of the cancer which was now consuming Athanase; they have gone through those long and bitter deliberations made in presence of some grandiose purpose they had not the means to carry out; they have endured those secret miscarriages in which the fructifying seed of genius falls on arid soil.  Such men know that the grandeur of desires is in proportion to the height and breadth of the imagination.  The higher they spring, the lower they fall; and how can it be that ties and bonds should not be broken by such a fall?  Their piercing eye has seen—­as did Athanase —­the brilliant future which awaited them, and from which they fancied that only a thin gauze parted them; but that gauze through which their eyes could see is changed by Society into a wall of iron.  Impelled by a vocation, by a sentiment of art, they endeavor again and again to live by sentiments which society as incessantly materializes.  Alas! the provinces calculate and arrange marriage with the one view of material comfort, and a poor artist or man of science is forbidden to double its purpose and make it the saviour of his genius by securing to him the means of subsistence!

Moved by such ideas, Athanase Granson first thought of marriage with Mademoiselle Cormon as a means of obtaining a livelihood which would be permanent.  Thence he could rise to fame, and make his mother happy, knowing at the same time that he was capable of faithfully loving his wife.  But soon his own will created, although he did not know it, a genuine passion.  He began to study the old maid, and, by dint of the charm which habit gives, he ended by seeing only her beauties and ignoring her defects.

In a young man of twenty-three the senses count for much in love; their fire produces a sort of prism between his eyes and the woman.  From this point of view the clasp with which Beaumarchis’ Cherubin seizes Marceline is a stroke of genius.  But when we reflect that in the utter isolation to which poverty condemned poor Athanase, Mademoiselle Cormon was the only figure presented to his gaze, that she attracted his eye incessantly, that all the light he had was concentrated on her, surely his love may be considered natural.

This sentiment, so carefully hidden, increased from day to day.  Desires, sufferings, hopes, and meditations swelled in quietness and silence the lake widening ever in the young man’s breast, as hour by hour added its drop of water to the volume.  And the wider this inward circle, drawn by the imagination, aided by the senses, grew, the more imposing Mademoiselle Cormon appeared to Athanase, and the more his own timidity increased.