Albert Savarus, Honoré de Balzac [romantic novels to read TXT] 📗

him the crooked mouth was straight; and ever since Savaron, by taking him into his service, had brought him so near to the Wattevilles' house, he had laid siege systematically to the maid, who was as prim and sanctimonious as her mistress, and who, like every ugly old maid, was far more exacting than the handsomest.

If the night-scene in the kiosk is thus fully accounted for to all perspicacious readers, it was not so to Rosalie, though she derived from it the most dangerous lesson that can be given, that of a bad example. A mother brings her daughter up strictly, keeps her under her wing for seventeen years, and then, in one hour, a servant girl destroys the long and painful work, sometimes by a word, often indeed by a gesture! Rosalie got into bed again, not without considering how she might take advantage of her discovery.

Next morning, as she went to Mass accompanied by Mariette--her mother was not well--Rosalie took the maid's arm, which surprised the country wench not a little.

"Mariette," said she, "is Jerome in his master's confidence?"

"I do not know, mademoiselle."

"Do not play the innocent with me," said Mademoiselle de Watteville drily. "You let him kiss you last night under the kiosk; I no longer wonder that you so warmly approved of my mother's ideas for the improvements she planned."

Rosalie could feel how Mariette was trembling by the shaking of her arm.

"I wish you no ill," Rosalie went on. "Be quite easy; I shall not say a word to my mother, and you can meet Jerome as often as you please."

"But, mademoiselle," said Mariette, "it is perfectly respectable; Jerome honestly means to marry me--"

"But then," said Rosalie, "why meet at night?"

Mariette was dumfounded, and could make no reply.

"Listen, Mariette; I am in love too! In secret and without any return. I am, after all, my father's and mother's only child. You have more to hope for from me than from any one else in the world--"

"Certainly, mademoiselle, and you may count on us for life or death," exclaimed Mariette, rejoiced at the unexpected turn of affairs.

"In the first place, silence for silence," said Rosalie. "I will not marry Monsieur de Soulas; but one thing I will have, and must have; my help and favor are yours on one condition only."

"What is that?"

"I must see the letters which Monsieur Savaron sends to the post by Jerome."

"But what for?" said Mariette in alarm.

"Oh! merely to read them, and you yourself shall post them afterwards. It will cause a little delay; that is all."

At this moment they went into church, and each of them, instead of reading the order of Mass, fell into her own train of thought.

"Dear, dear, how many sins are there in all that?" thought Mariette.

Rosalie, whose soul, brain, and heart were completely upset by reading the story, by this time regarded it as history, written for her rival. By dint of thinking of nothing else, like a child, she ended by believing that the _Eastern Review_ was no doubt forwarded to Albert's lady-love.

"Oh!" said she to herself, her head buried in her hands in the attitude of a person lost in prayer; "oh! how can I get my father to look through the list of people to whom the _Review_ is sent?"

After breakfast she took a turn in the garden with her father, coaxing and cajoling him, and brought him to the kiosk.

"Do you suppose, my dear little papa, that our _Review_ is ever read abroad?"

"It is but just started--"

"Well, I will wager that it is."

"It is hardly possible."

"Just go and find out, and note the names of any subscribers out of France."

Two hours later Monsieur de Watteville said to his daughter:

"I was right; there is not one foreign subscriber as yet. They hope to get some at Neufchatel, at Berne, and at Geneva. One copy, is in fact, sent to Italy, but it is not paid for--to a Milanese lady at her country house at Belgirate, on Lago Maggiore.

"What is her name?"

"The Duchesse d'Argaiolo."

"Do you know her, papa?"

"I have heard about her. She was by birth a Princess Soderini, a Florentine, a very great lady, and quite as rich as her husband, who has one of the largest fortunes in Lombardy. Their villa on the Lago Maggiore is one of the sights of Italy."

Two days after, Mariette placed the following letter in Mademoiselle de Watteville's hand:--

Albert Savaron to Leopold Hannequin.

"Yes, 'tis so, my dear friend; I am at Besancon, while you thought
I was traveling. I would not tell you anything till success should
begin, and now it is dawning. Yes, my dear Leopold, after so many
abortive undertakings, over which I have shed the best of my
blood, have wasted so many efforts, spent so much courage, I have
made up my mind to do as you have done--to start on a beaten path,
on the highroad, as the longest but the safest. I can see you jump
with surprise in your lawyer's chair!

"But do not suppose that anything is changed in my personal life,
of which you alone in the world know the secret, and that under
the reservations _she_ insists on. I did not tell you, my friend;
but I was horribly weary of Paris. The outcome of the first
enterprise, on which I had founded all my hopes, and which came to
a bad end in consequence of the utter rascality of my two
partners, who combined to cheat and fleece me--me, though
everything was done by my energy--made me give up the pursuit of a
fortune after the loss of three years of my life. One of these
years was spent in the law courts, and perhaps I should have come
worse out of the scrape if I had not been made to study law when I
was twenty.

"I made up my mind to go into politics solely, to the end that I
may some day find my name on a list for promotion to the Senate
under the title of Comte Albert Savaron de Savarus, and so revive
in France a good name now extinct in Belgium--though indeed I am
neither legitimate nor legitimized."

"Ah! I knew it! He is of noble birth!" exclaimed Rosalie, dropping the letter.

"You know how conscientiously I studied, how faithful and useful I
was as an obscure journalist, and how excellent a secretary to the
statesman who, on his part, was true to me in 1829. Flung to the
depths once more by the revolution of July just when my name was
becoming known, at the very moment when, as Master of Appeals, I
was about to find my place as a necessary wheel in the political
machine, I committed the blunder of remaining faithful to the
fallen, and fighting for them, without them. Oh! why was I but
three-and-thirty, and why did I not apply to you to make me
eligible? I concealed from you all my devotedness and my dangers.
What would you have? I was full of faith. We should not have
agreed.

"Ten months ago, when you saw me so gay and contented, writing my
political articles, I was in despair; I foresaw my fate, at the
age of thirty-seven, with two thousand francs for my whole
fortune, without the smallest fame, just having failed in a noble
undertaking, the founding, namely, of a daily paper answering only
to a need of the future instead of appealing to the passions of
the moment. I did not know which way to turn, and I felt my own
value! I wandered about, gloomy and hurt, through the lonely
places of Paris--Paris which had slipped through my fingers
--thinking of my crushed ambitions, but never giving them up. Oh,
what frantic letters I wrote at that time to _her_, my second
conscience, my other self! Sometimes I would say to myself, 'Why
did I sketch so vast a programme of life? Why demand everything?
Why not wait for happiness while devoting myself to some
mechanical employment.'

"I then looked about me for some modest appointment by which I
might live. I was about to get the editorship of a paper under a
manager who did not know much about it, a man of wealth and
ambition, when I took fright. 'Would _she_ ever accept as her
husband a man who had stooped so low?' I wondered.

"This reflection made me two-and-twenty again. But, oh, my dear
Leopold, how the soul is worn by these perplexities! What must not
the caged eagles suffer, and imprisoned lions!--They suffer what
Napoleon suffered, not at Saint Helena, but on the Quay of the
Tuileries, on the 10th of August, when he saw Louis XVI. defending
himself so badly while he could have quelled the insurrection; as
he actually did, on the same spot, a little later, in Vendemiaire.
Well, my life has been a torment of that kind, extending over four
years. How many a speech to the Chamber have I not delivered in
the deserted alleys of the Bois de Boulogne! These wasted
harangues have at any rate sharpened my tongue and accustomed my
mind to formulate its ideas in words. And while I was undergoing
this secret torture, you were getting married, you had paid for
your business, you were made law-clerk to the Maire of your
district, after gaining a cross for a wound at Saint-Merri.

"Now, listen. When I was a small boy and tortured cock-chafers,
the poor insects had one form of struggle which used almost to put
me in a fever. It was when I saw them making repeated efforts to
fly but without getting away, though they could spread their
wings. We used to say, 'They are marking time.' Now was this
sympathy? Was it a vision of my own future?--Oh! to spread my
wings and yet be unable to fly! That has been my predicament since
that fine undertaking by which I was disgusted, but which has now
made four families rich.

"At last, seven months ago, I determined to make myself a name at
the Paris Bar, seeing how many vacancies had been left by the
promotion of several lawyers to eminent positions. But when I
remembered the rivalry I had seen among men of the press, and how
difficult it is to achieve anything of any kind in Paris, the
arena where so many champions meet, I came to a determination
painful to myself, but certain in