Monsieur de Valois now approached Mademoiselle Cormon, and offered his arm.  The old maid’s feeling to the chevalier was that of respectful consideration; and certainly his name, together with the position he occupied among the aristocratic constellations of the department made him the most brilliant ornament of her salon.  In her inmost mind Mademoiselle Cormon had wished for the last dozen years to become Madame de Valois.  That name was like the branch of a tree, to which the ideas which swarmed in her mind about rank, nobility, and the external qualities of a husband had fastened.  But, though the Chevalier de Valois was the man chosen by her heart, and mind, and ambition, that elderly ruin, combed and curled like a little Saint-John in a procession, alarmed Mademoiselle Cormon.  She saw the gentleman in him, but she could not see a husband.  The indifference which the chevalier affected as to marriage, above all, the apparent purity of his morals in a house which abounded in grisettes, did singular harm in her mind to Monsieur de Valois against his expectations.  The worthy man, who showed such judgment in the matter of his annuity, was at fault here.  Without being herself aware of it, the thoughts of Mademoiselle Cormon on the too virtuous chevalier might be translated thus:—­

“What a pity that he isn’t a trifle dissipated!”

Observers of the human heart have remarked the leaning of pious women toward scamps; some have expressed surprise at this taste, considering it opposed to Christian virtue.  But, in the first place, what nobler destiny can you offer to a virtuous woman than to purify, like charcoal, the muddy waters of vice?  How is it some observers fail to see that these noble creatures, obliged by the sternness of their own principles never to infringe on conjugal fidelity, must naturally desire a husband of wider practical experience than their own?  The scamps of social life are great men in love.  Thus the poor woman groaned in spirit at finding her chosen vessel parted into two pieces.  God alone could solder together a Chevalier de Valois and a du Bousquier.

In order to explain the importance of the few words which the chevalier and Mademoiselle Cormon are about to say to each other, it is necessary to reveal two serious matters which agitated the town, and about which opinions were divided; besides, du Bousquier was mysteriously connected with them.

One concerns the rector of Alencon, who had formerly taken the constitutional oath, and who was now conquering the repugnance of the Catholics by a display of the highest virtues.  He was Cheverus on a small scale, and became in time so fully appreciated that when he died the whole town mourned him.  Mademoiselle Cormon and the Abbe de Sponde belonged to that “little Church,” sublime in its orthodoxy, which was to the court of Rome what the Ultras were to be to Louis XVIII.  The abbe, more especially, refused to recognize a Church which had compromised with the