ong those who returned to Alencon or its neighborhood,
no brave, honorable, and, above all, sound and healthy officer of
suitable age could be found, whose character would be a passport among
Bonaparte opinions; or some ci-devant noble who, to regain his lost
position, would join the ranks of the royalists. This hope kept
Mademoiselle Cormon in heart during the early months of that year. But,
alas! all the soldiers who thus returned were either too old or too
young; too aggressively Bonapartist, or too dissipated; in short, their
several situations were out of keeping with the rank, fortune, and
morals of Mademoiselle Cormon, who now grew daily more and more
desperate. The poor woman in vain prayed to God to send her a husband
with whom she could be piously happy: it was doubtless written above
that she should die both virgin and martyr; no man suitable for a
husband presented himself. The conversations in her salon every evening
kept her informed of the arrival of all strangers in Alencon, and of
the facts of their fortunes, rank, and habits. But Alencon is not a
town which attracts visitors; it is not on the road to any capital;
even sailors, travelling from Brest to Paris, never stop there. The
poor woman ended by admitting to herself that she was reduced to the
aborigines. Her eye now began to assume a certain savage expression, to
which the malicious chevalier responded by a shrewd look as he drew out
his snuff-box and gazed at the Princess Goritza. Monsieur de Valois
was well aware that in the feminine ethics of love fidelity to a first
attachment is considered a pledge for the future.

But Mademoiselle Cormon--we must admit it--was wanting in intellect,
and did not understand the snuff-box performance. She redoubled her
vigilance against "the evil spirit"; her rigid devotion and fixed
principles kept her cruel sufferings hidden among the mysteries of
private life. Every evening, after the company had left her, she thought
of her lost youth, her faded bloom, the hopes of thwarted nature; and,
all the while immolating her passions at the feet of the Cross (like
poems condemned to stay in a desk), she resolved firmly that if, by
chance, any suitor presented himself, to subject him to no tests, but to
accept him at once for whatever he might be. She even went so far as to
think of marrying a sub-lieutenant, a man who smoked tobacco, whom she
proposed to render, by dint of care and kindness, one of the best men in
the