prefecture for bringing an editor from Paris for the official
newspaper, to enable it to hold its own against the little _Gazette_,
dropped at Besancon by the great _Gazette_, and the _Patriot_, which
frisked in the hands of the Republicans. Paris sent them a young man,
knowing nothing about la Franche Comte, who began by writing them a
leading article of the school of the _Charivari_. The chief of the
moderate party, a member of the municipal council, sent for the
journalist and said to him, "You must understand, monsieur, that we
are serious, more than serious--tiresome; we resent being amused, and
are furious at having been made to laugh. Be as hard of digestion as
the toughest disquisitions in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and you will
hardly reach the level of Besancon."

The editor took the hint, and thenceforth spoke the most
incomprehensible philosophical lingo. His success was complete.

If young Monsieur de Soulas did not fall in the esteem of Besancon
society, it was out of pure vanity on its part; the aristocracy were
happy to affect a modern air, and to be able to show any Parisians of
rank 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, this
display of folly and latent prudence, had an object, or the _lion_ of
Besancon would have been no son of the soil. Amedee wanted to achieve
a 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, 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