by and by make a great sensation."

"Why should we discuss him? You have gained your action, and paid
him," said Madame de Watteville, watching her daughter, who, all the
time the Vicar-General had been speaking, seemed to hang on his lips.

The conversation changed, and no more was heard of Albert Savaron.

The portrait sketched by the cleverest of the Vicars-General of the
diocese had all the greater charm for Rosalie because there was a
romance behind it. For the first time in her life she had come across
the marvelous, the exceptional, which smiles on every youthful
imagination, and which curiosity, so eager at Rosalie's age, goes
forth to meet half-way. What an ideal being was this Albert--gloomy,
unhappy, eloquent, laborious, as compared by Mademoiselle de
Watteville to that 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