without their knowledge. Mademoiselle Cormon did not study them; she
watched them. A single word said heedlessly, a joke (that she often
was unable to understand), sufficed to make her reject an aspirant as
unworthy: this one had neither heart nor delicacy; that one told lies,
and was not religious; a third only wanted to coin money under the cloak
of marriage; another was not of a nature to make a woman happy; here
she suspected hereditary gout; there certain immoral antecedents alarmed
her. Like the Church, she required a noble priest at her altar; she even
wanted to be married for imaginary ugliness and pretended defects, just
as other women wish to be loved for the good qualities they have not,
and for imaginary beauties. Mademoiselle Cormon's ambition took its
rise in the most delicate and sensitive feminine feeling; she longed to
reward a lover by revealing to him a thousand virtues after marriage, as
other women then betray the imperfections they have hitherto concealed.
But she was ill understood. The noble woman met with none but common
souls in whom the reckoning of actual interests was paramount, and who
knew nothing of the nobler calculations of sentiment.

The farther she advanced towards that fatal epoch so adroitly called the
"second youth," the more her distrust increased. She affected to present
herself in the most unfavorable light, and played her part so well that
the last wooers hesitated to link their fate to that of a person whose
virtuous blind-man's-buff required an amount of penetration that men who
want the virtuous ready-made would not bestow upon it. The constant fear
of being married for her money rendered her suspicious and uneasy beyond
all reason. She turned to the rich men; but the rich are in search
of great marriages; she feared the poor men, in whom she denied the
disinterestedness she sought so eagerly. After each disappointment in
marriage, the poor lady, led to despise mankind, began to see them
all in a false light. Her character acquired, necessarily, a secret
misanthropy, which threw a tinge of bitterness into her conversation,
and some severity into her eyes. Celibacy gave to her manners and habits
a certain increasing rigidity; for she endeavored to sanctify herself
in despair of fate. Noble vengeance! she was cutting for God the rough
diamond rejected by man. Before long public opinion was against her; for
society accepts the verdict an independent woman renders on herself by