very precaution in preparing her to receive
the dreadful remains. The news of this suicide made, as may well be
supposed, a great excitement in Alencon. The poor young man of genius
had no protector the night before, but on the morrow of his death a
thousand voices cried aloud, "I would have helped him." It is so easy
and convenient to be charitable gratis!

The suicide was explained by the Chevalier de Valois. He revealed, in
a spirit of revenge, the artless, sincere, and genuine love of Athanase
for Mademoiselle Cormon. Madame Granson, enlightened by the chevalier,
remembered a thousand little circumstances which confirmed the
chevalier's statement. The story then became touching, and many women
wept over it. Madame Granson's grief was silent, concentrated, and
little understood. There are two forms of mourning for mothers. Often
the world can enter fully into the nature of their loss: their son,
admired, appreciated, young, perhaps handsome, with a noble path before
him, leading to fortune, possibly to fame, excites universal regret;
society joins in the grief, and alleviates while it magnifies it. But
there is another sorrow of mothers who alone know what their child was
really; who alone have received his smiles and observed the treasures of
a life too soon cut short. That sorrow hides its woe, the blackness
of which surpasses all other mourning; it cannot be described; happily
there are but few women whose heart-strings are thus severed.

Before Madame du Bousquier returned to town, Madame du Ronceret, one of
her good friends, had driven out to Prebaudet to fling this corpse upon
the roses of her joy, to show her the love she had ignored, and sweetly
shed a thousand drops of wormwood into the honey of her bridal month.
As Madame du Bousquier drove back to Alencon, she chanced to meet Madame
Granson at the corner of the rue Val-Noble. The glance of the mother,
dying of her grief, struck to the heart of the poor woman. A thousand
maledictions, a thousand flaming reproaches, were in that look: Madame
du Bousquier was horror-struck; that glance predicted and called down
evil upon her head.

The evening after the catastrophe, Madame Granson, one of the persons
most opposed to the rector of the town, and who had hitherto supported
the minister of Saint-Leonard, began to tremble as she thought of the
inflexible Catholic doctrines professed by her own party. After placing
her son's body in its shroud with her own hands,