Library / Literature & Fiction
Albert Savarus
- Pages
- about 151
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 2.8 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
One of the few drawing-rooms where, under the Restoration, the
Archbishop of Besancon was sometimes to be seen, was that of the Baronne
de Watteville, to whom he was particularly attached on account of her
religious sentiments.
A word as to this lady, the most important lady of Besancon.
Monsieur de Watteville, a descendant of the famous Watteville, the most
successful and illustrious of murderers and renegades--his extraordinary
adventures are too much a part of history to be related here--this
nineteenth century Monsieur de Watteville was as gentle and peaceable
as his ancestor of the Grand Siecle had been passionate and turbulent.
After living in the Comte (La Franche Comte) like a wood-louse in the
crack of a wainscot, he had married the heiress of the celebrated house
of Rupt. Mademoiselle de Rupt brought twenty thousand francs a year in
the funds to add to the ten thousand francs a year in real estate of the
Baron de Watteville. The Swiss gentleman’s coat-of-arms (the Wattevilles
are Swiss) was then borne as an escutcheon of pretence on the old shield
of the Rupts. The marriage, arranged in 1802, was solemnized in 1815
after the second Restoration. Within three years of the birth of a
daughter all Madame de Watteville’s grandparents were dead, and their
estates wound up. Monsieur de Watteville’s house was then sold, and
they settled in the Rue de la Prefecture in the fine old mansion of the
Rupts, with an immense garden stretching to the Rue du Perron. Madame
de Watteville, devout as a girl, became even more so after her marriage.
She is one of the queens of the saintly brotherhood which gives the
upper circles of Besancon a solemn air and prudish manners in harmony
with the character of the town.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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