al comfort, and a poor artist or man
of science is forbidden to double its purpose and make it the saviour of
his genius by securing to him the means of subsistence!

Moved by such ideas, Athanase Granson first thought of marriage with
Mademoiselle Cormon as a means of obtaining a livelihood which would
be permanent. Thence he could rise to fame, and make his mother happy,
knowing at the same time that he was capable of faithfully loving his
wife. But soon his own will created, although he did not know it, a
genuine passion. He began to study the old maid, and, by dint of the
charm which habit gives, he ended by seeing only her beauties and
ignoring her defects.

In a young man of twenty-three the senses count for much in love; their
fire produces a sort of prism between his eyes and the woman. From
this point of view the clasp with which Beaumarchis' Cherubin seizes
Marceline is a stroke of genius. But when we reflect that in the utter
isolation to which poverty condemned poor Athanase, Mademoiselle Cormon
was the only figure presented to his gaze, that she attracted his eye
incessantly, that all the light he had was concentrated on her, surely
his love may be considered natural.

This sentiment, so carefully hidden, increased from day to day. Desires,
sufferings, hopes, and meditations swelled in quietness and silence the
lake widening ever in the young man's breast, as hour by hour added its
drop of water to the volume. And the wider this inward circle, drawn
by the imagination, aided by the senses, grew, the more imposing
Mademoiselle Cormon appeared to Athanase, and the more his own timidity
increased.

The mother had divined the truth. Like all provincial mothers, she
calculated candidly in her own mind the advantages of the match. She
told herself that Mademoiselle Cormon would be very lucky to secure a
husband in a young man of twenty-three, full of talent, who would always
be an honor to his family and the neighborhood; at the same time the
obstacles which her son's want of fortune and Mademoiselle Cormon's age
presented to the marriage seemed to her almost insurmountable; she could
think of nothing but patience as being able to vanquish them. Like du
Bousquier, like the Chevalier de Valois, she had a policy of her own;
she was on the watch for circumstances, awaiting the propitious moment
for a move with the shrewdness of maternal instinct. Madame Granson
had no fears at all as to the chevalier, but she di