hat
chubby fat Count, bursting with health, paying compliments, and talking
of the fashions in the very face of the splendor of the old counts of
Rupt. Amedee had cost her many quarrels and scoldings, and, indeed, she
knew him only too well; while this Albert Savaron offered many enigmas
to be solved.

"Albert Savaron de Savarus," she repeated to herself.

Now, to see him, to catch sight of him! This was the desire of the girl
to whom desire was hitherto unknown. She pondered in her heart, in her
fancy, in her brain, the least phrases used by the Abbe de Grancey, for
all his words had told.

"A fine forehead!" said she to herself, looking at the head of every man
seated at the table; "I do not see one fine one.--Monsieur de Soulas' is
too prominent; Monsieur de Grancey's is fine, but he is seventy, and has
no hair, it is impossible to see where his forehead ends."

"What is the matter, Rosalie; you are eating nothing?"

"I am not hungry, mamma," said she. "A prelate's hands----" she went on
to herself. "I cannot remember our handsome Archbishop's hands, though
he confirmed me."

Finally, in the midst of her coming and going in the labyrinth of her
meditations, she remembered a lighted window she had seen from her bed,
gleaming through the trees of the two adjoining gardens, when she had
happened to wake in the night.... "Then that was his light!" thought
she. "I might see him!--I will see him."

"Monsieur de Grancey, is the Chapter's lawsuit quite settled?" said
Rosalie point-blank to the Vicar-General, during a moment of silence.

Madame de Watteville exchanged rapid glances with the Vicar-General.

"What can that matter to you, my dear child?" she said to Rosalie, with
an affected sweetness which made her daughter cautious for the rest of
her days.

"It might be carried to the Court of Appeal, but our adversaries will
think twice about that," replied the Abbe.

"I never could have believed that Rosalie would think about a lawsuit
all through a dinner," remarked Madame de Watteville.

"Nor I either," said Rosalie, in a dreamy way that made every one laugh.
"But Monsieur de Grancey was so full of it, that I was interested."

The company rose from table and returned to the drawing-room. All
through the evening Rosalie listened in case Albert Savaron should be
mentioned again; but beyond the congratulations offered by each newcomer
to the Abbe on having gained his suit, to which no one added any praise
of