So he who came so
mysteriously, as Mademoiselle Galard says, is gone away just as
mysteriously."
After hearing this narrative, Mademoiselle de Watteville fell into a
brooding and absent mood, which everybody could see. It is useless to
say anything of the commotion that arose in Besancon on the
disappearance of Monsieur Savaron. It was understood that the Prefect
had obliged him with the greatest readiness by giving him at once a
passport across the frontier, for he was thus quit of his only
opponent. Next day Monsieur de Chavoncourt was carried to the top by a
majority of a hundred and forty votes.
"Jack is gone by the way he came," said an elector on hearing of
Albert Savaron's flight.
This event lent weight to the prevailing prejudice at Besancon against
strangers; indeed, two years previously they had received confirmation
from the affair of the Republican newspaper. Ten days later Albert de
Savarus was never spoken of again. Only three persons--Girardet the
attorney, the Vicar-General, and Rosalie--were seriously affected by
his disappearance. Girardet knew that the white-haired stranger was
Prince Soderini, for he had seen his card, and he told the
Vicar-General; but Rosalie, better informed than either of them, had
known for three months past that the Duc d'Argaiolo was dead.
In the month of April 1836 no one had had any news from or of Albert
de Savarus. Jerome and Mariette were to be married, but the Baroness
confidentially desired her maid to wait till her daughter was married,
saying that the two weddings might take place at the same time.
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