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Overcoming the enemy resistance, they romped through to the Rupt de Mad, a small river, crossed it on stone bridges, occupied Thiaucourt, the first day's objective, scaled the heights just beyond it, pushed on to a line running from the Zammes-Joulney Ridges to the Binvaux Forest, and there rested, with the second day's objectives occupied by 2.50 o'clock of the first day.
Clotilde de Rupt, at this time five-and-thirty, and as good as widowed, with a husband who turned egg-cups in every variety of wood, who set his mind on making wheels with six spokes out of iron-wood, and manufactured snuff-boxes for everyone of his acquaintance, flirted in strict propriety with Amedee de Soulas.
Next morning, Mademoiselle de Watteville, while dressing, necessarily looked out at Albert Savaron walking in the garden adjoining that of the Hotel de Rupt. "What would have become of me," thought she, "if he had lived anywhere else? Here I can, at any rate, see him. What is he thinking about?"
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.
Mademoiselle de Rupt brought twenty thousand francs a year in the funds to add to the ten thousand francs a year in real estate of the Baron de Watteville. 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.
But here in Rupt, to my extreme astonishment, there was no such universal and human instinct. 'That, he said, 'is called the hill over above Rupt. 'Yes, of course, I said, 'but what is its name? 'That is its name, he answered.
In 1834 the mothers of the forty noble families composing the high society of Besancon quoted Monsieur Amedee de Soulas as the most charming young man in the town; no one would have dared to dispute his place as cock of the walk at the Hotel de Rupt, and all Besancon regarded him as Rosalie de Watteville's future husband.
This pleasant little moorland town, locally famous for its wine, is connected with Metz by two single-track railroad lines, one coming via Conflans, and the other by Arnaville on the Moselle. Thus the domination of Thiaucourt, or the valley of the Rupt de Mad, by French artillery would break the railroad communications between the troops keeping the salient and their base of supplies, Metz.
They closed in on the reentrant of the salient to the north Gussainville; and they used the same tactics in regard to Lamorville, because it dominated the Gap of Spada; and to the north of it they exerted a pressure on the Bois de la Selouse. The engagements on the south of the salient were fought desperately. The part of the top which falls away to the Rupt de Mad was held by the French.
This ran from Metz to Thiaucourt by the Rupt de Mad. The village of Vigneulles was about in the center of the narrow part of the salient, and on the road to St. Mihiel. There was a better road to the south through Apremont. A strategic railroad had been built from Thiaucourt by Vigneulles to St. Mihiel, down the Gap of Spada, which is an opening between the hills of the Meuse Valley.
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