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