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.
Monsieur le Baron de Watteville, a dry, lean man devoid of
intelligence, looked worn out without any one knowing whereby, for he
enjoyed the profoundest ignorance; but as his wife was a red-haired
woman, and of a stern nature that became proverbial (we still say "as
sharp as Madame de Watteville"), some wits of the legal profession
declared that he had been worn against that rock--_Rupt_ is obviously
derived from _rupes_. Scientific students of social phenomena will not
fail to have observed that Rosalie was the only offspring of the union
between the Wattevilles and the Rupts.
Monsieur de Watteville spent his existence in a handsome workshop with
a lathe; he was a turner! As subsidiary to this pursuit, he took up a
fancy for making collections. Philosophical doctors, devoted to the
study of madness, regard this tendency towards collecting as a first
degree of mental aberration when it is set on small things.
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