III

In 1834 Amedee was the only man in Besancon who wore trouser-straps;

this will account for the young man's being 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 Besancon 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

journalist 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 Besancon."

The editor took the hint, and thenceforth spoke the most

incomprehensible philosophical lingo. His success was complete.

If young Monsieur de Soulas did not fall in the esteem of Besancon

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. 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 Amedee. There are so many /lions/ who become /lions/ out

of self-interest and speculation. The Wattevilles, who for twelve

years had been drawing an income of fifty thousand francs a year, 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 without 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 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 Depute.

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

exchange 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 prospective 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 exclusively religious education, and by her

mother's despotism, which held her rigidly to principles. Rosalie knew

absolutely nothing. Is it 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, netting. 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 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 Fridays, 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 forehead, which was shapely enough. Her

face was exactly like those of Albert Durer's saints, or those of the

painters before Perugino; the same plump, though slender modeling, the

same delicacy saddened by ecstasy, the same severe guilelessness.

Everything about her, even to her attitude, was suggestive 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.