"My dear child," said Madame Granson to her son, "we are to dine, you know, with Mademoiselle Cormon; do take a little pains with your appearance.You are wrong to neglect your dress as you do.Put on that handsome frilled shirt and your green coat of Elbeuf cloth.I have my reasons," she added slyly."Besides, Mademoiselle Cormon is going to Prebaudet, and many persons will doubtless call to bid her good-bye.
When a young man is marriageable he ought to take every means to make himself agreeable.If girls would only tell the truth, heavens! my dear boy, you'd be astonished at what makes them fall in love.Often it suffices for a man to ride past them at the head of a company of artillery, or show himself at a ball in tight clothes.Sometimes a mere turn of the head, a melancholy attitude, makes them suppose a man's whole life; they'll invent a romance to match the hero--who is often a mere brute, but the marriage is made.Watch the Chevalier de Valois: study him; copy his manners; see with what ease he presents himself; he never puts on a stiff air, as you do.Talk a little more;one would really think you didn't know anything,--you, who know Hebrew by heart."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.
