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 vigorousgenius, forced to rely

on the independence of its own poverty, quits these cold regions where
thought is persecuted by brutalindifference, 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" target="_blank" title="ad.忠实地；诚恳地">faithfullyloving 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 woodenbuffet, 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