he saw the pitiless smile of wiser heads. The old gentleman,
who loved to assist women, turned Mademoiselle Cormon's sayings into wit
by sustaining them paradoxically, and he often covered the retreat so
well that it seemed as if the good woman had said nothing silly. She
asserted very seriously one evening that she did not see any difference
between an ox and a bull. The dear chevalier instantly arrested the
peals of laughter by asserting that there was only the difference
between a sheep and a lamb.

But the Chevalier de Valois served an ungrateful dame, for never did
Mademoiselle Cormon comprehend his chivalrous services. Observing that
the conversation grew lively, she simply thought that she was not so
stupid as she was,--the result being that she settled down into her
ignorance with some complacency; she lost her timidity, and acquired a
self-possession which gave to her "speeches" something of the solemnity
with which the British enunciate their patriotic absurdities,--the
self-conceit of stupidity, as it may be called.

As she approached her uncle, on this occasion, with a majestic step, she
was ruminating over a question that might draw him from a silence, which
always troubled her, for she feared he was dull.

"Uncle," she said, leaning on his arm and clinging to his side (this
was one of her fictions; for she said to herself "If I had a husband I
should do just so"),--"uncle, if everything here below happens according
to the will of God, there must be a reason for everything."

"Certainly," replied the abbe, gravely. The worthy man, who cherished
his niece, always allowed her to tear him from his meditations with
angelic patience.

"Then if I remain unmarried,--supposing that I do,--God wills it?"

"Yes, my child," replied the abbe.

"And yet, as nothing prevents me from marrying to-morrow if I choose,
His will can be destroyed by mine?"

"That would be true if we knew what was really the will of God," replied
the former prior of the Sorbonne. "Observe, my daughter, that you put in
an _if_."

The poor woman, who expected to draw her uncle into a matrimonial
discussion by an argument ad omnipotentem, was stupefied; but persons
of obtuse mind have the terrible logic of children, which consists
in turning from answer to question,--a logic that is frequently
embarrassing.

"But, uncle, God did not make women intending them not to marry;
otherwise they ought all to stay unmarried; if not, they ought al