“That good Monsieur du Bousquier! how well he carried you!” said Josette to her mistress.  “He was really pale at the sight of you; he loves you still.”

That speech served as closure to this solemn and terrible evening.

Throughout the morning of the next day every circumstance of the late comedy was known in the household of Alencon, and—­let us say it to the shame of that town,—­they caused inextinguishable laughter.  But on that day Mademoiselle Cormon (much benefited by the bleeding) would have seemed sublime even to the boldest scoffers, had they witnessed the noble dignity, the splendid Christian resignation which influenced her as she gave her arm to her involuntary deceiver to go into breakfast.  Cruel jesters! why could you not have seen her as she said to the viscount,—­

“Madame de Troisville will have difficulty in finding a suitable house; do me the favor, monsieur, of accepting the use of mine during the time you are in search of yours.”

“But, mademoiselle, I have two sons and two daughters; we should greatly inconvenience you.”

“Pray do not refuse me,” she said earnestly.

“I made you the same offer in the answer I wrote to your letter,” said the abbe; “but you did not receive it.”

“What, uncle! then you knew—­”

The poor woman stopped.  Josette sighed.  Neither the viscount nor the abbe observed anything amiss.  After breakfast the Abbe de Sponde carried off his guest, as agreed upon the previous evening, to show him the various houses in Alencon which could be bought, and the lots of lands on which he might build.

Left alone in the salon, Mademoiselle Cormon said to Josette, with a deeply distressed air, “My child, I am now the talk of the whole town.”

“Well, then, mademoiselle, you should marry.”

“But I am not prepared to make a choice.”

“Bah! if I were in your place, I should take Monsieur du Bousquier.”

“Josette, Monsieur de Valois says he is so republican.”

“They don’t know what they say, your gentlemen:  sometimes they declare that he robbed the republic; he couldn’t love it if he did that,” said Josette, departing.

“That girl has an amazing amount of sense,” thought Mademoiselle Cormon, who remained alone, a prey to her perplexities.

She saw plainly that a prompt marriage was the only way to silence the town.  This last checkmate, so evidently mortifying, was of a nature to drive her into some extreme action; for persons deficient in mind find difficulty in getting out of any path, either good or evil, into which they have entered.

Each of the two old bachelors had fully understood the situation in which Mademoiselle Cormon was about to find herself; consequently, each resolved to call in the course of that morning to ask after her health, and take occasion, in bachelor language, to “press his point.”  Monsieur de Valois considered that such an occasion demanded a painstaking toilet; he therefore took a bath and groomed himself with extraordinary care.  For the first and last time Cesarine observed him putting on with incredible art a suspicion of rouge.  Du Bousquier, on the other hand, that coarse republican, spurred by a brisk will, paid no attention to his dress, and arrived the first.