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

“You eat like an ogre!”

“Just so. But however much I may eat, I feel my legs get weaker and weaker — ”

“It is from working the lathe,” said his wife.

“I do not know,” said he.

“We will marry Rosalie to Monsieur de Soulas; if you give her les Rouxey, keep the life interest. I will give them fifteen thousand francs a year in the funds. Our children can live here; I do not see that they are much to be pitied.”

“No. I shall give them les Rouxey out and out. Rosalie is fond of les Rouxey.”

“You are a queer man with your daughter! It does not occur to you to ask me if I am fond of les Rouxey.”

Rosalie, at once sent for, was informed that she was to marry Monsieur de Soulas one day early in the month of May.

“I am very much obliged to you, mother, and to you too, father, for having thought of settling me; but I do not mean to marry; I am very happy with you.”

“Mere speeches!” said the Baroness. “You are not in love with Monsieur de Soulas, that is all.”

“If you insist on the plain truth, I will never marry Monsieur de Soulas — ”

“Oh! the never of a girl of nineteen!” retorted her mother, with a bitter smile.

“The never of Mademoiselle de Watteville,” said Rosalie with firm decision. “My father, I imagine, has no intention of making me marry against my wishes?”

“No, indeed no!” said the poor Baron, looking affectionately at his daughter.

“Very well!” said the Baroness, sternly controlling the rage of a bigot startled at finding herself unexpectedly defied, “you yourself, Monsieur de Watteville, may take the responsibility of settling your daughter. Consider well, mademoiselle, for if you do not marry to my mind you will get nothing out of me!”

The quarrel thus begun between Madame de Watteville and her husband, who took his daughter’s part, went so far that Rosalie and her father were obliged to spend the summer at les Rouxey; life at the Hotel de Rupt was unendurable. It thus became known in Besancon that Mademoiselle de Watteville had positively refused the Comte de Soulas.

After their marriage Mariette and Jerome came to les Rouxey to succeed to Modinier in due time. The Baron restored and repaired the house to suit his daughter’s taste. When she heard that these improvements had cost about sixty thousand francs, and that Rosalie and her father were building a conservatory, the Baroness understood that there was a leaven of spite in her daughter. The Baron purchased various outlying plots, and a little estate worth thirty thousand francs. Madame de Watteville was told that, away from her, Rosalie showed masterly qualities, that she was taking steps to improve the value of les Rouxey, that she had treated herself to a riding habit and rode about; her father, whom she made very happy, who no longer complained of his health, and who was growing fat, accompanied her in her expeditions. As the Baroness’ name-day grew near — her name was Louise — the Vicar-General came one day to les Rouxey, deputed, no doubt, by Madame de Watteville and Monsieur de Soulas, to negotiate a peace between mother and daughter.

“That little Rosalie has a head on her shoulders,” said the folk of Besancon.

After handsomely paying up the ninety thousand francs spent on les Rouxey, the Baroness allowed her husband a thousand francs a month to live on; she would not put herself in the wrong. The father and daughter were perfectly willing to return to Besancon for the 15th of August, and to remain there till the end of the month.

When, after dinner, the Vicar-General took Mademoiselle de Watteville apart, to open the question of the marriage, by explaining to her that it was vain to think any more of Albert, of whom they had had no news for a year past, he was stopped at once by a sign from Rosalie. The strange girl took Monsieur de Grancey by the arm, and led him to a seat under a clump of rhododendrons, whence there was a view of the lake.

“Listen, dear Abbe,” said she. “You whom I love as much as my father, for you had an affection for my Albert, I must at last confess that I committed crimes to become his wife, and he must be my husband. — Here; read this.”

She held out to him a number of the Gazette which she had in her apron pocket, pointing out the following paragraph under the date of Florence, May 25th: —

“The wedding of Monsieur le Duc de Rhetore, eldest son of the Duc

de Chaulieu, the former Ambassador, to Madame la Duchesse

d’Argaiolo, nee Princess Soderini, was solemnized with great

splendor. Numerous entertainments given in honor of the marriage

are making Florence gay. The Duchess’ fortune is one of the finest

in Italy, for the late Duke left her everything.”

“The woman he loved is married,” said she. “I divided them.”

“You? How?” asked the Abbe.

Rosalie was about to reply, when she was interrupted by a loud cry from two of the gardeners, following on the sound of a body falling into the water; she started, and ran off screaming, “Oh! father!” — The Baron had disappeared.

In trying to reach a piece of granite on which he fancied he saw the impression of a shell, a circumstance which would have contradicted some system of geology, Monsieur de Watteville had gone down the slope, lost his balance, and slipped into the lake, which, of course, was deepest close under the roadway. The men had the greatest difficulty in enabling the Baron to catch hold of a pole pushed down at the place where the water was bubbling, but at last they pulled him out, covered with mud, in which he had sunk; he was getting deeper and deeper in, by dint of struggling. Monsieur de Watteville had dined heavily, digestion was in progress, and was thus checked.

When he had been undressed, washed, and put to bed, he was in such evident danger that two servants at once set out on horseback: one to ride to Besancon, and the other to fetch the nearest doctor and surgeon. When Madame de Watteville arrived, eight hours later, with the first medical aid from Besancon, they found Monsieur de Watteville past all hope, in spite of the intelligent treatment of the Rouxey doctor. The fright had produced serious effusion on the brain, and the shock to the digestion was helping to kill the poor man.

This death, which would never have happened, said Madame de Watteville, if her husband had stayed at Besancon, was ascribed by her to her daughter’s obstinacy. She took an aversion for Rosalie, abandoning herself to grief and regrets that were evidently exaggerated. She spoke of the Baron as “her dear lamb!”

The last of the Wattevilles was buried on an island in the lake at les Rouxey, where the Baroness had a little Gothic monument erected of white marble, like that called the tomb of Heloise at Pere-Lachaise.

A month after this catastrophe the mother and daughter had settled in the Hotel de Rupt, where they lived in savage silence. Rosalie was suffering from real sorrow, which had no visible outlet; she accused herself of her father’s death, and she feared another disaster, much greater in her eyes, and very certainly her own work; neither Girardet the attorney nor the Abbe de Grancey could obtain any information concerning Albert. This silence was appalling. In a paroxysm of repentance she felt that she must confess to the Vicar-General the horrible machinations by which she had separated Francesca and Albert. They had been simple, but formidable. Mademoiselle de Watteville had intercepted Albert’s letters to the Duchess as well as that in which Francesca announced her husband’s illness, warning her lover that she could write to him no more during the time while she was devoted, as was her duty, to the care of the dying man. Thus, while Albert was wholly occupied with election matters, the Duchess had written him only two letters; one in which she told him that the Duc d’Argaiolo was in danger, and one announcing her widowhood — two noble and beautiful letters which Rosalie kept back.