In a moment, as rapid as the flash of the lightning, Suzanne received the broadside of this emotion in her heart.  The flame of a real love burned up the evil weeds fostered by a libertine and dissipated life.  She saw how much she was losing of decency and value by accusing herself falsely.  What had seemed to her a joke the night before became to her eyes a serious charge against herself.  She recoiled at her own success.  But the impossibility of any result; the poverty of the young man; a vague hope of enriching herself, of going to Paris, and returning with full hands to say, “I love you! here are the means of happiness!” or mere fate, if you will have it so, dried up the next moment this beneficent dew.

The ambitious grisette asked with a timid air for a moment’s interview with Madame Granson, who took her at once into her bedchamber.  When Suzanne came out she looked again at Athanase; he was still in the same position, and the tears came into her eyes.  As for Madame Granson, she was radiant with joy.  At last she had a weapon, and a terrible one, against du Bousquier; she could now deal him a mortal blow.  She had of course promised the poor seduced girl the support of all charitable ladies and that of the members of the Maternity Society in particular; she foresaw a dozen visits which would occupy her whole day, and brew up a frightful storm on the head of the guilty du Bousquier.  The Chevalier de Valois, while foreseeing the turn the affair would take, had really no idea of the scandal which would result from his own action.

“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:—­