* * * * *
Rosalie spent the winter of 1834-35 torn by secret tumults; but in the
spring, in the month of April, when she reached the age of nineteen,
she sometimes thought that it would be a fine thing to triumph over a
Duchesse d'Argaiolo. In silence and solitude the prospect of this
struggle had fanned her passion and her evil thoughts. She encouraged
her romantic daring by making plan after plan. Although such
characters are an exception, there are, unfortunately, too many
Rosalies in the world, and this story contains a moral that ought to
serve them as a warning.
In the course of this winter Albert de Savarus had quietly made
considerable progress in Besancon. Confident of success, he now
impatiently awaited the dissolution of the Chamber. Among the men of
the moderate party he had won the suffrages of one of the makers of
Besancon, a rich contractor, who had very wide influence.
Wherever they settled the Romans took immense pains, and spent
enormous sums to have an unlimited supply of good water in every town
of their empire. At Besancon they drank the water from Arcier, a hill
at some considerable distance from Besancon. The town stands in a
horseshoe circumscribed by the river Doubs. Thus, to restore an
aqueduct in order to drink the same water that the Romans drank, in a
town watered by the Doubs, is one of those absurdities which only
succeed in a country place where the most exemplary gravity prevails.
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