quiet and uniform
scene, this house and its interior, this company and its interests,
heightened by the pettiness of its intellect like goldleaf beaten
between sheets of parchment, ask yourself, What is human life? Try to
decide between him who scribbles jokes on Egyptian obelisks, and him who
has "bostoned" for twenty years with Du Bousquier, Monsieur de Valois,
Mademoiselle Cormon, the judge of the court, the king's attorney, the
Abbe de Sponde, Madame Granson, and tutti quanti. If the daily and
punctual return of the same steps to the same path is not happiness, it
imitates happiness so well that men driven by the storms of an agitated
life to reflect upon the blessings of tranquillity would say that here
was happiness _enough_.

To reckon the importance of Mademoiselle Cormon's salon at its true
value, it will suffice to say that the born statistician of the
society, du Bousquier, had estimated that the persons who frequented it
controlled one hundred and thirty-one votes in the electoral college,
and mustered among themselves eighteen hundred thousand francs a year
from landed estate in the neighborhood.

The town of Alencon, however, was not entirely represented by this
salon. The higher aristocracy had a salon of their own; moreover, that
of the receiver-general was like an administration inn kept by the
government, where society danced, plotted, fluttered, loved, and supped.
These two salons communicated by means of certain mixed individuals with
the house of Cormon, and vice-versa; but the Cormon establishment sat
severely in judgment on the two other camps. The luxury of their dinners
was criticised; the ices at their balls were pondered; the behavior of
the women, the dresses, and "novelties" there produced were discussed
and disapproved.

Mademoiselle Cormon, a species of firm, as one might say, under whose
name was comprised an imposing coterie, was naturally the aim and object
of two ambitious men as deep and wily as the Chevalier de Valois and
du Bousquier. To the one as well as to the other, she meant election as
deputy, resulting, for the noble, in the peerage, for the purveyor, in
a receiver-generalship. A leading salon is a difficult thing to create,
whether in Paris or the provinces, and here was one already created. To
marry Mademoiselle Cormon was to reign in Alencon. Athanase Granson, the
only one of the three suitors for the hand of the old maid who no longer
calculated profits, now loved her