quier! how well he carried you!" said Josette
to her mistress. "He was really pale at the sight of you; he loves you
still."

That speech served as closure to this solemn and terrible evening.

Throughout the morning of the next day every circumstance of the late
comedy was known in the household of Alencon, and--let us say it to the
shame of that town,--they caused inextinguishable laughter. But on that
day Mademoiselle Cormon (much benefited by the bleeding) would have
seemed sublime even to the boldest scoffers, had they witnessed the
noble dignity, the splendid Christian resignation which influenced her
as she gave her arm to her involuntary deceiver to go into breakfast.
Cruel jesters! why could you not have seen her as she said to the
viscount,--

"Madame de Troisville will have difficulty in finding a suitable house;
do me the favor, monsieur, of accepting the use of mine during the time
you are in search of yours."

"But, mademoiselle, I have two sons and two daughters; we should greatly
inconvenience you."

"Pray do not refuse me," she said earnestly.

"I made you the same offer in the answer I wrote to your letter," said
the abbe; "but you did not receive it."

"What, uncle! then you knew--"

The poor woman stopped. Josette sighed. Neither the viscount nor the
abbe observed anything amiss. After breakfast the Abbe de Sponde carried
off his guest, as agreed upon the previous evening, to show him the
various houses in Alencon which could be bought, and the lots of lands
on which he might build.

Left alone in the salon, Mademoiselle Cormon said to Josette, with a
deeply distressed air, "My child, I am now the talk of the whole town."

"Well, then, mademoiselle, you should marry."

"But I am not prepared to make a choice."

"Bah! if I were in your place, I should take Monsieur du Bousquier."

"Josette, Monsieur de Valois says he is so republican."

"They don't know what they say, your gentlemen: sometimes they declare
that he robbed the republic; he couldn't love it if he did that," said
Josette, departing.

"That girl has an amazing amount of sense," thought Mademoiselle Cormon,
who remained alone, a prey to her perplexities.

She saw plainly that a prompt marriage was the only way to silence the
town. This last checkmate, so evidently mortifying, was of a nature to
drive her into some extreme action; for persons deficient in mind find
difficulty in getting out of any path, either good or evi