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
e