CHAPTER III

Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers

Note: This eBook contains two existing Project Gutenberg eBooks,

An Old Maid (EBook #1352), Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley,

and The Collection of Antiquities (EBook #1405) Translated By Ellen

Marriage; these are combined into their original collected form

and includes an introduction by George Saintsbury.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC

INTRODUCTION

The two stories of /Les Rivalites/ are more closely connected than it

was always Balzac's habit to connect the tales which he united under a

common heading. Not only are both devoted to the society of Alencon--a

town and neighborhood to which he had evidently strong, though it is

not clearly known what, attractions--not only is the Chevalier de

Valois a notable figure in each; but the community, imparted by the

elaborate study of the old /noblesse/ in each case, is even greater

than either of these ties could give. Indeed, if instead of /Les

Rivalites/ the author had chosen some label indicating the study of

the /noblesse qui s'en va/, it might almost have been preferable. He

did not, however; and though in a man who so constantly changed his

titles and his arrangements the actual ones are not excessively

authoritative, they have authority.

/La Vieille Fille/, despite a certain tone of levity--which, to do

Balzac justice, is not common with him, and which is rather hard upon

the poor heroine--is one of the best and liveliest things he ever did.

The opening picture of the Chevalier, though, like other things of its

author's, especially in his overtures, liable to the charge of being

elaborated a little too much, is one of the very best things of its

kind, and is a sort of /locus classicus/ for its subject. The whole

picture of country town society is about as good as it can be; and the

only blot that I know is to be found in the sentimental Athanase, who

is not quite within Balzac's province, extensive as that province is.

If we compare Mr. Augustus Moddle, we shall see one of the not too

numerous instances in which Dickens has a clear advantage over Balzac;

and if it be retorted that Balzac's object was not to present a merely

ridiculous object, the rejoinder is not very far to seek. Such a

character, with such a fate as Balzac has assigned to him, must be

either humorously grotesque or unfeignedly pathetic, and Balzac has

not quite made Athanase either.

He is, however, if he is a failure, about the only failure in the

book, and he is atoned for by a whole bundle of successes. Of the

Chevalier, little more need be said. Balzac, it must be remembered,

was the oldest novelist of distinct genius who had the opportunity of

delineating the survivors of the /ancien regime/ from the life, and

directly. It is certain--even if we hesitate at believing him quite so

familiar with all the classes of higher society from the /Faubourg/

downwards, as he would have us believe him--that he saw something of

most of them, and his genius was unquestionably of the kind to which a

mere thumbnail study, a mere passing view, suffices for the

acquisition of a thorough working knowledge of the object. In this

case the Chevalier has served, and not improperly served, as the

original of a thousand after-studies. His rival, less carefully

projected, is also perhaps a little less alive. Again, Balzac was old

enough to have foregathered with many men of the Revolution. But the

most characteristic of them were not long-lived, the "little window"

and other things having had a bad effect on them; and most of those

who survived had, by the time he was old enough to take much notice,

gone through metamorphoses of Bonapartism, Constitutional Liberalism,

and what not. But still du Bousquier /is/ alive, as well as all the

minor assistants and spectators in the battle for the old maid's hand.

Suzanne, that tactful and graceless Suzanne to whom we are introduced

first of all, is very much alive; and for all her gracelessness, not

at all disagreeable. I am only sorry that she sold the counterfeit

presentment of the Princess Goritza after all.

/Le Cabinet des Antiques/, in its Alencon scenes, is a worthy pendant

to /La Vieille Fille/. The old-world honor of the Marquis d'Esgrignon,

the thankless sacrifices of Armande, the /prisca fides/ of Maitre

Chesnel, present pictures for which, out of Balzac, we can look only

in Jules Sandeau, and which in Sandeau, though they are presented with

a more poetical touch, have less masterly outline than here. One takes

--or, at least, I take--less interest in the ignoble intrigues of the

other side, except in so far as they menace the fortunes of a worthy

house unworthily represented. Victurnien d'Esgrignon, like his

companion Savinien de Portenduere (who, however, is, in every respect,

a very much better fellow), does not argue in Balzac any high opinion

of the /fils de famille/. He is, in fact, an extremely feeble youth,

who does not seem to have got much real satisfaction out of the

escapades, for which he risked not merely his family's fortune, but

his own honor, and who would seem to have been a rake, not from

natural taste and spirit and relish, but because it seemed to him to

be the proper thing to be. But the beginnings of the fortune of the

aspiring and intriguing Camusots are admirably painted; and Madame de

Maufrigneuse, that rather doubtful divinity, who appears so frequently

in Balzac, here acts the /dea ex machina/ with considerable effect.

And we end well (as we generally do when Blondet, whom Balzac seems

more than once to adopt as mask, is the narrator), in the last glimpse

of Mlle. Armande left alone with the remains of her beauty, the ruins

of everything dear to her--and God.

These two stories were written at no long interval, yet, for some

reason or other, Balzac did not at once unite them. /La Vieille Fille/

first appeared in November and December 1836 in the /Presse/, and was

inserted next year in the /Scenes de la Vie de Province/. It had three

chapter divisions. The second part did not appear all at once. Its

first installment, under the general title, came out in the /Chronique

de Paris/ even before the /Vieille Fille/ appeared in March 1836; the

completion was not published (under the title of /Les Rivalites en

Province/) till the autumn of 1838, when the /Constitutionnel/ served

as its vehicle. There were eight chapter divisions in this latter. The

whole of the /Cabinet/ was published in book form (with /Gambara/ to

follow it) in 1839. There were some changes here; and the divisions

were abolished when the whole book in 1844 entered the /Comedie/. One

of the greatest mistakes which, in my humble judgment, the organizers

of the /edition definitive/ have made, is their adoption of Balzac's

never executed separation of the pair and deletion of the excellent

joint-title /Les Rivalites/.

George Saintsbury

I

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 send 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 III

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.