An Old Maid

AN OLD MAID

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Monsieur Eugene-Auguste-Georges-Louis Midy de la Greneraye

Surville, Royal Engineer of the Ponts at Chausses.

As a testimony to the affection of his brother-in-law,

De Balzac

AN OLD MAID

CHAPTER I. ONE OF MANY CHEVALIERS DE VALOIS

Most persons have encountered, in certain provinces in France, a number

of Chevaliers de Valois. One lived in Normandy, another at Bourges,

a third (with whom we have here to do) flourished in Alencon, and

doubtless the South possesses others. The number of the Valesian

tribe is, however, of no consequence to the present tale. All these

chevaliers, among whom were doubtless some who were Valois as Louis XIV.

was Bourbon, knew so little of one another that it was not advisable

to speak to one about the others. They were all willing to leave the

Bourbons in tranquil possession of the throne of France; for it was too

plainly established that Henri IV. became king for want of a male heir

in the first Orleans branch called the Valois. If there are any Valois,

they descend from Charles de Valois, Duc d’Angouleme, son of Charles

IX. and Marie Touchet, the male line from whom ended, until proof to

the contrary be produced, in the person of the Abbe de Rothelin. The

Valois-Saint-Remy, who descended from Henri II., also came to an end

in the famous Lamothe-Valois implicated in the affair of the Diamond

Necklace.

Each of these many chevaliers, if we may believe reports, was, like

the Chevalier of Alencon, an old gentleman, tall, thin, withered, and

moneyless. He of Bourges had emigrated; he of Touraine hid himself; he

of Alencon fought in La Vendee and “chouanized” somewhat. The youth of

the latter was spend in Paris, where the Revolution overtook him when

thirty years of age in the midst of his conquests and gallantries.

The Chevalier de Valois of Alencon was accepted by the highest

aristocracy of the province as a genuine Valois; and he distinguished

himself, like the rest of his homonyms, by excellent manners, which

proved him a man of society. He dined out every day, and played cards

every evening. He was thought witty, thanks to his foible for relating

a quantity of anecdotes on the reign of Louis XV. and the beginnings

of the Revolution. When these tales were heard for the first time, they

were held to be well narrated. He had, moreover, the great merit of

not repeating his personal bons mots and of never speaking of

his love-affairs, though his smiles and his airs and graces were

delightfully indiscreet. The worthy gentleman used his privilege as a

Voltairean noble to stay away from mass; and great indulgence was shown

to his irreligion because of his devotion to the royal cause. One of his

particular graces was the air and manner (imitated, no doubt, from Mole)

with which he took snuff from a gold box adorned with the portrait of

the Princess Goritza,--a charming Hungarian, celebrated for her beauty

in the last years of the reign of Louis XV. Having been attached during

his youth to that illustrious stranger, he still mentioned her with

emotion. For her sake he had fought a duel with Monsieur de Lauzun.

The chevalier, now fifty-eight years of age, owned to only fifty; and he

might well allow himself that innocent deception, for, among the other

advantages granted to fair thin persons, he managed to preserve

the still youthful figure which saves men as well as women from an

appearance of old age. Yes, remember this: all of life, or rather

all the elegance that expresses life, is in the figure. Among the

chevalier’s other possessions must be counted an enormous nose with

which nature had endowed him. This nose vigorously divided a pale face

into two sections which seemed to have no knowledge of each other, for

one side would redden under the process of digestion, while the

other continued white. This fact is worthy of remark at a period when

physiology is so busy with the human heart. The incandescence, so to

call it, was on the left side. Though his long slim legs, supporting a

lank body, and his pallid skin, were not indicative of health, Monsieur

de Valois ate like an ogre and declared he had a malady called in the

provinces “hot liver,” perhaps to excuse his monstrous appetite. The

circumstance of his singular flush confirmed this declaration; but in a

region where repasts are developed on the line of thirty or forty dishes

and last four hours, the chevalier’s stomach would seem to have been a

blessing bestowed by Providence on the good town of Alencon. According

to certain doctors, heat on the left side denotes a prodigal heart.

The chevalier’s gallantries confirmed this scientific assertion, the

responsibility for which does not rest, fortunately, on the historian.

In spite of these symptoms, Monsieur de Valois’ constitution was

vigorous, consequently long-lived. If his liver “heated,” to use an

old-fashioned word, his heart was not less inflammable. His face was

wrinkled and his hair silvered; but an intelligent observer would have

recognized at once the stigmata of passion and the furrows of pleasure

which appeared in the crow’s-feet and the marches-du-palais, so prized

at the court of Cythera. Everything about this dainty chevalier bespoke

the “ladies’ man.” He was so minute in his ablutions that his cheeks

were a pleasure to look upon; they seemed to have been laved in some

miraculous water. The part of his skull which his hair refused to cover

shone like ivory. His eyebrows, like his hair, affected youth by the

care and regularity with which they were combed. His skin, already

white, seemed to have been extra-whitened by some secret compound.

Without using perfumes, the chevalier exhaled a certain fragrance of

youth, that refreshed the atmosphere. His hands, which were those of

a gentleman, and were cared for like the hands of a pretty woman,

attracted the eye to their rosy, well-shaped nails. In short, had it not

been for his magisterial and stupendous nose, the chevalier might have

been thought a trifle too dainty.

We must here compel ourselves to spoil this portrait by the avowal of a

littleness. The chevalier put cotton in his ears, and wore, appended to

them, two little ear-rings representing negroes’ heads in diamonds, of

admirable workmanship. He clung to these singular appendages, explaining

that since his ears had been bored he had ceased to have headaches (he

had had headaches). We do not present the chevalier as an accomplished

man; but surely we can pardon, in an old celibate whose heart sends

so much blood to his left cheek, these adorable qualities, founded,

perhaps, on some sublime secret history.

Besides, the Chevalier de Valois redeemed those negroes’ heads by so

many other graces that society felt itself sufficiently compensated. He

really took such immense trouble to conceal his age and give pleasure to

his friends. In the first place, we must call attention to the extreme

care he gave to his linen, the only distinction that well-bred men

can nowadays exhibit in their clothes. The linen of the chevalier was

invariably of a fineness and whiteness that were truly aristocratic. As

for his coat, though remarkable for its cleanliness, it was always half

worn-out, but without spots or creases. The preservation of that garment

was something marvellous to those who noticed the chevalier’s high-bred

indifference to its shabbiness. He did not go so far as to scrape the

seams with glass,--a refinement invented by the Prince of Wales; but

he did practice the rudiments of English elegance with a personal

satisfaction little understood by the people of Alencon. The world owes

a great deal to persons who take such pains to please it. In this there

is certainly some accomplishment of that most difficult precept of the

Gospel about rendering good for evil. This freshness of ablution and

all the other little cares harmonized charmingly with the blue eyes, the

ivory teeth, and the blond person of the old chevalier.

The only blemish was that this retired Adonis had nothing manly about

him; he seemed to be employing this toilet varnish to hide the ruins

occasioned by the military service of gallantry only. But we must hasten

to add that his voice produced what might be called an antithesis to his

blond delicacy. Unless you adopted the opinion of certain observers of

the human heart, and thought that the chevalier had the voice of

his nose, his organ of speech would have amazed you by its full and

redundant sound. Without possessing the volume of classical bass voices,

the tone of it was pleasing from a slightly muffled quality like that of

an English bugle, which is firm and sweet, strong but velvety.

The chevalier had repudiated the ridiculous costume still preserved by

certain monarchical old men; he had frankly modernized himself. He

was always seen in a maroon-colored coat with gilt buttons, half-tight

breeches of poult-de-soie with gold buckles, a white waistcoat without

embroidery, and a tight cravat showing no shirt-collar,--a last vestige

of the old French costume which he did not renounce, perhaps, because

it enabled him to show a neck like that of the sleekest abbe. His shoes

were noticeable for their square buckles, a style of which the present

generation has no knowledge; these buckles were fastened to a square of

polished black leather. The chevalier allowed two watch-chains to hang

parallel to each other from each of his waistcoat pockets,--another

vestige of the eighteenth century, which the Incroyables had not

disdained to use under the Directory. This transition costume, uniting

as it did two centuries, was worn by the chevalier with the high-bred

grace of an old French marquis, the secret of which is lost to France

since the day when Fleury, Mole’s last pupil, vanished.

The private life of this old bachelor was apparently open to all eyes,

though in fact it was quite mysterious. He lived in a lodging that was

modest, to say the best of it, in the rue du Cours, on the second floor

of a house belonging to Madame Lardot, the best and busiest washerwoman

in the town. This circumstance will explain the excessive nicety of his

linen. Ill-luck would have it that the day came when Alencon was guilty

of believing that the chevalier had not always comported himself as a

gentleman should, and that in fact he was secretly married in his old

age to a certain Cesarine,--the mother of a child which had had the

impertinence to come into the world without being called for.

“He had given his hand,” as a certain Monsieur du Bousquier remarked,

“to the person who had long had him under irons.”

This horrible calumny embittered the last days of the dainty chevalier

all the more because, as the present Scene will show, he had lost a hope

long cherished to which he had made many sacrifices.

Madame Lardot leased to the chevalier two rooms on the second floor of

her house, for the modest sum of one hundred francs a year. The worthy

gentleman dined out every day, returning only in time to go to bed. His

sole expense therefore was for breakfast, invariably composed of a cup

of chocolate, with bread and butter and fruits in their season. He made

no fire except in the coldest winter, and then only enough to get up

by. Between eleven and four o’clock he walked about, went to read the

papers, and paid visits. From the time of his settling in Alencon he had

nobly admitted his poverty, saying that his whole fortune consisted in

an annuity of six hundred francs a year, the sole remains of his former

opulence,--a property which obliged him to see his man of business (who

held the annuity papers) quarterly. In truth, one of the Alencon bankers

paid him every three months one hundred and fifty francs, sent down

by Monsieur Bordin of Paris, the last of the _procureurs du Chatelet_.

Every one knew these details because the chevalier exacted the utmost

secrecy from the persons to whom he first confided them.

Monsieur de Valois gathered the fruit of his misfortunes. His place at

table was laid in all the most distinguished houses in Alencon, and he

was bidden to all soirees. His talents as a card-player, a narrator, an

amiable man of the highest breeding, were so well known and appreciated

that parties would have seemed a failure if the dainty connoisseur was

absent. Masters of houses and their wives felt the need of his approving

grimace. When a young woman heard the chevalier say at a ball, “You are

delightfully well-dressed!” she was more pleased at such praise than she

would have been at mortifying a rival. Monsieur de Valois was the only

man who could perfectly pronounce certain phrases of the olden time.

The words, “my heart,” “my jewel,” “my little pet,” “my queen,” and the

amorous diminutives of 1770, had a grace that was quite irresistible

when they came from his lips. In short, the chevalier had the privilege

of superlatives. His compliments, of which he was stingy, won the good

graces of all the old women; he made himself agreeable to every one,

even to the officials of the government, from whom he wanted nothing.

His behavior at cards had a lofty distinction which everybody noticed:

he never complained; he praised his adversaries when they lost; he did

not rebuke or teach his partners by showing them how they ought to have

played. When, in the course of a deal, those sickening dissertations

on the game would take place, the chevalier invariably drew out his

snuff-box with a gesture that was worthy of Mole, looked at the Princess

Goritza, raised the cover with dignity, shook, sifted, massed the snuff,

and gathered his pinch, so that by the time the cards were dealt he

had decorated both nostrils and replaced the princess in his waistcoat

pocket,--always on his left side. A gentleman of the “good” century (in

distinction from the “grand” century) could alone have invented that

compromise between contemptuous silence and a sarcasm which might not

have been understood. He accepted poor players and knew how to make

the best of them. His delightful equability of temper made many persons

say,--

“I do admire the Chevalier de Valois!”

His conversation, his manners, seemed bland, like his person. He

endeavored to shock neither man nor woman. Indulgent to defects both

physical and mental, he listened patiently (by the help of the Princess

Goritza) to the many dull people who related to him the petty miseries

of provincial life,--an egg ill-boiled for breakfast, coffee with

feathered cream, burlesque details about health, disturbed sleep,

dreams, visits. The chevalier could call up a languishing look, he could

take on a classic attitude to feign compassion, which made him a most

valuable listener; he could put in an “Ah!” and a “Bah!” and a “What

DID you do?” with charming appropriateness. He died without any one

suspecting him of even an allusion to the tender passages of his romance

with the Princess Goritza. Has any one ever reflected on the service a

dead sentiment can do to society; how love may become both social and

useful? This will serve to explain why, in spite of his constant winning

at play (he never left a salon without carrying off with him about six

francs), the old chevalier remained the spoilt darling of the town. His

losses--which, by the bye, he always proclaimed, were very rare.

All who know him declare that they have never met, not even in the

Egyptian museum at Turin, so agreeable a mummy. In no country in

the world did parasitism ever take on so pleasant a form. Never did

selfishness of a most concentrated kind appear less forth-putting, less

offensive, than in this old gentleman; it stood him in place of devoted

friendship. If some one asked Monsieur de Valois to do him a little

service which might have discommoded him, that some one did not part

from the worthy chevalier without being truly enchanted with him, and

quite convinced that he either could not do the service demanded, or

that he should injure the affair if he meddled in it.

To explain the problematic existence of the chevalier, the historian,

whom Truth, that cruel wanton, grasps by the throat, is compelled to say

that after the “glorious” sad days of July, Alencon discovered that the

chevalier’s nightly winnings amounted to about one hundred and fifty

francs every three months; and that the clever old nobleman had had the

pluck to send to himself his annuity in order not to appear in the eyes

of a community, which loves the main chance, to be entirely without

resources. Many of his friends (he was by that time dead, you will

please remark) have contested mordicus this curious fact, declaring it

to be a fable, and upholding the Chevalier de Valois as a respectable

and worthy gentleman whom the liberals calumniated. Luckily for shrewd

players, there are people to be found among the spectators who will

always sustain them. Ashamed of having to defend a piece of wrong-doing,

they stoutly deny it. Do not accuse them of wilful infatuation; such

men have a sense of their dignity; governments set them the example of a

virtue which consists in burying their dead without chanting the Misere

of their defeats. If the chevalier did allow himself this bit of shrewd

practice,--which, by the bye, would have won him the regard of the

Chevalier de Gramont, a smile from the Baron de Foeneste, a shake of

the hand from the Marquis de Moncade,--was he any the less that amiable

guest, that witty talker, that imperturbable card-player, that famous

teller of anecdotes, in whom all Alencon took delight? Besides, in what

way was this action, which is certainly within the rights of a man’s own

will,--in what way was it contrary to the ethics of a gentleman? When

so many persons are forced to pay annuities to others, what more natural

than to pay one to his own best friend? But Laius is dead--

To return to the period of which we are writing: after about fifteen

years of this way of life the chevalier had amassed ten thousand and

some odd hundred francs. On the return of the Bourbons, one of his old

friends, the Marquis de Pombreton, formerly lieutenant in the Black

mousquetaires, returned to him--so he said--twelve hundred pistoles

which he had lent to the marquis for the purpose of emigrating. This

event made a sensation; it was used later to refute the sarcasms of

the “Constitutionnel,” on the method employed by some emigres in paying

their debts. When this noble act of the Marquis de Pombreton was lauded

before the chevalier, the good man reddened even to his right cheek.

Every one rejoiced frankly at this windfall for Monsieur de Valois,

who went about consulting moneyed people as to the safest manner of

investing this fragment of his past opulence. Confiding in the future of

the Restoration, he finally placed his money on the Grand-Livre at the

moment when the funds were at fifty-six francs and twenty-five centimes.

Messieurs de Lenoncourt, de Navarreins, de Verneuil, de Fontaine, and La

Billardiere, to whom he was known, he said, obtained for him, from the

king’s privy purse, a pension of three hundred francs, and sent him,

moreover, the cross of Saint-Louis. Never was it known positively by

what means the old chevalier obtained these two solemn consecrations of

his title and merits. But one thing is certain; the cross of Saint-Louis

authorized him to take the rank of retired colonel in view of his

service in the Catholic armies of the West.

Besides his fiction of an annuity, about which no one at the present

time knew anything, the chevalier really had, therefore, a bona fide

income of a thousand francs. But in spite of this bettering of his

circumstances, he made no change in his life, manners, or appearance,

except that the red ribbon made a fine effect on his maroon-colored

coat, and completed, so to speak, the physiognomy of a gentleman.

After 1802, the chevalier sealed his letters with a very old seal,

ill-engraved to be sure, by which the Casterans, the d’Esgrignons, the

Troisvilles were enabled to see that he bore: _Party of France, two

cottises gemelled gules, and gules, five mascles or, placed end to end;

on a chief sable, a cross argent_. For crest, a knight’s helmet. For

motto: “Valeo.” Bearing such noble arms, the so-called bastard of the

Valois had the right to get into all the royal carriages of the world.

Many persons envied the quiet existence of this old bachelor, spent

on whist, boston, backgammon, reversi, and piquet, all well played,

on dinners well digested, snuff gracefully inhaled, and tranquil walks

about the town. Nearly all Alencon believed this life to be exempt from

ambitions and serious interests; but no man has a life as simple as

envious neighbors attribute to him. You will find in the most out-of-the

way villages human mollusks, creatures apparently dead, who have

passions for lepidoptera or for conchology, let us say,--beings who will

give themselves infinite pains about moths, butterflies, or the concha

Veneris. Not only did the chevalier have his own particular shells,

but he cherished an ambitious desire which he pursued with a craft

so profound as to be worthy of Sixtus the Fifth: he wanted to marry a

certain rich old maid, with the intention, no doubt, of making her a

stepping-stone by which to reach the more elevated regions of the court.

There, then, lay the secret of his royal bearing and of his residence in

Alencon.

CHAPTER II. SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS

On a Wednesday morning, early, toward the middle of spring, in the year

16,--such was his mode of reckoning,--at the moment when the chevalier

was putting on his old green-flowered damask dressing-gown, he heard,

despite the cotton in his ears, the light step of a young girl who was

running up the stairway. Presently three taps were discreetly struck

upon the door; then, without waiting for any response, a handsome girl

slipped like an eel into the room occupied by the old bachelor.

“Ah! is it you, Suzanne?” said the Chevalier de Valois, without

discontinuing his occupation, which was that of stropping his razor.

“What have you come for, my dear little jewel of mischief?”

“I have come to tell you something which may perhaps give you as much

pleasure as pain?”

“Is it anything about Cesarine?”

“Cesarine! much I care about your Cesarine!” she said with a saucy air,

half serious, half indifferent.

This charming Suzanne, whose present comical performance was to exercise

a great influence in the principal personages of our history, was a

work-girl at Madame Lardot’s. One word here on the topography of the

house. The wash-rooms occupied the whole of the ground floor. The little

courtyard was used to hang out on wire cords embroidered handkerchiefs,

collarets, capes, cuffs, frilled shirts, cravats, laces, embroidered

dresses,--in short, all the fine linen of the best families of the town.

The chevalier assumed to know from the number of her capes in the wash

how the love-affairs of the wife of the prefect were going on. Though

he guessed much from observations of this kind, the chevalier was

discretion itself; he was never betrayed into an epigram (he had plenty

of wit) which might have closed to him an agreeable salon. You are

therefore to consider Monsieur de Valois as a man of superior manners,

whose talents, like those of many others, were lost in a narrow sphere.

Only--for, after all, he was a man--he permitted himself certain

penetrating glances which could make some women tremble; although they

all loved him heartily as soon as they discovered the depth of his

discretion and the sympathy that he felt for their little weaknesses.

The head woman, Madame Lardot’s factotum, an old maid of forty-six,

hideous to behold, lived on the opposite side of the passage to the

chevalier. Above them were the attics where the linen was dried in

winter. Each apartment had two rooms,--one lighted from the street, the

other from the courtyard. Beneath the chevalier’s room there lived a

paralytic, Madame Lardot’s grandfather, an old buccaneer named Grevin,

who had served under Admiral Simeuse in India, and was now stone-deaf.

As for Madame Lardot, who occupied the other lodging on the first floor,

she had so great a weakness for persons of condition that she may well

have been thought blind to the ways of the chevalier. To her, Monsieur

de Valois was a despotic monarch who did right in all things. Had any of

her workwomen been guilty of a happiness attributed to the chevalier

she would have said, “He is so lovable!” Thus, though the house was of

glass, like all provincial houses, it was discreet as a robber’s cave.

A born confidant to all the little intrigues of the work-rooms, the

chevalier never passed the door, which usually stood open, without

giving something to his little ducks,--chocolate, bonbons, ribbons,

laces, gilt crosses, and such like trifles adored by grisettes;

consequently, the kind old gentleman was adored in return. Women have an

instinct which enables them to divine the men who love them, who like

to be near them, and exact no payment for gallantries. In this respect

women have the instinct of dogs, who in a mixed company will go straight

to the man to whom animals are sacred.

The poor Chevalier de Valois retained from his former life the need of

bestowing gallant protection, a quality of the seigneurs of other

days. Faithful to the system of the “petite maison,” he liked to enrich

women,--the only beings who know how to receive, because they can

always return. But the poor chevalier could no longer ruin himself for

a mistress. Instead of the choicest bonbons wrapped in bank-bills, he

gallantly presented paper-bags full of toffee. Let us say to the glory

of Alencon that the toffee was accepted with more joy than la Duthe

ever showed at a gilt service or a fine equipage offered by the Comte

d’Artois. All these grisettes fully understood the fallen majesty of the

Chevalier de Valois, and they kept their private familiarities with him

a profound secret for his sake. If they were questioned about him in

certain houses when they carried home the linen, they always spoke

respectfully of the chevalier, and made him out older than he really

was; they talked of him as a most respectable monsieur, whose life was

a flower of sanctity; but once in their own regions they perched on his

shoulders like so many parrots. He liked to be told the secrets which

washerwomen discover in the bosom of households, and day after day these

girls would tell him the cancans which were going the round of Alencon.

He called them his “petticoat gazettes,” his “talking feuilletons.”

Never did Monsieur de Sartines have spies more intelligent and less

expensive, or minions who showed more honor while displaying their

rascality of mind. So it may be said that in the mornings, while

breakfasting, the chevalier usually amused himself as much as the saints

in heaven.

Suzanne was one of his favorites, a clever, ambitious girl, made of

the stuff of a Sophie Arnold, and handsome withal, as the handsomest

courtesan invited by Titian to pose on black velvet for a model of

Venus; although her face, fine about the eyes and forehead, degenerated,

lower down, into commonness of outline. Hers was a Norman beauty, fresh,

high-colored, redundant, the flesh of Rubens covering the muscles of

the Farnese Hercules, and not the slender articulations of the Venus de’

Medici, Apollo’s graceful consort.

“Well, my child, tell me your great or your little adventure, whatever

it is.”

The particular point about the chevalier which would have made him

noticeable from Paris to Pekin, was the gentle paternity of his manner

to grisettes. They reminded him of the illustrious operatic queens of

his early days, whose celebrity was European during a good third of the

eighteenth century. It is certain that the old gentleman, who had lived

in days gone by with that feminine nation now as much forgotten as many

other great things,--like the Jesuits, the Buccaneers, the Abbes, and

the Farmers-General,--had acquired an irresistible good-humor, a kindly

ease, a laisser-aller devoid of egotism, the self-effacement of

Jupiter with Alcmene, of the king intending to be duped, who casts his

thunderbolts to the devil, wants his Olympus full of follies, little

suppers, feminine profusions--but with Juno out of the way, be it

understood.

In spite of his old green damask dressing-gown and the bareness of the

room in which he sat, where the floor was covered with a shabby tapestry

in place of carpet, and the walls were hung with tavern-paper presenting

the profiles of Louis XVI. and members of his family, traced among the

branches of a weeping willow with other sentimentalities invented by

royalism during the Terror,--in spite of his ruins, the chevalier,

trimming his beard before a shabby old toilet-table, draped with

trumpery lace, exhaled an essence of the eighteenth century. All the

libertine graces of his youth reappeared; he seemed to have the wealth

of three hundred thousand francs of debt, while his vis-a-vis waited

before the door. He was grand,--like Berthier on the retreat from

Moscow, issuing orders to an army that existed no longer.

“Monsieur le chevalier,” replied Suzanne, drolly, “seems to me I needn’t

tell you anything; you’ve only to look.”

And Suzanne presented a side view of herself which gave a sort of

lawyer’s comment to her words. The chevalier, who, you must know, was a

sly old bird, lowered his right eye on the grisette, still holding the

razor at his throat, and pretended to understand.

“Well, well, my little duck, we’ll talk about that presently. But you

are rather previous, it seems to me.”

“Why, Monsieur le chevalier, ought I to wait until my mother beats me

and Madame Lardot turns me off? If I don’t get away soon to Paris, I

shall never be able to marry here, where men are so ridiculous.”

“It can’t be helped, my dear; society is changing; women are just as

much victims to the present state of things as the nobility themselves.

After political overturn comes the overturn of morals. Alas! before long

woman won’t exist” (he took out the cotton-wool to arrange his ears):

“she’ll lose everything by rushing into sentiment; she’ll wring her

nerves; good-bye to all the good little pleasures of our time, desired

without shame, accepted without nonsense.” (He polished up the little

negroes’ heads.) “Women had hysterics in those days to get their ends,

but now” (he began to laugh) “their vapors end in charcoal. In short,

marriage” (here he picked up his pincers to remove a hair) “will become

a thing intolerable; whereas it used to be so gay in my day! The reigns

of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.--remember this, my child--said farewell to

the finest manners and morals ever known to the world.”

“But, Monsieur le chevalier,” said the grisette, “the matter now

concerns the morals and honor of your poor little Suzanne, and I hope

you won’t abandon her.”

“Abandon her!” cried the chevalier, finishing his hair; “I’d sooner

abandon my own name.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Suzanne.

“Now, listen to me, you little mischief,” said the chevalier, sitting

down on a huge sofa, formerly called a duchesse, which Madame Lardot had

been at some pains to find for him.

He drew the magnificent Suzanne before him, holding her legs between his

knees. She let him do as he liked, although in the street she was offish

enough to other men, refusing their familiarities partly from decorum

and partly for contempt for their commonness. She now stood audaciously

in front of the chevalier, who, having fathomed in his day many other

mysteries in minds that were far more wily, took in the situation at a

single glance. He knew very well that no young girl would joke about

a real dishonor; but he took good care not to knock over the pretty

scaffolding of her lie as he touched it.

“We slander ourselves,” he said with inimitable craft; “we are as

virtuous as that beautiful biblical girl whose name we bear; we can

always marry as we please, but we are thirsty for Paris, where charming

creatures--and we are no fool--get rich without trouble. We want to go

and see if the great capital of pleasures hasn’t some young Chevalier de

Valois in store for us, with a carriage, diamonds, an opera-box, and so

forth. Russians, Austrians, Britons, have millions on which we have an

eye. Besides, we are patriotic; we want to help France in getting back

her money from the pockets of those gentry. Hey! hey! my dear little

devil’s duck! it isn’t a bad plan. The world you live in may cry out a

bit, but success justifies all things. The worst thing in this world,

my dear, is to be without money; that’s our disease, yours and mine. Now

inasmuch as we have plenty of wit, we thought it would be a good thing

to parade our dear little honor, or dishonor, to catch an old boy;

but that old boy, my dear heart, knows the Alpha and Omega of female

tricks,--which means that you could easier put salt on a sparrow’s tail

than to make me believe I have anything to do with your little affair.

Go to Paris, my dear; go at the cost of an old celibate, I won’t prevent

it; in fact, I’ll help you, for an old bachelor, Suzanne, is the natural

money-box of a young girl. But don’t drag me into the matter. Listen, my

queen, you who know life pretty well; you would me great harm and give

me much pain,--harm, because you would prevent my marriage in a town

where people cling to morality; pain, because if you are in trouble

(which I deny, you sly puss!) I haven’t a penny to get you out of it.

I’m as poor as a church mouse; you know that, my dear. Ah! if I marry

Mademoiselle Cormon, if I am once more rich, of course I would prefer

you to Cesarine. You’ve always seemed to me as fine as the gold they

gild on lead; you were made to be the love of a great seigneur. I think

you so clever that the trick you are trying to play off on me doesn’t

surprise me one bit; I expected it. You are flinging the scabbard after

the sword, and that’s daring for a girl. It takes nerve and superior

ideas to do it, my angel, and therefore you have won my respectful

esteem.”

“Monsieur le chevalier, I assure you, you are mistaken, and--”

She colored, and did not dare to say more. The chevalier, with a single

glance, had guessed and fathomed her whole plan.

“Yes, yes! I understand: you want me to believe it,” he said. “Well! I

do believe it. But take my advice: go to Monsieur du Bousquier. Haven’t

you taken linen there for the last six or eight months? I’m not asking

what went on between you; but I know the man: he has immense conceit;

he is an old bachelor, and very rich; and he only spends a quarter of

a comfortable income. If you are as clever as I suppose, you can go to

Paris at his expense. There, run along, my little doe; go and twist him

round your finger. Only, mind this: be as supple as silk; at every

word take a double turn round him and make a knot. He is a man to fear

scandal, and if he has given you a chance to put him in the pillory--in

short, understand; threaten him with the ladies of the Maternity

Hospital. Besides, he’s ambitious. A man succeeds through his wife, and

you are handsome and clever enough to make the fortune of a husband.

Hey! the mischief! you could hold your own against all the court

ladies.”

Suzanne, whose mind took in at a flash the chevalier’s last words,

was eager to run off to du Bousquier, but, not wishing to depart too

abruptly, she questioned the chevalier about Paris, all the while

helping him to dress. The chevalier, however, divined her desire to

be off, and favored it by asking her to tell Cesarine to bring up his

chocolate, which Madame Lardot made for him every morning. Suzanne then

slipped away to her new victim, whose biography must here be given.

Born of an old Alencon family, du Bousquier was a cross between the

bourgeois and the country squire. Finding himself without means on the

death of his father, he went, like other ruined provincials, to Paris.

On the breaking out of the Revolution he took part in public affairs.

In spite of revolutionary principles, which made a hobby of republican

honesty, the management of public business in those days was by no

means clean. A political spy, a stock-jobber, a contractor, a man who

confiscated in collusion with the syndic of a commune the property of

emigres in order to sell them and buy them in, a minister, and a general

were all equally engaged in public business. From 1793 to 1799 du

Bousquier was commissary of provisions to the French armies. He lived in

a magnificent hotel and was one of the matadors of finance, did business

with Ouvrard, kept open house, and led the scandalous life of the

period,--the life of a Cincinnatus, on sacks of corn harvested without

trouble, stolen rations, “little houses” full of mistresses, in which

were given splendid fetes to the Directors of the Republic.

The citizen du Bousquier was one of Barras’ familiars; he was on the

best of terms with Fouche, stood very well with Bernadotte, and fully

expected to become a minister by throwing himself into the party which

secretly caballed against Bonaparte until Marengo. If it had not been

for Kellermann’s charge and Desaix’s death, du Bousquier would probably

have become a minister. He was one of the chief assistances of that

secret government whom Napoleon’s luck sent behind the scenes in 1793.

(See “An Historical Mystery.”) The unexpected victory of Marengo was

the defeat of that party who actually had their proclamations printed

to return to the principles of the Montagne in case the First Consul

succumbed.

Convinced of the impossibility of Bonaparte’s triumph, du Bousquier

staked the greater part of his property on a fall in the Funds, and kept

two couriers on the field of battle. The first started for Paris when

Melas’ victory was certain; the second, starting four hours later,

brought the news of the defeat of the Austrians. Du Bousquier cursed

Kellermann and Desaix; he dared not curse Bonaparte, who might owe him

millions. This alternative of millions to be earned and present ruin

staring him in the face, deprived the purveyor of most of his faculties:

he became nearly imbecile for several days; the man had so abused his

health by excesses that when the thunderbolt fell upon him he had no

strength to resist. The payment of his bills against the Exchequer

gave him some hopes for the future, but, in spite of all efforts

to ingratiate himself, Napoleon’s hatred to the contractors who had

speculated on his defeat made itself felt; du Bousquier was left without

a sou. The immorality of his private life, his intimacy with Barras and

Bernadotte, displeased the First Consul even more than his manoeuvres

at the Bourse, and he struck du Bousquier’s name from the list of the

government contractors.

Out of all his past opulence du Bousquier saved only twelve hundred

francs a year from an investment in the Grand Livre, which he had

happened to place there by pure caprice, and which saved him from

penury. A man ruined by the First Consul interested the town of Alencon,

to which he now returned, where royalism was secretly dominant. Du

Bousquier, furious against Bonaparte, relating stories against him of

his meanness, of Josephine’s improprieties, and all the other scandalous

anecdotes of the last ten years, was well received.

About this time, when he was somewhere between forty and fifty, du

Bousquier’s appearance was that of a bachelor of thirty-six, of medium

height, plump as a purveyor, proud of his vigorous calves, with a

strongly marked countenance, a flattened nose, the nostrils garnished

with hair, black eyes with thick lashes, from which darted shrewd

glances like those of Monsieur de Talleyrand, though somewhat dulled.

He still wore republican whiskers and his hair very long; his hands,

adorned with bunches of hair on each knuckle, showed the power of his

muscular system in their prominent blue veins. He had the chest of the

Farnese Hercules, and shoulders fit to carry the stocks. Such shoulders

are seen nowadays only at Tortoni’s. This wealth of masculine vigor

counted for much in du Bousquier’s relations with others. And yet in

him, as in the chevalier, symptoms appeared which contrasted oddly with

the general aspect of their persons. The late purveyor had not the voice

of his muscles. We do not mean that his voice was a mere thread, such

as we sometimes hear issuing from the mouth of these walruses; on the

contrary, it was a strong voice, but stifled, an idea of which can be

given only by comparing it with the noise of a saw cutting into soft and

moistened wood,--the voice of a worn-out speculator.

In spite of the claims which the enmity of the First Consul gave

Monsieur du Bousquier to enter the royalist society of the province,

he was not received in the seven or eight families who composed the

faubourg Saint-Germain of Alencon, among whom the Chevalier de Valois

was welcome. He had offered himself in marriage, through her notary,

to Mademoiselle Armande, sister of the most distinguished noble in the

town; to which offer he received a refusal. He consoled himself as best

he could in the society of a dozen rich families, former manufacturers

of the old point d’Alencon, owners of pastures and cattle, or merchants

doing a wholesale business in linen, among whom, as he hoped, he

might find a wealthy wife. In fact, all his hopes now converged to

the perspective of a fortunate marriage. He was not without a certain

financial ability, which many persons used to their profit. Like a

ruined gambler who advises neophytes, he pointed out enterprises and

speculations, together with the means and chances of conducting them. He

was thought a good administrator, and it was often a question of making

him mayor of Alencon; but the memory of his underhand jobbery still

clung to him, and he was never received at the prefecture. All the

succeeding governments, even that of the Hundred Days, refused to

appoint him mayor of Alencon,--a place he coveted, which, could he have

had it, would, he thought, have won him the hand of a certain old maid

on whom his matrimonial views now turned.

Du Bousquier’s aversion to the Imperial government had thrown him at

first into the royalist circles of Alencon, where he remained in spite

of the rebuffs he received there; but when, after the first return

of the Bourbons, he was still excluded from the prefecture, that

mortification inspired him with a hatred as deep as it was secret

against the royalists. He now returned to his old opinions, and became

the leader of the liberal party in Alencon, the invisible manipulator of

elections, and did immense harm to the Restoration by the cleverness of

his underhand proceedings and the perfidy of his outward behavior. Du

Bousquier, like all those who live by their heads only, carried on his

hatreds with the quiet tranquillity of a rivulet, feeble apparently,

but inexhaustible. His hatred was that of a negro, so peaceful that it

deceived the enemy. His vengeance, brooded over for fifteen years, was

as yet satisfied by no victory, not even that of July, 1830.

It was not without some private intention that the Chevalier de Valois

had turned Suzanne’s designs upon Monsieur du Bousquier. The liberal

and the royalist had mutually divined each other in spite of the wide

dissimulation with which they hid their common hope from the rest of the

town. The two old bachelors were secretly rivals. Each had formed a plan

to marry the Demoiselle Cormon, whom Monsieur de Valois had mentioned to

Suzanne. Both, ensconced in their idea and wearing the armor of apparent

indifference, awaited the moment when some lucky chance might deliver

the old maid over to them. Thus, if the two old bachelors had not been

kept asunder by the two political systems of which they each offered

a living expression, their private rivalry would still have made them

enemies. Epochs put their mark on men. These two individuals proved the

truth of that axiom by the opposing historic tints that were visible

in their faces, in their conversation, in their ideas, and in their

clothes. One, abrupt, energetic, with loud, brusque manners, curt, rude

speech, dark in tone, in hair, in look, terrible apparently, in reality

as impotent as an insurrection, represented the republic admirably. The

other, gentle and polished, elegant and nice, attaining his ends by the

slow and infallible means of diplomacy, faithful to good taste, was the

express image of the old courtier regime.

The two enemies met nearly every evening on the same ground. The war

was courteous and benign on the side of the chevalier; but du Bousquier

showed less ceremony on his, though still preserving the outward

appearances demanded by society, for he did not wish to be driven from

the place. They themselves fully understood each other; but in spite of

the shrewd observation which provincials bestow on the petty interests

of their own little centre, no one in the town suspected the rivalry

of these two men. Monsieur le Chevalier de Valois occupied a

vantage-ground: he had never asked for the hand of Mademoiselle Cormon;

whereas du Bousquier, who entered the lists soon after his rejection by

the most distinguished family in the place, had been refused. But the

chevalier believed that his rival had still such strong chances of

success that he dealt him this coup de Jarnac with a blade (namely,

Suzanne) that was finely tempered for the purpose. The chevalier had

cast his plummet-line into the waters of du Bousquier; and, as we shall

see by the sequel, he was not mistaken in any of his conjectures.

Suzanne tripped with a light foot from the rue du Cours, by the rue de

la Porte de Seez and the rue du Bercail, to the rue du Cygne, where,

about five years earlier, du Bousquier had bought a little house built

of gray Jura stone, which is something between Breton slate and

Norman granite. There he established himself more comfortably than any

householder in town; for he had managed to preserve certain furniture

and decorations from the days of his splendor. But provincial manners

and morals obscured, little by little, the rays of this fallen

Sardanapalus; these vestiges of his former luxury now produced the

effect of a glass chandelier in a barn. Harmony, that bond of all work,

human or divine, was lacking in great things as well as in little ones.

The stairs, up which everybody mounted without wiping their feet, were

never polished; the walls, painted by some wretched artisan of the

neighborhood, were a terror to the eye; the stone mantel-piece,

ill-carved, “swore” with the handsome clock, which was further degraded

by the company of contemptible candlesticks. Like the period which

du Bousquier himself represented, the house was a jumble of dirt and

magnificence. Being considered a man of leisure, du Bousquier led the

same parasite life as the chevalier; and he who does not spend his

income is always rich. His only servant was a sort of Jocrisse, a lad of

the neighborhood, rather a ninny, trained slowly and with difficulty to

du Bousquier’s requirements. His master had taught him, as he might an

orang-outang, to rub the floors, dust the furniture, black his boots,

brush his coats, and bring a lantern to guide him home at night if

the weather were cloudy, and clogs if it rained. Like many other human

beings, this lad hadn’t stuff enough in him for more than one vice; he

was a glutton. Often, when du Bousquier went to a grand dinner, he would

take Rene to wait at table; on such occasions he made him take off his

blue cotton jacket, with its big pockets hanging round his hips, and

always bulging with handkerchiefs, clasp-knives, fruits, or a handful of

nuts, and forced him to put on a regulation coat. Rene would then stuff

his fill with the other servants. This duty, which du Bousquier had

turned into a reward, won him the most absolute discretion from the

Breton servant.

“You here, mademoiselle!” said Rene to Suzanne when she entered;

“‘t’isn’t your day. We haven’t any linen for the wash, tell Madame

Lardot.”

“Old stupid!” said Suzanne, laughing.

The pretty girl went upstairs, leaving Rene to finish his porringer of

buckwheat in boiled milk. Du Bousquier, still in bed, was revolving in

his mind his plans of fortune; for ambition was all that was left

to him, as to other men who have sucked dry the orange of pleasure.

Ambition and play are inexhaustible; in a well-organized man the

passions which proceed from the brain will always survive the passions

of the heart.

“Here am I,” said Suzanne, sitting down on the bed and jangling the

curtain-rings back along the rod with despotic vehemence.

“Quesaco, my charmer?” said the old bachelor, sitting up in bed.

“Monsieur,” said Suzanne, gravely, “you must be astonished to see me

here at this hour; but I find myself in a condition which obliges me not

to care for what people may say about it.”

“What does all that mean?” said du Bousquier, crossing his arms.

“Don’t you understand me?” said Suzanne. “I know,” she continued, making

a pretty little face, “how ridiculous it is in a poor girl to come and

nag at a man for what he thinks a mere nothing. But if you really knew

me, monsieur, if you knew all that I am capable of for a man who would

attach himself to me as much as I’m attached to you, you would never

repent having married me. Of course it isn’t here, in Alencon, that

I should be of service to you; but if we went to Paris, you would see

where I could lead a man with your mind and your capacities; and just

at this time too, when they are remaking the government from top to toe.

So--between ourselves, be it said--_is_ what has happened a misfortune?

Isn’t it rather a piece of luck, which will pay you well? Who and what

are you working for now?”

“For myself, of course!” cried du Bousquier, brutally.

“Monster! you’ll never be a father!” said Suzanne, giving a tone of

prophetic malediction to the words.

“Come, don’t talk nonsense, Suzanne,” replied du Bousquier; “I really

think I am still dreaming.”

“How much more reality do you want?” cried Suzanne, standing up.

Du Bousquier rubbed his cotton night-cap to the top of his head with a

rotatory motion, which plainly indicated the tremendous fermentation of

his ideas.

“He actually believes it!” thought Suzanne, “and he’s flattered. Heaven!

how easy it is to gull men!”

“Suzanne, what the devil must I do? It is so extraordinary--I, who

thought--The fact is that--No, no, it can’t be--”

“What? you can’t marry me?”

“Oh! as for that, no; I have engagements.”

“With Mademoiselle Armande or Mademoiselle Cormon, who have both

refused you? Listen to me, Monsieur du Bousquier, my honor doesn’t

need gendarmes to drag you to the mayor’s office. I sha’n’t lack for

husbands, thank goodness! and I don’t want a man who can’t appreciate

what I’m worth. But some day you’ll repent of the way you are behaving;

for I tell you now that nothing on earth, neither gold nor silver, will

induce me to return the good thing that belongs to you, if you refuse to

accept it to-day.”

“But, Suzanne, are you sure?”

“Oh, monsieur!” cried the grisette, wrapping her virtue round her, “what

do you take me for? I don’t remind you of the promises you made me,

which have ruined a poor young girl whose only blame was to have as much

ambition as love.”

Du Bousquier was torn with conflicting sentiments, joy, distrust,

calculation. He had long determined to marry Mademoiselle Cormon;

for the Charter, on which he had just been ruminating, offered to his

ambition, through the half of her property, the political career of a

deputy. Besides, his marriage with the old maid would put him socially

so high in the town that he would have great influence. Consequently,

the storm upraised by that malicious Suzanne drove him into the wildest

embarrassment. Without this secret scheme, he would have married Suzanne

without hesitation. In which case, he could openly assume the leadership

of the liberal party in Alencon. After such a marriage he would, of

course, renounce the best society and take up with the bourgeois class

of tradesmen, rich manufacturers and graziers, who would certainly carry

him in triumph as their candidate. Du Bousquier already foresaw the Left

side.

This solemn deliberation he did not conceal; he rubbed his hands over

his head, displacing the cap which covered its disastrous baldness.

Suzanne, meantime, like all those persons who succeed beyond their

hopes, was silent and amazed. To hide her astonishment, she assumed the

melancholy pose of an injured girl at the mercy of her seducer; inwardly

she was laughing like a grisette at her clever trick.

“My dear child,” said du Bousquier at length, “I’m not to be taken in

with such _bosh_, not I!”

Such was the curt remark which ended du Bousquier’s meditation. He

plumed himself on belonging to the class of cynical philosophers who

could never be “taken in” by women,--putting them, one and all, unto the

same category, as _suspicious_. These strong-minded persons are usually

weak men who have a special catechism in the matter of womenkind. To

them the whole sex, from queens of France to milliners, are essentially

depraved, licentious, intriguing, not a little rascally, fundamentally

deceitful, and incapable of thought about anything but trifles. To them,

women are evil-doing queens, who must be allowed to dance and sing and

laugh as they please; they see nothing sacred or saintly in them, nor

anything grand; to them there is no poetry in the senses, only gross

sensuality. Where such jurisprudence prevails, if a woman is not

perpetually tyrannized over, she reduces the man to the condition of a

slave. Under this aspect du Bousquier was again the antithesis of the

chevalier. When he made his final remark, he flung his night-cap to the

foot of the bed, as Pope Gregory did the taper when he fulminated

an excommunication; Suzanne then learned for the first time that du

Bousquier wore a toupet covering his bald spot.

“Please to remember, Monsieur du Bousquier,” she replied majestically,

“that in coming here to tell you of this matter I have done my duty;

remember that I have offered you my hand, and asked for yours; but

remember also that I behaved with the dignity of a woman who respects

herself. I have not abased myself to weep like a silly fool; I have not

insisted; I have not tormented you. You now know my situation. You must

see that I cannot stay in Alencon: my mother would beat me, and Madame

Lardot rides a hobby of principles; she’ll turn me off. Poor work-girl

that I am, must I go to the hospital? must I beg my bread? No! I’d

rather throw myself into the Brillante or the Sarthe. But isn’t it

better that I should go to Paris? My mother could find an excuse to send

me there,--an uncle who wants me, or a dying aunt, or a lady who sends

for me. But I must have some money for the journey and for--you know

what.”

This extraordinary piece of news was far more startling to du Bousquier

than to the Chevalier de Valois. Suzanne’s fiction introduced such

confusion into the ideas of the old bachelor that he was literally

incapable of sober reflection. Without this agitation and without his

inward delight (for vanity is a swindler which never fails of its dupe),

he would certainly have reflected that, supposing it were true, a

girl like Suzanne, whose heart was not yet spoiled, would have died a

thousand deaths before beginning a discussion of this kind and asking

for money.

“Will you really go to Paris, then?” he said.

A flash of gayety lighted Suzanne’s gray eyes as she heard these words;

but the self-satisfied du Bousquier saw nothing.

“Yes, monsieur,” she said.

Du Bousquier then began bitter lamentations: he had the last payments

to make on his house; the painter, the mason, the upholsterers must

be paid. Suzanne let him run on; she was listening for the figures. Du

Bousquier offered her three hundred francs. Suzanne made what is called

on the stage a false exit; that is, she marched toward the door.

“Stop, stop! where are you going?” said du Bousquier, uneasily. “This

is what comes of a bachelor’s life!” thought he. “The devil take me if

I ever did anything more than rumple her collar, and, lo and behold! she

makes THAT a ground to put her hand in one’s pocket!”

“I’m going, monsieur,” replied Suzanne, “to Madame Granson, the

treasurer of the Maternity Society, who, to my knowledge, has saved many

a poor girl in my condition from suicide.”

“Madame Granson!”

“Yes,” said Suzanne, “a relation of Mademoiselle Cormon, the president

of the Maternity Society. Saving your presence, the ladies of the town

have created an institution to protect poor creatures from destroying

their infants, like that handsome Faustine of Argentan who was executed

for it three years ago.”

“Here, Suzanne,” said du Bousquier, giving her a key, “open that

secretary, and take out the bag you’ll find there: there’s about six

hundred francs in it; it is all I possess.”

“Old cheat!” thought Suzanne, doing as he told her, “I’ll tell about

your false toupet.”

She compared du Bousquier with that charming chevalier, who had given

her nothing, it is true, but who had comprehended her, advised her, and

carried all grisettes in his heart.

“If you deceive me, Suzanne,” cried du Bousquier, as he saw her with her

hand in the drawer, “you--”

“Monsieur,” she said, interrupting him with ineffable impertinence,

“wouldn’t you have given me money if I had asked for it?”

Recalled to a sense of gallantry, du Bousquier had a remembrance of past

happiness and grunted his assent. Suzanne took the bag and departed,

after allowing the old bachelor to kiss her, which he did with an air

that seemed to say, “It is a right which costs me dear; but it is better

than being harried by a lawyer in the court of assizes as the seducer of

a girl accused of infanticide.”

Suzanne hid the sack in a sort of gamebag made of osier which she had on

her arm, all the while cursing du Bousquier for his stinginess; for one

thousand francs was the sum she wanted. Once tempted of the devil to

desire that sum, a girl will go far when she has set foot on the path of

trickery. As she made her way along the rue du Bercail, it came into her

head that the Maternity Society, presided over by Mademoiselle Cormon,

might be induced to complete the sum at which she had reckoned her

journey to Paris, which to a grisette of Alencon seemed considerable.

Besides, she hated du Bousquier. The latter had evidently feared a

revelation of his supposed misconduct to Madame Granson; and Suzanne, at

the risk of not getting a penny from the society, was possessed with

the desire, on leaving Alencon, of entangling the old bachelor in the

inextricable meshes of a provincial slander. In all grisettes there is

something of the malevolent mischief of a monkey. Accordingly, Suzanne

now went to see Madame Granson, composing her face to an expression of

the deepest dejection.

CHAPTER III. ATHANASE

Madame Granson, widow of a lieutenant-colonel of artillery killed at

Jena, possessed, as her whole means of livelihood, a meagre pension of

nine hundred francs a year, and three hundred francs from property of

her own, plus a son whose support and education had eaten up all her

savings. She occupied, in the rue du Bercail, one of those melancholy

ground-floor apartments which a traveller passing along the principal

street of a little provincial town can look through at a glance. The

street door opened at the top of three steep steps; a passage led to an

interior courtyard, at the end of which was the staircase covered by a

wooden gallery. On one side of the passage was the dining-room and the

kitchen; on the other side, a salon put to many uses, and the widow’s

bedchamber.

Athanase Granson, a young man twenty-three years of age, who slept in an

attic room above the second floor of the house, added six hundred francs

to the income of his poor mother, by the salary of a little place which

the influence of his relation, Mademoiselle Cormon, had obtained for him

in the mayor’s office, where he was placed in charge of the archives.

From these indications it is easy to imagine Madame Granson in her

cold salon with its yellow curtains and Utrecht velvet furniture, also

yellow, as she straightened the round straw mats which were placed

before each chair, that visitors might not soil the red-tiled floor

while they sat there; after which she returned to her cushioned

armchair and little work-table placed beneath the portrait of the

lieutenant-colonel of artillery between two windows,--a point from which

her eye could rake the rue du Bercail and see all comers. She was a good

woman, dressed with bourgeois simplicity in keeping with her wan face

furrowed by grief. The rigorous humbleness of poverty made itself felt

in all the accessories of this household, the very air of which was

charged with the stern and upright morals of the provinces. At this

moment the son and mother were together in the dining-room, where

they were breakfasting with a cup of coffee, with bread and butter and

radishes. To make the pleasure which Suzanne’s visit was to give to

Madame Granson intelligible, we must explain certain secret interests of

the mother and son.

Athanase Granson was a thin and pale young man, of medium height, with

a hollow face in which his two black eyes, sparkling with thoughts, gave

the effect of bits of coal. The rather irregular lines of his face, the

curve of his lips, a prominent chin, the fine modelling of his forehead,

his melancholy countenance, caused by a sense of his poverty warring

with the powers that he felt within him, were all indications of

repressed and imprisoned talent. In any other place than the town of

Alencon the mere aspect of his person would have won him the assistance

of superior men, or of women who are able to recognize genius in

obscurity. If his was not genius, it was at any rate the form and aspect

of it; if he had not the actual force of a great heart, the glow of such

a heart was in his glance. Although he was capable of expressing the

highest feeling, a casing of timidity destroyed all the graces of his

youth, just as the ice of poverty kept him from daring to put forth all

his powers. Provincial life, without an opening, without appreciation,

without encouragement, described a circle about him in which languished

and died the power of thought,--a power which as yet had scarcely

reached its dawn. Moreover, Athanase possessed that savage pride which

poverty intensifies in noble minds, exalting them in their struggle with

men and things; although at their start in life it is an obstacle to

their advancement. Genius proceeds in two ways: either it takes its

opportunity--like Napoleon, like Moliere--the moment that it sees it,

or it waits to be sought when it has patiently revealed itself. Young

Granson belonged to that class of men of talent who distrust themselves

and are easily discouraged. His soul was contemplative. He lived more

by thought than by action. Perhaps he might have seemed deficient or

incomplete to those who cannot conceive of genius without the sparkle

of French passion; but he was powerful in the world of mind, and he was

liable to reach, through a series of emotions imperceptible to common

souls, those sudden determinations which make fools say of a man, “He is

mad.”

The contempt which the world pours out on poverty was death to Athanase;

the enervating heat of solitude, without a breath or current of air,

relaxed the bow which ever strove to tighten itself; his soul grew weary

in this painful effort without results. Athanase was a man who might

have taken his place among the glories of France; but, eagle as he was,

cooped in a cage without his proper nourishment, he was about to die of

hunger after contemplating with an ardent eye the fields of air and

the mountain heights where genius soars. His work in the city library

escaped attention, and he buried in his soul his thoughts of fame,

fearing that they might injure him; but deeper than all lay buried

within him the secret of his heart,--a passion which hollowed his

cheeks and yellowed his brow. He loved his distant cousin, this very

Mademoiselle Cormon whom the Chevalier de Valois and du Bousquier,

his hidden rivals, were stalking. This love had had its origin in

calculation. Mademoiselle Cormon was thought to be one of the richest

persons in the town: the poor lad had therefore been led to love her by

desires for material happiness, by the hope, long indulged, of gilding

with comfort his mother’s last years, by eager longing for the ease of

life so needful to men who live by thought; but this most innocent point

of departure degraded his passion in his own eyes. Moreover, he feared

the ridicule the world would cast upon the love of a young man of

twenty-three for an old maid of forty.

And yet his passion was real; whatever may seem false about such a love

elsewhere, it can be realized as a fact in the provinces, where, manners

and morals being without change or chance or movement or mystery,

marriage becomes a necessity of life. No family will accept a young man

of dissolute habits. However natural the liaison of a young man, like

Athanase, with a handsome girl, like Suzanne, for instance, might seem

in a capital, it alarms provincial parents, and destroys the hopes of

marriage of a poor young man when possibly the fortune of a rich one

might cause such an unfortunate antecedent to be overlooked. Between the

depravity of certain liaisons and a sincere love, a man of honor and no

fortune will not hesitate: he prefers the misfortunes of virtue to the

evils of vice. But in the provinces women with whom a young man call

fall in love are rare. A rich young girl he cannot obtain in a region

where all is calculation; a poor young girl he is prevented from loving;

it would be, as provincials say, marrying hunger and thirst. Such

monkish solitude is, however, dangerous to youth.

These reflections explain why provincial life is so firmly based on

marriage. Thus we find that ardent and vigorous genius, forced to rely

on the independence of its own poverty, quits these cold regions where

thought is persecuted by brutal indifference, where no woman is willing

to be a sister of charity to a man of talent, of art, of science.

Who will really understand Athanase Granson’s love for Mademoiselle

Cormon? Certainly neither rich men--those sultans of society who fill

their harems--nor middle-class men, who follow the well-beaten high-road

of prejudices; nor women who, not choosing to understand the passions of

artists, impose the yoke of their virtues upon men of genius, imagining

that the two sexes are governed by the same laws.

Here, perhaps, we should appeal to those young men who suffer from the

repression of their first desires at the moment when all their forces

are developing; to artists sick of their own genius smothering under the

pressure of poverty; to men of talent, persecuted and without influence,

often without friends at the start, who have ended by triumphing over

that double anguish, equally agonizing, of soul and body. Such men

will well understand the lancinating pains of the cancer which was

now consuming Athanase; they have gone through those long and bitter

deliberations made in presence of some grandiose purpose they had not

the means to carry out; they have endured those secret miscarriages in

which the fructifying seed of genius falls on arid soil. Such men know

that the grandeur of desires is in proportion to the height and breadth

of the imagination. The higher they spring, the lower they fall; and how

can it be that ties and bonds should not be broken by such a fall?

Their piercing eye has seen--as did Athanase--the brilliant future which

awaited them, and from which they fancied that only a thin gauze parted

them; but that gauze through which their eyes could see is changed by

Society into a wall of iron. Impelled by a vocation, by a sentiment of

art, they endeavor again and again to live by sentiments which society

as incessantly materializes. Alas! the provinces calculate and arrange

marriage with the one view of material comfort, and a poor artist or man

of science is forbidden to double its purpose and make it the saviour of

his genius by securing to him the means of subsistence!

Moved by such ideas, Athanase Granson first thought of marriage with

Mademoiselle Cormon as a means of obtaining a livelihood which would

be permanent. Thence he could rise to fame, and make his mother happy,

knowing at the same time that he was capable of faithfully loving his

wife. But soon his own will created, although he did not know it, a

genuine passion. He began to study the old maid, and, by dint of the

charm which habit gives, he ended by seeing only her beauties and

ignoring her defects.

In a young man of twenty-three the senses count for much in love; their

fire produces a sort of prism between his eyes and the woman. From

this point of view the clasp with which Beaumarchis’ Cherubin seizes

Marceline is a stroke of genius. But when we reflect that in the utter

isolation to which poverty condemned poor Athanase, Mademoiselle Cormon

was the only figure presented to his gaze, that she attracted his eye

incessantly, that all the light he had was concentrated on her, surely

his love may be considered natural.

This sentiment, so carefully hidden, increased from day to day. Desires,

sufferings, hopes, and meditations swelled in quietness and silence the

lake widening ever in the young man’s breast, as hour by hour added its

drop of water to the volume. And the wider this inward circle, drawn

by the imagination, aided by the senses, grew, the more imposing

Mademoiselle Cormon appeared to Athanase, and the more his own timidity

increased.

The mother had divined the truth. Like all provincial mothers, she

calculated candidly in her own mind the advantages of the match. She

told herself that Mademoiselle Cormon would be very lucky to secure a

husband in a young man of twenty-three, full of talent, who would always

be an honor to his family and the neighborhood; at the same time the

obstacles which her son’s want of fortune and Mademoiselle Cormon’s age

presented to the marriage seemed to her almost insurmountable; she could

think of nothing but patience as being able to vanquish them. Like du

Bousquier, like the Chevalier de Valois, she had a policy of her own;

she was on the watch for circumstances, awaiting the propitious moment

for a move with the shrewdness of maternal instinct. Madame Granson

had no fears at all as to the chevalier, but she did suppose that du

Bousquier, although refused, retained certain hopes. As an able and

underhand enemy to the latter, she did him much secret harm in the

interests of her son; from whom, by the bye, she carefully concealed all

such proceedings.

After this explanation it is easy to understand the importance which

Suzanne’s lie, confided to Madame Granson, was about to acquire. What a

weapon put into the hands of this charitable lady, the treasurer of the

Maternity Society! How she would gently and demurely spread the news

while collecting assistance for the chaste Suzanne!

At the present moment Athanase, leaning pensively on his elbow at

the breakfast table, was twirling his spoon in his empty cup and

contemplating with a preoccupied eye the poor room with its red brick

floor, its straw chairs, its painted wooden buffet, its pink and white

curtains chequered like a backgammon board, which communicated with the

kitchen through a glass door. As his back was to the chimney which his

mother faced, and as the chimney was opposite to the door, his pallid

face, strongly lighted from the window, framed in beautiful black hair,

the eyes gleaming with despair and fiery with morning thoughts, was the

first object which met the eyes of the incoming Suzanne. The grisette,

who belonged to a class which certainly has the instinct of misery and

the sufferings of the heart, suddenly felt that electric spark, darting

from Heaven knows where, which can never be explained, which some strong

minds deny, but the sympathetic stroke of which has been felt by many

men and many women. It is at once a light which lightens the darkness

of the future, a presentiment of the sacred joys of a shared love, the

certainty of mutual comprehension. Above all, it is like the touch of

a firm and able hand on the keyboard of the senses. The eyes are

fascinated by an irresistible attraction; the heart is stirred; the

melodies of happiness echo in the soul and in the ears; a voice cries

out, “It is he!” Often reflection casts a douche of cold water on this

boiling emotion, and all is over.

In a moment, as rapid as the flash of the lightning, Suzanne received

the broadside of this emotion in her heart. The flame of a real love

burned up the evil weeds fostered by a libertine and dissipated life.

She saw how much she was losing of decency and value by accusing herself

falsely. What had seemed to her a joke the night before became to her

eyes a serious charge against herself. She recoiled at her own success.

But the impossibility of any result; the poverty of the young man; a

vague hope of enriching herself, of going to Paris, and returning with

full hands to say, “I love you! here are the means of happiness!”

or mere fate, if you will have it so, dried up the next moment this

beneficent dew.

The ambitious grisette asked with a timid air for a moment’s interview

with Madame Granson, who took her at once into her bedchamber. When

Suzanne came out she looked again at Athanase; he was still in the same

position, and the tears came into her eyes. As for Madame Granson, she

was radiant with joy. At last she had a weapon, and a terrible one,

against du Bousquier; she could now deal him a mortal blow. She had

of course promised the poor seduced girl the support of all charitable

ladies and that of the members of the Maternity Society in particular;

she foresaw a dozen visits which would occupy her whole day, and brew up

a frightful storm on the head of the guilty du Bousquier. The Chevalier

de Valois, while foreseeing the turn the affair would take, had really

no idea of the scandal which would result from his own action.

“My dear child,” said Madame Granson to her son, “we are to dine,

you know, with Mademoiselle Cormon; do take a little pains with your

appearance. You are wrong to neglect your dress as you do. Put on that

handsome frilled shirt and your green coat of Elbeuf cloth. I have my

reasons,” she added slyly. “Besides, Mademoiselle Cormon is going to

Prebaudet, and many persons will doubtless call to bid her good-bye.

When a young man is marriageable he ought to take every means to make

himself agreeable. If girls would only tell the truth, heavens! my

dear boy, you’d be astonished at what makes them fall in love. Often

it suffices for a man to ride past them at the head of a company of

artillery, or show himself at a ball in tight clothes. Sometimes a mere

turn of the head, a melancholy attitude, makes them suppose a man’s

whole life; they’ll invent a romance to match the hero--who is often

a mere brute, but the marriage is made. Watch the Chevalier de Valois:

study him; copy his manners; see with what ease he presents himself;

he never puts on a stiff air, as you do. Talk a little more; one would

really think you didn’t know anything,--you, who know Hebrew by heart.”

Athanase listened to his mother with a surprised but submissive air;

then he rose, took his cap, and went off to the mayor’s office, saying

to himself, “Can my mother suspect my secret?”

He passed through the rue du Val-Noble, where Mademoiselle Cormon

lived,--a little pleasure which he gave himself every morning, thinking,

as usual, a variety of fanciful things:--

“How little she knows that a young man is passing before her house who

loves her well, who would be faithful to her, who would never cause

her any grief; who would leave her the entire management of her fortune

without interference. Good God! what fatality! here, side by side, in

the same town, are two persons in our mutual condition, and yet nothing

can bring them together. Suppose I were to speak to her this evening?”

During this time Suzanne had returned to her mother’s house thinking of

Athanase; and, like many other women who have longed to help an adored

man beyond the limit of human powers, she felt herself capable of making

her body a stepping-stone on which he could rise to attain his throne.

It is now necessary to enter the house of this old maid toward whom so

many interests are converging, where the actors in this scene, with

the exception of Suzanne, were all to meet this very evening. As for

Suzanne, that handsome individual bold enough to burn her ships like

Alexander at her start in life, and to begin the battle by a falsehood,

she disappears from the stage, having introduced upon it a violent

element of interest. Her utmost wishes were gratified. She quitted her

native town a few days later, well supplied with money and good clothes,

among which was a fine dress of green reps and a charming green bonnet

lined with pink, the gift of Monsieur de Valois,--a present which she

preferred to all the rest, even the money. If the chevalier had gone

to Paris in the days of her future brilliancy, she would certainly have

left every one for him. Like the chaste Susannah of the Bible, whom the

Elders hardly saw, she established herself joyously and full of hope in

Paris, while all Alencon was deploring her misfortunes, for which the

ladies of two Societies (Charity and Maternity) manifested the liveliest

sympathy. Though Suzanne is a fair specimen of those handsome Norman

women whom a learned physician reckons as comprising one third of her

fallen class whom our monstrous Paris absorbs, it must be stated that

she remained in the upper and more decent regions of gallantry. At an

epoch when, as Monsieur de Valois said, Woman no longer existed, she was

simply “Madame du Val-Noble”; in other days she would have rivalled

the Rhodopes, the Imperias, the Ninons of the past. One of the most

distinguished writers of the Restoration has taken her under his

protection; perhaps he may marry her. He is a journalist, and

consequently above public opinion, inasmuch as he manufactures it afresh

every year or two.

CHAPTER IV. MADEMOISELLE CORMON

In nearly all the second-class prefectures of France there exists

one salon which is the meeting-ground of those considerable and

well-considered persons of the community who are, nevertheless, _not_

the cream of the best society. The master and mistress of such an

establishment are counted among the leading persons of the town; they

are received wherever it may please them to visit; no fete is given, no

formal or diplomatic dinner takes place, to which they are not invited.

But the chateau people, heads of families possessing great estates,

in short, the highest personages in the department, do not go to their

houses; social intercourse between them is carried on by cards from one

to the other, and a dinner or soiree accepted and returned.

This salon, in which the lesser nobility, the clergy, and the magistracy

meet together, exerts a great influence. The judgment and mind of the

region reside in that solid, unostentatious society, where each man

knows the resources of his neighbor, where complete indifference is

shown to luxury and dress,--pleasures which are thought childish in

comparison to that of obtaining ten or twelve acres of pasture land,--a

purchase coveted for years, which has probably given rise to endless

diplomatic combinations. Immovable in its prejudices, good or evil,

this social circle follows a beaten track, looking neither before it nor

behind it. It accepts nothing from Paris without long examination and

trial; it rejects cashmeres as it does investments on the Grand-Livre;

it scoffs at fashions and novelties; reads nothing, prefers ignorance,

whether of science, literature, or industrial inventions. It insists on

the removal of a prefect when that official does not suit it; and if the

administration resists, it isolates him, after the manner of bees who

wall up a snail in wax when it gets into their hive.

In this society gossip is often turned into solemn verdicts. Young women

are seldom seen there; when they come it is to seek approbation of

their conduct,--a consecration of their self-importance. This supremacy

granted to one house is apt to wound the sensibilities of other natives

of the region, who console themselves by adding up the cost it involves,

and by which they profit. If it so happens that there is no fortune

large enough to keep open house in this way, the big-wigs of the place

choose a place of meeting, as they did at Alencon, in the house of some

inoffensive person, whose settled life and character and position offers

no umbrage to the vanities or the interests of any one.

For some years the upper classes of Alencon had met in this way at the

house of an old maid, whose fortune was, unknown to herself, the aim

and object of Madame Granson, her second cousin, and of the two old

bachelors whose secret hopes in that direction we have just unveiled.

This lady lived with her maternal uncle, a former grand-vicar of the

bishopric of Seez, once her guardian, and whose heir she was. The family

of which Rose-Marie-Victoire Cormon was the present representative had

been in earlier days among the most considerable in the province. Though

belonging to the middle classes, she consorted with the nobility, among

whom she was more or less allied, her family having furnished, in past

years, stewards to the Duc d’Alencon, many magistrates to the long robe,

and various bishops to the clergy. Monsieur de Sponde, the maternal

grandfather of Mademoiselle Cormon, was elected by the Nobility to the

States-General, and Monsieur Cormon, her father, by the Tiers-Etat,

though neither accepted the mission. For the last hundred years the

daughters of the family had married nobles belonging to the provinces;

consequently, this family had thrown out so many suckers throughout the

duchy as to appear on nearly all the genealogical trees. No bourgeois

family had ever seemed so like nobility.

The house in which Mademoiselle Cormon lived, build in Henri IV.’s time,

by Pierre Cormon, the steward of the last Duc d’Alencon, had always

belonged to the family; and among the old maid’s visible possessions

this one was particularly stimulating to the covetous desires of the two

old lovers. Yet, far from producing revenue, the house was a cause of

expense. But it is so rare to find in the very centre of a provincial

town a private dwelling without unpleasant surroundings, handsome in

outward structure and convenient within, that Alencon shared the envy of

the lovers.

This old mansion stands exactly in the middle of the rue du Val-Noble.

It is remarkable for the strength of its construction,--a style of

building introduced by Marie de’ Medici. Though built of granite,--a

stone which is hard to work,--its angles, and the casings of the doors

and windows, are decorated with corner blocks cut into diamond facets.

It has only one clear story above the ground-floor; but the roof, rising

steeply, has several projecting windows, with carved spandrels rather

elegantly enclosed in oaken frames, and externally adorned with

balustrades. Between each of these windows is a gargoyle presenting the

fantastic jaws of an animal without a body, vomiting the rain-water upon

large stones pierced with five holes. The two gables are surmounted by

leaden bouquets,--a symbol of the bourgeoisie; for nobles alone had

the privilege in former days of having weather-vanes. To right of

the courtyard are the stables and coach-house; to left, the kitchen,

wood-house, and laundry.

One side of the porte-cochere, being left open, allowed the passers in

the street to see in the midst of the vast courtyard a flower-bed, the

raised earth of which was held in place by a low privet hedge. A few

monthly roses, pinkes, lilies, and Spanish broom filled this bed, around

which in the summer season boxes of paurestinus, pomegranates, and

myrtle were placed. Struck by the scrupulous cleanliness of the

courtyard and its dependencies, a stranger would at once have divined

that the place belonged to an old maid. The eye which presided there

must have been an unoccupied, ferreting eye; minutely careful, less from

nature than for want of something to do. An old maid, forced to employ

her vacant days, could alone see to the grass being hoed from between

the paving stones, the tops of the walls kept clean, the broom

continually going, and the leather curtains of the coach-house always

closed. She alone would have introduced, out of busy idleness, a sort

of Dutch cleanliness into a house on the confines of Bretagne and

Normandie,--a region where they take pride in professing an utter

indifference to comfort.

Never did the Chevalier de Valois, or du Bousquier, mount the steps of

the double stairway leading to the portico of this house without saying

to himself, one, that it was fit for a peer of France, the other, that

the mayor of the town ought to live there.

A glass door gave entrance from this portico into an antechamber, a

species of gallery paved in red tiles and wainscoted, which served as a

hospital for the family portraits,--some having an eye put out, others

suffering from a dislocated shoulder; this one held his hat in a hand

that no longer existed; that one was a case of amputation at the knee.

Here were deposited the cloaks, clogs, overshoes, umbrellas, hoods, and

pelisses of the guests. It was an arsenal where each arrival left his

baggage on arriving, and took it up when departing. Along each wall was

a bench for the servants who arrived with lanterns, and a large stove,

to counteract the north wind, which blew through this hall from the

garden to the courtyard.

The house was divided in two equal parts. On one side, toward the

courtyard, was the well of the staircase, a large dining-room looking to

the garden, and an office or pantry which communicated with the kitchen.

On the other side was the salon, with four windows, beyond which were

two smaller rooms,--one looking on the garden, and used as a boudoir,

the other lighted from the courtyard, and used as a sort of office.

The upper floor contained a complete apartment for a family household,

and a suite of rooms where the venerable Abbe de Sponde had his abode.

The garrets offered fine quarters to the rats and mice, whose nocturnal

performances were related by Mademoiselle Cormon to the Chevalier

de Valois, with many expressions of surprise at the inutility of her

efforts to get rid of them. The garden, about half an acre in size, is

margined by the Brillante, so named from the particles of mica which

sparkle in its bed elsewhere than in the Val-Noble, where its shallow

waters are stained by the dyehouses, and loaded with refuse from

the other industries of the town. The shore opposite to Mademoiselle

Cormon’s garden is crowded with houses where a variety of trades are

carried on; happily for her, the occupants are quiet people,--a baker,

a cleaner, an upholsterer, and several bourgeois. The garden, full of

common flowers, ends in a natural terrace, forming a quay, down which

are several steps leading to the river. Imagine on the balustrade of

this terrace a number of tall vases of blue and white pottery, in which

are gilliflowers; and to right and left, along the neighboring walls,

hedges of linden closely trimmed in, and you will gain an idea of

the landscape, full of tranquil chastity, modest cheerfulness, but

commonplace withal, which surrounded the venerable edifice of the Cormon

family. What peace! what tranquillity! nothing pretentious, but nothing

transitory; all seems eternal there!

The ground-floor is devoted wholly to the reception-rooms. The old,

unchangeable provincial spirit pervades them. The great square salon has

four windows, modestly cased in woodwork painted gray. A single oblong

mirror is placed above the fireplace; the top of its frame represented

the Dawn led by the Hours, and painted in camaieu (two shades of one

color). This style of painting infested the decorative art of the day,

especially above door-frames, where the artist displayed his eternal

Seasons, and made you, in most houses in the centre of France, abhor

the odious Cupids, endlessly employed in skating, gleaning, twirling,

or garlanding one another with flowers. Each window was draped in green

damask curtains, looped up by heavy cords, which made them resemble a

vast dais. The furniture, covered with tapestry, the woodwork, painted

and varnished, and remarkable for the twisted forms so much the fashion

in the last century, bore scenes from the fables of La Fontaine on the

chair-backs; some of this tapestry had been mended. The ceiling was

divided at the centre of the room by a huge beam, from which depended an

old chandelier of rock-crystal swathed in green gauze. On the fireplace

were two vases in Sevres blue, and two old girandoles attached to the

frame of the mirror, and a clock, the subject of which, taken from

the last scene of the “Deserteur,” proved the enormous popularity of

Sedaine’s work. This clock, of bronze-gilt, bore eleven personages

upon it, each about four inches tall. At the back the Deserter was seen

issuing from prison between the soldiers; in the foreground the young

woman lay fainting, and pointing to his pardon. On the walls of this

salon were several of the more recent portraits of the family,--one

or two by Rigaud, and three pastels by Latour. Four card tables, a

backgammon board, and a piquet table occupied the vast room, the only

one in the house, by the bye, which was ceiled.

The dining-room, paved in black and white stone, not ceiled, and its

beams painted, was furnished with one of those enormous sideboards with

marble tops, required by the war waged in the provinces against the

human stomach. The walls, painted in fresco, represented a flowery

trellis. The seats were of varnished cane, and the doors of natural

wood. All things about the place carried out the patriarchal air which

emanated from the inside as well as the outside of the house. The genius

of the provinces preserved everything; nothing was new or old, neither

young nor decrepit. A cold precision made itself felt throughout.

Tourists in Normandy, Brittany, Maine, and Anjou must all have seen in

the capitals of those provinces many houses which resemble more or less

that of the Cormons; for it is, in its way, an archetype of the burgher

houses in that region of France, and it deserves a place in this history

because it serves to explain manners and customs, and represents ideas.

Who does not already feel that life must have been calm and monotonously

regular in this old edifice? It contained a library; but that was placed

below the level of the river. The books were well bound and shelved,

and the dust, far from injuring them, only made them valuable. They were

preserved with the care given in these provinces deprived of vineyards

to other native products, desirable for their antique perfume, and

issued by the presses of Bourgogne, Touraine, Gascogne, and the South.

The cost of transportation was too great to allow any but the best

products to be imported.

The basis of Mademoiselle Cormon’s society consisted of about one

hundred and fifty persons; some went at times to the country; others

were occasionally ill; a few travelled about the department on business;

but certain of the faithful came every night (unless invited elsewhere),

and so did certain others compelled by duties or by habit to live

permanently in the town. All the personages were of ripe age; few

among them had ever travelled; nearly all had spent their lives in the

provinces, and some had taken part in the chouannerie. The latter were

beginning to speak fearlessly of that war, now that rewards were being

showered on the defenders of the good cause. Monsieur de Valois, one of

the movers in the last uprising (during which the Marquis de Montauran,

betrayed by his mistress, perished in spite of the devotion of

Marche-a-Terre, now tranquilly raising cattle for the market near

Mayenne),--Monsieur de Valois had, during the last six months, given the

key to several choice stratagems practised upon an old republican named

Hulot, the commander of a demi-brigade stationed at Alencon from 1798 to

1800, who had left many memories in the place. [See “The Chouans.”]

The women of this society took little pains with their dress, except on

Wednesdays, when Mademoiselle Cormon gave a dinner, on which occasion

the guests invited on the previous Wednesday paid their “visit of

digestion.” Wednesdays were gala days: the assembly was numerous; guests

and visitors appeared in fiocchi; some women brought their sewing,

knitting, or worsted work; the young girls were not ashamed to make

patterns for the Alencon point lace, with the proceeds of which they

paid for their personal expenses. Certain husbands brought their wives

out of policy, for young men were few in that house; not a word could be

whispered in any ear without attracting the attention of all; there was

therefore no danger, either for young girls or wives, of love-making.

Every evening, at six o’clock, the long antechamber received its

furniture. Each habitue brought his cane, his cloak, his lantern. All

these persons knew each other so well, and their habits and ways were

so familiarly patriarchal, that if by chance the old Abbe de Sponde was

lying down, or Mademoiselle Cormon was in her chamber, neither Josette,

the maid, nor Jacquelin, the man-servant, nor Mariette, the cook,

informed them. The first comer received the second; then, when the

company were sufficiently numerous for whist, piquet, or boston,

they began the game without awaiting either the Abbe de Sponde or

mademoiselle. If it was dark, Josette or Jacquelin would hasten to light

the candles as soon as the first bell rang. Seeing the salon lighted up,

the abbe would slowly hurry to come down. Every evening the backgammon

and the piquet tables, the three boston tables, and the whist table were

filled,--which gave occupation to twenty-five or thirty persons; but

as many as forty were usually present. Jacquelin would then light the

candles in the other rooms.

Between eight and nine o’clock the servants began to arrive in the

antechamber to accompany their masters home; and, short of a revolution,

no one remained in the salon at ten o’clock. At that hour the guests

were departing in groups along the street, discoursing on the game, or

continuing conversations on the land they were covetous of buying, on

the terms of some one’s will, on quarrels among heirs, on the haughty

assumption of the aristocratic portion of the community. It was like

Paris when the audience of a theatre disperses.

Certain persons who talk much of poesy and know nothing about it,

declaim against the habits of life in the provinces. But put your

forehead in your left hand, rest one foot on the fender, and your elbow

on your knee; then, if you compass the idea of this quiet and uniform

scene, this house and its interior, this company and its interests,

heightened by the pettiness of its intellect like goldleaf beaten

between sheets of parchment, ask yourself, What is human life? Try to

decide between him who scribbles jokes on Egyptian obelisks, and him who

has “bostoned” for twenty years with Du Bousquier, Monsieur de Valois,

Mademoiselle Cormon, the judge of the court, the king’s attorney, the

Abbe de Sponde, Madame Granson, and tutti quanti. If the daily and

punctual return of the same steps to the same path is not happiness, it

imitates happiness so well that men driven by the storms of an agitated

life to reflect upon the blessings of tranquillity would say that here

was happiness _enough_.

To reckon the importance of Mademoiselle Cormon’s salon at its true

value, it will suffice to say that the born statistician of the

society, du Bousquier, had estimated that the persons who frequented it

controlled one hundred and thirty-one votes in the electoral college,

and mustered among themselves eighteen hundred thousand francs a year

from landed estate in the neighborhood.

The town of Alencon, however, was not entirely represented by this

salon. The higher aristocracy had a salon of their own; moreover, that

of the receiver-general was like an administration inn kept by the

government, where society danced, plotted, fluttered, loved, and supped.

These two salons communicated by means of certain mixed individuals with

the house of Cormon, and vice-versa; but the Cormon establishment sat

severely in judgment on the two other camps. The luxury of their dinners

was criticised; the ices at their balls were pondered; the behavior of

the women, the dresses, and “novelties” there produced were discussed

and disapproved.

Mademoiselle Cormon, a species of firm, as one might say, under whose

name was comprised an imposing coterie, was naturally the aim and object

of two ambitious men as deep and wily as the Chevalier de Valois and

du Bousquier. To the one as well as to the other, she meant election as

deputy, resulting, for the noble, in the peerage, for the purveyor, in

a receiver-generalship. A leading salon is a difficult thing to create,

whether in Paris or the provinces, and here was one already created. To

marry Mademoiselle Cormon was to reign in Alencon. Athanase Granson, the

only one of the three suitors for the hand of the old maid who no longer

calculated profits, now loved her person as well as her fortune.

To employ the jargon of the day, is there not a singular drama in the

situation of these four personages? Surely there is something odd and

fantastic in three rivalries silently encompassing a woman who never

guessed their existence, in spite of an eager and legitimate desire

to be married. And yet, though all these circumstances make the

spinsterhood of this old maid an extraordinary thing, it is not

difficult to explain how and why, in spite of her fortune and her

three lovers, she was still unmarried. In the first place, Mademoiselle

Cormon, following the custom and rule of her house, had always desired

to marry a nobleman; but from 1788 to 1798 public circumstances were

very unfavorable to such pretensions. Though she wanted to be a woman

of condition, as the saying is, she was horribly afraid of the

Revolutionary tribunal. The two sentiments, equal in force, kept her

stationary by a law as true in ethics as it is in statics. This state

of uncertain expectation is pleasing to unmarried women as long as they

feel themselves young, and in a position to choose a husband. France

knows that the political system of Napoleon resulted in making many

widows. Under that regime heiresses were entirely out of proportion

in numbers to the bachelors who wanted to marry. When the Consulate

restored internal order, external difficulties made the marriage of

Mademoiselle Cormon as difficult to arrange as it had been in the past.

If, on the one hand, Rose-Marie-Victoire refused to marry an old man, on

the other, the fear of ridicule forbade her to marry a very young one.

In the provinces, families marry their sons early to escape the

conscription. In addition to all this, she was obstinately determined

not to marry a soldier: she did not intend to take a man and then give

him up to the Emperor; she wanted him for herself alone. With these

views, she found it therefore impossible, from 1804 to 1815, to enter

the lists with young girls who were rivalling each other for suitable

matches.

Besides her predilection for the nobility, Mademoiselle Cormon had

another and very excusable mania: that of being loved for herself.

You could hardly believe the lengths to which this desire led her. She

employed her mind on setting traps for her possible lovers, in order to

test their real sentiments. Her nets were so well laid that the luckless

suitors were all caught, and succumbed to the test she applied to them

without their knowledge. Mademoiselle Cormon did not study them; she

watched them. A single word said heedlessly, a joke (that she often

was unable to understand), sufficed to make her reject an aspirant as

unworthy: this one had neither heart nor delicacy; that one told lies,

and was not religious; a third only wanted to coin money under the cloak

of marriage; another was not of a nature to make a woman happy; here

she suspected hereditary gout; there certain immoral antecedents alarmed

her. Like the Church, she required a noble priest at her altar; she even

wanted to be married for imaginary ugliness and pretended defects, just

as other women wish to be loved for the good qualities they have not,

and for imaginary beauties. Mademoiselle Cormon’s ambition took its

rise in the most delicate and sensitive feminine feeling; she longed to

reward a lover by revealing to him a thousand virtues after marriage, as

other women then betray the imperfections they have hitherto concealed.

But she was ill understood. The noble woman met with none but common

souls in whom the reckoning of actual interests was paramount, and who

knew nothing of the nobler calculations of sentiment.

The farther she advanced towards that fatal epoch so adroitly called the

“second youth,” the more her distrust increased. She affected to present

herself in the most unfavorable light, and played her part so well that

the last wooers hesitated to link their fate to that of a person whose

virtuous blind-man’s-buff required an amount of penetration that men who

want the virtuous ready-made would not bestow upon it. The constant fear

of being married for her money rendered her suspicious and uneasy beyond

all reason. She turned to the rich men; but the rich are in search

of great marriages; she feared the poor men, in whom she denied the

disinterestedness she sought so eagerly. After each disappointment in

marriage, the poor lady, led to despise mankind, began to see them

all in a false light. Her character acquired, necessarily, a secret

misanthropy, which threw a tinge of bitterness into her conversation,

and some severity into her eyes. Celibacy gave to her manners and habits

a certain increasing rigidity; for she endeavored to sanctify herself

in despair of fate. Noble vengeance! she was cutting for God the rough

diamond rejected by man. Before long public opinion was against her; for

society accepts the verdict an independent woman renders on herself by

not marrying, either through losing suitors or rejecting them. Everybody

supposed that these rejections were founded on secret reasons, always

ill interpreted. One said she was deformed; another suggested some

hidden fault; but the poor girl was really as pure as a saint, as

healthy as an infant, and full of loving kindness; Nature had intended

her for all the pleasures, all the joys, and all the fatigues of

motherhood.

Mademoiselle Cormon did not possess in her person an obliging auxiliary

to her desires. She had no other beauty than that very improperly called

la beaute du diable, which consists of a buxom freshness of youth that

the devil, theologically speaking, could never have,--though perhaps

the expression may be explained by the constant desire that must surely

possess him to cool and refresh himself. The feet of the heiress were

broad and flat. Her leg, which she often exposed to sight by her manner

(be it said without malice) of lifting her gown when it rained, could

never have been taken for the leg of a woman. It was sinewy, with a

thick projecting calf like a sailor’s. A stout waist, the plumpness of a

wet-nurse, strong dimpled arms, red hands, were all in keeping with the

swelling outlines and the fat whiteness of Norman beauty. Projecting

eyes, undecided in color, gave to her face, the rounded outline of which

had no dignity, an air of surprise and sheepish simplicity, which was

suitable perhaps for an old maid. If Rose had not been, as she was,

really innocent, she would have seemed so. An aquiline nose contrasted

curiously with the narrowness of her forehead; for it is rare that that

form of nose does not carry with it a fine brow. In spite of her thick

red lips, a sign of great kindliness, the forehead revealed too great a

lack of ideas to allow of the heart being guided by intellect; she was

evidently benevolent without grace. How severely we reproach Virtue for

its defects, and how full of indulgence we all are for the pleasanter

qualities of Vice!

Chestnut hair of extraordinary length gave to Rose Cormon’s face a

beauty which results from vigor and abundance,--the physical qualities

most apparent in her person. In the days of her chief pretensions,

Rose affected to hold her head at the three-quarter angle, in order to

exhibit a very pretty ear, which detached itself from the blue-veined

whiteness of her throat and temples, set off, as it was, by her wealth

of hair. Seen thus in a ball-dress, she might have seemed handsome. Her

protuberant outlines and her vigorous health did, in fact, draw from the

officers of the Empire the approving exclamation,--

“What a fine slip of a girl!”

But, as years rolled on, this plumpness, encouraged by a tranquil,

wholesome life, had insensibly so ill spread itself over the whole

of Mademoiselle Cormon’s body that her primitive proportions were

destroyed. At the present moment, no corset could restore a pair of hips

to the poor lady, who seemed to have been cast in a single mould. The

youthful harmony of her bosom existed no longer; and its excessive

amplitude made the spectator fear that if she stooped its heavy masses

might topple her over. But nature had provided against this by giving

her a natural counterpoise, which rendered needless the deceitful

adjunct of a bustle; in Rose Cormon everything was genuine. Her chin,

as it doubled, reduced the length of her neck, and hindered the easy

carriage of her head. Rose had no wrinkles, but she had folds of flesh;

and jesters declared that to save chafing she powdered her skin as they

do an infant’s.

This ample person offered to a young man full of ardent desires like

Athanase an attraction to which he had succumbed. Young imaginations,

essentially eager and courageous, like to rove upon these fine living

sheets of flesh. Rose was like a plump partridge attracting the knife

of a gourmet. Many an elegant deep in debt would very willingly have

resigned himself to make the happiness of Mademoiselle Cormon. But,

alas! the poor girl was now forty years old. At this period, after

vainly seeking to put into her life those interests which make the

Woman, and finding herself forced to be still unmarried, she fortified

her virtue by stern religious practices. She had recourse to religion,

the great consoler of oppressed virginity. A confessor had, for the last

three years, directed Mademoiselle Cormon rather stupidly in the path

of maceration; he advised the use of scourging, which, if modern medical

science is to be believed, produces an effect quite the contrary to

that expected by the worthy priest, whose hygienic knowledge was not

extensive.

These absurd practices were beginning to shed a monastic tint over the

face of Rose Cormon, who now saw with something like despair her white

skin assuming the yellow tones which proclaim maturity. A slight down

on her upper lip, about the corners, began to spread and darken like a

trail of smoke; her temples grew shiny; decadence was beginning! It

was authentic in Alencon that Mademoiselle Cormon suffered from rush

of blood to the head. She confided her ills to the Chevalier de Valois,

enumerating her foot-baths, and consulting him as to refrigerants. On

such occasions the shrewd old gentleman would pull out his snuff-box,

gaze at the Princess Goritza, and say, by way of conclusion:--

“The right composing draught, my dear lady, is a good and kind husband.”

“But whom can one trust?” she replied.

The chevalier would then brush away the snuff which had settled in the

folds of his waistcoat or his paduasoy breeches. To the world at large

this gesture would have seemed very natural; but it always gave extreme

uneasiness to the poor woman.

The violence of this hope without an object was so great that Rose was

afraid to look a man in the face lest he should perceive in her eyes the

feelings that filled her soul. By a wilfulness, which was perhaps

only the continuation of her earlier methods, though she felt herself

attracted toward the men who might still suit her, she was so afraid of

being accused of folly that she treated them ungraciously. Most persons

in her society, being incapable of appreciating her motives, which

were always noble, explained her manner towards her co-celibates as the

revenge of a refusal received or expected. When the year 1815 began,

Rose had reached that fatal age which she dared not avow. She was

forty-two years old. Her desire for marriage then acquired an intensity

which bordered on monomania, for she saw plainly that all chance of

progeny was about to escape her; and the thing which in her celestial

ignorance she desired above all things was the possession of children.

Not a person in all Alencon ever attributed to this virtuous woman

a single desire for amorous license. She loved, as it were, in bulk

without the slightest imagination of love. Rose was a Catholic Agnes,

incapable of inventing even one of the wiles of Moliere’s Agnes.

For some months past she had counted on chance. The disbandment of the

Imperial troops and the reorganization of the Royal army caused a change

in the destination of many officers, who returned, some on half-pay,

others with or without a pension, to their native towns,--all having a

desire to counteract their luckless fate, and to end their life in a way

which might to Rose Cormon be a happy beginning of hers. It would surely

be strange if, among those who returned to Alencon or its neighborhood,

no brave, honorable, and, above all, sound and healthy officer of

suitable age could be found, whose character would be a passport among

Bonaparte opinions; or some ci-devant noble who, to regain his lost

position, would join the ranks of the royalists. This hope kept

Mademoiselle Cormon in heart during the early months of that year. But,

alas! all the soldiers who thus returned were either too old or too

young; too aggressively Bonapartist, or too dissipated; in short, their

several situations were out of keeping with the rank, fortune, and

morals of Mademoiselle Cormon, who now grew daily more and more

desperate. The poor woman in vain prayed to God to send her a husband

with whom she could be piously happy: it was doubtless written above

that she should die both virgin and martyr; no man suitable for a

husband presented himself. The conversations in her salon every evening

kept her informed of the arrival of all strangers in Alencon, and of

the facts of their fortunes, rank, and habits. But Alencon is not a

town which attracts visitors; it is not on the road to any capital;

even sailors, travelling from Brest to Paris, never stop there. The

poor woman ended by admitting to herself that she was reduced to the

aborigines. Her eye now began to assume a certain savage expression, to

which the malicious chevalier responded by a shrewd look as he drew out

his snuff-box and gazed at the Princess Goritza. Monsieur de Valois

was well aware that in the feminine ethics of love fidelity to a first

attachment is considered a pledge for the future.

But Mademoiselle Cormon--we must admit it--was wanting in intellect,

and did not understand the snuff-box performance. She redoubled her

vigilance against “the evil spirit”; her rigid devotion and fixed

principles kept her cruel sufferings hidden among the mysteries of

private life. Every evening, after the company had left her, she thought

of her lost youth, her faded bloom, the hopes of thwarted nature; and,

all the while immolating her passions at the feet of the Cross (like

poems condemned to stay in a desk), she resolved firmly that if, by

chance, any suitor presented himself, to subject him to no tests, but to

accept him at once for whatever he might be. She even went so far as to

think of marrying a sub-lieutenant, a man who smoked tobacco, whom she

proposed to render, by dint of care and kindness, one of the best men in

the world, although he was hampered with debts.

But it was only in the silence of night watches that these fantastic

marriages, in which she played the sublime role of guardian angel, took

place. The next day, though Josette found her mistress’ bed in a tossed

and tumbled condition, Mademoiselle Cormon had recovered her dignity,

and could only think of a man of forty, a land-owner, well preserved,

and a quasi-young man.

The Abbe de Sponde was incapable of giving his niece the slightest aid

in her matrimonial manoeuvres. The worthy soul, now seventy years of

age, attributed the disasters of the French Revolution to the design of

Providence, eager to punish a dissolute Church. He had therefore flung

himself into the path, long since abandoned, which anchorites once

followed in order to reach heaven: he led an ascetic life without

proclaiming it, and without external credit. He hid from the world his

works of charity, his continual prayers, his penances; he thought that

all priests should have acted thus during the days of wrath and terror,

and he preached by example. While presenting to the world a calm and

smiling face, he had ended by detaching himself utterly from earthly

interests; his mind turned exclusively to sufferers, to the needs of the

Church, and to his own salvation. He left the management of his property

to his niece, who gave him the income of it, and to whom he paid a

slender board in order to spend the surplus in secret alms and gifts to

the Church.

All the abbe’s affections were concentrated on his niece, who regarded

him as a father, but an abstracted father, unable to conceive the

agitations of the flesh, and thanking God for maintaining his dear

daughter in a state of celibacy; for he had, from his youth up, adopted

the principles of Saint John Chrysostom, who wrote that “the virgin

state is as far above the marriage state as the angel is above

humanity.” Accustomed to reverence her uncle, Mademoiselle Cormon dared

not initiate him into the desires which filled her soul for a change

of state. The worthy man, accustomed, on his side, to the ways of

the house, would scarcely have liked the introduction of a husband.

Preoccupied by the sufferings he soothed, lost in the depths of prayer,

the Abbe de Sponde had periods of abstraction which the habitues of the

house regarded as absent-mindedness. In any case, he talked little; but

his silence was affable and benevolent. He was a man of great height

and spare, with grave and solemn manners, though his face expressed all

gentle sentiments and an inward calm; while his mere presence carried

with it a sacred authority. He was very fond of the Voltairean

chevalier. Those two majestic relics of the nobility and clergy, though

of very different habits and morals, recognized each other by their

generous traits. Besides, the chevalier was as unctuous with the abbe as

he was paternal with the grisettes.

Some persons may fancy that Mademoiselle Cormon used every means to

attain her end; and that among the legitimate lures of womanhood she

devoted herself to dress, wore low-necked gowns, and employed the

negative coquetries of a magnificent display of arms. Not at all! She

was as heroic and immovable in her high-necked chemisette as a sentry in

his box. Her gowns, bonnets, and chiffons were all cut and made by the

dressmaker and the milliner of Alencon, two hump-backed sisters,

who were not without some taste. In spite of the entreaties of these

artists, Mademoiselle Cormon refused to employ the airy deceits of

elegance; she chose to be substantial in all things, flesh and feathers.

But perhaps the heavy fashion of her gowns was best suited to her cast

of countenance. Let those laugh who will at this poor girl; you would

have thought her sublime, O generous souls! who care but little what

form true feeling takes, but admire it where it _is_.

Here some light-minded person may exclaim against the truth of this

statement; they will say that there is not in all France a girl so

silly as to be ignorant of the art of angling for men; that Mademoiselle

Cormon is one of those monstrous exceptions which commonsense should

prevent a writer from using as a type; that the most virtuous and also

the silliest girl who desires to catch her fish knows well how to bait

the hook. But these criticisms fall before the fact that the noble

catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion is still erect in Brittany and

in the ancient duchy of Alencon. Faith and piety admit of no subtleties.

Mademoiselle Cormon trod the path of salvation, preferring the sorrows

of her virginity so cruelly prolonged to the evils of trickery and

the sin of a snare. In a woman armed with a scourge virtue could never

compromise; consequently both love and self-interest were forced to seek

her, and seek her resolutely. And here let us have the courage to make

a cruel observation, in days when religion is nothing more than a

useful means to some, and a poesy to others. Devotion causes a moral

ophthalmia. By some providential grace, it takes from souls on the road

to eternity the sight of many little earthly things. In a word, pious

persons, devotes, are stupid on various points. This stupidity proves

with what force they turn their minds to celestial matters; although the

Voltairean Chevalier de Valois declared that it was difficult to decide

whether stupid people became naturally pious, or whether piety had the

effect of making intelligent young women stupid. But reflect upon this

carefully: the purest catholic virtue, with its loving acceptance of all

cups, with its pious submission to the will of God, with its belief in

the print of the divine finger on the clay of all earthly life, is the

mysterious light which glides into the innermost folds of human history,

setting them in relief and magnifying them in the eyes of those who

still have Faith. Besides, if there be stupidity, why not concern

ourselves with the sorrows of stupidity as well as with the sorrows of

genius? The former is a social element infinitely more abundant than the

latter.

So, then, Mademoiselle Cormon was guilty in the eyes of the world of the

divine ignorance of virgins. She was no observer, and her behavior with

her suitors proved it. At this very moment, a young girl of sixteen, who

had never opened a novel, would have read a hundred chapters of a love

story in the eyes of Athanase Granson, where Mademoiselle Cormon saw

absolutely nothing. Shy herself, she never suspected shyness in others;

she did not recognize in the quavering tones of his speech the force of

a sentiment he could not utter. Capable of inventing those refinements

of sentimental grandeur which hindered her marriage in her early years,

she yet could not recognize them in Athanase. This moral phenomenon will

not seem surprising to persons who know that the qualities of the heart

are as distinct from those of the mind as the faculties of genius are

from the nobility of soul. A perfect, all-rounded man is so rare

that Socrates, one of the noblest pearls of humanity, declared (as a

phrenologist of that day) that he was born to be a scamp, and a very

bad one. A great general may save his country at Zurich, and take

commissions from purveyors. A great musician may conceive the sublimest

music and commit a forgery. A woman of true feeling may be a fool. In

short, a devote may have a sublime soul and yet be unable to recognize

the tones of a noble soul beside her. The caprices produced by physical

infirmities are equally to be met with in the mental and moral regions.

This good creature, who grieved at making her yearly preserves for no

one but her uncle and herself, was becoming almost ridiculous. Those who

felt a sympathy for her on account of her good qualities, and others

on account of her defects, now made fun of her abortive marriages.

More than one conversation was based on what would become of so fine

a property, together with the old maid’s savings and her uncle’s

inheritance. For some time past she had been suspected of being au fond,

in spite of appearances, an “original.” In the provinces it was not

permissible to be original: being original means having ideas that are

not understood by others; the provinces demand equality of mind as well

as equality of manners and customs.

The marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon seemed, after 1804, a thing so

problematical that the saying “married like Mademoiselle Cormon” became

proverbial in Alencon as applied to ridiculous failures. Surely the

sarcastic mood must be an imperative need in France, that so excellent

a woman should excite the laughter of Alencon. Not only did she

receive the whole society of the place at her house, not only was she

charitable, pious, incapable of saying an unkind thing, but she was

fully in accord with the spirit of the place and the habits and customs

of the inhabitants, who liked her as the symbol of their lives; she was

absolutely inlaid into the ways of the provinces; she had never

quitted them; she imbibed all their prejudices; she espoused all their

interests; she adored them.

In spite of her income of eighteen thousand francs from landed property,

a very considerable fortune in the provinces, she lived on a footing

with families who were less rich. When she went to her country-place at

Prebaudet, she drove there in an old wicker carriole, hung on two straps

of white leather, drawn by a wheezy mare, and scarcely protected by two

leather curtains rusty with age. This carriole, known to all the town,

was cared for by Jacquelin as though it were the finest coupe in all

Paris. Mademoiselle valued it; she had used it for twelve years,--a fact

to which she called attention with the triumphant joy of happy avarice.

Most of the inhabitants of the town were grateful to Mademoiselle Cormon

for not humiliating them by the luxury she could have displayed; we may

even believe that had she imported a caleche from Paris they would have

gossiped more about that than about her various matrimonial failures.

The most brilliant equipage would, after all, have only taken her, like

the old carriole, to Prebaudet. Now the provinces, which look solely to

results, care little about the beauty or elegance of the means, provided

they are efficient.

CHAPTER V. AN OLD MAID’S HOUSEHOLD

To complete the picture of the internal habits and ways of this house,

it is necessary to group around Mademoiselle Cormon and the Abbe

de Sponde Jacquelin, Josette, and Mariette, the cook, who employed

themselves in providing for the comfort of uncle and niece.

Jacquelin, a man of forty, short, fat, ruddy, and brown, with a

face like a Breton sailor, had been in the service of the house for

twenty-two years. He waited at table, groomed the mare, gardened,

blacked the abbe’s boots, went on errands, chopped the wood, drove the

carriole, and fetched the oats, straw, and hay from Prebaudet. He sat in

the antechamber during the evening, where he slept like a dormouse. He

was in love with Josette, a girl of thirty, whom Mademoiselle would

have dismissed had she married him. So the poor fond pair laid by their

wages, and loved each other silently, waiting, hoping for mademoiselle’s

own marriage, as the Jews are waiting for the Messiah. Josette, born

between Alencon and Mortagne, was short and plump; her face, which

looked like a dirty apricot, was not wanting in sense and character;

it was said that she ruled her mistress. Josette and Jacquelin, sure of

results, endeavored to hide an inward satisfaction which allows it to be

supposed that, as lovers, they had discounted the future. Mariette, the

cook, who had been fifteen years in the household, knew how to make all

the dishes held in most honor in Alencon.

Perhaps we ought to count for much the fat old Norman brown-bay mare,

which drew Mademoiselle Cormon to her country-seat at Prebaudet; for the

five inhabitants of the house bore to this animal a maniacal affection.

She was called Penelope, and had served the family for eighteen

years; but she was kept so carefully and fed with such regularity that

mademoiselle and Jacquelin both hoped to use her for ten years longer.

This beast was the subject of perpetual talk and occupation; it seemed

as if poor Mademoiselle Cormon, having no children on whom her repressed

motherly feelings could expend themselves, had turned those sentiments

wholly on this most fortunate animal.

The four faithful servants--for Penelope’s intelligence raised her to

the level of the other good servants; while they, on the other hand, had

lowered themselves to the mute, submissive regularity of the beast--went

and came daily in the same occupations with the infallible accuracy of

mechanism. But, as they said in their idiom, they had eaten their white

bread first. Mademoiselle Cormon, like all persons nervously agitated

by a fixed idea, became hard to please, and nagging, less by nature than

from the need of employing her activity. Having no husband or children

to occupy her, she fell back on petty details. She talked for hours

about mere nothings, on a dozen napkins marked “Z,” placed in the closet

before the “O’s.”

“What can Josette be thinking of?” she exclaimed. “Josette is beginning

to neglect things.”

Mademoiselle inquired for eight days running whether Penelope had had

her oats at two o’clock, because on one occasion Jacquelin was a trifle

late. Her narrow imagination spent itself on trifles. A layer of dust

forgotten by the feather-duster, a slice of toast ill-made by Mariette,

Josette’s delay in closing the blinds when the sun came round to fade

the colors of the furniture,--all these great little things gave rise

to serious quarrels in which mademoiselle grew angry. “Everything was

changing,” she would cry; “she did not know her own servants; the fact

was she spoiled them!” On one occasion Josette gave her the “Journee du

Chretien” instead of the “Quinzaine de Paques.” The whole town heard of

this disaster the same evening. Mademoiselle had been forced to leave

the church and return home; and her sudden departure, upsetting

the chairs, made people suppose a catastrophe had happened. She was

therefore obliged to explain the facts to her friends.

“Josette,” she said gently, “such a thing must never happen again.”

Mademoiselle Cormon was, without being aware of it, made happier by such

little quarrels, which served as cathartics to relieve her bitterness.

The soul has its needs, and, like the body, its gymnastics. These

uncertainties of temper were accepted by Josette and Jacquelin as

changes in the weather are accepted by husbandmen. Those worthy souls

remark, “It is fine to-day,” or “It rains,” without arraigning the

heavens. And so when they met in the morning the servants would wonder

in what humor mademoiselle would get up, just as a farmer wonders about

the mists at dawn.

Mademoiselle Cormon had ended, as it was natural she should end, in

contemplating herself only in the infinite pettinesses of her life.

Herself and God, her confessor and the weekly wash, her preserves and

the church services, and her uncle to care for, absorbed her feeble

intellect. To her the atoms of life were magnified by an optic peculiar

to persons who are selfish by nature or self-absorbed by some accident.

Her perfect health gave alarming meaning to the least little derangement

of her digestive organs. She lived under the iron rod of the medical

science of our forefathers, and took yearly four precautionary doses,

strong enough to have killed Penelope, though they seemed to rejuvenate

her mistress. If Josette, when dressing her, chanced to discover a

little pimple on the still satiny shoulders of mademoiselle, it became

the subject of endless inquiries as to the various alimentary articles

of the preceding week. And what a triumph when Josette reminded her

mistress of a certain hare that was rather “high,” and had doubtless

raised that accursed pimple! With what joy they said to each other: “No

doubt, no doubt, it _was_ the hare!”

“Mariette over-seasoned it,” said mademoiselle. “I am always telling

her to do so lightly for my uncle and for me; but Mariette has no more

memory than--”

“The hare,” said Josette.

“Just so,” replied Mademoiselle; “she has no more memory than a hare,--a

very just remark.”

Four times a year, at the beginning of each season, Mademoiselle Cormon

went to pass a certain number of days on her estate of Prebaudet. It

was now the middle of May, the period at which she wished to see how her

apple-trees had “snowed,” a saying of that region which expressed the

effect produced beneath the trees by the falling of their blossoms. When

the circular deposit of these fallen petals resembled a layer of snow

the owner of the trees might hope for an abundant supply of cider.

While she thus gauged her vats, Mademoiselle Cormon also attended to the

repairs which the winter necessitated; she ordered the digging of her

flower-beds and her vegetable garden, from which she supplied her table.

Every season had its own business. Mademoiselle always gave a dinner of

farewell to her intimate friends the day before her departure, although

she was certain to see them again within three weeks. It was always

a piece of news which echoed through Alencon when Mademoiselle Cormon

departed. All her visitors, especially those who had missed a visit,

came to bid her good-bye; the salon was thronged, and every one said

farewell as though she were starting for Calcutta. The next day the

shopkeepers would stand at their doors to see the old carriole pass, and

they seemed to be telling one another some news by repeating from shop

to shop:--

“So Mademoiselle Cormon is going to Prebaudet!”

Some said: “_Her_ bread is baked.”

“Hey! my lad,” replied the next man. “She’s a worthy woman; if money

always came into such hands we shouldn’t see a beggar in the country.”

Another said: “Dear me, I shouldn’t be surprised if the vineyards were

in bloom; here’s Mademoiselle Cormon going to Prebaudet. How happens it

she doesn’t marry?”

“I’d marry her myself,” said a wag; “in fact, the marriage is half-made,

for here’s one consenting party; but the other side won’t. Pooh! the

oven is heating for Monsieur du Bousquier.”

“Monsieur du Bousquier! Why, she has refused him.”

That evening at all the gatherings it was told gravely:--

“Mademoiselle Cormon has gone.”

Or:--

“So you have really let Mademoiselle Cormon go.”

The Wednesday chosen by Suzanne to make known her scandal happened to

be this farewell Wednesday,--a day on which Mademoiselle Cormon drove

Josette distracted on the subject of packing. During the morning,

therefore, things had been said and done in the town which lent the

utmost interest to this farewell meeting. Madame Granson had gone the

round of a dozen houses while the old maid was deliberating on the

things she needed for the journey; and the malicious Chevalier de Valois

was playing piquet with Mademoiselle Armande, sister of a distinguished

old marquis, and the queen of the salon of the aristocrats. If it was

not uninteresting to any one to see what figure the seducer would cut

that evening, it was all important for the chevalier and Madame Granson

to know how Mademoiselle Cormon would take the news in her double

capacity of marriageable woman and president of the Maternity Society.

As for the innocent du Bousquier, he was taking a walk on the promenade,

and beginning to suspect that Suzanne had tricked him; this suspicion

confirmed him in his principles as to women.

On gala days the table was laid at Mademoiselle Cormon’s about half-past

three o’clock. At that period the fashionable people of Alencon dined at

four. Under the Empire they still dined as in former times at half-past

two; but then they supped! One of the pleasures which Mademoiselle

Cormon valued most was (without meaning any malice, although the fact

certainly rests on egotism) the unspeakable satisfaction she derived

from seeing herself dressed as mistress of the house to receive her

guests. When she was thus under arms a ray of hope would glide into

the darkness of her heart; a voice told her that nature had not so

abundantly provided for her in vain, and that some man, brave and

enterprising, would surely present himself. Her desire was refreshed

like her person; she contemplated herself in her heavy stuffs with a

sort of intoxication, and this satisfaction continued when she descended

the stairs to cast her redoubtable eye on the salon, the dinner-table,

and the boudoir. She would then walk about with the naive contentment of

the rich,--who remember at all moments that they are rich and will never

want for anything. She looked at her eternal furniture, her curiosities,

her lacquers, and said to herself that all these fine things wanted was

a master. After admiring the dining-room, and the oblong dinner-table,

on which was spread a snow-white cloth adorned with twenty covers placed

at equal distances; after verifying the squadron of bottles she had

ordered to be brought up, and which all bore honorable labels; after

carefully verifying the names written on little bits of paper in the

trembling handwriting of the abbe (the only duty he assumed in the

household, and one which gave rise to grave discussions on the place

of each guest),--after going through all these preliminary acts

mademoiselle went, in her fine clothes, to her uncle, who was accustomed

at this, the best hour in the day, to take his walk on the terrace which

overlooked the Brillante, where he could listen to the warble of birds

which were resting in the coppice, unafraid of either sportsmen or

children. At such times of waiting she never joined the Abbe de Sponde

without asking him some ridiculous question, in order to draw the old

man into a discussion which might serve to amuse him. And her reason

was this,--which will serve to complete our picture of this excellent

woman’s nature:--

Mademoiselle Cormon regarded it as one of her duties to talk; not that

she was talkative, for she had unfortunately too few ideas, and did

not know enough phrases to converse readily. But she believed she was

accomplishing one of the social duties enjoined by religion, which

orders us to make ourselves agreeable to our neighbor. This obligation

cost her so much that she consulted her director, the Abbe Couturier,

upon the subject of this honest but puerile civility. In spite of the

humble remark of his penitent, confessing the inward labor of her

mind in finding anything to say, the old priest, rigid on the point

of discipline, read her a passage from Saint-Francois de Sales on the

duties of women in society, which dwelt on the decent gayety of

pious Christian women, who were bound to reserve their sternness for

themselves, and to be amiable and pleasing in their homes, and see that

their neighbors enjoyed themselves. Thus, filled with a sense of duty,

and wishing, at all costs, to obey her director, who bade her converse

with amenity, the poor soul perspired in her corset when the talk around

her languished, so much did she suffer from the effort of emitting ideas

in order to revive it. Under such circumstances she would put forth

the silliest statements, such as: “No one can be in two places at

once--unless it is a little bird,” by which she one day roused, and not

without success, a discussion on the ubiquity of the apostles, which

she was unable to comprehend. Such efforts at conversation won her the

appellation of “that good Mademoiselle Cormon,” which, from the lips of

the beaux esprits of society, means that she was as ignorant as a carp,

and rather a poor fool; but many persons of her own calibre took the

remark in its literal sense, and answered:--

“Yes; oh yes! Mademoiselle Cormon is an excellent woman.”

Sometimes she would put such absurd questions (always for the purpose

of fulfilling her duties to society, and making herself agreeable to her

guests) that everybody burst out laughing. She asked, for instance, what

the government did with the taxes they were always receiving; and why

the Bible had not been printed in the days of Jesus Christ, inasmuch

as it was written by Moses. Her mental powers were those of the English

“country gentleman” who, hearing constant mention of “posterity” in

the House of Commons, rose to make the speech that has since become

celebrated: “Gentlemen,” he said, “I hear much talk in this place about

Posterity. I should be glad to know what that power has ever done for

England.”

Under these circumstances the heroic Chevalier de Valois would bring

to the succor of the old maid all the powers of his clever diplomacy,

whenever he saw the pitiless smile of wiser heads. The old gentleman,

who loved to assist women, turned Mademoiselle Cormon’s sayings into wit

by sustaining them paradoxically, and he often covered the retreat so

well that it seemed as if the good woman had said nothing silly. She

asserted very seriously one evening that she did not see any difference

between an ox and a bull. The dear chevalier instantly arrested the

peals of laughter by asserting that there was only the difference

between a sheep and a lamb.

But the Chevalier de Valois served an ungrateful dame, for never did

Mademoiselle Cormon comprehend his chivalrous services. Observing that

the conversation grew lively, she simply thought that she was not so

stupid as she was,--the result being that she settled down into her

ignorance with some complacency; she lost her timidity, and acquired a

self-possession which gave to her “speeches” something of the solemnity

with which the British enunciate their patriotic absurdities,--the

self-conceit of stupidity, as it may be called.

As she approached her uncle, on this occasion, with a majestic step, she

was ruminating over a question that might draw him from a silence, which

always troubled her, for she feared he was dull.

“Uncle,” she said, leaning on his arm and clinging to his side (this

was one of her fictions; for she said to herself “If I had a husband I

should do just so”),--“uncle, if everything here below happens according

to the will of God, there must be a reason for everything.”

“Certainly,” replied the abbe, gravely. The worthy man, who cherished

his niece, always allowed her to tear him from his meditations with

angelic patience.

“Then if I remain unmarried,--supposing that I do,--God wills it?”

“Yes, my child,” replied the abbe.

“And yet, as nothing prevents me from marrying to-morrow if I choose,

His will can be destroyed by mine?”

“That would be true if we knew what was really the will of God,” replied

the former prior of the Sorbonne. “Observe, my daughter, that you put in

an _if_.”

The poor woman, who expected to draw her uncle into a matrimonial

discussion by an argument ad omnipotentem, was stupefied; but persons

of obtuse mind have the terrible logic of children, which consists

in turning from answer to question,--a logic that is frequently

embarrassing.

“But, uncle, God did not make women intending them not to marry;

otherwise they ought all to stay unmarried; if not, they ought all to

marry. There’s great injustice in the distribution of parts.”

“Daughter,” said the worthy abbe, “you are blaming the Church, which

declares celibacy to be the better way to God.”

“But if the Church is right, and all the world were good Catholics,

wouldn’t the human race come to an end, uncle?”

“You have too much mind, Rose; you don’t need so much to be happy.”

That remark brought a smile of satisfaction to the lips of the poor

woman, and confirmed her in the good opinion she was beginning to

acquire about herself. That is how the world, our friends, and our

enemies are the accomplices of our defects!

At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the successive

arrival of the guests. On these ceremonial days, friendly familiarities

were exchanged between the servants of the house and the company.

Mariette remarked to the chief-justice as he passed the kitchen:--

“Ah, Monsieur du Ronceret, I’ve cooked the cauliflowers au gratin

expressly for you, for mademoiselle knows how you like them; and she

said to me: ‘Now don’t forget, Mariette, for Monsieur du Ronceret is

coming.’”

“That good Mademoiselle Cormon!” ejaculated the chief legal authority of

the town. “Mariette, did you steep them in gravy instead of soup-stock?

it is much richer.”

The chief-justice was not above entering the chamber of council where

Mariette held court; he cast the eye of a gastronome around it, and

offered the advice of a past master in cookery.

“Good-day, madame,” said Josette to Madame Granson, who courted the

maid. “Mademoiselle has thought of you, and there’s fish for dinner.”

As for the Chevalier de Valois, he remarked to Mariette, in the easy

tone of a great seigneur who condescends to be familiar:--

“Well, my dear cordon-bleu, to whom I should give the cross of the

Legion of honor, is there some little dainty for which I had better

reserve myself?”

“Yes, yes, Monsieur de Valois,--a hare sent from Prebaudet; weighs

fourteen pounds.”

Du Bousquier was not invited. Mademoiselle Cormon, faithful to the

system which we know of, treated that fifty-year-old suitor extremely

ill, although she felt inexplicable sentiments towards him in the depths

of her heart. She had refused him; yet at times she repented; and a

presentiment that she should yet marry him, together with a terror at

the idea which prevented her from wishing for the marriage, assailed

her. Her mind, stimulated by these feelings, was much occupied by

du Bousquier. Without being aware of it, she was influenced by the

herculean form of the republican. Madame Granson and the Chevalier

de Valois, although they could not explain to themselves Mademoiselle

Cormon’s inconsistencies, had detected her naive glances in that

direction, the meaning of which seemed clear enough to make them both

resolve to ruin the hopes of the already rejected purveyor,--hopes which

it was evident he still indulged.

Two guests, whose functions excused them, kept the dinner waiting. One

was Monsieur du Coudrai, the recorder of mortgages; the other Monsieur

Choisnel, former bailiff to the house of Esgrignon, and now the notary

of the upper aristocracy, by whom he was received with a distinction due

to his virtues; he was also a man of considerable wealth. When the two

belated guests arrived, Jacquelin said to them as he saw them about to

enter the salon:--

“_They_ are all in the garden.”

No doubt the assembled stomachs were impatient; for on the appearance

of the register of mortgages--who had no defect except that of having

married for her money an intolerable old woman, and of perpetrating

endless puns, at which he was the first to laugh--the gentle murmur by

which such late-comers are welcomed arose. While awaiting the official

announcement of dinner, the company were sauntering on the terrace above

the river, and gazing at the water-plants, the mosaic of the currents,

and the various pretty details of the houses clustering across the

river, their old wooden galleries, their mouldering window-frames, their

little gardens where clothes were drying, the cabinet-maker’s shop,--in

short, the many details of a small community to which the vicinity of

a river, a weeping willow, flowers, rose-bushes, added a certain grace,

making the scene quite worthy of a landscape painter.

The chevalier studied all faces, for he knew that his firebrand had been

very successfully introduced into the chief houses of the place. But

no one as yet referred openly to the great news of Suzanne and du

Bousquier. Provincials possess in the highest degree the art of

distilling gossip; the right moment for openly discussing this strange

affair had not arrived; it was first necessary that all present should

put themselves on record. So the whispers went round from ear to ear:--

“You have heard?”

“Yes.”

“Du Bousquier?”

“And that handsome Suzanne.”

“Does Mademoiselle Cormon know of it?”

“No.”

“Ha!”

This was the _piano_ of the scandal; the _rinforzando_ would break

forth as soon as the first course had been removed. Suddenly Monsieur de

Valois’s eyes lighted on Madame Granson, arrayed in her green hat with

bunches of auriculas, and beaming with evident joy. Was it merely the

joy of opening the concert? Though such a piece of news was like a gold

mine to work in the monotonous lives of these personages, the observant

and distrustful chevalier thought he recognized in the worthy woman a

far more extended sentiment; namely, the joy caused by the triumph of

self-interest. Instantly he turned to examine Athanase, and detected him

in the significant silence of deep meditation. Presently, a look cast

by the young man on Mademoiselle Cormon carried to the soul of the

chevalier a sudden gleam. That momentary flash of lightning enabled him

to read the past.

“Ha! the devil!” he said to himself; “what a checkmate I’m exposed to!”

Monsieur de Valois now approached Mademoiselle Cormon, and offered his

arm. The old maid’s feeling to the chevalier was that of respectful

consideration; and certainly his name, together with the position he

occupied among the aristocratic constellations of the department

made him the most brilliant ornament of her salon. In her inmost mind

Mademoiselle Cormon had wished for the last dozen years to become Madame

de Valois. That name was like the branch of a tree, to which the ideas

which _swarmed_ in her mind about rank, nobility, and the external

qualities of a husband had fastened. But, though the Chevalier de Valois

was the man chosen by her heart, and mind, and ambition, that elderly

ruin, combed and curled like a little Saint-John in a procession,

alarmed Mademoiselle Cormon. She saw the gentleman in him, but she could

not see a husband. The indifference which the chevalier affected as to

marriage, above all, the apparent purity of his morals in a house which

abounded in grisettes, did singular harm in her mind to Monsieur

de Valois against his expectations. The worthy man, who showed such

judgment in the matter of his annuity, was at fault here. Without being

herself aware of it, the thoughts of Mademoiselle Cormon on the too

virtuous chevalier might be translated thus:--

“What a pity that he isn’t a trifle dissipated!”

Observers of the human heart have remarked the leaning of pious women

toward scamps; some have expressed surprise at this taste, considering

it opposed to Christian virtue. But, in the first place, what nobler

destiny can you offer to a virtuous woman than to purify, like charcoal,

the muddy waters of vice? How is it some observers fail to see that

these noble creatures, obliged by the sternness of their own principles

never to infringe on conjugal fidelity, must naturally desire a husband

of wider practical experience than their own? The scamps of social life

are great men in love. Thus the poor woman groaned in spirit at finding

her chosen vessel parted into two pieces. God alone could solder

together a Chevalier de Valois and a du Bousquier.

In order to explain the importance of the few words which the chevalier

and Mademoiselle Cormon are about to say to each other, it is necessary

to reveal two serious matters which agitated the town, and about which

opinions were divided; besides, du Bousquier was mysteriously connected

with them.

One concerns the rector of Alencon, who had formerly taken the

constitutional oath, and who was now conquering the repugnance of the

Catholics by a display of the highest virtues. He was Cheverus on a

small scale, and became in time so fully appreciated that when he died

the whole town mourned him. Mademoiselle Cormon and the Abbe de Sponde

belonged to that “little Church,” sublime in its orthodoxy, which was to

the court of Rome what the Ultras were to be to Louis XVIII. The abbe,

more especially, refused to recognize a Church which had compromised

with the constitutionals. The rector was therefore not received in

the Cormon household, whose sympathies were all given to the curate of

Saint-Leonard, the aristocratic parish of Alencon. Du Bousquier, that

fanatic liberal now concealed under the skin of a royalist, knowing how

necessary rallying points are to all discontents (which are really at

the bottom of all oppositions), had drawn the sympathies of the middle

classes around the rector. So much for the first case; the second was

this:--

Under the secret inspiration of du Bousquier the idea of building a

theatre had dawned on Alencon. The henchmen of the purveyor did not know

their Mohammed; and they thought they were ardent in carrying out their

own conception. Athanase Granson was one of the warmest partisans for

the theatre; and of late he had urged at the mayor’s office a cause

which all the other young clerks had eagerly adopted.

The chevalier, as we have said, offered his arm to the old maid for

a turn on the terrace. She accepted it, not without thanking him by

a happy look for this attention, to which the chevalier replied by

motioning toward Athanase with a meaning eye.

“Mademoiselle,” he began, “you have so much sense and judgment in social

proprieties, and also, you are connected with that young man by certain

ties--”

“Distant ones,” she said, interrupting him.

“Ought you not,” he continued, “to use the influence you have over his

mother and over himself by saving him from perdition? He is not very

religious, as you know; indeed he approves of the rector; but that is

not all; there is something far more serious; isn’t he throwing himself

headlong into an opposition without considering what influence his

present conduct may exert upon his future? He is working for the

construction of a theatre. In this affair he is simply the dupe of that

disguised republican du Bousquier--”

“Good gracious! Monsieur de Valois,” she replied; “his mother is always

telling me he has so much mind, and yet he can’t say two words; he

stands planted before me as mum as a post--”

“Which doesn’t think at all!” cried the recorder of mortgages. “I caught

your words on the fly. I present my compliments to Monsieur de Valois,”

he added, bowing to that gentleman with much emphasis.

The chevalier returned the salutation stiffly, and drew Mademoiselle

Cormon toward some flower-pots at a little distance, in order to show

the interrupter that he did not choose to be spied upon.

“How is it possible,” he continued, lowering his voice, and leaning

towards Mademoiselle Cormon’s ear, “that a young man brought up in those

detestable lyceums should have ideas? Only sound morals and noble habits

will ever produce great ideas and a true love. It is easy to see by a

mere look at him that the poor lad is likely to be imbecile, and come,

perhaps, to some sad end. See how pale and haggard he is!”

“His mother declares he works too hard,” replied the old maid,

innocently. “He sits up late, and for what? reading books and writing!

What business ought to require a young man to write at night?”

“It exhausts him,” replied the chevalier, trying to bring the old maid’s

thoughts back to the ground where he hoped to inspire her with horror

for her youthful lover. “The morals of those Imperial lyceums are really

shocking.”

“Oh, yes!” said the ingenuous creature. “They march the pupils about

with drums at their head. The masters have no more religion than pagans.

And they put the poor lads in uniform, as if they were troops. What

ideas!”

“And behold the product!” said the chevalier, motioning to Athanase. “In

my day, young men were not so shy of looking at a pretty woman. As for

him, he drops his eyes whenever he sees you. That young man frightens me

because I am really interested in him. Tell him not to intrigue with

the Bonapartists, as he is now doing about that theatre. When all these

petty folks cease to ask for it insurrectionally,--which to my mind is

the synonym of constitutionally,--the government will build it. Besides

which, tell his mother to keep an eye on him.”

“Oh, I’m sure she will prevent him from seeing those half-pay,

questionable people. I’ll talk to her,” said Mademoiselle Cormon, “for

he might lose his place in the mayor’s office; and then what would he

and his mother have to live on? It makes me shudder.”

As Monsieur de Talleyrand said of his wife, so the chevalier said to

himself, looking at Mademoiselle Cormon:--

“Find me another as stupid! Good powers! isn’t virtue which drives out

intellect vice? But what an adorable wife for a man of my age! What

principles! what ignorance!”

Remember that this monologue, addressed to the Princess Goritza, was

mentally uttered while he took a pinch of snuff.

Madame Granson had divined that the chevalier was talking about

Athanase. Eager to know the result of the conversation, she followed

Mademoiselle Cormon, who was now approaching the young man with

much dignity. But at this moment Jacquelin appeared to announce that

mademoiselle was served. The old maid gave a glance of appeal to the

chevalier; but the gallant recorder of mortgages, who was beginning to

see in the manners of that gentleman the barrier which the provincial

nobles were setting up about this time between themselves and the

bourgeoisie, made the most of his chance to cut out Monsieur de Valois.

He was close to Mademoiselle Cormon, and promptly offered his arm, which

she found herself compelled to accept. The chevalier then darted, out of

policy, upon Madame Granson.

“Mademoiselle Cormon, my dear lady,” he said to her, walking slowly

after all the other guests, “feels the liveliest interest in your

dear Athanase; but I fear it will vanish through his own fault. He is

irreligious and liberal; he is agitating this matter of the theatre;

he frequents the Bonapartists; he takes the side of that rector. Such

conduct may make him lose his place in the mayor’s office. You know with

what care the government is beginning to weed out such opinions. If your

dear Athanase loses his place, where can he find other employment? I

advise him not to get himself in bad odor with the administration.”

“Monsieur le Chevalier,” said the poor frightened mother, “how grateful

I am to you! You are right: my son is the tool of a bad set of people; I

shall enlighten him.”

The chevalier had long since fathomed the nature of Athanase, and

recognized in it that unyielding element of republican convictions

to which in his youth a young man is willing to sacrifice everything,

carried away by the word “liberty,” so ill-defined and so little

understood, but which to persons disdained by fate is a banner of

revolt; and to such, revolt is vengeance. Athanase would certainly

persist in that faith, for his opinions were woven in with his artistic

sorrows, with his bitter contemplation of the social state. He was

ignorant of the fact that at thirty-six years of age,--the period of

life when a man has judged men and social interests and relations,--the

opinions for which he was ready to sacrifice his future would be

modified in him, as they are in all men of real superiority. To remain

faithful to the Left side of Alencon was to gain the aversion of

Mademoiselle Cormon. There, indeed, the chevalier saw true.

Thus we see that this society, so peaceful in appearance, was internally

as agitated as any diplomatic circle, where craft, ability, and passions

group themselves around the grave questions of an empire. The guests

were now seated at the table laden with the first course, which they ate

as provincials eat, without shame at possessing a good appetite, and

not as in Paris, where it seems as if jaws gnashed under sumptuary laws,

which made it their business to contradict the laws of anatomy. In Paris

people eat with their teeth, and trifle with their pleasure; in the

provinces things are done naturally, and interest is perhaps rather too

much concentrated on the grand and universal means of existence to which

God has condemned his creatures.

It was at the end of the first course that Mademoiselle Cormon made the

most celebrated of her “speeches”; it was talked about for fully two

years, and is still told at the gatherings of the lesser bourgeoisie

whenever the topic of her marriage comes up.

The conversation, becoming lively as the penultimate entree was

reached, had turned naturally on the affair of the theatre and the

constitutionally sworn rector. In the first fervor of royalty, during

the year 1816, those who later were called Jesuits were all for the

expulsion of the Abbe Francois from his parish. Du Bousquier, suspected

by Monsieur de Valois of sustaining the priest and being at the bottom

of the theatre intrigues, and on whose back the adroit chevalier would

in any case have put those sins with his customary cleverness, was in

the dock with no lawyer to defend him. Athanase, the only guest loyal

enough to stand by du Bousquier, had not the nerve to emit his ideas

in the presence of those potentates of Alencon, whom in his heart he

thought stupid. None but provincial youths now retain a respectful

demeanor before men of a certain age, and dare neither to censure

nor contradict them. The talk, diminished under the effect of certain

delicious ducks dressed with olives, was falling flat. Mademoiselle

Cormon, feeling the necessity of maintaining it against her own ducks,

attempted to defend du Bousquier, who was being represented as a

pernicious fomenter of intrigues, capable of any trickery.

“As for me,” she said, “I thought that Monsieur du Bousquier cared

chiefly for childish things.”

Under existing circumstances the remark had enormous success.

Mademoiselle Cormon obtained a great triumph; she brought the nose

of the Princess Goritza flat on the table. The chevalier, who little

expected such an apt remark from his Dulcinea, was so amazed that he

could at first find no words to express his admiration; he applauded

noiselessly, as they do at the Opera, tapping his fingers together to

imitate applause.

“She is adorably witty,” he said to Madame Granson. “I always said that

some day she would unmask her batteries.”

“In private she is always charming,” replied the widow.

“In private, madame, all women have wit,” returned the chevalier.

The Homeric laugh thus raised having subsided, Mademoiselle Cormon asked

the reason of her success. Then began the _forte_ of the gossip. Du

Bousquier was depicted as a species of celibate Pere Gigogne, a monster,

who for the last fifteen years had kept the Foundling Hospital supplied.

His immoral habits were at last revealed! these Parisian saturnalias

were the result of them, etc., etc. Conducted by the Chevalier de

Valois, a most able leader of an orchestra of this kind, the opening of

the _cancan_ was magnificent.

“I really don’t know,” he said, “what should hinder a du Bousquier from

marrying a Mademoiselle Suzanne What’s-her-name. What _is_ her name, do

you know? Suzette! Though I have lodgings at Madame Lardot’s, I know her

girls only by sight. If this Suzette is a tall, fine, saucy girl, with

gray eyes, a slim waist, and a pretty foot, whom I have occasionally

seen, and whose behavior always seemed to me extremely insolent, she

is far superior in manners to du Bousquier. Besides, the girl has the

nobility of beauty; from that point of view the marriage would be a poor

one for her; she might do better. You know how the Emperor Joseph had

the curiosity to see the du Barry at Luciennes. He offered her his arm

to walk about, and the poor thing was so surprised at the honor that she

hesitated to accept it: ‘Beauty is ever a queen,’ said the Emperor. And

he, you know, was an Austrian-German,” added the chevalier. “But I can

tell you that Germany, which is thought here very rustic, is a land

of noble chivalry and fine manners, especially in Poland and Hungary,

where--”

Here the chevalier stopped, fearing to slip into some allusion to his

personal happiness; he took out his snuff-box, and confided the rest

of his remarks to the princess, who had smiled upon him for thirty-six

years and more.

“That speech was rather a delicate one for Louis XV.,” said du Ronceret.

“But it was, I think, the Emperor Joseph who made it, and not Louis

XV.,” remarked Mademoiselle Cormon, in a correcting tone.

“Mademoiselle,” said the chevalier, observing the malicious glance

exchanged between the judge, the notary, and the recorder, “Madame du

Barry was the Suzanne of Louis XV.,--a circumstance well known to scamps

like ourselves, but unsuitable for the knowledge of young ladies. Your

ignorance proves you to be a flawless diamond; historical corruptions do

not enter your mind.”

The Abbe de Sponde looked graciously at the Chevalier de Valois, and

nodded his head in sign of his laudatory approbation.

“Doesn’t mademoiselle know history?” asked the recorder of mortgages.

“If you mix up Louis XV. and this girl Suzanne, how am I to know

history?” replied Mademoiselle Cormon, angelically, glad to see that the

dish of ducks was empty at last, and the conversation so ready to revive

that all present laughed with their mouths full at her last remark.

“Poor girl!” said the Abbe de Sponde. “When a great misfortune happens,

charity, which is divine love, and as blind as pagan love, ought not to

look into the causes of it. Niece, you are president of the Maternity

Society; you must succor that poor girl, who will now find it difficult

to marry.”

“Poor child!” ejaculated Mademoiselle Cormon.

“Do you suppose du Bousquier would marry her?” asked the judge.

“If he is an honorable man he ought to do so,” said Madame Granson; “but

really, to tell the truth, my dog has better morals than he--”

“Azor is, however, a good purveyor,” said the recorder of mortgages,

with the air of saying a witty thing.

At dessert du Bousquier was still the topic of conversation, having

given rise to various little jokes which the wine rendered sparkling.

Following the example of the recorder, each guest capped his neighbor’s

joke with another: Du Bousquier was a father, but not a confessor; he

was father less; he was father LY; he was not a reverend father; nor yet

a conscript-father--

“Nor can he be a foster-father,” said the Abbe de Sponde, with a gravity

which stopped the laughter.

“Nor a noble father,” added the chevalier.

The Church and the nobility descended thus into the arena of puns,

without, however, losing their dignity.

“Hush!” exclaimed the recorder of mortgages. “I hear the creaking of du

Bousquier’s boots.”

It usually happens that a man is ignorant of rumors that are afloat

about him. A whole town may be talking of his affairs; may calumniate

and decry him, but if he has no good friends, he will know nothing about

it. Now the innocent du Bousquier was superb in his ignorance. No one

had told him as yet of Suzanne’s revelations; he therefore appeared very

jaunty and slightly conceited when the company, leaving the dining-room,

returned to the salon for their coffee; several other guests had

meantime assembled for the evening. Mademoiselle Cormon, from a sense of

shamefacedness, dared not look at the terrible seducer. She seized upon

Athanase, and began to lecture him with the queerest platitudes about

royalist politics and religious morality. Not possessing, like the

Chevalier de Valois, a snuff-box adorned with a princess, by the help of

which he could stand this torrent of silliness, the poor poet listened

to the words of her whom he loved with a stupid air, gazing, meanwhile,

at her enormous bust, which held itself before him in that still repose

which is the attribute of all great masses. His love produced in him a

sort of intoxication which changed the shrill voice of the old maid into

a soft murmur, and her flat remarks into witty speeches. Love is a maker

of false coin, continually changing copper pennies into gold-pieces, and

sometimes turning its real gold into copper.

“Well, Athanase, will you promise me?”

This final sentence struck the ear of the absorbed young man like one of

those noises which wake us with a bound.

“What, mademoiselle?”

Mademoiselle Cormon rose hastily, and looked at du Bousquier, who at

that moment resembled the stout god of Fable which the Republic stamped

upon her coins. She walked up to Madame Granson, and said in her ear:--

“My dear friend, you son is an idiot. That lyceum has ruined him,” she

added, remembering the insistence with which the chevalier had spoken of

the evils of education in such schools.

What a catastrophe! Unknown to himself, the luckless Athanase had had

an occasion to fling an ember of his own fire upon the pile of brush

gathered in the heart of the old maid. Had he listened to her, he

might have made her, then and there, perceive his passion; for, in the

agitated state of Mademoiselle Cormon’s mind, a single word would

have sufficed. But that stupid absorption in his own sentiments, which

characterizes young and true love, had ruined him, as a child full of

life sometimes kills itself out of ignorance.

“What have you been saying to Mademoiselle Cormon?” demanded his mother.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing; well, I can explain that,” she thought to herself, putting off

till the next day all further reflection on the matter, and attaching

but little importance to Mademoiselle Cormon’s words; for she fully

believed that du Bousquier was forever lost in the old maid’s esteem

after the revelation of that evening.

Soon the four tables were filled with their sixteen players. Four

persons were playing piquet,--an expensive game, at which the most money

was lost. Monsieur Choisnel, the procureur-du-roi, and two ladies

went into the boudoir for a game at backgammon. The glass lustres were

lighted; and then the flower of Mademoiselle Cormon’s company gathered

before the fireplace, on sofas, and around the tables, and each couple

said to her as they arrived,--

“So you are going to-morrow to Prebaudet?”

“Yes, I really must,” she replied.

On this occasion the mistress of the house appeared preoccupied. Madame

Granson was the first to perceive the quite unnatural state of the old

maid’s mind,--Mademoiselle Cormon was thinking!

“What are you thinking of, cousin?” she said at last, finding her seated

in the boudoir.

“I am thinking,” she replied, “of that poor girl. As the president of

the Maternity Society, I will give you fifty francs for her.”

“Fifty francs!” cried Madame Granson. “But you have never given as much

as that.”

“But, my dear cousin, it is so natural to have children.”

That immoral speech coming from the heart of the old maid staggered the

treasurer of the Maternity Society. Du Bousquier had evidently advanced

in the estimation of Mademoiselle Cormon.

“Upon my word,” said Madame Granson, “du Bousquier is not only a

monster, he is a villain. When a man has done a wrong like that, he

ought to pay the indemnity. Isn’t it his place rather than ours to

look after the girl?--who, to tell you the truth, seems to me rather

questionable; there are plenty of better men in Alencon than that cynic

du Bousquier. A girl must be depraved, indeed, to go after him.”

“Cynic! Your son teaches you to talk Latin, my dear, which is wholly

incomprehensible. Certainly I don’t wish to excuse Monsieur du

Bousquier; but pray explain to me why a woman is depraved because she

prefers one man to another.”

“My dear cousin, suppose you married my son Athanase; nothing could be

more natural. He is young and handsome, full of promise, and he will be

the glory of Alencon; and yet everybody will exclaim against you: evil

tongues will say all sorts of things; jealous women will accuse you

of depravity,--but what will that matter? you will be loved, and loved

truly. If Athanase seemed to you an idiot, my dear, it is that he has

too many ideas; extremes meet. He lives the life of a girl of fifteen;

he has never wallowed in the impurities of Paris, not he! Well, change

the terms, as my poor husband used to say; it is the same thing with du

Bousquier in connection with Suzanne. _You_ would be calumniated; but in

the case of du Bousquier, the charge would be true. Don’t you understand

me?”

“No more than if you were talking Greek,” replied Mademoiselle Cormon,

who opened her eyes wide, and strained all the forces of her intellect.

“Well, cousin, if I must dot all the i’s, it is impossible for Suzanne

to love du Bousquier. And if the heart counts for nothing in this

affair--”

“But, cousin, what do people love with if not their hearts?”

Here Madame Granson said to herself, as the chevalier had previously

thought: “My poor cousin is altogether too innocent; such stupidity

passes all bounds!--Dear child,” she continued aloud, “it seems to me

that children are not conceived by the spirit only.”

“Why, yes, my dear; the Holy Virgin herself--”

“But, my love, du Bousquier isn’t the Holy Ghost!”

“True,” said the old maid; “he is a man!--a man whose personal

appearance makes him dangerous enough for his friends to advise him to

marry.”

“You could yourself bring about that result, cousin.”

“How so?” said the old maid, with the meekness of Christian charity.

“By not receiving him in your house until he marries. You owe it to good

morals and to religion to manifest under such circumstances an exemplary

displeasure.”

“On my return from Prebaudet we will talk further of this, my dear

Madame Granson. I will consult my uncle and the Abbe Couturier,” said

Mademoiselle Cormon, returning to the salon, where the animation was now

at its height.

The lights, the group of women in their best clothes, the solemn tone,

the dignified air of the assembly, made Mademoiselle Cormon not a little

proud of her company. To many persons nothing better could be seen in

Paris in the highest society.

At this moment du Bousquier, who was playing whist with the chevalier

and two old ladies,--Madame du Coudrai and Madame du Ronceret,--was the

object of deep but silent curiosity. A few young women arrived, who,

under pretext of watching the game, gazed fixedly at him in so singular

a manner, though slyly, that the old bachelor began to think that there

must be some deficiency in his toilet.

“Can my false front be crooked?” he asked himself, seized by one of

those anxieties which beset old bachelors.

He took advantage of a lost trick, which ended a seventh rubber, to rise

and leave the table.

“I can’t touch a card without losing,” he said. “I am decidedly too

unlucky.”

“But you are lucky in other ways,” said the chevalier, giving him a sly

look.

That speech naturally made the rounds of the salon, where every one

exclaimed on the exquisite taste of the chevalier, the Prince de

Talleyrand of the province.

“There’s no one like Monsieur de Valois for such wit.”

Du Bousquier went to look at himself in a little oblong mirror, placed

above the “Deserter,” but he saw nothing strange in his appearance.

After innumerable repetitions of the same text, varied in all keys, the

departure of the company took place about ten o’clock, through the long

antechamber, Mademoiselle Cormon conducting certain of her favorite

guests to the portico. There the groups parted; some followed the

Bretagne road towards the chateau; the others went in the direction of

the river Sarthe. Then began the usual conversation, which for twenty

years had echoed at that hour through this particular street of Alencon.

It was invariably:--

“Mademoiselle Cormon looked very well to-night.”

“Mademoiselle Cormon? why, I thought her rather strange.”

“How that poor abbe fails! Did you notice that he slept? He does not

know what cards he holds; he is getting very absent-minded.”

“We shall soon have the grief of losing him.”

“What a fine night! It will be a fine day to-morrow.”

“Good weather for the apple-blossoms.”

“You beat us; but when you play with Monsieur de Valois you never do

otherwise.”

“How much did he win?”

“Well, to-night, three or four francs; he never loses.”

“True; and don’t you know there are three hundred and sixty-five days a

year? At that price his gains are the value of a farm.”

“Ah! what hands we had to-night!”

“Here you are at home, monsieur and madame, how lucky you are, while we

have half the town to cross!”

“I don’t pity you; you could afford a carriage, and dispense with the

fatigue of going on foot.”

“Ah, monsieur! we have a daughter to marry, which takes off one wheel,

and the support of our son in Paris carries off another.”

“You persist in making a magistrate of him?”

“What else can be done with a young man? Besides, there’s no shame in

serving the king.”

Sometimes a discussion on ciders and flax, always couched in the same

terms, and returning at the same time of year, was continued on the

homeward way. If any observer of human customs had lived in this street,

he would have known the months and seasons by simply overhearing the

conversations.

On this occasion it was exclusively jocose; for du Bousquier, who

chanced to march alone in front of the groups, was humming the

well-known air,--little thinking of its appropriateness,--“Tender woman!

hear the warble of the birds,” etc. To some, du Bousquier was a strong

man and a misjudged man. Ever since he had been confirmed in his present

office by a royal decree, Monsieur du Ronceret had been in favor of

du Bousquier. To others the purveyor seemed dangerous,--a man of bad

habits, capable of anything. In the provinces, as in Paris, men before

the public eye are like that statue in the fine allegorical tale of

Addison, for which two knights on arriving near it fought; for one saw

it white, the other saw it black. Then, when they were both off their

horses, they saw it was white one side and black the other. A third

knight coming along declared it red.

When the chevalier went home that night, he made many reflections, as

follows:--

“It is high time now to spread a rumor of my marriage with Mademoiselle

Cormon. It will leak out from the d’Esgrignon salon, and go straight

to the bishop at Seez, and so get round through the grand vicars to the

curate of Saint-Leonard’s, who will be certain to tell it to the Abbe

Couturier; and Mademoiselle Cormon will get the shot in her upper works.

The old Marquis d’Esgrignon shall invite the Abbe de Sponde to dinner,

so as to stop all gossip about Mademoiselle Cormon if I decide against

her, or about me if she refuses me. The abbe shall be well cajoled; and

Mademoiselle Cormon will certainly not hold out against a visit from

Mademoiselle Armande, who will show her the grandeur and future chances

of such an alliance. The abbe’s property is undoubtedly as much as three

hundred thousand; her own savings must amount to more than two hundred

thousand; she has her house and Prebaudet and fifteen thousand francs a

year. A word to my friend the Comte de Fontaine, and I should be

mayor of Alencon to-morrow, and deputy. Then, once seated on the Right

benches, we shall reach the peerage, shouting, ‘Cloture!’ ‘Ordre!’”

As soon as she reached home Madame Granson had a lively argument with

her son, who could not be made to see the connection which existed

between his love and his political opinions. It was the first quarrel

that had ever troubled that poor household.

CHAPTER VI. FINAL DISAPPOINTMENT AND ITS FIRST RESULT

The next day, Mademoiselle Cormon, packed into the old carriole with

Josette, and looking like a pyramid on a vast sea of parcels, drove up

the rue Saint-Blaise on her way to Prebaudet, where she was overtaken by

an event which hurried on her marriage,--an event entirely unlooked

for by either Madame Granson, du Bousquier, Monsieur de Valois, or

Mademoiselle Cormon himself. Chance is the greatest of all artificers.

The day after her arrival at Prebaudet, she was innocently employed,

about eight o’clock in the morning, in listening, as she breakfasted, to

the various reports of her keeper and her gardener, when Jacquelin made

a violent irruption into the dining-room.

“Mademoiselle,” he cried, out of breath, “Monsieur l’abbe sends you an

express, the son of Mere Grosmort, with a letter. The lad left Alencon

before daylight, and he has just arrived; he ran like Penelope! Can’t I

give him a glass of wine?”

“What can have happened, Josette? Do you think my uncle can be--”

“He couldn’t write if he were,” said Josette, guessing her mistress’s

fears.

“Quick! quick!” cried Mademoiselle Cormon, as soon as she had read the

first lines. “Tell Jacquelin to harness Penelope--Get ready, Josette;

pack up everything in half an hour. We must go back to town--”

“Jacquelin!” called Josette, excited by the sentiment she saw on her

mistress’s face.

Jacquelin, informed by Josette, came in to say,--

“But, mademoiselle, Penelope is eating her oats.”

“What does that signify? I must start at once.”

“But, mademoiselle, it is going to rain.”

“Then we shall get wet.”

“The house is on fire!” muttered Josette, piqued at the silence her

mistress kept as to the contents of the letter, which she read and

reread.

“Finish your coffee, at any rate, mademoiselle; don’t excite your blood;

just see how red you are.”

“Am I red, Josette?” she said, going to a mirror, from which the

quicksilver was peeling, and which presented her features to her upside

down.

“Good heavens!” thought Mademoiselle Cormon, “suppose I should look

ugly! Come, Josette; come, my dear, dress me at once; I want to be ready

before Jacquelin has harnessed Penelope. If you can’t pack my things in

time, I will leave them here rather than lose a single minute.”

If you have thoroughly comprehended the positive monomania to which the

desire of marriage had brought Mademoiselle Cormon, you will share her

emotion. The worthy uncle announced in this sudden missive that Monsieur

de Troisville, of the Russian army during the Emigration, grandson of

one of his best friends, was desirous of retiring to Alencon, and asked

his, the abbe’s hospitality, on the ground of his friendship for his

grandfather, the Vicomte de Troisville. The old abbe, alarmed at the

responsibility, entreated his niece to return instantly and help him to

receive this guest, and do the honors of the house; for the viscount’s

letter had been delayed, and he might descend upon his shoulders that

very night.

After reading this missive could there be a question of the demands

of Prebaudet? The keeper and the gardener, witnesses to Mademoiselle

Cormon’s excitement, stood aside and awaited her orders. But when,

as she was about to leave the room, they stopped her to ask for

instructions, for the first time in her life the despotic old maid,

who saw to everything at Prebaudet with her own eyes, said, to their

stupefaction, “Do what you like.” This from a mistress who carried her

administration to the point of counting her fruits, and marking them so

as to order their consumption according to the number and condition of

each!

“I believe I’m dreaming,” thought Josette, as she saw her mistress

flying down the staircase like an elephant to which God has given wings.

Presently, in spite of a driving rain, Mademoiselle Cormon drove away

from Prebaudet, leaving her factotums with the reins on their necks.

Jacquelin dared not take upon himself to hasten the usual little trot

of the peaceable Penelope, who, like the beautiful queen whose name she

bore, had an appearance of making as many steps backward as she made

forward. Impatient with the pace, mademoiselle ordered Jacquelin in a

sharp voice to drive at a gallop, with the whip, if necessary, to the

great astonishment of the poor beast, so afraid was she of not having

time to arrange the house suitably to receive Monsieur de Troisville.

She calculated that the grandson of her uncle’s friend was probably

about forty years of age; a soldier just from service was undoubtedly

a bachelor; and she resolved, her uncle aiding, not to let Monsieur

de Troisville quit their house in the condition he entered it. Though

Penelope galloped, Mademoiselle Cormon, absorbed in thoughts of her

trousseau and the wedding-day, declared again and again that Jacquelin

made no way at all. She twisted about in the carriole without replying

to Josette’s questions, and talked to herself like a person who is

mentally revolving important designs.

The carriole at last arrived in the main street of Alencon, called the

rue Saint-Blaise at the end toward Montagne, but near the hotel du More

it takes the name of the rue de la Porte-de-Seez, and becomes the rue

du Bercail as it enters the road to Brittany. If the departure of

Mademoiselle Cormon made a great noise in Alencon, it is easy to imagine

the uproar caused by her sudden return on the following day, in a

pouring rain which beat her face without her apparently minding it.

Penelope at a full gallop was observed by every one, and Jacquelin’s

grin, the early hour, the parcels stuffed into the carriole topsy-turvy,

and the evident impatience of Mademoiselle Cormon were all noted.

The property of the house of Troisville lay between Alencon and

Mortagne. Josette knew the various branches of the family. A word

dropped by mademoiselle as they entered Alencon had put Josette on the

scent of the affair; and a discussion having started between them, it

was settled that the expected de Troisville must be between forty

and forty-two years of age, a bachelor, and neither rich nor poor.

Mademoiselle Cormon beheld herself speedily Vicomtesse de Troisville.

“And to think that my uncle told me nothing! thinks of nothing! inquires

nothing! That’s my uncle all over. He’d forget his own nose if it wasn’t

fastened to his face.”

Have you never remarked that, under circumstances such as these,

old maids become, like Richard III., keen-witted, fierce, bold,

promissory,--if one may so use the word,--and, like inebriate clerks, no

longer in awe of anything?

Immediately the town of Alencon, speedily informed from the farther

end of the rue de Saint-Blaise to the gate of Seez of this precipitate

return, accompanied by singular circumstances, was perturbed throughout

its viscera, both public and domestic. Cooks, shopkeepers, street

passengers, told the news from door to door; thence it rose to the upper

regions. Soon the words: “Mademoiselle Cormon has returned!” burst like

a bombshell into all households. At that moment Jacquelin was descending

from his wooden seat (polished by a process unknown to cabinet-makers),

on which he perched in front of the carriole. He opened the great green

gate, round at the top, and closed in sign of mourning; for during

Mademoiselle Cormon’s absence the evening assemblies did not take place.

The faithful invited the Abbe de Sponde to their several houses; and

Monsieur de Valois paid his debt by inviting him to dine at the Marquis

d’Esgrignon’s. Jacquelin, having opened the gate, called familiarly to

Penelope, whom he had left in the middle of the street. That animal,

accustomed to this proceeding, turned in of herself, and circled round

the courtyard in a manner to avoid injuring the flower-bed. Jacquelin

then took her bridle, and led the carriage to the portico.

“Mariette!” cried Mademoiselle Cormon.

“Mademoiselle!” exclaimed Mariette, who was occupied in closing the

gate.

“Has the gentleman arrived?”

“No, mademoiselle.”

“Where’s my uncle?”

“He is at church, mademoiselle.”

Jacquelin and Josette were by this time on the first step of the

portico, holding out their hands to manoeuvre the exit of their mistress

from the carriole as she pulled herself up by the sides of the vehicle

and clung to the curtains. Mademoiselle then threw herself into their

arms; because for the last two years she dared not risk her weight

on the iron step, affixed to the frame of the carriage by a horrible

mechanism of clumsy bolts.

When Mademoiselle Cormon reached the level of the portico she looked

about her courtyard with an air of satisfaction.

“Come, come, Mariette, leave that gate alone; I want you.”

“There’s something in the wind,” whispered Jacquelin, as Mariette passed

the carriole.

“Mariette, what provisions have you in the house?” asked Mademoiselle

Cormon, sitting down on the bench in the long antechamber like a person

overcome with fatigue.

“I haven’t anything,” replied Mariette, with her hands on her hips.

“Mademoiselle knows very well that during her absence Monsieur l’abbe

dines out every day. Yesterday I went to fetch him from Mademoiselle

Armande’s.”

“Where is he now?”

“Monsieur l’abbe? Why, at church; he won’t be in before three o’clock.”

“He thinks of nothing! he ought to have told you to go to market.

Mariette, go at once; and without wasting money, don’t spare it; get all

there is that is good and delicate. Go to the diligence office and see

if you can send for pates; and I want shrimps from the Brillante. What

o’clock is it?”

“A quarter to nine.”

“Good heavens! Mariette, don’t stop to chatter. The person my uncle

expects may arrive at any moment. If we had to give him breakfast, where

should we be with nothing in the house?”

Mariette turned back to Penelope in a lather, and looked at Jacquelin

as if she would say, “Mademoiselle has put her hand on a husband _this_

time.”

“Now, Josette,” continued the old maid, “let us see where we had better

put Monsieur de Troisville to sleep.”

With what joy she said the words, “Put Monsieur de Troisville”

(pronounced Treville) “to sleep.” How many ideas in those few words! The

old maid was bathed in hope.

“Will you put him in the green chamber?”

“The bishop’s room? No; that’s too near mine,” said Mademoiselle Cormon.

“All very well for monseigneur; he’s a saintly man.”

“Give him your uncle’s room.”

“Oh, that’s so bare; it is actually indecent.”

“Well, then, mademoiselle, why not arrange a bed in your boudoir? It is

easily done; and there’s a fire-place. Moreau can certainly find in his

warerooms a bed to match the hangings.”

“You are right, Josette. Go yourself to Moreau; consult with him what

to do; I authorize you to get what is wanted. If the bed could be put up

to-night without Monsieur de Troisville observing it (in case Monsieur

de Troisville arrives while Moreau is here), I should like it. If Moreau

won’t engage to do this, then I must put Monsieur de Troisville in the

green room, although Monsieur de Troisville would be so very near to

me.”

Josette was departing when her mistress recalled her.

“Stop! explain the matter to Jacquelin,” she cried, in a loud nervous

tone. “Tell _him_ to go to Moreau; I must be dressed! Fancy if Monsieur

de Troisville surprised me as I am now! and my uncle not here to receive

him! Oh, uncle, uncle! Come, Josette; come and dress me at once.”

“But Penelope?” said Josette, imprudently.

“Always Penelope! Penelope this, Penelope that! Is Penelope the mistress

of this house?”

“But she is all of a lather, and she hasn’t had time to eat her oats.”

“Then let her starve!” cried Mademoiselle Cormon; “provided I marry,”

she thought to herself.

Hearing these words, which seemed to her like homicide, Josette stood

still for a moment, speechless. Then, at a gesture from her mistress,

she ran headlong down the steps of the portico.

“The devil is in her, Jacquelin,” were the first words she uttered.

Thus all things conspired on this fateful day to produce the great

scenic effect which decided the future life of Mademoiselle Cormon.

The town was already topsy-turvy in mind, as a consequence of the five

extraordinary circumstances which accompanied Mademoiselle Cormon’s

return; to wit, the pouring rain; Penelope at a gallop, in a lather, and

blown; the early hour; the parcels half-packed; and the singular air of

the excited old maid. But when Mariette made an invasion of the market,

and bought all the best things; when Jacquelin went to the principal

upholsterer in Alencon, two doors from the church, in search of a

bed,--there was matter for the gravest conjectures. These extraordinary

events were discussed on all sides; they occupied the minds of every

one, even Mademoiselle Armande herself, with whom was Monsieur de

Valois. Within two days the town of Alencon had been agitated by such

startling events that certain good women were heard to remark that the

world was coming to an end. This last news, however, resolved itself

into a single question, “What is happening at the Cormons?”

The Abbe de Sponde, adroitly questioned when he left Saint-Leonard’s

to take his daily walk with the Abbe Couturier, replied with his usual

kindliness that he expected the Vicomte de Troisville, a nobleman in the

service of Russia during the Emigration, who was returning to Alencon

to settle there. From two to five o’clock a species of labial telegraphy

went on throughout the town; and all the inhabitants learned that

Mademoiselle Cormon had at last found a husband by letter, and was about

to marry the Vicomte de Troisville. Some said, “Moreau has sold them a

bed.” The bed was six feet wide in that quarter; it was four feet wide

at Madame Granson’s, in the rue du Bercail; but it was reduced to a

simple couch at Monsieur du Ronceret’s, where du Bousquier was dining.

The lesser bourgeoisie declared that the cost was eleven hundred francs.

But generally it was thought that, as to this, rumor was counting the

chickens before they were hatched. In other quarters it was said that

Mariette had made such a raid on the market that the price of carp had

risen. At the end of the rue Saint-Blaise, Penelope had dropped dead.

This decease was doubted in the house of the receiver-general; but at

the Prefecture it was authenticated that the poor beast had expired as

she turned into the courtyard of the hotel Cormon, with such velocity

had the old maid flown to meet her husband. The harness-maker, who lived

at the corner of the rue de Seez, was bold enough to call at the house

and ask if anything had happened to Mademoiselle Cormon’s carriage, in

order to discover whether Penelope was really dead. From the end of

the rue Saint-Blaise to the end of the rue du Bercail, it was then made

known that, thanks to Jacquelin’s devotion, Penelope, that silent victim

of her mistress’s impetuosity, still lived, though she seemed to be

suffering.

Along the road to Brittany the Vicomte de Troisville was stated to be a

younger son without a penny, for the estates in Perche belonged to the

Marquis de Troisville, peer of France, who had children; the marriage

would be, therefore, an enormous piece of luck for a poor emigre. The

aristocracy along that road approved of the marriage; Mademoiselle

Cormon could not do better with her money. But among the Bourgeoisie,

the Vicomte de Troisville was a Russian general who had fought against

France, and was now returning with a great fortune made at the court of

Saint-Petersburg; he was a _foreigner_; one of those _allies_ so hated

by the liberals; the Abbe de Sponde had slyly negotiated this marriage.

All the persons who had a right to call upon Mademoiselle Cormon

determined to do so that very evening.

During this transurban excitement, which made that of Suzanne almost

a forgotten affair, Mademoiselle was not less agitated; she was filled

with a variety of novel emotions. Looking about her salon, dining-room,

and boudoir, cruel apprehensions took possession of her. A species of

demon showed her with a sneer her old-fashioned luxury. The handsome

things she had admired from her youth up she suddenly suspected of age

and absurdity. In short, she felt that fear which takes possession of

nearly all authors when they read over a work they have hitherto thought

proof against every exacting or blase critic: new situations seem

timeworn; the best-turned and most highly polished phrases limp and

squint; metaphors and images grin or contradict each other; whatsoever

is false strikes the eye. In like manner this poor woman trembled lest

she should see on the lips of Monsieur de Troisville a smile of contempt

for this episcopal salon; she dreaded the cold look he might cast over

that ancient dining-room; in short, she feared the frame might injure

and age the portrait. Suppose these antiquities should cast a reflected

light of old age upon herself? This question made her flesh creep. She

would gladly, at that moment, spend half her savings on refitting her

house if some fairy wand could do it in a moment. Where is the general

who has not trembled on the eve of a battle? The poor woman was now

between her Austerlitz and her Waterloo.

“Madame la Vicomtesse de Troisville,” she said to herself; “a noble

name! Our property will go to a good family, at any rate.”

She fell a prey to an irritation which made every fibre of her nerves

quiver to all their papillae, long sunk in flesh. Her blood, lashed

by this new hope, was in motion. She felt the strength to converse, if

necessary, with Monsieur de Troisville.

It is useless to relate the activity with which Josette, Jacquelin,

Mariette, Moreau, and his agents went about their functions. It was like

the busyness of ants about their eggs. All that daily care had already

rendered neat and clean was again gone over and brushed and rubbed and

scrubbed. The china of ceremony saw the light; the damask linen marked

“A, B, C” was drawn from depths where it lay under a triple guard of

wrappings, still further defended by formidable lines of pins. Above

all, Mademoiselle Cormon sacrificed on the altar of her hopes three

bottles of the famous liqueurs of Madame Amphoux, the most illustrious

of all the distillers of the tropics,--a name very dear to gourmets.

Thanks to the devotion of her lieutenants, mademoiselle was soon ready

for the conflict. The different weapons--furniture, cookery, provisions,

in short, all the various munitions of war, together with a body of

reserve forces--were ready along the whole line. Jacquelin, Mariette,

and Josette received orders to appear in full dress. The garden was

raked. The old maid regretted that she couldn’t come to an understanding

with the nightingales nesting in the trees, in order to obtain their

finest trilling.

At last, about four o’clock, at the very moment when the Abbe de Sponde

returned home, and just as mademoiselle began to think she had set the

table with the best plate and linen and prepared the choicest dishes to

no purpose, the click-clack of a postilion was heard in the Val-Noble.

“‘Tis he!” she said to herself, the snap of the whip echoing in her

heart.

True enough; heralded by all this gossip, a post-chaise, in which was

a single gentleman, made so great a sensation coming down the rue

Saint-Blaise and turning into the rue du Cours that several little

gamains and some grown persons followed it, and stood in groups about

the gate of the hotel Cormon to see it enter. Jacquelin, who foresaw his

own marriage in that of his mistress, had also heard the click-clack in

the rue Saint-Blaise, and had opened wide the gates into the courtyard.

The postilion, a friend of his, took pride in making a fine turn-in, and

drew up sharply before the portico. The abbe came forward to greet his

guest, whose carriage was emptied with a speed that highwaymen might put

into the operation; the chaise itself was rolled into the coach-house,

the gates closed, and in a few moments all signs of Monsieur de

Troisville’s arrival had disappeared. Never did two chemicals blend

into each other with greater rapidity than the hotel Cormon displayed in

absorbing the Vicomte de Troisville.

Mademoiselle, whose heart was beating like a lizard caught by a

herdsman, sat heroically still on her sofa, beside the fire in the

salon. Josette opened the door; and the Vicomte de Troisville, followed

by the Abbe de Sponde, presented himself to the eyes of the spinster.

“Niece, this is Monsieur le Vicomte de Troisville, the grandson of one

of my old schoolmates; Monsieur de Troisville, my niece, Mademoiselle

Cormon.”

“Ah! that good uncle; how well he does it!” thought Rose-Marie-Victoire.

The Vicomte de Troisville was, to paint him in two words, du Bousquier

ennobled. Between the two men there was precisely the difference which

separates the vulgar style from the noble style. If they had both been

present, the most fanatic liberal would not have denied the existence

of aristocracy. The viscount’s strength had all the distinction of

elegance; his figure had preserved its magnificent dignity. He had blue

eyes, black hair, an olive skin, and looked to be about forty-six years

of age. You might have thought him a handsome Spaniard preserved in

the ice of Russia. His manner, carriage, and attitude, all denoted

a diplomat who had seen Europe. His dress was that of a well-bred

traveller. As he seemed fatigued, the abbe offered to show him to his

room, and was much amazed when his niece threw open the door of the

boudoir, transformed into a bedroom.

Mademoiselle Cormon and her uncle then left the noble stranger to attend

to his own affairs, aided by Jacquelin, who brought up his luggage, and

went themselves to walk beside the river until their guest had made

his toilet. Although the Abbe de Sponde chanced to be even more

absent-minded than usual, Mademoiselle Cormon was not less preoccupied.

They both walked on in silence. The old maid had never before met any

man as seductive as this Olympean viscount. She might have said to

herself, as the Germans do, “This is my ideal!” instead of which she

felt herself bound from head to foot, and could only say, “Here’s my

affair!” Then she flew to Mariette to know if the dinner could be put

back a while without loss of excellence.

“Uncle, your Monsieur de Troisville is very amiable,” she said, on

returning.

“Why, niece, he hasn’t as yet said a word.”

“But you can see it in his ways, his manners, his face. Is he a

bachelor?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied the abbe, who was thinking of a

discussion on mercy, lately begun between the Abbe Couturier and

himself. “Monsieur de Troisville wrote me that he wanted to buy a house

here. If he was married, he wouldn’t come alone on such an errand,”

added the abbe, carelessly, not conceiving the idea that his niece could

be thinking of marriage.

“Is he rich?”

“He is a younger son of the younger branch,” replied her uncle. “His

grandfather commanded a squadron, but the father of this young man made

a bad marriage.”

“Young man!” exclaimed the old maid. “It seems to me, uncle, that he

must be at least forty-five.” She felt the strongest desire to put their

years on a par.

“Yes,” said the abbe; “but to a poor priest of seventy, Rose, a man of

forty seems a youth.”

All Alencon knew by this time that Monsieur de Troisville had arrived at

the Cormons. The traveller soon rejoined his hosts, and began to admire

the Brillante, the garden, and the house.

“Monsieur l’abbe,” he said, “my whole ambition is to have a house like

this.” The old maid fancied a declaration lurked in that speech, and she

lowered her eyes. “You must enjoy it very much, mademoiselle,” added the

viscount.

“How could it be otherwise? It has been in our family since 1574, the

period at which one of our ancestors, steward to the Duc d’Alencon,

acquired the land and built the house,” replied Mademoiselle Cormon. “It

is built on piles,” she added.

Jacquelin announced dinner. Monsieur de Troisville offered his arm to

the happy woman, who endeavored not to lean too heavily upon it; she

feared, as usual, to seem to make advances.

“Everything is so harmonious here,” said the viscount, as he seated

himself at table.

“Yes, our trees are full of birds, which give us concerts for nothing;

no one ever frightens them; and the nightingales sing at night,” said

Mademoiselle Cormon.

“I was speaking of the interior of the house,” remarked the viscount,

who did not trouble himself to observe Mademoiselle Cormon, and

therefore did not perceive the dulness of her mind. “Everything is so in

keeping,--the tones of color, the furniture, the general character.”

“But it costs a great deal; taxes are enormous,” responded the excellent

woman.

“Ah! taxes are high, are they?” said the viscount, preoccupied with his

own ideas.

“I don’t know,” replied the abbe. “My niece manages the property of each

of us.”

“Taxes are not of much importance to the rich,” said Mademoiselle

Cormon, not wishing to be thought miserly. “As for the furniture, I

shall leave it as it is, and change nothing,--unless I marry; and then,

of course, everything here must suit the husband.”

“You have noble principles, mademoiselle,” said the viscount, smiling.

“You will make one happy man.”

“No one ever made to me such a pretty speech,” thought the old maid.

The viscount complimented Mademoiselle Cormon on the excellence of her

service and the admirable arrangements of the house, remarking that he

had supposed the provinces behind the age in that respect; but, on the

contrary, he found them, as the English say, “very comfortable.”

“What can that word mean?” she thought. “Oh, where is the chevalier to

explain it to me? ‘Comfortable,’--there seem to be several words in it.

Well, courage!” she said to herself. “I can’t be expected to answer a

foreign language--But,” she continued aloud, feeling her tongue untied

by the eloquence which nearly all human creatures find in momentous

circumstances, “we have a very brilliant society here, monsieur. It

assembles at my house, and you shall judge of it this evening, for

some of my faithful friends have no doubt heard of my return and your

arrival. Among them is the Chevalier de Valois, a seigneur of the

old court, a man of infinite wit and taste; then there is Monsieur le

Marquis d’Esgrignon and Mademoiselle Armande, his sister” (she bit her

tongue with vexation),--“a woman remarkable in her way,” she added. “She

resolved to remain unmarried in order to leave all her fortune to her

brother and nephew.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the viscount. “Yes, the d’Esgrignons,--I remember them.”

“Alencon is very gay,” continued the old maid, now fairly launched.

“There’s much amusement: the receiver-general gives balls; the prefect

is an amiable man; and Monseigneur the bishop sometimes honors us with a

visit--”

“Well, then,” said the viscount, smiling, “I have done wisely to come

back, like the hare, to die in my form.”

“Yes,” she said. “I, too, attach myself or I die.”

The viscount smiled.

“Ah!” thought the old maid, “all is well; he understands me.”

The conversation continued on generalities. By one of those mysterious

unknown and undefinable faculties, Mademoiselle Cormon found in her

brain, under the pressure of her desire to be agreeable, all the phrases

and opinions of the Chevalier de Valois. It was like a duel in which the

devil himself pointed the pistol. Never was any adversary better aimed

at. The viscount was far too well-bred to speak of the excellence of

the dinner; but his silence was praise. As he drank the delicious wines

which Jacquelin served to him profusely, he seemed to feel he was with

friends, and to meet them with pleasure; for the true connoisseur does

not applaud, he enjoys. He inquired the price of land, of houses, of

estates; he made Mademoiselle Cormon describe at length the confluence

of the Sarthe and the Brillante; he expressed surprise that the town was

placed so far from the river, and seemed to be much interested in the

topography of the place.

The silent abbe left his niece to throw the dice of conversation; and

she truly felt that she pleased Monsieur de Troisville, who smiled at

her gracefully, and committed himself during this dinner far more than

her most eager suitors had ever done in ten days. Imagine, therefore,

the little attentions with which he was petted; you might have thought

him a cherished lover, whose return brought joy to the household.

Mademoiselle foresaw the moment when the viscount wanted bread; she

watched his every look; when he turned his head she adroitly put upon

his plate a portion of some dish he seemed to like; had he been a

gourmand, she would almost have killed him; but what a delightful

specimen of the attentions she would show to a husband! She did not

commit the folly of depreciating herself; on the contrary, she set every

sail bravely, ran up all her flags, assumed the bearing of the queen of

Alencon, and boasted of her excellent preserves. In fact, she fished

for compliments in speaking of herself, for she saw that she pleased the

viscount; the truth being that her eager desire had so transformed her

that she became almost a woman.

At dessert she heard, not without emotions of delight, certain sounds in

the antechamber and salon which denoted the arrival of her usual guests.

She called the attention of her uncle and Monsieur de Troisville to this

prompt attendance as a proof of the affection that was felt for her;

whereas it was really the result of the poignant curiosity which had

seized upon the town. Impatient to show herself in all her glory,

Mademoiselle Cormon told Jacquelin to serve coffee and liqueurs in

the salon, where he presently set out, in view of the whole company,

a magnificent liqueur-stand of Dresden china which saw the light only

twice a year. This circumstance was taken note of by the company,

standing ready to gossip over the merest trifle:--

“The deuce!” muttered du Bousquier. “Actually Madame Amphoux’s liqueurs,

which they only serve at the four church festivals!”

“Undoubtedly the marriage was arranged a year ago by letter,” said

the chief-justice du Ronceret. “The postmaster tells me his office has

received letters postmarked Odessa for more than a year.”

Madame Granson trembled. The Chevalier de Valois, though he had dined

with the appetite of four men, turned pale even to the left section

of his face. Feeling that he was about to betray himself, he said

hastily,--

“Don’t you think it is very cold to-day? I am almost frozen.”

“The neighborhood of Russia, perhaps,” said du Bousquier.

The chevalier looked at him as if to say, “Well played!”

Mademoiselle Cormon appeared so radiant, so triumphant, that the company

thought her handsome. This extraordinary brilliancy was not the effect

of sentiment only. Since early morning her blood had been whirling

tempestuously within her, and her nerves were agitated by the

presentiment of some great crisis. It required all these circumstances

combined to make her so unlike herself. With what joy did she now make

her solemn presentation of the viscount to the chevalier, the chevalier

to the viscount, and all Alencon to Monsieur de Troisville, and Monsieur

de Troisville to all Alencon!

By an accident wholly explainable, the viscount and chevalier,

aristocrats by nature, came instantly into unison; they recognized each

other at once as men belonging to the same sphere. Accordingly, they

began to converse together, standing before the fireplace. A circle

formed around them; and their conversation, though uttered in a low

voice, was listened to in religious silence. To give the effect of

this scene it is necessary to dramatize it, and to picture Mademoiselle

Cormon occupied in pouring out the coffee of her imaginary suitor, with

her back to the fireplace.

Monsieur de Valois. “Monsieur le vicomte has come, I am told, to settle

in Alencon?”

Monsieur de Troisville. “Yes, monsieur, I am looking for a house.”

[Mademoiselle Cormon, cup in hand, turns round.] “It must be a large

house” [Mademoiselle Cormon offers him the cup] “to lodge my whole

family.” [The eyes of the old maid are troubled.]

Monsieur de Valois. “Are you married?”

Monsieur de Troisville. “Yes, for the last sixteen years, to a daughter

of the Princess Scherbellof.”

Mademoiselle Cormon fainted; du Bousquier, who saw her stagger, sprang

forward and received her in his arms; some one opened the door and

allowed him to pass out with his enormous burden. The fiery republican,

instructed by Josette, found strength to carry the old maid to her

bedroom, where he laid her out on the bed. Josette, armed with scissors,

cut the corset, which was terribly tight. Du Bousquier flung water on

Mademoiselle Cormon’s face and bosom, which, released from the corset,

overflowed like the Loire in flood. The poor woman opened her eyes,

saw du Bousquier, and gave a cry of modesty at the sight of him. Du

Bousquier retired at once, leaving six women, at the head of whom was

Madame Granson, radiant with joy, to take care of the invalid.

What had the Chevalier de Valois been about all this time? Faithful to

his system, he had covered the retreat.

“That poor Mademoiselle Cormon,” he said to Monsieur de Troisville,

gazing at the assembly, whose laughter was repressed by his cool

aristocratic glances, “her blood is horribly out of order; she wouldn’t

be bled before going to Prebaudet (her estate),--and see the result!”

“She came back this morning in the rain,” said the Abbe de Sponde, “and

she may have taken cold. It won’t be anything; it is only a little upset

she is subject to.”

“She told me yesterday she had not had one for three months, adding that

she was afraid it would play her a trick at last,” said the chevalier.

“Ha! so you are married?” said Jacquelin to himself as he looked at

Monsieur de Troisville, who was quietly sipping his coffee.

The faithful servant espoused his mistress’s disappointment; he divined

it, and he promptly carried away the liqueurs of Madame Amphoux, which

were offered to a bachelor, and not to the husband of a Russian woman.

All these details were noticed and laughed at. The Abbe de Sponde knew

the object of Monsieur de Troisville’s journey; but, absent-minded

as usual, he forgot it, not supposing that his niece could have the

slightest interest in Monsieur de Troisville’s marriage. As for the

viscount, preoccupied with the object of his journey, and, like many

husbands, not eager to talk about his wife, he had had no occasion

to say he was married; besides, he would naturally suppose that

Mademoiselle Cormon knew it.

Du Bousquier reappeared, and was questioned furiously. One of the six

women came down soon after, and announced that Mademoiselle Cormon was

much better, and that the doctor had come. She intended to stay in bed,

as it was necessary to bleed her. The salon was now full. Mademoiselle

Cormon’s absence allowed the ladies present to discuss the tragi-comic

scene--embellished, extended, historified, embroidered, wreathed,

colored, and adorned--which had just taken place, and which, on the

morrow, was destined to occupy all Alencon.

“That good Monsieur du Bousquier! how well he carried you!” said Josette

to her mistress. “He was really pale at the sight of you; he loves you

still.”

That speech served as closure to this solemn and terrible evening.

Throughout the morning of the next day every circumstance of the late

comedy was known in the household of Alencon, and--let us say it to the

shame of that town,--they caused inextinguishable laughter. But on that

day Mademoiselle Cormon (much benefited by the bleeding) would have

seemed sublime even to the boldest scoffers, had they witnessed the

noble dignity, the splendid Christian resignation which influenced her

as she gave her arm to her involuntary deceiver to go into breakfast.

Cruel jesters! why could you not have seen her as she said to the

viscount,--

“Madame de Troisville will have difficulty in finding a suitable house;

do me the favor, monsieur, of accepting the use of mine during the time

you are in search of yours.”

“But, mademoiselle, I have two sons and two daughters; we should greatly

inconvenience you.”

“Pray do not refuse me,” she said earnestly.

“I made you the same offer in the answer I wrote to your letter,” said

the abbe; “but you did not receive it.”

“What, uncle! then you knew--”

The poor woman stopped. Josette sighed. Neither the viscount nor the

abbe observed anything amiss. After breakfast the Abbe de Sponde carried

off his guest, as agreed upon the previous evening, to show him the

various houses in Alencon which could be bought, and the lots of lands

on which he might build.

Left alone in the salon, Mademoiselle Cormon said to Josette, with a

deeply distressed air, “My child, I am now the talk of the whole town.”

“Well, then, mademoiselle, you should marry.”

“But I am not prepared to make a choice.”

“Bah! if I were in your place, I should take Monsieur du Bousquier.”

“Josette, Monsieur de Valois says he is so republican.”

“They don’t know what they say, your gentlemen: sometimes they declare

that he robbed the republic; he couldn’t love it if he did that,” said

Josette, departing.

“That girl has an amazing amount of sense,” thought Mademoiselle Cormon,

who remained alone, a prey to her perplexities.

She saw plainly that a prompt marriage was the only way to silence the

town. This last checkmate, so evidently mortifying, was of a nature to

drive her into some extreme action; for persons deficient in mind find

difficulty in getting out of any path, either good or evil, into which

they have entered.

Each of the two old bachelors had fully understood the situation in

which Mademoiselle Cormon was about to find herself; consequently, each

resolved to call in the course of that morning to ask after her health,

and take occasion, in bachelor language, to “press his point.” Monsieur

de Valois considered that such an occasion demanded a painstaking

toilet; he therefore took a bath and groomed himself with extraordinary

care. For the first and last time Cesarine observed him putting on with

incredible art a suspicion of rouge. Du Bousquier, on the other hand,

that coarse republican, spurred by a brisk will, paid no attention to

his dress, and arrived the first.

Such little things decide the fortunes of men, as they do of empires.

Kellerman’s charge at Marengo, Blucher’s arrival at Waterloo, Louis

XIV.’s disdain for Prince Eugene, the rector of Denain,--all these great

causes of fortune or catastrophe history has recorded; but no one

ever profits by them to avoid the small neglects of their own life.

Consequently, observe what happens: the Duchesse de Langeais (see

“History of the Thirteen”) makes herself a nun for the lack of ten

minutes’ patience; Judge Popinot (see “Commission in Lunacy”) puts off

till the morrow the duty of examining the Marquis d’Espard; Charles

Grandet (see “Eugenie Grandet”) goes to Paris from Bordeaux instead of

returning by Nantes; and such events are called chance or fatality! A

touch of rouge carefully applied destroyed the hopes of the Chevalier de

Valois; could that nobleman perish in any other way? He had lived by the

Graces, and he was doomed to die by their hand. While the chevalier was

giving this last touch to his toilet the rough du Bousquier was entering

the salon of the desolate old maid. This entrance produced a thought

in Mademoiselle Cormon’s mind which was favorable to the republican,

although in all other respects the Chevalier de Valois held the

advantages.

“God wills it!” she said piously, on seeing du Bousquier.

“Mademoiselle, you will not, I trust, think my eagerness importunate. I

could not trust to my stupid Rene to bring news of your condition, and

therefore I have come myself.”

“I am perfectly recovered,” she replied, in a tone of emotion. “I thank

you, Monsieur du Bousquier,” she added, after a slight pause, and in a

significant tone of voice, “for the trouble you have taken, and for that

which I gave you yesterday--”

She remembered having been in his arms, and that again seemed to her an

order from heaven. She had been seen for the first time by a man with

her laces cut, her treasures violently bursting from their casket.

“I carried you with such joy that you seemed to me light.”

Here Mademoiselle Cormon looked at du Bousquier as she had never yet

looked at any man in the world. Thus encouraged, the purveyor cast upon

the old maid a glance which reached her heart.

“I would,” he said, “that that moment had given me the right to keep

you as mine forever” [she listened with a delighted air]; “as you lay

fainting upon that bed, you were enchanting. I have never in my life

seen a more beautiful person,--and I have seen many handsome women.

Plump ladies have this advantage: they are superb to look upon; they

have only to show themselves and they triumph.”

“I fear you are making fun of me,” said the old maid, “and that is not

kind when all the town will probably misinterpret what happened to me

yesterday.”

“As true as my name is du Bousquier, mademoiselle, I have never changed

in my feelings toward you; and your first refusal has not discouraged

me.”

The old maid’s eyes were lowered. There was a moment of cruel silence

for du Bousquier, and then Mademoiselle Cormon decided on her course.

She raised her eyelids; tears flowed from her eyes, and she gave du

Bousquier a tender glance.

“If that is so, monsieur,” she said, in a trembling voice, “promise me

to live in a Christian manner, and not oppose my religious customs, but

to leave me the right to select my confessors, and I will grant you my

hand”; as she said the words, she held it out to him.

Du Bousquier seized the good fat hand so full of money, and kissed it

solemnly.

“But,” she said, allowing him to kiss it, “one thing more I must require

of you.”

“If it is a possible thing, it is granted,” replied the purveyor.

“Alas!” returned the old maid. “For my sake, I must ask you to take upon

yourself a sin which I feel to be enormous,--for to lie is one of the

capital sins. But you will confess it, will you not? We will do penance

for it together” [they looked at each other tenderly]. “Besides, it may

be one of those lies which the Church permits as necessary--”

“Can she be as Suzanne says she is?” thought du Bousquier. “What luck!

Well, mademoiselle, what is it?” he said aloud.

“That you will take upon yourself to--”

“What?”

“To say that this marriage has been agreed upon between us for the last

six months.”

“Charming woman,” said the purveyor, in the tone of a man willing to

devote himself, “such sacrifices can be made only for a creature adored

these ten years.”

“In spite of my harshness?” she said.

“Yes, in spite of your harshness.”

“Monsieur du Bousquier, I have misjudged you.”

Again she held out the fat red hand, which du Bousquier kissed again.

At this moment the door opened; the betrothed pair, looking round to see

who entered, beheld the delightful, but tardy Chevalier de Valois.

“Ah!” he said, on entering, “I see you are about to be up, fair queen.”

She smiled at the chevalier, feeling a weight upon her heart. Monsieur

de Valois, remarkably young and seductive, had the air of a Lauzun

re-entering the apartments of the Grande Mademoiselle in the

Palais-Royal.

“Hey! dear du Bousquier,” said he, in a jaunty tone, so sure was he of

success, “Monsieur de Troisville and the Abbe de Sponde are examining

your house like appraisers.”

“Faith!” said du Bousquier, “if the Vicomte de Troisville wants it,

it it is his for forty thousand francs. It is useless to me now. If

mademoiselle will permit--it must soon be known--Mademoiselle, may I

tell it?--Yes! Well, then, be the first, _my dear Chevalier_, to hear”

[Mademoiselle Cormon dropped her eyes] “of the honor that mademoiselle

has done me, the secret of which I have kept for some months. We shall

be married in a few days; the contract is already drawn, and we shall

sign it to-morrow. You see, therefore, that my house in the rue du Cygne

is useless to me. I have been privately looking for a purchaser for some

time; and the Abbe de Sponde, who knew that fact, has naturally taken

Monsieur de Troisville to see the house.”

This falsehood bore such an appearance of truth that the chevalier was

taken in by it. That “my dear chevalier” was like the revenge taken by

Peter the Great on Charles XII. at Pultawa for all his past defeats. Du

Bousquier revenged himself deliciously for the thousand little shafts he

had long borne in silence; but in his triumph he made a lively

youthful gesture by running his hands through his hair, and in so doing

he--knocked aside his false front.

“I congratulate you both,” said the chevalier, with an agreeable air;

“and I wish that the marriage may end like a fairy tale: _They were

happy ever after, and had--many--children_!” So saying, he took a pinch

of snuff. “But, monsieur,” he added satirically, “you forget--that you

are wearing a false front.”

Du Bousquier blushed. The false front was hanging half a dozen inches

from his skull. Mademoiselle Cormon raised her eyes, saw that skull in

all its nudity, and lowered them, abashed. Du Bousquier cast upon the

chevalier the most venomous look that toad ever darted on its prey.

“Dogs of aristocrats who despise me,” thought he, “I’ll crush you some

day.”

The chevalier thought he had recovered his advantage. But Mademoiselle

Cormon was not a woman to understand the connection which the chevalier

intimated between his congratulatory wish and the false front. Besides,

even if she had comprehended it, her word was passed, her hand given.

Monsieur de Valois saw at once that all was lost. The innocent woman,

with the two now silent men before her, wished, true to her sense of

duty, to amuse them.

“Why not play a game of piquet together?” she said artlessly, without

the slightest malice.

Du Bousquier smiled, and went, as the future master of the house, to

fetch the piquet table. Whether the Chevalier de Valois lost his head,

or whether he wanted to stay and study the causes of his disaster and

remedy it, certain it is that he allowed himself to be led like a lamb

to the slaughter. He had received the most violent knock-down blow that

ever struck a man; any nobleman would have lost his senses for less.

The Abbe de Sponde and the Vicomte de Troisville soon returned.

Mademoiselle Cormon instantly rose, hurried into the antechamber, and

took her uncle apart to tell him her resolution. Learning that the house

in the rue du Cygne exactly suited the viscount, she begged her future

husband to do her the kindness to tell him that her uncle knew it

was for sale. She dared not confide that lie to the abbe, fearing his

absent-mindedness. The lie, however, prospered better than if it had

been a virtuous action. In the course of that evening all Alencon heard

the news. For the last four days the town had had as much to think of

as during the fatal days of 1814 and 1815. Some laughed; others admitted

the marriage. These blamed it; those approved it. The middle classes

of Alencon rejoiced; they regarded it as a victory. The next day, among

friends, the Chevalier de Valois said a cruel thing:--

“The Cormons end as they began; there’s only a hand’s breadth between a

steward and a purveyor.”

CHAPTER VII. OTHER RESULTS

The news of Mademoiselle Cormon’s choice stabbed poor Athanase Granson

to the heart; but he showed no outward sign of the terrible agitation

within him. When he first heard of the marriage he was at the house of

the chief-justice, du Ronceret, where his mother was playing boston.

Madame Granson looked at her son in a mirror, and thought him pale;

but he had been so all day, for a vague rumor of the matter had already

reached him.

Mademoiselle Cormon was the card on which Athanase had staked his life;

and the cold presentiment of a catastrophe was already upon him. When

the soul and the imagination have magnified a misfortune and made it

too heavy for the shoulders and the brain to bear; when a hope long

cherished, the realization of which would pacify the vulture feeding on

the heart, is balked, and the man has faith neither in himself, despite

his powers, nor in the future, despite of the Divine power,--then that

man is lost. Athanase was a fruit of the Imperial system of education.

Fatality, the Emperor’s religion, had filtered down from the throne to

the lowest ranks of the army and the benches of the lyceums. Athanase

sat still, with his eyes fixed on Madame du Ronceret’s cards, in a

stupor that might so well pass for indifference that Madame Granson

herself was deceived about his feelings. This apparent unconcern

explained her son’s refusal to make a sacrifice for this marriage of his

_liberal_ opinions,--the term “liberal” having lately been created for

the Emperor Alexander by, I think, Madame de Stael, through the lips of

Benjamin Constant.

After that fatal evening the young man took to rambling among the

picturesque regions of the Sarthe, the banks of which are much

frequented by sketchers who come to Alencon for points of view.

Windmills are there, and the river is gay in the meadows. The shores of

the Sarthe are bordered with beautiful trees, well grouped. Though

the landscape is flat, it is not without those modest graces which

distinguish France, where the eye is never wearied by the brilliancy of

Oriental skies, nor saddened by constant fog. The place is solitary. In

the provinces no one pays much attention to a fine view, either because

provincials are blases on the beauty around them, or because they have

no poesy in their souls. If there exists in the provinces a mall, a

promenade, a vantage-ground from which a fine view can be obtained, that

is the point to which no one goes. Athanase was fond of this solitude,

enlivened by the sparkling water, where the fields were the first to

green under the earliest smiling of the springtide sun. Those persons

who saw him sitting beneath a poplar, and who noticed the vacant eye

which he turned to them, would say to Madame Granson:--

“Something is the matter with your son.”

“I know what it is,” the mother would reply; hinting that he was

meditating over some great work.

Athanase no longer took part in politics: he ceased to have opinions;

but he appeared at times quite gay,--gay with the satire of those who

think to insult a whole world with their own individual scorn. This

young man, outside of all the ideas and all the pleasures of the

provinces, interested few persons; he was not even an object of

curiosity. If persons spoke of him to his mother, it was for her sake,

not his. There was not a single soul in Alencon that sympathized with

his; not a woman, not a friend came near to dry his tears; they dropped

into the Sarthe. If the gorgeous Suzanne had happened that way, how many

young miseries might have been born of the meeting! for the two would

surely have loved each other.

She did come, however. Suzanne’s ambition was early excited by the tale

of a strange adventure which had happened at the tavern of the More,--a

tale which had taken possession of her childish brain. A Parisian woman,

beautiful as the angels, was sent by Fouche to entangle the Marquis

de Montauran, otherwise called “The Gars,” in a love-affair (see “The

Chouans”). She met him at the tavern of the More on his return from an

expedition to Mortagne; she cajoled him, made him love her, and then

betrayed him. That fantastic power--the power of beauty over mankind;

in fact, the whole story of Marie de Verneuil and the Gars--dazzled

Suzanne; she longed to grow up in order to play upon men. Some months

after her hasty departure she passed through her native town with an

artist on his way to Brittany. She wanted to see Fougeres, where the

adventure of the Marquis de Montauran culminated, and to stand upon the

scene of that picturesque war, the tragedies of which, still so little

known, had filled her childish mind. Besides this, she had a fancy to

pass through Alencon so elegantly equipped that no one could recognize

her; to put her mother above the reach of necessity, and also to send to

poor Athanase, in a delicate manner, a sum of money,--which in our age

is to genius what in the middle ages was the charger and the coat of

mail that Rebecca conveyed to Ivanhoe.

One month passed away in the strangest uncertainties respecting the

marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon. A party of unbelievers denied the

marriage altogether; the believers, on the other hand, affirmed it. At

the end of two weeks, the faction of unbelief received a vigorous blow

in the sale of du Bousquier’s house to the Marquis de Troisville, who

only wanted a simple establishment in Alencon, intending to go to Paris

after the death of the Princess Scherbellof; he proposed to await that

inheritance in retirement, and then to reconstitute his estates. This

seemed positive. The unbelievers, however, were not crushed. They

declared that du Bousquier, married or not, had made an excellent

sale, for the house had only cost him twenty-seven thousand francs.

The believers were depressed by this practical observation of the

incredulous. Choisnel, Mademoiselle Cormon’s notary, asserted the

latter, had heard nothing about the marriage contract; but the

believers, still firm in their faith, carried off, on the twentieth day,

a signal victory: Monsieur Lepressoir, the notary of the liberals, went

to Mademoiselle Cormon’s house, and the contract was signed.

This was the first of the numerous sacrifices which Mademoiselle Cormon

was destined to make to her husband. Du Bousquier bore the deepest

hatred to Choisnel; to him he owed the refusal of the hand of

Mademoiselle Armande,--a refusal which, as he believed, had influenced

that of Mademoiselle Cormon. This circumstance alone made the marriage

drag along. Mademoiselle received several anonymous letters. She

learned, to her great astonishment, that Suzanne was as truly a virgin

as herself so far as du Bousquier was concerned, for that seducer

with the false toupet could never be the hero of any such adventure.

Mademoiselle Cormon disdained anonymous letters; but she wrote to

Suzanne herself, on the ground of enlightening the Maternity Society.

Suzanne, who had no doubt heard of du Bousquier’s proposed marriage,

acknowledged her trick, sent a thousand francs to the society, and did

all the harm she could to the old purveyor. Mademoiselle Cormon convoked

the Maternity Society, which held a special meeting at which it was

voted that the association would not in future assist any misfortunes

about to happen, but solely those that had happened.

In spite of all these various events which kept the town in the choicest

gossip, the banns were published in the churches and at the mayor’s

office. Athanase prepared the deeds. As a matter of propriety and public

decency, the bride retired to Prebaudet, where du Bousquier, bearing

sumptuous and horrible bouquets, betook himself every morning, returning

home for dinner.

At last, on a dull and rainy morning in June, the marriage of

Mademoiselle Cormon and the Sieur du Bousquier took place at noon in the

parish church of Alencon, in sight of the whole town. The bridal pair

went from their own house to the mayor’s office, and from the mayor’s

office to the church in an open caleche, a magnificent vehicle for

Alencon, which du Bousquier had sent for secretly to Paris. The loss of

the old carriole was a species of calamity in the eyes of the community.

The harness-maker of the Porte de Seez bemoaned it, for he lost the

fifty francs a year which it cost in repairs. Alencon saw with alarm

the possibility of luxury being thus introduced into the town. Every

one feared a rise in the price of rents and provisions, and a coming

invasion of Parisian furniture. Some persons were sufficiently pricked

by curiosity to give ten sous to Jacquelin to allow them a close

inspection of the vehicle which threatened to upset the whole economy

of the region. A pair of horses, bought in Normandie, were also most

alarming.

“If we bought our own horses,” said the Ronceret circle, “we couldn’t

sell them to those who come to buy.”

Stupid as it was, this reasoning seemed sound; for surely such a course

would prevent the region from grasping the money of foreigners. In the

eyes of the provinces wealth consisted less in the rapid turning over

of money than in sterile accumulation. It may be mentioned here that

Penelope succumbed to a pleurisy which she acquired about six weeks

before the marriage; nothing could save her.

Madame Granson, Mariette, Madame du Coudrai, Madame du Ronceret, and

through them the whole town, remarked that Madame du Bousquier entered

the church _with her left foot_,--an omen all the more dreadful because

the term Left was beginning to acquire a political meaning. The priest

whose duty it was to read the opening formula opened his book by chance

at the De Profundis. Thus the marriage was accompanied by circumstances

so fateful, so alarming, so annihilating that no one dared to augur well

of it. Matters, in fact, went from bad to worse. There was no wedding

party; the married pair departed immediately for Prebaudet. Parisian

customs, said the community, were about to triumph over time-honored

provincial ways.

The marriage of Jacquelin and Josette now took place: it was gay; and

they were the only two persons in Alencon who refuted the sinister

prophecies relating to the marriage of their mistress.

Du Bousquier determined to use the proceeds of the sale of his late

residence in restoring and modernizing the hotel Cormon. He decided to

remain through two seasons at Prebaudet, and took the Abbe de Sponde

with them. This news spread terror through the town, where every

individual felt that du Bousquier was about to drag the community into

the fatal path of “comfort.” This fear increased when the inhabitants

of Alencon saw the bridegroom driving in from Prebaudet one morning to

inspect his works, in a fine tilbury drawn by a new horse, having Rene

at his side in livery. The first act of his administration had been to

place his wife’s savings on the Grand-Livre, which was then quoted at 67

fr. 50 cent. In the space of one year, during which he played constantly

for a rise, he made himself a personal fortune almost as considerable as

that of his wife.

But all these foreboding prophecies, these perturbing innovations, were

superseded and surpassed by an event connected with this marriage which

gave a still more fatal aspect to it.

On the very evening of the ceremony, Athanase and his mother were

sitting, after their dinner, over a little fire of fagots, which the

servant lighted usually at dessert.

“Well, we will go this evening to the du Roncerets’, inasmuch as we have

lost Mademoiselle Cormon,” said Madame Granson. “Heavens! how shall I

ever accustom myself to call her Madame du Bousquier! that name burns my

lips.”

Athanase looked at his mother with a constrained and melancholy air; he

could not smile; but he seemed to wish to welcome that naive sentiment

which soothed his wound, though it could not cure his anguish.

“Mamma,” he said, in the voice of his childhood, so tender was it, and

using the name he had abandoned for several years,--“my dear mamma, do

not let us go out just yet; it is so pleasant here before the fire.”

The mother heard, without comprehending, that supreme prayer of a mortal

sorrow.

“Yes, let us stay, my child,” she said. “I like much better to talk

with you and listen to your projects than to play at boston and lose my

money.”

“You are so handsome to-night I love to look at you. Besides, I am in

a current of ideas which harmonize with this poor little salon where we

have suffered so much.”

“And where we shall still suffer, my poor Athanase, until your works

succeed. For myself, I am trained to poverty; but you, my treasure! to

see your youth go by without a joy! nothing but toil for my poor boy

in life! That thought is like an illness to a mother; it tortures me

at night; it wakes me in the morning. O God! what have I done? for what

crime dost thou punish me thus?”

She left her sofa, took a little chair, and sat close to Athanase, so as

to lay her head on the bosom of her child. There is always the grace of

love in true motherhood. Athanase kissed her on the eyes, on her

gray hair, on her forehead, with the sacred desire of laying his soul

wherever he applied his lips.

“I shall never succeed,” he said, trying to deceive his mother as to the

fatal resolution he was revolving in his mind.

“Pooh! don’t get discouraged. As you often say, thought can do all

things. With ten bottles of ink, ten reams of paper, and his powerful

will, Luther upset all Europe. Well, you’ll make yourself famous; you

will do good things by the same means which he used to do evil things.

Haven’t you said so yourself? For my part, I listen to you; I understand

you a great deal more than you think I do,--for I still bear you in my

bosom, and your every thought still stirs me as your slightest motion

did in other days.”

“I shall never succeed here, mamma; and I don’t want you to witness the

sight of my struggles, my misery, my anguish. Oh, mother, let me leave

Alencon! I want to suffer away from you.”

“And I wish to be at your side,” replied his mother, proudly. “Suffer

without your mother!--that poor mother who would be your servant if

necessary; who will efface herself rather than injure you; your mother,

who will never shame you. No, no, Athanase; we must not part.”

Athanase clung to his mother with the ardor of a dying man who clings to

life.

“But I wish it, nevertheless. If not, you will lose me; this double

grief, yours and mine, is killing me. You would rather I lived than

died?”

Madame Granson looked at her son with a haggard eye.

“So this is what you have been brooding?” she said. “They told me right.

Do you really mean to go?”

“Yes.”

“You will not go without telling me; without warning me? You must have

an outfit and money. I have some louis sewn into my petticoat; I shall

give them to you.”

Athanase wept.

“That’s all I wanted to tell you,” he said. “Now I’ll take you to the du

Roncerets’. Come.”

The mother and the son went out. Athanase left his mother at the door of

the house where she intended to pass the evening. He looked long at the

light which came through the shutters; he clung closely to the wall, and

a frenzied joy came over him when he presently heard his mother say, “He

has great independence of heart.”

“Poor mother! I have deceived her,” he cried, as he made his way to the

Sarthe.

He reached the noble poplar beneath which he had meditated so much for

the last forty days, and where he had placed two heavy stones on which

he now sat down. He contemplated that beautiful nature lighted by the

moon; he reviewed once more the glorious future he had longed for;

he passed through towns that were stirred by his name; he heard the

applauding crowds; he breathed the incense of his fame; he adored that

life long dreamed of; radiant, he sprang to radiant triumphs; he raised

his stature; he evoked his illusions to bid them farewell in a last

Olympic feast. The magic had been potent for a moment; but now it

vanished forever. In that awful hour he clung to the beautiful tree

to which, as to a friend, he had attached himself; then he put the two

stones into the pockets of his overcoat, which he buttoned across his

breast. He had come intentionally without a hat. He now went to the deep

pool he had long selected, and glided into it resolutely, trying to make

as little noise as possible, and, in fact, making scarcely any.

When, at half-past nine o’clock, Madame Granson returned home, her

servant said nothing of Athanase, but gave her a letter. She opened it

and read these few words,--

“My good mother, I have departed; don’t be angry with me.”

“A pretty trick he has played me!” she thought. “And his linen! and the

money! Well, he will write to me, and then I’ll follow him. These

poor children think they are so much cleverer than their fathers and

mothers.”

And she went to bed in peace.

During the preceding morning the Sarthe had risen to a height foreseen

by the fisherman. These sudden rises of muddy water brought eels from

their various runlets. It so happened that a fisherman had spread his

net at the very place where poor Athanase had flung himself, believing

that no one would ever find him. About six o’clock in the morning the

man drew in his net, and with it the young body. The few friends of

the poor mother took every precaution in preparing her to receive

the dreadful remains. The news of this suicide made, as may well be

supposed, a great excitement in Alencon. The poor young man of genius

had no protector the night before, but on the morrow of his death a

thousand voices cried aloud, “I would have helped him.” It is so easy

and convenient to be charitable gratis!

The suicide was explained by the Chevalier de Valois. He revealed, in

a spirit of revenge, the artless, sincere, and genuine love of Athanase

for Mademoiselle Cormon. Madame Granson, enlightened by the chevalier,

remembered a thousand little circumstances which confirmed the

chevalier’s statement. The story then became touching, and many women

wept over it. Madame Granson’s grief was silent, concentrated, and

little understood. There are two forms of mourning for mothers. Often

the world can enter fully into the nature of their loss: their son,

admired, appreciated, young, perhaps handsome, with a noble path before

him, leading to fortune, possibly to fame, excites universal regret;

society joins in the grief, and alleviates while it magnifies it. But

there is another sorrow of mothers who alone know what their child was

really; who alone have received his smiles and observed the treasures of

a life too soon cut short. That sorrow hides its woe, the blackness

of which surpasses all other mourning; it cannot be described; happily

there are but few women whose heart-strings are thus severed.

Before Madame du Bousquier returned to town, Madame du Ronceret, one of

her good friends, had driven out to Prebaudet to fling this corpse upon

the roses of her joy, to show her the love she had ignored, and sweetly

shed a thousand drops of wormwood into the honey of her bridal month.

As Madame du Bousquier drove back to Alencon, she chanced to meet Madame

Granson at the corner of the rue Val-Noble. The glance of the mother,

dying of her grief, struck to the heart of the poor woman. A thousand

maledictions, a thousand flaming reproaches, were in that look: Madame

du Bousquier was horror-struck; that glance predicted and called down

evil upon her head.

The evening after the catastrophe, Madame Granson, one of the persons

most opposed to the rector of the town, and who had hitherto supported

the minister of Saint-Leonard, began to tremble as she thought of the

inflexible Catholic doctrines professed by her own party. After placing

her son’s body in its shroud with her own hands, thinking of the mother

of the Saviour, she went, with a soul convulsed by anguish, to the house

of the hated rector. There she found the modest priest in an outer room,

engaged in putting away the flax and yarns with which he supplied poor

women, in order that they might never be wholly out of work,--a form

of charity which saved many who were incapable of begging from actual

penury. The rector left his yarns and hastened to take Madame Granson

into his dining-room, where the wretched mother noticed, as she looked

at his supper, the frugal method of his own living.

“Monsieur l’abbe,” she said, “I have come to implore you--” She burst

into tears, unable to continue.

“I know what brings you,” replied the saintly man. “I must trust to you,

madame, and to your relation, Madame du Bousquier, to pacify Monseigneur

the Bishop at Seez. Yes, I will pray for your unhappy child; yes, I will

say the masses. But we must avoid all scandal, and give no opportunity

for evil-judging persons to assemble in the church. I alone, without

other clergy, at night--”

“Yes, yes, as you think best; if only he may lie in consecrated ground,”

said the poor mother, taking the priest’s hand and kissing it.

Toward midnight a coffin was clandestinely borne to the parish church by

four young men, comrades whom Athanase had liked the best. A few friends

of Madame Granson, women dressed in black, and veiled, were present; and

half a dozen other young men who had been somewhat intimate with this

lost genius. Four torches flickered on the coffin, which was covered

with crape. The rector, assisted by one discreet choirboy, said the

mortuary mass. Then the body of the suicide was noiselessly carried to a

corner of the cemetery, where a black wooden cross, without inscription,

was all that indicated its place hereafter to the mother. Athanase lived

and died in shadow. No voice was raised to blame the rector; the bishop

kept silence. The piety of the mother redeemed the impiety of the son’s

last act.

Some months later, the poor woman, half beside herself with grief, and

moved by one of those inexplicable thirsts which misery feels to steep

its lips in the bitter chalice, determined to see the spot where her son

was drowned. Her instinct may have told her that thoughts of his could

be recovered beneath that poplar; perhaps, too, she desired to see

what his eyes had seen for the last time. Some mothers would die of the

sight; others give themselves up to it in saintly adoration. Patient

anatomists of human nature cannot too often enunciate the truths before

which all educations, laws, and philosophical systems must give way.

Let us repeat continually: it is absurd to force sentiments into one

formula: appearing as they do, in each individual man, they combine with

the elements that form his nature and take his own physiognomy.

Madame Granson, as she stood on that fatal spot, saw a woman approach

it, who exclaimed,--

“Was it here?”

That woman wept as the mother wept. It was Suzanne. Arriving that

morning at the hotel du More, she had been told of the catastrophe. If

poor Athanase had been living, she meant to do as many noble souls,

who are moneyless, dream of doing, and as the rich never think of

doing,--she meant to have sent him several thousand francs, writing up

the envelope the words: “Money due to your father from a comrade who

makes restitution to you.” This tender scheme had been arranged by

Suzanne during her journey.

The courtesan caught sight of Madame Granson and moved rapidly away,

whispering as she passed her, “I loved him!”

Suzanne, faithful to her nature, did not leave Alencon on this occasion

without changing the orange-blossoms of the bride to rue. She was the

first to declare that Madame du Bousquier would never be anything but

Mademoiselle Cormon. With one stab of her tongue she revenged poor

Athanase and her dear chevalier.

Alencon now witnessed a suicide that was slower and quite differently

pitiful from that of poor Athanase, who was quickly forgotten by

society, which always makes haste to forget its dead. The poor Chevalier

de Valois died in life; his suicide was a daily occurrence for fourteen

years. Three months after the du Bousquier marriage society remarked,

not without astonishment, that the linen of the chevalier was frayed and

rusty, that his hair was irregularly combed and brushed. With a frowsy

head the Chevalier de Valois could no longer be said to exist! A few

of his ivory teeth deserted, though the keenest observers of human life

were unable to discover to what body they had hitherto belonged, whether

to a foreign legion or whether they were indigenous, vegetable or

animal; whether age had pulled them from the chevalier’s mouth, or

whether they were left forgotten in the drawer of his dressing-table.

The cravat was crooked, indifferent to elegance. The negroes’ heads grew

pale with dust and grease. The wrinkles of the face were blackened and

puckered; the skin became parchment. The nails, neglected, were often

seen, alas! with a black velvet edging. The waistcoat was tracked and

stained with droppings which spread upon its surface like autumn leaves.

The cotton in the ears was seldom changed. Sadness reigned upon that

brow, and slipped its yellowing tints into the depths of each furrow.

In short, the ruins, hitherto so cleverly hidden, now showed through the

cracks and crevices of that fine edifice, and proved the power of the

soul over the body; for the fair and dainty man, the cavalier, the young

blood, died when hope deserted him. Until then the nose of the chevalier

was ever delicate and nice; never had a damp black blotch, nor an amber

drop fall from it; but now that nose, smeared with tobacco around the

nostrils, degraded by the driblets which took advantage of the natural

gutter placed between itself and the upper lip,--that nose, which no

longer cared to seem agreeable, revealed the infinite pains which

the chevalier had formerly taken with his person, and made observers

comprehend, by the extent of its degradation, the greatness and

persistence of the man’s designs upon Mademoiselle Cormon.

Alas, too, the anecdotes went the way of the teeth; the clever sayings

grew rare. The appetite, however, remained; the old nobleman saved

nothing but his stomach from the wreck of his hopes; though he languidly

prepared his pinches of snuff, he ate alarming dinners. Perhaps you will

more fully understand the disaster that this marriage was to the mind

and heart of the chevalier when you learn that his intercourse with the

Princess Goritza became less frequent.

One day he appeared in Mademoiselle Armande’s salon with the calf of

his leg on the shin-bone. This bankruptcy of the graces was, I do assure

you, terrible, and struck all Alencon with horror. The late young man

had become an old one; this human being, who, by the breaking-down

of his spirit, had passed at once from fifty to ninety years of age,

frightened society. Besides, his secret was betrayed; he had waited and

watched for Mademoiselle Cormon; he had, like a patient hunter, adjusted

his aim for ten whole years, and finally had missed the game! In short,

the impotent Republic had won the day from Valiant Chivalry, and that,

too, under the Restoration! Form triumphed; mind was vanquished by

matter, diplomacy by insurrection. And, O final blow! a mortified

grisette revealed the secret of the chevalier’s mornings, and he now

passed for a libertine. The liberals cast at his door all the foundlings

hitherto attributed to du Bousquier. But the faubourg Saint-Germain of

Alencon accepted them proudly: it even said, “That poor chevalier, what

else could he do?” The faubourg pitied him, gathered him closer to their

circle, and brought back a few rare smiles to his face; but frightful

enmity was piled upon the head of du Bousquier. Eleven persons deserted

the Cormon salon, and passed to that of the d’Esgrignons.

The old maid’s marriage had a signal effect in defining the two parties

in Alencon. The salon d’Esgrignon represented the upper aristocracy

(the returning Troisvilles attached themselves to it); the Cormon salon

represented, under the clever influence of du Bousquier, that fatal

class of opinions which, without being truly liberal or resolutely

royalist, gave birth to the 221 on that famous day when the struggle

openly began between the most august, grandest, and only true power,

_royalty_, and the most false, most changeful, most oppressive of all

powers,--the power called _parliamentary_, which elective assemblies

exercise. The salon du Ronceret, secretly allied to the Cormon salon,

was boldly liberal.

The Abbe de Sponde, after his return from Prebaudet, bore many and

continual sufferings, which he kept within his breast, saying no word

of them to his niece. But to Mademoiselle Armande he opened his heart,

admitting that, folly for folly, he would much have preferred the

Chevalier de Valois to Monsieur du Bousquier. Never would the dear

chevalier have had the bad taste to contradict and oppose a poor old

man who had but a few days more to live; du Bousquier had destroyed

everything in the good old home. The abbe said, with scanty tears

moistening his aged eyes,--

“Mademoiselle, I haven’t even the little grove where I have walked for

fifty years. My beloved lindens are all cut down! At the moment of my

death the Republic appears to me more than ever under the form of a

horrible destruction of the Home.”

“You must pardon your niece,” said the Chevalier de Valois. “Republican

ideas are the first error of youth which seeks for liberty; later it

finds it the worst of despotisms,--that of an impotent canaille. Your

poor niece is punished where she sinned.”

“What will become of me in a house where naked women are painted on the

walls?” said the poor abbe. “Where shall I find other lindens beneath

which to read my breviary?”

Like Kant, who was unable to collect his thoughts after the fir-tree at

which he was accustomed to gaze while meditating was cut down, so the

poor abbe could never attain the ardor of his former prayers while

walking up and down the shadeless paths. Du Bousquier had planted an

English garden.

“It was best,” said Madame du Bousquier, without thinking so; but the

Abbe Couterier had authorized her to commit many wrongs to please her

husband.

These restorations destroyed all the venerable dignity, cordiality, and

patriarchal air of the old house. Like the Chevalier de Valois, whose

personal neglect might be called an abdication, the bourgeois dignity of

the Cormon salon no longer existed when it was turned to white and gold,

with mahogany ottomans covered in blue satin. The dining-room, adorned

in modern taste, was colder in tone than it used to be, and the dinners

were eaten with less appetite than formerly. Monsieur du Coudrai

declared that he felt his puns stick in his throat as he glanced at

the figures painted on the walls, which looked him out of countenance.

Externally, the house was still provincial; but internally everything

revealed the purveyor of the Directory and the bad taste of the

money-changer,--for instance, columns in stucco, glass doors, Greek

mouldings, meaningless outlines, all styles conglomerated, magnificence

out of place and out of season.

The town of Alencon gabbled for two weeks over this luxury, which seemed

unparalleled; but a few months later the community was proud of it, and

several rich manufacturers restored their houses and set up fine salons.

Modern furniture came into the town, and astral lamps were seen!

The Abbe de Sponde was among the first to perceive the secret

unhappiness this marriage now brought to the private life of his beloved

niece. The character of noble simplicity which had hitherto ruled their

lives was lost during the first winter, when du Bousquier gave two balls

every month. Oh, to hear violins and profane music at these worldly

entertainments in the sacred old house! The abbe prayed on his knees

while the revels lasted. Next the political system of the sober salon

was slowly perverted. The abbe fathomed du Bousquier; he shuddered at

his imperious tone; he saw the tears in his niece’s eyes when she felt

herself losing all control over her own property; for her husband now

left nothing in her hands but the management of the linen, the table,

and things of a kind which are the lot of women. Rose had no longer any

orders to give. Monsieur’s will was alone regarded by Jacquelin, now

become coachman, by Rene, the groom, and by the chef, who came from

Paris, Mariette being reduced to kitchen maid. Madame du Bousquier had

no one to rule but Josette. Who knows what it costs to relinquish the

delights of power? If the triumph of the will is one of the intoxicating

pleasures in the lives of great men, it is the ALL of life to narrow

minds. One must needs have been a minister dismissed from power to

comprehend the bitter pain which came upon Madame du Bousquier when she

found herself reduced to this absolute servitude. She often got into the

carriage against her will; she saw herself surrounded by servants who

were distasteful to her; she no longer had the handling of her dear

money,--she who had known herself free to spend money, and did not spend

it.

All imposed limits make the human being desire to go beyond them. The

keenest sufferings come from the thwarting of self-will. The beginning

of this state of things was, however, rose-colored. Every concession

made to marital authority was an effect of the love which the poor

woman felt for her husband. Du Bousquier behaved, in the first instance,

admirably to his wife: he was wise; he was excellent; he gave her the

best of reasons for each new encroachment. So for the first two years of

her marriage Madame du Bousquier appeared to be satisfied. She had that

deliberate, demure little air which distinguishes young women who have

married for love. The rush of blood to her head no longer tormented

her. This appearance of satisfaction routed the scoffers, contradicted

certain rumors about du Bousquier, and puzzled all observers of the

human heart. Rose-Marie-Victoire was so afraid that if she displeased

her husband or opposed him, she would lose his affection and be deprived

of his company, that she would willingly have sacrificed all to him,

even her uncle. Her silly little forms of pleasure deceived even the

poor abbe for a time, who endured his own trials all the better for

thinking that his niece was happy, after all.

Alencon at first thought the same. But there was one man more difficult

to deceive than the whole town put together. The Chevalier de Valois,

who had taken refuge on the Sacred Mount of the upper aristocracy, now

passed his life at the d’Esgrignons. He listened to the gossip and the

gabble, and he thought day and night upon his vengeance. He meant to

strike du Bousquier to the heart.

The poor abbe fully understood the baseness of this first and last

love of his niece; he shuddered as, little by little, he perceived the

hypocritical nature of his nephew and his treacherous manoeuvres. Though

du Bousquier restrained himself, as he thought of the abbe’s property,

and wished not to cause him vexation, it was his hand that dealt the

blow that sent the old priest to his grave. If you will interpret the

word _intolerance_ as _firmness of principle_, if you do not wish to

condemn in the catholic soul of the Abbe de Sponde the stoicism which

Walter Scott has made you admire in the puritan soul of Jeanie Deans’

father; if you are willing to recognize in the Roman Church the Potius

mori quam foedari that you admire in republican tenets,--you will

understand the sorrow of the Abbe de Sponde when he saw in his niece’s

salon the apostate priest, the renegade, the pervert, the heretic, that

enemy of the Church, the guilty taker of the Constitutional oath. Du

Bousquier, whose secret ambition was to lay down the law to the town,

wished, as a first proof of his power, to reconcile the minister of

Saint-Leonard with the rector of the parish, and he succeeded. His wife

thought he had accomplished a work of peace where the immovable abbe saw

only treachery. The bishop came to visit du Bousquier, and seemed glad

of the cessation of hostilities. The virtues of the Abbe Francois

had conquered prejudice, except that of the aged Roman Catholic, who

exclaimed with Cornelle, “Alas! what virtues do you make me hate!”

The abbe died when orthodoxy thus expired in the diocese.

In 1819, the property of the Abbe de Sponde increased Madame du

Bousquier’s income from real estate to twenty-five thousand francs

without counting Prebaudet or the house in the Val-Noble. About this

time du Bousquier returned to his wife the capital of her savings which

she had yielded to him; and he made her use it in purchasing lands

contiguous to Prebaudet, which made that domain one of the most

considerable in the department, for the estates of the Abbe de Sponde

also adjoined it. Du Bousquier thus passed for one of the richest men of

the department. This able man, the constant candidate of the liberals,

missing by seven or eight votes only in all the electoral battles fought

under the Restoration, and who ostensibly repudiated the liberals by

trying to be elected as a ministerial royalist (without ever being

able to conquer the aversion of the administration),--this rancorous

republican, mad with ambition, resolved to rival the royalism and

aristocracy of Alencon at the moment when they once more had the

upper hand. He strengthened himself with the Church by the deceitful

appearance of a well-feigned piety: he accompanied his wife to mass; he

gave money for the convents of the town; he assisted the congregation of

the Sacre-Coeur; he took sides with the clergy on all occasions when the

clergy came into collision with the town, the department, or the State.

Secretly supported by the liberals, protected by the Church, calling

himself a constitutional royalist, he kept beside the aristocracy of the

department in the one hope of ruining it,--and he did ruin it. Ever

on the watch for the faults and blunders of the nobility and

the government, he laid plans for his vengeance against the

“chateau-people,” and especially against the d’Esgrignons, in whose

bosom he was one day to thrust a poisoned dagger.

Among other benefits to the town he gave money liberally to revive the

manufacture of point d’Alencon; he renewed the trade in linens, and the

town had a factory. Inscribing himself thus upon the interests and heart

of the masses, by doing what the royalists did not do, du Bousquier did

not really risk a farthing. Backed by his fortune, he could afford

to wait results which enterprising persons who involve themselves are

forced to abandon to luckier successors.

Du Bousquier now posed as a banker. This miniature Lafitte was a partner

in all new enterprises, taking good security. He served himself while

apparently serving the interests of the community. He was the prime

mover of insurance companies, the protector of new enterprises for

public conveyance; he suggested petitions for asking the administration

for the necessary roads and bridges. Thus warned, the government

considered this action an encroachment of its own authority. A struggle

was begun injudiciously, for the good of the community compelled the

authorities to yield in the end. Du Bousquier embittered the provincial

nobility against the court nobility and the peerage; and finally he

brought about the shocking adhesion of a strong party of constitutional

royalists to the warfare sustained by the “Journal des Debats,” and M.

de Chateaubriand against the throne,--an ungrateful opposition based on

ignoble interests, which was one cause of the triumph of the bourgeoisie

and journalism in 1830.

Thus du Bousquier, in common with the class he represented, had the

satisfaction of beholding the funeral of royalty. The old republican,

smothered with masses, who for fifteen years had played that comedy to

satisfy his vendetta, himself threw down with his own hand the white

flag of the mayoralty to the applause of the multitude. No man in

France cast upon the new throne raised in August, 1830, a glance of more

intoxicated, joyous vengeance. The accession of the Younger Branch was

the triumph of the Revolution. To him the victory of the tricolor meant

the resurrection of Montagne, which this time should surely bring

the nobility down to the dust by means more certain than that of the

guillotine, because less violent. The peerage without heredity; the

National Guard, which puts on the same camp-bed the corner grocer

and the marquis; the abolition of the entails demanded by a bourgeois

lawyer; the Catholic Church deprived of its supremacy; and all the other

legislative inventions of August, 1830,--were to du Bousquier the wisest

possible application of the principles of 1793.

Since 1830 this man has been a receiver-general. He relied for his

advancement on his relations with the Duc d’Orleans, father of

Louis Philippe, and with Monsieur de Folmon, formerly steward to the

Duchess-dowager of Orleans. He receives about eighty thousand francs a

year. In the eyes of the people about him Monsieur du Bousquier is a

man of means,--a respectable man, steady in his principles, upright,

and obliging. Alencon owes to him its connection with the industrial

movement by which Brittany may possibly some day be joined to what is

popularly called modern civilization. Alencon, which up to 1816 could

boast of only two private carriages, saw, without amazement, in the

course of ten years, coupes, landaus, tilburies, and cabriolets rolling

through her streets. The burghers and the land-owners, alarmed at first

lest the price of everything should increase, recognized later that

this increase in the style of living had a contrary effect upon their

revenues. The prophetic remark of du Ronceret, “Du Bousquier is a very

strong man,” was adopted by the whole country-side.

But, unhappily for the wife, that saying has a double meaning. The

husband does not in any way resemble the public politician. This great

citizen, so liberal to the world about him, so kindly inspired with love

for his native place, is a despot in his own house, and utterly devoid

of conjugal affection. This man, so profoundly astute, hypocritical, and

sly; this Cromwell of the Val-Noble,--behaves in his home as he behaves

to the aristocracy, whom he caresses in hopes to throttle them. Like his

friend Bernadotte, he wears a velvet glove upon his iron hand. His

wife has given him no children. Suzanne’s remark and the chevalier’s

insinuations were therefore justified. But the liberal bourgeoisie,

the constitutional-royalist-bourgeoisie, the country-squires, the

magistracy, and the “church party” laid the blame on Madame du

Bousquier. “She was too old,” they said; “Monsieur du Bousquier had

married her too late. Besides, it was very lucky for the poor woman;

it was dangerous at her age to bear children!” When Madame du Bousquier

confided, weeping, her periodic despair to Mesdames du Coudrai and du

Ronceret, those ladies would reply,--

“But you are crazy, my dear; you don’t know what you are wishing for; a

child would be your death.”

Many men, whose hopes were fastened on du Bousquier’s triumph, sang his

praises to their wives, who in turn repeated them to the poor wife in

some such speech as this:--

“You are very lucky, dear, to have married such an able man; you’ll

escape the misery of women whose husbands are men without energy,

incapable of managing their property, or bringing up their children.”

“Your husband is making you queen of the department, my love. He’ll

never leave you embarrassed, not he! Why, he leads all Alencon.”

“But I wish,” said the poor wife, “that he gave less time to the public

and--”

“You are hard to please, my dear Madame du Bousquier. I assure you that

all the women in town envy you your husband.”

Misjudged by society, which began by blaming her, the pious woman found

ample opportunity in her home to display her virtues. She lived in

tears, but she never ceased to present to others a placid face. To so

Christian a soul a certain thought which pecked forever at her heart was

a crime: “I loved the Chevalier de Valois,” it said; “but I have married

du Bousquier.” The love of poor Athanase Granson also rose like a

phantom of remorse, and pursued her even in her dreams. The death of her

uncle, whose griefs at the last burst forth, made her life still more

sorrowful; for she now felt the suffering her uncle must have endured

in witnessing the change of political and religious opinion in the

old house. Sorrow often falls like a thunderbolt, as it did on Madame

Granson; but in this old maid it slowly spread like a drop of oil, which

never leaves the stuff that slowly imbibes it.

The Chevalier de Valois was the malicious manipulator who brought about

the crowning misfortune of Madame du Bousquier’s life. His heart was set

on undeceiving her pious simplicity; for the chevalier, expert in love,

divined du Bousquier, the married man, as he had divined du Bousquier,

the bachelor. But the wary republican was difficult of attack. His salon

was, of course, closed to the Chevalier de Valois, as to all those who,

in the early days of his marriage, had slighted the Cormon mansion. He

was, moreover, impervious to ridicule; he possessed a vast fortune;

he reigned in Alencon; he cared as little for his wife as Richard III.

cared for the dead horse which had helped him win a battle. To please

her husband, Madame du Bousquier had broken off relations with the

d’Esgrignon household, where she went no longer, except that sometimes

when her husband left her during his trips to Paris, she would pay a

brief visit to Mademoiselle Armande.

About three years after her marriage, at the time of the Abbe de

Sponde’s death, Mademoiselle Armande joined Madame du Bousquier as they

were leaving Saint-Leonard’s, where they had gone to hear a requiem said

for him. The generous demoiselle thought that on this occasion she owed

her sympathy to the niece in trouble. They walked together, talking of

the dear deceased, until they reached the forbidden house, into which

Mademoiselle Armande enticed Madame du Bousquier by the charm of her

manner and conversation. The poor desolate woman was glad to talk of her

uncle with one whom he truly loved. Moreover, she wanted to receive the

condolences of the old marquis, whom she had not seen for nearly

three years. It was half-past one o’clock, and she found at the hotel

d’Esgrignon the Chevalier de Valois, who had come to dinner. As he bowed

to her, he took her by the hands.

“Well, dear, virtuous, and beloved lady,” he said, in a tone of emotion,

“we have lost our sainted friend; we share your grief. Yes, your loss is

as keenly felt here as in your own home,--more so,” he added, alluding

to du Bousquier.

After a few more words of funeral oration, in which all present spoke

from the heart, the chevalier took Madame du Bousquier’s arm, and,

gallantly placing it within his own, pressed it adoringly as he led her

to the recess of a window.

“Are you happy?” he said in a fatherly voice.

“Yes,” she said, dropping her eyes.

Hearing that “Yes,” Madame de Troisville, the daughter of the Princess

Scherbellof, and the old Marquise de Casteran came up and joined the

chevalier, together with Mademoiselle Armande. They all went to walk in

the garden until dinner was served, without any perception on the part

of Madame du Bousquier that a little conspiracy was afoot. “We have her!

now let us find out the secret of the case,” were the words written in

the eyes of all present.

“To make your happiness complete,” said Mademoiselle Armande, “you ought

to have children,--a fine lad like my nephew--”

Tears seemed to start in Madame du Bousquier’s eyes.

“I have heard it said that you were the one to blame in the matter, and

that you feared the dangers of a pregnancy,” said the chevalier.

“I!” she said artlessly. “I would buy a child with a hundred years of

purgatory if I could.”

On the question thus started a discussion arose, conducted by Madame

de Troisville and the old Marquise de Casteran with such delicacy and

adroitness that the poor victim revealed, without being aware of it,

the secrets of her house. Mademoiselle Armande had taken the chevalier’s

arm, and walked away so as to leave the three women free to discuss

wedlock. Madame du Bousquier was then enlightened on the various

deceptions of her marriage; and as she was still the same simpleton she

had always been, she amused her advisers by delightful naivetes.

Although at first the deceptive marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon made a

laugh throughout the town, which was soon initiated into the story of

the case, before long Madame du Bousquier won the esteem and sympathy

of all the women. The fact that Mademoiselle Cormon had flung herself

headlong into marriage without succeeding in being married, made

everybody laugh at her; but when they learned the exceptional position

in which the sternness of her religious principles placed her, all the

world admired her. “That poor Madame du Bousquier” took the place of

“That good Mademoiselle Cormon.”

Thus the chevalier contrived to render du Bousquier both ridiculous and

odious for a time; but ridicule ends by weakening; when all had said

their say about him, the gossip died out. Besides, at fifty-seven years

of age the dumb republican seemed to many people to have a right to

retire. This affair, however, envenomed the hatred which du Bousquier

already bore to the house of Esgrignon to such a degree that it made

him pitiless when the day of vengeance came. [See “The Gallery of

Antiquities.”] Madame du Bousquier received orders never again to set

foot into that house. By way of reprisals upon the chevalier for the

trick thus played him, du Bousquier, who had just created the journal

called the “Courrier de l’Orne,” caused the following notice to be

inserted in it:--

“Bonds to the amount of one thousand francs a year will be paid to

any person who can prove the existence of one Monsieur de

Pombreton before, during, or after the Emigration.”

Although her marriage was essentially negative, Madame du Bousquier saw

some advantages in it: was it not better to interest herself in the

most remarkable man in the town than to live alone? Du Bousquier was

preferable to a dog, or cat, or those canaries that spinsters love. He

showed for his wife a sentiment more real and less selfish than that

which is felt by servants, confessors, and hopeful heirs. Later in life

she came to consider her husband as the instrument of divine wrath; for

she then saw innumerable sins in her former desires for marriage; she

regarded herself as justly punished for the sorrow she had brought on

Madame Granson, and for the hastened death of her uncle. Obedient

to that religion which commands us to kiss the rod with which the

punishment is inflicted, she praised her husband, and publicly approved

him. But in the confessional, or at night, when praying, she wept often,

imploring God’s forgiveness for the apostasy of the man who thought the

contrary of what he professed, and who desired the destruction of the

aristocracy and the Church,--the two religions of the house of Cormon.

With all her feelings bruised and immolated within her, compelled by

duty to make her husband happy, attached to him by a certain indefinable

affection, born, perhaps, of habit, her life became one perpetual

contradiction. She had married a man whose conduct and opinions she

hated, but whom she was bound to care for with dutiful tenderness.

Often she walked with the angels when du Bousquier ate her preserves or

thought the dinner good. She watched to see that his slightest wish was

satisfied. If he tore off the cover of his newspaper and left it on a

table, instead of throwing it away, she would say:--

“Rene, leave that where it is; monsieur did not place it there without

intention.”

If du Bousquier had a journey to take, she was anxious about his

trunk, his linen; she took the most minute precautions for his material

benefit. If he went to Prebaudet, she consulted the barometer the

evening before to know if the weather would be fine. She watched for

his will in his eyes, like a dog which hears and sees its master while

sleeping. When the stout du Bousquier, touched by this scrupulous love,

would take her round the waist and kiss her forehead, saying, “What a

good woman you are!” tears of pleasure would come into the eyes of the

poor creature. It is probably that du Bousquier felt himself obliged

to make certain concessions which obtained for him the respect

of Rose-Marie-Victoire; for Catholic virtue does not require a

dissimulation as complete as that of Madame du Bousquier. Often the

good saint sat mutely by and listened to the hatred of men who concealed

themselves under the cloak of constitutional royalists. She shuddered

as she foresaw the ruin of the Church. Occasionally she risked a stupid

word, an observation which du Bousquier cut short with a glance.

The worries of such an existence ended by stupefying Madame du

Bousquier, who found it easier and also more dignified to concentrate

her intelligence on her own thoughts and resign herself to lead a life

that was purely animal. She then adopted the submission of a slave, and

regarded it as a meritorious deed to accept the degradation in which her

husband placed her. The fulfilment of his will never once caused her to

murmur. The timid sheep went henceforth in the way the shepherd led her;

she gave herself up to the severest religious practices, and thought no

more of Satan and his works and vanities. Thus she presented to the

eyes of the world a union of all Christian virtues; and du Bousquier

was certainly one of the luckiest men in the kingdom of France and of

Navarre.

“She will be a simpleton to her last breath,” said the former collector,

who, however, dined with her twice a week.

This history would be strangely incomplete if no mention were made of

the coincidence of the Chevalier de Valois’s death occurring at the same

time as that of Suzanne’s mother. The chevalier died with the monarchy,

in August, 1830. He had joined the cortege of Charles X. at Nonancourt,

and piously escorted it to Cherbourg with the Troisvilles, Casterans,

d’Esgrignons, Verneuils, etc. The old gentleman had taken with him fifty

thousand francs,--the sum to which his savings then amounted. He offered

them to one of the faithful friends of the king for transmission to his

master, speaking of his approaching death, and declaring that the money

came originally from the goodness of the king, and, moreover, that the

property of the last of the Valois belonged of right to the crown. It is

not known whether the fervor of his zeal conquered the reluctance of the

Bourbon, who abandoned his fine kingdom of France without carrying away

with him a farthing, and who ought to have been touched by the devotion

of the chevalier. It is certain, however, that Cesarine, the residuary

legate of the old man, received from his estate only six hundred francs

a year. The chevalier returned to Alencon, cruelly weakened by grief and

by fatigue; he died on the very day when Charles X. arrived on a foreign

shore.

Madame du Val-Noble and her protector, who was just then afraid of

the vengeance of the liberal party, were glad of a pretext to remain

incognito in the village where Suzanne’s mother died. At the sale of the

chevalier’s effects, which took place at that time, Suzanne, anxious to

obtain a souvenir of her first and last friend, pushed up the price

of the famous snuff-box, which was finally knocked down to her for a

thousand francs. The portrait of the Princess Goritza was alone worth

that sum. Two years later, a young dandy, who was making a collection

of the fine snuff-boxes of the last century, obtained from Madame du

Val-Noble the chevalier’s treasure. The charming confidant of many a

love and the pleasure of an old age is now on exhibition in a species

of private museum. If the dead could know what happens after them, the

chevalier’s head would surely blush upon its left cheek.

If this history has no other effect than to inspire the possessors of

precious relics with holy fear, and induce them to make codicils to

secure these touching souvenirs of joys that are no more by bequeathing

them to loving hands, it will have done an immense service to the

chivalrous and romantic portion of the community; but it does, in truth,

contain a far higher moral. Does it not show the necessity for a

new species of education? Does it not invoke, from the enlightened

solicitude of the ministers of Public Instruction, the creation of

chairs of anthropology,--a science in which Germany outstrips us? Modern

myths are even less understood than ancient ones, harried as we are with

myths. Myths are pressing us from every point; they serve all theories,

they explain all questions. They are, according to human ideas, the

torches of history; they would save empires from revolution if only the

professors of history would force the explanations they give into the

mind of the provincial masses. If Mademoiselle Cormon had been a reader

or a student, and if there had existed in the department of the Orne a

professor of anthropology, or even had she read Ariosto, the frightful

disasters of her conjugal life would never have occurred. She would

probably have known why the Italian poet makes Angelica prefer Medoro,

who was a blond Chevalier de Valois, to Orlando, whose mare was dead,

and who knew no better than to fly into a passion. Is not Medoro the

mythic form for all courtiers of feminine royalty, and Orlando the myth

of disorderly, furious, and impotent revolutions, which destroy but

cannot produce? We publish, but without assuming any responsibility for

it, this opinion of a pupil of Monsieur Ballanche.

No information has reached us as to the fate of the negroes’ heads in

diamonds. You may see Madame du Val-Noble every evening at the Opera.

Thanks to the education given her by the Chevalier de Valois, she has

almost the air of a well-bred woman.

Madame du Bousquier still lives; is not that as much as to say she still

suffers? After reaching the age of sixty--the period at which women

allow themselves to make confessions--she said confidentially to Madame

du Coudrai, that she had never been able to endure the idea of dying an

old maid.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

(Note: The Collection of Antiquities is a companion piece to The Old

Maid. In other Addendum appearances they are combined under the title of

The Jealousies of a Country Town.)

Bordin

The Gondreville Mystery

The Seamy Side of History

The Commission in Lunacy

Bousquier, Du (or Du Croisier or Du Bourguier)

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

The Middle Classes

Bousquier, Madame du (du Croisier) (Mlle. Cormon)

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

Casteran, De

The Chouans

The Seamy Side of History

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

Beatrix

The Peasantry

Chesnel (or Choisnel)

The Seamy Side of History

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

Coudrai, Du

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

Esgrignon, Charles-Marie-Victor-Ange-Carol, Marquis d’ (or Des Grignons)

The Chouans

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

Esgrignon, Marie-Armande-Claire d’

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

Gaillard, Madame Theodore (Suzanne)

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Bachelor’s Establishment

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Beatrix

The Unconscious Humorists

Granson, Athanase

The Government Clerks (mentioned only)

Lenoncourt, Duc de

The Lily of the Valley

Cesar Birotteau

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

The Gondreville Mystery

Beatrix

Navarreins, Duc de

Colonel Chabert

The Muse of the Department

The Thirteen

The Peasantry

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

The Country Parson

The Magic Skin

The Gondreville Mystery

The Secrets of a Princess

Cousin Betty

Pombreton, Marquis de

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Ronceret, Du

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

Beatrix

Ronceret, Madame Du

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

Simeuse, Admiral de

Beatrix

The Gondreville Mystery

Troisville, Guibelin, Vicomte de

The Seamy Side of History

The Chouans

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

The Peasantry

Valois, Chevalier de

The Chouans

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

Verneuil, Duc de

The Chouans

The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)