Gamard cast her most gracious look on the
Abbe Troubert, and immediately turned her eyes with terrible severity
on Birotteau, who fortunately by that time was looking on his plate.

No creature of the feminine gender was ever more capable of presenting
to the mind the elegaic nature of an old maid than Mademoiselle Sophie
Gamard. In order to describe a being whose character gives a momentous
interest to the petty events of the present drama and to the anterior
lives of the actors in it, it may be useful to give a summary of the
ideas which find expression in the being of an Old Maid,--remembering
always that the habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the
physical presence.

Though all things in society as well as in the universe are said to
have a purpose, there do exist here below certain beings whose purpose
and utility seem inexplicable. Moral philosophy and political economy
both condemn the individual who consumes without producing; who fills
a place on the earth but does not shed upon it either good or evil,
--for evil is sometimes good the meaning of which is not at once made
manifest. It is seldom that old maids of their own motion enter the
ranks of these unproductive beings. Now, if the consciousness of work
done gives to the workers a sense of satisfaction which helps them to
support life, the certainty of being a useless burden must, one would
think, produce a contrary effect, and fill the minds of such fruitless
beings with the same contempt for themselves which they inspire in
others. This harsh social reprobation is one of the causes which
contribute to fill the souls of old maids with the distress that
appears in their faces. Prejudice, in which there is truth, does cast,
throughout the world but especially in France, a great stigma on the
woman with whom no man has been willing to share the blessings or
endure the ills of life. Now, there comes to all unmarried women a
period when the world, be it right or wrong, condemns them on the fact
of this contempt, this rejection. If they are ugly, the goodness of
their characters ought to have compensated for their natural
imperfections; if, on the contrary, they are handsome, that fact
argues that their misfortune has some serious cause. It is impossible
to say which of the two classes is most deserving of rejection. If, on
the other hand, their celibacy is deliberate, if it proceeds from a
desire for independence, neither men nor mothers will forgi