Works of Honore De Balzac, page 100
“Indeed, my child, between ourselves, it is the truth,” said Monsieur de Watteville simply. “The land is an usurpation, with no title-deed but lapse of time. And, therefore, to avoid all worry, I should wish to come to a friendly understanding as to my border line on this side of the Dent de Vilard, and I will then raise a wall.”
“If you give way to the municipality, it will swallow you up. You ought to have threatened Riceys.”
“That is just what I told the master last evening,” said Modinier. “But in confirmation of that view I proposed that he should come to see whether, on this side of the Dent or on the other, there may not be, high or low, some traces of an enclosure.”
For a century the Dent de Vilard had been used by both parties without coming to extremities; it stood as a sort of party wall between the communes of Riceys and les Rouxey, yielding little profit. Indeed, the object in dispute, being covered with snow for six months in the year, was of a nature to cool their ardor. Thus it required all the hot blast by which the revolution of 1830 inflamed the advocates of the people, to stir up this matter, by which Monsieur Chantonnit, the Maire of Riceys, hoped to give a dramatic turn to his career on the peaceful frontier of Switzerland, and to immortalize his term of office. Chantonnit, as his name shows, was a native of Neuchatel.
“My dear father,” said Rosalie, as they got into the boat again, “I agree with Modinier. If you wish to secure the joint possession of the Dent de Vilard, you must act with decision, and get a legal opinion which will protect you against this enterprising Chantonnit. Why should you be afraid? Get the famous lawyer Savaron — engage him at once, lest Chantonnit should place the interests of the village in his hands. The man who won the case for the Chapter against the town can certainly win that of Watteville versus Riceys! Besides,” she added, “les Rouxey will some day be mine — not for a long time yet, I trust. — Well, then do not leave me with a lawsuit on my hands. I like this place, I shall often live here, and add to it as much as possible. On those banks,” and she pointed to the feet of the two hills, “I shall cut flowerbeds and make the loveliest English gardens. Let us go to Besancon and bring back with us the Abbe de Grancey, Monsieur Savaron, and my mother, if she cares to come. You can then make up your mind; but in your place I should have done so already. Your name is Watteville, and you are afraid of a fight! If you should lose your case — well, I will never reproach you by a word!”
“Oh, if that is the way you take it,” said the Baron, “I am quite ready; I will see the lawyer.”
“Besides a lawsuit is really great fun. It brings some interest into life, with coming and going and raging over it. You will have a great deal to do before you can get hold of the judges. — We did not see the Abbe de Grancey for three weeks, he was so busy!”
“But the very existence of the Chapter was involved,” said Monsieur de Watteville; “and then the Archbishop’s pride, his conscience, everything that makes up the life of the priesthood, was at stake. That Savaron does not know what he did for the Chapter! He saved it!”
“Listen to me,” said his daughter in his ear, “if you secure Monsieur de Savaron, you will gain your suit, won’t you? Well, then, let me advise you. You cannot get at Monsieur Savaron excepting through Monsieur de Grancey. Take my word for it, and let us together talk to the dear Abbe without my mother’s presence at the interview, for I know a way of persuading him to bring the lawyer to us.”
“It will be very difficult to avoid mentioning it to your mother!”
“The Abbe de Grancey will settle that afterwards. But just make up your mind to promise your vote to Monsieur Savaron at the next election, and you will see!”
“Go to the election! take the oath?” cried the Baron de Watteville.
“What then!” said she.
“And what will your mother say?”
“She may even desire you to do it,” replied Rosalie, knowing as she did from Albert’s letter to Leopold how deeply the Vicar-General had pledged himself.
Four days after, the Abbe de Grancey called very early one morning on Albert de Savarus, having announced his visit the day before. The old priest had come to win over the great lawyer to the house of the Wattevilles, a proceeding which shows how much tact and subtlety Rosalie must have employed in an underhand way.
“What can I do for you, Monsieur le Vicaire-General?” asked Savarus.
The Abbe, who told his story with admirable frankness, was coldly heard by Albert.
“Monsieur l’Abbe,” said he, “it is out of the question that I should defend the interests of the Wattevilles, and you shall understand why. My part in this town is to remain perfectly neutral. I will display no colors; I must remain a mystery till the eve of my election. Now, to plead for the Wattevilles would mean nothing in Paris, but here! — Here, where everything is discussed, I should be supposed by every one to be an ally of your Faubourg Saint-Germain.”
“What! do you suppose that you can remain unknown on the day of the election, when the candidates must oppose each other? It must then become known that your name is Savaron de Savarus, that you have held the appointment of Master of Appeals, that you are a man of the Restoration!”
“On the day of the election,” said Savarus, “I will be all I am expected to be; and I intend to speak at the preliminary meetings.”
“If you have the support of Monsieur de Watteville and his party, you will get a hundred votes in a mass, and far more to be trusted than those on which you rely. It is always possible to produce division of interests; convictions are inseparable.”
“The deuce is in it!” said Savarus. “I am attached to you, and I could do a great deal for you, Father! Perhaps we may compound with the Devil. Whatever Monsieur de Watteville’s business may be, by engaging Girardet, and prompting him, it will be possible to drag the proceedings out till the elections are over. I will not undertake to plead till the day after I am returned.”
“Do this one thing,” said the Abbe. “Come to the Hotel de Rupt: there is a young person of nineteen there who, one of these days, will have a hundred thousand francs a year, and you can seem to be paying your court to her — ”
“Ah! the young lady I sometimes see in the kiosk?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle Rosalie,” replied the Abbe de Grancey. “You are ambitious. If she takes a fancy to you, you may be everything an ambitious man can wish — who knows? A Minister perhaps. A man can always be a Minister who adds a hundred thousand francs a year to your amazing talents.”
“Monsieur l’Abbe, if Mademoiselle de Watteville had three times her fortune, and adored me into the bargain, it would be impossible that I should marry her — ”
“You are married?” exclaimed the Abbe.
“Not in church nor before the Maire, but morally speaking,” said Savarus.
“That is even worse when a man cares about it as you seem to care,” replied the Abbe. “Everything that is not done, can be undone. Do not stake your fortune and your prospects on a woman’s liking, any more than a wise man counts on a dead man’s shoes before starting on his way.”
“Let us say no more about Mademoiselle de Watteville,” said Albert gravely, “and agree as to the facts. At your desire — for I have a regard and respect for you — I will appear for Monsieur de Watteville, but after the elections. Until then Girardet must conduct the case under my instructions. That is the most I can do.”
“But there are questions involved which can only be settled after inspection of the localities,” said the Vicar-General.
“Girardet can go,” said Savarus. “I cannot allow myself, in the face of a town I know so well, to take any step which might compromise the supreme interests that lie beyond my election.”
The Abbe left Savarus after giving him a keen look, in which he seemed to be laughing at the young athlete’s uncompromising politics, while admiring his firmness.
“Ah! I would have dragged my father into a lawsuit — I would have done anything to get him here!” cried Rosalie to herself, standing in the kiosk and looking at the lawyer in his room, the day after Albert’s interview with the Abbe, who had reported the result to her father. “I would have committed any mortal sin, and you will not enter the Wattevilles’ drawing-room; I may not hear your fine voice! You make conditions when your help is required by the Wattevilles and the Rupts! — Well, God knows, I meant to be content with these small joys; with seeing you, hearing you speak, going with you to les Rouxey, that your presence might to me make the place sacred. That was all I asked. But now — now I mean to be your wife. — Yes, yes; look at her portrait, at her drawing-room, her bedroom, at the four sides of her villa, the points of view from her gardens. You expect her statue? I will make her marble herself towards you! — After all, the woman does not love. Art, science, books, singing, music, have absorbed half her senses and her intelligence. She is old, too; she is past thirty; my Albert will not be happy!”
“What is the matter that you stay here, Rosalie?” asked her mother, interrupting her reflections. “Monsieur de Soulas is in the drawing-room, and he observed your attitude, which certainly betrays more thoughtfulness than is due at your age.”
“Then, is Monsieur de Soulas a foe to thought?” asked Rosalie.
“Then you were thinking?” said Madame de Watteville.
“Why, yes, mamma.”
“Why, no! you were not thinking. You were staring at that lawyer’s window with an attention that is neither becoming, nor decent, and which Monsieur de Soulas, of all men, ought never to have observed.”
“Why?” said Rosalie.
“It is time,” said the Baroness, “that you should know what our intentions are. Amedee likes you, and you will not be unhappy as Comtesse de Soulas.”
Rosalie, as white as a lily, made no reply, so completely was she stupefied by contending feelings. And yet in the presence of the man she had this instant begun to hate vehemently, she forced the kind of smile which a ballet-dancer puts on for the public. Nay, she could even laugh; she had the strength to conceal her rage, which presently subsided, for she was determined to make use of this fat simpleton to further her designs.
“Monsieur Amedee,” said she, at the moment when her mother was walking ahead of them in the garden, affecting to leave the young people together, “were you not aware that Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus is a Legitimist?”
“A Legitimist?”
“Until 1830 he was Master of Appeals to the Council of State, attached to the supreme Ministerial Council, and in favor with the Dauphin and Dauphiness. It would be very good of you to say nothing against him, but it would be better still if you would attend the election this year, carry the day, and hinder that poor Monsieur de Chavoncourt from representing the town of Besancon.”
“What sudden interest have you in this Savaron?”
“Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus, the natural son of the Comte de Savarus — pray keep the secret of my indiscretion — if he is returned deputy, will be our advocate in the suit about les Rouxey. Les Rouxey, my father tells me, will be my property; I intend to live there, it is a lovely place! I should be broken-hearted at seeing that fine piece of the great de Watteville’s work destroyed.”
“The devil!” thought Amedee, as he left the house. “The heiress is not such a fool as her mother thinks her.”
Monsieur de Chavoncourt is a Royalist, of the famous 221. Hence, from the day after the revolution of July, he always preached the salutary doctrine of taking the oaths and resisting the present order of things, after the pattern of the Tories against the Whigs in England. This doctrine was not acceptable to the Legitimists, who, in their defeat, had the wit to divide in their opinions, and to trust to the force of inertia and to Providence. Monsieur de Chavoncourt was not wholly trusted by his own party, but seemed to the Moderates the best man to choose; they preferred the triumph of his half-hearted opinions to the acclamation of a Republican who should combine the votes of the enthusiasts and the patriots. Monsieur de Chavoncourt, highly respected in Besancon, was the representative of an old parliamentary family; his fortune, of about fifteen thousand francs a year, was not an offence to anybody, especially as he had a son and three daughters. With such a family, fifteen thousand francs a year are a mere nothing. Now when, under these circumstances, the father of the family is above bribery, it would be hard if the electors did not esteem him. Electors wax enthusiastic over a beau ideal of parliamentary virtue, just as the audience in the pit do at the representation of the generous sentiments they so little practise.
Madame de Chavoncourt, at this time a woman of forty, was one of the beauties of Besancon. While the Chamber was sitting, she lived meagrely in one of their country places to recoup herself by economy for Monsieur de Chavoncourt’s expenses in Paris. In the winter she received very creditably once a week, on Tuesdays, understanding her business as mistress of the house. Young Chavoncourt, a youth of two-and-twenty, and another young gentleman, named Monsieur de Vauchelles, no richer than Amedee and his school-friend, were his intimate allies. They made excursions together to Granvelle, and sometimes went out shooting; they were so well known to be inseparable that they were invited to the country together.
Rosalie, who was intimate with the Chavoncourt girls, knew that the three young men had no secrets from each other. She reflected that if Monsieur de Soulas should repeat her words, it would be to his two companions. Now, Monsieur de Vauchelles had his matrimonial plans, as Amedee had his; he wished to marry Victoire, the eldest of the Chavoncourts, on whom an old aunt was to settle an estate worth seven thousand francs a year, and a hundred thousand francs in hard cash, when the contract was to be signed. Victoire was this aunt’s god-daughter and favorite niece. Consequently, young Chavoncourt and his friend Vauchelles would be sure to warn Monsieur de Chavoncourt of the danger he was in from Albert’s candidature.
But this did not satisfy Rosalie. She sent the Prefet of the department a letter written with her left hand, signed “A friend to Louis Philippe,” in which she informed him of the secret intentions of Monsieur Albert de Savarus, pointing out the serious support a Royalist orator might give to Berryer, and revealing to him the deeply artful course pursued by the lawyer during his two years’ residence at Besancon. The Prefet was a capable man, a personal enemy of the Royalist party, devoted by conviction to the Government of July — in short, one of those men of whom, in the Rue de Grenelle, the Minister of the Interior could say, “We have a capital Prefet at Besancon.” — The Prefet read the letter, and, in obedience to its instructions, he burnt it.
Rosalie aimed at preventing Albert’s election, so as to keep him five years longer at Besancon.
At that time an election was a fight between parties, and in order to win, the Ministry chose its ground by choosing the moment when it would give battle. The elections were therefore not to take place for three months yet. When a man’s whole life depends on an election, the period that elapses between the issuing of the writs for convening the electoral bodies, and the day fixed for their meetings, is an interval during which ordinary vitality is suspended. Rosalie fully understood how much latitude Albert’s absorbed state would leave her during these three months. By promising Mariette — as she afterwards confessed — to take both her and Jerome into her service, she induced the maid to bring her all the letters Albert might sent to Italy, and those addressed to him from that country. And all the time she was pondering these machinations, the extraordinary girl was working slippers for her father with the most innocent air in the world. She even made a greater display than ever of candor and simplicity, quite understanding how valuable that candor and innocence would be to her ends.
“My daughter grows quite charming!” said Madame de Watteville.
Two months before the election a meeting was held at the house of Monsieur Boucher senior, composed of the contractor who expected to get the work for the aqueduct for the Arcier waters; of Monsieur Boucher’s father-in-law; of Monsieur Granet, the influential man to whom Savarus had done a service, and who was to nominate him as a candidate; of Girardet the lawyer; of the printer of the Eastern Review; and of the President of the Chamber of Commerce. In fact, the assembly consisted of twenty-seven persons in all, men who in the provinces are regarded as bigwigs. Each man represented on an average six votes, but in estimating their values they said ten, for men always begin by exaggerating their own influence. Among these twenty-seven was one who was wholly devoted to the Prefet, one false brother who secretly looked for some favor from the Ministry, either for himself or for some one belonging to him.
At this preliminary meeting, it was agreed that Savaron the lawyer should be named as candidate, a motion received with such enthusiasm as no one looked for from Besancon. Albert, waiting at home for Alfred Boucher to fetch him, was chatting with the Abbe de Grancey, who was interested in this absorbing ambition. Albert had appreciated the priest’s vast political capacities; and the priest, touched by the young man’s entreaties, had been willing to become his guide and adviser in this culminating struggle. The Chapter did not love Monsieur de Chavoncourt, for it was his wife’s brother-in-law, as President of the Tribunal, who had lost the famous suit for them in the lower Court.
“You are betrayed, my dear fellow,” said the shrewd and worthy Abbe, in that gentle, calm voice which old priests acquire.
“Betrayed!” cried the lover, struck to the heart.
“By whom I know not at all,” the priest replied. “But at the Prefecture your plans are known, and your hand read like a book. At this moment I have no advice to give you. Such affairs need consideration. As for this evening, take the bull by the horns, anticipate the blow. Tell them all your previous life, and thus you will mitigate the effect of the discovery on the good folks of Besancon.”
“Oh, I was prepared for it,” said Albert in a broken voice.
