Madame Granson, widow of a lieutenant-colonel of artillery¹ killed at Jena, possessed², as her whole means of livelihood³, a meagre pension of nine hundred francs a year, and three hundred francs from property of her own, plus a son whose support and education had eaten up all her savings⁴. She occupied, in the rue⁵ du Bercail, one of those melancholy⁶ ground-floor apartments which a traveller passing along the principal street of a little provincial⁷ town can look through at a glance. The street door opened at the top of three steep steps; a passage led to an interior courtyard, at the end of which was the staircase covered by a wooden gallery. On one side of the passage was the dining-room and the kitchen; on the other side, a salon⁸ put to many uses, and the widow’s bedchamber.  
Athanase Granson, a young man twenty-three years of age, who slept in an attic⁹ room above the second floor of the house, added six hundred francs to the income of his poor mother, by the salary of a little place which the influence of his relation, Mademoiselle Cormon, had obtained for him in the mayor’s office, where he was placed in charge of the archives.
 
From these indications it is easy to imagine Madame Granson in her cold salon with its yellow curtains and Utrecht velvet¹⁰ furniture, also yellow, as she straightened the round straw mats which were placed before each chair, that visitors might not soil the red-tiled floor while they sat there; after which she returned to her cushioned armchair and little work-table placed beneath the portrait of the lieutenant-colonel of artillery between two windows,—a point from which her eye could rake the rue du Bercail and see all comers. She was a good woman, dressed with bourgeois¹¹ simplicity¹² in keeping with her wan¹³ face furrowed¹⁴ by grief. The rigorous humbleness¹⁵ of poverty made itself felt in all the accessories of this household, the very air of which was charged with the stern and upright morals of the provinces. At this moment the son and mother were together in the dining-room, where they were breakfasting with a cup of coffee, with bread and butter and radishes. To make the pleasure which Suzanne’s visit was to give to Madame Granson intelligible¹⁶, we must explain certain secret interests of the mother and son.
 
Athanase Granson was a thin and pale young man, of medium height, with a hollow face in which his two black eyes, sparkling with thoughts, gave the effect of bits of coal. The rather irregular lines of his face, the curve of his lips, a prominent chin, the fine modelling of his forehead, his melancholy countenance¹⁷, caused by a sense of his poverty warring with the powers that he felt within him, were all indications of repressed and imprisoned¹⁸ talent. In any other place than the town of Alencon the mere¹⁹ aspect of his person would have won him the assistance of superior men, or of women who are able to recognize genius in obscurity. If his was not genius, it was at any rate the form and aspect of it; if he had not the actual force of a great heart, the glow of such a heart was in his glance. Although he was capable of expressing the highest feeling, a casing of timidity destroyed all the graces of his youth, just as the ice of poverty kept him from daring to put forth²⁰ all his powers. Provincial life, without an opening, without appreciation²¹, without encouragement, described a circle about him in which languished²² and died the power of thought,—a power which as yet had scarcely reached its dawn. Moreover, Athanase possessed that savage²⁴ pride which poverty intensifies²⁵ in noble minds, exalting²⁶ them in their struggle with men and things; although at their start in life it is an obstacle to their advancement²⁷. Genius proceeds in two ways: either it takes its opportunity—like Napoleon, like Moliere—the moment that it sees it, or it waits to be sought when it has patiently revealed itself. Young Granson belonged to that class of men of talent who distrust themselves and are easily discouraged. His soul was contemplative. He lived more by thought than by action. Perhaps he might have seemed deficient²⁸ or incomplete to those who cannot conceive of genius without the sparkle of French passion; but he was powerful in the world of mind, and he was liable to reach, through a series of emotions 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 enervating²⁹ heat of solitude³⁰, without a breath or current of air, relaxed the bow which ever strove to tighten³¹ 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 nourishment³², he was about to die of hunger after contemplating³³ with an ardent³⁴ 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 gilding³⁵ with comfort his mother’s last years, by eager longing³⁶ 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 ridicule³⁷ 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 liaison³⁸ 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 liaisons³⁹ and a sincere love, a man of honor and no fortune will not hesitate: he prefers the misfortunes of virtue⁴⁰ to the evils of vice⁴¹. But in the provinces women with whom a young man call fall in love are rare. A rich young girl he cannot obtain in a region where all is calculation; a poor young girl he is prevented from loving; it would be, as provincials⁴² say, marrying hunger and thirst. Such monkish⁴³ solitude is, however, dangerous to youth.
 
These reflections explain why provincial life is so firmly based on marriage. Thus we find that ardent and vigorous genius, forced to rely on the independence of its own poverty, quits these cold regions where thought is persecuted⁴⁴ by brutal⁴⁵ indifference⁴⁶, where no woman is willing to be a sister of charity to a man of talent, of art, of science.
 
Who will really understand Athanase Granson’s love for Mademoiselle Cormon? Certainly neither rich men—those sultans of society who fill their harems—nor middle-class men, who follow the well-beaten high-road of prejudices; nor women who, not choosing to understand the passions of artists, impose the yoke⁴⁷ of their virtues⁴⁸ upon men of genius, imagining that the two sexes are governed by the same laws.
 
Here, perhaps, we should appeal to those young men who suffer from the repression⁴⁹ of their first desires at the moment when all their forces are developing; to artists sick of their own genius smothering⁵⁰ under the pressure of poverty; to men of talent, persecuted and without influence, often without friends at the start, who have ended by triumphing over that double anguish²³, equally agonizing⁵¹, of soul and body. Such men will well understand the lancinating pains of the cancer which was now consuming Athanase; they have gone through those long and bitter deliberations made in presence of some grandiose⁵² purpose they had not the means to carry out; they have endured those secret miscarriages⁵³ in which the fructifying⁵⁴ seed of genius falls on arid⁵⁵ soil. Such men know that the grandeur⁵⁶ of desires is in proportion to the height and breadth of the imagination. The higher they spring, the lower they fall; and how can it be that ties and bonds should not be broken by such a fall? Their piercing eye has seen—as did Athanase—the brilliant future which awaited them, and from which they fancied that only a thin gauze parted them; but that gauze through which their eyes could see is changed by Society into a wall of iron. Impelled⁵⁷ by a vocation⁵⁸, by a sentiment of art, they endeavor again and again to live by sentiments which society as

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