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 person as
well as her fortune.

To employ the jargon of the day, is there not a singular drama in the
situation of these four personages? Surely there is something odd and
fantastic in three rivalries silently encompassing a woman who never
guessed their existence, in spite of an eager and legitimate desire to
be married. And yet, though all these circumstances make the
spinsterhood of this old maid an extraordinary thing, it is not
difficult to explain how and why, in spite of her fortune and her
three lovers, she was still unmarried. In the first place,
Mademoiselle Cormon, following the custom and rule of her house, had
always desired to marry a nobleman; but from 1788 to 1798 public
circumstances were very unfavorable to such pretensions. Though she
wanted to be a woman of condition, as the saying is, she was horribly
afraid of the Revolutionary tribunal. The two sentiments, equal in
force, kept her stationary by a law as true in ethics as it is in