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.