observation, in days when religion is nothing more than a useful means
to some, and a poesy to others. Devotion causes a moral ophthalmia. By

some providential grace, it takes from souls on the road to eternity
the sight of many little earthly things. In a word, pious persons,

devotes, are stupid on various points. This stupidity proves with what
force they turn their minds to celestial matters; although the

Voltairean Chevalier de Valois declared that it was difficult to
decide whether stupid people became naturally pious, or whether piety

had the effect of making intelligent young women stupid. But reflect
upon this carefully: the purest catholicvirtue, with its loving

acceptance of all cups, with its pious submission to the will of God,
with its belief in the print of the divine finger on the clay of all

earthly life, is the mysterious light which glides into the innermost
folds of human history, setting them in relief and magnifying them in

the eyes of those who still have Faith. Besides, if there be
stupidity, why not concern ourselves with the sorrows of stupidity as

well as with the sorrows of genius? The former is a social element
infinitely more abundant than the latter.

So, then, Mademoiselle Cormon was guilty in the eyes of the world of
the divineignorance of virgins. She was no observer, and her behavior

with her suitors proved it. At this very moment, a young girl of
sixteen, who had never opened a novel, would have read a hundred

chapters of a love story in the eyes of Athanase Granson, where
Mademoiselle Cormon saw absolutely nothing. Shy herself, she never

suspected shyness in others; she did not recognize in the quavering
tones of his speech the force of a sentiment he could not utter.

Capable of inventing those refinements of sentimental grandeur which
hindered her marriage in her early years, she yet could not recognize

them in Athanase. This moral phenomenon will not seem surprising to
persons who know that the qualities of the heart are as distinct from

those of the mind as the faculties of genius are from the nobility of
soul. A perfect, all-rounded man is so rare that Socrates, one of the

noblest pearls of humanity, declared (as a phrenologist of that day)
that he was born to be a scamp, and a very bad one. A great general

may save his country at Zurich, and take commissions from purveyors. A
great musician may conceive the sublimest music and commit a forgery.

A woman of true feeling may be a fool. In short, a devote may have a
sublime soul and yet be unable to recognize the tones of a noble soul

beside her. The caprices produced by physical infirmities are equally
to be met with in the mental and moral regions.

This good creature, who grieved at making her yearly preserves for no
one but her uncle and herself, was becoming almost ridiculous. Those

who felt a sympathy for her on account of her good qualities, and
others on account of her defects, now made fun of her abortive

marriages. More than one conversation was based on what would become
of so fine a property, together with the old maid's savings and her

uncle's inheritance. For some time past she had been suspected of
being au fond, in spite of appearances, an "original." In the

provinces it was not permissible to be original: being original means
having ideas that are not understood by others; the provinces demand

equality of mind as well as equality of manners and customs.
The marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon seemed, after 1804, a thing so

problematical that the saying "married like Mademoiselle Cormon"
became proverbial in Alencon as applied to ridiculous failures. Surely

the sarcastic mood must be an imperative need in France, that so
excellent a woman should excite the laughter of Alencon. Not only did

she receive the whole society of the place at her house, not only was
she charitable, pious, incapable of saying an unkind thing, but she

was fully in accord with the spirit of the place and the habits and
customs of the inhabitants, who liked her as the symbol of their

lives; she was absolutely inlaid into the ways of the provinces; she
had never quitted them; she imbibed all their prejudices; she espoused

all their interests; she adored them.
In spite of her income of eighteen thousand francs from landed

property, a very considerable fortune in the provinces, she lived on a
footing with families who were less rich. When she went to her

country-place at Prebaudet, she drove there in an old wicker carriole,
hung on two straps of white leather, drawn by a wheezy mare, and

scarcely protected by two leather curtains rusty with age. This
carriole, known to all the town, was cared for by Jacquelin as though

it were the finest coupe in all Paris. Mademoiselle valued it; she had
used it for twelve years,--a fact to which she called attention with

the triumphant joy of happy avarice. Most of the inhabitants of the
town were grateful to Mademoiselle Cormon for not humiliating them by

the luxury she could have displayed; we may even believe that had she
imported a caleche from Paris they would have gossiped more about that

than about her various matrimonial failures. The most brilliant
equipage would, after all, have only taken her, like the old carriole,

to Prebaudet. Now the provinces, which look solely to results, care
little about the beauty or elegance of the means, provided they are

efficient.
CHAPTER V

AN OLD MAID'S HOUSEHOLD
To complete the picture of the internal habits and ways of this house,

it is necessary to group around Mademoiselle Cormon and the Abbe de
Sponde Jacquelin, Josette, and Mariette, the cook, who employed

themselves in providing for the comfort of uncle and niece.
Jacquelin, a man of forty, short, fat, ruddy, and brown, with a face

like a Breton sailor, had been in the service of the house for twenty-
two years. He waited at table, groomed the mare, gardened, blacked the

abbe's boots, went on errands, chopped the wood, drove the carriole,
and fetched the oats, straw, and hay from Prebaudet. He sat in the

antechamber during the evening, where he slept like a dormouse. He was
in love with Josette, a girl of thirty, whom Mademoiselle would have

dismissed had she married him. So the poor fond pair laid by their
wages, and loved each other silently, waiting, hoping for

mademoiselle's own marriage, as the Jews are waiting for the Messiah.
Josette, born between Alencon and Mortagne, was short and plump; her

face, which looked like a dirty apricot, was not wanting in sense and
character; it was said that she ruled her mistress. Josette and

Jacquelin, sure of results, endeavored to hide an inward satisfaction
which allows it to be supposed that, as lovers, they had discounted

the future. Mariette, the cook, who had been fifteen years in the
household, knew how to make all the dishes held in most honor in

Alencon.
Perhaps we ought to count for much the fat old Norman brown-bay mare,

which drew Mademoiselle Cormon to her country-seat at Prebaudet; for
the five inhabitants of the house bore to this animal a maniacal

affection. She was called Penelope, and had served the family for
eighteen years; but she was kept so carefully and fed with such

regularity that mademoiselle and Jacquelin both hoped to use her for
ten years longer. This beast was the subject of perpetual talk and

occupation; it seemed as if poor Mademoiselle Cormon, having no
children on whom her repressed motherly feelings could expend

themselves, had turned those sentiments wholly on this most fortunate
animal.

The four faithful servants--for Penelope's intelligence raised her to
the level of the other good servants; while they, on the other hand,

had lowered themselves to the mute, submissive regularity of the beast
--went and came daily in the same occupations with the infallible

accuracy of mechanism. But, as they said in their idiom, they had
eaten their white bread first. Mademoiselle Cormon, like all persons

nervously agitated by a fixed idea, became hard to please, and
nagging, less by nature than from the need of employing her activity.

Having no husband or children to occupy her, she fell back on petty
details. She talked for hours about mere nothings, on a dozen napkins

marked "Z," placed in the closet before the "O's."
"What can Josette be thinking of?" she exclaimed. "Josette is

beginning to neglect things."
Mademoiselle inquired for eight days running whether Penelope had had

her oats at two o'clock, because on one occasion Jacquelin was a
trifle late. Her narrow imagination spent itself on trifles. A layer

of dust forgotten by the feather-duster, a slice of toast ill-made by
Mariette, Josette's delay in closing the blinds when the sun came

round to fade the colors of the furniture,--all these great little
things gave rise to serious quarrels in which mademoiselle grew angry.