“I know what it is,” the mother would reply; hinting that he was meditating over some great work.

Athanase no longer took part in politics:  he ceased to have opinions; but he appeared at times quite gay,—­gay with the satire of those who think to insult a whole world with their own individual scorn.  This young man, outside of all the ideas and all the pleasures of the provinces, interested few persons; he was not even an object of curiosity.  If persons spoke of him to his mother, it was for her sake, not his.  There was not a single soul in Alencon that sympathized with his; not a woman, not a friend came near to dry his tears; they dropped into the Sarthe.  If the gorgeous Suzanne had happened that way, how many young miseries might have been born of the meeting! for the two would surely have loved each other.

She did come, however.  Suzanne’s ambition was early excited by the tale of a strange adventure which had happened at the tavern of the More,—­a tale which had taken possession of her childish brain.  A Parisian woman, beautiful as the angels, was sent by Fouche to entangle the Marquis de Montauran, otherwise called “The Gars,” in a love-affair (see “The Chouans").  She met him at the tavern of the More on his return from an expedition to Mortagne; she cajoled him, made him love her, and then betrayed him.  That fantastic power—­the power of beauty over mankind; in fact, the whole story of Marie de Verneuil and the Gars—­dazzled Suzanne; she longed to grow up in order to play upon men.  Some months after her hasty departure she passed through her native town with an artist on his way to Brittany.  She wanted to see Fougeres, where the adventure of the Marquis de Montauran culminated, and to stand upon the scene of that picturesque war, the tragedies of which, still so little known, had filled her childish mind.  Besides this, she had a fancy to pass through Alencon so elegantly equipped that no one could recognize her; to put her mother above the reach of necessity, and also to send to poor Athanase, in a delicate manner, a sum of money,—­which in our age is to genius what in the middle ages was the charger and the coat of mail that Rebecca conveyed to Ivanhoe.

One month passed away in the strangest uncertainties respecting the marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon.  A party of unbelievers denied the marriage altogether; the believers, on the other hand, affirmed it.  At the end of two weeks, the faction of unbelief received a vigorous blow in the sale of du Bousquier’s house to the Marquis de Troisville, who only wanted a simple establishment in Alencon, intending to go to Paris after the death of the Princess Scherbellof; he proposed to await that inheritance in retirement, and then to reconstitute his estates.  This seemed positive.  The unbelievers, however, were not crushed.  They declared that du Bousquier, married or not, had made an excellent sale, for the house had only cost him twenty-seven thousand francs.  The believers were depressed by this practical observation of the incredulous.  Choisnel, Mademoiselle Cormon’s notary, asserted the latter, had heard nothing about the marriage contract; but the believers, still firm in their faith, carried off, on the twentieth day, a signal victory:  Monsieur Lepressoir, the notary of the liberals, went to Mademoiselle Cormon’s house, and the contract was signed.