“She drove over in the rain this morning,” said the Abbé de Sponde. “She may have taken a little cold, and so caused the slight derangement of the system to which she is subject. But she will soon get over it.”
“She was telling me the day before yesterday that she had not had a recurrence of it for three months; she added at the time that it was sure to play her a bad turn,” added the Chevalier.
“Ah! so you are married!” thought Jacquelin, watching M. de Troisville, who was sipping his coffee.
The faithful manservant made his mistress’ disappointment his own. He guessed her feelings. He took away the liqueurs brought out for a bachelor, and not for a Russian woman’s husband. All these little things were noticed with amusement.
The Abbé de Sponde had known all along why M. de Troisville had come to Alençon, but in his absentmindedness he had said nothing about it; it had never entered his mind that his niece could take the slightest interest in that gentleman. As for the Vicomte, he was engrossed by the object of his journey; like many other married men, he was in no great hurry to introduce his wife into the conversation; he had had no opportunity of saying that he was married; and besides, he thought that Mlle. Cormon knew his history. Du Bousquier reappeared, and was questioned without mercy. One of the six women came down, and reported that Mlle. Cormon was feeling much better, and that her doctor had come; but she was to stay in bed, and it appeared that she ought to be bled at once. The salon soon filled. In Mlle. Cormon’s absence, the ladies were free to discuss the tragicomic scene which had just taken place; and duly they enlarged, annotated, embellished, colored, adorned, embroidered, and bedizened the tale which was to set all Alençon thinking of the old maid on the morrow.
Meanwhile, Josette upstairs was saying to her mistress, “That good M. du Bousquier! How he carried you upstairs! What a fist! Really, your illness made him quite pale. He loves you still.”
And with this final phrase, the solemn and terrible day came to a close.
Next day all morning long, the news of the comedy, with full details, circulated over Alençon, raising laughter everywhere, to the shame of the town be it said. Next day, Mlle. Cormon, very much the better for the bloodletting, would have seemed sublime to the most hardened of those who jeered at her, if they could but have seen her noble dignity and the Christian resignation in her soul, as she gave her hand to the unconscious perpetrator of the hoax, and went in to breakfast. Ah! heartless wags, who were laughing at her expense, why could you not hear her say to the Vicomte:
“Mme. de Troisville will have some difficulty in finding a house to suit her. Do me the favor of using my house, monsieur, until you have made all your arrangements.”
“But I have two girls and two boys, mademoiselle. We should put you to a great deal of inconvenience.”
“Do not refuse me,” said she, her eyes full of apprehension and regret.
“I made the offer, however you might decide, in my letter; but you did not take it,” remarked the Abbé.
“What, uncle! did you know?—”
Poor thing, she broke off. Josette heaved a sigh, and neither M. de Troisville nor the uncle noticed anything.
After breakfast, the Abbé de Sponde, carrying out the plan agreed upon over night, took the Vicomte to see houses for sale and suitable sites for building. Mlle. Cormon was left alone in the salon.
“I am the talk of the town, child, by this time,” she said, looking piteously at Josette.
“Well, mademoiselle, get married.”
“But, my girl, I am not at all prepared to make a choice.”
“Bah! I should take M. du Bousquier if I were you.”
“M. de Valois says that he is such a Republican, Josette.”
“Your gentlemen don’t know what they are talking about; they say that he robbed the Republic, so he can’t have been at all fond of it,” said Josette, and with that she went.
“That girl is amazingly shrewd,” thought Mlle. Cormon, left alone to her gnawing perplexity.
She saw that the only way of silencing talk was to marry at once. This last so patently humiliating check was enough to drive her to extreme measures; and it takes a great deal to force a feebleminded human being out of a groove, be it good or bad. Both the old bachelors understood the position of affairs, both made up their minds to call in the morning to make inquiries, and (in their own language) to press the point.
M. de Valois considered that the occasion demanded a scrupulous toilet; he took a bath, he groomed himself with unusual care, and for the first time and the last Césarine saw him applying “a suspicion of rouge” with incredible skill.
Du Bousquier, rough and ready Republican that he was, inspired by dogged purpose, paid no attention to his appearance, he hurried round, and came in first. The fate of men, like the destinies of empires, hangs on small things. History records all such principal causes of great failure or success—a Kellermann’s charge at Marengo, a Blücher coming up at the battle of Waterloo, a Prince Eugène slighted by Louis XIV, a curé on the battlefield of Denain; but nobody profits by the lesson to be diligently attentive to the little trifles of his own life. Behold the results.—The Duchesse de Langeais in L’Histoire des Treize entering a convent for want of ten minutes’ patience; Judge Popinot in L’Interdiction putting off his inquiries as to the Marquis d’Espard till tomorrow; Charles Grandet coming home
