Rosalie spent the winter of 1834-35 torn by secret tumults; but in the
spring, in the month of April, when she reached the age of nineteen, she sometimes thought that it would be a fine thing to triumph over a Duchesse d'Argaiolo. In silence and solitude the prospect of this struggle had fanned her passion and her evil thoughts. She encouraged her romantic daring by making plan after plan. Although such characters are an exception, there are, unfortunately, too many Rosalies in the world, and this story contains a moral that ought to serve them as a warning.
In the course of this winter Albert de Savarus had quietly made
considerable progress in Besancon. Confident of success, he now
impatiently awaited the dissolution of the Chamber. Among the men of
the moderate party he had won the suffrages of one of the makers of
Besancon, a rich contractor, who had very wide influence.
Wherever they settled the Romans took immense pains, and spent
enormous sums to have an unlimited supply of good water in every town
of their empire. At Besancon they drank the water from Arcier, a hill
at some considerable distance from Besancon. The town stands in a
horseshoe circumscribed by the river Doubs. Thus, to restore an
aqueduct in order to drink the same water that the Romans drank, in a
town watered by the Doubs, is one of those absurdities which only
succeed in a country place where the most exemplary gravity prevails. If this whim could be brought home to the hearts of the citizens, it would lead to considerable outlay; and this expenditure would benefit the influential contractor.
Albert Savaron de Savarus opined that the water of the river was good
for nothing but to flow under the suspension bridge, and that the only
drinkable water was that from Arcier. Articles were printed in the
Review which merely expressed the views of the commercial interest
of Besancon. The nobility and the citizens, the moderates and the
legitimists, the government party and the opposition, everybody, in
short, was agreed that they must drink the same water as the Romans, and boast of a suspension bridge. The question of the Arcier water was the order of the day at Besancon. At Besancon—as in the matter of the two railways to Versailles—as for every standing abuse—there were private interests unconfessed which gave vital force to this idea. The reasonable folk in opposition to this scheme, who were indeed but few, were regarded as old women. No one talked of anything but of Savaron's two projects. And thus, after eighteen months of underground labor, the ambitious lawyer had succeeded in stirring to its depths the most stagnant town in France, the most unyielding to foreign influence, in finding the length of its foot, to use a vulgar phrase, and exerting a preponderant influence without stirring from his own room. He had solved the singular problem of how to be powerful without being popular.
In the course of this winter he won seven lawsuits for various priests
of Besancon. At moments he could breathe freely at the thought of his
coming triumph. This intense desire, which made him work so many
interests and devise so many springs, absorbed the last strength of
his terribly overstrung soul. His disinterestedness was lauded, and he
took his clients' fees without comment. But this disinterestedness
was, in truth, moral usury; he counted on a reward far greater to him
than all the gold in the world.
In the month of October 1834 he had brought, ostensibly to serve a
merchant who was in difficulties, with money lent him by Leopold
Hannequin, a house which gave him a qualification for election. He had
not seemed to seek or desire this advantageous bargain.
"You are really a remarkable man," said the Abbe de Grancey, who, of
course, had watched and understood the lawyer. The Vicar-General had
come to introduce to him a Canon who needed his professional advice. "You are a priest who has taken the wrong turning." This observation struck Savarus.
Rosalie, on her part, had made up her mind, in her strong girl's head, to get Monsieur de Savarus into the drawing-room and acquainted with the society of the Hotel de Rupt. So far she had limited her desires to seeing and hearing Albert. She had compounded, so to speak, and a composition is often no more than a truce.