“But how about Penelope?” the woman began imprudently. Mlle. Cormon’s eyes shot sparks for the first and last time in her life.
“It is always Penelope! Penelope this, Penelope that! Is Penelope mistress here?”
“She is all of a lather, and she has not been fed.”
“Eh! and if she dies, let her die!—” cried Mlle. Cormon—“so long as I am married,” she added in her own mind.
Josette stood stockstill a moment in amazement, such a remark was tantamount to murder; then, at a sign from her mistress, she dashed headlong down the steps into the yard.
“Mademoiselle is possessed, Jacquelin!” were Josette’s first words.
And in this way, everything that occurred throughout the day led up to the great climax which was to change the whole course of Mlle. Cormon’s life. The town was already turned upside down by five aggravating circumstances which attended the lady’s sudden return, to wit—the pouring rain; Penelope’s panting pace and sunk flanks covered with foam; the earliness of the hour; the untidy bundles; and the spinster’s strange, sacred looks. But when Mariette invaded the market to carry off everything that she could lay her hands on; when Jacquelin went to inquire for a bedstead of the principal upholsterer in the Rue Porte de Séez, close by the church; here, indeed, was material on which to build the gravest conjecture! The strange event was discussed on the Parade and the Promenade; everyone was full of it, not excepting Mlle. Armande, on whom the Chevalier de Valois happened to be calling at the time.
Only two days ago Alençon had been stirred to its depths by occurrences of such capital importance, that worthy matrons were still exclaiming that it was like the end of the world! And now, this last news was summed up in all houses by the inquiry, “What can be happening at the Cormons’?”
The Abbé de Sponde, skilfully questioned when he emerged from St. Leonard’s to take a walk with the Abbé Couturier along the Parade, made reply in the simplicity of his heart, to the effect that he expected a visit from the Vicomte de Troisville, who had been in the Russian service during the Emigration, and now was coming back to settle in Alençon. A kind of labial telegraph, at work that afternoon between two and five o’clock, informed all the inhabitants of Alençon that Mlle. Cormon at last had found herself a husband by advertisement. She was going to marry the Vicomte de Troisville. Some said that “Moreau was at work on a bedstead already.” In some places the bed was six feet long. It was only four feet at Mme. Granson’s house in the Rue du Bercail. At President du Ronceret’s, where du Bousquier was dining, it dwindled into a sofa. The tradespeople said that it cost eleven hundred francs. It was generally thought that this was like counting your chickens before they were hatched.
Further away, it was said that the price of carp had gone up. Mariette had swooped down upon the market and created a general scarcity. Penelope had dropped down at the upper end of the Rue Saint-Blaise; the death was called in question at the receiver-general’s; nevertheless at the prefecture it was known for a fact that the animal fell dead just as she turned in at the gate of the Hôtel Cormon, so swiftly had the old maid come down upon her prey. The saddler at the corner of the Rue de Séez, in his anxiety to know the truth about Penelope, was hardy enough to call in to ask if anything had happened to Mlle. Cormon’s chaise. Then from the utmost end of the Rue Saint-Blaise, to the furthermost parts of the Rue du Bercail, it was known that, thanks to Jacquelin’s care, Penelope, dumb victim of her mistress’ intemperate haste, was still alive, but she seemed to be in a bad way.
All along the Brittany road the Vicomte de Troisville was a penniless younger son, for the domains of Perche belonged to the Marquis of that ilk, a peer of France with two children. The match was a lucky thing for an impoverished émigré; as for the Vicomte himself, that was Mlle. Cormon’s affair. Altogether the match received the approval of the aristocratic section on the Brittany road; Mlle. Cormon could not have put her fortune to a better use.
Among the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, the Vicomte de Troisville was a Russian general that had borne arms against France. He was bringing back a large fortune made at the court of St. Petersburg. He was a “foreigner,” one of the “Allies” detested by the Liberals. The Abbé de Sponde had manoeuvred the match on the sly. Every person who had any shadow of a right of entrance to Mlle. Cormon’s drawing-room vowed to be there that night.
While the excitement went through the town, and all but put Suzanne out of people’s heads. Mlle. Cormon herself was not less excited; she felt as she had never felt before. She looked round the drawing-room, the boudoir, the cabinet, the dining-room, and a dreadful apprehension seized upon her. Some mocking demon seemed to show her the old-fashioned splendor in a new light; the beautiful furniture, admired ever since she was a child, was suspected, nay, convicted, of being out of date. She was shaken, in fact, by the dread that catches almost every author by the throat when he begins to read his own work aloud to some exigent or jaded critic. Before he began, it was perfect in his eyes; now the novel situations are stale; the finest periods turned with such secret relish are turgid or halting; the metaphors are mixed or grotesque; his sins stare him in the face. Even so, poor
