Array The griffin classics - The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac

“What can this girl have had to do with this business?” he asked himself.

They all three returned to the drawing-room, where Monsieur de Watteville announced the strange, the extraordinary, the prodigious news of the lawyer’s departure, without any reason assigned for his evasion. By half-past eleven only fifteen persons remained, among them Madame de Chavoncourt and the Abbe de Godenars, another Vicar-General, a man of about forty, who hoped for a bishopric, the two Chavoncourt girls, and Monsieur de Vauchelles, the Abbe de Grancey, Rosalie, Amedee de Soulas, and a retired magistrate, one of the most influential members of the upper circle of Besancon, who had been very eager for Albert’s election. The Abbe de Grancey sat down by the Baroness in such a position as to watch Rosalie, whose face, usually pale, wore a feverish flush.

“What can have happened to Monsieur de Savarus?” said Madame de Chavoncourt.

At this moment a servant in livery brought in a letter for the Abbe de Grancey on a silver tray.

“Pray read it,” said the Baroness.

The Vicar-General read the letter; he saw Rosalie suddenly turn as white as her kerchief.

“She recognizes the writing,” said he to himself, after glancing at the girl over his spectacles. He folded up the letter, and calmly put it in his pocket without a word. In three minutes he had met three looks from Rosalie which were enough to make him guess everything.

“She is in love with Albert Savarus!” thought the Vicar-General.

He rose and took leave. He was going towards the door when, in the next room, he was overtaken by Rosalie, who said:

“Monsieur de Grancey, it was from Albert!”

“How do you know that it was his writing, to recognize it from so far?”

The girl’s reply, caught as she was in the toils of her impatience and rage, seemed to the Abbe sublime.

“I love him! — What is the matter?” she said after a pause.

“He gives up the election.”

Rosalie put her finger to her lip.

“I ask you to be as secret as if it were a confession,” said she before returning to the drawing-room. “If there is an end of the election, there is an end of the marriage with Sidonie.”

In the morning, on her way to Mass, Mademoiselle de Watteville heard from Mariette some of the circumstances which had prompted Albert’s disappearance at the most critical moment of his life.

“Mademoiselle, an old gentleman from Paris arrived yesterday morning at the Hotel National; he came in his own carriage with four horses, and a courier in front, and a servant. Indeed, Jerome, who saw the carriage returning, declares he could only be a prince or a milord .”

“Was there a coronet on the carriage?” asked Rosalie.

“I do not know,” said Mariette. “Just as two was striking he came to call on Monsieur Savarus, and sent in his card; and when he saw it, Jerome says Monsieur turned as pale as a sheet, and said he was to be shown in. As he himself locked the door, it is impossible to tell what the old gentleman and the lawyer said to each other; but they were together above an hour, and then the old gentleman, with the lawyer, called up his servant. Jerome saw the servant go out again with an immense package, four feet long, which looked like a great painting on canvas. The old gentleman had in his hand a large parcel of papers. Monsieur Savaron was paler than death, and he, so proud, so dignified, was in a state to be pitied. But he treated the old gentleman so respectfully that he could not have been politer to the King himself. Jerome and Monsieur Albert Savaron escorted the gentleman to his carriage, which was standing with the horses in. The courier started on the stroke of three.

“Monsieur Savaron went straight to the Prefecture, and from that to Monsieur Gentillet, who sold him the old traveling carriage that used to belong to Madame de Saint-Vier before she died; then he ordered post horses for six o’clock. He went home to pack; no doubt he wrote a lot of letters; finally, he settled everything with Monsieur Girardet, who went to him and stayed till seven. Jerome carried a note to Monsieur Boucher, with whom his master was to have dined; and then, at half-past seven, the lawyer set out, leaving Jerome with three months’ wages, and telling him to find another place.

“He left his keys with Monsieur Girardet, whom he took home, and at his house, Jerome says, he took a plate of soup, for at half-past seven Monsieur Girardet had not yet dined. When Monsieur Savaron got into the carriage he looked like death. Jerome, who, of course, saw his master off, heard him tell the postilion ‘The Geneva Road!’”

“Did Jerome ask the name of the stranger at the Hotel National?”

“As the old gentleman did not mean to stay, he was not asked for it. The servant, by his orders no doubt, pretended not to speak French.”

“And the letter which came so late to Abbe de Grancey?” said Rosalie.

“It was Monsieur Girardet, no doubt, who ought to have delivered it; but Jerome says that poor Monsieur Girardet, who was much attached to lawyer Savaron, was as much upset as he was. So he who came so mysteriously, as Mademoiselle Galard says, is gone away just as mysteriously.”

After hearing this narrative, Mademoiselle de Watteville fell into a brooding and absent mood, which everybody could see. It is useless to say anything of the commotion that arose in Besancon on the disappearance of Monsieur Savaron. It was understood that the Prefect had obliged him with the greatest readiness by giving him at once a passport across the frontier, for he was thus quit of his only opponent. Next day Monsieur de Chavoncourt was carried to the top by a majority of a hundred and forty votes.

“Jack is gone by the way he came,” said an elector on hearing of Albert Savaron’s flight.

This event lent weight to the prevailing prejudice at Besancon against strangers; indeed, two years previously they had received confirmation from the affair of the Republican newspaper. Ten days later Albert de Savarus was never spoken of again. Only three persons — Girardet the attorney, the Vicar-General, and Rosalie — were seriously affected by his disappearance. Girardet knew that the white-haired stranger was Prince Soderini, for he had seen his card, and he told the Vicar-General; but Rosalie, better informed than either of them, had known for three months past that the Duc d’Argaiolo was dead.

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.”