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.

Impelled by a vocation, by a sentiment of art, they endeavor again and again to live by sentiments which society as incessantly materializes.

Alas! the provinces calculate and arrange marriage with the one view of material comfort, and a poor artist or man of science is forbidden to double its purpose and make it the saviour of his genius by securing to him the means of subsistence! Moved by such ideas, Athanase Granson first thought of marriage with Mademoiselle Cormon as a means of obtaining a livelihood which would be permanent.

Thence he could rise to fame, and make his mother happy, knowing at the same time that he was capable of faithfully loving his wife.

But soon his own will created, although he did not know it, a genuine passion.