Under these circumstances the heroic Chevalier de Valois would bring to the succor of the old maid all the powers of his clever diplomacy, whenever he saw the pitiless smile of wiser heads.  The old gentleman, who loved to assist women, turned Mademoiselle Cormon’s sayings into wit by sustaining them paradoxically, and he often covered the retreat so well that it seemed as if the good woman had said nothing silly.  She asserted very seriously one evening that she did not see any difference between an ox and a bull.  The dear chevalier instantly arrested the peals of laughter by asserting that there was only the difference between a sheep and a lamb.

But the Chevalier de Valois served an ungrateful dame, for never did Mademoiselle Cormon comprehend his chivalrous services.  Observing that the conversation grew lively, she simply thought that she was not so stupid as she was,—­the result being that she settled down into her ignorance with some complacency; she lost her timidity, and acquired a self-possession which gave to her “speeches” something of the solemnity with which the British enunciate their patriotic absurdities,—­the self-conceit of stupidity, as it may be called.

As she approached her uncle, on this occasion, with a majestic step, she was ruminating over a question that might draw him from a silence, which always troubled her, for she feared he was dull.

“Uncle,” she said, leaning on his arm and clinging to his side (this was one of her fictions; for she said to herself “If I had a husband I should do just so"),—­“uncle, if everything here below happens according to the will of God, there must be a reason for everything.”

“Certainly,” replied the abbe, gravely.  The worthy man, who cherished his niece, always allowed her to tear him from his meditations with angelic patience.

“Then if I remain unmarried,—­supposing that I do,—­God wills it?”

“Yes, my child,” replied the abbe.

“And yet, as nothing prevents me from marrying to-morrow if I choose, His will can be destroyed by mine?”

“That would be true if we knew what was really the will of God,” replied the former prior of the Sorbonne.  “Observe, my daughter, that you put in an if.”

The poor woman, who expected to draw her uncle into a matrimonial discussion by an argument ad omnipotentem, was stupefied; but persons of obtuse mind have the terrible logic of children, which consists in turning from answer to question,—­a logic that is frequently embarrassing.

“But, uncle, God did not make women intending them not to marry; otherwise they ought all to stay unmarried; if not, they ought all to marry.  There’s great injustice in the distribution of parts.”

“Daughter,” said the worthy abbe, “you are blaming the Church, which declares celibacy to be the better way to God.”

“But if the Church is right, and all the world were good Catholics, wouldn’t the human race come to an end, uncle?”