to common souls, those
sudden determinations which make fools say of a man, "He is mad."

The contempt which the world pours out on poverty was death to
Athanase; the enervating heat of solitude, without a breath or current
of air, relaxed the bow which ever strove to tighten itself; his soul
grew weary in this painful effort without results. Athanase was a man
who might have taken his place among the glories of France; but, eagle
as he was, cooped in a cage without his proper nourishment, he was
about to die of hunger after contemplating with an ardent eye the
fields of air and the mountain heights where genius soars. His work in
the city library escaped attention, and he buried in his soul his
thoughts of fame, fearing that they might injure him; but deeper than
all lay buried within him the secret of his heart,--a passion which
hollowed his cheeks and yellowed his brow. He loved his distant
cousin, this very Mademoiselle Cormon whom the Chevalier de Valois and
du Bousquier, his hidden rivals, were stalking. This love had had its
origin in calculation. Mademoiselle Cormon was thought to be one of
the richest persons in the town: the poor lad had therefore been led
to love her by desires for material happiness, by the hope, long
indulged, of gilding with comfort his mother's last years, by eager
longing for the ease of life so needful to men who live by thought;
but this most innocent point of departure degraded his passion in his
own eyes. Moreover, he feared the ridicule the world would cast upon
the love of a young man of twenty-three for an old maid of forty.

And yet his passion was real; whatever may seem false about such a
love elsewhere, it can be realized as a fact in the provinces, where,
manners and morals being without change or chance or movement or
mystery, marriage becomes a necessity of life. No family will accept a
young man of dissolute habits. However natural the liaison of a young
man, like Athanase, with a handsome girl, like Suzanne, for instance,
might seem in a capital, it alarms provincial parents, and destroys
the hopes of marriage of a poor young man when possibly the fortune of
a rich one might cause such an unfortunate antecedent to be
overlooked. Between the depravity of certain liaisons and a sincere
love, a man of honor and no fortune will not hesitate: he prefers the
misfortunes of virtue to the evils of vice. But in the provinces women
with whom a young man call fall in love are rare.