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.