e Valois said a cruel thing:--

"The Cormons end as they began; there's only a hand's breadth between
a steward and a purveyor."

CHAPTER VII

OTHER RESULTS

The news of Mademoiselle Cormon's choice stabbed poor Athanase Granson
to the heart; but he showed no outward sign of the terrible agitation
within him. When he first heard of the marriage he was at the house of
the chief-justice, du Ronceret, where his mother was playing boston.
Madame Granson looked at her son in a mirror, and thought him pale;
but he had been so all day, for a vague rumor of the matter had
already reached him.

Mademoiselle Cormon was the card on which Athanase had staked his
life; and the cold presentiment of a catastrophe was already upon him.
When the soul and the imagination have magnified a misfortune and made
it too heavy for the shoulders and the brain to bear; when a hope long
cherished, the realization of which would pacify the vulture feeding
on the heart, is balked, and the man has faith neither in himself,
despite his powers, nor in the future, despite of the Divine power,
--then that man is lost. Athanase was a fruit of the Imperial system
of education. Fatality, the Emperor's religion, had filtered down from
the throne to the lowest ranks of the army and the benches of the
lyceums. Athanase sat still, with his eyes fixed on Madame du
Ronceret's cards, in a stupor that might so well pass for indifference
that Madame Granson herself was deceived about his feelings. This
apparent unconcern explained her son's refusal to make a sacrifice for
this marriage of his /liberal/ opinions,--the term "liberal" having
lately been created for the Emperor Alexander by, I think, Madame de
Stael, through the lips of Benjamin Constant.

After that fatal evening the young man took to rambling among the
picturesque regions of the Sarthe, the banks of which are much
frequented by sketchers who come to Alencon for points of view.
Windmills are there, and the river is gay in the meadows. The shores
of the Sarthe are bordered with beautiful trees, well grouped. Though
the landscape is flat, it is not without those modest graces which
distinguish France, where the eye is never wearied by the brilliancy
of Oriental skies, nor saddened by constant fog. The place is
solitary. In the provinces no one pays much attention to a fine view,
either because provincials are blases on the beauty around th