An Old Maid

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Athanase listened to his mother with a surprised but submissive air;
then he rose, took his cap, and went off to the mayor's office, saying
to himself, "Can my mother suspect my secret?"

He passed through the rue du Val-Noble, where Mademoiselle Cormon
lived,--a little pleasure which he gave himself every morning,
thinking, as usual, a variety of fanciful things:--

"How little she knows that a young man is passing before her house who
loves her well, who would be faithful to her, who would never cause
her any grief; who would leave her the entire management of her
fortune without interference. Good God! what fatality! here, side by
side, in the same town, are two persons in our mutual condition, and
yet nothing can bring them together. Suppose I were to speak to her
this evening?"

During this time Suzanne had returned to her mother's house thinking
of Athanase; and, like many other women who have longed to help an
adored man beyond the limit of human powers, she felt herself capable
of making her body a stepping-stone on which he could rise to attain
his throne.

It is now necessary to enter the house of this old maid toward whom so
many interests are converging, where the actors in this scene, with
the exception of Suzanne, were all to meet this very evening. As for
Suzanne, that handsome individual bold enough to burn her ships like
Alexander at her start in life, and to begin the battle by a
falsehood, she disappears from the stage, having introduced upon it a
violent element of interest. Her utmost wishes were gratified. She
quitted her native town a few days later, well supplied with money and
good clothes, among which was a fine dress of green reps and a
charming green bonnet lined with pink, the gift of Monsieur de Valois,
--a present which she preferred to all the rest, even the money. If
the chevalier had gone to Paris in the days of her future brilliancy,
she would certainly have left every one for him. Like the chaste
Susannah of the Bible, whom the Elders hardly saw, she established
herself joyously and full of hope in Paris, while all Alencon was
deploring her misfortunes, for which the ladies of two Societies
(Charity and Maternity) manifested the liveliest sympathy. Though
Suzanne is a fair specimen of those handsome Norman women whom a
learned physician reckons as comprising one third of her fallen class
whom our monstrous Paris absorbs, it must be stated that she remained
in the upper and more decent regions of gallantry. At an epoch when,
as Monsieur de Valois said, Woman no longer existed, she was simply
"Madame du Val-Noble"; in other days she would have rivalled the
Rhodopes, the Imperias, the Ninons of the past. One of the most
distinguished writers of the Restoration has taken her under his
protection; perhaps he may marry her. He is a journalist, and
consequently above public opinion, inasmuch as he manufactures it
afresh every year or two.



CHAPTER III

MADEMOISELLE CORMON

In nearly all the second-class prefectures of France there exists one
salon which is the meeting-ground of those considerable and
well-considered persons of the community who are, nevertheless, /not/
the cream of the best society. The master and mistress of such an
establishment are counted among the leading persons of the town; they
are received wherever it may please them to visit; no fete is given,
no formal or diplomatic dinner takes place, to which they are not
invited. But the chateau people, heads of families possessing great
estates, in short, the highest personages in the department, do not go
to their houses; social intercourse between them is carried on by
cards from one to the other, and a dinner or soiree accepted and
returned.

This salon, in which the lesser nobility, the clergy, and the
magistracy meet together, exerts a great influence. The judgment and
mind of the region reside in that solid, unostentatious society, where
each man knows the resources of his neighbor, where complete
indifference is shown to luxury and dress,--pleasures which are
thought childish in comparison to that of obtaining ten or twelve
acres of pasture land,--a purchase coveted for years, which has
probably given rise to endless diplomatic combinations. Immovable in
its prejudices, good or evil, this social circle follows a beaten
track, looking neither before it nor behind it. It accepts nothing
from Paris without long examination and trial; it rejects cashmeres as
it does investments on the Grand-Livre; it scoffs at fashions and
novelties; reads nothing, prefers ignorance, whether of science,
literature, or industrial inventions. It insists on the removal of a
prefect when that official does not suit it; and if the administration
resists, it isolates him, after the manner of bees who wall up a snail
in wax when it gets into their hive.

In this society gossip is often turned into solemn verdicts. Young
women are seldom seen there; when they come it is to seek approbation
of their conduct,--a consecration of their self-importance. This
supremacy granted to one house is apt to wound the sensibilities of
other natives of the region, who console themselves by adding up the
cost it involves, and by which they profit. If it so happens that
there is no fortune large enough to keep open house in this way, the
big-wigs of the place choose a place of meeting, as they did at
Alencon, in the house of some inoffensive person, whose settled life
and character and position offers no umbrage to the vanities or the
interests of any one.

For some years the upper classes of Alencon had met in this way at the
house of an old maid, whose fortune was, unknown to herself, the aim
and object of Madame Granson, her second cousin, and of the two old
bachelors whose secret hopes in that direction we have just unveiled.
This lady lived with her maternal uncle, a former grand-vicar of the
bishopric of Seez, once her guardian, and whose heir she was. The
family of which Rose-Marie-Victoire Cormon was the present
representative had been in earlier days among the most considerable in
the province. Though belonging to the middle classes, she consorted
with the nobility, among whom she was more or less allied, her family
having furnished, in past years, stewards to the Duc d'Alencon, many
magistrates to the long robe, and various bishops to the clergy.
Monsieur de Sponde, the maternal grandfather of Mademoiselle Cormon,
was elected by the Nobility to the States-General, and Monsieur
Cormon, her father, by the Tiers-Etat, though neither accepted the
mission. For the last hundred years the daughters of the family had
married nobles belonging to the provinces; consequently, this family
had thrown out so many suckers throughout the duchy as to appear on
nearly all the genealogical trees. No bourgeois family had ever seemed
so like nobility.

The house in which Mademoiselle Cormon lived, build in Henri IV.'s
time, by Pierre Cormon, the steward of the last Duc d'Alencon, had
always belonged to the family; and among the old maid's visible
possessions this one was particularly stimulating to the covetous
desires of the two old lovers. Yet, far from producing revenue, the
house was a cause of expense. But it is so rare to find in the very
centre of a provincial town a private dwelling without unpleasant
surroundings, handsome in outward structure and convenient within,
that Alencon shared the envy of the lovers.

This old mansion stands exactly in the middle of the rue du Val-Noble.
It is remarkable for the strength of its construction,--a style of
building introduced by Marie de' Medici. Though built of granite,--a
stone which is hard to work,--its angles, and the casings of the doors
and windows, are decorated with corner blocks cut into diamond facets.
It has only one clear story above the ground-floor; but the roof,
rising steeply, has several projecting windows, with carved spandrels
rather elegantly enclosed in oaken frames, and externally adorned with
balustrades. Between each of these windows is a gargoyle presenting
the fantastic jaws of an animal without a body, vomiting the
rain-water upon large stones pierced with five holes. The two gables
are surmounted by leaden bouquets,--a symbol of the bourgeoisie; for
nobles alone had the privilege in former days of having weather-vanes.
To right of the courtyard are the stables and coach-house; to left,
the kitchen, wood-house, and laundry.

One side of the porte-cochere, being left open, allowed the passers in
the street to see in the midst of the vast courtyard a flower-bed, the
raised earth of which was held in place by a low privet hedge. A few
monthly roses, pinkes, lilies, and Spanish broom filled this bed,
around which in the summer season boxes of paurestinus, pomegranates,
and myrtle were placed. Struck by the scrupulous cleanliness of the
courtyard and its dependencies, a stranger would at once have divined
that the place belonged to an old maid. The eye which presided there
must have been an unoccupied, ferreting eye; minutely careful, less
from nature than for want of something to do. An old maid, forced to
employ her vacant days, could alone see to the grass being hoed from
between the paving stones, the tops of the walls kept clean, the broom
continually going, and the leather curtains of the coach-house always
closed. She alone would have introduced, out of busy idleness, a sort
of Dutch cleanliness into a house on the confines of Bretagne and
Normandie,--a region where they take pride in professing an utter
indifference to comfort.

Never did the Chevalier de Valois, or du Bousquier, mount the steps of
the double stairway leading to the portico of this house without
saying to himself, one, that it was fit for a peer of France, the
other, that the mayor of the town ought to live there.

A glass door gave entrance from this portico into an antechamber, a
species of gallery paved in red tiles and wainscoted, which served as
a hospital for the family portraits,--some having an eye put out,
others suffering from a dislocated shoulder; this one held his hat in
a hand that no longer existed; that one was a case of amputation at
the knee. Here were deposited the cloaks, clogs, overshoes, umbrellas,
hoods, and pelisses of the guests. It was an arsenal where each
arrival left his baggage on arriving, and took it up when departing.
Along each wall was a bench for the servants who arrived with
lanterns, and a large stove, to counteract the north wind, which blew
through this hall from the garden to the courtyard.

The house was divided in two equal parts. On one side, toward the
courtyard, was the well of the staircase, a large dining-room looking
to the garden, and an office or pantry which communicated with the
kitchen. On the other side was the salon, with four windows, beyond
which were two smaller rooms,--one looking on the garden, and used as
a boudoir, the other lighted from the courtyard, and used as a sort of
office.

The upper floor contained a complete apartment for a family household,
and a suite of rooms where the venerable Abbe de Sponde had his abode.
The garrets offered fine quarters to the rats and mice, whose
nocturnal performances were related by Mademoiselle Cormon to the
Chevalier de Valois, with many expressions of surprise at the
inutility of her efforts to get rid of them. The garden, about half an
acre in size, is margined by the Brillante, so named from the
particles of mica which sparkle in its bed elsewhere than in the
Val-Noble, where its shallow waters are stained by the dyehouses, and
loaded with refuse from the other industries of the town. The shore
opposite to Mademoiselle Cormon's garden is crowded with houses where
a variety of trades are carried on; happily for her, the occupants are
quiet people,--a baker, a cleaner, an upholsterer, and several
bourgeois. The garden, full of common flowers, ends in a natural
terrace, forming a quay, down which are several steps leading to the
river. Imagine on the balustrade of this terrace a number of tall
vases of blue and white pottery, in which are gilliflowers; and to
right and left, along the neighboring walls, hedges of linden closely
trimmed in, and you will gain an idea of the landscape, full of
tranquil chastity, modest cheerfulness, but commonplace withal, which
surrounded the venerable edifice of the Cormon family. What peace!
what tranquillity! nothing pretentious, but nothing transitory; all
seems eternal there!

The ground-floor is devoted wholly to the reception-rooms. The old,
unchangeable provincial spirit pervades them. The great square salon
has four windows, modestly cased in woodwork painted gray. A single
oblong mirror is placed above the fireplace; the top of its frame
represented the Dawn led by the Hours, and painted in camaieu (two
shades of one color). This style of painting infested the decorative
art of the day, especially above door-frames, where the artist
displayed his eternal Seasons, and made you, in most houses in the
centre of France, abhor the odious Cupids, endlessly employed in
skating, gleaning, twirling, or garlanding one another with flowers.
Each window was draped in green damask curtains, looped up by heavy
cords, which made them resemble a vast dais. The furniture, covered
with tapestry, the woodwork, painted and varnished, and remarkable for
the twisted forms so much the fashion in the last century, bore scenes
from the fables of La Fontaine on the chair-backs; some of this
tapestry had been mended. The ceiling was divided at the centre of the
room by a huge beam, from which depended an old chandelier of
rock-crystal swathed in green gauze. On the fireplace were two vases
in Sevres blue, and two old girandoles attached to the frame of the
mirror, and a clock, the subject of which, taken from the last scene
of the "Deserteur," proved the enormous popularity of Sedaine's work.
This clock, of bronze-gilt, bore eleven personages upon it, each about
four inches tall. At the back the Deserter was seen issuing from
prison between the soldiers; in the foreground the young woman lay
fainting, and pointing to his pardon. On the walls of this salon were
several of the more recent portraits of the family,--one or two by
Rigaud, and three pastels by Latour. Four card tables, a backgammon
board, and a piquet table occupied the vast room, the only one in the
house, by the bye, which was ceiled.

The dining-room, paved in black and white stone, not ceiled, and its
beams painted, was furnished with one of those enormous sideboards
with marble tops, required by the war waged in the provinces against
the human stomach. The walls, painted in fresco, represented a flowery
trellis. The seats were of varnished cane, and the doors of natural
wood. All things about the place carried out the patriarchal air which
emanated from the inside as well as the outside of the house. The
genius of the provinces preserved everything; nothing was new or old,
neither young nor decrepit. A cold precision made itself felt
throughout.

Tourists in Normandy, Brittany, Maine, and Anjou must all have seen in
the capitals of those provinces many houses which resemble more or
less that of the Cormons; for it is, in its way, an archetype of the
burgher houses in that region of France, and it deserves a place in
this history because it serves to explain manners and customs, and
represents ideas. Who does not already feel that life must have been
calm and monotonously regular in this old edifice? It contained a
library; but that was placed below the level of the river. The books
were well bound and shelved, and the dust, far from injuring them,
only made them valuable. They were preserved with the care given in
these provinces deprived of vineyards to other native products,
desirable for their antique perfume, and issued by the presses of
Bourgogne, Touraine, Gascogne, and the South. The cost of
transportation was too great to allow any but the best products to be
imported.

The basis of Mademoiselle Cormon's society consisted of about one
hundred and fifty persons; some went at times to the country; others
were occasionally ill; a few travelled about the department on
business; but certain of the faithful came every night (unless invited
elsewhere), and so did certain others compelled by duties or by habit
to live permanently in the town. All the personages were of ripe age;
few among them had ever travelled; nearly all had spent their lives in
the provinces, and some had taken part in the chouannerie. The latter
were beginning to speak fearlessly of that war, now that rewards were
being showered on the defenders of the good cause. Monsieur de Valois,
one of the movers in the last uprising (during which the Marquis de
Montauran, betrayed by his mistress, perished in spite of the devotion
of Marche-a-Terre, now tranquilly raising cattle for the market near
Mayenne),--Monsieur de Valois had, during the last six months, given
the key to several choice stratagems practised upon an old republican
named Hulot, the commander of a demi-brigade stationed at Alencon from
1798 to 1800, who had left many memories in the place. [See "The
Chouans."]

The women of this society took little pains with their dress, except
on Wednesdays, when Mademoiselle Cormon gave a dinner, on which
occasion the guests invited on the previous Wednesday paid their
"visit of digestion." Wednesdays were gala days: the assembly was
numerous; guests and visitors appeared in fiocchi; some women brought
their sewing, knitting, or worsted work; the young girls were not
ashamed to make patterns for the Alencon point lace, with the proceeds
of which they paid for their personal expenses. Certain husbands
brought their wives out of policy, for young men were few in that
house; not a word could be whispered in any ear without attracting the
attention of all; there was therefore no danger, either for young
girls or wives, of love-making.

Every evening, at six o'clock, the long antechamber received its
furniture. Each habitue brought his cane, his cloak, his lantern. All
these persons knew each other so well, and their habits and ways were
so familiarly patriarchal, that if by chance the old Abbe de Sponde
was lying down, or Mademoiselle Cormon was in her chamber, neither
Josette, the maid, nor Jacquelin, the man-servant, nor Mariette, the
cook, informed them. The first comer received the second; then, when
the company were sufficiently numerous for whist, piquet, or boston,
they began the game without awaiting either the Abbe de Sponde or
mademoiselle. If it was dark, Josette or Jacquelin would hasten to
light the candles as soon as the first bell rang. Seeing the salon
lighted up, the abbe would slowly hurry to come down. Every evening
the backgammon and the piquet tables, the three boston tables, and the
whist table were filled,--which gave occupation to twenty-five or
thirty persons; but as many as forty were usually present. Jacquelin
would then light the candles in the other rooms.

Between eight and nine o'clock the servants began to arrive in the
antechamber to accompany their masters home; and, short of a
revolution, no one remained in the salon at ten o'clock. At that hour
the guests were departing in groups along the street, discoursing on
the game, or continuing conversations on the land they were covetous
of buying, on the terms of some one's will, on quarrels among heirs,
on the haughty assumption of the aristocratic portion of the
community. It was like Paris when the audience of a theatre disperses.

Certain persons who talk much of poesy and know nothing about it,
declaim against the habits of life in the provinces. But put your
forehead in your left hand, rest one foot on the fender, and your
elbow on your knee; then, if you compass the idea of this quiet and
uniform scene, this house and its interior, this company and its
interests, heightened by the pettiness of its intellect like goldleaf
beaten between sheets of parchment, ask yourself, What is human life?
Try to decide between him who scribbles jokes on Egyptian obelisks,
and him who has "bostoned" for twenty years with Du Bousquier,
Monsieur de Valois, Mademoiselle Cormon, the judge of the court, the
king's attorney, the Abbe de Sponde, Madame Granson, and tutti quanti.
If the daily and punctual return of the same steps to the same path is
not happiness, it imitates happiness so well that men driven by the
storms of an agitated life to reflect upon the blessings of
tranquillity would say that here was happiness /enough/.

To reckon the importance of Mademoiselle Cormon's salon at its true
value, it will suffice to say that the born statistician of the
society, du Bousquier, had estimated that the persons who frequented
it controlled one hundred and thirty-one votes in the electoral
college, and mustered among themselves eighteen hundred thousand
francs a year from landed estate in the neighborhood.

The town of Alencon, however, was not entirely represented by this
salon. The higher aristocracy had a salon of their own; moreover, that
of the receiver-general was like an administration inn kept by the
government, where society danced, plotted, fluttered, loved, and
supped. These two salons communicated by means of certain mixed
individuals with the house of Cormon, and vice-versa; but the Cormon
establishment sat severely in judgment on the two other camps. The
luxury of their dinners was criticised; the ices at their balls were
pondered; the behavior of the women, the dresses, and "novelties"
there produced were discussed and disapproved.

Mademoiselle Cormon, a species of firm, as one might say, under whose
name was comprised an imposing coterie, was naturally the aim and
object of two ambitious men as deep and wily as the Chevalier de
Valois and du Bousquier. To the one as well as to the other, she meant
election as deputy, resulting, for the noble, in the peerage, for the
purveyor, in a receiver-generalship. A leading salon is a difficult
thing to create, whether in Paris or the provinces, and here was one
already created. To marry Mademoiselle Cormon was to reign in Alencon.
Athanase Granson, the only one of the three suitors for the hand of
the old maid who no longer calculated profits, now loved her person as
well as her fortune.

To employ the jargon of the day, is there not a singular drama in the
situation of these four personages? Surely there is something odd and
fantastic in three rivalries silently encompassing a woman who never
guessed their existence, in spite of an eager and legitimate desire to
be married. And yet, though all these circumstances make the
spinsterhood of this old maid an extraordinary thing, it is not
difficult to explain how and why, in spite of her fortune and her
three lovers, she was still unmarried. In the first place,
Mademoiselle Cormon, following the custom and rule of her house, had
always desired to marry a nobleman; but from 1788 to 1798 public
circumstances were very unfavorable to such pretensions. Though she
wanted to be a woman of condition, as the saying is, she was horribly
afraid of the Revolutionary tribunal. The two sentiments, equal in
force, kept her stationary by a law as true in ethics as it is in
statics. This state of uncertain expectation is pleasing to unmarried
women as long as they feel themselves young, and in a position to
choose a husband. France knows that the political system of Napoleon
resulted in making many widows. Under that regime heiresses were
entirely out of proportion in numbers to the bachelors who wanted to
marry. When the Consulate restored internal order, external
difficulties made the marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon as difficult to
arrange as it had been in the past. If, on the one hand,
Rose-Marie-Victoire refused to marry an old man, on the other, the
fear of ridicule forbade her to marry a very young one.

In the provinces, families marry their sons early to escape the
conscription. In addition to all this, she was obstinately determined
not to marry a soldier: she did not intend to take a man and then give
him up to the Emperor; she wanted him for herself alone. With these
views, she found it therefore impossible, from 1804 to 1815, to enter
the lists with young girls who were rivalling each other for suitable
matches.

Besides her predilection for the nobility, Mademoiselle Cormon had
another and very excusable mania: that of being loved for herself. You
could hardly believe the lengths to which this desire led her. She
employed her mind on setting traps for her possible lovers, in order
to test their real sentiments. Her nets were so well laid that the
luckless suitors were all caught, and succumbed to the test she
applied to them without their knowledge. Mademoiselle Cormon did not
study them; she watched them. A single word said heedlessly, a joke
(that she often was unable to understand), sufficed to make her reject
an aspirant as unworthy: this one had neither heart nor delicacy; that
one told lies, and was not religious; a third only wanted to coin
money under the cloak of marriage; another was not of a nature to make
a woman happy; here she suspected hereditary gout; there certain
immoral antecedents alarmed her. Like the Church, she required a noble
priest at her altar; she even wanted to be married for imaginary
ugliness and pretended defects, just as other women wish to be loved
for the good qualities they have not, and for imaginary beauties.
Mademoiselle Cormon's ambition took its rise in the most delicate and
sensitive feminine feeling; she longed to reward a lover by revealing
to him a thousand virtues after marriage, as other women then betray
the imperfections they have hitherto concealed. But she was ill
understood. The noble woman met with none but common souls in whom the
reckoning of actual interests was paramount, and who knew nothing of
the nobler calculations of sentiment.