Works of Honore De Balzac, page 102
“Jerome!” cried Rosalie, seeing the servant in the yard below. The Abbe looked at her with astonishment. “Where 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 Monsieur 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 Chavoncourt and the Abbe de Godenars, another Vicar-General, a man of about forty, who hoped for a bishopric, the two Chavoncourt girls, and Monsieur de Vauchelles, the Abbe de Grancey, Rosalie, Amedee de Soulas, and a retired magistrate, 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 Savarus?” 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.
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 three minutes he had met three looks from Rosalie which were enough to make him guess everything.
“She is in love with Albert Savarus!” 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 impatience 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 Watteville heard from Mariette some of the circumstances which had prompted Albert’s disappearance at the most critical moment of his life.
“Mademoiselle, an old gentleman from Paris arrived yesterday 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 Savarus, 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 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 traveling 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 he looked like death. Jerome, who, of course, saw his master off, heard him tell the postilion ‘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.”
“And the letter which came so late to Abbe de Grancey?” 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 Savarus 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 Duc d’Argaiolo was dead.
In the month of April 1836 no one had had any news from or of Albert de Savarus. 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 Baroness one day to Monsieur de Watteville. “She is nineteen, 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 occurred to you,” said Madame de Watteville, “that this decision cost me thirty thousand francs handed over to Chantonnit. That peasant would take nothing 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.
“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!” 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 Monsieur 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 affectionately 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 responsibility of settling your daughter. Consider well, mademoiselle, 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 to Modinier in due time. The Baron restored 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 building a conservatory, the Baroness understood that there was a leaven of spite in her daughter. The Baron purchased various outlying plots, and a little estate worth thirty thousand francs. Madame de Watteville was told that, away from her, 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 grew 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 negotiate a peace between 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 thousand 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 15th 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 Duc de Rhetore, eldest son of the Duc
de Chaulieu, the former Ambassador, to Madame la Duchesse
d’Argaiolo, nee Princess Soderini, was solemnized 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 ran 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. Monsieur de Watteville had dined heavily, digestion was in progress, 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 Besancon, and the other to fetch the nearest doctor and surgeon. When Madame de Watteville 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 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 concerning 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 Francesca 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 Duc 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 him as faithless, and she had answered the news of the Duc 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 spiritual 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 off, no doubt, to try to justify himself. But how is it that in fourteen months he has given us no news of himself?”
