"That good Monsieur du Bousquier! how well he carried you!" said Josette to her mistress."He was really pale at the sight of you; he loves you still."That speech served as closure to this solemn and terrible evening.
Throughout the morning of the next day every circumstance of the late comedy was known in the household of Alencon, and--let us say it to the shame of that town,--they caused inextinguishable laughter.But on that day Mademoiselle Cormon (much benefited by the bleeding) would have seemed sublime even to the boldest scoffers, had they witnessed the noble dignity, the splendid Christian resignation which influenced her as she gave her arm to her involuntary deceiver to go into breakfast.Cruel jesters! why could you not have seen her as she said to the viscount,--"Madame de Troisville will have difficulty in finding a suitable house; do me the favor, monsieur, of accepting the use of mine during the time you are in search of yours.""But, mademoiselle, I have two sons and two daughters; we should greatly inconvenience you.""Pray do not refuse me," she said earnestly.
"I made you the same offer in the answer I wrote to your letter," said the abbe; "but you did not receive it.""What, uncle! then you knew--"
The poor woman stopped.Josette sighed.Neither the viscount nor the abbe observed anything amiss.After breakfast the Abbe de Sponde carried off his guest, as agreed upon the previous evening, to show him the various houses in Alencon which could be bought, and the lots of lands on which he might build.
Left alone in the salon, Mademoiselle Cormon said to Josette, with a deeply distressed air, "My child, I am now the talk of the whole town.""Well, then, mademoiselle, you should marry.""But I am not prepared to make a choice.""Bah! if I were in your place, I should take Monsieur du Bousquier.""Josette, Monsieur de Valois says he is so republican.""They don't know what they say, your gentlemen: sometimes they declare that he robbed the republic; he couldn't love it if he did that," said Josette, departing.
"That girl has an amazing amount of sense," thought Mademoiselle Cormon, who remained alone, a prey to her perplexities.
She saw plainly that a prompt marriage was the only way to silence the town.This last checkmate, so evidently mortifying, was of a nature to drive her into some extreme action; for persons deficient in mind find difficulty in getting out of any path, either good or evil, into which they have entered.
Each of the two old bachelors had fully understood the situation in which Mademoiselle Cormon was about to find herself; consequently, each resolved to call in the course of that morning to ask after her health, and take occasion, in bachelor language, to "press his point."Monsieur de Valois considered that such an occasion demanded a painstaking toilet; he therefore took a bath and groomed himself with extraordinary care.For the first and last time Cesarine observed him putting on with incredible art a suspicion of rouge.Du Bousquier, on the other hand, that coarse republican, spurred by a brisk will, paid no attention to his dress, and arrived the first.
Such little things decide the fortunes of men, as they do of empires.
Kellerman's charge at Marengo, Blucher's arrival at Waterloo, Louis XIV.'s disdain for Prince Eugene, the rector of Denain,--all these great causes of fortune or catastrophe history has recorded; but no one ever profits by them to avoid the small neglects of their own life.Consequently, observe what happens: the Duchesse de Langeais (see "History of the Thirteen") makes herself a nun for the lack of ten minutes' patience; Judge Popinot (see "Commission in Lunacy") puts off till the morrow the duty of examining the Marquis d'Espard;Charles Grandet (see "Eugenie Grandet") goes to Paris from Bordeaux instead of returning by Nantes; and such events are called chance or fatality! A touch of rouge carefully applied destroyed the hopes of the Chevalier de Valois; could that nobleman perish in any other way?
He had lived by the Graces, and he was doomed to die by their hand.
While the chevalier was giving this last touch to his toilet the rough du Bousquier was entering the salon of the desolate old maid.This entrance produced a thought in Mademoiselle Cormon's mind which was favorable to the republican, although in all other respects the Chevalier de Valois held the advantages.
"God wills it!" she said piously, on seeing du Bousquier.
"Mademoiselle, you will not, I trust, think my eagerness importunate.
I could not trust to my stupid Rene to bring news of your condition, and therefore I have come myself.""I am perfectly recovered," she replied, in a tone of emotion."Ithank you, Monsieur du Bousquier," she added, after a slight pause, and in a significant tone of voice, "for the trouble you have taken, and for that which I gave you yesterday--"She remembered having been in his arms, and that again seemed to her an order from heaven.She had been seen for the first time by a man with her laces cut, her treasures violently bursting from their casket.
"I carried you with such joy that you seemed to me light."Here Mademoiselle Cormon looked at du Bousquier as she had never yet looked at any man in the world.Thus encouraged, the purveyor cast upon the old maid a glance which reached her heart.
"I would," he said, "that that moment had given me the right to keep you as mine forever" [she listened with a delighted air]; "as you lay fainting upon that bed, you were enchanting.I have never in my life seen a more beautiful person,--and I have seen many handsome women.
