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 theCustom-house. The fashion that is called English in Paris is calledFrench in London, and this is reciprocal. The hostility of the twonations is suspended on two points--the uses of words and the fashionsof dress. God Save the King, the national air of England, is a tunewritten by Lulli for the Chorus of Esther or of Athalie. Hoops,introduced at Paris by an Englishwoman, were invented in London, it isknown why, by a Frenchwoman, the notorious Duchess of Portsmouth. Theywere at first so jeered at that the first Englishwoman who appeared inthem at the Tuileries narrowly escaped being crushed by the crowd; butthey were adopted. This fashion tyrannized over the ladies of Europefor half a century. At the peace of 1815, for a year, the long waistsof the English were a standing jest; all Paris went to see Pothier andBrunet in Les Anglaises pour rire; but in 1816 and 1817 the belt ofthe Frenchwoman, which in 1814 cut her across the bosom, graduallydescended till it reached the hips.
Within ten years England has made two little gifts to our language.The Incroyable, the Merveilleux, the Elegant, the threesuccesses of the petit-maitre of discreditable etymology, have madeway for the "dandy" and the "lion." The lion is not the parent ofthe lionne. The lionne is due to the famous song by Alfred deMusset:
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 twowords and the leading ideas. When an absurdity can amuse Paris, whichdevours as many masterpieces as absurdities, the provinces can hardlybe deprived of them. So, as soon as the lion paraded Paris with hismane, his beard and moustaches, his waistcoats and his eyeglass,maintained in its place, without the help of his hands, by thecontraction of his cheek, and eye-socket, the chief towns of somedepartments had their sub-lions, who protested by the smartness oftheir trouser-straps against the untidiness of their fellow-townsmen.
Thus, in 1834, Besancon could boast of a lion, in the person ofMonsieur Amedee-Sylvain de Soulas, spelt Souleyas at the time of theSpanish occupation. Amedee de Soulas is perhaps the only man inBesancon descended from a Spanish family. Spain sent men to manage herbusiness in the Comte, but very few Spaniards settled there. TheSoulas remained in consequence of their connection with CardinalGranvelle. Young Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leavingBesancon, a dull town, church-going, and not literary, a militarycentre and garrison town, of which the manners and customs andphysiognomy are worth describing. This opinion allowed of his lodging,like a man uncertain of the future, in three very scantily furnishedrooms at the end of the Rue Neuve, just where it opens into the Rue dela Prefecture.
Young Monsieur de Soulas could not possibly live without a tiger. Thistiger was the son of one of his farmers, a small servant agedfourteen, thick-set, and named Babylas. The lion dressed his tigervery smartly--a short tunic-coat of iron-gray cloth, belted withpatent leather, bright blue plush breeches, a red waistcoat, polishedleather top-boots, a shiny hat with black lacing, and brass buttonswith the arms of Soulas. Amedee gave this boy white cotton gloves andhis washing, and thirty-six francs a month to keep himself--a sum thatseemed enormous to the grisettes of Besancon: four hundred and twentyfrancs a year to a child of fifteen, without counting extras! Theextras consisted in the price for which he could sell his turnedclothes, a present when Soulas exchanged one of his horses, and theperquisite of the manure. The two horses, treated with sordid economy,cost, one with another, eight hundred francs a year. His bills forarticles 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 ofdress, and six hundred francs a year for rent, and you will see agrand total of three thousand francs.
Now, Monsieur de Soulas' father had left him only four thousand francsa year, the income from some cottage farms which lent painfuluncertainty to the rents. The lion had hardly three francs a day leftfor food, amusements, and gambling. He very often dined out, andbreakfasted with remarkable frugality. When he was positively obligedto dine at his own cost, he sent his tiger to fetch a couple of dishesfrom a cookshop, never spending more than twenty-five sous.
Young Monsieur de Soulas was supposed to be a spendthrift, recklesslyextravagant, whereas the poor man made the two ends meet in the yearwith a keenness and skill which would have done honor to a thriftyhousewife. At Besancon in those days no one knew how great a tax on aman's capital were six francs spent in polish to spread on his bootsor shoes, yellow gloves at fifty sous a pair, cleaned in the deepestsecrecy to make them three times renewed, cravats costing ten francs,and lasting three months, four waistcoats at twenty-five francs, andtrousers fitting close to the boots. How could he do otherwise, sincewe see women in Paris bestowing their special attention on simpletonswho visit them, and cut out the most remarkable men by means of thesefrivolous advantages, which a man can buy for fifteen louis, and gethis hair curled and a fine linen shirt into the bargain?
If this unhappy youth should seem to you to have become a lion onvery cheap terms, you must know that Amedee de Soulas had been threetimes 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 thetown would say to him, "You, who have been in England . . ." He hadbeen as far as Lombardy, and seen the shores of the Italian lakes. Heread new books. Finally, when he was cleaning his gloves, the tigerBabylas replied to callers, "Monsieur is very busy." An attempt hadbeen made to withdraw Monsieur Amedee de Soulas from circulation bypronouncing him "A man of advanced ideas." Amedee had the gift ofuttering with the gravity of a native the commonplaces that were infashion, which gave him the credit of being one of the mostenlightened of the nobility. His person was garnished with fashionabletrinkets, 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 plumplegs, 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 befatal 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 inmatters of fashion and elegance.
Amedee slept late, dressed and went out towards noon, to go to one ofhis farms and practise pistol-shooting. He attached as much importanceto this exercise as Lord Byron did in his later days. Then, at threeo'clock he came home, admired on horseback by the grisettes and theladies who happened to be at their windows. After an affectation ofstudy or business, which seemed to engage him till four, he dressed todine out, spent the evening in the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy ofBesancon playing whist, and went home to bed at eleven. No life couldbe more above board, more prudent, or more irreproachable, for hepunctually attended the services at church on Sundays and holy days.
To enable you to understand how exceptional is such a life, it isnecessary to devote a few words to an account of Besancon. No townever offered more deaf and dumb resistance to progress. At Besanconthe officials, the employes, the military, in short, every one engagedin 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. Thecolony is neutral ground, the only ground where, as in church, theupper rank and the townsfolk of the place can meet. Here, fired by aword, a look, or gesture, are started those feuds between house andhouse, between a woman of rank and a citizen's wife, which endure tilldeath, and widen the impassable gulf which parts the two classes ofsociety. With the exception of the Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean, theBeauffremont, the de Scey, and the Gramont families, with a few otherswho come only to stay on their estates in the Comte, the aristocracyof Besancon dates no further back than a couple of centuries, the timeof the conquest by Louis XIV. This little world is essentially of theparlement, and arrogant, stiff, solemn, uncompromising, haughtybeyond all comparison, even with the Court of Vienna, for in this thenobility of Besancon would put the Viennese drawing-rooms to shame. Asto Victor Hugo, Nodier, Fourier, the glories of the town, they arenever mentioned, no one thinks about them. The marriages in thesefamilies are arranged in the cradle, so rigidly are the greatestthings settled as well as the smallest. No stranger, no intruder, everfinds his way into one of these houses, and to obtain an introductionfor the colonels or officers of title belonging to the first familiesin France when quartered there, requires efforts of diplomacy whichPrince 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 alittle anecdote will enable you to understand the city of Besancon.
Some time before the opening of this story, the need arose at theprefecture for bringing an editor from Paris for the officialnewspaper, to enable it to hold its own against the little Gazette,dropped at Besancon by the great Gazette, and the Patriot, whichfrisked in the hands of the Republicans. Paris sent them a young man,knowing nothing about la Franche Comte, who began by writing them aleading article of the school of the Charivari. The chief of themoderate party, a member of the municipal council, sent for thejournalist and said to him, "You must understand, monsieur, that weare serious, more than serious--tiresome; we resent being amused, andare furious at having been made to laugh. Be as hard of digestion asthe toughest disquisitions in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and you willhardly reach the level of Besancon."
The editor took the hint, and thenceforth spoke the mostincomprehensible philosophical lingo. His success was complete.
If young Monsieur de Soulas did not fall in the esteem of Besanconsociety, it was out of pure vanity on its part; the aristocracy werehappy to affect a modern air, and to be able to show any Parisians ofrank 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, thisdisplay of folly and latent prudence, had an object, or the lion ofBesancon would have been no son of the soil. Amedee wanted to achievea 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, tobe the finest and best-dressed man there, in order to win first theattention, and then the hand, of Mademoiselle Rosalie de Watteville.
In 1830, at the time when young Monsieur de Soulas was setting up inbusiness as a dandy, Rosalie was but fourteen. Hence, in 1834,Mademoiselle de Watteville had reached the age when young persons areeasily struck by the peculiarities which attracted the attention ofthe town to Amedee. There are so many lions who become lions outof self-interest and speculation. The Wattevilles, who for twelveyears had been drawing an income of fifty thousand francs a year, didnot spend more than four-and-twenty thousand francs a year, whilereceiving all the upper circle of Besancon every Monday and Friday. OnMonday they gave a dinner, on Friday an evening party. Thus, in twelveyears, what a sum must have accumulated from twenty-six thousandfrancs a year, saved and invested with the judgment that distinguishesthose old families! It was very generally supposed that Madame deWatteville, thinking she had land enough, had placed her savings inthe three per cents, in 1830. Rosalie's dowry would therefore, as thebest informed opined, amount to about twenty thousand francs a year.So for the last five years Amedee had worked like a mole to get intothe highest favor of the severe Baroness, while laying himself out toflatter Mademoiselle de Watteville's conceit.
Madame de Watteville was in the secret of the devices by which Amedeesucceeded in keeping up his rank in Besancon, and esteemed him highlyfor 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 hadgot so far as to be allowed--he alone in the world--to pour out to herall the unseemly gossip which almost all very precise women love tohear, being authorized by their superior virtue to look into the gulfwithout falling, and into the devil's snares without being caught. Doyou understand why the lion did not allow himself the very smallestintrigue? He lived a public life, in the street so to speak, onpurpose to play the part of a lover sacrificed to duty by theBaroness, and to feast her mind with the sins she had forbidden to hersenses. A man who is so privileged as to be allowed to pour lightstories into the ear of a bigot is in her eyes a charming man. If thisexemplary youth had better known the human heart, he might withoutrisk have allowed himself some flirtations among the grisettes ofBesancon who looked up to him as a king; his affairs might perhapshave been all the more hopeful with the strict and prudish Baroness.To Rosalie our Cato affected prodigality; he professed a life ofelegance, showing her in perspective the splendid part played by awoman of fashion in Paris, whither he meant to go as Depute.
All these manoeuvres were crowned with complete success. In 1834 themothers of the forty noble families composing the high society ofBesancon quoted Monsieur Amedee de Soulas as the most charming youngman in the town; no one would have dared to dispute his place as cockof the walk at the Hotel de Rupt, and all Besancon regarded him asRosalie de Watteville's future husband. There had even been someexchange of ideas on the subject between the Baroness and Amedee, towhich the Baron's apparent nonentity gave some certainty.
Mademoiselle de Watteville, to whom her enormous prospective fortuneat that time lent considerable importance, had been brought upexclusively within the precincts of the Hotel de Rupt--which hermother rarely quitted, so devoted was she to her dear Archbishop--andseverely repressed by an exclusively religious education, and by hermother's despotism, which held her rigidly to principles. Rosalie knewabsolutely nothing. Is it knowledge to have learned geography fromGuthrie, sacred history, ancient history, the history of France, andthe four rules all passed through the sieve of an old Jesuit? Dancingand music were forbidden, as being more likely to corrupt life than tograce it. The Baroness taught her daughter every conceivable stitch intapestry and women's work--plain sewing, embroidery, netting. Atseventeen Rosalie had never read anything but the Lettres edifiantesand some works on heraldry. No newspaper had ever defiled her sight.She attended mass at the Cathedral every morning, taken there by hermother, came back to breakfast, did needlework after a little walk inthe garden, and received visitors, sitting with the baroness untildinner-time. Then, after dinner, excepting on Mondays and Fridays, sheaccompanied 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 aflat 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 frecklesmarred the whiteness of her forehead, which was shapely enough. Herface was exactly like those of Albert Durer's saints, or those of thepainters before Perugino; the same plump, though slender modeling, thesame delicacy saddened by ecstasy, the same severe guilelessness.Everything about her, even to her attitude, was suggestive of thosevirgins, whose beauty is only revealed in its mystical radiance to theeyes of the studious connoisseur. She had fine hands though red, and apretty foot, the foot of an aristocrat.
She habitually wore simple checked cotton dresses; but on Sundays andin the evening her mother allowed her silk. The cut of her frocks,made at Besancon, almost made her ugly, while her mother tried toborrow grace, beauty, and elegance from Paris fashions; for throughMonsieur de Soulas she procured the smallest trifles of her dress fromthence. Rosalie had never worn a pair of silk stockings or thin boots,but always cotton stockings and leather shoes. On high days she wasdressed in a muslin frock, her hair plainly dressed, and had bronzekid shoes.
This education, and her own modest demeanor, hid in Rosalie a spiritof iron. Physiologists and profound observers will tell you, perhapsto your astonishment, that tempers, characteristics, wit, or geniusreappear in families at long intervals, precisely like what are knownas hereditary diseases. Thus talent, like the gout, sometimes skipsover two generations. We have an illustrious example of thisphenomenon in George Sand, in whom are resuscitated the force, thepower, and the imaginative faculty of the Marechal de Saxe, whosenatural granddaughter she is.
The decisive character and romantic daring of the famous Wattevillehad reappeared in the soul of his grand-niece, reinforced by thetenacity and pride of blood of the Rupts. But these qualities--orfaults, if you will have it so--were as deeply buried in this younggirlish soul, apparently so weak and yielding, as the seething lavaswithin a hill before it becomes a volcano. Madame de Watteville alone,perhaps, suspected this inheritance from two strains. She was sosevere to her Rosalie, that she replied one day to the Archbishop, whoblamed her for being too hard on the child, "Leave me to manage her,monseigneur. I know her! She has more than one Beelzebub in her skin!"
The Baroness kept all the keener watch over her daughter, because sheconsidered her honor as a mother to be at stake. After all, she hadnothing else to do. Clotilde de Rupt, at this time five-and-thirty,and as good as widowed, with a husband who turned egg-cups in everyvariety of wood, who set his mind on making wheels with six spokes outof iron-wood, and manufactured snuff-boxes for everyone of hisacquaintance, flirted in strict propriety with Amedee de Soulas. Whenthis young man was in the house, she alternately dismissed andrecalled her daughter, and tried to detect symptoms of jealousy inthat youthful soul, so as to have occasion to repress them. Sheimitated the police in its dealings with the republicans; but shelabored in vain. Rosalie showed no symptoms of rebellion. Then thearid bigot accused her daughter of perfect insensibility. Rosalie knewher mother well enough to be sure that if she had thought youngMonsieur de Soulas nice, she would have drawn down on herself asmart reproof. Thus, to all her mother's incitement she replied merelyby such phrases as are wrongly called Jesuitical--wrongly, because theJesuits were strong, and such reservations are the chevaux de frisebehind which weakness takes refuge. Then the mother regarded the girlas a dissembler. If by mischance a spark of the true nature of theWattevilles and the Rupts blazed out, the mother armed herself withthe respect due from children to their parents to reduce Rosalie topassive obedience.
This covert battle was carried on in the most secret seclusion ofdomestic life, with closed doors. The Vicar-General, the dear AbbeGrancey, the friend of the late Archbishop, clever as he was in hiscapacity of the chief Father Confessor of the diocese, could notdiscover whether the struggle had stirred up some hatred between themother and daughter, whether the mother were jealous in anticipation,or whether the court Amedee was paying to the girl through her motherhad not overstepped its due limits. Being a friend of the family,neither mother nor daughter, confessed to him. Rosalie, a little toomuch harried, morally, about young de Soulas, could not abide him, touse a homely phrase, and when he spoke to her, trying to take herheart by surprise, she received him but coldly. This aversion,discerned only by her mother's eyes, was a constant subject ofadmonition.
"Rosalie, I cannot imagine why you affect such coldness towardsAmedee. Is it because he is a friend of the family, and because welike him--your father and I?"
"Well, mamma," replied the poor child one day, "if I made him welcome,should I not be still more in the wrong?"
"What do you mean by that?" cried Madame de Watteville. "What is themeaning of such words? Your mother is unjust, no doubt, and accordingto you, would be so in any case! Never let such an answer pass yourlips again to your mother--" and so forth.
This quarrel lasted three hours and three-quarters. Rosalie noted thetime. Her mother, pale with fury, sent her to her room, where Rosaliepondered on the meaning of this scene without discovering it, soguileless was she. Thus young Monsieur de Soulas, who was supposed byevery one to be very near the end he was aiming at, all neckclothsset, and by dint of pots of patent blacking--an end which required somuch waxing of his moustaches, so many smart waistcoats, wore out somany horseshoes and stays--for he wore a leather vest, the stays ofthe lion--Amedee, I say, was further away than any chance comer,although he had on his side the worthy and noble Abbe de Grancey.