XXV

I

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."