Supported by these mental calculations. Mlle. Cormon maintained the severity of her attitude for the first few months of the year; but the men that came back to the town were all either too old or too young, or their characters were too bad, or their opinions too Bonapartist, or their station in life was incompatible with her position, fortune, and habits. The case grew more and more desperate every day. Officers high in the service had used their advantages under Napoleon to marry, and these gentlemen now became Royalists for the sake of their families. In vain had she put up prayers to heaven to send her a husband that she might be happy in Christian fashion; it was written, no doubt, that she should die virgin and martyr, for not a single likely-looking man presented himself.
In the course of conversation in her drawing-room of an evening, the frequenters of the house kept the police register under tolerably strict supervision; no one could arrive in Alençon but they informed themselves at once as to the newcomer’s mode of life, quality, and fortune. But, at the same time, Alençon is not a town to attract many strangers; it is not on the highroad to any larger city; there are no chance arrivals; naval officers on their way to Brest do not so much as stop in the place.
Poor Mlle. Cormon at last comprehended that her choice was reduced to the natives. At times her eyes took an almost fierce expression, to which the Chevalier would respond with a keen glance at her as he drew out his snuffbox to gaze at the Princess Goritza. M. de Valois knew that in feminine jurisprudence, fidelity to an old love is a guarantee for the new. But Mlle. Cormon, it cannot be denied, was not very intelligent. His snuffbox strategy was wasted upon her.
She redoubled her watchfulness, the better to combat the “evil one,” and with devout rigidness and the sternest principles she consigned her cruel sufferings to the secret places of her life.
At night, when she was alone, she thought of her lost youth, of her faded bloom, of the thwarted instincts of her nature; and while she laid her passionate longings at the foot of the Cross, together with all the poetry doomed to remain pent within her, she vowed inwardly to take the first man that was willing to marry her, just as he was, without putting him to any proof whatsoever. Sounding her own dispositions, after a series of vigils, each more trying than the last, in her own mind she went so far as to espouse a sublieutenant, a tobacco-smoker to boot; nay, he was even head over ears in debt. Him she proposed to transform with care, submission, and gentleness into a pattern for mankind. But only in the silence of night could she plan these imaginary marriages, in which she amused herself with playing the sublime part of guardian angel; with morning, if Josette found her mistress’ bedclothes turned topsy-turvy, mademoiselle had recovered her dignity; with morning, after breakfast, she would have nothing less than a solid landowner, a well-preserved man of forty—a young man, as you may say.
The Abbé de Sponde was incapable of giving his niece assistance of any sort in schemes for marriage. The good man, aged seventy or thereabouts, referred all the calamities of the Revolution to the design of a Providence prompt to punish a dissolute Church. For which reasons M. de Sponde had long since entered upon a deserted path to heaven, the way trodden by the hermits of old. He led an ascetic life, simply, unobtrusively, hiding his deeds of charity, his constant prayer and fasting from all other eyes. Necessity was laid upon all priests, he thought, to do as he did; he preached by example, turning a serene and smiling face upon the world, while he completely cut himself off from worldly interests. All his thoughts were given to the afflicted, to the needs of the Church, and the saving of his own soul. He left the management of his property to his niece. She paid over his yearly income to him, and, after a slight deduction for his maintenance, the whole of it went in private almsgiving or in donations to the Church.
All the Abbé’s affections were centered upon his niece, and she looked upon him as a father. He was a somewhat absentminded father, however, without the remotest conception of the rebellion of the flesh; a father who gave thanks to God for maintaining his beloved daughter in a state of virginity; for from his youth up he had held, with St. John Chrysostom, “that virginity is as much above the estate of marriage as the angels are above man.”
Mlle. Cormon was accustomed to look up to her uncle; she did not venture to confide her wishes for a change of condition to him; and he, good man, on his side was accustomed to the ways of the house, and perhaps might not have relished the introduction of a master into it. Absorbed in thoughts of the distress which he relieved, or lost in fathomless inner depths of prayer, he was often unconscious of what was going on about him; frequenters of the house set this down to absentmindedness; but while he said little, his silence was neither unsociable nor ungenial. A tall, spare, grave, and solemn man, his face told of kindly feeling and a great inward peace. His presence in the house seemed as it were to consecrate it. The Abbé entertained a strong liking for that elderly sceptic the Chevalier de Valois. Far apart as their lives were, the two grand wrecks of the eighteenth century clergy and noblesse recognized each other by generic signs and tokens; and the Chevalier, for that matter, could converse with unction with the Abbé, just as he talked like a father with his grisettes.
Some may think that Mlle. Cormon would leave no means untried to gain
