VI

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 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, mamma," 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 labyrinth 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?" said

Rosalie point-blank to the Vicar-General, during 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 Abbe.

"I never could have believed that Rosalie would think 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 congratulations 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 almost

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 distinguish 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 University of France

long since set itself the task of having nothing 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

Agnes, and you leave this suppressed mind, so fresh and clear-seeing,

as swift and as logical as that of a savage, 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 Abbes of the

Chapter of Besancon 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 Besancon

faces she had hitherto met with, Rosalie at once jumped at the idea of

getting into his house, of ascertaining the reason of so much mystery,

of hearing that eloquent 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 interview with the Abbe Giroud at Saint-Pierre, and

managed so ingeniously that the hour of her confession was fixed for

Sunday morning at half-past seven, before the 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 turning, 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 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!" 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 eye would command the lawyer's private

room. And there are men for whose sake young girls can carry out such

masterstrokes of diplomacy, while, for the most part, like Albert

Savaron, they know it not.