Love is an utterer of false coin; he is always at work transforming common copper into gold louis; sometimes, also, he makes his seeming halfpence of fine gold.
“Well, Athanase, will you promise me?”
The final phrase struck on the young man’s ear; he woke with a start from a blissful dream.
“What, mademoiselle?” returned he.
Mlle. Cormon rose abruptly and glanced across at du Bousquier. At that moment he looked like the brawny fabulous deity whose likeness you behold upon Republican three-franc pieces. She went over to Mme. Granson and said in a confidential tone:
“Your son is weak in his intellect, my poor friend. That lyceum has been the ruin of him,” she added, recollecting how the Chevalier de Valois had insisted on the bad education given in those institutions.
Here was a thunderbolt! Poor Athanase had had his chance of flinging fire upon the dried stems heaped up in the old maid’s heart, and he had not known it! If he had but listened to her, he might have made her understand; for in Mlle. Cormon’s present highly-wrought mood a word would have been enough, but the very force of the stupefying cravings of lovesick youth had spoiled his chances; so sometimes a child full of life kills himself through ignorance.
“What can you have been saying to Mlle. Cormon?” asked his mother.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?—I will have this cleared up,” she said, and put off serious business to the morrow; du Bousquier was hopelessly lost, she thought, and the speech troubled her very little.
Soon the four card-tables received their complement of players. Four persons sat down to piquet, the most expensive amusement of the evening, over which a good deal of money changed hands. M. Choisnel, the attorney for the crown, and a couple of ladies went to the red-lacquered cabinet for a game of trictrac. The candles in the wall-sconces were lighted, and then the flower of Mlle. Cormon’s set blossomed out about the fire, on the settees, and about the tables. Each new couple, on entering the room, made the same remark to Mlle. Cormon, “So you are going to the Prébaudet tomorrow?”
“Yes, I really must,” she said, in answer to each.
All through the evening the hostess wore a preoccupied air. Mme. Granson was the first to see that she was not at all like herself. Mlle. Cormon was thinking.
“What are you thinking about, cousin?” Mme. Granson asked at last, finding her sitting in the boudoir.
“I am thinking of that poor girl. Am I not patroness of the Maternity Society? I will go now to find ten crowns for you.”
“Ten crowns!” exclaimed Mme. Granson. “Why, you have never given so much to anyone before!”
“But, my dear, it is so natural to have a child.”
This improper cry from the heart struck the treasurer of the Maternity Society dumb from sheer astonishment. Du Bousquier had actually gone up in Mlle. Cormon’s opinion!
“Really,” began Mme. Granson, “du Bousquier is not merely a monster—he is a villain into the bargain. When a man has spoiled somebody else’s life, it is his duty surely to make amends. It should be his part rather than ours to rescue this young person; and when all comes to all, she is a bad girl, it seems to me, for there are better men in Alençon than that cynic of a du Bousquier. A girl must be shameless indeed to have anything to do with him.”
“Cynic? Your son, dear, teaches you Latin words that are quite beyond me. Certainly I do not want to make excuses for M. du Bousquier; but explain to me why it is immoral for a woman to prefer one man to another?”
“Dear cousin, suppose now that you were to marry my Athanase; there would be nothing but what was very natural in that. He is young and good-looking; he has a future before him; Alençon will be proud of him some day. But—everyone would think that you took such a young man as your husband for the sake of greater conjugal felicity. Slanderous tongues would say that you were making a sufficient provision of bliss for yourself. There would be jealous women to bring charges of depravity against you. But what would it matter to you? You would be dearly loved—loved sincerely. If Athanase seemed to you to be weak of intellect, my dear, it is because he has too many ideas. Extremes meet. He is as clean in his life as a girl of fifteen; he has not wallowed in the pollutions of Paris. … Well, now, change the terms, as my poor husband used to say. It is relatively just the same situation as du Bousquier’s and Suzanne’s. But what would be slander in your case is true in every way of du Bousquier. Now do you understand?”
“No more than if you were talking Greek,” said Rose Cormon, opening wide eyes and exerting all the powers of her understanding.
“Well, then, cousin, since one must put dots on all the i’s, it is quite out of the question that Suzanne should love du Bousquier. And when the heart counts for nothing in such an affair—”
“Why, really, cousin, how should people love if not with their hearts?”
At this Mme. Granson thought within herself, as the Chevalier had thought:
“The poor cousin is too innocent by far. This goes beyond the permissible—” Aloud she said, “Dear girl, it seems to me that a child is not conceived of spirit alone.”
“Why, yes, dear, for the Holy Virgin—”
“But, my dear, good girl, du Bousquier is not the Holy Ghost.”
“That is true,” returned the spinster; “he is a man—a man dangerous enough for his friends to recommend him strongly to marry.”
“You, cousin, might bring that about—”
“Oh, how?” cried the spinster, with a glow of Christian charity.
“Decline to receive him until he takes a wife. For the sake of religion and morality, you ought to make an example of him under the circumstances.”
“We will talk of this again, dear
