So, then, Mademoiselle Cormon was guilty in the eyes of the world of the divine ignorance of virgins.  She was no observer, and her behavior with her suitors proved it.  At this very moment, a young girl of sixteen, who had never opened a novel, would have read a hundred chapters of a love story in the eyes of Athanase Granson, where Mademoiselle Cormon saw absolutely nothing.  Shy herself, she never suspected shyness in others; she did not recognize in the quavering tones of his speech the force of a sentiment he could not utter.  Capable of inventing those refinements of sentimental grandeur which hindered her marriage in her early years, she yet could not recognize them in Athanase.  This moral phenomenon will not seem surprising to persons who know that the qualities of the heart are as distinct from those of the mind as the faculties of genius are from the nobility of soul.  A perfect, all-rounded man is so rare that Socrates, one of the noblest pearls of humanity, declared (as a phrenologist of that day) that he was born to be a scamp, and a very bad one.  A great general may save his country at Zurich, and take commissions from purveyors.  A great musician may conceive the sublimest music and commit a forgery.  A woman of true feeling may be a fool.  In short, a devote may have a sublime soul and yet be unable to recognize the tones of a noble soul beside her.  The caprices produced by physical infirmities are equally to be met with in the mental and moral regions.

This good creature, who grieved at making her yearly preserves for no one but her uncle and herself, was becoming almost ridiculous.  Those who felt a sympathy for her on account of her good qualities, and others on account of her defects, now made fun of her abortive marriages.  More than one conversation was based on what would become of so fine a property, together with the old maid’s savings and her uncle’s inheritance.  For some time past she had been suspected of being au fond, in spite of appearances, an “original.”  In the provinces it was not permissible to be original:  being original means having ideas that are not understood by others; the provinces demand equality of mind as well as equality of manners and customs.

The marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon seemed, after 1804, a thing so problematical that the saying “married like Mademoiselle Cormon” became proverbial in Alencon as applied to ridiculous failures.  Surely the sarcastic mood must be an imperative need in France, that so excellent a woman should excite the laughter of Alencon.  Not only did she receive the whole society of the place at her house, not only was she charitable, pious, incapable of saying an unkind thing, but she was fully in accord with the spirit of the place and the habits and customs of the inhabitants, who liked her as the symbol of their lives; she was absolutely inlaid into the ways of the provinces; she had never quitted them; she imbibed all their prejudices; she espoused all their interests; she adored them.