Albert Savarus

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Albert Savarus

By

Honore de Balzac


Translated by Ellen Marriage




DEDICATION

To Madame Emile Girardin




ALBERT SAVARUS




One of the few drawing-rooms where, under the Restoration, the
Archbishop of Besancon was sometimes to be seen, was that of the
Baronne de Watteville, to whom he was particularly attached on account
of her religious sentiments.

A word as to this lady, the most important lady of Besancon.

Monsieur de Watteville, a descendant of the famous Watteville, the
most successful and illustrious of murderers and renegades--his
extraordinary adventures are too much a part of history to be related
here--this nineteenth century Monsieur de Watteville was as gentle and
peaceable as his ancestor of the _Grand Siecle_ had been passionate
and turbulent. After living in the _Comte_ (La Franche Comte) like a
wood-louse in the crack of a wainscot, he had married the heiress of
the celebrated house of Rupt. Mademoiselle de Rupt brought twenty
thousand francs a year in the funds to add to the ten thousand francs
a year in real estate of the Baron de Watteville. The Swiss
gentleman's coat-of-arms (the Wattevilles are Swiss) was then borne as
an escutcheon of pretence on the old shield of the Rupts. The
marriage, arranged in 1802, was solemnized in 1815 after the second
Restoration. Within three years of the birth of a daughter all Madame
de Watteville's grandparents were dead, and their estates wound up.
Monsieur de Watteville's house was then sold, and they settled in the
Rue de la Prefecture in the fine old mansion of the Rupts, with an
immense garden stretching to the Rue du Perron. Madame de Watteville,
devout as a girl, became even more so after her marriage. She is one
of the queens of the saintly brotherhood which gives the upper circles
of Besancon a solemn air and prudish manners in harmony with the
character of the town.

Monsieur le Baron de Watteville, a dry, lean man devoid of
intelligence, looked worn out without any one knowing whereby, for he
enjoyed the profoundest ignorance; but as his wife was a red-haired
woman, and of a stern nature that became proverbial (we still say "as
sharp as Madame de Watteville"), some wits of the legal profession
declared that he had been worn against that rock--_Rupt_ is obviously
derived from _rupes_. Scientific students of social phenomena will not
fail to have observed that Rosalie was the only offspring of the union
between the Wattevilles and the Rupts.

Monsieur de Watteville spent his existence in a handsome workshop with
a lathe; he was a turner! As subsidiary to this pursuit, he took up a
fancy for making collections. Philosophical doctors, devoted to the
study of madness, regard this tendency towards collecting as a first
degree of mental aberration when it is set on small things. The Baron
de Watteville treasured shells and geological fragments of the
neighborhood of Besancon. Some contradictory folk, especially women,
would say of Monsieur de Watteville, "He has a noble soul! He
perceived from the first days of his married life that he would never
be his wife's master, so he threw himself into a mechanical occupation
and good living."

The house of the Rupts was not devoid of a certain magnificence worthy
of Louis XIV., and bore traces of the nobility of the two families who
had mingled in 1815. The chandeliers of glass cut in the shape of
leaves, the brocades, the damask, the carpets, the gilt furniture,
were all in harmony with the old liveries and the old servants. Though
served in blackened family plate, round a looking-glass tray furnished
with Dresden china, the food was exquisite. The wines selected by
Monsieur de Watteville, who, to occupy his time and vary his
employments, was his own butler, enjoyed a sort of fame throughout the
department. Madame de Watteville's fortune was a fine one; while her
husband's, which consisted only of the estate of Rouxey, worth about
ten thousand francs a year, was not increased by inheritance. It is
needless to add that in consequence of Madame de Watteville's close
intimacy with the Archbishop, the three or four clever or remarkable
Abbes of the diocese who were not averse to good feeding were very
much at home at her house.

At a ceremonial dinner given in honor of I know not whose wedding, at
the beginning of September 1834, when the women were standing in a
circle round the drawing-room fire, and the men in groups by the
windows, every one exclaimed with pleasure at the entrance of Monsieur
l'Abbe de Grancey, who was announced.

"Well, and the lawsuit?" they all cried.

"Won!" replied the Vicar-General. "The verdict of the Court, from
which we had no hope, you know why----"

This was an allusion to the members of the First Court of Appeal of
1830; the Legitimists had almost all withdrawn.

"The verdict is in our favor on every point, and reverses the decision
of the Lower Court."

"Everybody thought you were done for."

"And we should have been, but for me. I told our advocate to be off to
Paris, and at the crucial moment I was able to secure a new pleader,
to whom we owe our victory, a wonderful man--"

"At Besancon?" said Monsieur de Watteville, guilelessly.

"At Besancon," replied the Abbe de Grancey.

"Oh yes, Savaron," said a handsome young man sitting near the
Baroness, and named de Soulas.

"He spent five or six nights over it; he devoured documents and
briefs; he had seven or eight interviews of several hours with me,"
continued Monsieur de Grancey, who had just reappeared at the Hotel de
Rupt for the first time in three weeks. "In short, Monsieur Savaron
has just completely beaten the celebrated lawyer whom our adversaries
had sent for from Paris. This young man is wonderful, the bigwigs say.
Thus the chapter is twice victorious; it has triumphed in law and also
in politics, since it has vanquished Liberalism in the person of the
Counsel of our Municipality.--'Our adversaries,' so our advocate said,
'must not expect to find readiness on all sides to ruin the
Archbishoprics.'--The President was obliged to enforce silence. All
the townsfolk of Besancon applauded. Thus the possession of the
buildings of the old convent remains with the Chapter of the Cathedral
of Besancon. Monsieur Savaron, however, invited his Parisian opponent
to dine with him as they came out of court. He accepted, saying,
'Honor to every conqueror,' and complimented him on his success
without bitterness."

"And where did you unearth this lawyer?" said Madame de Watteville. "I
never heard his name before."

"Why, you can see his windows from hence," replied the Vicar-General.
"Monsieur Savaron lives in the Rue du Perron; the garden of his house
joins on to yours."

"But he is not a native of the Comte," said Monsieur de Watteville.

"So little is he a native of any place, that no one knows where he
comes from," said Madame de Chavoncourt.

"But who is he?" asked Madame de Watteville, taking the Abbe's arm to
go into the dining-room. "If he is a stranger, by what chance has he
settled at Besancon? It is a strange fancy for a barrister."

"Very strange!" echoed Amedee de Soulas, whose biography is here
necessary to the understanding of this tale.

* * * * *

In all ages France and England have carried on an exchange of trifles,
which is all the more constant because it evades the tyranny of the
Custom-house. The fashion that is called English in Paris is called
French in London, and this is reciprocal. The hostility of the two
nations is suspended on two points--the uses of words and the fashions
of dress. _God Save the King_, the national air of England, is a tune
written by Lulli for the Chorus of Esther or of Athalie. Hoops,
introduced at Paris by an Englishwoman, were invented in London, it is
known why, by a Frenchwoman, the notorious Duchess of Portsmouth. They
were at first so jeered at that the first Englishwoman who appeared in
them at the Tuileries narrowly escaped being crushed by the crowd; but
they were adopted. This fashion tyrannized over the ladies of Europe
for half a century. At the peace of 1815, for a year, the long waists
of the English were a standing jest; all Paris went to see Pothier and
Brunet in _Les Anglaises pour rire_; but in 1816 and 1817 the belt of
the Frenchwoman, which in 1814 cut her across the bosom, gradually
descended till it reached the hips.

Within ten years England has made two little gifts to our language.
The _Incroyable_, the _Merveilleux_, the _Elegant_, the three
successes of the _petit-maitre_ of discreditable etymology, have made
way for the "dandy" and the "lion." The _lion_ is not the parent of
the _lionne_. The _lionne_ is due to the famous song by Alfred de
Musset:

Avez vous vu dans Barcelone
. . . . . .
C'est ma maitresse et ma lionne.

There has been a fusion--or, if you prefer it, a confusion--of the two
words and the leading ideas. When an absurdity can amuse Paris, which
devours as many masterpieces as absurdities, the provinces can hardly
be deprived of them. So, as soon as the _lion_ paraded Paris with his
mane, his beard and moustaches, his waistcoats and his eyeglass,
maintained in its place, without the help of his hands, by the
contraction of his cheek, and eye-socket, the chief towns of some
departments had their sub-lions, who protested by the smartness of
their trouser-straps against the untidiness of their fellow-townsmen.

Thus, in 1834, Besancon could boast of a _lion_, in the person of
Monsieur Amedee-Sylvain de Soulas, spelt Souleyas at the time of the
Spanish occupation. Amedee de Soulas is perhaps the only man in
Besancon descended from a Spanish family. Spain sent men to manage her
business in the Comte, but very few Spaniards settled there. The
Soulas remained in consequence of their connection with Cardinal
Granvelle. Young Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leaving
Besancon, a dull town, church-going, and not literary, a military
centre and garrison town, of which the manners and customs and
physiognomy are worth describing. This opinion allowed of his lodging,
like a man uncertain of the future, in three very scantily furnished
rooms at the end of the Rue Neuve, just where it opens into the Rue de
la Prefecture.

Young Monsieur de Soulas could not possibly live without a tiger. This
tiger was the son of one of his farmers, a small servant aged
fourteen, thick-set, and named Babylas. The lion dressed his tiger
very smartly--a short tunic-coat of iron-gray cloth, belted with
patent leather, bright blue plush breeches, a red waistcoat, polished
leather top-boots, a shiny hat with black lacing, and brass buttons
with the arms of Soulas. Amedee gave this boy white cotton gloves and
his washing, and thirty-six francs a month to keep himself--a sum that
seemed enormous to the grisettes of Besancon: four hundred and twenty
francs a year to a child of fifteen, without counting extras! The
extras consisted in the price for which he could sell his turned
clothes, a present when Soulas exchanged one of his horses, and the
perquisite of the manure. The two horses, treated with sordid economy,
cost, one with another, eight hundred francs a year. His bills for
articles received from Paris, such as perfumery, cravats, jewelry,
patent blacking, and clothes, ran to another twelve hundred francs.
Add to this the groom, or tiger, the horses, a very superior style of
dress, and six hundred francs a year for rent, and you will see a
grand total of three thousand francs.

Now, Monsieur de Soulas' father had left him only four thousand francs
a year, the income from some cottage farms which lent painful
uncertainty to the rents. The lion had hardly three francs a day left
for food, amusements, and gambling. He very often dined out, and
breakfasted with remarkable frugality. When he was positively obliged
to dine at his own cost, he sent his tiger to fetch a couple of dishes
from a cookshop, never spending more than twenty-five sous.

Young Monsieur de Soulas was supposed to be a spendthrift, recklessly
extravagant, whereas the poor man made the two ends meet in the year
with a keenness and skill which would have done honor to a thrifty
housewife. At Besancon in those days no one knew how great a tax on a
man's capital were six francs spent in polish to spread on his boots
or shoes, yellow gloves at fifty sous a pair, cleaned in the deepest
secrecy to make them three times renewed, cravats costing ten francs,
and lasting three months, four waistcoats at twenty-five francs, and
trousers fitting close to the boots. How could he do otherwise, since
we see women in Paris bestowing their special attention on simpletons
who visit them, and cut out the most remarkable men by means of these
frivolous advantages, which a man can buy for fifteen louis, and get
his hair curled and a fine linen shirt into the bargain?

If this unhappy youth should seem to you to have become a _lion_ on
very cheap terms, you must know that Amedee de Soulas had been three
times to Switzerland, by coach and in short stages, twice to Paris,
and once from Paris to England. He passed as a well-informed traveler,
and could say, "In England, where I went . . ." The dowagers of the
town would say to him, "You, who have been in England . . ." He had
been as far as Lombardy, and seen the shores of the Italian lakes. He
read new books. Finally, when he was cleaning his gloves, the tiger
Babylas replied to callers, "Monsieur is very busy." An attempt had
been made to withdraw Monsieur Amedee de Soulas from circulation by
pronouncing him "A man of advanced ideas." Amedee had the gift of
uttering with the gravity of a native the commonplaces that were in
fashion, which gave him the credit of being one of the most
enlightened of the nobility. His person was garnished with fashionable
trinkets, and his head furnished with ideas hall-marked by the press.

In 1834 Amedee was a young man of five-and-twenty, of medium height,
dark, with a very prominent thorax, well-made shoulders, rather plump
legs, feet already fat, white dimpled hands, a beard under his chin,
moustaches worthy of the garrison, a good-natured, fat, rubicund face,
a flat nose, and brown expressionless eyes; nothing Spanish about him.
He was progressing rapidly in the direction of obesity, which would be
fatal to his pretensions. His nails were well kept, his beard trimmed,
the smallest details of his dress attended to with English precision.
Hence Amedee de Soulas was looked upon as the finest man in Besancon.
A hairdresser who waited upon him at a fixed hour--another luxury,
costing sixty francs a year--held him up as the sovereign authority in
matters of fashion and elegance.

Amedee slept late, dressed and went out towards noon, to go to one of
his farms and practise pistol-shooting. He attached as much importance
to this exercise as Lord Byron did in his later days. Then, at three
o'clock he came home, admired on horseback by the grisettes and the
ladies who happened to be at their windows. After an affectation of
study or business, which seemed to engage him till four, he dressed to
dine out, spent the evening in the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy of
Besancon playing whist, and went home to bed at eleven. No life could
be more above board, more prudent, or more irreproachable, for he
punctually attended the services at church on Sundays and holy days.

To enable you to understand how exceptional is such a life, it is
necessary to devote a few words to an account of Besancon. No town
ever offered more deaf and dumb resistance to progress. At Besancon
the officials, the _employes_, the military, in short, every one engaged
in governing it, sent thither from Paris to fill a post of any kind,
are all spoken of by the expressive general name of _the Colony_. The
colony is neutral ground, the only ground where, as in church, the
upper rank and the townsfolk of the place can meet. Here, fired by a
word, a look, or gesture, are started those feuds between house and
house, between a woman of rank and a citizen's wife, which endure till
death, and widen the impassable gulf which parts the two classes of
society. With the exception of the Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean, the
Beauffremont, the de Scey, and the Gramont families, with a few others
who come only to stay on their estates in the Comte, the aristocracy
of Besancon dates no further back than a couple of centuries, the time
of the conquest by Louis XIV. This little world is essentially of the
_parlement_, and arrogant, stiff, solemn, uncompromising, haughty
beyond all comparison, even with the Court of Vienna, for in this the
nobility of Besancon would put the Viennese drawing-rooms to shame. As
to Victor Hugo, Nodier, Fourier, the glories of the town, they are
never mentioned, no one thinks about them. The marriages in these
families are arranged in the cradle, so rigidly are the greatest
things settled as well as the smallest. No stranger, no intruder, ever
finds his way into one of these houses, and to obtain an introduction
for the colonels or officers of title belonging to the first families
in France when quartered there, requires efforts of diplomacy which
Prince Talleyrand would gladly have mastered to use at a congress.

In 1834 Amedee was the only man in Besancon who wore trouser-straps;
this will account for the young man's being regarded as a lion. And a
little anecdote will enable you to understand the city of Besancon.

Some time before the opening of this story, the need arose at the
prefecture for bringing an editor from Paris for the official
newspaper, to enable it to hold its own against the little _Gazette_,
dropped at Besancon by the great _Gazette_, and the _Patriot_, which
frisked in the hands of the Republicans. Paris sent them a young man,
knowing nothing about la Franche Comte, who began by writing them a
leading article of the school of the _Charivari_. The chief of the
moderate party, a member of the municipal council, sent for the
journalist and said to him, "You must understand, monsieur, that we
are serious, more than serious--tiresome; we resent being amused, and
are furious at having been made to laugh. Be as hard of digestion as
the toughest disquisitions in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and you will
hardly reach the level of Besancon."

The editor took the hint, and thenceforth spoke the most
incomprehensible philosophical lingo. His success was complete.

If young Monsieur de Soulas did not fall in the esteem of Besancon
society, it was out of pure vanity on its part; the aristocracy were
happy to affect a modern air, and to be able to show any Parisians of
rank who visited the Comte a young man who bore some likeness to them.

All this hidden labor, all this dust thrown in people's eyes, this
display of folly and latent prudence, had an object, or the _lion_ of
Besancon would have been no son of the soil. Amedee wanted to achieve
a good marriage by proving some day that his farms were not mortgaged,
and that he had some savings. He wanted to be the talk of the town, to
be the finest and best-dressed man there, in order to win first the
attention, and then the hand, of Mademoiselle Rosalie de Watteville.

In 1830, at the time when young Monsieur de Soulas was setting up in
business as a dandy, Rosalie was but fourteen. Hence, in 1834,
Mademoiselle de Watteville had reached the age when young persons are
easily struck by the peculiarities which attracted the attention of
the town to Amedee. There are so many _lions_ who become _lions_ out
of self-interest and speculation. The Wattevilles, who for twelve
years had been drawing an income of fifty thousand francs a year, did
not spend more than four-and-twenty thousand francs a year, while
receiving all the upper circle of Besancon every Monday and Friday. On
Monday they gave a dinner, on Friday an evening party. Thus, in twelve
years, what a sum must have accumulated from twenty-six thousand
francs a year, saved and invested with the judgment that distinguishes
those old families! It was very generally supposed that Madame de
Watteville, thinking she had land enough, had placed her savings in
the three per cents, in 1830. Rosalie's dowry would therefore, as the
best informed opined, amount to about twenty thousand francs a year.
So for the last five years Amedee had worked like a mole to get into
the highest favor of the severe Baroness, while laying himself out to
flatter Mademoiselle de Watteville's conceit.

Madame de Watteville was in the secret of the devices by which Amedee
succeeded in keeping up his rank in Besancon, and esteemed him highly
for it. Soulas had placed himself under her wing when she was thirty,
and at that time had dared to admire her and make her his idol; he had
got so far as to be allowed--he alone in the world--to pour out to her
all the unseemly gossip which almost all very precise women love to
hear, being authorized by their superior virtue to look into the gulf
without falling, and into the devil's snares without being caught. Do
you understand why the lion did not allow himself the very smallest
intrigue? He lived a public life, in the street so to speak, on
purpose to play the part of a lover sacrificed to duty by the
Baroness, and to feast her mind with the sins she had forbidden to her
senses. A man who is so privileged as to be allowed to pour light
stories into the ear of a bigot is in her eyes a charming man. If this
exemplary youth had better known the human heart, he might without
risk have allowed himself some flirtations among the grisettes of
Besancon who looked up to him as a king; his affairs might perhaps
have been all the more hopeful with the strict and prudish Baroness.
To Rosalie our Cato affected prodigality; he professed a life of
elegance, showing her in perspective the splendid part played by a
woman of fashion in Paris, whither he meant to go as Depute.

All these manoeuvres were crowned with complete success. In 1834 the
mothers of the forty noble families composing the high society of
Besancon quoted Monsieur Amedee de Soulas as the most charming young
man in the town; no one would have dared to dispute his place as cock
of the walk at the Hotel de Rupt, and all Besancon regarded him as
Rosalie de Watteville's future husband. There had even been some
exchange of ideas on the subject between the Baroness and Amedee, to
which the Baron's apparent nonentity gave some certainty.

Mademoiselle de Watteville, to whom her enormous prospective fortune
at that time lent considerable importance, had been brought up
exclusively within the precincts of the Hotel de Rupt--which her
mother rarely quitted, so devoted was she to her dear Archbishop--and
severely repressed by an exclusively religious education, and by her
mother's despotism, which held her rigidly to principles. Rosalie knew
absolutely nothing. Is it knowledge to have learned geography from
Guthrie, sacred history, ancient history, the history of France, and
the four rules all passed through the sieve of an old Jesuit? Dancing
and music were forbidden, as being more likely to corrupt life than to
grace it. The Baroness taught her daughter every conceivable stitch in
tapestry and women's work--plain sewing, embroidery, netting. At
seventeen Rosalie had never read anything but the _Lettres edifiantes_
and some works on heraldry. No newspaper had ever defiled her sight.
She attended mass at the Cathedral every morning, taken there by her
mother, came back to breakfast, did needlework after a little walk in
the garden, and received visitors, sitting with the baroness until
dinner-time. Then, after dinner, excepting on Mondays and Fridays, she
accompanied Madame de Watteville to other houses to spend the evening,
without being allowed to talk more than the maternal rule permitted.

At eighteen Mademoiselle de Watteville was a slight, thin girl with a
flat figure, fair, colorless, and insignificant to the last degree.
Her eyes, of a very light blue, borrowed beauty from their lashes,
which, when downcast, threw a shadow on her cheeks. A few freckles
marred the whiteness of her forehead, which was shapely enough. Her
face was exactly like those of Albert Durer's saints, or those of the
painters before Perugino; the same plump, though slender modeling, the
same delicacy saddened by ecstasy, the same severe guilelessness.
Everything about her, even to her attitude, was suggestive of those
virgins, whose beauty is only revealed in its mystical radiance to the
eyes of the studious connoisseur. She had fine hands though red, and a
pretty foot, the foot of an aristocrat.

She habitually wore simple checked cotton dresses; but on Sundays and
in the evening her mother allowed her silk. The cut of her frocks,
made at Besancon, almost made her ugly, while her mother tried to
borrow grace, beauty, and elegance from Paris fashions; for through
Monsieur de Soulas she procured the smallest trifles of her dress from
thence. Rosalie had never worn a pair of silk stockings or thin boots,
but always cotton stockings and leather shoes. On high days she was
dressed in a muslin frock, her hair plainly dressed, and had bronze
kid shoes.