But this ferocious old
man was so widely dreaded, that so long as he lived no claim was urged
by the inhabitants of Riceys, the little village on the further side
of the Dent de Vilard. When the Baron died, he left the slopes of the
two Rouxey hills joined by a strong wall, to protect from inundation
the two lateral valleys opening into the valley of Rouxey, to the
right and left at the foot of the Dent de Vilard. Thus he died the
master of the Dent de Vilard.
His heirs asserted their protectorate of the village of Riceys, and so
maintained the usurpation. The old assassin, the old renegade, the old
Abbe Watteville, ended his career by planting trees and making a fine
road over the shoulder of one of the Rouxey hills to join the
highroad. The estate belonging to this park and house was extensive,
but badly cultivated; there were chalets on both hills and neglected
forests of timber. It was all wild and deserted, left to the care of
nature, abandoned to chance growths, but full of sublime and
unexpected beauty. You may now imagine les Rouxey.
It is unnecessary to complicate this story by relating all the
prodigious trouble and the inventiveness stamped with genius, by which
Rosalie achieved her end without allowing it to be suspected. It is
enough to say that it was in obedience to her mother that she left
Besancon in the month of May 1835, in an antique traveling carriage
drawn by a pair of sturdy hired horses, and accompanied her father to
les Rouxey.
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