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 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