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When he was positively obliged to dine at his own cost, he sent his tiger to fetch a couple of dishes from a cookshop, never spending more than twenty-five sous. Young Monsieur de Soulas was supposed to be a spendthrift, recklessly extravagant, whereas the poor man made the two ends meet in the year with a keenness and skill which would have done honor to a thrifty housewife.
The subjects were the same as those treated in the small capitals of the royal doorway, outside the church, above the panegyric of the kings, saints, and queens. They were taken from the Apocryphal legends, the Gospel of the Childhood of Mary, and the Protoevangelist James the Less. The first of these groups was executed by an artist named Jehan Soulas.
The Soulas remained in consequence of their connection with Cardinal Granvelle. Young Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leaving Besancon, a dull town, church-going, and not literary, a military centre and garrison town, of which the manners and customs and physiognomy are worth describing.
"Certainly, mademoiselle, and you may count on us for life or death," exclaimed Mariette, rejoiced at the unexpected turn of affairs. "In the first place, silence for silence," said Rosalie. "I will not marry Monsieur de Soulas; but one thing I will have, and must have; my help and favor are yours on one condition only." "What is that?"
I told our advocate to be off to Paris, and at the crucial moment I was able to secure a new pleader, to whom we owe our victory, a wonderful man " "At Besancon?" said Monsieur de Watteville, guilelessly. "At Besancon," replied the Abbe de Grancey. "Oh yes, Savaron," said a handsome young man sitting near the Baroness, and named de Soulas.
Rosalie knew her mother well enough to be sure that if she had thought young Monsieur de Soulas nice, she would have drawn down on herself a smart reproof. Thus, to all her mother's incitement she replied merely by such phrases as are wrongly called Jesuitical wrongly, because the Jesuits were strong, and such reservations are the chevaux de frise behind which weakness takes refuge.
When he showed this letter to Rosalie, who, with a pious impulse, kissed the lines which contained her forgiveness, he said to her: "Well, now that he is lost to you, will you not be reconciled to your mother and marry the Comte de Soulas?" "Only if Albert should order it," said she. "But you see it is impossible to consult him. The General of the Order would not allow it."
The Baroness desired that the inside should be lined with rustic wood-work, such as was then the fashion for flower-stands, with a looking-glass against the wall, an ottoman forming a box, and a table of inlaid bark. Monsieur de Soulas proposed that the floor should be of asphalt. Rosalie suggested a hanging chandelier of rustic wood.
"But who is he?" asked Madame de Watteville, taking the Abbe's arm to go into the dining-room. "If he is a stranger, by what chance has he settled at Besancon? It is a strange fancy for a barrister." "Very strange!" echoed Amedee de Soulas, whose biography is here necessary to the understanding of this tale.
Soulas, who had undoubtedly learned his craft from some Flemish artist, produced certain little genre pictures well adapted, by their spirit and liveliness, to cheer the soul that the solemnity of the windows might have depressed; for in this aisle they really seemed to let the light filter through Indian shawl-stuff, admitting only a few dull sparks and smoky gleams.
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