“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

MademoiselleCormon

In nearly all the second-class prefectures of France