But reflect upon this carefully: the purest catholic virtue, with its loving acceptance of all cups, with its pious submission to the will of God, with its belief in the print of the divine finger on the clay of all earthly life, is the mysterious light which glides into the innermost folds of human history, setting them in relief and magnifying them in the eyes of those who still have Faith.

Besides, if there be stupidity, why not concern ourselves with the sorrows of stupidity as well as with the sorrows of genius?
The former is a social element infinitely more abundant than the latter.
So, then, Mademoiselle Cormon was guilty in the eyes of the world of the divine ignorance of virgins.

She was no observer, and her behavior with her suitors proved it.

At this very moment, a young girl of sixteen, who had never opened a novel, would have read a hundred chapters of a love story in the eyes of Athanase Granson, where Mademoiselle Cormon saw absolutely nothing.

Shy herself, she never suspected shyness in others; she did not recognize in the quavering tones of his speech the force of a sentiment he could not utter.