These absurd practices were beginning to shed a monastic tint over the face of Rose Cormon, who now saw with something like despair her white skin assuming the yellow tones which proclaim maturity.A slight down on her upper lip, about the corners, began to spread and darken like a trail of smoke; her temples grew shiny; decadence was beginning! It was authentic in Alencon that Mademoiselle Cormon suffered from rush of blood to the head.She confided her ills to the Chevalier de Valois, enumerating her foot-baths, and consulting him as to refrigerants.On such occasions the shrewd old gentleman would pull out his snuff-box, gaze at the Princess Goritza, and say, by way of conclusion:--"The right composing draught, my dear lady, is a good and kind husband.""But whom can one trust?" she replied.
The chevalier would then brush away the snuff which had settled in the folds of his waistcoat or his paduasoy breeches.To the world at large this gesture would have seemed very natural; but it always gave extreme uneasiness to the poor woman.
The violence of this hope without an object was so great that Rose was afraid to look a man in the face lest he should perceive in her eyes the feelings that filled her soul.By a wilfulness, which was perhaps only the continuation of her earlier methods, though she felt herself attracted toward the men who might still suit her, she was so afraid of being accused of folly that she treated them ungraciously.Most persons in her society, being incapable of appreciating her motives, which were always noble, explained her manner towards her co-celibates as the revenge of a refusal received or expected.When the year 1815began, Rose had reached that fatal age which she dared not avow.She was forty-two years old.Her desire for marriage then acquired an intensity which bordered on monomania, for she saw plainly that all chance of progeny was about to escape her; and the thing which in her celestial ignorance she desired above all things was the possession of children.Not a person in all Alencon ever attributed to this virtuous woman a single desire for amorous license.She loved, as it were, in bulk without the slightest imagination of love.Rose was a Catholic Agnes, incapable of inventing even one of the wiles of Moliere's Agnes.
For some months past she had counted on chance.The disbandment of the Imperial troops and the reorganization of the Royal army caused a change in the destination of many officers, who returned, some on half-pay, others with or without a pension, to their native towns,--all having a desire to counteract their luckless fate, and to end their life in a way which might to Rose Cormon be a happy beginning of hers.It would surely be strange if, among those who returned to Alencon or its neighborhood, no brave, honorable, and, above all, sound and healthy officer of suitable age could be found, whose character would be a passport among Bonaparte opinions; or some ci-devant noble who, to regain his lost position, would join the ranks of the royalists.This hope kept Mademoiselle Cormon in heart during the early months of that year.But, alas! all the soldiers who thus returned were either too old or too young; too aggressively Bonapartist, or too dissipated; in short, their several situations were out of keeping with the rank, fortune, and morals of Mademoiselle Cormon, who now grew daily more and more desperate.The poor woman in vain prayed to God to send her a husband with whom she could be piously happy: it was doubtless written above that she should die both virgin and martyr; no man suitable for a husband presented himself.
The conversations in her salon every evening kept her informed of the arrival of all strangers in Alencon, and of the facts of their fortunes, rank, and habits.But Alencon is not a town which attracts visitors; it is not on the road to any capital; even sailors, travelling from Brest to Paris, never stop there.The poor woman ended by admitting to herself that she was reduced to the aborigines.Her eye now began to assume a certain savage expression, to which the malicious chevalier responded by a shrewd look as he drew out his snuff-box and gazed at the Princess Goritza.Monsieur de Valois was well aware that in the feminine ethics of love fidelity to a first attachment is considered a pledge for the future.
But Mademoiselle Cormon--we must admit it--was wanting in intellect, and did not understand the snuff-box performance.She redoubled her vigilance against "the evil spirit"; her rigid devotion and fixed principles kept her cruel sufferings hidden among the mysteries of private life.Every evening, after the company had left her, she thought of her lost youth, her faded bloom, the hopes of thwarted nature; and, all the while immolating her passions at the feet of the Cross (like poems condemned to stay in a desk), she resolved firmly that if, by chance, any suitor presented himself, to subject him to no tests, but to accept him at once for whatever he might be.She even went so far as to think of marrying a sub-lieutenant, a man who smoked tobacco, whom she proposed to render, by dint of care and kindness, one of the best men in the world, although he was hampered with debts.
But it was only in the silence of night watches that these fantastic marriages, in which she played the sublime role of guardian angel, took place.The next day, though Josette found her mistress' bed in a tossed and tumbled condition, Mademoiselle Cormon had recovered her dignity, and could only think of a man of forty, a land-owner, well preserved, and a quasi-young man.