But it was only in the silence of night watches that these fantastic marriages, in which she played the sublime role of guardian angel, took place.  The next day, though Josette found her mistress’ bed in a tossed and tumbled condition, Mademoiselle Cormon had recovered her dignity, and could only think of a man of forty, a land-owner, well preserved, and a quasi-young man.

The Abbe de Sponde was incapable of giving his niece the slightest aid in her matrimonial manoeuvres.  The worthy soul, now seventy years of age, attributed the disasters of the French Revolution to the design of Providence, eager to punish a dissolute Church.  He had therefore flung himself into the path, long since abandoned, which anchorites once followed in order to reach heaven:  he led an ascetic life without proclaiming it, and without external credit.  He hid from the world his works of charity, his continual prayers, his penances; he thought that all priests should have acted thus during the days of wrath and terror, and he preached by example.  While presenting to the world a calm and smiling face, he had ended by detaching himself utterly from earthly interests; his mind turned exclusively to sufferers, to the needs of the Church, and to his own salvation.  He left the management of his property to his niece, who gave him the income of it, and to whom he paid a slender board in order to spend the surplus in secret alms and gifts to the Church.

All the abbe’s affections were concentrated on his niece, who regarded him as a father, but an abstracted father, unable to conceive the agitations of the flesh, and thanking God for maintaining his dear daughter in a state of celibacy; for he had, from his youth up, adopted the principles of Saint John Chrysostom, who wrote that “the virgin state is as far above the marriage state as the angel is above humanity.”  Accustomed to reverence her uncle, Mademoiselle Cormon dared not initiate him into the desires which filled her soul for a change of state.  The worthy man, accustomed, on his side, to the ways of the house, would scarcely have liked the introduction of a husband.  Preoccupied by the sufferings he soothed, lost in the depths of prayer, the Abbe de Sponde had periods of abstraction which the habitues of the house regarded as absent-mindedness.  In any case, he talked little; but his silence was affable and benevolent.  He was a man of great height and spare, with grave and solemn manners, though his face expressed all gentle sentiments and an inward calm; while his mere presence carried with it a sacred authority.  He was very fond of the Voltairean chevalier.  Those two majestic relics of the nobility and clergy, though of very different habits and morals, recognized each other by their generous traits.  Besides, the chevalier was as unctuous with the abbe as he was paternal with the grisettes.