第23章

Here some light-minded person may exclaim against the truth of this statement; they will say that there is not in all France a girl so silly as to be ignorant of the art of angling for men; that Mademoiselle Cormon is one of those monstrous exceptions which commonsense should prevent a writer from using as a type; that the most virtuous and also the silliest girl who desires to catch her fish knows well how to bait the hook.But these criticisms fall before the fact that the noble catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion is still erect in Brittany and in the ancient duchy of Alencon.Faith and piety admit of no subtleties.Mademoiselle Cormon trod the path of salvation, preferring the sorrows of her virginity so cruelly prolonged to the evils of trickery and the sin of a snare.In a woman armed with a scourge virtue could never compromise; consequently both love and self-interest were forced to seek her, and seek her resolutely.And here let us have the courage to make a cruel 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 catholic virtue, 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 divine ignorance 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.Agreat 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.