Character guide

Rosalie de Watteville

major

Also known as Mademoiselle Rosalie de Watteville, Mademoiselle de Watteville, the famous Watteville, mademoiselle

Raised in the Rue de la Préfecture between a mother whose sharpness is proverbial and a father who turns shells on a lathe, Rosalie is the sole heiress of two proud houses and the most watched young woman in Besançon society. Her cloistered piety and quick intelligence have no outlet but observation, and when a celebrated lawyer takes the house adjoining the Watteville garden, she begins to study him as she has studied everything else — quietly, exhaustively, and without asking permission. Her talent for secrecy is what sets the novel's machinery in motion.

Albert Savarus

major

Also known as Savaron, Monsieur Savaron, Albert Savaron, Monsieur Albert Savaron, Albert Savaron de Savarus, Albert, Monsieur Albert, Albert de Savarus, Comte Albert Savaron de Savarus, Brother Albert

Savaron appears in the salons of Besançon as a stranger with no past, having crushed a Parisian advocate in the chapter's suit and earned the gratitude of the Legitimist set. He keeps his rooms in the Rue du Perron, works at night, and reveals nothing — yet his ambition is not legal but political, and his solitude conceals a history of love and ruin he is trying to convert into a career. The town's curiosity about him, and Rosalie's, become the engine of the plot.

Rodolphe

major

Rodolphe is the name under which Albert Savarus lived his real life: a young man of great promise who loved Francesca Colonna in Florence and lost her to the calculations of her family and his own poverty. His story reaches Besançon only in the pages of 'L'Ambitieux par amour,' the novel Savarus publishes in a Paris review while the town wonders who he is. Everything Savarus does in the present is a continuation of Rodolphe's grief and resolve.

Francesca Colonna

major

Also known as cara Francesca, Colonna, Francesca Colonna, Povera Francesca, Francesca Soderini

Francesca Colonna, later Francesca Soderini, is the woman at the center of the story Savarus cannot stop writing: a Florentine of high birth whose love for Rodolphe collided with her family's ambitions and her own duty. In the novel she is both beloved and lost, invoked with tenderness and reproach, and her memory shapes every choice Rodolphe makes afterward. She never appears in Besançon, yet she governs the emotional logic of the entire book.

Amédée de Soulas

supporting

Also known as Monsieur Amédée, The Soulas, Young Monsieur de Soulas, Amédée, Soulas, Monsieur de Soulas, Monsieur Amédée de Soulas, Young Monsieur de Soulas

Amédée de Soulas is the handsome, well-dressed young man of the Watteville circle, fluent in the fashions and gossip of the town and quietly confident of his prospects with Rosalie. He is the acceptable suitor — noble, presentable, unthreatening — and his courtship gives Rosalie's scheming a visible rival to work against. His vanity and his assumption of success make him a useful instrument in a game he does not know is being played.

Baron de Watteville

supporting

Also known as Monsieur de Watteville, the famous Watteville, the Baron de Watteville, Monsieur le Baron de Watteville, The Baron de Watteville, de Watteville, The Baron, Monsieur le Baron

Monsieur de Watteville is a dry, lean man who married the heiress of the Rupts and discovered early that he would never be master in his own house. He spends his days in a workshop turning wood and cataloguing geological fragments, a harmless hobby that the family's sharper observers regard as a first degree of madness. His passivity is the quiet condition of the Hôtel de Rupt, and his daughter's freedom to observe and scheme depends on his never looking up from his lathe.

Baronne de Watteville

supporting

Also known as Madame de Watteville, Madame la Baronne de Watteville, Madame d'Argaiolo

Madame de Watteville presides over the saintly upper circle of Besançon, where the Archbishop himself is a familiar guest and prudish manners pass for virtue. Married to a mild, lathe-turning baron she has long since eclipsed, she channels her iron will into religion and social control, and her red-haired severity has become proverbial. Her ambitions for her daughter Rosalie—and her suspicion of any stranger who might disturb them—set the household's quiet machinery of surveillance and resistance in motion.

Léopold Hannequin

supporting

Also known as So Léopold, Léopold, Monsieur Léopold Hannequin

Léopold Hannequin belongs to the small circle around Albert Savaron, the mysterious advocate whose sudden triumph for the Chapter of Besançon has the whole town asking who he is. Where Savaron is reserved and ambitious, Hannequin is the steady confidant through whom the lawyer's private designs and hidden past are kept from the curious drawing-rooms of the Rue du Perron. His loyalty matters because it makes Savaron's secrecy possible—and because any crack in it would expose the man everyone is trying to read.

Abbé de Grancey

supporting

Also known as the Abbé de Grancey, the dear Abbé Grancey, de Grancey, The Abbé de Grancey, Abbé, the worthy Abbé de Grancey, Monsieur l'Abbé de Grancey, Monsieur de Grancey

The Abbé de Grancey moves easily between the Archbishop's palace and Madame de Watteville's drawing-room, welcomed everywhere for his wit and trusted for his judgment. It is he who discovers the obscure advocate Savaron and stakes the Chapter's case on him, then returns to the Hôtel de Rupt to tell the story that makes the whole town curious about the stranger next door. Worldly, generous, and a little vain of his own cleverness, he is the hinge connecting the novel's religious politics to its private drama.

Vicar-General

minor

Also known as the Vicar - General, The Vicar - General

A high-ranking church official involved in local society.

Mariette

minor

Also known as made Mariette

A servant in the Watteville household.

Jérôme

minor

A servant or minor character in the narrative.

Gina

minor

Also known as little Gina

A young girl, possibly a relative or servant.

Girardet

minor

Also known as worthy Monsieur Girardet, Monsieur Girardet

A local businessman or tradesman.

Princess Gandolphini

minor

Also known as Gandolphini

An Italian noblewoman, part of the Roman social circle.

Madame de Chavoncourt

minor

Also known as young Chavoncourt

A local noblewoman and acquaintance of the Wattevilles.

Monsieur de Chavoncourt

minor

Also known as young Chavoncourt

A local nobleman and father of the Chavoncourt family.

Fanny Lovelace

minor

Also known as Miss Lovelace, Miss Fanny, Miss Fanny Lovelace

An Englishwoman connected to the story's past.

Alfred Boucher

minor

Also known as Alfred

A young man from a local family.

Chantonnit

minor

Also known as Monsieur Chantonnit

A local resident or official in Besançon.

Tito

minor

A servant or minor figure in the Italian storyline.

Comtesse de Soulas

minor

Also known as de Soulas, the Comtesse de Soulas

Mother of Amédée de Soulas, a noblewoman.

Monsieur Boucher

minor

Father of Alfred Boucher, a local figure.

Monsieur de Vauchelles

minor

Also known as Vauchelles

A local nobleman or acquaintance.

Sidonie de Chavoncourt

minor

Also known as Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt

Daughter of Monsieur and Madame de Chavoncourt.

Emilio

minor

A minor character in the Italian backstory.

Prince Gandolphini

minor

Also known as Prince

Husband of Princess Gandolphini, an Italian nobleman.

Modinier

minor

A local character, possibly a servant or tradesman.

Prince Colonna

minor

A member of the Colonna family, Francesca's relative.

Princess Colonna

minor

A member of the Colonna family, Francesca's relative.

Tinti

minor

A minor character in the Italian narrative.