ice stabbed poor Athanase Granson
to the heart; but he showed no outward sign of the terrible agitation
within him. When he first heard of the marriage he was at the house of
the chief-justice, du Ronceret, where his mother was playing boston.
Madame Granson looked at her son in a mirror, and thought him pale;
but he had been so all day, for a vague rumor of the matter had already
reached him.

Mademoiselle Cormon was the card on which Athanase had staked his life;
and the cold presentiment of a catastrophe was already upon him. When
the soul and the imagination have magnified a misfortune and made it
too heavy for the shoulders and the brain to bear; when a hope long
cherished, the realization of which would pacify the vulture feeding on
the heart, is balked, and the man has faith neither in himself, despite
his powers, nor in the future, despite of the Divine power,--then that
man is lost. Athanase was a fruit of the Imperial system of education.
Fatality, the Emperor's religion, had filtered down from the throne to
the lowest ranks of the army and the benches of the lyceums. Athanase
sat still, with his eyes fixed on Madame du Ronceret's cards, in a
stupor that might so well pass for indifference that Madame Granson
herself was deceived about his feelings. This apparent unconcern
explained her son's refusal to make a sacrifice for this marriage of his
_liberal_ opinions,--the term "liberal" having lately been created for
the Emperor Alexander by, I think, Madame de Stael, through the lips of
Benjamin Constant.

After that fatal evening the young man took to rambling among the
picturesque regions of the Sarthe, the banks of which are much
frequented by sketchers who come to Alencon for points of view.
Windmills are there, and the river is gay in the meadows. The shores of
the Sarthe are bordered with beautiful trees, well grouped. Though
the landscape is flat, it is not without those modest graces which
distinguish France, where the eye is never wearied by the brilliancy of
Oriental skies, nor saddened by constant fog. The place is solitary. In
the provinces no one pays much attention to a fine view, either because
provincials are blases on the beauty around them, or because they have
no poesy in their souls. If there exists in the provinces a mall, a
promenade, a vantage-ground from which a fine view can be obtained, that
is the point to which no one goes. Athanase was fond of this solitude,
enlivened by the sparkl