the spot where her
son was drowned. Her instinct may have told her that thoughts of his
could be recovered beneath that poplar; perhaps, too, she desired to
see what his eyes had seen for the last time. Some mothers would die
of the sight; others give themselves up to it in saintly adoration.
Patient anatomists of human nature cannot too often enunciate the
truths before which all educations, laws, and philosophical systems
must give way. Let us repeat continually: it is absurd to force
sentiments into one formula: appearing as they do, in each individual
man, they combine with the elements that form his nature and take his
own physiognomy.

Madame Granson, as she stood on that fatal spot, saw a woman approach
it, who exclaimed,--

"Was it here?"

That woman wept as the mother wept. It was Suzanne. Arriving that
morning at the hotel du More, she had been told of the catastrophe. If
poor Athanase had been living, she meant to do as many noble souls,
who are moneyless, dream of doing, and as the rich never think of
doing,--she meant to have sent him several thousand francs, writing up
the envelope the words: "Money due to your father from a comrade who
makes restitution to you." This tender scheme had been arranged by
Suzanne during her journey.

The courtesan caught sight of Madame Granson and moved rapidly away,
whispering as she passed her, "I loved him!"

Suzanne, faithful to her nature, did not leave Alencon on this
occasion without changing the orange-blossoms of the bride to rue. She
was the first to declare that Madame du Bousquier would never be
anything but Mademoiselle Cormon. With one stab of her tongue she
revenged poor Athanase and her dear chevalier.

Alencon now witnessed a suicide that was slower and quite differently
pitiful from that of poor Athanase, who was quickly forgotten by
society, which always makes haste to forget its dead. The poor
Chevalier de Valois died in life; his suicide was a daily occurrence
for fourteen years. Three months after the du Bousquier marriage
society remarked, not without astonishment, that the linen of the
chevalier was frayed and rusty, that his hair was irregularly combed
and brushed. With a frowsy head the Chevalier de Valois could no
longer be said to exist! A few of his ivory teeth deserted, though the
keenest observers of human life were unable to discover to what body
they had hitherto belonged, whether to a foreign legion or whether
they were indigenous,