writes that within a year there will be an amnesty. Oh ! la cara patria > ' ' These three words made Gina weep. "Another winter here," said she, "and I should have been dead ! " " Poor little Sicilian kid ! " said Francesca, stroking Gina's head with an expression and an affection which made Ro- dolphe long to be so caressed, even if it were without love. The boat grounded ; Rodolphe sprang on to the sand, offered his hand to the Italian lady, escorted her to the door of the Bergmanns' house, and went to dress and return as soon as possible. When he joined the bookseller and his wife, who were sit- ting on the balcony, Rodolphe could scarcely repress an ex- clamation of surprise at seeing the prodigious change which the good news had produced in the old man. He now saw a man of about sixty, extremely well preserved, a lean Italian, as straight as an I, with hair still black though thin and show- ing a white skull, with bright eyes, a full set of white teeth, a 334 ALBERT S AVAR ON. face like Caesar, and on his diplomatic lips a sardonic smile, the almost false smile under which a man of good breeding hides his real feelings. " Here is my husband under his natural form," said Fran- cesca gravely. "He is quite a new acquaintance," replied Rodolphe, be- wildered. "Quite," said the bookseller; "I have played many a part, and know well how to make up. Ah ! I played one in Paris under the Empire, with Bourrienne, Madame Murat, Madame d'Abrantis e tutte, quanti. Everything we take the trouble to learn in our youth, even the most futile, is of use. If my wife had not received a man's education an unheard-of thing in Italy I should have been obliged to chop wood to get my living here. Povera Francesca ! who would have told me that she would some day maintain me ! " As he listened to this worthy bookseller, so easy, so affable, so hale, Rodolphe scented some mystification, and preserved the watchful silence of a man who has been duped. " Che avete, signer?" Francesca asked with simplicity. " Does our happiness sadden you? " "Your husband is a young man," he whispered in her ear. She broke into such a frank, infectious laugh that Rodolphe was still more puzzled. "He is but sixty-five, at your service," said she; "but I can assure you that even that is something to be thankful for!" " I do not like to hear you jest about an affection so sacred as this, of which you yourself prescribed the conditions." " Zitto /" said she, stamping her foot, and looking whether her husband were listening. " Never disturb the peace of mind of that dear man, as simple as a child, and with whom I can do what I please. He is under my protection," she added. " If you could know with what generosity he risked his life and fortune because I was a Liberal ! for he does not ALBERT S AVAR ON. 335 share my political opinions. Is not that love, Monsieur Frenchman ? But they are like that in his family. Emilio's younger brother was deserted for a handsome youth by the woman he loved. He thrust his sword through his own heart ten minutes after he had said to his servant, ' I could of course kill my rival, but it would grieve the Diva too deeply.' ' This mixture of dignity and banter, of haughtiness and playfulness, made Francesca at this moment the most fascina- ting creature in the world. The dinner and the evening were full of cheerfulness, justified, indeed, by the relief of the two refugees, but depressing to Rodolphe. " Can she be fickle ? " he asked himself as he returned to the Stopfers' house. " She sympathized in my sorrow, and I cannot take part in her joy ! " He blamed himself, justifying this girl-wife. " She has no taint of hypocrisy, and is carried away by impulse," thought he, " and I want her to be like a Parisian woman." Next day and the following days in fact, for twenty days after Rodolphe spent all his time at the Bergmanns', watch- ing Francesca without having determined to watch her. In some souls admiration is not independent of a certain pene- tration. The young Frenchman discerned in Francesca the imprudence of girlhood, the true nature of a woman as yet unbroken, sometimes struggling against her love, and at other moments yielding and carried away by it. The old man cer- tainly behaved to her as a father to his daughter, and Fran- cesca treated him with a deeply felt gratitude which roused her instinctive nobleness. The situation and the woman were to Rodolphe an impenetrable enigma, of which the solu- tion attracted him more and more. These last days were full of secret joys, alternating with melancholy moods, with tiffs and quarrels even more delight- ful than the hours when Rodolphe and Francesca were of one 336 ALBERT S AVAR ON. mind. And he was more and more fascinated by this tender- ness apart from wit, always and in all things the same, an affection that was jealous of mere nothings already ! "You care very much for luxury? " said he one evening to Francesca, who was expressing her wish to get away from Gersau, where she missed many things. "I ! " cried she. " I love luxury as I love the arts, as I love a picture by Raphael, a fine horse, a beautiful day, or the Bay of Naples. Emilio," she went on, " have I ever com- plained here during our days of privation ? " "You would not have been yourself if you had," replied the old man gravely. " After all, is it not in the nature of plain folks to aspire to grandeur?" she asked, with a mischievous glance at Ro- dolphe and at her husband. "Were my feet made for fatigue?" she added, putting out two pretty little feet. " My hands " and she held one out to Rodolphe "were those hands made to work? Leave us," she said to her hus- band ; "I want to speak to him." The old man went into, the drawing-room with sublime good faith ; he was sure of his wife. " I will not have you come with us to Geneva," she said to Rodolphe. " It is a gossiping town. Though I am far above the nonsense the world talks, I do not choose to be calumniated, not for my own sake, but for his. I make it my pride to be the glory of that old man, who is, after all, my only protector. We are leaving ; stay here a few days. When you come on to Geneva, call first on my husband, and let him introduce you to me. Let us hide our great and unchangeable affection from the eyes of the world. I love you ; you know it ; but this is how I will prove it to you you shall never discern in my conduct anything whatever that may arouse your jealousy." She drew him into a corner of the balcony, kissed him on the forehead, and fled, leaving him in amazement. ALBERT SAVARON. 337 Next day Rodolphe heard that the lodgers at the Berg- manns' had left at daybreak. It then seemed to him intoler- able to remain at Gersau, and he set out for Vcvay by the longest route, starting sooner than was necessary. Attracted to the waters of the lake where the beautiful Italian awaited him, he reached Geneva by the end of October. To avoid the discomforts of the town he took rooms in a house at Eaux-Vives, outside the walls. As soon as he was settled, his first care was to ask his landlord, a retired jeweler, whether some Italian refugees from Milan had not lately come to reside at Geneva. "Not so far as I know," replied the man. "Prince and Princess Colonna of Rome have taken Monsieur Jeanrenaud's place for three years ; it is one of the finest on the lake. It is situated between the Villa Diodati and that of Monsieur Lafin-de-Dieu, let to the Vicomtesse de Beauseant. Prince Colonna has come to see his daughter and his son-in-law, Prince Gandolphini, a Neapolitan, or if you like, a Sicilian, an old adherent of King Murat's, and a victim of the last revolution. These are the last arrivals at Geneva, and they are not Milanese. Serious steps had to be taken, and the pope's interest in the Colonna family was invoked, to obtain permission from the foreign powers and the King of Naples for the Prince and Princesse Gandolphini to live here. Ge- neva is anxious to do nothing to displease the Holy Alliance to which it owes its independence. Our part is not to ruffle for- eign courts : there are many foreigners here, Russians and English." " Even some Genevese? " "Yes, monsieur, our lake is so fine ! Lord Byron lived here about seven years at the Villa Diodati, which every one goes to see now, like Coppet and Ferney." "Yon cannot tell me whether within a week or so a book- seller from Milan has come with his wife named Lamporani, one of the leaders of the last revolution? " 22 338 ALBERT SAVARON. " I could easily find out by going to the Foreigners' Club," said the jeweler. Rodolphe's first walk was very naturally to the Villa Dio- dati, the residence of Lord Byron, whose recent death added to its attractiveness: for is not death the consecration of genius ? The road to Eaux-Vives follows the shore of the lake, and, like all the roads in Switzerland, is very narrow ; in some spots, in consequence of the configuration of the hilly ground, there is scarcely space for two carriages to pass each other. At a few yards from the Jeanrenauds' house, which he was approaching without knowing it, Rodolphe heard the sound of a carriage behind him, and, finding himself in a sunken road, he climbed to the top of a rock to leave the road free. Of course he looked at the approaching carriage an elegant English phaeton, with a splendid pair of English horses. He felt quite dizzy as he beheld in this carriage Francesca, beau- tifully dressed, by the side of an old lady as hard as a cameo. A servant blazing with gold lace stood behind. Francesca recognized Rodolphe, and smiled at seeing him like a statue on a pedestal. The carriage, which the lover followed with his eyes as he climbed the hill, turned in at the gate of a country house, towards which he ran. "Who lives here? " he asked of the gardener. " Prince and Princess Colonna, and Prince and Princess Gandolphini." " Have they not just driven in ? " "Yes, sir." In that instant a veil fell from Rodolphe's eyes ; he saw clearly the meaning of the past. "If only this is her last piece of trickery ! " thought the thunder-stricken lover to himself. He trembled lest he should have been the plaything of a whim, for he had heard what a capriccio might mean in an ALBERT SAVARON. 339 Italian. But what a crime had he committed in the eyes of a woman in accepting a born princess as a citizen's wife ! in believing that a daughter of one of the most illustrious houses of the middle ages was the wife of a bookseller ! The con- sciousness of his blunders increased Rodolphe's desire to know whether he would be ignored and repelled. He asked for Prince Gandolphini, sending in his card, and was imme- diately received by the false Lamporani, who came forward to meet him, welcomed him with the best possible grace, and took him to walk on a terrace whence there was a view of Geneva, the Jura, the hills covered with villas, and below them a wide expanse of the lake. " My wife is faithful to the lakes, you see," he remarked, after pointing out the details to his visitor. " We have a sort of concert this evening," he added, as they returned to the splendid Villa Jeanrenaud. " I hope you will do me and the Princess the pleasure of seeing you. Two months of poverty endured in intimacy are equal to years of friendship." Though he was consumed by curiosity, Rodolphe dared not ask to see the Princess ; he slowly made his way back to Eaux-Vives, looking forward to the evening. In a few hours his passion, great as it had already been, was augmented by his anxiety and by suspense as to future events. He now understood the necessity for making himself famous, that he might some day find himself, socially speaking, on a level with his idol. In his eyes Francesca was made really great by the simplicity and ease of her conduct at Gersau. Princess Colonna's haughtiness, so evidently natural to her, alarmed Rodolphe, who would find enemies in Francesca's father and mother at least, so he might expect ; and the secrecy which Princess Gandolphini had so strictly enjoined on him now struck him as a wonderful proof of affection. By not choos- ing to compromise the future, had she not confessed that she loved him ? At last nine o'clock struck ; Rodolphe could get into a car- 840 ALBERT SAVARON. riage and say with an emotion that is very intelligible, " To the Villa Jeanrenaud to Prince Gandolphini's." At last he saw Francesca, but without being seen by her. The Princess was standing quite near the piano. Her beauti- ful hair, so thick and long, was bound with a golden fillet. Her face, in the light of wax-candles, had the brilliant pallor peculiar to Italians, and which looks its best only by artificial light. She was in full evening dress, showing her fascinating shoulders, the figure of a girl and the arms of an antique statue. Her sublime beauty was beyond all possible rivalry, though there were some charming English and Russian ladies present, the prettiest women of Geneva, and other Italians, among them the dazzling and illustrious Princess Varese, and the famous singer Tinti, who was at that moment engaged in singing. Rodolphe, leaning against the door-post, looked at the Princess, turning on her the fixed, tenacious, attracting gaze, charged with the full, insistent will which is concentrated in the feeling called desire, and thus assumes the nature of a vehement command. Did the flame of that gaze reach Fran- cesca ? Was Francesca expecting each instant to see Rodolphe ? In a few minutes she stole a glance at the door, as though magnetized by this current of love, and her eyes, without reserve, looked deep into Rodolphe's. A slight thrill quiv- ered through that superb face and beautiful body; the shock to her spirit reacted : Francesca blushed ! Rodolphe felt a whole life in this exchange of looks, so swift that it can only be compared to a lightning flash. But to what could his hap- piness compare ? He was loved. The lofty Princess, in the midst of her world, in this handsome villa, kept the pledge given by the disguised exile, the capricious beauty of Berg- manns' lodgings. The intoxication of such a moment enslaves a man for life ! A faint smile, refined and subtle, candid and triumphant, curled Princess Gandolphini's lips, and at a moment when she did not feel herself observed she looked at ALBERT SAVARON. 341 Rodolphe with an expression which seemed to ask his pardon for having deceived him as to her rank. When the song was ended Rodolphe could make his way to the Prince, who graciously led him to his wife. Rodolphe went through the ceremonial of a formal introduction to Princess and Prince Colonna, and to Francesca. When this was over, the Princess had to take part in the famous quartette, Mi manca la voce, which was sung by her with Tinti, with the famous tenor Genovese, and with a well-known Italian prince then in exile, whose voice, if he had not been a prince, would have made him one of the princes of art. "Take that seat," said Francesca to Rodolphe, pointing to her own chair. "Oimef I think there is some mistake in my name ; I have for the last minute been Princess Ro- dolphini." It was said with an artless grace which revived, in this avowal hidden beneath a jest, the happy days at Gersau. Rodolphe reveled in the exquisite sensation of listening to the voice of the woman he adored, while sitting so close to her that one cheek was almost touched by the stuff of her dress and the gauze of her scarf. But when, at such a moment, Mi manca la voce is being sung, and by the finest voices in Italy, it is easy to understand what it was that brought the tears to Rodolphe' s eyes. In love, as perhaps in all else, there are certain circum- stances, trivial in themselves, but the outcome of a thousand little previous incidents, of which the importance is immense, as an epitome of the past and as a link with the future. A hundred times already we have felt the preciousness of the one we love ; but a trifle the perfect touch of two souls united during a walk perhaps by a single word, by some unlooked-for proof of affection will carry the feeling to its supremest pitch. In short, to express this truth by an image which has been pre-eminently successful from the earliest ages of the world, there are in a long chain points of attachment 342 ALBERT S AVAR ON. needed where the cohesion is stronger than in the intermediate loops of rings. This recognition between Rodolphe and Francesca, at this party, in the face of the world, was one of those intense moments which join the future to the past, and rivet a real attachment more deeply in the heart. It was perhaps of these incidental rivets that Bossuet spoke when he compared to them the rarity of happy moments in our lives he who had such a living and secret experience of love. Next to the pleasure of admiring the woman we love comes that of seeing her admired by every one else. Rodolphe was enjoying both at once. Love is a treasury of memories, and though Rodolphe' s was already full, he added to it pearls of great price ; smiles shed aside for him alone, stolen glances, tones in her singing which Francesca addressed to him alone, but which made Tinti pale with jealousy, they were so much applauded. All his strength of desire, the special expression of his soul, was thrown over the beautiful Roman, who became unchangeably the beginning and the end of all his thoughts and actions. Rodolphe loved as every woman may dream of being loved, with a force, a constancy, a tenacity, which made Francesca the very substance of his heart ; he felt her mingling with his blood as purer blood, with his soul as a more perfect soul ; she would henceforth underlie the least efforts of his life as the golden sand of the Mediterranean lies beneath the waves. In short, Rodolphe's lightest aspiration was now a living hope. At the end of a few days, Francesca understood this bound- less love ; but it was so natural, and so perfectly shared by her, that it did not surprise her. She was worthy of it. "What is there that is strange? " said she to Rodolphe, as they walked on the garden terrace, when he had been betrayed into one of those outbursts of conceit which come so natur- ally to Frenchmen in the expression of their feelings "what is extraordinary in the fact of your loving a young and beau- tiful woman, artist enough to be able to earn her living like ALBERT SAVARON. 343 Tinti, and of giving you some of the pleasures of vanity ? What lout but would then become an Amadis? This is not in question between you and me. What is needed is that we both love faithfully, persistently; at a distance from each other for years, with no satisfaction but that of knowing that we are loved." " Alas ! " said Rodolphe, " will you not consider my fidelity as devoid of all merit when you see me absorbed in the efforts of devouring ambition ? Do you imagine that I can wish to see you one day exchange the fine name of Gandolphini for that of a man who is a nobody ? I want to become one of the most remarkable men of my country, to be rich, great that you may be as proud of my name as of your own name of Colonna." " I should be grieved to see you without such sentiments in your heart," she replied, with a bewitching smile. "But do not wear yourself out too soon in your ambitious labors. Remain young. They say that politics soon make a man old." One of the rarest gifts in women is a certain gaiety which does not detract from tenderness. This combination of deep feeling with the lightness of youth added an enchanting grace at this moment to Francesca's charms. This is the key to her character ; she laughs and she is touched ; she becomes enthu- siastic, and returns to arch raillery with a readiness, a facility, which make her the charming and exquisite creature she is, and for which her reputation is known outside Italy. Under the graces of a woman she conceals vast learning, thanks to the excessively monotonous and almost monastic life she led in the castle of the old Colonnas. This rich heiress was at first intended for the cloister, being the fourth child of Prince and Princess Colonna ; but the death of her two brothers, and of her elder sister, suddenly brought her out of her retirement, and made her one of the most brilliant matches in the papal states. Her elder sister had been betrothed to Prince Gandolphini, one of the richest 344 A LBER T SA VAR ON. landowners in Sicily ; and Francesca was married to him instead, so that nothing might be changed in the position of the family. The Colonnas and Gandolphinis had always intermarried. From the age of nine till she was sixteen, Francesca, under the direction of a cardinal of the family, had read all through the library of the Colonnas, to make weight against her ardent imagination by studying science, art, and letters. But in these studies she acquired the taste for independence and liberal ideas, which threw her, with her husband, into the ranks of the revolution. Rodolphe had not yet learned that, besides five living languages, Francesca knew Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. The charming creature perfectly understood that, for a woman, the first condition of being learned is to keep it deeply hidden. Rodolphe spent the whole winter at Geneva. This winter passed like a day. When spring returned, notwithstanding the infinite delights of the society of a clever woman, wonderfully well informed, young and lovely, the lover went through cruel sufferings, endured indeed with courage, but which were sometimes legible in his countenance, and be- trayed themselves in his manners or speech, perhaps because he believed that Francesca shared them. Now and again it annoyed him to admire her calmness. Like an English- woman, she seemed to pride herself on expressing nothing in her face ; its serenity defied love ; he longed to see her agitated ; he accused her of having no feeling, for he believed in the tradition which ascribes to Italian women a feverish excitability. "I am a Roman! " Francesca gravely replied one day when she took quite seriously some banter on this subject from Rodolphe. There was a depth of tone in her reply which gave it the appearance of scathing irony, and which set Rodolphe's pulses throbbing. The month of May spread before them the ALBERT SA VARON. 345 treasures of her fresh verdure ; the sun was sometimes as powerful as at midsummer. The two lovers happened to be at a part of the terrace where the rock rises abruptly from the lake, and where leaning over the stone parapet that crowns the wall above a flight of steps leading down to a landing-stage. From the neighboring villa, where there is a similar stairway, a boat presently shot out like a swan, its flag flaming, its crimson awning spread over a lovely woman com- fortably reclining on red cushions, her hair wreathed with real flowers ; the boatman was a young man dressed like a sailor, and rowing with all the more grace because he was under the lady's eye. "They are happy ! " exclaimed Rodolphe, with bitter em- phasis. " Claire de Bourgogne, the last survivor of the only house which could ever vie with the royal family of France " " Oh ! of a bastard branch, and that a female line." "At any rate, she is Vicomtesse de Beauseant; and she did not " " Did not hesitate, you would say, to bury herself here with Monsieur Gaston de Nueil," replied the daughter of the Colonnas. " She is only a Frenchwoman ; I am an Italian, my dear sir ! " Francesca turned away from the parapet, leaving Rodolphe, and went to the farther end of the terrace, whence there is a wide prospect of the lake. Watching her as she slowly walked away/ Rodolphe suspected that he had wounded her soul, at once so simple and so wise, so proud and so humble. It turned him cold ; he followed Francesca, who signed to him to leave her to herself. But he did not heed the warning, and detected her wiping away her tears. Tears ! in so strong a nature. " Francesca," said he, taking her hand, " is there a single regret in your heart?" She was silent, disengaged her hand which held her em- broidered handkerchief, and again dried her eyes. 346 ALBERT S AVAR ON. " Forgive me ! " he said. And with a rush, he kissed her eyes to wipe away the tears. Francesca did not seem aware of his passionate impulse, she was so violently agitated. Rodolphe, thinking she consented, grew bolder; he put his arm round her, clasped her to his. heart, and snatched a kiss. But she freed herself by a dig- nified movement of offended modesty, and, standing a yard off, she looked at him without anger, but with firm deter- mination. " Go this evening," she said. " We meet no more till we meet at Naples." The order was stern, but it was obeyed, for it was Fran- cesca's will. On his return to Paris, Rodolphe found in his rooms a por- trait of Princess Gandolphini painted by Schinner, as Schinner can paint. The artist had passed through Geneva on his way to Italy. As he had positively refused to paint the portraits of several women, Rodolphe did not believe that the Prince, anxious as he was for a portrait of his wife, would be able to conquer the great painter's objections ; but Francesca, no doubt, had bewitched him, and obtained from him which was almost a miracle an original portrait for Rodolphe, and a duplicate for Emilio. She told him this in a charming and delightful letter, in which the mind indemnified itself for the reserve required by the worship of the proprieties. The lover replied. Thus began, never to cease, a regular correspond- ence between Rodolphe and Francesca, and which was the only indulgence that they allowed themselves through the many years following. Rodolphe, possessed by an ambition sanctified by his love, set to work. First he longed to make his fortune, and risked his all in an undertaking to which he devoted all his faculties as well as his capital ; but he, an inexperienced youth, had to contend against duplicity, which won the day. Thus three ALBERT SAVARON. 347 years were lost in a vast enterprise, three years of struggling and courage. The Villele ministry fell just when Rodolphe was ruined. The valiant lover thought he would seek in politics what com- mercial industry had refused him ; but before braving the storms of this career, he went, all wounded and sick at heart, to have his bruises healed and his courage revived at Naples, where the Prince and Princess had been reinstated in their place and rights on the King's accession. This, in the midst of his warfare, was a respite full of delights ; he spent three months at the Villa Gandolphini, rocked in hope. Rodolphe then began again to construct his fortune. His talents were already known ; he was about to attain the de- sires of his ambitions ; a high position was promised him as the reward of his zeal, his devotion, and his past services, when the storm of July, 1830, broke, and again his bark was swamped. She, and God ! These are the only witnesses of the brave efforts, the daring attempts of a young man gifted with fine qualities, but to whom, so far, the protection of luck the god of fools has been denied. And this indefatigable wrestler, upheld by love, comes back to fresh struggles, lighted on his way by an always friendly eye, an ever-faithful heart. Lovers ! Pray for him ! As she finished this narrative, Mademoiselle de Watteville's cheeks were on fire ; there was a fever in her blood. She was crying but with rage. This little novel, inspired by the literary style then in fashion, was the first reading of the kind that Rosalie had ever had the chance of devouring. Love was depicted in it, if not by a master-hand, at any rate by a man who seemed to give his own impressions ; and truth, even if unskilled, could not fail to touch a virgin soul. Here lay the secret of Rosalie's terrible agitation, of her fever and her tears ; she was jealous of Francesca Colonna, 348 ALBERT S AVAR ON. She never for an instant doubted the sincerity of this poetical flight ; Albert had taken pleasure in telling the story of his passion, while changing the names of persons and per- haps of places. Rosalie was possessed by infernal curiosity. What woman but would, like her, have wanted to know her rival's name for she too loved ! As she read these pages, to her really contagious, she had said solemnly to herself, " I love him ! " She loved Albert, and felt in her heart a gnaw- ing desire to fight for him, to snatch him from this unknown rival. She reflected that she knew nothing of music, and that she was not beautiful. " He will never love me ! " thought she. This conclusion aggravated her anxiety to know whether she might not be mistaken, whether Albert really loved an Italian princess, and was loved by her. In the course of this fateful night, the power of swift decision, which had charac- terized the famous Watteville, was fully developed in his descendant. She devised those whimsical schemes, round which hovers the imagination of most young girls when, in the solitude to which some injudicious mothers confine them, they are aroused by some tremendous event which the system of repression to which they are subjected could neither foresee nor prevent. She dreamed of descending by a ladder from the kiosk into the garden of the house occupied by Albert ; of taking advantage of the lawyer being asleep to look through the window into his private room. She thought of writing to him, or of bursting the fetters of Besancon society by introducing Albert to the drawing-room of the Hotel de Rupt. This enterprise, which to the Abbe de Grancey even would have seemed the climax of the impossible, was a mere passing thought. "Ah ! " said she to herself, " my father has a dispute pend- ing as to his land at les Rouxey. I will go there ! If there is no lawsuit, I will manage to make one, and he shall come into our drawing-room ! " she cried, as she sprang out of bed ALBERT S AVAR ON. 349 and to the window to look at the fascinating gleam which shone through Albert's lights. The clock struck one ; he was still asleep. " I shall see him when he gets up ; perhaps he will come to his window." At this instant Mademoiselle de Watteville was witness to an incident which promised to place in her power the means of knowing Albert's secrets. By the light of the moon she saw a pair of arms stretched out from the kiosk to help Jerome, Albert's servant, to get across the coping of the wall and step into the little building. In Jerome's accomplice Rosalie at once recognized Mariette the lady's maid. " Mariette and Jerome ! " said she to herself. " Mariette, such an ugly girl ! Certainly they must be ashamed of them- selves." Though Mariette was horribly ugly and six-and-thirty, she had inherited several plots of land. She had been seventeen years with Madame de Watteville, who valued her highly for her bigotry, her honesty, and long service, and she had no doubt saved money and invested her wages and perquisites. Hence, earning about ten louis a year, she probably had by this time, including compound interest and her little inherit- ance, not less than ten thousand francs. In Jerome's eyes ten thousand francs could alter the laws of optics ; he saw in Mariette a neat figure ; he did not perceive the pits and seams which virulent smallpox had left on her flat, parched face ; to him the crooked mouth was straight ; and ever since Savaron, by taking him into his service, had brought him so near to the Wattevilles' house, he had laid siege systematically to the maid, who was as prim and sancti- monious as her mistress, and who, like every ugly old maid, was far more exacting than the handsomest. If the night-scene in the kiosk is thus fully accounted for to all perspicacious readers, it was not so to Rosalie, though she derived from it the most dangerous lesson that can be given. 350 ALBERT SAVARON. that of a bad example. A mother brings her daughter up strictly, keeps her under her wing for seventeen years, and then, in one hour, a servant-girl destroys the long and painful work, sometimes by a word, often indeed by a gesture ! Rosalie got into bed again, not without considering how she might take advantage of her discovery. Next morning, as she went to mass accompanied by Mariette her mother was not well Rosalie took the maid's arm, which surprised the country wench not a little. "Mariette," said she, "is Jerome in his master's confi- dence?" "I do not know, mademoiselle." "Do not play the innocent with me," said Mademoiselle de Watteville drily. " You let him kiss you last night under the kiosk ; I no longer wonder that you so warmly approved of my mother's ideas for the improvements she planned." Rosalie could feel how Mariette was trembling by the shak- ing of her arm. "I wish you no ill," Rosalie went on. "Be quite easy; I shall not say a word to my mother, and you can meet Jerome as often as you please." "But, mademoiselle," replied Mariette, "it is perfectly respectable; Jerdme honestly means to marry me " " But then," said Rosalie, " why meet at night ? " Mariette was completely dumfounded, and could make no reply. " Listen, Mariette ; I am in love too ! In secret and with- out any return. I am, after all, my father's and mother's only child. You have more to hope for from me than from any one else in the world " " Certainly, mademoiselle, and you may count on us for life or death," exclaimed Mariette, rejoiced at the unexpected turn of affairs. "In the first place, silence for silence," said Rosalie. "I will not marry Monsieur de Soulas; but one thing I will have s ALBERT S AVAR ON. 351 and must have ; my help and favor are yours on one condition only." "What is that?" " I must see the letters which Monsieur Savaron sends to the post by Jerome." " But what for? " said Mariette in alarm. "Oh! merely to read them, and you yourself shall post them afterwards. It will cause a little delay; that is all." At this moment they went into church, and each of them, instead of reading the order of mass, fell into her own train of thought. " Dear, dear, how many sins are there in all that ? " thought Mariette. Rosalie, whose soul, brain, and heart were completely upset by reading the story, by this time regarded it as history, written for her rival. By dint of thinking of noth- ing else, like a child, she ended by believing that the Eastern Review was no doubt forwarded to Albert's lady- love. "Oil ! " said she to herself, her head buried in her hands in the attitude of a person lost in prayer ; " Oh ! how can I get my father to look through the list of people to whom the Review is sent?" After breakfast she took a turn in the garden with her father, coaxing and cajoling him, and brought him to the kiosk. " Do you suppose, my dear little papa, that our Review is ever read abroad ? ' ' " It is but just started " " Well, I will wager that it is." "It is hardly possible." " Just go and find out, and note the names of any sub- scribers out of France." Two hours later Monsieur de Watteville said to his daughter 352 ALBERT SA VARON. "I was right; there is not one foreign subscriber as yet. They hope to get some at Neufchatel, at Berne, and at Geneva. One copy is, in fact, sent to Italy, but it is not paid for to a Milanese lady at her country house at Bel- girate, on Lago Maggiore." " What is her name? " " The Duchesse d'Argaiolo." " Do you know her, papa ? " " I have heard about her. She was by birth a Princess Soderini, a Florentine, a very great lady, and quite as rich as her husband, who has one of the largest fortunes in Lom- bardy. Their villa on the Lago Maggiore is one of the sights of Italy." Two days after, Mariette placed the following letter in Mademoiselle de Watteville's hands : Albert Savaron to Leopold Hannequin. "Yes, 'tis so, my dear friend; I am at Besancon, while you thought I was traveling. I would not tell you anything till success should begin, and now it is dawning. Yes, my dear Leopold, after so many abortive undertakings, over which I have shed the best of my blood, have wasted so many efforts, spent so much courage, I have made up my mind to do as you have done to start on a beaten path, on the high- road, as the longest but the safest. I can see you jump with surprise in your lawyer's chair ! "But do not suppose that anything is changed in my per- sonal life, of which you alone in the world know the secret, and that under the reservations she insists on. I did not tell you, my friend; but I was horribly weary of Paris. The outcome of the first enterprise, on which I had founded all my hopes, and which came to a bad end in consequence of the utter rascality of my two partners, who combined to cheat and fleece me me, though everything was done by my energy ALBERT S AVAR ON. 353 made me give up the pursuit of a fortune after the loss of three years of my life. One of these years was spent in the law courts, and perhaps I should have come worse out of the scrape if I had not been made to study law when I was twenty. " I made up my mind to go into politics solely, to the end that I may some day find my name in a list for promo- tion to the Senate under the title of Comte Albert Savaron de Savarus, and so revive in France a good name now extinct in Belgium though indeed I am neither legitimate nor legit- imized." "Ah! I knew it! He is of noble birth!" exclaimed Rosalie, dropping the letter. " You know how conscientiously I studied, how faithful and useful I was as an obscure journalist, and how excellent a secretary to the statesman who, on his part, was true to me in 1829. Flung to the depths once more by the revolution of July, just when my name was becoming known, at the very moment when, as master of appeals, I was about to find my place as a necessary wheel in the political machine, I com- mitted the blunder of remaining faithful to the fallen, and fighting for them, without them. Oh ! why was I but three- and-thirty, and why did I not apply to you to make me eligible? I concealed from you all my devotedness and my dangers. What would you have ? I was full of faith. We should not have agreed. " Ten months ago, when you saw me so gay and contented, writing my political articles, I was in despair ; I foresaw my fate, at the age of thirty-seven, with two thousand francs for my whole fortune, without the smallest fame, just having, failed in a noble undertaking, the founding, namely, of a daily paper, answering only to a need of the future instead of appealing to the passions of the moment. I did not know which way to turn, and I felt my own value ! I wandered about, gloomy and hurt, through the lonely places of Paris 23 354 ALBERT SAVARON. Paris which had slipped through my fingers thinking of my crushed ambitions, but never giving them up. Oh, what frantic letters I wrote at that time to her, my second con- science, my other self! Sometimes, I would say to myself, ' Why did I sketch so vast a programme of life ? Why demand everything ? Why not wait for happiness while devoting myself to some mechanical employment.' "I then looked about me for some modest appointment by which I might live. I was about to get the editorship of a paper under a manager who did not know much about it, a man of wealth and ambition, when I took fright. ' Would she ever accept as her husband a man who had stooped so low ? ' I wondered. " This reflection made me two-and-twenty again. But, oh, my dear Leopold, how the soul is worn by these perplexities ! What must not caged eagles suffer, and imprisoned lions ! They suffer what Napoleon suffered, not at Saint Helena, but on the Quay of the Tuileries, on the loth of August, when he saw Louis XVI. defending himself so badly while he could have quelled the insurrection ; as he actually did, on the same spot, a little later, in Vendemiaire. Well, my life has been a torment of that kind, extending over four years. How many a speech to the Chamber have I not delivered in the deserted alleys of the Bois de Boulogne ! These wasted harangues have at any rate sharpened my tongue and accus- tomed my mind to formulate its ideas in words. And while I was undergoing this secret torture, you were getting married, you had paid for your business, you were made law-clerk to the mayor of your district, after gaining the cross for a wound at Saint-Merri. " Now, listen. When I was a small boy and tortured cock- chafers, the poor insects had one form of struggle which used almost to put me in a fever. It was when I saw them making repeated efforts to fly but without getting away, though they could spread their wings. We used to say, ' They are mark- ALBERT SAVARON. 365 ing time.' Now, was this sympathy ? Was it a vision of my own future ? Oh ! to spread my wings and yet be unable to fly ! That has been my predicament since that fine under- taking by which I was disgusted, but which has now made four families rich. " At last, seven months ago, I determined to make myself a name at the Paris bar, seeing how many vacancies had been left by the promotion of several lawyers to eminent positions. But when I remembered the rivalry I had seen among men of the press, and how difficult it is to achieve anything of any kind in Paris, the arena where so many champions meet, I came to a determination painful to myself, but certain in its results, and perhaps quicker than any other. In the course of our conversations you had given me a picture of the society of Besancon, of the impossibility for a stranger to get on there, to produce the smallest effect, to get into society, or to succeed in any way whatever. It was there that I determined to set up my flag, thinking, and rightly, that I should meet with no opposition, but find myself alone to canvass for the election. The people of the Comte will not meet the out- sider ? The outsider will not meet them ! They refuse to admit him to their drawing-rooms, he will never go there ! He never shows himself anywhere, not even in the streets ! But there is one class that elects the deputies the commercial class. I am going especially to study commercial questions, with which I am already familiar ; I will gain their lawsuits, I will effect compromises, I will be the greatest pleader in Besancon. By-and-by I will start a Review, in which I will defend the interests of the country, will create them, or pre- serve them, or resuscitate them. When I shall have won a sufficient number of votes, my name will come out of the urn. For a long time the unknown barrister will be treated with contempt, but some circumstance will arise to bring him to the front some unpaid defense, or a case which no other pleader will undertake. 356 ALBERT SAVARON. " Well, my dear Leopold, I packed up my books in eleven cases, I bought such law-books as might prove useful, and I sent everything off, furniture and all, by carrier to Besanc.on. I collected my diplomas, and I went to bid you good-bye. The mail-coach dropped me at Besanc,on, where, in three days' time, I chose a little set of rooms looking out over some gardens. I sumptuously arranged the mysterious private room where I spend my nights and days, and where the portrait of my divinity reigns of her to whom my life is dedicated, who fills it wholly, who is the mainspring of my efforts, the secret of my courage, the cause of my talents. Then, as soon as the furniture and books had come, I engaged an intelligent man- servant, and there I sat for five months like a hibernating marmot. " My name had, however, been entered on the list of law- yers in the town. At last I was called one day to defend an unhappy wretch at the assizes, no doubt in order to hear me speak for once ! One of the most influential merchants of Besanc.on was on the jury ; he had a difficult task to fulfill ; I did my utmost for the man, and my success was absolute and complete. My client was innocent ; I very dramatically se- cured the arrest of the real criminals, who had come forward as witnesses. In short, the court and the public were united in their admiration. I managed to save the examining magis- trate's pride by pointing out the impossibility of detecting a plot so skillfully planned. "Then I had to fight a case for my merchant, and won his suit. The Cathedral Chapter next chose me to defend a tre- mendous action against the town, which had been going on for four years ; I won that. Thus after three trials, I had be- come the most famous advocate of Francbe-Comte. " But I bury my life in the deepest mystery, and so hide my aims. I have adopted habits which prevent my accepting any invitations. I am only to be consulted between six and eight in the morning ; I go to bed after my dinner, and work ALBERT S AVAR OK. 857 at night. The vicar-general, a man of parts, and very influen- tial, who placed the chapter's case in my hands after they had lost it in the lower court, of course professed their grati- tude. ' Monsieur,' said I, ' I will win your suit, but I want no fee ; I want more ' (start of alarm on the abbe's part). ' You must know that I am a great loser by putting myself forward in antagonism to the town. I came here only to leave the place as deputy. I mean to engage only in com- mercial cases, because commercial men return the members j they will distrust me if I defend "the priests" for to them you are simply the priests. If I undertake your defense, it is because I was, in 1828, private secretary to such a minister ' (again a start of surprise on the part of my abbe), ' and mas- ter of appeals, under the name of Albert de Savarus ' (an- other start). ' I have remained faithful to monarchical opin- ions ; but, as you have not the majority of votes in Besangon, I must gain votes among the citizens. So the fee I ask of you is the votes you may be able secretly to secure for me at the opportune moment. Let us each keep our own counsel, and I will defend, for nothing, every case to which a priest of this diocese may be a party. Not a word about my previous life, and we will be true to each other.' "When he came to thank me afterwards, he gave me a note. for five hundred francs, and said in my ear, 'The votes are a bargain all the same.' I have in the course of five interviews made a friend, I think, of this vicar-general. " Now I am overwhelmed with business, and I understand no cases but those brought me by merchants, saying that com- mercial questions are my specialty. This line of conduct attaches business men to me, and allows me to make friends with influential persons. So all goes well. Within a few months I shall have found a house to purchase in Besan^on, so as to secure a qualification. I count on your lending me the necessary capital for this investment. If I should die, if I should fail, the loss would be too small to be any considera- 368 ALBERT S AVAR ON. tion between you and me. You will get the interest out of the rental, and I shall take good care to lookout for some- thing cheap, so that you may lose nothing by this mortgage, which is indispensable. " Oh ! my dear Leopold, no gambler with the last remains of his fortune in his pocket, bent on staking it at the Cercle des Etrangers for the last time one night, when he must come away rich or ruined, ever felt such a perpetual ringing in his ears, such a nervous moisture on his palms, such a fevered tumult in his brain, such inward qualms in his body as I go through every day now that I am playing my last card in the game of ambition. Alas ! my dear and only friend, for nearly ten years now have 1 been struggling. This battle with men and things, in which I have unceasingly poured out my strength and energy, and so constantly worn the springs of desire, has, so to speak, undermined my vitality. With all the appearance 'of a strong man of good health, I feel myself a wreck. Every day carries with it a shred of my in- most life. At every fresh effort I feel that I should never be able to begin again. I have no power, no vigor left but for happiness ; and if it should never come to crown my head with roses, the me that is really me would cease to exist, I should be a ruined thing. I should wish for nothing more in the world. I should want to cease from living. You know that power and fame, the vast moral empire that I crave, is but secondary ; it is to me only a means to happiness, the pedestal for my idol. " To reach the goal and die, like the runner of antiquity ! To see fortune and death stand on the threshold hand in hand ! To win the beloved woman just when love is extinct ! To lose the faculty of enjoyment after earning the right to be happy ! Of how many men has this been the fate ! " But there surely is a moment when Tantalus rebels, crosses his arms, and defies hell, throwing up his part of the eternal dupe. That is what I shall come to if anything should thwart ALBERT SAVARON. 359 my plan ; if, after stooping to the dust of provincial life, prowl- ing like a starving tiger round these tradesmen, these electors, to secure their votes ; if, after wrangling in these squalid cases, and giving them my time the time I might have spent on Lago Maggiore, seeing the waters she sees, basking in her gaze, hearing her voice if, after all, I failed to scale the tribune and conquer the glory that should surround the name that is to succeed to that of Argaiolo ! Nay, more than this, Leopold ; there are days when I feel a heavy languor ; deep disgust surges up from the depths of my soul, especially when, abandoned to long day-dreams, I have lost myself in anticipa- tion of the joys of blissful love ! May it not be that our de- sire has only a certain modicum of power, and that it perishes, perhaps, of a too lavish effusion of its essence? For, after all, at this present, my life is fair, illuminated by faith, work, and love. "Farewell, my friend; I send love to your children, and beg you to remember me to your excellent wife. Yours, "ALBERT." Rosalie read this letter twice through, and its general purport was stamped on her heart. She suddenly saw the whole of Albert's previous existence, for her quick intelligence threw light on all the details, and enabled her to take it all in. By adding this information to the little novel published in the Review, she now fully understood Albert. Of course, she exaggerated the greatness, remarkable as it was, of this lofty soul and potent will, and her love for Albert thenceforth became a passion, its violence enhanced by all the strength of her youth, the weariness of her solitude, and the unspent energy of her character. Love is in a young girl the effect of a natural law ; but when her craving for affection is centred in an exceptional man, it is mingled with the enthusiasm which overflows in a youthful heart. Thus Mademoiselle de Watteville had in a few days reached a morbid and very 360 ALBERT S AVAR ON. dangerous stage of enamored infatuation. The Baroness was much pleased with her daughter, who, being under the spell of her absorbing thoughts, never resisted her will, seemed to be devoted to feminine occupations, and realized her mother's ideal of a docile daughter. The lawyer was now engaged in court two or three times a week. Though he was overwhelmed with business he found time to attend the trials, call on litigious merchants, and conduct the Review; keeping up his personal mystery, from the conviction that the more covert and hidden was his influence, the more real it would be. But he neglected no means of success, reading up the list of electors of Besancon, and finding out their interests, their characters, their various friendships and antipathies. Did ever a cardinal hoping to be made pope give himself more trouble ? One evening Mariette, on coming to dress Rosalie for an evening party, handed to her, not without many groans over this treachery, a letter of which the address made Mademoiselle de Watteville shiver and redden and turn pale again as she read the address : To Madame la Duchess e (f Argaiolo (n&e Princesse Soderini), At Belgirate, Lago Maggiore, Italy. In her eyes this direction blazed as the words Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, did in the eyes of Belshazzar. After concealing the letter, Rosalie went downstairs to accompany her mother to Madame de Chavoncourt's ; and as long as the endless evening lasted, she was tormented by remorse and scruples. She had already felt shame at having violated the secrecy of Albert's letter to Leopold ; she had several times asked her- self whether, if he knew of her crime, infamous inasmuch as- it necessarily goes unpunished, the high-minded Albert could ALBERT S AVAR ON. 361 esteem her. Her conscience answered an uncompromising "No." She had expiated her sin by self-imposed penances ; she fasted ; she mortified herself by remaining on her knees, her arms outstretched for hours, and repeating prayers all the time. She had compelled Mariette to similar acts of repentance ; her passion was mingled with genuine asceticism, and was all the more dangerous. " Shall I read that letter, shall I not?" she asked herself, while listening to the Chavoncourt girls. One was sixteen, the other seventeen and a half. Rosalie looked upon her two friends as mere children because they were not secretly in love. " If I read it," she finally decided, after hesitating for an hour between yes and no, " it shall, at any rate, be the last. Since I have gone so far as to see what he wrote to his friend, why should I not know what he says to her? If it is a horrible crime, is it not a proof of love ? Oh, Albert ! am I not your love?" When Rosalie was in bed she opened the letter, dated from day to day, so as to give the Duchess a faithful picture of Albert's life and feelings. " My dear Soul, all is well. To my other conquests I have just added an invaluable one : I have done a service to one of the most influential men who work the elections. Like the critics, who make other men's reputations but can never make their own, he makes deputies though he can never become one. The worthy man wanted to show his gratitude without loosen- ing his purse-strings by saying to me, ' Would you care to sit in the Chamber ? I can get you returned as deputy.' " ' If I ever made up my mind to enter on a political career,' replied I hypocritically, ' it would be to devote myself to the Comte, which I love, and where I am appre- ciated.' " 'Well,' he said, ' we will persuade you, and through you 362 ALBERT SAVAROM. we shall have weight in the Chamber, for you will distinguish yourself there.' " And so, my beloved angel, say what you will, my perse- verance will be rewarded. Ere long I shall, from the high- place of the French Tribune, come before my country, before Europe. My name will be flung to you by the hundred voices of the French press. "Yes, as you tell me, I was old when I came to Besancon, and Besancon has aged me more; but, like Sixtus V., I shall be young again the day after my election. I shall enter on my true life, my own sphere. Shall we not then stand in the same line ? Count Savaron de Savarus, ambassador I know not where, may surely marry a Princess Soderini, the widow of the Due d'Argaiolo ! Triumph restores the youth of men who have been preserved by incessant struggles. Oh, my Life ! with what gladness did I fly from my library to my private room, to tell your portrait of this progress before writing to you ! Yes, the votes I can command, those of the vicar-general, of the persons I can oblige, and of this client, make my election already sure. " 26^. " We have entered on the twelfth year since that blest evening when, by a look, the beautiful Duchess sealed the promises made by the exile Francesca. You, dear, are thirty- two, I am thirty-five; the dear Duke is seventy-seven that is to say, ten years more than yours and mine put together, and he still keeps well ! My patience is almost as great as my love, and indeed I need a few years yet to rise to the level of your name. As you see, I am in good spirits to-day, I can laugh ; that is the effect of hope. Sadness or gladness, it all comes to me through you. The hope of success always carries me back to the day following that on which I saw you for the first time, when my life became one with yours as the earth turns to the light. Qua/ pianto are these eleven years, for this is the z6th of December, the anniversary of my arrival ALBERT S AVAR ON. 363 at your villa on the Lake of Geneva. For eleven years have I been crying to you, while you shine like a star set too high for man to reach it. " -2.1th. " No, dearest, do not go to Milan ; stay at Belgirate. Milan terrifies me. I do not like that odious Milanese fashion of chatting at the Scala every evening with a dozen persons, among whom it is hard if no one says something sweet. To me solitude is like the lump of amber in whose heart an insect lives for ever in unchanging beauty. Thus the heart and soul of a woman remain pure and unaltered in the form of their first youth. Is it the Tedeschi that you regret ? 2%th. "Is your statue never to be finished? I should wish to have you in marble, in painting, in miniature, in every pos- sible form, to beguile my impatience. I still am waiting for the view of Belgirate from the south, and that of the balcony ; these are all that I now lack. I am so extremely busy that to-day I can only write you nothing but that nothing is everything. Was it not of nothing that God made the world? That nothing is a word, God's word : I love you ! "Ah! I have received your journal. Thanks for your punctuality. So you found great pleasure in seeing all the details of our first acquaintance thus set down ? Alas ! even while disguising them I was sorely afraid of offending you. We had no stories, and a Review without stories is a beauty without hair. Not being inventive by nature, and in sheer despair, I took the only poetry in my soul, the only adventure in my memory, and pitched it in the key in which it would bear telling ; nor did I ever cease to think of you while writing the only literary production that will ever come from my heart, I cannot say from my pen. Did not the trans- formation of your fierce Sormano into Gina cause you to laugh ? 364 ALBERT S AVAR ON. " You ask after my health. Well, it is better than in Paris. Though I work enormously, the peacefulness of the surround- ings has its effect on the mind. What really tries and ages me, dear angel, is the anguish of mortified vanity, the per- petual friction of Paris life, the struggle of rival ambitions. This peace is a balm. " If you could imagine the pleasure your letter gives me ! the long, kind letter in which you tell me the most trivial incidents of your life. No ! you women can never know to what a degree a true lover is interested in these trifles. It was an immense pleasure to see the pattern of your new dress. Can it be a matter of indifference to me to know what you wear ? If your lofty brow is knit ? If our writers amuse you ? If Canalis' songs delight you? I read the books you read. Even to your boating on the lake; every incident touched me. Your letter is as lovely, as sweet as your soul ! Oh ! flower of heaven, perpetually adored, could I have lived without those dear letters, which for eleven years have upheld me in my difficult path like a light, like a perfume, like a steady chant, like some divine nourishment, like everything which can soothe and comfort life. " Do not fail me ! If you knew what anxiety I suffer the day before they are due, or the pain a day's delay can give me! Is she ill? Is he? I am midway between hell and paradise. " O mia cara diva, keep up your music, exercise your voice, practice. I am enchanted with the -coincidence of employ- ments and hours by which, though separated by the Alps, we live by precisely the same rule. The thought charms me and gives me courage. The first time I undertook to plead here I forgot to tell you this I fancied that you were listening to me, and I suddenly felt the flash of inspiration which lifts the poet above mankind. If I am returned to the Chamber oh ! you must come to Paris to be present at my first appearance there ! ALBERT SAVARON. 365 " 3oM, Evening, " Good heavens, how I love you ! Alas ! I have in- trusted too much to my love and my hopes. An accident which should sink that overloaded bark would end my life ! For three years now I have not seen you, and at the thought of going to Belgirate my heart beats so wildly that I am forced to stop. To see you, to hear that girlish caressing voice ! To embrace in my gaze that ivory skin, glistening under the candlelight, and through which I can read your noble mind ! To admire your fingers playing on the keys, to drink in your whole soul in a look, in the tone of an Oimk or an Alberto ! To walk by the blossoming orange trees, to live a few months in the bosom of that glorious scenery ! That is life. What folly it is to run after power, a name, fortune ! But at Belgirate there is everything; there is poetry, there is glory ! I ought to have made myself your steward, or, as that dear tyrant whom we cannot hate proposed to me, live there as cavaliere servente, only our passion was too fierce to allow of it. " Farewell, my angel, forgive me my next fit of sadness in consideration of this cheerful mood ; it has come as a beam of light from the torch of Hope, which has hitherto seemed to me a will-o'-the-wisp." "How he loves her! " cried Rosalie, dropping the letter, which seemed heavy in her hand. "After eleven years, to write like this ! " "Mariette," said Mademoiselle de Watteville to her maid next morning, " go and post this letter. Tell Jerome that I know all I wished to know, and that he is to serve Monsieur Albert faithfully. We will confess our sins, you and I, without saying to whom the letters belonged, nor to whom they were going. I was in the wrong ; I alone am guilty." " Mademoiselle has been crying?" said Mariette, noticing Rosalie's eyes. 366 ALBERT S AVAR ON. " Yes, but I do not want that my mother should perceive it ; give me some, very cold water." In the midst of the storms of her passion Rosalie often lis- tened to the voice of conscience. Touched by the beautiful fidelity of these -two hearts, she had just said her prayers, telling herself that there was nothing left to her but to be resigned, and to respect the happiness of two beings worthy of each other, submissive to fate, looking to God for every- thing, without allowing themselves any criminal acts or wishes. She felt a better woman, and had a certain sense of satisfac- tion after coming to this resolution, inspired by the natural rectitude of youth. And she was confirmed in it by a girl's idea : She was sacrificing herself for him. "She does not know how to love," thought she. "Ah! if it were I I would give up everything to a man who loved me so. To be loved ! When, by whom shall I be loved ? That little Monsieur de Soulas only loves my money; if I were poor, he would not even look at me." "Rosalie, my child, what are you thinking about? You are working beyond the outline," said the Baroness to her daughter, who was making worsted-work slippers for the Baron. Rosalie spent the winter of 1834-35 torn by secret tumult; 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 pas- sion 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 which ought to serve them as a warning. In the course of this winter Albert Savaron had quietly made considerable progress in Besancon. Most confident of suc- cess, he now impatiently awaited the dissolution of the ALBERT S AVAR ON. 367 Chamber. Among the men of the moderate party he had won the suffrages of one of the makers of Besan^on, 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 Bensacon they drank the water from Arcier, a hill at some considerable dis- tance from Besancon. The town stands in a horseshoe circum- scribed 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 a 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 legiti- mists, 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 Besanon as in the matter of the two railways to Versailles as for every standing abuse there were private interests un- confessed 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 368 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 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 vari- ous priests of Besan9on. 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 bought, ostensibly to serve a merchant who was in difficulties, with money loaned him by Leopold Hannequin, a house which gave him a quali- fication 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 Savaron. Rosalie, on her part, had made up her mind, in her strong girl's head, to get Monsieur de Savaron 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 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 369 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 sum- mits 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, hitherto devastated by the torrent. This lake, this valley, and these two hills he enclosed in a ring fence, and built him- self 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 farther 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 24 370 ALBERT S AVAR ON. by planting trees and making a fine road over the shoulder of one of the Rouxey hills to join the high-road. 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 sub- lime 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 make 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 Savannahs or the Steppes, then every one must exclaim as Rosalie did. " We owe that," said her father, " to the notorious Watte- ville." "On my word," said the girl, "he did his best to earn forgiveness. Let us go in a boat to the farther 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 ALBER T SAVAR ON. 371 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 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 Chan- tonnit, the mayor 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 un- derstand 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 Abb 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 usurpa- tion, with no title-deed but lapse of time. And, therefore, to 372 ALBER T SA VAR ON. avoid all worry, I should wish to come to a friendly under- standing 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 mayor of Riceys, hoped to give a dramatic turn to his career on the peaceful frontier of Switzerland, and to immor- talize his term of office. Chantonnit, as his name shows, was a native of Neufchatel. " 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 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 37$ she pointed to the feet of the two hills, " I shall cut flower- beds and make the loveliest English gardens. Let us go to Besancon and bring back with us the Abbe de Grancey, Mon- sieur 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 Abb6 de Grancey for three weeks, he was so busy ! " " But the very existence of the chapter was involved," said Monsieuc de Watteville ; " and then the archbishop's pride, his conscience, everything that makes up the life of the priesthood, were 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. 374 ALBERT SAVARON. "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 Savaron, 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 ha>ve employed in an underhand way. "What can I do for you, Monsieur le Vicaire-General ? " asked Savaron. The abbe, who told his story with admirable frankness, was coldly heard by Albert. " Monsieur 1'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 every- thing 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 supported the Restoration ! " " On the day of the election," said Savaron, " 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 in- separable." ALBERT S AVAR ON. 375 " The deuce is in it ! " said Savaron. " 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 Watte- ville'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 Gran- cey. " 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 min- ister who adds a hundred thousand francs a year to your amazing talents." " Monsieur 1'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 mayor, but morally speak- ing," said Savaron. " That is even worse when a man cares about it as you seem to care," replied the abbe. "Some things that are done can be undone. Do not stake your fortune and your pros- pects 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 utmost I can do." 376 ALBERT S AVAR ON. " But there are questions involved which can only be set- tled after careful inspection of the localities," said the vicar- general. " Girardet can go," said Savaron. " 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 Savaron after giving him a keen look, in which he seemed to be laughing at the young athlete's uncom- promising 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 Watte- villes' drawing-room ; I may not hear your fine voice ! You make conditions when your help is required by the Watte- villes and the Rupts ! Well, God knows, I meant to be con- tent 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 intelli- gence. 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." ALBERT SAVARON. 877. "Then is Monsieur de Soulas a foe to thought?" asked Rosalie. "Then you were thinking? " said Madame de Watteville. "Why, yes, mamma." " Why, no I you were not thinking. You were staring at that lawyer's window with an attention that is neither becom- ing 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 vehe- mently, 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 a 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 indis- 578 ALBERT S AVAR ON. cretion 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 resist- ing 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 Repub- lican 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 offense 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 practice. 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' 3 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 379 expenses in Paris. In the winter she received very creditably once a week, on Tuesdays, understanding her business as mis- tress 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, Mon- sieur de Vauchelles had his matrimonial plans, as Amedee had his ; he wished to marry Victoire, the eldest of the Chavon- courts, 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 should be signed. Victoire was this aunt's god-daughter and favorite niece. Conse- quently, 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 Savaron, 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 Besan^on. 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 Crenelle, 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. 380 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 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 there- fore 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 send 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 acqueduct for the Arcier waters ; of Monsieur Boucher's father-in-law ; of Monsieur Granet, the influential man for whom Savaron had done a ser- vice, and who was to nominate him as a candidate ; of Gir- ardet 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 value they said ten, for men always begin by exaggerating their own influ- ALBERT S AVAR ON. 381 ence. 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 Besanc,on. Albert, waiting at home for Alfred Boucher to fetch him, was chatting with the Abbe de Grancey, who was interested in this absorb- ing ambition. Albert had appreciated the priest's vast politi- cal 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 Mon- sieur 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 lawyer, 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 Besangon." " Oh, I was prepared for it," said Albert in a broken voice. " You would not benefit by my advice ; you had the oppor- tunity 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 382 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 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 1' 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 am- bitious man, whose face at that moment wore the lofty expres- sion 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 of 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 Savaron, feeling the necessity of winning him- self 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 meet- ing 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 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 383 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 declarations 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 him- self as a new man since his arrival at Besanc.on, while pledging himself for the future. This address held his hearers breath- less, 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. Admira- tion 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 common' place 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 instru- ment 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 384 ALBERT S AVAR ON. man present who was capable of judging of Savaron (he has since become one of the leading men of Besancon), a master- piece of skill and of feeling, of fervor, interest, and fascina- tion. 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 before- hand the malignant talk to which his early career might give rise. The commercial interest of Besancon had unanimously 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 being able to discover how, the voters in the Boucher Committee diminished in number. Nothing could resist the slow grinding of the prefecture. Three or 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 con tracts, 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 Savaron 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 ALBERT SAt'ARON. 385 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 ambi- tious man. Each day was a check for Savaron, 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 for- midable ; 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 preTet could succeed in gaining over a few of the Radicals. A hundred and sixty votes were not 25 386 ALBERT S AVAR ON. 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 Savaron 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 Savaron, through the medium of Monsieur Boucher, that thirty voters, unknown, were secretly working against him in his party, playing the same sharp 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 compan- ionship. 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, wa? 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 him- self, feeling his heart beat so violently that its pulses seemed "SHE WAS ONE OF THOSE WOMEN WHO ARE BORN TO REICN I" ALBERT S AVAR ON. 387 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 Besangon." " Come and see her ! " cried Savaron, seizing a candle, and leading the abbe into the handsome room where hung the portrait of the Duchess 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 Savaron. " But, my dear abbe, for more than twelve years now she has reigned over my life, and I have not a single thought for which to blame mys elf 388 ALBERT SAVARON. " 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 poli- tician, this time you will follow my advice. You would not be where you are now if you would have gone to the Watte- villes 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 Savaron. " 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 abb6 calmly for the third time. ALBERT SAVARON. 38J This time Albert understood. The vicar-general would not be implicated in the 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 the Legitimist voters ; I have secured Madame de Watteville, and that means all the aristocracy of Besancon. Ameclee de Soulas and Vau- chelles, 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 Chavon- court?" asked Savaron. " 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 abb6. I understand. When 390 ALBERT SAVARON. 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 Savaron. After seeing out the old priest, Albert went to bed in the swaddling-clothes of power. Next evening, as may well be supposed, by nine o'clock Madame la Baronne de Watteville's rooms were crowded by the aristocracy of Besangon in convocation extraordinary. They were discussing the exceptional step of going to the poll, to oblige the daughter of the de Rupts. It was known that the former master of appeals, the secretary of one of the most faithful ministers under the elder branch, was to be presented that evening. Madame de Chavoncourt was there with her second daughter Sidonie, exquisitely dressed, while her elder sister, secure of her lover, had not indulged in any of the arts of the toilet. In country towns these little things are re- marked. The Abbe de Grancey's fine and clever head was to be seen moving from group to group, listening to every- thing, seeming to be apart from it all, but uttering those incisive phrases which sum up a question and direct the issue. "If the elder branch were to return," said he to an old ALBERT S AVAR ON. 391 statesman of seventy, "what politicians would they find?" " Berryer, alone on his bench, does not know which way to turn ; if he had sixty votes, he would often scotch the wheels of the government and upset ministries!" "The Due de Fitz- James is to be nominated at Toulouse." "You will enable Monsieur de Watte ville to win his lawsuit." " If you vote for Monsieur Savaron, the Republicans will vote with you rather than with the Moderates ! " etc., etc. At nine o'clock Albert had not arrived. Madame de Watteville was disposed to regard such delay as an imperti- nence. "My dear Baroness," said Madame de Chavoncourt, "do not let such serious issues turn on such a trifle. The varnish on his boots is not dry or a consultation, perhaps, detains Monsieur de Savaron." Rosalie shot a side glance at Madame de Chavoncourt. " She is very lenient to Monsieur de Savaron," she whis- pered to her mother. " You see," said the Baroness, with a smile, "there is a question of a marriage between Sidonie and Monsieur de Savaron." Mademoiselle de Watteville hastily went to a window look- ing out over the garden. At ten o'clock Albert de Savaron had not yet appeared. The storm that threatened now burst. Some of the gentlemen sat down to cards, finding the thing intolerable. The Abbe de Grancey, who did not know what to think, went to the window where Rosalie was hidden, and exclaimed aloud in his amazement, " He must be dead ! " The vicar-general stepped out into the garden, followed by Monsieur de Watteville and his daughter, and they all three went up to the kiosk. In Albert's rooms all was dark ; not a light was to be seen. " Jerome ! " cried Rosalie, seeing the servant in the yard below. The abbe looked at her with astonishment. " Where 392 ALBERT S AVAR ON in the world is your master?" she asked the man, who came to the foot of the wall. " Gone in a post-chaise, mademoiselle." " He is ruined ! " exclaimed the Abbe de Grancey, " or he is happy ! ' ' The joy of triumph was not so effectually concealed on Rosalie's face that the vicar-general could not detect it. He affected to see nothing. " What can this girl have had to do with this business? " he asked himself. They all three returned to the drawing-room, where Mon- sieur de Watteville announced the strange, the extraordinary, the prodigious news of the lawyer's departure, without any reason assigned for his evasion. By half-past eleven only fifteen persons remained, among them Madame de Chavan- court and the Abbe de Godenars, another vicar-general, a man of about forty, who hoped for a bishopric ; the two Cha- voncourt girls and Monsieur de Vauchelles, the Abbe de Grancey, Rosalie, Amedee de Soulas, and a retired magis- trate, one of the most influential members of the upper circle of Besancon, who had been very eager for Albert's election. The Abbe de Grancey sat down by the Baroness in such a position as to watch Rosalie, whose face, usually pale, wore a feverish flush. " What can have happened to Monsieur de Savaron? " said Madame de Chavoncourt. At this moment a servant in livery brought in a letter for the Abbe de Grancey on a silver tray. "Pray read it," said the Baroness de Watteville, with manifest interest. The vicar-general read the letter ; he saw Rosalie suddenly turn as white as her kerchief. " She recognizes the writing," said he to himself, after glancing at the girl over his spectacles. He folded up the letter, and calmly put it in his pocket without a word. In ALBERT SAVARON. 393 three minutes he had met three looks from Rosalie which were enough to make him guess everything. " She is in love with Albert Savaron ! " thought the vicar- general. He rose and took leave. He was going towards the door when, in the next room, he was overtaken by Rosalie, who said " Monsieur de Grancey, it was from Albert ! " " How do you know that it was his writing, to recognize it from so far ? " The girl's reply, caught as she was in the toils of her impa- tience and rage, seemed to the abbe sublime. " I love him! What is the matter?" she said after a pause. " He gives up the election." Rosalie put her finger to her lip. "I ask you to be as secret as if it were a confession," said she before returning to the drawing-room. "If there is an end of the election, there is an end of the marriage with Sidonie." In the morning, on her way to mass, Mademoiselle de Wat- teville heard from Mariette some of the circumstances which had prompted Albert's disappearance at the most critical mo- ment of his life. " Mademoiselle, an old gentleman from Paris arrived yes- terday morning at the Hotel National ; he came in his own carriage with four horses, and a courier in front, and a servant. Indeed, Jerome, who saw the carriage returning, declares he could only be a prince or a milord." " Was there a coronet on the carriage? " asked Rosalie. " I do not know," said Mariette. " Just as two was striking he came to call on Monsieur Savaron, and sent in his card ; and when he saw it, Jerome says Monsieur turned as pale as a sheet, and said he was to be shown in. As he himself locked 394 ALBERT S AVAR ON. the door, it is impossible to tell what the old gentleman and the lawyer said to each other ; but they were together above an hour, and then the old gentleman, with the lawyer, called up his servant. Jerome saw the servant go out again with an immense package, four feet long, which looked like a great painting on canvas. The old gentleman had in his hand a large parcel of papers. Monsieur Savaron was paler than death, and he, so proud, so dignified, was in a state to be pitied. But he treated the old gentleman so respectfully that he could not have been politer to the king himself. Jerome and Monsieur Albert Savaron escorted the gentleman to his carriage, which was standing with the horses in. The courier started on the stroke of three. "Monsieur Savaron went straight to the prefecture, and from that to Monsieur Gentillet, who sold him the old travel- ing carriage that used to belong to Madame de Saint-Vier before she died ; then he ordered post-horses for six o'clock. He went home to pack ; no doubt he wrote a lot of letters ; finally, he settled everything with Monsieur Girardet, who went to him and stayed till seven. Jerome carried a note to Monsieur Boucher, with whom his master was to have dined ; and then, at half-past seven, the lawyer set out, leaving Jerome with three months' wages, and telling him to find another place. " He left his keys with Monsieur Girardet, whom he took home, and at his house, Jerome says, he took a plate of soup, for at half-past seven Monsieur Girardet had not yet dined. When Monsieur Savaron got into the carriage again he looked like death. Jerome, who, of course, saw his master off, heard him tell the postillion ' The Geneva Road ! ' " "Did Jerome ask the name of the stranger at the Hotel National?" "As the old gentleman did not mean to stay, he was not asked for it. The servant, by his orders no doubt, pretended not to speak French.'' ALBERT S AVAR ON. 395 "And the letter which came so late to the Abbe de Gran- cey?" said Rosalie. "It was Monsieur Girardet, no doubt, who ought to have delivered it ; but Jerome says that poor Monsieur Girardet, who was much attached to lawyer Savaron, was as much upset as he was. So he who came so mysteriously, as Mademoiselle Galard says, is gone away just as mysteriously." After hearing this narrative, Mademoiselle de Watteville fell into a brooding and absent mood, which everybody could see. It is useless to say anything of the commotion that arose in Besancon on the disappearance of Monsieur Savaron. It was understood that the prefect had obliged him with the greatest readiness by giving him at once a passport across the frontier, for he was thus quit of his only opponent. Next day Monsieur de Chavoncourt was carried to the top by a majority of a hundred and forty votes. "Jack is gone by the way he came," said an elector on hearing of Albert Savaron's flight. This event lent weight to the prevailing prejudice at Besancon against strangers ; indeed, two years previously they had received confirmation from the affair of the Republican newspaper. Ten days later Albert de Savaron was never spoken of again. Only three persons Girardet the attorney, the vicar-general, and Rosalie were seriously affected by his disappearance. Girardet knew that the white-haired stranger was Prince Soderini, for he had seen his card, and he told the vicar-general; but Rosalie, better informed than either of them, had known for three months past that the Due d'Argaiolo was dead. In the month of April, 1836, no one had had any news from or of Albert de Savaron. Jerome and Mariette were to be married, but the Baroness confidentially desired her maid to wait till her daughter was married, saying that the two weddings might take place at the same time. "It is time that Rosalie should be married," said the 396 ALBERT S AVAR ON. Baroness one day to Monsieur de Watteville. " She is nine- teen, and she is fearfully altered in these last months." "I do not know what ails her," said the Baron. "When fathers do not know what ails their daughters, mothers can guess," said the Baroness; "we must get her married." "I am quite willing," said the Baron. "I shall give her Les Rouxey now that the court has settled our quarrel with the authorities of Riceys by fixing the boundary line at three hundred feet up the side of the Dent de Vilard. I am having a trench made to collect all the water and carry it into the lake. The village did not appeal, so the decision is final." "It has never yet occurred to you," said Madame de Watteville, " that this decision cost me thirty thousand francs handed over to Chantonnit. That peasant would take noth- ing else ; he sold us peace. If you give away Les Rouxey, you will have nothing left," said the Baroness. "I do not need much, "said the Baron; "I am breaking up." " You eat like an ogre ! " "Just so. But however much I may eat, I feel my legs get weaker and weaker " "It is from working the lathe," said his wife. " I do not know," said he. "We will marry Rosalie to Monsieur de Soulas; if you give her Les Rouxey, keep the life interest. I will give them fifteen thousand francs a year in the funds. Our children can live here; I do not see that they are much to be pitied." " No. I shall give them Les Rouxey out and out. Rosalie is fond of Les Rouxey." " You are a queer man with your daughter ! It does not occur to you to ask me if I am fond of Les Rouxey." Rosalie, at once sent for, was informed that she was to marry Monsieur de Soulas one day early in the month of May. ALBERT SAVARON. 397 " I am very much obliged to you, mother, and to you too, father, for having thought of settling me ; but I do not mean to marry ; I am very happy with you." " Mere speeches 1 " said the Baroness. " You are not in love with Monsieur de Soulas, that is all." " If you insist on the plain truth, I will never marry Mon- sieur de Soulas " " Oh ! the never of a girl of nineteen!" retorted her mother, with a bitter smile. " The never of Mademoiselle de Watteville," said Rosalie with firm decision. " My father, I imagine, has no intention of making me marry against my wishes? " " No, indeed no ! " said the poor Baron, looking affection- ately at his daughter. " Very well !" said the Baroness, sternly controlling the rage of a bigot startled at finding herself unexpectedly defied, " you yourself, Monsieur de Watteville, may take the respon- sibility of settling your daughter. Consider well, Made- moiselle, for if you do not marry to my mind you will get nothing out of me ! " The quarrel thus begun between Madame de Watteville and her husband, who took his daughter's part, went so far that Rosalie and her father were obliged to spend the summer at Les Rouxey ; life at the Hotel de Rupt was unendurable. It thus became known in Besancon that Mademoiselle de Watteville had positively refused the Comte de Soulas. After their marriage Mariette and Jerome came to Les Rouxey to succeed Modinier in due time. The Baron re- stored and repaired the house to suit his daughter's taste. When she heard that these improvements had cost about sixty thousand francs, and that Rosalie and her father were build- ing a conservatory, the Baroness understood that there was a leaven of spite in her daughter. The Baron purchased vari- ous outlying plots, and a little estate worth thirty thousand francs. Madame de Watteville was told that, away from her, 398 ALBERT SAVARON. Rosalie showed masterly qualities, that she was taking steps to improve the value of Les Rouxey, that she had treated herself to a riding-habit and rode about ; her father, whom she made very happy, who no longer complained of his health, and who was growing fat, accompanied her in her expeditions. As the Baroness' name-day drew near her name was Louise the vicar-general came one day to Les Rouxey, deputed, no doubt, by Madame de Watteville and Monsieur de Soulas, to nego- tiate a peace between the mother and daughter. " That little Rosalie has a head on her shoulders," said the folk of Besancon. After handsomely paying up the ninety thousand francs spent on Les Rouxey, the Baroness allowed her husband a thou- sand francs a month to live on ; she would not put herself in the wrong. The father and daughter were perfectly willing to return to Besancon for the i5th of August, and to remain there till the end of the month. When, after dinner, the vicar-general took Mademoiselle de Watteville apart, to open the question of the marriage, by explaining to her that it was vain to think any more of Albert, of whom they had had no news for a year past, he was stopped at once by a sign from Rosalie. The strange girl took Monsieur de Grancey by the arm, and led him to a seat under a clump of rhododendrons, whence there was a view of the lake. "Listen, dear abbe," said she. "You whom I love as much as my father, for you had an affection for my Albert, I must at last confess that I committed crimes to become his wife, and he must be my husband. Here ; read this." She held out to him a number of the Gazette which she had in her apron pocket, pointing out the following paragraph under the date of Florence, May 25th : " The wedding of Monsieur le Due de Rhetore, eldest son of the Due de Chaulieu, the former ambassador, to Madame la Duchesse d'Argaiolo, nee Princess Soderini, was solemnized ALBER T SAVAR ON. 399 with great splendor. Numerous entertainments given in honor of the marriage are making Florence gay. The Duchess' fortune is one of the finest in Italy, for the late Duke left her everything." " The woman he loved is married," said she. "I divided them." " You ? How ? ' ' asked the abbe. Rosalie was about to reply, when she was interrupted by a loud cry from two of the gardeners, following on the sound of a body falling into the water; she started, and jan -off screaming, " Oh ! father ! " The Baron had disappeared. In trying to reach a piece of granite on which he fancied he saw the impression of a shell, a circumstance which would have contradicted some system of geology, Monsieur de Watteville had gone down the slope, lost his balance, and slipped into the lake, which, of course, was deepest close under the roadway. The men had the greatest difficulty in enabling the Baron to catch hold of a pole pushed down at the place where the water was bubbling, but at last they pulled him out, covered with mud, in which he had sunk; he was getting deeper and deeper in, by dint of struggling. Mon- sieur de Watteville had dined heavily, digestion was in pro- gress, and was thus checked. When he had been undressed, washed, and put to bed, he was in such evident danger that two servants at once set out on horseback : one to ride to Besanc.on, and the other to fetch the nearest doctor and surgeon. When Madame de Watte- ville arrived, eight hours later, with the first medical aid from Besancon, they found Monsieur de Watteville past all hope, in spite of the intelligent treatment of the Rouxey doctor. The fright had produced serious effusion on the brain, and the shock to the digestion was helping to kill the poor man. This death, which would never have happened, said Madame de Watteville, if her husband had stayed at Besancon, was ascribed by her to her daughter's obstinacy. She took an 400 ALBERT S AVAR ON. aversion for Rosalie, abandoning herself to grief and regrets that were evidently exaggerated. She spoke of the Baron as " her dear lamb ! " The last of the Wattevilles was buried on an island in the lake at Les Rouxey, where the Baroness had a little Gothic monument erected of white marble, like that called the tomb of Heloise at Pere-Lachaise. A month after this catastrophe the mother and daughter had settled in the Hotel de Rupt, where they lived in savage silence. Rosalie was suffering from real sorrow, which had no visible outlet ; she accused herself of her father's death, and she feared another disaster, much greater in her eyes, and very certainly her own work ; neither Girardet the attorney nor the Abbe de Grancey could obtain any information con- cerning Albert. This silence was appalling. In a paroxysm of repentance she felt that she must confess to the vicar-general the horrible machinations by which she had separated Fran- cesca and Albert. They had been simple, but formidable. Mademoiselle -de Watteville had intercepted Albert's letters to the Duchess as well as that in which Francesca announced her husband's illness, warning her lover that she could write to him no more during the time while she was devoted, as was her duty, to the care of the dying man. Thus, while Albert was wholly occupied with election matters, the Duchess had written him only two letters ; one in which she told him that the Due d'Argaiolo was in danger, and one announcing her widowhood two noble and beautiful letters, which Rosalie kept back. After several nights' labor she succeeded in imitating Albert's writing very perfectly. She had substituted three letters of her own writing for three of Albert's, and the rough copies which she showed to the old priest made him shudder the genius of evil was revealed in them to such perfection. Rosalie, writing in Albert's name, had prepared the Duchess for a change in the Frenchman's feelings, falsely representing ALBERT SAVARON. 401 him as faithless, and she had answered the news of the Due d'Argaiolo's death by announcing the marriage ere long of Albert and Mademoiselle de Watteville. The two letters, intended to cross on the road, had, in fact, done so. The infernal cleverness with which the letters were written so much astonished the vicar-general that he read them a second time. Francesca, stabbed to the heart by a girl who wanted to kill love in her rival, had answered the last in these four words : "You are free. Farewell." " Purely moral crimes, which give no hold to human justice, are the most atrocious and detestable," said the abbe severely. " God often punishes them on earth ; herein lies the reason of the terrible catastrophes which to us seem inexplicable. Of all secret crimes buried in the mystery of private life, the most disgraceful is that of breaking the seal of a letter, or of reading it surreptitiously. Every one, whoever it may be, and urged by whatever reason, who is guilty of such an act has stained his honor beyond retrieving. " Do you not feel all that is touching, that is heavenly in the story of the youthful page, falsely accused, and carrying the letter containing the order for his execution, who sets out without a thought of ill, and whom Providence protects and saves miraculously, we say ! But do you know wherein the miracle lies? Virtue has a glory as potent as that of innocent childhood. " I say these things not meaning to admonish you," said the old priest, with deep grief. " I, alas ! am not your spirit- ual director ; you are not kneeling at the feet of God ; I am your friend, appalled by dread of what your punishment may be. What has become of that unhappy Albert? Has he, perhaps, killed himself? There was tremendous passion under his assumption of calm. I understand now that old Prince Soderini, the father of the Duchess d'Argaiolo, came here to take back his daughter's letters and portraits. This was the thunderbolt that fell on Albert's head, and he went 402 ALBERT SAVAROtf. off, no doubt, to try to justify himself. But how is it that in fourteen months he has given us no news of himself? " " Oh ! if I marry him, he will be so happy ! " "Happy? He does not love you. Besides, you have no great fortune to give him. Your mother detests you ; you made her a fierce reply which rankles, and which will be your ruin. When she told you yesterday that obedience was the only way to repair your errors, and reminded you of the need for marrying, mentioning Amedee ' If you are so fond of him, marry him yourself, mother ! ' Did you, or did you not, fling these words in her teeth?" "Yes," said Rosalie. " Well, I know her/' Monsieur de Grancey went on. " In a few months she will be Comtesse de Soulas ! She will be sure to have children ; she will give Monsieur de Soulas forty thousand francs a year ; she will benefit him in other ways, and reduce your share of her fortune as much as possible. You will be poor as long as she lives, and she is but eight-and- thirty ! Your whole estate will be the land of Les Rouxey, and the small share left to you after your father's legal debts are settled, if indeed, your mother should consent to forego her claims on Les Rouxey. From the point of view of mate- rial advantages, you have done badly for yourself; from the point of view of feeling, I imagine you have wrecked your life. Instead of going to your mother " Rosalie shook her head fiercely. "To your mother," the priest went on, "and to religion, where you would, at the first impulse of your heart, have found enlightenment, counsel and guidance, you chose to act in your own way, knowing nothing of life, and listening only to passion ! ' ' These words of wisdom terrified Mademoiselle de Watte- ville. "And what ought I to do now?" she asked after a brief pause. ALBERT SAVARON. 403 " To repair your wrongdoing, you must ascertain its ex- tent," said the abbe. " Well, I will write to the only man who can know any- thing of Albert's fate, Monsieur Leopold Hannequin, a notary in Paris, his friend from childhood." "Write no more, unless to do honor to truth," said the vicar-general. " Place the real and the false letters in my hands, confess everything in detail as though I were the keeper of your conscience, asking me how you may expiate your sins, and doing as I bid you. I shall see for, above all things, restore this unfortunate man to his innocence in the eyes of the woman he had made his divinity on earth. Though he has lost his happiness, Albert must still hope for justification." Rosalie promised to obey the abbe, hoping that the steps he might take would perhaps end in bringing Albert back to her. Not long after Mademoiselle de Watteville's confession a clerk came to Besancon from Monsieur Leopold Hannequin, armed with a power of attorney from Albert ; he called first on Monsieur Girardet, begging his assistance in selling the house belonging to Monsieur Savaron. The attorney under- took to do this out of friendship for Albert. The clerk from Paris sold the furniture, and with the proceeds could repay some money owed by Savaron to Girardet, who, on the occa- sion of his inexplicable departure, had lent him five thousand francs while undertaking to collect his assets. When Girardet asked what had become of the handsome and noble pleader, to whom he had been much attached, the clerk replied that no one knew but his master, and that the notary had seemed greatly distressed by the contents of the last letter he had received from Monsieur Albert de Savaron. On hearing this, the vicar-general wrote to Leopold. This was the worthy notary's reply: 404 ALBERT SAVARON. "To Monsieur 1'Abbe de Grancey, Vicar-General of the Diocese of Besancon. "PARIS. "Alas, monsieur, it is in nobody's power to restore Albert to the life of the world; he has renounced it. He is a novice in the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble. You know, better than I who have but just learned it, that on the threshold of that cloister everything dies. Albert, foresee- ing that I should go to him, placed the general of the order be- tween my utmost efforts and himself. I know his noble soul well enough to be sure that he is the victim of some odious plot unknown to us ; but everything is at an end. The Duch- esse d'Argaiolo, now Duchesse de Rhetore, seems to me to have carried severity to an extreme. At Belgirate, which she had left when Albert flew thither, she had left instructions leading him to believe that she was living in London. From London Albert went in search of her to Naples, and from Naples to Rome, where she was now engaged to the Due de Rhetore. When Albert succeeded in seeing Madame d'Ar- gaiolo, at Florence, it was at the ceremony of her marriage. " Our poor friend swooned in church, and even when he was in danger of death he could never obtain any explanation from this woman, who must have had I know not what in her heart. For seven months Albert had traveled in pursuit of a cruel creature who thought it sport to escape him ; he knew not where or how to catch her. " I saw him on his way through Paris ; and if you had seen him, as I did, you would have felt that not a word might be spoken about the Duchess, at the risk of bringing on an attack which might have wrecked his reason. If he had known what his crime was, he might have found means to justify himself; but being falsely accused of being married ! what could he do? Albert is dead, quite dead to the world. He longed for rest ; let us hope that the deep silence and prayer into which he has thrown himself may give him happiness in another ALBERT SAVARON. 405 guise. You, monsieur, who have known him, must greatly pity him ; and pity his friends also. "Yours, etc." As soon as he received this letter the good vicar-general wrote to the general of the Carthusian order, and this was the letter he received from Albert Savaron : "Brother Albert to Monsieur 1'Abbe de Grancey, Vicar- General of the Diocese of Besanson. " LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE. " I recognized your tender soul, dear and well-beloved vicar-general, and your still youthful heart, in all that the reverend father general of our order has just told me. You have understood the only wish that lurks in the depths of my heart so far as the things of the world are concerned to get justice done to my feelings by her who has treated me so badly ! But before leaving me at liberty to avail myself of your offer, the general wanted to know that my vocation was sincere ; he was so kind as to tell me his idea, on finding that I was determined to preserve absolute silence on this point. If I had yielded to the temptation to rehabilitate the man of the world, the friar would have been rejected by this monas- tery. Grace has certainly done her work ; but, though short, the struggle was not the less keen or the less painful. Is not this enough to show you that I could never return to the world. " Hence my forgiveness, which you ask for the author of so much woe, is entire and without a thought of vindictiveness. I will pray to God to forgive that young lady as I forgive her, and as I shall beseech Him to give Madame de Rhetore a life of happiness. Ah ! whether it be death, or the obstinate hand of a young girl madly bent on being loved, or one of the blows ascribed to chance, must we not all obey God ? Sorrow in some souls makes a vast void through which the Divine voice rings. I learned tog late the bearings of this life on 406 ALBERT S AVAR ON. that which awaits us ; all in me is worn out ; I could not serve in the ranks of the church militant, and I lay the remains of an almost extinct life at the foot of the altar. "This is the last time I shall ever write. You alone, who loved me, and whom I loved so well, could make me break the law of oblivion I imposed on myself when I entered these headquarters of Saint Bruno, but you are always especially named in the prayers of " BROTHER ALBERT. " November, 1836." "Everything is for the best, perhaps," thought the Abbe de Grancey. When he showed this letter to Rosalie, who with a pious impulse kissed the lines which contained her forgiveness, he said to her "Well, now that he is lost to you, will you not be recon- ciled to your mother and marry the Comte de Soulas?" "Only if Albert should order it," said she. " But you see it is impossible to consult him. The general of the order would not allow it." " If I were to go to see him ? " "No Carthusian sees any visitor. Besides, no woman but the Queen of France may enter a Carthusian monastery," said the abbe. " So you have no longer any excuse for not marry- ing young Monsieur de Soulas." " I do not wish to destroy my mother's happiness," retorted Rosalie. " Satan ! " exclaimed the vicar-general. Towards the end of that winter the worthy Abbe de Grancey died. This good friend no longer stood between Madame de Watteville and her daughter, to soften the impact of those two iron wills. The event he had foretold took place. In the month of August, 1837, Madame de Watteville was married to Monsieur de Soulas in Paris, whither she went by Rosalie's advice, the ALBERT S AVAR ON. 407 girl making a show of kindness and sweetness to her mother. Madame de Watteville believed in this affection on the part of her daughter, who simply desired to go to Paris to give herself the luxury of a bitter revenge ; she thought of nothing but avenging Savaron by torturing her rival. Mademoiselle de Watteville had been declared legally of age; she was, in fact, not far from one-and-twenty. Her mother, to settle with her finally, had resigned her claims on Les Rouxey, and the daughter had signed a release for all the inheritance of the Baron de Watteville. Rosalie encouraged her mother to marry the Comte de Soulas and settle all her own fortune on him. " Let us each be perfectly free," she said. Madame de Soulas, who had been uneasy as to her daugh- ter's intentions, was touched by this liberality, and made her a present of six thousand francs a year in the funds as con- science money. As the Comtesse de Soulas had an income of forty-eight thousand francs from her own lands, and was quite incapable of alienating them in order to diminish Rosalie's share, Mademoiselle de Watteville was still a fortune to marry, of eighteen hundred thousand francs ; Les Rouxey, with the Baron's additions, and certain improvements, might yield twenty thousand francs a year, besides the value of the house, rents, and preserves. So Rosalie and her mother, who soon adopted the Paris style and fashions, easily obtained introductions to the best society. The golden key eighteen hundred thousand francs embroidered on Mademoiselle de Watteville's stomacher, did more for the Comtesse de Soulas than her pretentious a la de Rupt, her inappropriate pride, or even her rather distant great connections. In the month of February, 1838, Rosalie, who was eagerly courted by many young men, achieved the purpose which had brought her to Paris. This was to meet the Duchesse de Rhetore, to see this wonderful woman, and to overwhelm her with perennial remorse. Rosalie gave herself up to the most 408 ALBER T SA VARON. bewildering elegance and vanities in order to face the Duchess on an equal footing. They first met at a ball given annually after 1830 for the benefit of the pensioners on the old Civil List. A young man, prompted by Rosalie, pointed her out to the Duchess, saying " There is a very remarkable young person, a strong-minded young lady too ! She drove a clever man into a monastery the Grande Chartreuse a man of immense capabilities, Albert de Savaron, whose career she wrecked. She is Made- moiselle de Watteville, the famous Besanc.on heiress The Duchess turned pale. Rosalie's eyes met hers with one of those flashes which, between woman and woman, are more fatal than the pistol-shots of a duel. Francesca Soderini, who had suspected that Albert might be innocent, hastily quitted the ball-room, leaving the speaker at his wits' end to guess what terrible blow he had inflicted on the beautiful Duchesse de Rhetore. " If you want to hear more about Albert, come to the opera ball on Tuesday with a marigold in your hand." This anonymous note, sent by Rosalie to the Duchess, brought the unhappy Italian to the ball, where Mademoiselle de Watteville placed in her hand all Albert's letters, with that written to Leopold Hannequin by the vicar-general, and the notary's reply, and even that in which she had written her own confession to the Abbe de Grancey. " I do not choose to be the only sufferer," she said to her rival, " for one has been as ruthless as the other." After enjoying the dismay stamped on the Duchess' beau- tiful face, Rosalie went away ; she went out no more, and returned to Besancon with her mother. Mademoiselle de Watteville, who lived alone on her estate of Les Rouxey, riding, hunting, refusing two or three offers a ALBERT S AVAR ON. 409 year, going to Besancon four or five times in the course of the winter, and busying herself with improving her land, was regarded as a very eccentric personage. She was one of the celebrities of the Eastern provinces. Madame de Soulas has two children, a boy and a girl, and she has grown younger ; but young Monsieur de Soulas has aged a good deal. "My fortune has cost me dear," said he to young Chavon- court. " Really to know a bigot it is unfortunately necessary to marry her ! ' ' Mademoiselle de Watteville behaves in the most extra- ordinary manner. "She has vagaries," people say. Every year she goes to gaze at the walls of the Grande Chartreuse. Perhaps she dreams of imitating her grand-uncle by forcing the walls of the monastery to find a husband, as Watteville broke through those of his monastery to recover his liberty. She left Besancon in 1841, intending, it was said, to get married ; but the real reason of this expedition is still un- known, for she returned home in a state which forbids her ever appearing in society again. By one of those chances of which the Abbe de Grancey had spoken, she happened to be on the Loire in a steamboat of which the boiler burst. Mademoiselle de Watteville was so severely injured that she lost her right arm and her left leg ; her face is marked with fearful scars, which have bereft her of her beauty ; her health, cruelly upset, leaves her few days free from suffering. In short, she now never leaves the Chartreuse of Les Rouxey, where she leads a life wholly devoted to religious practices. PARIS, May, 1842. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 635 095 3