You know with
what care the government is beginning to weed out such opinions. If your
dear Athanase loses his place, where can he find other employment? I
advise him not to get himself in bad odor with the administration."

"Monsieur le Chevalier," said the poor frightened mother, "how grateful
I am to you! You are right: my son is the tool of a bad set of people; I
shall enlighten him."

The chevalier had long since fathomed the nature of Athanase, and
recognized in it that unyielding element of republican convictions
to which in his youth a young man is willing to sacrifice everything,
carried away by the word "liberty," so ill-defined and so little
understood, but which to persons disdained by fate is a banner of
revolt; and to such, revolt is vengeance. Athanase would certainly
persist in that faith, for his opinions were woven in with his artistic
sorrows, with his bitter contemplation of the social state. He was
ignorant of the fact that at thirty-six years of age,--the period of
life when a man has judged men and social interests and relations,--the
opinions for which he was ready to sacrifice his future would be
modified in him, as they are in all men of real superiority. To remain
faithful to the Left side of Alencon was to gain the aversion of
Mademoiselle Cormon. There, indeed, the chevalier saw true.

Thus we see that this society, so peaceful in appearance, was internally
as agitated as any diplomatic circle, where craft, ability, and passions
group themselves around the grave questions of an empire. The guests
were now seated at the table laden with the first course, which they ate
as provincials eat, without shame at possessing a good appetite, and
not as in Paris, where it seems as if jaws gnashed under sumptuary laws,
which made it their business to contradict the laws of anatomy. In Paris
people eat with their teeth, and trifle with their pleasure; in the
provinces things are done naturally, and interest is perhaps rather too
much concentrated on the grand and universal means of existence to which
God has condemned his creatures.

It was at the end of the first course that Mademoiselle Cormon made the
most celebrated of her "speeches"; it was talked about for fully two
years, and is still told at the gatherings of the lesser bourgeoisie
whenever the topic of her marriage comes up.

The conversation, becoming lively as the penultimate entree was
reached, had turned naturally on the affair of the t