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. If this whim could be brought
home to the hearts of the citizens, it would lead to considerable
outlay; and this expenditure would benefit the influential contractor.

Albert Savaron de Savarus opined that the water of the river was good
for nothing but to flow under the suspension bridge, and that the only
drinkable water was that from Arcier. Articles were printed in the
_Review_ which merely expressed the views of the commercial interest
of Besancon. The nobility and the citizens, the moderates and the
legitimists, the government party and the opposition, everybody, in
short, was agreed that they must drink the same water as the Romans, and
boast of a suspension bridge. The question of the Arcier water was the
order of the day at Besancon. At Besancon--as in the matter of the two
railways to Versailles--as for every standing abuse--there were
private interests unconfessed which gave vital force to this idea. The
reasonable folk in opposition to this scheme, who were indeed but few,
were regarded as old women. No one talked of anything but of Savaron's
two projects. And thus, after eighteen months of underground labor,
the ambitious lawyer had succeeded in stirring to its depths the most
stagnant town in France, the most unyielding to foreign influence, in
finding the length of its foot, to use a vulgar phrase, and exerting a
preponderant influence without stirring from his own room. He had solved
the singular problem of how to be powerful without being popular.

In the course of this