statics. This state of uncertain expectation is pleasing to unmarried
women as long as they feel themselves young, and in a position to
choose a husband. France knows that the political system of Napoleon
resulted in making many widows. Under that regime heiresses were
entirely out of proportion in numbers to the bachelors who wanted to
marry. When the Consulate restored internal order, external
difficulties made the marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon as difficult to
arrange as it had been in the past. If, on the one hand,
Rose-Marie-Victoire refused to marry an old man, on the other, the
fear of ridicule forbade her to marry a very young one.

In the provinces, families marry their sons early to escape the
conscription. In addition to all this, she was obstinately determined
not to marry a soldier: she did not intend to take a man and then give
him up to the Emperor; she wanted him for herself alone. With these
views, she found it therefore impossible, from 1804 to 1815, to enter
the lists with young girls who were rivalling each other for suitable
matches.

Besides her predilection for the nobility, Mademoiselle Cormon had
another and very excusable mania: that of being loved for herself. You
could hardly believe the lengths to which this desire led her. She
employed her mind on setting traps for her possible lovers, in order
to test their real sentiments. Her nets were so well laid that the
luckless suitors were all caught, and succumbed to the test she
applied to them without their knowledge. Mademoiselle Cormon did not
study them; she watched them. A single word said heedlessly, a joke
(that she often was unable to understand), sufficed to make her reject
an aspirant as unworthy: this one had neither heart nor delicacy; that
one told lies, and was not religious; a third only wanted to coin