VIII

"Papa," said Rosalie, "a /Review/ is published in Besancon; you ought

to take it in; and keep it in your room, for mamma would not let me

read it, but you will lend it to me."

Monsieur de Watteville, eager to obey his dear Rosalie, who for the

last five months had given him so many proofs of filial affection,--

Monsieur de Watteville went in person to subscribe for a year to the

/Eastern Review/, and lent the four numbers already out to his

daughter. In the course of the night Rosalie devoured the tale--the

first she had ever read in her life--but she had only known life for

two months past. Hence the effect produced on her by this work must

not be judged by ordinary rules. Without prejudice of any kind as to

the greater or less merit of this composition from the pen of a

Parisian who had thus imported into the province the manner, the

brilliancy, if you will, of the new literary school, it could not fail

to be a masterpiece to a young girl abandoning all her intelligence

and her innocent heart to her first reading of this kind.

Also, from what she had heard said, Rosalie had by intuition conceived

a notion of it which strangely enhanced the interest of this novel.

She hoped to find in it the sentiments, and perhaps something of the

life of Albert. From the first pages this opinion took so strong a

hold on her, that after reading the fragment to the end she was

certain that it was no mistake. Here, then, is this confession, in

which, according to the critics of Madame de Chavoncourt's drawing-

room, Albert had imitated some modern writers who, for lack of

inventiveness, relate their private joys, their private griefs, or the

mysterious events of their own life.

*****

AMBITION FOR LOVE'S SAKE

In 1823 two young men, having agreed as a plan for a holiday to make a

tour through Switzerland, set out from Lucerne one fine morning in the

month of July in a boat pulled by three oarsmen. They started for

Fluelen, intending to stop at every notable spot on the lake of the

Four Cantons. The views which shut in the waters on the way from

Lucerne to Fluelen offer every combination that the most exacting

fancy can demand of mountains and rivers, lakes and rocks, brooks and

pastures, trees and torrents. Here are austere solitudes and charming

headlands, smiling and trimly kept meadows, forests crowning

perpendicular granite cliffs, like plumes, deserted but verdant

reaches opening out, and valleys whose beauty seems the lovelier in

the dreamy distance.

As they passed the pretty hamlet of Gersau, one of the friends looked

for a long time at a wooden house which seemed to have been recently

built, enclosed by a paling, and standing on a promontory, almost

bathed by the waters. As the boat rowed past, a woman's head was

raised against the background of the room on the upper story of this

house, to admire the effect of the boat on the lake. One of the young

men met the glance thus indifferently given by the unknown fair.

"Let us stop here," said he to his friend. "We meant to make Lucerne

our headquarters for seeing Switzerland; you will not take it amiss,

Leopold, if I change my mind and stay here to take charge of our

possessions. Then you can go where you please; my journey is ended.

Pull to land, men, and put us out at this village; we will breakfast

here. I will go back to Lucerne to fetch all our luggage, and before

you leave you will know in which house I take a lodging, where you

will find me on your return."

"Here or at Lucerne," replied Leopold, "the difference is not so great

that I need hinder you from following your whim."

These two youths were friends in the truest sense of the word. They

were of the same age; they had learned at the same school; and after

studying the law, they were spending their holiday in the classical

tour in Switzerland. Leopold, by his father's determination, was

already pledged to a place in a notary's office in Paris. His spirit

of rectitude, his gentleness, and the coolness of his senses and his

brain, guaranteed him to be a docile pupil. Leopold could see himself

a notary in Paris; his life lay before him like one of the highroads

that cross the plains of France, and he looked along its whole length

with philosophical resignation.

The character of his companion, whom we will call Rodolphe, presented

a strong contrast with Leopold's, and their antagonism had no doubt

had the result of tightening the bond that united them. Rodolphe was

the natural son of a man of rank, who was carried off by a premature

death before he could make any arrangements for securing the means of

existence to a woman he fondly loved and to Rodolphe. Thus cheated by

a stroke of fate, Rodolphe's mother had recourse to a heroic measure.

She sold everything she owed to the munificence of her child's father

for a sum of more than a hundred thousand francs, bought with it a

life annuity for herself at a high rate, and thus acquired an income

of about fifteen thousand francs, resolving to devote the whole of it

to the education of her son, so as to give him all the personal

advantages that might help to make his fortune, while saving, by

strict economy, a small capital to be his when he came of age. It was

bold; it was counting on her own life; but without this boldness the

good mother would certainly have found it impossible to live and to

bring her child up suitably, and he was her only hope, her future, the

spring of all her joys.

Rodolphe, the son of a most charming Parisian woman, and a man of

mark, a nobleman of Brabant, was cursed with extreme sensitiveness.

From his infancy he had in everything shown a most ardent nature. In

him mere desire became a guiding force and the motive power of his

whole being, the stimulus to his imagination, the reason of his

actions. Notwithstanding the pains taken by a clever mother, who was

alarmed when she detected this predisposition, Rodolphe wished for

things as a poet imagines, as a mathematician calculates, as a painter

sketches, as a musician creates melodies. Tender-hearted, like his

mother, he dashed with inconceivable violence and impetus of thought

after the object of his desires; he annihilated time. While dreaming

of the fulfilment of his schemes, he always overlooked the means of

attainment. "When my son has children," said his other, "he will want

them born grown up."

This fine frenzy, carefully directed, enabled Rodolphe to achieve his

studies with brilliant results, and to become what the English call an

accomplished gentleman. His mother was then proud of him, though still

fearing a catastrophe if ever a passion should possess a heart at once

so tender and so susceptible, so vehement and so kind. Therefore, the

judicious mother had encouraged the friendship which bound Leopold to

Rodolphe and Rodolphe to Leopold, since she saw in the cold and

faithful young notary, a guardian, a comrade, who might to a certain

extent take her place if by some misfortune she should be lost to her

son. Rodolphe's mother, still handsome at three-and-forty, had

inspired Leopold with an ardent passion. This circumstance made the

two young men even more intimate.

So Leopold, knowing Rodolphe well, was not surprised to find him

stopping at a village and giving up the projected journey to Saint-

Gothard, on the strength of a single glance at the upper window of a

house. While breakfast was prepared for them at the Swan Inn, the

friends walked round the hamlet and came to the neighborhood of the

pretty new house; here, while gazing about him and talking to the

inhabitants, Rodolphe discovered the residence of some decent folk,

who were willing to take him as a boarder, a very frequent custom in

Switzerland. They offered him a bedroom looking over the lake and the

mountains, and from whence he had a view of one of those immense

sweeping reaches which, in this lake, are the admiration of every

traveler. This house was divided by a roadway and a little creek from

the new house, where Rodolphe had caught sight of the unknown fair

one's face.