ions imperceptible to common
souls, those sudden determinations which make fools say of a man, "He is
mad."

The contempt which the world pours out on poverty was death to Athanase;
the enervating heat of solitude, without a breath or current of air,
relaxed the bow which ever strove to tighten itself; his soul grew weary
in this painful effort without results. Athanase was a man who might
have taken his place among the glories of France; but, eagle as he was,
cooped in a cage without his proper nourishment, he was about to die of
hunger after contemplating with an ardent eye the fields of air and
the mountain heights where genius soars. His work in the city library
escaped attention, and he buried in his soul his thoughts of fame,
fearing that they might injure him; but deeper than all lay buried
within him the secret of his heart,--a passion which hollowed his
cheeks and yellowed his brow. He loved his distant cousin, this very
Mademoiselle Cormon whom the Chevalier de Valois and du Bousquier,
his hidden rivals, were stalking. This love had had its origin in
calculation. Mademoiselle Cormon was thought to be one of the richest
persons in the town: the poor lad had therefore been led to love her by
desires for material happiness, by the hope, long indulged, of gilding
with comfort his mother's last years, by eager longing for the ease of
life so needful to men who live by thought; but this most innocent point
of departure degraded his passion in his own eyes. Moreover, he feared
the ridicule the world would cast upon the love of a young man of
twenty-three for an old maid of forty.

And yet his passion was real; whatever may seem false about such a love
elsewhere, it can be realized as a fact in the provinces, where, manners
and morals being without change or chance or movement or mystery,
marriage becomes a necessity of life. No family will accept a young man
of dissolute habits. However natural the liaison of a young man, like
Athanase, with a handsome girl, like Suzanne, for instance, might seem
in a capital, it alarms provincial parents, and destroys the hopes of
marriage of a poor young man when possibly the fortune of a rich one
might cause such an unfortunate antecedent to be overlooked. Between the
depravity of certain liaisons and a sincere love, a man of honor and no
fortune will not hesitate: he prefers the misfortunes of virtue to the
evils of vice. But in the provinces women with whom a young man call
fa