When the Baron de Watteville thus obtained the lake above his dam he was owner of the two hills, but not of the upper valley thus flooded, through which there had been at all times a right-of-way to where it ends in a horseshoe under the Dent de Vilard.  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.

To a young girl love lurks in everything.  When she rose, the morning after her arrival, Mademoiselle de Watteville saw from her bedroom window the fine expanse of water, from which the light mists rose like smoke, and were caught in the firs and larches, rolling up and along the hills till they reached the heights, and she gave a cry of admiration.

“They loved by the lakes! She lives by a lake!  A lake is certainly full of love!” she thought.

A lake fed by snows has opalescent colors and a translucency that makes it one huge diamond; but when it is shut in like that of les Rouxey, between two granite masses covered with pines, when silence broods over it like that of the Savannas or the Steppes, then every one must exclaim as Rosalie did.

“We owe that,” said her father, “to the notorious Watteville.”

“On my word,” said the girl, “he did his best to earn forgiveness.  Let us go in a boat to the further end; it will give us an appetite for breakfast.”

The Baron called two gardener lads who knew how to row, and took with him his prime minister Modinier.  The lake was about six acres in breadth, in some places ten or twelve, and four hundred in length.  Rosalie soon found herself at the upper end shut in by the Dent de Vilard, the Jungfrau of that little Switzerland.