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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1482 ***
+
+MODESTE MIGNON
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                         To a Polish Lady.
+
+  Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through love, witch through
+  fancy, child by faith, aged by experience, man in brain, woman in
+  heart, giant by hope, mother through sorrows, poet in thy dreams,
+  --to _thee_ belongs this book, in which thy love, thy fancy, thy
+  experience, thy sorrow, thy hope, thy dreams, are the warp through
+  which is shot a woof less brilliant than the poesy of thy soul,
+  whose expression, when it shines upon thy countenance, is, to
+  those who love thee, what the characters of a lost language are to
+  scholars.
+
+                                                        De Balzac.
+
+
+
+
+
+MODESTE MIGNON
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE CHALET
+
+
+At the beginning of October, 1829, Monsieur Simon Babylas Latournelle,
+notary, was walking up from Havre to Ingouville, arm in arm with his
+son and accompanied by his wife, at whose side the head clerk of the
+lawyer’s office, a little hunchback named Jean Butscha, trotted along
+like a page. When these four personages (two of whom came the same way
+every evening) reached the elbow of the road where it turns back upon
+itself like those called in Italy “cornice,” the notary looked about to
+see if any one could overhear him either from the terrace above or
+the path beneath, and when he spoke he lowered his voice as a further
+precaution.
+
+“Exupere,” he said to his son, “you must try to carry out intelligently
+a little manoeuvre which I shall explain to you, but you are not to ask
+the meaning of it; and if you guess the meaning I command you to toss
+it into that Styx which every lawyer and every man who expects to have
+a hand in the government of his country is bound to keep within him for
+the secrets of others. After you have paid your respects and compliments
+to Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon, to Monsieur and Madame Dumay, and
+to Monsieur Gobenheim if he is at the Chalet, and as soon as quiet
+is restored, Monsieur Dumay will take you aside; you are then to look
+attentively at Mademoiselle Modeste (yes, I am willing to allow it)
+during the whole time he is speaking to you. My worthy friend will ask
+you to go out and take a walk; at the end of an hour, that is, about
+nine o’clock, you are to come back in a great hurry; try to puff as if
+you were out of breath, and whisper in Monsieur Dumay’s ear, quite low,
+but so that Mademoiselle Modeste is sure to overhear you, these words:
+‘The young man has come.’”
+
+Exupere was to start the next morning for Paris to begin the study of
+law. This impending departure had induced Latournelle to propose him
+to his friend Dumay as an accomplice in the important conspiracy which
+these directions indicate.
+
+“Is Mademoiselle Modeste suspected of having a lover?” asked Butscha in
+a timid voice of Madame Latournelle.
+
+“Hush, Butscha,” she replied, taking her husband’s arm.
+
+Madame Latournelle, the daughter of a clerk of the supreme court,
+feels that her birth authorizes her to claim issue from a parliamentary
+family. This conviction explains why the lady, who is somewhat blotched
+as to complexion, endeavors to assume in her own person the majesty of
+a court whose decrees are recorded in her father’s pothooks. She
+takes snuff, holds herself as stiff as a ramrod, poses for a person
+of consideration, and resembles nothing so much as a mummy brought
+momentarily to life by galvanism. She tries to give high-bred tones to
+her sharp voice, and succeeds no better in doing that than in hiding
+her general lack of breeding. Her social usefulness seems, however,
+incontestable when we glance at the flower-bedecked cap she wears,
+at the false front frizzling around her forehead, at the gowns of her
+choice; for how could shopkeepers dispose of those products if there
+were no Madame Latournelle? All these absurdities of the worthy woman,
+who is truly pious and charitable, might have passed unnoticed, if
+nature, amusing herself as she often does by turning out these ludicrous
+creations, had not endowed her with the height of a drum-major, and thus
+held up to view the comicalities of her provincial nature. She has
+never been out of Havre; she believes in the infallibility of Havre; she
+proclaims herself Norman to the very tips of her fingers; she venerates
+her father, and adores her husband.
+
+Little Latournelle was bold enough to marry this lady after she had
+attained the anti-matrimonial age of thirty-three, and what is more, he
+had a son by her. As he could have got the sixty thousand francs of
+her “dot” in several other ways, the public assigned his uncommon
+intrepidity to a desire to escape an invasion of the Minotaur, against
+whom his personal qualifications would have insufficiently protected him
+had he rashly dared his fate by bringing home a young and pretty wife.
+The fact was, however, that the notary recognized the really fine
+qualities of Mademoiselle Agnes (she was called Agnes) and reflected to
+himself that a woman’s beauty is soon past and gone to a husband. As
+to the insignificant youth on whom the clerk of the court bestowed in
+baptism his Norman name of “Exupere,” Madame Latournelle is still so
+surprised at becoming his mother, at the age of thirty-five years and
+seven months, that she would still provide him, if it were necessary,
+with her breast and her milk,--an hyperbole which alone can fully
+express her impassioned maternity. “How handsome he is, that son of
+mine!” she says to her little friend Modeste, as they walk to church,
+with the beautiful Exupere in front of them. “He is like you,” Modeste
+Mignon answers, very much as she might have said, “What horrid
+weather!” This silhouette of Madame Latournelle is quite important as an
+accessory, inasmuch as for three years she has been the chaperone of the
+young girl against whom the notary and his friend Dumay are now plotting
+to set up what we have called, in the “Physiologie du Mariage,” a
+“mouse-trap.”
+
+As for Latournelle, imagine a worthy little fellow as sly as the purest
+honor and uprightness would allow him to be,--a man whom any stranger
+would take for a rascal at sight of his queer physiognomy, to which,
+however, the inhabitants of Havre were well accustomed. His eyesight,
+said to be weak, obliged the worthy man to wear green goggles for the
+protection of his eyes, which were constantly inflamed. The arch of each
+eyebrow, defined by a thin down of hair, surrounded the tortoise-shell
+rim of the glasses and made a couple of circles as it were, slightly
+apart. If you have never observed on the human face the effect produced
+by these circumferences placed one within the other, and separated by a
+hollow space or line, you can hardly imagine how perplexing such a face
+will be to you, especially if pale, hollow-cheeked, and terminating in a
+pointed chin like that of Mephistopheles,--a type which painters give
+to cats. This double resemblance was observable on the face of Babylas
+Latournelle. Above the atrocious green spectacles rose a bald crown,
+all the more crafty in expression because a wig, seemingly endowed with
+motion, let the white hairs show on all sides of it as it meandered
+crookedly across the forehead. An observer taking note of this excellent
+Norman, clothed in black and mounted on his two legs like a beetle on
+a couple of pins, and knowing him to be one of the most trustworthy
+of men, would have sought, without finding it, for the reason of such
+physical misrepresentation.
+
+Jean Butscha, a natural son abandoned by his parents and taken care of
+by the clerk of the court and his daughter, and now, through sheer hard
+work, head-clerk to the notary, fed and lodged by his master, who
+gave him a salary of nine hundred francs, almost a dwarf, and with
+no semblance of youth,--Jean Butscha made Modeste his idol, and would
+willingly have given his life for hers. The poor fellow, whose eyes
+were hollowed beneath their heavy lids like the touch-holes of a cannon,
+whose head overweighted his body, with its shock of crisp hair, and
+whose face was pock-marked, had lived under pitying eyes from the time
+he was seven years of age. Is not that enough to explain his whole
+being? Silent, self-contained, pious, exemplary in conduct, he went
+his way over that vast tract of country named on the map of the heart
+Love-without-Hope, the sublime and arid steppes of Desire. Modeste had
+christened this grotesque little being her “Black Dwarf.” The nickname
+sent him to the pages of Walter Scott’s novel, and he one day said
+to Modeste: “Will you accept a rose against the evil day from your
+mysterious dwarf?” Modeste instantly sent the soul of her adorer to its
+humble mud-cabin with a terrible glance, such as young girls bestow
+on the men who cannot please them. Butscha’s conception of himself was
+lowly, and, like the wife of his master, he had never been out of Havre.
+
+Perhaps it will be well, for the sake of those who have never seen
+that city, to say a few words as to the present destination of the
+Latournelle family,--the head clerk being included in the latter term.
+Ingouville is to Havre what Montmartre is to Paris,--a high hill at the
+foot of which the city lies; with this difference, that the hill and the
+city are surrounded by the sea and the Seine, that Havre is helplessly
+circumscribed by enclosing fortifications, and, in short, that the mouth
+of the river, the harbor, and the docks present a very different aspect
+from the fifty thousand houses of Paris. At the foot of Montmartre an
+ocean of slate roofs lies in motionless blue billows; at Ingouville the
+sea is like the same roofs stirred by the wind. This eminence, or line
+of hills, which coasts the Seine from Rouen to the seashore, leaving a
+margin of valley land more or less narrow between itself and the river,
+and containing in its cities, its ravines, its vales, its meadows,
+veritable treasures of the picturesque, became of enormous value in
+and about Ingouville, after the year 1816, the period at which the
+prosperity of Havre began. This township has become since that time
+the Auteuil, the Ville-d’Avray, the Montmorency, in short, the suburban
+residence of the merchants of Havre. Here they build their houses on
+terraces around its ampitheatre of hills, and breathe the sea air
+laden with the fragrance of their splendid gardens. Here these bold
+speculators cast off the burden of their counting-rooms and the
+atmosphere of their city houses, which are built closely together
+without open spaces, often without court-yards,--a vice of construction
+with the increasing population of Havre, the inflexible line of the
+fortifications, and the enlargement of the docks has forced upon them.
+The result is, weariness of heart in Havre, cheerfulness and joy at
+Ingouville. The law of social development has forced up the suburb of
+Graville like a mushroom. It is to-day more extensive than Havre itself,
+which lies at the foot of its slopes like a serpent.
+
+At the crest of the hill Ingouville has but one street, and (as in all
+such situations) the houses which overlook the river have an immense
+advantage over those on the other side of the road, whose view they
+obstruct, and which present the effect of standing on tip-toe to look
+over the opposing roofs. However, there exist here, as elsewhere,
+certain servitudes. Some houses standing at the summit have a finer
+position or possess legal rights of view which compel their opposite
+neighbors to keep their buildings down to a required height. Moreover,
+the openings cut in the capricious rock by roads which follow its
+declensions and make the ampitheatre habitable, give vistas through
+which some estates can see the city, or the river, or the sea. Instead
+of rising to an actual peak, the hill ends abruptly in a cliff. At the
+end of the street which follows the line of the summit, ravines appear
+in which a few villages are clustered (Sainte-Adresse and two or three
+other Saint-somethings) together with several creeks which murmur and
+flow with the tides of the sea. These half-deserted slopes of Ingouville
+form a striking contrast to the terraces of fine villas which overlook
+the valley of the Seine. Is the wind on this side too strong for
+vegetation? Do the merchants shrink from the cost of terracing it?
+However this may be, the traveller approaching Havre on a steamer is
+surprised to find a barren coast and tangled gorges to the west of
+Ingouville, like a beggar in rags beside a perfumed and sumptuously
+apparelled rich man.
+
+In 1829 one of the last houses looking toward the sea, and which in
+all probability stands about the centre of the Ingouville to-day, was
+called, and perhaps is still called, “the Chalet.” Originally it was a
+porter’s lodge with a trim little garden in front of it. The owner of
+the villa to which it belonged,--a mansion with park, gardens, aviaries,
+hot-houses, and lawns--took a fancy to put the little dwelling more in
+keeping with the splendor of his own abode, and he reconstructed it on
+the model of an ornamental cottage. He divided this cottage from his own
+lawn, which was bordered and set with flower-beds and formed the terrace
+of his villa, by a low wall along which he planted a concealing hedge.
+Behind the cottage (called, in spite of all his efforts to prevent it,
+the Chalet) were the orchards and kitchen gardens of the villa. The
+Chalet, without cows or dairy, is separated from the roadway by a wooden
+fence whose palings are hidden under a luxuriant hedge. On the other
+side of the road the opposite house, subject to a legal privilege, has
+a similar hedge and paling, so as to leave an unobstructed view of Havre
+to the Chalet.
+
+This little dwelling was the torment of the present proprietor of the
+villa, Monsieur Vilquin; and here is the why and the wherefore. The
+original creator of the villa, whose sumptuous details cry aloud,
+“Behold our millions!” extended his park far into the country for the
+purpose, as he averred, of getting his gardeners out of his pockets; and
+so, when the Chalet was finished, none but a friend could be allowed to
+inhabit it. Monsieur Mignon, the next owner of the property, was very
+much attached to his cashier, Dumay, and the following history will
+prove that the attachment was mutual; to him therefore he offered
+the little dwelling. Dumay, a stickler for legal methods, insisted on
+signing a lease for three hundred francs for twelve years, and Monsieur
+Mignon willingly agreed, remarking,--
+
+“My dear Dumay, remember, you have now bound yourself to live with me
+for twelve years.”
+
+In consequence of certain events which will presently be related, the
+estates of Monsieur Mignon, formerly the richest merchant in Havre, were
+sold to Vilquin, one of his business competitors. In his joy at getting
+possession of the celebrated villa Mignon, the latter forgot to demand
+the cancelling of the lease. Dumay, anxious not to hinder the sale,
+would have signed anything Vilquin required, but the sale once made, he
+held to his lease like a vengeance. And there he remained, in Vilquin’s
+pocket as it were; at the heart of Vilquin’s family life, observing
+Vilquin, irritating Vilquin,--in short, the gadfly of all the Vilquins.
+Every morning, when he looked out of his window, Vilquin felt a violent
+shock of annoyance as his eye lighted on the little gem of a building,
+the Chalet, which had cost sixty thousand francs and sparkled like a
+ruby in the sun. That comparison is very nearly exact. The architect has
+constructed the cottage of brilliant red brick pointed with white.
+The window-frames are painted of a lively green, the woodwork is brown
+verging on yellow. The roof overhangs by several feet. A pretty gallery,
+with open-worked balustrade, surmounts the lower floor and projects
+at the centre of the facade into a veranda with glass sides. The
+ground-floor has a charming salon and a dining-room, separated from
+each other by the landing of a staircase built of wood, designed
+and decorated with elegant simplicity. The kitchen is behind the
+dining-room, and the corresponding room back of the salon, formerly a
+study, is now the bedroom of Monsieur and Madame Dumay. On the upper
+floor the architect has managed to get two large bedrooms, each with a
+dressing-room, to which the veranda serves as a salon; and above this
+floor, under the eaves, which are tipped together like a couple of
+cards, are two servants’ rooms with mansard roofs, each lighted by a
+circular window and tolerably spacious.
+
+Vilquin has been petty enough to build a high wall on the side toward
+the orchard and kitchen garden; and in consequence of this piece
+of spite, the few square feet which the lease secured to the Chalet
+resembled a Parisian garden. The out-buildings, painted in keeping
+with the cottage, stood with their backs to the wall of the adjoining
+property.
+
+The interior of this charming dwelling harmonized with its exterior.
+The salon, floored entirely with iron-wood, was painted in a style that
+suggested the beauties of Chinese lacquer. On black panels edged with
+gold, birds of every color, foliage of impossible greens, and fantastic
+oriental designs glowed and shimmered. The dining-room was entirely
+sheathed in Northern woods carved and cut in open-work like the
+beautiful Russian chalets. The little antechamber formed by the landing
+and the well of the staircase was painted in old oak to represent Gothic
+ornament. The bedrooms, hung with chintz, were charming in their costly
+simplicity. The study, where the cashier and his wife now slept, was
+panelled from top to bottom, on the walls and ceiling, like the cabin of
+a steamboat. These luxuries of his predecessor excited Vilquin’s wrath.
+He would fain have lodged his daughter and her husband in the cottage.
+This desire, well known to Dumay, will presently serve to illustrate the
+Breton obstinacy of the latter.
+
+The entrance to the Chalet is by a little trellised iron door, the
+uprights of which, ending in lance-heads, show for a few inches above
+the fence and its hedge. The little garden, about as wide as the more
+pretentious lawn, was just now filled with flowers, roses, and dahlias
+of the choicest kind, and many rare products of the hot-houses, for
+(another Vilquinard grievance) the elegant little hot-house, a very whim
+of a hot-house, a hot-house representing dignity and style, belonged
+to the Chalet, and separated, or if you prefer, united it to the villa
+Vilquin. Dumay consoled himself for the toils of business in taking care
+of this hot-house, whose exotic treasures were one of Modeste’s joys.
+The billiard-room of the villa Vilquin, a species of gallery, formerly
+communicated through an immense aviary with this hot-house. But after
+the building of the wall which deprived him of a view into the orchards,
+Dumay bricked up the door of communication. “Wall for wall!” he said.
+
+In 1827 Vilquin offered Dumay a salary of six thousand francs, and ten
+thousand more as indemnity, if he would give up the lease. The cashier
+refused; though he had but three thousand francs from Gobenheim, a
+former clerk of his master. Dumay was a Breton transplanted by fate into
+Normandy. Imagine therefore the hatred conceived for the tenants of the
+Chalet by the Norman Vilquin, a man worth three millions! What criminal
+leze-million on the part of a cashier, to hold up to the eyes of such
+a man the impotence of his wealth! Vilquin, whose desperation in the
+matter made him the talk of Havre, had just proposed to give Dumay a
+pretty house of his own, and had again been refused. Havre itself began
+to grow uneasy at the man’s obstinacy, and a good many persons explained
+it by the phrase, “Dumay is a Breton.” As for the cashier, he thought
+Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon would be ill-lodged elsewhere. His
+two idols now inhabited a temple worthy of them; the sumptuous little
+cottage gave them a home, where these dethroned royalties could keep the
+semblance of majesty about them,--a species of dignity usually denied to
+those who have seen better days.
+
+Perhaps as the story goes on, the reader will not regret having learned
+in advance a few particulars as to the home and the habitual companions
+of Modeste Mignon, for, at her age, people and things have as much
+influence upon the future life as a person’s own character,--indeed,
+character often receives ineffaceable impressions from its surroundings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. A PORTRAIT FROM LIFE
+
+
+From the manner with which the Latournelles entered the Chalet a
+stranger would readily have guessed that they came there every evening.
+
+“Ah, you are here already,” said the notary, perceiving the young banker
+Gobenheim, a connection of Gobenheim-Keller, the head of the great
+banking house in Paris.
+
+This young man with a livid face--a blonde of the type with black eyes,
+whose immovable glance has an indescribable fascination, sober in speech
+as in conduct, dressed in black, lean as a consumptive, but nevertheless
+vigorously framed--visited the family of his former master and the house
+of his cashier less from affection than from self-interest. Here they
+played whist at two sous a point; a dress-coat was not required; he
+accepted no refreshment except “eau sucree,” and consequently had
+no civilities to return. This apparent devotion to the Mignon family
+allowed it to be supposed that Gobenheim had a heart; it also released
+him from the necessity of going into the society of Havre and incurring
+useless expenses, thus upsetting the orderly economy of his domestic
+life. This disciple of the golden calf went to bed at half-past ten
+o’clock and got up at five in the morning. Moreover, being perfectly
+sure of Latournelle’s and Butscha’s discretion, he could talk over
+difficult business matters, obtain the advice of the notary gratis,
+and get an inkling of the real truth of the gossip of the street. This
+stolid gold-glutton (the epithet is Butscha’s) belonged by nature to
+the class of substances which chemistry terms absorbents. Ever since the
+catastrophe of the house of Mignon, where the Kellers had placed him to
+learn the principles of maritime commerce, no one at the Chalet had ever
+asked him to do the smallest thing, no matter what; his reply was too
+well known. The young fellow looked at Modeste precisely as he would
+have looked at a cheap lithograph.
+
+“He’s one of the pistons of the big engine called ‘Commerce,’” said poor
+Butscha, whose clever mind made itself felt occasionally by such little
+sayings timidly jerked out.
+
+The four Latournelles bowed with the most respectful deference to an
+old lady dressed in black velvet, who did not rise from the armchair in
+which she was seated, for the reason that both eyes were covered with
+the yellow film produced by cataract. Madame Mignon may be sketched in
+one sentence. Her august countenance of the mother of a family attracted
+instant notice as that of one whose irreproachable life defies the
+assaults of destiny, which nevertheless makes her the target of its
+arrows and a member of the unnumbered tribe of Niobes. Her blonde wig,
+carefully curled and well arranged upon her head, became the cold white
+face which resembled that of some burgomaster’s wife painted by Hals or
+Mirevelt. The extreme neatness of her dress, the velvet boots, the lace
+collar, the shawl evenly folded and put on, all bore testimony to the
+solicitous care which Modeste bestowed upon her mother.
+
+When silence was, as the notary had predicted, restored in the pretty
+salon, Modeste, sitting beside her mother, for whom she was embroidering
+a kerchief, became for an instant the centre of observation. This
+curiosity, barely veiled by the commonplace salutations and inquiries
+of the visitors, would have revealed even to an indifferent person the
+existence of the domestic plot to which Modeste was expected to fall
+a victim; but Gobenheim, more than indifferent, noticed nothing, and
+proceeded to light the candles on the card-table. The behavior of Dumay
+made the whole scene terrifying to Butscha, to the Latournelles, and
+above all to Madame Dumay, who knew her husband to be capable of firing
+a pistol at Modeste’s lover as coolly as though he were a mad dog.
+
+After dinner that day the cashier had gone to walk followed by two
+magnificent Pyrenees hounds, whom he suspected of betraying him, and
+therefore left in charge of a farmer, a former tenant of Monsieur
+Mignon. On his return, just before the arrival of the Latournelles,
+he had taken his pistols from his bed’s head and placed them on the
+chimney-piece, concealing this action from Modeste. The young girl took
+no notice whatever of these preparations, singular as they were.
+
+Though short, thick-set, pockmarked, and speaking always in a low voice
+as if listening to himself, this Breton, a former lieutenant in the
+Guard, showed the evidence of such resolution, such sang-froid on his
+face that throughout life, even in the army, no one had ever ventured
+to trifle with him. His little eyes, of a calm blue, were like bits of
+steel. His ways, the look on his face, his speech, his carriage, were
+all in keeping with the short name of Dumay. His physical strength,
+well-known to every one, put him above all danger of attack. He was able
+to kill a man with a blow of his fist, and had performed that feat at
+Bautzen, where he found himself, unarmed, face to face with a Saxon
+at the rear of his company. At the present moment the usually firm
+yet gentle expression of the man’s face had risen to a sort of tragic
+sublimity; his lips were pale as the rest of his face, indicating a
+tumult within him mastered by his Breton will; a slight sweat, which
+every one noticed and guessed to be cold, moistened his brow. The notary
+knew but too well that these signs might result in a drama before the
+criminal courts. In fact the cashier was playing a part in connection
+with Modeste Mignon, which involved to his mind sentiments of honor and
+loyalty of far greater importance than mere social laws; and his present
+conduct proceeded from one of those compacts which, in case disaster
+came of it, could be judged only in a higher court than one of earth.
+The majority of dramas lie really in the ideas which we make to
+ourselves about things. Events which seem to us dramatic are nothing
+more than subjects which our souls convert into tragedy or comedy
+according to the bent of our characters.
+
+Madame Latournelle and Madame Dumay, who were appointed to watch
+Modeste, had a certain assumed stiffness of demeanor and a quiver in
+their voices, which the suspected party did not notice, so absorbed
+was she in her embroidery. Modeste laid each thread of cotton with a
+precision that would have made an ordinary workwoman desperate. Her face
+expressed the pleasure she took in the smooth petals of the flower
+she was working. The dwarf, seated between his mistress and Gobenheim,
+restrained his emotion, trying to find means to approach Modeste and
+whisper a word of warning in her ear.
+
+By taking a position in front of Madame Mignon, Madame Latournelle, with
+the diabolical intelligence of conscientious duty, had isolated Modeste.
+Madame Mignon, whose blindness always made her silent, was even paler
+than usual, showing plainly that she was aware of the test to which
+her daughter was about to be subjected. Perhaps at the last moment she
+revolted from the stratagem, necessary as it might seem to her. Hence
+her silence; she was weeping inwardly. Exupere, the spring of the
+trap, was wholly ignorant of the piece in which he was to play a
+part. Gobenheim, by reason of his character, remained in a state of
+indifference equal to that displayed by Modeste. To a spectator who
+understood the situation, this contrast between the ignorance of some
+and the palpitating interest of others would have seemed quite poetic.
+Nowadays romance-writers arrange such effects; and it is quite within
+their province to do so, for nature in all ages takes the liberty to be
+stronger than they. In this instance, as you will see, nature, social
+nature, which is a second nature within nature, amused herself by making
+truth more interesting than fiction; just as mountain torrents describe
+curves which are beyond the skill of painters to convey, and accomplish
+giant deeds in displacing or smoothing stones which are the wonder of
+architects and sculptors.
+
+It was eight o’clock. At that season twilight was still shedding its
+last gleams; there was not a cloud in the sky; the balmy air caressed
+the earth, the flowers gave forth their fragrance, the steps of
+pedestrians turning homeward sounded along the gravelly road, the sea
+shone like a mirror, and there was so little wind that the wax candles
+upon the card-tables sent up a steady flame, although the windows were
+wide open. This salon, this evening, this dwelling--what a frame for the
+portrait of the young girl whom these persons were now studying with the
+profound attention of a painter in presence of the Margharita Doni, one
+of the glories of the Pitti palace. Modeste,--blossom enclosed, like
+that of Catullus,--was she worth all these precautions?
+
+You have seen the cage; behold the bird! Just twenty years of age,
+slender and delicate as the sirens which English designers invent for
+their “Books of Beauty,” Modeste was, like her mother before her, the
+captivating embodiment of a grace too little understood in France, where
+we choose to call it sentimentality, but which among German women is
+the poetry of the heart coming to the surface of the being and spending
+itself--in affectations if the owner is silly, in divine charms of
+manner if she is “spirituelle” and intelligent. Remarkable for her pale
+golden hair, Modeste belonged to the type of woman called, perhaps in
+memory of Eve, the celestial blonde; whose satiny skin is like a silk
+paper applied to the flesh, shuddering at the winter of a cold look,
+expanding in the sunshine of a loving glance,--teaching the hand to be
+jealous of the eye. Beneath her hair, which was soft and feathery and
+worn in many curls, the brow, which might have been traced by a compass
+so pure was its modelling, shone forth discreet, calm to placidity,
+and yet luminous with thought: when and where could another be found so
+transparently clear or more exquisitely smooth? It seemed, like a pearl,
+to have its orient. The eyes, of a blue verging on gray and limpid
+as the eyes of a child, had all the mischief, all the innocence of
+childhood, and they harmonized well with the arch of the eyebrows,
+faintly indicated by lines like those made with a brush on Chinese
+faces. This candor of the soul was still further evidenced around the
+eyes, in their corners, and about the temples, by pearly tints threaded
+with blue, the special privilege of these delicate complexions. The
+face, whose oval Raphael so often gave to his Madonnas, was remarkable
+for the sober and virginal tone of the cheeks, soft as a Bengal rose,
+upon which the long lashes of the diaphanous eyelids cast shadows that
+were mingled with light. The throat, bending as she worked, too delicate
+perhaps, and of milky whiteness, recalled those vanishing lines that
+Leonardo loved. A few little blemishes here and there, like the patches
+of the eighteenth century, proved that Modeste was indeed a child of
+earth, and not a creation dreamed of in Italy by the angelic school. Her
+lips, delicate yet full, were slightly mocking and somewhat sensuous;
+the waist, which was supple and yet not fragile, had no terrors for
+maternity, like those of girls who seek beauty by the fatal pressure of
+a corset. Steel and dimity and lacings defined but did not create the
+serpentine lines of the elegant figure, graceful as that of a young
+poplar swaying in the wind.
+
+A pearl-gray dress with crimson trimmings, made with a long waist,
+modestly outlined the bust and covered the shoulders, still rather thin,
+with a chemisette which left nothing to view but the first curves of
+the throat where it joined the shoulders. From the aspect of the young
+girl’s face, at once ethereal and intelligent, where the delicacy of a
+Greek nose with its rosy nostrils and firm modelling marked something
+positive and defined; where the poetry enthroned upon an almost mystic
+brow seemed belied at times by the pleasure-loving expression of the
+mouth; where candor claimed the depths profound and varied of the
+eye, and disputed them with a spirit of irony that was trained and
+educated,--from all these signs an observer would have felt that this
+young girl, with the keen, alert ear that waked at every sound, with
+a nostril open to catch the fragrance of the celestial flower of the
+Ideal, was destined to be the battle-ground of a struggle between
+the poesies of the dawn and the labors of the day; between fancy
+and reality, the spirit and the life. Modeste was a pure young girl,
+inquisitive after knowledge, understanding her destiny, and filled with
+chastity,--the Virgin of Spain rather than the Madonna of Raphael.
+
+She raised her head when she heard Dumay say to Exupere, “Come here,
+young man.” Seeing them together in the corner of the salon she supposed
+they were talking of some commission in Paris. Then she looked at
+the friends who surrounded her, as if surprised by their silence, and
+exclaimed in her natural manner, “Why are you not playing?”--with a
+glance at the green table which the imposing Madame Latournelle called
+the “altar.”
+
+“Yes, let us play,” said Dumay, having sent off Exupere.
+
+“Sit there, Butscha,” said Madame Latournelle, separating the head-clerk
+from the group around Madame Mignon and her daughter by the whole width
+of the table.
+
+“And you, come over here,” said Dumay to his wife, making her sit close
+by him.
+
+Madame Dumay, a little American about thirty-six years of age, wiped her
+eyes furtively; she adored Modeste, and feared a catastrophe.
+
+“You are not very lively this evening,” remarked Modeste.
+
+“We are playing,” said Gobenheim, sorting his cards.
+
+No matter how interesting this situation may appear, it can be made
+still more so by explaining Dumay’s position towards Modeste. If the
+brevity of this explanation makes it seem rather dry, the reader must
+pardon its dryness in view of our desire to get through with these
+preliminaries as speedily as possible, and the necessity of relating the
+main circumstances which govern all dramas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. PRELIMINARIES
+
+
+Jean Francois Bernard Dumay, born at Vannes, started as a soldier for
+the army of Italy in 1799. His father, president of the revolutionary
+tribunal of that town, had displayed so much energy in his office
+that the place had become too hot to hold the son when the parent, a
+pettifogging lawyer, perished on the scaffold after the ninth Thermidor.
+On the death of his mother, who died of the grief this catastrophe
+occasioned, Jean sold all that he possessed and rushed to Italy at the
+age of twenty-two, at the very moment when our armies were beginning to
+yield. On the way he met a young man in the department of Var, who
+for reasons analogous to his own was in search of glory, believing a
+battle-field less perilous than his own Provence. Charles Mignon, the
+last scion of an ancient family, which gave its name to a street in
+Paris and to a mansion built by Cardinal Mignon, had a shrewd and
+calculating father, whose one idea was to save his feudal estate of La
+Bastie in the Comtat from the claws of the Revolution. Like all timid
+folk of that day, the Comte de La Bastie, now citizen Mignon, found it
+more wholesome to cut off other people’s heads than to let his own be
+cut off. The sham terrorist disappeared after the 9th Thermidor, and was
+then inscribed on the list of emigres. The estate of La Bastie was sold;
+the towers and bastions of the old castle were pulled down, and citizen
+Mignon was soon after discovered at Orleans and put to death with his
+wife and all his children except Charles, whom he had sent to find a
+refuge for the family in the Upper Alps.
+
+Horrorstruck at the news, Charles waited for better times in a valley of
+Mont Genevra; and there he remained till 1799, subsisting on a few
+louis which his father had put into his hand at starting. Finally,
+when twenty-three years of age, and without other fortune than his fine
+presence and that southern beauty which, when it reaches perfection,
+may be called sublime (of which Antinous, the favorite of Adrian, is the
+type), Charles resolved to wager his Provencal audacity--taking it, like
+many another youth, for a vocation--on the red cloth of war. On his
+way to the base of the army at Nice he met the Breton. The pair became
+intimate, partly from the contrasts in their characters; they drank from
+the same cup at the wayside torrents, broke the same biscuit, and were
+both made sergeants at the peace which followed the battle of Marengo.
+
+When the war recommenced, Charles Mignon was promoted into the cavalry
+and lost sight of his comrade. In 1812 the last of the Mignon de La
+Bastie was an officer of the Legion of honor and major of a regiment
+of cavalry. Taken prisoner by the Russians he was sent, like so
+many others, to Siberia. He made the journey in company with another
+prisoner, a poor lieutenant, in whom he recognized his old friend Jean
+Dumay, brave, neglected, undecorated, unhappy, like a million of other
+woollen epaulets, rank and file--that canvas of men on which
+Napoleon painted the picture of the Empire. While in Siberia, the
+lieutenant-colonel, to kill time, taught writing and arithmetic to the
+Breton, whose early education had seemed a useless waste of time to Pere
+Scevola. Charles found in the old comrade of his marching days one of
+those rare hearts into which a man can pour his griefs while telling his
+joys.
+
+The young Provencal had met the fate which attends all handsome
+bachelors. In 1804, at Frankfort on the Main, he was adored by Bettina
+Wallenrod, only daughter of a banker, and he married her with all the
+more enthusiasm because she was rich and a noted beauty, while he was
+only a lieutenant with no prospects but the extremely problematical
+future of a soldier of fortune of that day. Old Wallenrod, a decayed
+German baron (there is always a baron in a German bank) delighted to
+know that the handsome lieutenant was the sole representative of the
+Mignon de La Bastie, approved the love of the blonde Bettina, whose
+beauty an artist (at that time there really was one in Frankfort) had
+lately painted as an ideal head of Germany. Wallenrod invested enough
+money in the French funds to give his daughter thirty thousand francs a
+year, and settled it on his anticipated grandsons, naming them counts of
+La Bastie-Wallenrod. This “dot” made only a small hole in his cash-box,
+the value of money being then very low. But the Empire, pursuing a
+policy often attempted by other debtors, rarely paid its dividends; and
+Charles was rather alarmed at this investment, having less faith than
+his father-in-law in the imperial eagle. The phenomenon of belief, or of
+admiration which is ephemeral belief, is not so easily maintained when
+in close quarters with the idol. The mechanic distrusts the machine
+which the traveller admires; and the officers of the army might be
+called the stokers of the Napoleonic engine,--if, indeed, they were not
+its fuel.
+
+However, the Baron Wallenrod-Tustall-Bartenstild promised to come if
+necessary to the help of the household. Charles loved Bettina Wallenrod
+as much as she loved him, and that is saying a good deal; but when a
+Provencal is moved to enthusiasm all his feelings and attachments are
+genuine and natural. And how could he fail to adore that blonde beauty,
+escaping, as it were, from the canvas of Durer, gifted with an angelic
+nature and endowed with Frankfort wealth? The pair had four children, of
+whom only two daughters survived at the time when he poured his griefs
+into the Breton’s heart. Dumay loved these little ones without having
+seen them, solely through the sympathy so well described by Charlet,
+which makes a soldier the father of every child. The eldest, named
+Bettina Caroline, was born in 1805; the other, Marie Modeste, in 1808.
+The unfortunate lieutenant-colonel, long without tidings of these
+cherished darlings, was sent, at the peace of 1814, across Russia
+and Prussia on foot, accompanied by the lieutenant. No difference of
+epaulets could count between the two friends, who reached Frankfort just
+as Napoleon was disembarking at Cannes.
+
+Charles found his wife in Frankfort, in mourning for her father, who had
+always idolized her and tried to keep a smile upon her lips, even by
+his dying bed. Old Wallenrod was unable to survive the disasters of the
+Empire. At seventy years of age he speculated in cottons, relying on the
+genius of Napoleon without comprehending that genius is quite as often
+beyond as at the bottom of current events. The old man had purchased
+nearly as many bales of cotton as the Emperor had lost men during his
+magnificent campaign in France. “I tie in goddon,” said the father to
+the daughter, a father of the Goriot type, striving to quiet a grief
+which distressed him. “I owe no mann anything--” and he died, still
+trying to speak to his daughter in the language that she loved.
+
+Thankful to have saved his wife and daughters from the general
+wreck, Charles Mignon returned to Paris, where the Emperor made him
+lieutenant-colonel in the cuirassiers of the Guard and commander of the
+Legion of honor. The colonel dreamed of being count and general
+after the first victory. Alas! that hope was quenched in the blood of
+Waterloo. The colonel, slightly wounded, retired to the Loire, and left
+Tours before the disbandment of the army.
+
+In the spring of 1816 Charles sold his wife’s property out of the funds
+to the amount of nearly four hundred thousand francs, intending to seek
+his fortune in America, and abandon his own country where persecution
+was beginning to lay a heavy hand on the soldiers of Napoleon. He went
+to Havre accompanied by Dumay, whose life he had saved at Waterloo
+by taking him on the crupper of his saddle in the hurly-burly of the
+retreat. Dumay shared the opinions and the anxieties of his colonel; the
+poor fellow idolized the two little girls and followed Charles like
+a spaniel. The latter, confident that the habit of obedience, the
+discipline of subordination, and the honesty and affection of the
+lieutenant would make him a useful as well as a faithful retainer,
+proposed to take him with him in a civil capacity. Dumay was only too
+happy to be adopted into the family, to which he resolved to cling like
+the mistletoe to an oak.
+
+While waiting for an opportunity to embark, at the same time making
+choice of a ship and reflecting on the chances offered by the various
+ports for which they sailed, the colonel heard much talk about the
+brilliant future which the peace seemed to promise to Havre. As he
+listened to these conversations among the merchants, he foresaw the
+means of fortune, and without loss of time he set about making himself
+the owner of landed property, a banker, and a shipping-merchant. He
+bought land and houses in the town, and despatched a vessel to New York
+freighted with silks purchased in Lyons at reduced prices. He sent Dumay
+on the ship as his agent; and when the latter returned, after making a
+double profit by the sale of the silks and the purchase of cottons at
+a low valuation, he found the colonel installed with his family in
+the handsomest house in the rue Royale, and studying the principles of
+banking with the prodigious activity and intelligence of a native of
+Provence.
+
+This double operation of Dumay’s was worth a fortune to the house of
+Mignon. The colonel purchased the villa at Ingouville and rewarded his
+agent with the gift of a modest little house in the rue Royale. The
+poor toiler had brought back from New York, together with his cottons,
+a pretty little wife, attracted it would seem by his French nature. Miss
+Grummer was worth about four thousand dollars (twenty thousand francs),
+which sum Dumay placed with his colonel, to whom he now became an alter
+ego. In a short time he learned to keep his patron’s books, a science
+which, to use his own expression, pertains to the sergeant-majors of
+commerce. The simple-hearted soldier, whom fortune had forgotten for
+twenty years, thought himself the happiest man in the world as the owner
+of the little house (which his master’s liberality had furnished), with
+twelve hundred francs a year from money in the funds, and a salary of
+three thousand six hundred. Never in his dreams had Lieutenant Dumay
+hoped for a situation so good as this; but greater still was the
+satisfaction he derived from the knowledge that his lucky enterprise had
+been the pivot of good fortune to the richest commercial house in Havre.
+
+Madame Dumay, a rather pretty little American, had the misfortune to
+lose all her children at their birth; and her last confinement was so
+disastrous as to deprive her of the hope of any other. She therefore
+attached herself to the two little Mignons, whom Dumay himself loved,
+or would have loved, even better than his own children had they lived.
+Madame Dumay, whose parents were farmers accustomed to a life of
+economy, was quite satisfied to receive only two thousand four hundred
+francs of her own and her household expenses; so that every year Dumay
+laid by two thousand and some extra hundreds with the house of Mignon.
+When the yearly accounts were made up the colonel always added something
+to this little store by way of acknowledging the cashier’s services,
+until in 1824 the latter had a credit of fifty-eight thousand francs. In
+was then that Charles Mignon, Comte de La Bastie, a title he never used,
+crowned his cashier with the final happiness of residing at the Chalet,
+where at the time when this story begins Madame Mignon and her daughter
+were living in obscurity.
+
+The deplorable state of Madame Mignon’s health was caused in part by the
+catastrophe to which the absence of her husband was due. Grief had taken
+three years to break down the docile German woman; but it was a grief
+that gnawed at her heart like a worm at the core of a sound fruit. It
+is easy to reckon up its obvious causes. Two children, dying in infancy,
+had a double grave in a soul that could never forget. The exile of her
+husband to Siberia was to such a woman a daily death. The failure of
+the rich house of Wallenrod, and the death of her father, leaving his
+coffers empty, was to Bettina, then uncertain about the fate of her
+husband, a terrible blow. The joy of Charles’s return came near killing
+the tender German flower. After that the second fall of the Empire and
+the proposed expatriation acted on her feelings like a renewed attack
+of the same fever. At last, however, after ten years of continual
+prosperity, the comforts of her house, which was the finest in Havre,
+the dinners, balls, and fetes of a prosperous merchant, the splendors of
+the villa Mignon, the unbounded respect and consideration enjoyed by her
+husband, his absolute affection, giving her an unrivalled love in return
+for her single-minded love for him,--all these things brought the woman
+back to life. At the moment when her doubts and fears at last left her,
+when she could look forward to the bright evening of her stormy life, a
+hidden catastrophe, buried in the heart of the family, and of which we
+shall presently make mention, came as the precursor of renewed trials.
+
+In January, 1826, on the day when Havre had unanimously chosen Charles
+Mignon as its deputy, three letters, arriving from New York, Paris, and
+London, fell with the destruction of a hammer upon the crystal palace
+of his prosperity. In an instant ruin like a vulture swooped down upon
+their happiness, just as the cold fell in 1812 upon the grand army in
+Russia. One night sufficed Charles Mignon to decide upon his course,
+and he spent it in settling his accounts with Dumay. All he owned, not
+excepting his furniture, would just suffice to pay his creditors.
+
+“Havre shall never see me doing nothing,” said the colonel to the
+lieutenant. “Dumay, I take your sixty thousand francs at six per cent.”
+
+“Three, my colonel.”
+
+“At nothing, then,” cried Mignon, peremptorily; “you shall have your
+share in the profits of what I now undertake. The ‘Modeste,’ which is no
+longer mine, sails to-morrow, and I sail in her. I commit to you my wife
+and daughter. I shall not write. No news must be taken as good news.”
+
+Dumay, always subordinate, asked no questions of his colonel. “I think,”
+ he said to Latournelle with a knowing little glance, “that my colonel
+has a plan laid out.”
+
+The following day at dawn he accompanied his master on board the
+“Modeste” bound for Constantinople. There, on the poop of the vessel,
+the Breton said to the Provencal,--
+
+“What are your last commands, my colonel?”
+
+“That no man shall enter the Chalet,” cried the father with strong
+emotion. “Dumay, guard my last child as though you were a bull-dog.
+Death to the man who seduces another daughter! Fear nothing, not even
+the scaffold--I will be with you.”
+
+“My colonel, go in peace. I understand you. You shall find Mademoiselle
+Mignon on your return such as you now give her to me, or I shall be
+dead. You know me, and you know your Pyrenees hounds. No man shall reach
+your daughter. Forgive me for troubling you with words.”
+
+The two soldiers clasped arms like men who had learned to understand
+each other in the solitudes of Siberia.
+
+On the same day the Havre “Courier” published the following terrible,
+simple, energetic, and honorable notice:--
+
+  “The house of Charles Mignon suspends payment. But the
+  undersigned, assignees of the estate, undertake to pay all
+  liabilities. On and after this date, holders of notes may obtain
+  the usual discount. The sale of the landed estates will fully
+  cover all current indebtedness.
+
+  “This notice is issued for the honor of the house, and to prevent
+  any disturbance in the money-market of this town.
+
+  “Monsieur Charles Mignon sailed this morning on the ‘Modeste’ for
+  Asia Minor, leaving full powers with the undersigned to sell his
+  whole property, both landed and personal.
+
+    “DUMAY, assignee of the Bank accounts,
+    LATOURNELLE, notary, assignee of the city and villa property,
+    GOBENHEIM, assignee of the commercial property.”
+
+Latournelle owed his prosperity to the kindness of Monsieur Mignon,
+who lent him one hundred thousand francs in 1817 to buy the finest law
+practice in Havre. The poor man, who had no pecuniary means, was nearly
+forty years of age and saw no prospect of being other than head-clerk
+for the rest of his days. He was the only man in Havre whose devotion
+could be compared with Dumay’s. As for Gobenheim, he profited by the
+liquidation to get a part of Monsieur Mignon’s business, which lifted
+his own little bank into prominence.
+
+While unanimous regrets for the disaster were expressed in
+counting-rooms, on the wharves, and in private houses, where praises of
+a man so irreproachable, honorable, and beneficent filled every mouth,
+Latournelle and Dumay, silent and active as ants, sold land, turned
+property into money, paid the debts, and settled up everything.
+Vilquin showed a good deal of generosity in purchasing the villa, the
+town-house, and a farm; and Latournelle made the most of his liberality
+by getting a good price out of him. Society wished to show civilities to
+Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon; but they had already obeyed the father’s
+last wishes and taken refuge in the Chalet, where they went on the very
+morning of his departure, the exact hour of which had been concealed
+from them. Not to be shaken in his resolution by his grief at parting,
+the brave man said farewell to his wife and daughter while they slept.
+Three hundred visiting cards were left at the house. A fortnight later,
+just as Charles had predicted, complete forgetfulness settled down upon
+the Chalet, and proved to these women the wisdom and dignity of his
+command.
+
+Dumay sent agents to represent his master in New York, Paris, and
+London, and followed up the assignments of the three banking-houses
+whose failure had caused the ruin of the Havre house, thus realizing
+five hundred thousand francs between 1826 and 1828, an eighth of
+Charles’s whole fortune; then, according to the latter’s directions
+given on the night of his departure, he sent that sum to New York
+through the house of Mongenod to the credit of Monsieur Charles Mignon.
+All this was done with military obedience, except in a matter of
+withholding thirty thousand francs for the personal expenses of Madame
+and Mademoiselle Mignon as the colonel had ordered him to do, but
+which Dumay did not do. The Breton sold his own little house for twenty
+thousand francs, which sum he gave to Madame Mignon, believing that the
+more capital he sent to his colonel the sooner the latter would return.
+
+“He might perish for the want of thirty thousand francs,” Dumay remarked
+to Latournelle, who bought the little house at its full value, where an
+apartment was always kept ready for the inhabitants of the Chalet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. A SIMPLE STORY
+
+
+Such was the result to the celebrated house of Mignon at Havre of
+the crisis of 1825-26, which convulsed many of the principal business
+centres in Europe and caused the ruin of several Parisian bankers, among
+them (as those who remember that crisis will recall) the president of
+the chamber of commerce.
+
+We can now understand how this great disaster, coming suddenly at the
+close of ten years of domestic happiness, might well have been the death
+of Bettina Mignon, again separated from her husband and ignorant of his
+fate,--to her as adventurous and perilous as the exile to Siberia. But
+the grief which was dragging her to the grave was far other than these
+visible sorrows. The caustic that was slowly eating into her heart lay
+beneath a stone in the little graveyard of Ingouville, on which was
+inscribed:--
+
+                      BETTINA CAROLINE MIGNON
+
+                       Died aged twenty-two.
+
+                           Pray for her.
+
+This inscription is to the young girl whom it covered what many another
+epitaph has been for the dead lying beneath them,--a table of contents
+to a hidden book. Here is the book, in its dreadful brevity; and it will
+explain the oath exacted and taken when the colonel and the lieutenant
+bade each other farewell.
+
+A young man of charming appearance, named Charles d’Estourny, came to
+Havre for the commonplace purpose of being near the sea, and there he
+saw Bettina Mignon. A “soi-disant” fashionable Parisian is never without
+introductions, and he was invited at the instance of a friend of the
+Mignons to a fete given at Ingouville. He fell in love with Bettina and
+with her fortune, and in three months he had done the work of seduction
+and enticed her away. The father of a family of daughters should no more
+allow a young man whom he does not know to enter his home than he should
+leave books and papers lying about which he has not read. A young girl’s
+innocence is like milk, which a small matter turns sour,--a clap of
+thunder, an evil odor, a hot day, a mere breath.
+
+When Charles Mignon read his daughter’s letter of farewell he instantly
+despatched Madame Dumay to Paris. The family gave out that a journey
+to another climate had suddenly been advised for Caroline by their
+physician; and the physician himself sustained the excuse, though unable
+to prevent some gossip in the society of Havre. “Such a vigorous young
+girl! with the complexion of a Spaniard, and that black hair!--she
+consumptive!” “Yes, they say she committed some imprudence.” “Ah, ah!”
+ cried a Vilquin. “I am told she came back bathed in perspiration after
+riding on horseback, and drank iced water; at least, that is what Dr.
+Troussenard says.”
+
+By the time Madame Dumay returned to Havre the catastrophe of the
+failure had taken place, and society paid no further attention to the
+absence of Bettina or the return of the cashier’s wife. At the beginning
+of 1827 the newspapers rang with the trial of Charles d’Estourny, who
+was found guilty of cheating at cards. The young corsair escaped into
+foreign parts without taking thought of Mademoiselle Mignon, who was of
+little value to him since the failure of the bank. Bettina heard of his
+infamous desertion and of her father’s ruin almost at the same time. She
+returned home struck by death, and wasted away in a short time at the
+Chalet. Her death at least protected her reputation. The illness that
+Monsieur Mignon alleged to be the cause of her absence, and the doctor’s
+order which sent her to Nice were now generally believed. Up to the last
+moment the mother hoped to save her daughter’s life. Bettina was her
+darling and Modeste was the father’s. There was something touching in
+the two preferences. Bettina was the image of Charles, just as Modeste
+was the reproduction of her mother. Both parents continued their love
+for each other in their children. Bettina, a daughter of Provence,
+inherited from her father the beautiful hair, black as a raven’s wing,
+which distinguishes the women of the South, the brown eye, almond-shaped
+and brilliant as a star, the olive tint, the velvet skin as of some
+golden fruit, the arched instep, and the Spanish waist from which the
+short basque skirt fell crisply. Both mother and father were proud of
+the charming contrast between the sisters. “A devil and an angel!” they
+said to each other, laughing, little thinking it prophetic.
+
+After weeping for a month in the solitude of her chamber, where she
+admitted no one, the mother came forth at last with injured eyes. Before
+losing her sight altogether she persisted, against the wishes of her
+friends, in visiting her daughter’s grave, on which she riveted her gaze
+in contemplation. That image remained vivid in the darkness which now
+fell upon her, just as the red spectrum of an object shines in our eyes
+when we close them in full daylight. This terrible and double misfortune
+made Dumay, not less devoted, but more anxious about Modeste, now the
+only daughter of the father who was unaware of his loss. Madame Dumay,
+idolizing Modeste, like other women deprived of their children, cast her
+motherliness about the girl,--yet without disregarding the commands
+of her husband, who distrusted female intimacies. Those commands were
+brief. “If any man, of any age, or any rank,” Dumay said, “speaks to
+Modeste, ogles her, makes love to her, he is a dead man. I’ll blow his
+brains out and give myself to the authorities; my death may save her. If
+you don’t wish to see my head cut off, do you take my place in watching
+her when I am obliged to go out.”
+
+For the last three years Dumay had examined his pistols every night. He
+seemed to have put half the burden of his oath upon the Pyrenean hounds,
+two animals of uncommon sagacity. One slept inside the Chalet, the
+other was stationed in a kennel which he never left, and where he never
+barked; but terrible would have been the moment had the pair made their
+teeth meet in some unknown adventurer.
+
+We can now imagine the sort of life led by mother and daughter at the
+Chalet. Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, often accompanied by Gobenheim,
+came to call and play whist with Dumay nearly every evening. The
+conversation turned on the gossip of Havre and the petty events of
+provincial life. The little company separated between nine and ten
+o’clock. Modeste put her mother to bed, and together they said their
+prayers, kept up each other’s courage, and talked of the dear absent
+one, the husband and father. After kissing her mother for good-night,
+the girl went to her own room about ten o’clock. The next morning she
+prepared her mother for the day with the same care, the same prayers,
+the same prattle. To her praise be it said that from the day when the
+terrible infirmity deprived her mother of a sense, Modeste had been like
+a servant to her, displaying at all times the same solicitude; never
+wearying of the duty, never thinking it monotonous. Such constant
+devotion, combined with a tenderness rare among young girls, was
+thoroughly appreciated by those who witnessed it. To the Latournelle
+family, and to Monsieur and Madame Dumay, Modeste was, in soul, the
+pearl of price.
+
+On sunny days, between breakfast and dinner, Madame Mignon and Madame
+Dumay took a little walk toward the sea. Modeste accompanied them, for
+two arms were needed to support the blind mother. About a month before
+the scene to which this explanation is a parenthesis, Madame Mignon
+had taken counsel with her friends, Madame Latournelle, the notary, and
+Dumay, while Madame Dumay carried Modeste in another direction for a
+longer walk.
+
+“Listen to what I have to say,” said the blind woman. “My daughter is in
+love. I feel it; I see it. A singular change has taken place within her,
+and I do not see how it is that none of you have perceived it.”
+
+“In the name of all that’s honorable--” cried the lieutenant.
+
+“Don’t interrupt me, Dumay. For the last two months Modeste has taken as
+much care of her personal appearance as if she expected to meet a lover.
+She has grown extremely fastidious about her shoes; she wants to set off
+her pretty feet; she scolds Madame Gobet, the shoemaker. It is the
+same thing with her milliner. Some days my poor darling is absorbed in
+thought, evidently expectant, as if waiting for some one. Her voice has
+curt tones when she answers a question, as though she were interrupted
+in the current of her thoughts and secret expectations. Then, if this
+awaited lover has come--”
+
+“Good heavens!”
+
+“Sit down, Dumay,” said the blind woman. “Well, then Modeste is gay. Oh!
+she is not gay to your sight; you cannot catch these gradations; they
+are too delicate for eyes that see only the outside of nature. Her
+gaiety is betrayed to me by the tones of her voice, by certain accents
+which I alone can catch and understand. Modeste then, instead of sitting
+still and thoughtful, gives vent to a wild, inward activity by impulsive
+movements,--in short, she is happy. There is a grace, a charm in the
+very ideas she utters. Ah, my friends, I know happiness as well as I
+know sorrow; I know its signs. By the kiss my Modeste gives me I can
+guess what is passing within her. I know whether she has received what
+she was looking for, or whether she is uneasy or expectant. There are
+many gradations in a kiss, even in that of an innocent young girl, and
+Modeste is innocence itself; but hers is the innocence of knowledge,
+not of ignorance. I may be blind, but my tenderness is all-seeing, and I
+charge you to watch over my daughter.”
+
+Dumay, now actually ferocious, the notary, in the character of a
+man bound to ferret out a mystery, Madame Latournelle, the deceived
+chaperone, and Madame Dumay, alarmed for her husband’s safety, became
+at once a set of spies, and Modeste from this day forth was never left
+alone for an instant. Dumay passed nights under her window wrapped in
+his cloak like a jealous Spaniard; but with all his military sagacity
+he was unable to detect the least suspicious sign. Unless she loved the
+nightingales in the villa park, or some fairy prince, Modeste could have
+seen no one, and had neither given nor received a signal. Madame Dumay,
+who never went to bed till she knew Modeste was asleep, watched the
+road from the upper windows of the Chalet with a vigilance equal to her
+husband’s. Under these eight Argus eyes the blameless child, whose
+every motion was studied and analyzed, came out of the ordeal so fully
+acquitted of all criminal conversation that the four friends declared
+to each other privately that Madame Mignon was foolishly over-anxious.
+Madame Latournelle, who always took Modeste to church and brought her
+back again, was commissioned to tell the mother that she was mistaken
+about her daughter.
+
+“Modeste,” she said, “is a young girl of very exalted ideas; she works
+herself into enthusiasm for the poetry of one writer or the prose of
+another. You have only to judge by the impression made upon her by
+that scaffold symphony, ‘The Last Hours of a Convict’” (the saying was
+Butscha’s, who supplied wit to his benefactress with a lavish hand);
+“she seemed to me all but crazy with admiration for that Monsieur Hugo.
+I’m sure I don’t know where such people” (Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Byron
+being _such people_ to the Madame Latournelles of the bourgeoisie) “get
+their ideas. Modeste kept talking to me of Childe Harold, and as I did
+not wish to get the worst of the argument I was silly enough to try
+to read the thing. Perhaps it was the fault of the translator, but it
+actually turned my stomach; I was dazed; I couldn’t possibly finish it.
+Why, the man talks about comparisons that howl, rocks that faint, and
+waves of war! However, he is only a travelling Englishman, and we must
+expect absurdities,--though his are really inexcusable. He takes you to
+Spain, and sets you in the clouds above the Alps, and makes the torrents
+talk, and the stars; and he says there are too many virgins! Did you
+ever hear the like? Then, after Napoleon’s campaigns, the lines are full
+of sonorous brass and flaming cannon-balls, rolling along from page to
+page. Modeste tells me that all that bathos is put in by the translator,
+and that I ought to read the book in English. But I certainly sha’n’t
+learn English to read Lord Byron when I didn’t learn it to teach
+Exupere. I much prefer the novels of Ducray-Dumenil to all these
+English romances. I’m too good a Norman to fall in love with foreign
+things,--above all when they come from England.”
+
+Madame Mignon, notwithstanding her melancholy, could not help smiling at
+the idea of Madame Latournelle reading Childe Harold. The stern scion of
+a parliamentary house accepted the smile as an approval of her doctrine.
+
+“And, therefore, my dear Madame Mignon,” she went on, “you have taken
+Modeste’s fancies, which are nothing but the results of her reading,
+for a love-affair. Remember, she is just twenty. Girls fall in love with
+themselves at that age; they dress to see themselves well-dressed. I
+remember I used to make my little sister, now dead, put on a man’s hat
+and pretend we were monsieur and madame. You see, you had a very happy
+youth in Frankfort; but let us be just,--Modeste is living here without
+the slightest amusement. Although, to be sure, her every wish is
+attended to, still she knows she is shut up and watched, and the life
+she leads would give her no pleasure at all if it were not for the
+amusement she gets out of her books. Come, don’t worry yourself; she
+loves nobody but you. You ought to be very glad that she goes into these
+enthusiasms for the corsairs of Byron and the heroes of Walter Scott and
+your own Germans, Egmont, Goethe, Werther, Schiller, and all the other
+‘ers.’”
+
+“Well, madame, what do you say to that?” asked Dumay, respectfully,
+alarmed at Madame Mignon’s silence.
+
+“Modeste is not only inclined to love, but she loves some man,” answered
+the mother, obstinately.
+
+“Madame, my life is at stake, and you must allow me--not for my sake,
+but for my wife, my colonel, for all of us--to probe this matter to the
+bottom, and find out whether it is the mother or the watch-dog who is
+deceived.”
+
+“It is you who are deceived, Dumay. Ah! if I could but see my daughter!”
+ cried the poor woman.
+
+“But whom is it possible for her to love?” asked the notary. “I’ll
+answer for my Exupere.”
+
+“It can’t be Gobenheim,” said Dumay, “for since the colonel’s departure
+he has not spent nine hours a week in this house. Besides, he doesn’t
+even notice Modeste--that five-franc piece of a man! His uncle
+Gobenheim-Keller is all the time writing him, ‘Get rich enough to marry
+a Keller.’ With that idea in his mind you may be sure he doesn’t know
+which sex Modeste belongs to. No other men ever come here,--for of
+course I don’t count Butscha, poor little fellow; I love him! He is your
+Dumay, madame,” said the cashier to Madame Latournelle. “Butscha knows
+very well that a mere glance at Modeste would cost him a Breton ducking.
+Not a soul has any communication with this house. Madame Latournelle who
+takes Modeste to church ever since your--your misfortune, madame, has
+carefully watched her on the way and all through the service, and has
+seen nothing suspicious. In short, if I must confess the truth, I have
+myself raked all the paths about the house every evening for the last
+month, and found no trace of footsteps in the morning.”
+
+“Rakes are neither costly nor difficult to handle,” remarked the
+daughter of Germany.
+
+“But the dogs?” cried Dumay.
+
+“Lovers have philters even for dogs,” answered Madame Mignon.
+
+“If you are right, my honor is lost! I may as well blow my brains out,”
+ exclaimed Dumay.
+
+“Why so, Dumay?” said the blind woman.
+
+“Ah, madame, I could never meet my colonel’s eye if he did not find his
+daughter--now his only daughter--as pure and virtuous as she was when
+he said to me on the vessel, ‘Let no fear of the scaffold hinder you,
+Dumay, if the honor of my Modeste is at stake.’”
+
+“Ah! I recognize you both,” said Madame Mignon in a voice of strong
+emotion.
+
+“I’ll wager my salvation that Modeste is as pure as she was in her
+cradle,” exclaimed Madame Dumay.
+
+“Well, I shall make certain of it,” replied her husband, “if Madame
+la Comtesse will allow me to employ certain means; for old troopers
+understand strategy.”
+
+“I will allow you to do anything that shall enlighten us, provided it
+does no injury to my last child.”
+
+“What are you going to do, Jean?” asked Madame Dumay; “how can you
+discover a young girl’s secret if she means to hide it?”
+
+“Obey me, all!” cried the lieutenant, “I shall need every one of you.”
+
+If this rapid sketch were clearly developed it would give a whole
+picture of manners and customs in which many a family could recognize
+the events of their own history; but it must suffice as it is to explain
+the importance of the few details heretofore given about persons and
+things on the memorable evening when the old soldier had made ready his
+plot against the young girl, intending to wrench from the recesses of
+her heart the secret of a love and a lover seen only by a blind mother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE PROBLEM STILL UNSOLVED
+
+
+An hour went by in solemn stillness broken only by the cabalistic
+phrases of the whist-players: “Spades!” “Trumped!” “Cut!” “How are
+honors?” “Two to four.” “Whose deal?”--phrases which represent in these
+days the higher emotions of the European aristocracy. Modeste continued
+to work, without seeming to be surprised at her mother’s silence.
+Madame Mignon’s handkerchief slipped from her lap to the floor; Butscha
+precipitated himself upon it, picked it up, and as he returned it
+whispered in Modeste’s ear, “Take care!” Modeste raised a pair of
+wondering eyes, whose puzzled glance filled the poor cripple with joy
+unspeakable. “She is not in love!” he whispered to himself, rubbing his
+hands till the skin was nearly peeled off. At this moment Exupere
+tore through the garden and the house, plunged into the salon like an
+avalanche, and said to Dumay in an audible whisper, “The young man is
+here!” Dumay sprang for his pistols and rushed out.
+
+“Good God! suppose he kills him!” cried Madame Dumay, bursting into
+tears.
+
+“What is the matter?” asked Modeste, looking innocently at her friends
+and not betraying the slightest fear.
+
+“It is all about a young man who is hanging round the house,” cried
+Madame Latournelle.
+
+“Well!” said Modeste, “why should Dumay kill him?”
+
+“Sancta simplicita!” ejaculated Butscha, looking at his master as
+proudly as Alexander is made to contemplate Babylon in Lebrun’s great
+picture.
+
+“Where are you going, Modeste?” asked the mother as her daughter rose to
+leave the room.
+
+“To get ready for your bedtime, mamma,” answered Modeste, in a voice as
+pure as the tones of an instrument.
+
+“You haven’t paid your expenses,” said the dwarf to Dumay when he
+returned.
+
+“Modeste is as pure as the Virgin on our altar,” cried Madame
+Latournelle.
+
+“Good God! such excitements wear me out,” said Dumay; “and yet I’m a
+strong man.”
+
+“May I lose that twenty-five sous if I have the slightest idea what you
+are about,” remarked Gobenheim. “You seem to me to be crazy.”
+
+“And yet it is all about a treasure,” said Butscha, standing on tiptoe
+to whisper in Gobenheim’s ear.
+
+“Dumay, I am sorry to say that I am still almost certain of what I told
+you,” persisted Madame Mignon.
+
+“The burden of proof is now on you, madame,” said Dumay, calmly; “it is
+for you to prove that we are mistaken.”
+
+Discovering that the matter in question was only Modeste’s honor,
+Gobenheim took his hat, made his bow, and walked off, carrying his ten
+sous with him,--there being evidently no hope of another rubber.
+
+“Exupere, and you too, Butscha, may leave us,” said Madame Latournelle.
+“Go back to Havre; you will get there in time for the last piece at the
+theatre. I’ll pay for your tickets.”
+
+When the four friends were alone with Madame Mignon, Madame Latournelle,
+after looking at Dumay, who being a Breton understood the mother’s
+obstinacy, and at her husband who was fingering the cards, felt herself
+authorized to speak up.
+
+“Madame Mignon, come now, tell us what decisive thing has struck your
+mind.”
+
+“Ah, my good friend, if you were a musician you would have heard, as I
+have, the language of love that Modeste speaks.”
+
+The piano of the demoiselles Mignon was among the few articles of
+furniture which had been moved from the town-house to the Chalet.
+Modeste often conjured away her troubles by practising, without a
+master. Born a musician, she played to enliven her mother. She sang
+by nature, and loved the German airs which her mother taught her. From
+these lessons and these attempts at self-instruction came a phenomenon
+not uncommon to natures with a musical vocation; Modeste composed, as
+far as a person ignorant of the laws of harmony can be said to compose,
+tender little lyric melodies. Melody is to music what imagery and
+sentiment are to poetry, a flower that blossoms spontaneously.
+Consequently, nations have had melodies before harmony,--botany comes
+later than the flower. In like manner, Modeste, who knew nothing of
+the painter’s art except what she had seen her sister do in the way of
+water-color, would have stood subdued and fascinated before the
+pictures of Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Murillo, Rembrandt, Albert Durer,
+Holbein,--in other words, before the great ideals of many lands. Lately,
+for at least a month, Modeste had warbled the songs of nightingales,
+musical rhapsodies whose poetry and meaning had roused the attention of
+her mother, already surprised by her sudden eagerness for composition
+and her fancy for putting airs into certain verses.
+
+“If your suspicions have no other foundation,” said Latournelle to
+Madame Mignon, “I pity your susceptibilities.”
+
+“When a Breton girl sings,” said Dumay gloomily, “the lover is not far
+off.”
+
+“I will let you hear Modeste when she is improvising,” said the mother,
+“and you shall judge for yourselves--”
+
+“Poor girl!” said Madame Dumay, “If she only knew our anxiety she would
+be deeply distressed; she would tell us the truth,--especially if she
+thought it would save Dumay.”
+
+“My friends, I will question my daughter to-morrow,” said Madame Mignon;
+“perhaps I shall obtain more by tenderness than you have discovered by
+trickery.”
+
+Was the comedy of the “Fille mal Gardee” being played here,--as it is
+everywhere and forever,--under the noses of these faithful spies, these
+honest Bartholos, these Pyrenean hounds, without their being able to
+ferret out, detect, nor even surmise the lover, the love-affair, or
+the smoke of the fire? At any rate it was certainly not the result of a
+struggle between the jailers and the prisoner, between the despotism of
+a dungeon and the liberty of a victim,--it was simply the never-ending
+repetition of the first scene played by man when the curtain of the
+Creation rose; it was Eve in Paradise.
+
+And now, which of the two, the mother or the watch-dog, had the right of
+it?
+
+None of the persons who were about Modeste could understand that maiden
+heart--for the soul and the face we have described were in harmony. The
+girl had transported her existence into another world, as much denied
+and disbelieved in in these days of ours as the new world of Christopher
+Columbus in the sixteenth century. Happily, she kept her own counsel,
+or they would have thought her crazy. But first we must explain the
+influence of the past upon her nature.
+
+Two events had formed the soul and developed the mind of this young
+girl. Monsieur and Madame Mignon, warned by the fate that overtook
+Bettina, had resolved, just before the failure, to marry Modeste. They
+chose the son of a rich banker, formerly of Hamburg, but established in
+Havre since 1815,--a man, moreover, who was under obligations to them.
+The young man, whose name was Francois Althor, the dandy of Havre,
+blessed with a certain vulgar beauty in which the middle classes
+delight, well-made, well-fleshed, and with a fine complexion, abandoned
+his betrothed so hastily on the day of her father’s failure that neither
+Modeste nor her mother nor either of the Dumays had seen him since.
+Latournelle ventured a question on the subject to Jacob Althor, the
+father; but he only shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I really don’t
+know what you mean.”
+
+This answer, told to Modeste to give her some experience of life, was
+a lesson which she learned all the more readily because Latournelle
+and Dumay made many and long comments on the cowardly desertion. The
+daughters of Charles Mignon, like spoiled children, had all their wishes
+gratified; they rode on horseback, kept their own horses and grooms, and
+otherwise enjoyed a perilous liberty. Seeing herself in possession of
+an official lover, Modeste had allowed Francisque to kiss her hand, and
+take her by the waist to mount her. She accepted his flowers and all the
+little proofs of tenderness with which it is proper to surround the
+lady of our choice; she even worked him a purse, believing in such
+ties,--strong indeed to noble souls, but cobwebs for the Gobenheims, the
+Vilquins, and the Althors.
+
+Some time during the spring which followed the removal of Madame Mignon
+and her daughter to the Chalet, Francisque Althor came to dine with
+the Vilquins. Happening to see Modeste over the wall at the foot of the
+lawn, he turned away his head. Six weeks later he married the eldest
+Mademoiselle Vilquin. In this way Modeste, young, beautiful, and of high
+birth, learned the lesson that for three whole months of her engagement
+she had been nothing more than Mademoiselle Million. Her poverty, well
+known to all, became a sentinel defending the approaches to the Chalet
+fully as well as the prudence of the Latournelles or the vigilance of
+Dumay. The talk of the town ran for a time on Mademoiselle Mignon’s
+position only to insult her.
+
+“Poor girl! what will become of her?--an old maid, of course.”
+
+“What a fate! to have had the world at her feet; to have had the chance
+to marry Francisque Althor,--and now, nobody willing to take her!”
+
+“After a life of luxury, to come down to such poverty--”
+
+And these insults were not uttered in secret or left to Modeste’s
+imagination; she heard them spoken more than once by the young men and
+the young women of Havre as they walked to Ingouville, and, knowing that
+Madame Mignon and her daughter lived at the Chalet, talked of them as
+they passed the house. Friends of the Vilquins expressed surprise that
+the mother and daughter were willing to live on among the scenes of
+their former splendor. From her open window behind the closed blinds
+Modeste sometimes heard such insolence as this:--
+
+“I am sure I can’t think how they can live there,” some one would say
+as he paced the villa lawn,--perhaps to assist Vilquin in getting rid of
+his tenant.
+
+“What do you suppose they live on? they haven’t any means of earning
+money.”
+
+“I am told the old woman has gone blind.”
+
+“Is Mademoiselle Mignon still pretty? Dear me, how dashing she used to
+be! Well, she hasn’t any horses now.”
+
+Most young girls on hearing these spiteful and silly speeches, born of
+an envy that now rushed, peevish and drivelling, to avenge the past,
+would have felt the blood mount to their foreheads; others would have
+wept; some would have undergone spasms of anger; but Modeste smiled, as
+we smile at the theatre while watching the actors. Her pride could not
+descend so low as the level of such speeches.
+
+The other event was more serious than these mercenary meannesses.
+Bettina Caroline died in the arms of her younger sister, who had nursed
+her with the devotion of girlhood, and the curiosity of an untainted
+imagination. In the silence of long nights the sisters exchanged many a
+confidence. With what dramatic interest was poor Bettina invested in the
+eyes of the innocent Modeste? Bettina knew love through sorrow only, and
+she was dying of it. Among young girls every man, scoundrel though he
+be, is still a lover. Passion is the one thing absolutely real in the
+things of life, and it insists on its supremacy. Charles d’Estourny,
+gambler, criminal, and debauchee, remained in the memory of the
+sisters, the elegant Parisian of the fetes of Havre, the admired of the
+womenkind. Bettina believed she had carried him off from the coquettish
+Madame Vilquin, and to Modeste he was her sister’s happy lover. Such
+adoration in young girls is stronger than all social condemnations. To
+Bettina’s thinking, justice had been deceived; if not, how could it
+have sentenced a man who had loved her for six months?--loved her to
+distraction in the hidden retreat to which he had taken her,--that he
+might, we may add, be at liberty to go his own way. Thus the dying girl
+inoculated her sister with love. Together they talked of the great drama
+which imagination enhances; and Bettina carried with her to the grave
+her sister’s ignorance, leaving her, if not informed, at least thirsting
+for information.
+
+Nevertheless, remorse had set its fangs too sharply in Bettina’s heart
+not to force her to warn her sister. In the midst of her own confessions
+she had preached duty and implicit obedience to Modeste. On the evening
+of her death she implored her to remember the tears that soaked her
+pillow, and not to imitate a conduct which even suffering could not
+expiate. Bettina accused herself of bringing a curse upon the family,
+and died in despair at being unable to obtain her father’s pardon.
+Notwithstanding the consolations which the ministers of religion,
+touched by her repentance, freely gave her, she cried in heartrending
+tones with her latest breath: “Oh father! father!” “Never give your
+heart without your hand,” she said to Modeste an hour before she died;
+“and above all, accept no attentions from any man without telling
+everything to papa and mamma.”
+
+These words, so earnest in their practical meaning, uttered in the hour
+of death, had more effect upon Modeste than if Bettina had exacted a
+solemn oath. The dying girl, farseeing as prophet, drew from beneath her
+pillow a ring which she had sent by her faithful maid, Francoise Cochet,
+to be engraved in Havre with these words, “Think of Bettina, 1827,” and
+placed it on her sister’s finger, begging her to keep it there until
+she married. Thus there had been between these two young girls a strange
+commingling of bitter remorse and the artless visions of a fleeting
+spring-time too early blighted by the keen north wind of desertion; yet
+all their tears, regrets and memories were always subordinate to their
+horror of evil.
+
+Nevertheless, this drama of a poor seduced sister returning to die under
+a roof of elegant poverty, the failure of her father, the baseness of
+her betrothed, the blindness of her mother caused by grief, had touched
+the surface only of Modeste’s life, by which alone the Dumays and the
+Latournelles judged her; for no devotion of friends can take the place
+of a mother’s eye. The monotonous life in the dainty little Chalet,
+surrounded by the choice flowers which Dumay cultivated; the family
+customs, as regular as clock-work, the provincial decorum, the games
+at whist while the mother knitted and the daughter sewed, the silence,
+broken only by the roar of the sea in the equinoctial storms,--all this
+monastic tranquillity did in fact hide an inner and tumultuous life, the
+life of ideas, the life of the spiritual being. We sometimes wonder how
+it is possible for young girls to do wrong; but such as do so have no
+blind mother to send her plummet line of intuition to the depths of the
+subterranean fancies of a virgin heart. The Dumays slept when Modeste
+opened her window, as it were to watch for the passing of a man,--the
+man of her dreams, the expected knight who was to mount her behind him
+and ride away under the fire of Dumay’s pistols.
+
+During the depression caused by her sister’s death Modeste flung herself
+into the practice of reading, until her mind became sodden in it. Born
+to the use of two languages, she could speak and read German quite as
+well as French; she had also, together with her sister, learned English
+from Madame Dumay. Being very little overlooked in the matter of reading
+by the people about her, who had no literary knowledge, Modeste fed her
+soul on the modern masterpieces of three literatures, English, French,
+and German. Lord Byron, Goethe, Schiller, Walter Scott, Hugo, Lamartine,
+Crabbe, Moore, the great works of the 17th and 18th centuries, history,
+drama, and fiction, from Astraea to Manon Lescaut, from Montaigne’s
+Essays to Diderot, from the Fabliaux to the Nouvelle Heloise,--in short,
+the thought of three lands crowded with confused images that girlish
+head, august in its cold guilelessness, its native chastity, but from
+which there sprang full-armed, brilliant, sincere, and strong, an
+overwhelming admiration for genius. To Modeste a new book was an event;
+a masterpiece that would have horrified Madame Latournelle made her
+happy,--equally unhappy if the great work did not play havoc with her
+heart. A lyric instinct bubbled in that girlish soul, so full of the
+beautiful illusions of its youth. But of this radiant existence not a
+gleam reached the surface of daily life; it escaped the ken of Dumay and
+his wife and the Latournelles; the ears of the blind mother alone caught
+the crackling of its flame.
+
+The profound disdain which Modeste now conceived for ordinary men gave
+to her face a look of pride, an inexpressible untamed shyness, which
+tempered her Teutonic simplicity, and accorded well with a peculiarity
+of her head. The hair growing in a point above the forehead seemed the
+continuation of a slight line which thought had already furrowed between
+the eyebrows, and made the expression of untameability perhaps a
+shade too strong. The voice of this charming child, whom her father,
+delighting in her wit, was wont to call his “little proverb of Solomon,”
+ had acquired a precious flexibility of organ through the practice of
+three languages. This advantage was still further enhanced by a
+natural bell-like tone both sweet and fresh, which touched the heart as
+delightfully as it did the ear. If the mother could no longer see the
+signs of a noble destiny upon her daughter’s brow, she could study
+the transitions of her soul’s development in the accents of that voice
+attuned to love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. A MAIDEN’S FIRST ROMANCE
+
+
+To this period of Modeste’s eager rage for reading succeeded the
+exercise of a strange faculty given to vigorous imaginations,--the
+power, namely, of making herself an actor in a dream-existence; of
+representing to her own mind the things desired, with so vivid a
+conception that they seemed actually to attain reality; in short, to
+enjoy by thought,--to live out her years within her mind; to marry;
+to grow old; to attend her own funeral like Charles V.; to play within
+herself the comedy of life and, if need be, that of death. Modeste was
+indeed playing, but all alone, the comedy of Love. She fancied herself
+adored to the summit of her wishes in many an imagined phase of
+social life. Sometimes as the heroine of a dark romance, she loved the
+executioner, or the wretch who ended her days upon the scaffold, or,
+like her sister, some Parisian youth without a penny, whose struggles
+were all beneath a garret-roof. Sometimes she was Ninon, scorning men
+amid continual fetes; or some applauded actress, or gay adventuress,
+exhausting in her own behalf the luck of Gil Blas, or the triumphs
+of Pasta, Malibran, and Florine. Then, weary of the horrors and
+excitements, she returned to actual life. She married a notary, she ate
+the plain brown bread of honest everyday life, she saw herself a Madame
+Latournelle; she accepted a painful existence, she bore all the trials
+of a struggle with fortune. After that she went back to the romances:
+she was loved for her beauty; a son of a peer of France, an eccentric,
+artistic young man, divined her heart, recognized the star which the
+genius of a De Stael had planted on her brow. Her father returned,
+possessing millions. With his permission, she put her various lovers
+to certain tests (always carefully guarding her own independence); she
+owned a magnificent estate and castle, servants, horses, carriages, the
+choicest of everything that luxury could bestow, and kept her suitors
+uncertain until she was forty years old, at which age she made her
+choice.
+
+This edition of the Arabian Nights in a single copy lasted nearly a
+year, and taught Modeste the sense of satiety through thought. She held
+her life too often in her hand, she said to herself philosophically and
+with too real a bitterness, too seriously, and too often, “Well, what
+is it, after all?” not to have plunged to her waist in the deep disgust
+which all men of genius feel when they try to complete by intense toil
+the work to which they have devoted themselves. Her youth and her rich
+nature alone kept Modeste at this period of her life from seeking to
+enter a cloister. But this sense of satiety cast her, saturated as
+she still was with Catholic spirituality, into the love of Good, the
+infinite of heaven. She conceived of charity, service to others, as the
+true occupation of life; but she cowered in the gloomy dreariness of
+finding in it no food for the fancy that lay crouching in her heart like
+an insect at the bottom of a calyx. Meanwhile she sat tranquilly sewing
+garments for the children of the poor, and listening abstractedly to the
+grumblings of Monsieur Latournelle when Dumay held the thirteenth card
+or drew out his last trump.
+
+Her religious faith drove Modeste for a time into a singular track
+of thought. She imagined that if she became sinless (speaking
+ecclesiastically) she would attain to such a condition of sanctity that
+God would hear her and accomplish her desires. “Faith,” she thought,
+“can move mountains; Christ has said so. The Saviour led his apostle
+upon the waters of the lake Tiberias; and I, all I ask of God is a
+husband to love me; that is easier than walking upon the sea.” She
+fasted through the next Lent, and did not commit a single sin; then she
+said to herself that on a certain day coming out of church she should
+meet a handsome young man who was worthy of her, whom her mother would
+accept, and who would fall madly in love with her. When the day came on
+which she had, as it were, summoned God to send her an angel, she was
+persistently followed by a rather disgusting beggar; moreover, it rained
+heavily, and not a single young man was in the streets. On another
+occasion she went to walk on the jetty to see the English travellers
+land; but each Englishman had an Englishwoman, nearly as handsome as
+Modeste herself, who saw no one at all resembling a wandering Childe
+Harold. Tears overcame her, as she sat down like Marius on the ruins of
+her imagination. But on the day when she subpoenaed God for the third
+time she firmly believed that the Elect of her dreams was within the
+church, hiding, perhaps out of delicacy, behind one of the pillars,
+round all of which she dragged Madame Latournelle on a tour of
+inspection. After this failure, she deposed the Deity from omnipotence.
+Many were her conversations with the imaginary lover, for whom she
+invented questions and answers, bestowing upon him a great deal of wit
+and intelligence.
+
+The high ambitions of her heart hidden within these romances were
+the real explanation of the prudent conduct which the good people who
+watched over Modeste so much admired; they might have brought her any
+number of young Althors or Vilquins, and she would never have stooped to
+such clowns. She wanted, purely and simply, a man of genius,--talent she
+cared little for; just as a lawyer is of no account to a girl who aims
+for an ambassador. Her only desire for wealth was to cast it at the feet
+of her idol. Indeed, the golden background of these visions was far less
+rich than the treasury of her own heart, filled with womanly delicacy;
+for its dominant desire was to make some Tasso, some Milton, a
+Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Murat, a Christopher Columbus happy.
+
+Commonplace miseries did not seriously touch this youthful soul, who
+longed to extinguish the fires of the martyrs ignored and rejected in
+their own day. Sometimes she imagined balms of Gilead, soothing melodies
+which might have allayed the savage misanthropy of Rousseau. Or she
+fancied herself the wife of Lord Byron; guessing intuitively his
+contempt for the real, she made herself as fantastic as the poetry
+of Manfred, and provided for his scepticism by making him a Catholic.
+Modeste attributed Moliere’s melancholy to the women of the seventeenth
+century. “Why is there not some one woman,” she asked herself, “loving,
+beautiful, and rich, ready to stand beside each man of genius and be
+his slave, like Lara, the mysterious page?” She had, as the reader
+perceives, fully understood “il pianto,” which the English poet chanted
+by the mouth of his Gulmare. Modeste greatly admired the behavior of
+the young Englishwoman who offered herself to Crebillon, the son, who
+married her. The story of Sterne and Eliza Draper was her life and her
+happiness for several months. She made herself ideally the heroine of a
+like romance, and many a time she rehearsed in imagination the
+sublime role of Eliza. The sensibility so charmingly expressed in that
+delightful correspondence filled her eyes with tears which, it is said,
+were lacking in those of the wittiest of English writers.
+
+Modeste existed for some time on a comprehension, not only of the works,
+but of the characters of her favorite authors,--Goldsmith, the author
+of Obermann, Charles Nodier, Maturin. The poorest and the most suffering
+among them were her deities; she guessed their trials, initiated herself
+into a destitution where the thoughts of genius brooded, and poured upon
+it the treasures of her heart; she fancied herself the giver of material
+comfort to these great men, martyrs to their own faculty. This noble
+compassion, this intuition of the struggles of toilers, this worship
+of genius, are among the choicest perceptions that flutter through the
+souls of women. They are, in the first place, a secret between the woman
+and God, for they are hidden; in them there is nothing striking, nothing
+that gratifies the vanity,--that powerful auxiliary to all action among
+the French.
+
+Out of this third period of the development of her ideas, there came to
+Modeste a passionate desire to penetrate to the heart of one of these
+abnormal beings; to understand the working of the thoughts and the
+hidden griefs of genius,--to know not only what it wanted but what it
+was. At the period when this story begins, these vagaries of fancy,
+these excursions of her soul into the void, these feelers put forth into
+the darkness of the future, the impatience of an ungiven love to find
+its goal, the nobility of all her thoughts of life, the decision of her
+mind to suffer in a sphere of higher things rather than flounder in the
+marshes of provincial life like her mother, the pledge she had made to
+herself never to fail in conduct, but to respect her father’s hearth and
+bring it happiness,--all this world of feeling and sentiment had lately
+come to a climax and taken shape. Modeste wished to be the friend and
+companion of a poet, an artist, a man in some way superior to the crowd
+of men. But she intended to choose him,--not to give him her heart, her
+life, her infinite tenderness freed from the trammels of passion, until
+she had carefully and deeply studied him.
+
+She began this pretty romance by simply enjoying it. Profound
+tranquillity settled down upon her soul. Her cheeks took on a soft
+color; and she became the beautiful and noble image of Germany, such as
+we have lately seen her, the glory of the Chalet, the pride of Madame
+Latournelle and the Dumays. Modeste was living a double existence. She
+performed with humble, loving care all the minute duties of the homely
+life at the Chalet, using them as a rein to guide the poetry of her
+ideal life, like the Carthusian monks who labor methodically on material
+things to leave their souls the freer to develop in prayer. All great
+minds have bound themselves to some form of mechanical toil to obtain
+greater mastery of thought. Spinosa ground glasses for spectacles; Bayle
+counted the tiles on the roof; Montesquieu gardened. The body being thus
+subdued, the soul could spread its wings in all security.
+
+Madame Mignon, reading her daughter’s soul, was therefore right. Modeste
+loved; she loved with that rare platonic love, so little understood, the
+first illusion of a young girl, the most delicate of all sentiments, a
+very dainty of the heart. She drank deep draughts from the chalice of
+the unknown, the vague, the visionary. She admired the blue plumage of
+the bird that sings afar in the paradise of young girls, which no hand
+can touch, no gun can cover, as it flits across the sight; she loved
+those magic colors, like sparkling jewels dazzling to the eye, which
+youth can see, and never sees again when Reality, the hideous hag,
+appears with witnesses accompanied by the mayor. To live the very poetry
+of love and not to see the lover--ah, what sweet intoxication! what
+visionary rapture! a chimera with flowing man and outspread wings!
+
+The following is the puerile and even silly event which decided the
+future life of this young girl.
+
+Modeste happened to see in a bookseller’s window a lithographic portrait
+of one of her favorites, Canalis. We all know what lies such pictures
+tell,--being as they are the result of a shameless speculation, which
+seizes upon the personality of celebrated individuals as if their faces
+were public property.
+
+In this instance Canalis, sketched in a Byronic pose, was offering to
+public admiration his dark locks floating in the breeze, a bare throat,
+and the unfathomable brow which every bard ought to possess. Victor
+Hugo’s forehead will make more persons shave their heads than the
+number of incipient marshals ever killed by the glory of Napoleon.
+This portrait of Canalis (poetic through mercantile necessity) caught
+Modeste’s eye. The day on which it caught her eye one of Arthez’s best
+books happened to be published. We are compelled to admit, though it may
+be to Modeste’s injury, that she hesitated long between the illustrious
+poet and the illustrious prose-writer. Which of these celebrated men was
+free?--that was the question.
+
+Modeste began by securing the co-operation of Francoise Cochet, a maid
+taken from Havre and brought back again by poor Bettina, whom Madame
+Mignon and Madame Dumay now employed by the day, and who lived in Havre.
+Modeste took her to her own room and assured her that she would never
+cause her parents any grief, never pass the bounds of a young girl’s
+propriety, and that as to Francoise herself she would be well provided
+for after the return of Monsieur Mignon, on condition that she would do
+a certain service and keep it an inviolable secret. What was it? Why, a
+nothing--perfectly innocent. All that Modeste wanted of her accomplice
+was to put certain letters into the post at Havre and to bring some
+back which would be directed to herself, Francoise Cochet. The treaty
+concluded, Modeste wrote a polite note to Dauriat, publisher of the
+poems of Canalis, asking, in the interest of that great poet, for some
+particulars about him, among others if he were married. She requested
+the publisher to address his answer to Mademoiselle Francoise, “poste
+restante,” Havre.
+
+Dauriat, incapable of taking the epistle seriously, wrote a reply in
+presence of four or five journalists who happened to be in his office
+at the time, each of whom added his particular stroke of wit to the
+production.
+
+  Mademoiselle,--Canalis (Baron of), Constant Cys Melchior, member
+  of the French Academy, born in 1800, at Canalis (Correze), five
+  feet four inches in height, of good standing, vaccinated, spotless
+  birth, has given a substitute to the conscription, enjoys perfect
+  health, owns a small patrimonial estate in the Correze, and wishes
+  to marry, but the lady must be rich.
+
+  He beareth per pale, gules an axe or, sable three escallops
+  argent, surmounted by a baron’s coronet; supporters, two larches,
+  vert. Motto: “Or et fer” (no allusion to Ophir or auriferous).
+
+  The original Canalis, who went to the Holy Land with the First
+  Crusade, is cited in the chronicles of Auvergne as being armed
+  with an axe on account of the family indigence, which to this day
+  weighs heavily on the race. This noble baron, famous for
+  discomfiting a vast number of infidels, died, without “or” or
+  “fer,” as naked as a worm, near Jerusalem, on the plains of
+  Ascalon, ambulances not being then invented.
+
+  The chateau of Canalis (the domain yields a few chestnuts)
+  consists of two dismantled towers, united by a piece of wall
+  covered by a fine ivy, and is taxed at twenty-two francs.
+
+  The undersigned (publisher) calls attention to the fact that he
+  pays ten thousand francs for every volume of poetry written by
+  Monsieur de Canalis, who does not give his shells, or his nuts
+  either, for nothing.
+
+  The chanticler of the Correze lives in the rue de
+  Paradis-Poissoniere, number 29, which is a highly suitable
+  location for a poet of the angelic school. Letters must be
+  _post-paid_.
+
+  Noble dames of the faubourg Saint-Germain are said to take the
+  path to Paradise and protect its god. The king, Charles X., thinks
+  so highly of this great poet as to believe him capable of
+  governing the country; he has lately made him officer of the
+  Legion of honor, and (what pays him better) president of the court
+  of Claims at the foreign office. These functions do not hinder
+  this great genius from drawing an annuity out of the fund for the
+  encouragement of the arts and belles letters.
+
+  The last edition of the works of Canalis, printed on vellum, royal
+  8vo, from the press of Didot, with illustrations by Bixiou, Joseph
+  Bridau, Schinner, Sommervieux, etc., is in five volumes, price,
+  nine francs post-paid.
+
+This letter fell like a cobble-stone on a tulip. A poet, secretary
+of claims, getting a stipend in a public office, drawing an
+annuity, seeking a decoration, adored by the women of the faubourg
+Saint-Germain--was that the muddy minstrel lingering along the quays,
+sad, dreamy, worn with toil, and re-entering his garret fraught with
+poetry? However, Modeste perceived the irony of the envious bookseller,
+who dared to say, “I invented Canalis; I made Nathan!” Besides, she
+re-read her hero’s poems,--verses extremely seductive, insincere, and
+hypocritical, which require a word of analysis, were it only to explain
+her infatuation.
+
+Canalis may be distinguished from Lamartine, chief of the angelic
+school, by a wheedling tone like that of a sick-nurse, a treacherous
+sweetness, and a delightful correctness of diction. If the chief with
+his strident cry is an eagle, Canalis, rose and white, is a flamingo.
+In him women find the friend they seek, their interpreter, a being who
+understands them, who explains them to themselves, and a safe confidant.
+The wide margins given by Didot to the last edition were crowded with
+Modeste’s pencilled sentiments, expressing her sympathy with this tender
+and dreamy spirit. Canalis does not possess the gift of life; he cannot
+breathe existence into his creations; but he knows how to calm vague
+sufferings like those which assailed Modeste. He speaks to young girls
+in their own language; he can allay the anguish of a bleeding wound
+and lull the moans, even the sobs of woe. His gift lies not in stirring
+words, nor in the remedy of strong emotions, he contents himself with
+saying in harmonious tones which compel belief, “I suffer with you; I
+understand you; come with me; let us weep together beside the brook,
+beneath the willows.” And they follow him! They listen to his empty and
+sonorous poetry like infants to a nurse’s lullaby. Canalis, like Nodier,
+enchants the reader by an artlessness which is genuine in the prose
+writer and artificial in the poet, by his tact, his smile, the shedding
+of his rose-leaves, in short by his infantile philosophy. He imitates
+so well the language of our early youth that he leads us back to
+the prairie-land of our illusions. We can be pitiless to the eagles,
+requiring from them the quality of the diamond, incorruptible
+perfection; but as for Canalis, we take him for what he is and let the
+rest go. He seems a good fellow; the affectations of the angelic school
+have answered his purpose and succeeded, just as a woman succeeds when
+she plays the ingenue cleverly, and simulates surprise, youth, innocence
+betrayed, in short, the wounded angel.
+
+Modeste, recovering her first impression, renewed her confidence in
+that soul, in that countenance as ravishing as the face of Bernardin de
+Saint-Pierre. She paid no further attention to the publisher. And so,
+about the beginning of the month of August she wrote the following
+letter to this Dorat of the sacristy, who still ranks as a star of the
+modern Pleiades.
+
+  To Monsieur de Canalis,--Many a time, monsieur, I have wished to
+  write to you; and why? Surely you guess why,--to tell you how much
+  I admire your genius. Yes, I feel the need of expressing to you
+  the admiration of a poor country girl, lonely in her little
+  corner, whose only happiness is to read your thoughts. I have read
+  Rene, and I come to you. Sadness leads to reverie. How many other
+  women are sending you the homage of their secret thoughts? What
+  chance have I for notice among so many? This paper, filled with my
+  soul,--can it be more to you than the perfumed letters which
+  already beset you. I come to you with less grace than others, for
+  I wish to remain unknown and yet to receive your entire confidence
+  --as though you had long known me.
+
+  Answer my letter and be friendly with me. I cannot promise to make
+  myself known to you, though I do not positively say I will not
+  some day do so.
+
+  What shall I add? Read between the lines of this letter, monsieur,
+  the great effort which I am making: permit me to offer you my
+  hand,--that of a friend, ah! a true friend.
+
+  Your servant,       O. d’Este M.
+
+
+  P.S.--If you do me the favor to answer this letter address your
+  reply, if you please, to Mademoiselle F. Cochet, “poste restante,”
+   Havre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. A POET OF THE ANGELIC SCHOOL
+
+
+All young girls, romantic or otherwise, can imagine the impatience in
+which Modeste lived for the next few days. The air was full of tongues
+of fire. The trees were like a plumage. She was not conscious of a body;
+she hovered in space, the earth melted away under her feet. Full of
+admiration for the post-office, she followed her little sheet of paper
+on its way; she was happy, as we all are happy at twenty years of age,
+in the first exercise of our will. She was possessed, as in the middle
+ages. She made pictures in her mind of the poet’s abode, of his
+study; she saw him unsealing her letter; and then followed myriads of
+suppositions.
+
+After sketching the poetry we cannot do less than give the profile of
+the poet. Canalis is a short, spare man, with an air of good-breeding, a
+dark-complexioned, moon-shaped face, and a rather mean head like that
+of a man who has more vanity than pride. He loves luxury, rank, and
+splendor. Money is of more importance to him than to most men. Proud of
+his birth, even more than of his talent, he destroys the value of his
+ancestors by making too much of them in the present day,--after all,
+the Canalis are not Navarreins, nor Cadignans, nor Grandlieus. Nature,
+however, helps him out in his pretensions. He has those eyes of Eastern
+effulgence which we demand in a poet, a delicate charm of manner, and a
+vibrant voice; yet a taint of natural charlatanism destroys the effect
+of nearly all these advantages; he is a born comedian. If he puts
+forward his well-shaped foot, it is because the attitude has become
+a habit; if he uses exclamatory terms they are part of himself; if he
+poses with high dramatic action he has made that deportment his second
+nature. Such defects as these are not incompatible with a general
+benevolence and a certain quality of errant and purely ideal chivalry,
+which distinguishes the paladin from the knight. Canalis has not
+devotion enough for a Don Quixote, but he has too much elevation of
+thought not to put himself on the nobler side of questions and things.
+His poetry, which takes the town by storm on all profitable occasions,
+really injures the man as a poet; for he is not without mind, but
+his talent prevents him from developing it; he is overweighted by his
+reputation, and is always aiming to make himself appear greater than he
+has the credit of being. Thus, as often happens, the man is entirely out
+of keeping with the products of his thought. The author of these naive,
+caressing, tender little lyrics, these calm idylls pure and cold as the
+surface of a lake, these verses so essentially feminine, is an ambitious
+little creature in a tightly buttoned frock-coat, with the air of
+a diplomat seeking political influence, smelling of the musk of
+aristocracy, full of pretension, thirsting for money, already spoiled by
+success in two directions, and wearing the double wreath of myrtle and
+of laurel. A government situation worth eight thousand francs, three
+thousand francs’ annuity from the literary fund, two thousand from the
+Academy, three thousand more from the paternal estate (less the taxes
+and the cost of keeping it in order),--a total fixed income of fifteen
+thousand francs, plus the ten thousand bought in, one year with another,
+by his poetry; in all twenty-five thousand francs,--this for Modeste’s
+hero was so precarious and insufficient an income that he usually spent
+five or six thousand francs more every year; but the king’s privy purse
+and the secret funds of the foreign office had hitherto supplied the
+deficit. He wrote a hymn for the king’s coronation which earned him a
+whole silver service,--having refused a sum of money on the ground that
+a Canalis owed his duty to his sovereign.
+
+But about this time Canalis had, as the journalists say, exhausted his
+budget. He felt himself unable to invent any new form of poetry; his
+lyre did not have seven strings, it had one; and having played on that
+one string so long, the public allowed him no other alternative but to
+hang himself with it, or to hold his tongue. De Marsay, who did not
+like Canalis, made a remark whose poisoned shaft touched the poet to
+the quick of his vanity. “Canalis,” he said, “always reminds me of that
+brave man whom Frederic the Great called up and commended after a battle
+because his trumpet had never ceased tooting its one little tune.”
+ Canalis’s ambition was to enter political life, and he made capital of a
+journey he had taken to Madrid as secretary to the embassy of the Duc
+de Chaulieu, though it was really made, according to Parisian gossip, in
+the capacity of “attache to the duchess.” How many times a sarcasm or a
+single speech has decided the whole course of a man’s life. Colla,
+the late president of the Cisalpine republic, and the best lawyer in
+Piedmont, was told by a friend when he was forty years of age that
+he knew nothing of botany. He was piqued, became a second Jussieu,
+cultivated flowers, and compiled and published “The Flora of Piedmont,”
+ in Latin, a labor of ten years. “I’ll master De Marsay some of these
+days!” thought the crushed poet; “after all, Canning and Chateaubriand
+are both in politics.”
+
+Canalis would gladly have brought forth some great political poem, but
+he was afraid of the French press, whose criticisms are savage upon any
+writer who takes four alexandrines to express one idea. Of all the poets
+of our day only three, Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and De Vigny, have been
+able to win the double glory of poet and prose-writer, like Racine and
+Voltaire, Moliere, and Rabelais,--a rare distinction in the literature
+of France, which ought to give a man a right to the crowning title of
+poet.
+
+So then, the bard of the faubourg Saint-Germain was doing a wise thing
+in trying to house his little chariot under the protecting roof of the
+present government. When he became president of the court of Claims at
+the foreign office, he stood in need of a secretary,--a friend who could
+take his place in various ways; cook up his interests with publishers,
+see to his glory in the newspapers, help him if need be in politics,--in
+short, a cat’s paw and satellite. In Paris many men of celebrity in art,
+science, and literature have one or more train-bearers, captains of
+the guard, chamberlains as it were, who live in the sunshine of their
+presence,--aides-de-camp entrusted with delicate missions, allowing
+themselves to be compromised if necessary; workers round the pedestal
+of the idol; not exactly his servants, nor yet his equals; bold in
+his defence, first in the breach, covering all retreats, busy with his
+business, and devoted to him just so long as their illusions last,
+or until the moment when they have got all they wanted. Some of these
+satellites perceive the ingratitude of their great man; others feel that
+they are simply made tools of; many weary of the life; very few remain
+contented with that sweet equality of feeling and sentiment which is
+the only reward that should be looked for in an intimacy with a superior
+man,--a reward that contented Ali when Mohammed raised him to himself.
+
+Many of these men, misled by vanity, think themselves quite as capable
+as their patron. Pure devotion, such as Modeste conceived it, without
+money and without price, and more especially without hope, is rare.
+Nevertheless there are Mennevals to be found, more perhaps in Paris
+than elsewhere, men who value a life in the background with its peaceful
+toil; these are the wandering Benedictines of our social world, which
+offers them no other monastery. These brave, meek hearts live, by their
+actions and in their hidden lives, the poetry that poets utter. They
+are poets themselves in soul, in tenderness, in their lonely vigils and
+meditations,--as truly poets as others of the name on paper, who fatten
+in the fields of literature at so much a verse; like Lord Byron, like
+all who live, alas, by ink, the Hippocrene water of to-day, for want of
+a better.
+
+Attracted by the fame of Canalis, also by the prospect of political
+interest, and advised thereto by Madame d’Espard, who acted in the
+matter for the Duchesse de Chaulieu, a young lawyer of the court
+of Claims became secretary and confidential friend of the poet, who
+welcomed and petted him very much as a broker caresses his first dabbler
+in the funds. The beginning of this companionship bore a very fair
+resemblance to friendship. The young man had already held the same
+relation to a minister, who went out of office in 1827, taking care
+before he did so to appoint his young secretary to a place in the
+foreign office. Ernest de La Briere, then about twenty-seven years of
+age, was decorated with the Legion of honor but was without other means
+than his salary; he was accustomed to the management of business and
+had learned a good deal of life during his four years in a minister’s
+cabinet. Kindly, amiable, and over-modest, with a heart full of pure and
+sound feelings, he was averse to putting himself in the foreground. He
+loved his country, and wished to serve her, but notoriety abashed him.
+To him the place of secretary to a Napoleon was far more desirable
+than that of the minister himself. As soon as he became the friend and
+secretary of Canalis he did a great amount of labor for him, but by the
+end of eighteen months he had learned to understand the barrenness of
+a nature that was poetic through literary expression only. The truth of
+the old proverb, “The cowl doesn’t make the monk,” is eminently shown in
+literature. It is extremely rare to find among literary men a nature
+and a talent that are in perfect accord. The faculties are not the man
+himself. This disconnection, whose phenomena are amazing, proceeds
+from an unexplored, possibly an unexplorable mystery. The brain and its
+products of all kinds (for in art the hand of man is a continuation of
+his brain) are a world apart, which flourishes beneath the cranium in
+absolute independence of sentiments, feelings, and all that is called
+virtue, the virtue of citizens, fathers, and private life. This, however
+true, is not absolutely so; nothing is absolutely true of man. It is
+certain that a debauched man will dissipate his talent, that a drunkard
+will waste it in libations; while, on the other hand, no man can give
+himself talent by wholesome living: nevertheless, it is all but proved
+that Virgil, the painter of love, never loved a Dido, and that
+Rousseau, the model citizen, had enough pride to had furnished forth an
+aristocracy. On the other hand Raphael and Michael Angelo do present the
+glorious conjunction of genius with the lines of character. Talent
+in men is therefore, in all moral points, very much what beauty is in
+women,--simply a promise. Let us, therefore, doubly admire the man in
+whom both heart and character equal the perfection of his genius.
+
+When Ernest discovered within his poet an ambitious egoist, the worst
+species of egoist (for there are some amiable forms of the vice), he
+felt a delicacy in leaving him. Honest natures cannot easily break the
+ties that bind them, especially if they have tied them voluntarily. The
+secretary was therefore still living in domestic relations with the
+poet when Modeste’s letter arrived,--in such relations, be it said, as
+involved a perpetual sacrifice of his feelings. La Briere admitted the
+frankness with which Canalis had laid himself bare before him. Moreover,
+the defects of the man, who will always be considered a great poet
+during his lifetime and flattered as Martmontel was flattered, were only
+the wrong side of his brilliant qualities. Without his vanity and his
+magniloquence it is possible that he might never have acquired the
+sonorous elocution which is so useful and even necessary an instrument
+in political life. His cold-bloodedness touched at certain points on
+rectitude and loyalty; his ostentation had a lining of generosity.
+Results, we must remember, are to the profit of society; motives concern
+God.
+
+But after the arrival of Modeste’s letter Ernest deceived himself no
+longer as to Canalis. The pair had just finished breakfast and were
+talking together in the poet’s study, which was on the ground-floor of a
+house standing back in a court-yard, and looked into a garden.
+
+“There!” exclaimed Canalis, “I was telling Madame de Chaulieu the
+other day that I ought to bring out another poem; I knew admiration was
+running short, for I have had no anonymous letters for a long time.”
+
+“Is it from an unknown woman?”
+
+“Unknown? yes!--a D’Este, in Havre; evidently a feigned name.”
+
+Canalis passed the letter to La Briere. The little poem, with all its
+hidden enthusiasms, in short, poor Modeste’s heart, was disdainfully
+handed over, with the gesture of a spoiled dandy.
+
+“It is a fine thing,” said the lawyer, “to have the power to attract
+such feelings; to force a poor woman to step out of the habits which
+nature, education, and the world dictate to her, to break through
+conventions. What privileges genius wins! A letter such as this, written
+by a young girl--a genuine young girl--without hidden meanings, with
+real enthusiasm--”
+
+“Well, what?” said Canalis.
+
+“Why, a man might suffer as much as Tasso and yet feel recompensed,”
+ cried La Briere.
+
+“So he might, my dear fellow, by a first letter of that kind, and even a
+second; but how about the thirtieth? And suppose you find out that these
+young enthusiasts are little jades? Or imagine a poet rushing along the
+brilliant path in search of her, and finding at the end of it an old
+Englishwoman sitting on a mile-stone and offering you her hand! Or
+suppose this post-office angel should really be a rather ugly girl in
+quest of a husband? Ah, my boy! the effervescence then goes down.”
+
+“I begin to perceive,” said La Briere, smiling, “that there is something
+poisonous in glory, as there is in certain dazzling flowers.”
+
+“And then,” resumed Canalis, “all these women, even when they are
+simple-minded, have ideals, and you can’t satisfy them. They never say
+to themselves that a poet is a vain man, as I am accused of being; they
+can’t conceive what it is for an author to be at the mercy of a feverish
+excitement, which makes him disagreeable and capricious; they want him
+always grand, noble; it never occurs to them that genius is a disease,
+or that Nathan lives with Florine; that D’Arthez is too fat, and Joseph
+Bridau is too thin; that Beranger limps, and that their own particular
+deity may have the snuffles! A Lucien de Rubempre, poet and cupid, is a
+phoenix. And why should I go in search of compliments only to pull the
+string of a shower-bath of horrid looks from some disillusioned female?”
+
+“Then the true poet,” said La Briere, “ought to remain hidden, like God,
+in the centre of his worlds, and be only seen in his own creations.”
+
+“Glory would cost too dear in that case,” answered Canalis. “There is
+some good in life. As for that letter,” he added, taking a cup of tea,
+“I assure you that when a noble and beautiful woman loves a poet she
+does not hide in the corner boxes, like a duchess in love with an actor;
+she feels that her beauty, her fortune, her name are protection enough,
+and she dares to say openly, like an epic poem: ‘I am the nymph Calypso,
+enamored of Telemachus.’ Mystery and feigned names are the resources of
+little minds. For my part I no longer answer masks--”
+
+“I should love a woman who came to seek me,” cried La Briere. “To all
+you say I reply, my dear Canalis, that it cannot be an ordinary girl who
+aspires to a distinguished man; such a girl has too little trust, too
+much vanity; she is too faint-hearted. Only a star, a--”
+
+“--princess!” cried Canalis, bursting into a shout of laughter; “only a
+princess can descend to him. My dear fellow, that doesn’t happen once
+in a hundred years. Such a love is like that flower that blossoms every
+century. Princesses, let me tell you, if they are young, rich, and
+beautiful, have something else to think of; they are surrounded
+like rare plants by a hedge of fools, well-bred idiots as hollow as
+elder-bushes! My dream, alas! the crystal of my dream, garlanded from
+hence to the Correze with roses--ah! I cannot speak of it--it is in
+fragments at my feet, and has long been so. No, no, all anonymous
+letters are begging letters; and what sort of begging? Write yourself to
+that young woman, if you suppose her young and pretty, and you’ll find
+out. There is nothing like experience. As for me, I can’t reasonably be
+expected to love every woman; Apollo, at any rate he of Belvedere, is a
+delicate consumptive who must take care of his health.”
+
+“But when a woman writes to you in this way her excuse must certainly
+be in her consciousness that she is able to eclipse in tenderness and
+beauty every other woman,” said Ernest, “and I should think you might
+feel some curiosity--”
+
+“Ah,” said Canalis, “permit me, my juvenile friend, to abide by the
+beautiful duchess who is all my joy.”
+
+“You are right, you are right!” cried Ernest. However, the young
+secretary read and re-read Modeste’s letter, striving to guess the mind
+of its hidden writer.
+
+“There is not the least fine-writing here,” he said, “she does not even
+talk of your genius; she speaks to your heart. In your place I should
+feel tempted by this fragrance of modesty,--this proposed agreement--”
+
+“Then, sign it!” cried Canalis, laughing; “answer the letter and go to
+the end of the adventure yourself. You shall tell me the results three
+months hence--if the affair lasts so long.”
+
+Four days later Modeste received the following letter, written on
+extremely fine paper, protected by two envelopes, and sealed with the
+arms of Canalis.
+
+  Mademoiselle,--The admiration for fine works (allowing that my
+  books are such) implies something so lofty and sincere as to
+  protect you from all light jesting, and to justify before the
+  sternest judge the step you have taken in writing to me.
+
+  But first I must thank you for the pleasure which such proofs of
+  sympathy afford, even though we may not merit them,--for the maker
+  of verses and the true poet are equally certain of the intrinsic
+  worth of their writings,--so readily does self-esteem lend itself
+  to praise. The best proof of friendship that I can give to an
+  unknown lady in exchange for a faith which allays the sting of
+  criticism, is to share with her the harvest of my own experience,
+  even at the risk of dispelling her most vivid illusions.
+
+  Mademoiselle, the noblest adornment of a young girl is the flower
+  of a pure and saintly and irreproachable life. Are you alone in
+  the world? If you are, there is no need to say more. But if you
+  have a family, a father or a mother, think of all the sorrow that
+  might come to them from such a letter as yours addressed to a poet
+  of whom you know nothing personally. All writers are not angels;
+  they have many defects. Some are frivolous, heedless, foppish,
+  ambitious, dissipated; and, believe me, no matter how imposing
+  innocence may be, how chivalrous a poet is, you will meet with
+  many a degenerate troubadour in Paris ready to cultivate your
+  affection only to betray it. By such a man your letter would be
+  interpreted otherwise than it is by me. He would see a thought
+  that is not in it, which you, in your innocence, have not
+  suspected. There are as many natures as there are writers. I am
+  deeply flattered that you have judged me capable of understanding
+  you; but had you, perchance, fallen upon a hypocrite, a scoffer,
+  one whose books may be melancholy but whose life is a perpetual
+  carnival, you would have found as the result of your generous
+  imprudence an evil-minded man, the frequenter of green-rooms,
+  perhaps a hero of some gay resort. In the bower of clematis where
+  you dream of poets, can you smell the odor of the cigar which
+  drives all poetry from the manuscript?
+
+  But let us look still further. How could the dreamy, solitary life
+  you lead, doubtless by the sea-shore, interest a poet, whose
+  mission it is to imagine all, and to paint all? What reality can
+  equal imagination? The young girls of the poets are so ideal that
+  no living daughter of Eve can compete with them. And now tell me,
+  what will you gain,--you, a young girl, brought up to be the
+  virtuous mother of a family,--if you learn to comprehend the
+  terrible agitations of a poet’s life in this dreadful capital,
+  which may be defined by one sentence,--the hell in which men love.
+
+  If the desire to brighten the monotonous existence of a young girl
+  thirsting for knowledge has led you to take your pen in hand and
+  write to me, has not the step itself the appearance of
+  degradation? What meaning am I to give to your letter? Are you one
+  of a rejected caste, and do you seek a friend far away from you?
+  Or, are you afflicted with personal ugliness, yet feeling within
+  you a noble soul which can give and receive a confidence? Alas,
+  alas, the conclusion to be drawn is grievous. You have said too
+  much, or too little; you have gone too far, or not far enough.
+  Either let us drop this correspondence, or, if you continue it,
+  tell me more than in the letter you have now written me.
+
+  But, mademoiselle, if you are young, if you are beautiful, if you
+  have a home, a family, if in your heart you have the precious
+  ointment, the spikenard, to pour out, as did Magdalene on the feet
+  of Jesus, let yourself be won by a man worthy of you; become what
+  every pure young girl should be,--a good woman, the virtuous
+  mother of a family. A poet is the saddest conquest that a girl can
+  make; he is full of vanity, full of angles that will sharply wound
+  a woman’s proper pride, and kill a tenderness which has no
+  experience of life. The wife of a poet should love him long before
+  she marries him; she must train herself to the charity of angels,
+  to their forbearance, to all the virtues of motherhood. Such
+  qualities, mademoiselle, are but germs in a young girl.
+
+  Hear the whole truth,--do I not owe it to you in return for your
+  intoxicating flattery? If it is a glorious thing to marry a great
+  renown, remember also that you must soon discover a superior man
+  to be, in all that makes a man, like other men. He therefore
+  poorly realizes the hopes that attach to him as a phoenix. He
+  becomes like a woman whose beauty is over-praised, and of whom we
+  say: “I thought her far more lovely.” She has not warranted the
+  portrait painted by the fairy to whom I owe your letter,--the
+  fairy whose name is Imagination.
+
+  Believe me, the qualities of the mind live and thrive only in a
+  sphere invisible, not in daily life; the wife of a poet bears the
+  burden; she sees the jewels manufactured, but she never wears
+  them. If the glory of the position fascinates you, hear me now
+  when I tell you that its pleasures are soon at an end. You will
+  suffer when you find so many asperities in a nature which, from a
+  distance, you thought equable, and such coldness at the shining
+  summit. Moreover, as women never set their feet within the world
+  of real difficulties, they cease to appreciate what they once
+  admired as soon as they think they see the inner mechanism of it.
+
+  I close with a last thought, in which there is no disguised
+  entreaty; it is the counsel of a friend. The exchange of souls can
+  take place only between persons who are resolved to hide nothing
+  from each other. Would you show yourself for such as you are to an
+  unknown man? I dare not follow out the consequences of that idea.
+
+  Deign to accept, mademoiselle, the homage which we owe to all
+  women, even those who are disguised and masked.
+
+So this was the letter she had worn between her flesh and her corset
+above her palpitating heart throughout one whole day! For this she had
+postponed the reading until the midnight hour when the household slept,
+waiting for the solemn silence with the eager anxiety of an imagination
+on fire! For this she had blessed the poet by anticipation, reading a
+thousand letters ere she opened one,--fancying all things, except this
+drop of cold water falling upon the vaporous forms of her illusion, and
+dissolving them as prussic acid dissolves life. What could she do but
+hide herself in her bed, blow out her candle, bury her face in the
+sheets and weep?
+
+All this happened during the first days of July. But Modeste presently
+got up, walked across the room and opened the window. She wanted air.
+The fragrance of the flowers came to her with the peculiar freshness of
+the odors of the night. The sea, lighted by the moon, sparkled like a
+mirror. A nightingale was singing in a tree. “Ah, there is the poet!”
+ thought Modeste, whose anger subsided at once. Bitter reflections chased
+each other through her mind. She was cut to the quick; she wished to
+re-read the letter, and lit a candle; she studied the sentences so
+carefully studied when written; and ended by hearing the wheezing voice
+of the outer world.
+
+“He is right, and I am wrong,” she said to herself. “But who could ever
+believe that under the starry mantle of a poet I should find nothing but
+one of Moliere’s old men?”
+
+When a woman or young girl is taken in the act, “flagrante delicto,” she
+conceives a deadly hatred to the witness, the author, or the object of
+her fault. And so the true, the single-minded, the untamed and untamable
+Modeste conceived within her soul an unquenchable desire to get
+the better of that righteous spirit, to drive him into some fatal
+inconsistency, and so return him blow for blow. This girl, this
+child, as we may call her, so pure, whose head alone had been
+misguided,--partly by her reading, partly by her sister’s sorrows, and
+more perhaps by the dangerous meditations of her solitary life,--was
+suddenly caught by a ray of sunshine flickering across her face. She had
+been standing for three hours on the shores of the vast sea of Doubt.
+Nights like these are never forgotten. Modeste walked straight to
+her little Chinese table, a gift from her father, and wrote a letter
+dictated by the infernal spirit of vengeance which palpitates in the
+hearts of young girls.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. BLADE TO BLADE
+
+  To Monsieur de Canalis:
+
+  Monsieur,--You are certainly a great poet, and you are something
+  more,--an honest man. After showing such loyal frankness to a
+  young girl who was stepping to the verge of an abyss, have you
+  enough left to answer without hypocrisy or evasion the following
+  question?
+
+  Would you have written the letter I now hold in answer to mine,
+  --would your ideas, your language have been the same,--had some
+  one whispered in your ear (what may prove true), Mademoiselle O.
+  d’Este M. has six millions and does intend to have a dunce for a
+  master?
+
+  Admit the supposition for a moment. Be with me what you are with
+  yourself; fear nothing. I am wiser than my twenty years; nothing
+  that is frank can hurt you in my mind. When I have read your
+  confidence, if you deign to make it, you shall receive from me an
+  answer to your first letter.
+
+  Having admired your talent, often so sublime, permit me to do
+  homage to your delicacy and your integrity, which force me to
+  remain always,
+
+Your humble servant, O. d’Este M.
+
+
+When Ernest de La Briere had held this letter in his hands for some
+little time he went to walk along the boulevards, tossed in mind like a
+tiny vessel by a tempest when the wind is blowing from all points of the
+compass. Most young men, specially true Parisians, would have settled
+the matter in a single phrase, “The girl is a little hussy.” But for
+a youth whose soul was noble and true, this attempt to put him, as it
+were, upon his oath, this appeal to truth, had the power to awaken the
+three judges hidden in the conscience of every man. Honor, Truth,
+and Justice, getting on their feet, cried out in their several ways
+energetically.
+
+“Ah, my dear Ernest,” said Truth, “you never would have read that lesson
+to a rich heiress. No, my boy; you would have gone in hot haste to Havre
+to find out if the girl were handsome, and you would have been very
+unhappy indeed at her preference for genius; and if you could
+have tripped up your friend and supplanted him in her affections,
+Mademoiselle d’Este would have been a divinity.”
+
+“What?” cried Justice, “are you not always bemoaning yourselves, you
+penniless men of wit and capacity, that rich girls marry beings whom you
+wouldn’t take as your servants? You rail against the materialism of the
+century which hastens to join wealth to wealth, and never marries some
+fine young man with brains and no money to a rich girl. What an outcry
+you make about it; and yet here is a young woman who revolts against
+that very spirit of the age, and behold! the poet replies with a blow at
+her heart!”
+
+“Rich or poor, young or old, ugly or handsome, the girl is right; she
+has sense and judgment, she has tripped you over into the slough of
+self-interest and lets you know it,” cried Honor. “She deserves an
+answer, a sincere and loyal and frank answer, and, above all, the honest
+expression of your thought. Examine yourself! sound your heart and purge
+it of its meannesses. What would Moliere’s Alceste say?”
+
+And La Briere, having started from the boulevard Poissoniere, walked so
+slowly, absorbed in these reflections, that he was more than an hour in
+reaching the boulevard des Capucines. Then he followed the quays, which
+led him to the Cour des Comptes, situated in that time close to the
+Saint-Chapelle. Instead of beginning on the accounts as he should have
+done, he remained at the mercy of his perplexities.
+
+“One thing is evident,” he said to himself; “she hasn’t six millions;
+but that’s not the point--”
+
+Six days later, Modeste received the following letter:
+
+  Mademoiselle,--You are not a D’Este. The name is a feigned one to
+  conceal your own. Do I owe the revelations which you solicit to a
+  person who is untruthful about herself? Question for question: Are
+  you of an illustrious family? or a noble family? or a middle-class
+  family? Undoubtedly ethics and morality cannot change; they are
+  one: but obligations vary in the different states of life. Just as
+  the sun lights up a scene diversely and produces differences which
+  we admire, so morality conforms social duty to rank, to position.
+  The peccadillo of a soldier is a crime in a general, and
+  vice-versa. Observances are not alike in all cases. They are not
+  the same for the gleaner in the field, for the girl who sews at
+  fifteen sous a day, for the daughter of a petty shopkeeper, for
+  the young bourgoise, for the child of a rich merchant, for the
+  heiress of a noble family, for a daughter of the house of Este. A
+  king must not stoop to pick up a piece of gold, but a laborer
+  ought to retrace his steps to find ten sous; though both are
+  equally bound to obey the laws of economy. A daughter of Este, who
+  is worth six millions, has the right to wear a broad-brimmed hat
+  and plume, to flourish her whip, press the flanks of her barb, and
+  ride like an amazon decked in gold lace, with a lackey behind her,
+  into the presence of a poet and say: “I love poetry; and I would
+  fain expiate Leonora’s cruelty to Tasso!” but a daughter of the
+  people would cover herself with ridicule by imitating her. To what
+  class do you belong? Answer sincerely, and I will answer the
+  question you have put to me.
+
+  As I have not the honor of knowing you personally, and yet am
+  bound to you, in a measure, by the ties of poetic communion, I am
+  unwilling to offer any commonplace compliments. Perhaps you have
+  already won a malicious victory by thus embarrassing a maker of
+  books.
+
+The young man was certainly not wanting in the sort of shrewdness which
+is permissible to a man of honor. By return courier he received an
+answer:--
+
+  To Monsieur de Canalis,--You grow more and more sensible, my dear
+  poet. My father is a count. The chief glory of our house was a
+  cardinal, in the days when cardinals walked the earth by the side
+  of kings. I am the last of our family, which ends in me; but I
+  have the necessary quarterings to make my entry into any court or
+  chapter-house in Europe. We are quite the equals of the Canalis.
+  You will be so kind as to excuse me from sending you our arms.
+
+  Endeavor to answer me as truthfully as I have now answered you. I
+  await your response to know if I can then sign myself as I do now,
+
+  Your servant,       O. d’Este M.
+
+
+“The little mischief! how she abuses her privileges,” cried La Briere;
+“but isn’t she frank!”
+
+No young man can be four years private secretary to a cabinet minister,
+and live in Paris and observe the carrying on of many intrigues, with
+perfect impunity; in fact, the purest soul is more or less intoxicated
+by the heady atmosphere of the imperial city. Happy in the thought
+that he was not Canalis, our young secretary engaged a place in the
+mail-coach for Havre, after writing a letter in which he announced that
+the promised answer would be sent a few days later,--excusing the delay
+on the ground of the importance of the confession and the pressure of
+his duties at the ministry.
+
+He took care to get from the director-general of the post-office a note
+to the postmaster at Havre, requesting secrecy and attention to his
+wishes. Ernest was thus enabled to see Francoise Cochet when she came
+for the letters, and to follow her without exciting observation. Guided
+by her, he reached Ingouville and saw Modeste Mignon at the window of
+the Chalet.
+
+“Well, Francoise?” he heard the young girl say, to which the maid
+responded,--
+
+“Yes, mademoiselle, I have one.”
+
+Struck by the girl’s great beauty, Ernest retraced his steps and asked a
+man on the street the name of the owner of that magnificent estate.
+
+“That?” said the man, nodding to the villa.
+
+“Yes, my friend.”
+
+“Oh, that belongs to Monsieur Vilquin, the richest shipping merchant in
+Havre, so rich he doesn’t know what he is worth.”
+
+“There is no Cardinal Vilquin that I know of in history,” thought
+Ernest, as he walked back to Havre for the night mail to Paris.
+Naturally he questioned the postmaster about the Vilquin family, and
+learned that it possessed an enormous fortune. Monsieur Vilquin had
+a son and two daughters, one of whom was married to Monsieur Althor,
+junior. Prudence kept La Briere from seeming anxious about the Vilquins;
+the postmaster was already looking at him slyly.
+
+“Is there there any one staying with them at the present moment,” he
+asked, “besides the family?”
+
+“The d’Herouville family is there just now. They do talk of a marriage
+between the young duke and the remaining Mademoiselle Vilquin.”
+
+“Ha!” thought Ernest; “there was a celebrated Cardinal d’Herouville
+under the Valois, and a terrible marshal whom they made a duke in the
+time of Henri IV.”
+
+Ernest returned to Paris having seen enough of Modeste to dream of her,
+and to think that, whether she were rich or whether she were poor, if
+she had a noble soul he would like to make her Madame de La Briere; and
+so thinking, he resolved to continue the correspondence.
+
+Ah! you poor women of France, try to remain hidden if you can; try
+to weave the least little romance about your lives in the midst of
+a civilization which posts in the public streets the hours when the
+coaches arrive and depart; which counts all letters and stamps them
+twice over, first with the hour when they are thrown into the boxes, and
+next with that of their delivery; which numbers the houses, prints the
+tax of every tenant on a metal register at the doors (after verifying
+its particulars), and will soon possess one vast register of every
+inch of its territory down to the smallest parcel of land, and the most
+insignificant features of it,--a giant work ordained by a giant. Try,
+imprudent young ladies, to escape not only the eye of the police, but
+the incessant chatter which takes place in a country town about the
+veriest trifles,--how many dishes the prefect has at his dessert,
+how many slices of melon are left at the door of some small
+householder,--which strains its ear to catch the chink of the gold a
+thrifty man lays by, and spends its evenings in calculating the incomes
+of the village and the town and the department. It was mere chance
+that enabled Modeste to escape discovery through Ernest’s reconnoitring
+expedition,--a step which he already regretted; but what Parisian can
+allow himself to be the dupe of a little country girl? Incapable of
+being duped! that horrid maxim is the dissolvent of all noble sentiments
+in man.
+
+We can readily guess the struggle of feeling to which this honest young
+fellow fell a prey when we read the letter that he now indited, in which
+every stroke of the flail which scourged his conscience will be found to
+have left its trace.
+
+This is what Modeste read a few days later, as she sat by her window on
+a fine summer’s day:--
+
+  Mademoiselle,--Without hypocrisy or evasion, _yes_, if I had been
+  certain that you possessed an immense fortune I should have acted
+  differently. Why? I have searched for the reason; here it is. We
+  have within us an inborn feeling, inordinately developed by social
+  life, which drives us to the pursuit and to the possession of
+  happiness. Most men confound happiness with the means that lead to
+  it; money in their eyes is the chief element of happiness. I
+  should, therefore, have endeavored to win you, prompted by that
+  social sentiment which has in all ages made wealth a religion. At
+  least, I think I should. It is not to be expected of a man still
+  young that he can have the wisdom to substitute sound sense for
+  the pleasure of the senses; within sight of a prey the brutal
+  instincts hidden in the heart of man drive him on. Instead of that
+  lesson, I should have sent you compliments and flatteries. Should
+  I have kept my own esteem in so doing? I doubt it. Mademoiselle,
+  in such a case success brings absolution; but happiness? That is
+  another thing. Should I have distrusted my wife had I won her in
+  that way? Most assuredly I should. Your advance on me would sooner
+  or later have come between us. Your husband, however grand your
+  fancy may make him, would have ended by reproaching you for having
+  abased him. You, yourself, might have come, sooner or later, to
+  despise him. The strong man forgives, but the poet whines. Such,
+  mademoiselle, is the answer which my honesty compels me to make to
+  you.
+
+  And now, listen to me. You have the triumph of forcing me to
+  reflect deeply,--first on you, whom I do not sufficiently know;
+  next, on myself, of whom I knew too little. You have had the power
+  to stir up many of the evil thoughts which crouched in my heart,
+  as in all hearts; but from them something good and generous has
+  come forth, and I salute you with my most fervent benedictions,
+  just as at sea we salute the lighthouse which shows the rocks on
+  which we were about to perish. Here is my confession, for I would
+  not lose your esteem nor my own for all the treasures of earth.
+
+  I wished to know who you are. I have just returned from Havre,
+  where I saw Francoise Cochet, and followed her to Ingouville. You
+  are as beautiful as the woman of a poet’s dream; but I do not know
+  if you are Mademoiselle Vilquin concealed under Mademoiselle
+  d’Herouville, or Mademoiselle d’Herouville hidden under
+  Mademoiselle Vilquin. Though all is fair in war, I blushed at such
+  spying and stopped short in my inquiries. You have roused my
+  curiosity; forgive me for being somewhat of a woman; it is, I
+  believe, the privilege of a poet.
+
+  Now that I have laid bare my heart and allowed you to read it, you
+  will believe in the sincerity of what I am about to add. Though
+  the glimpse I had of you was all too rapid, it has sufficed to
+  modify my opinion of your conduct. You are a poet and a poem, even
+  more than you are a woman. Yes, there is in you something more
+  precious than beauty; you are the beautiful Ideal of art, of
+  fancy. The step you took, blamable as it would be in an ordinary
+  young girl, allotted to an every-day destiny, has another aspect
+  if endowed with the nature which I now attribute to you. Among the
+  crowd of beings flung by fate into the social life of this planet
+  to make up a generation there are exceptional souls. If your
+  letter is the outcome of long poetic reveries on the fate which
+  conventions bring to women, if, constrained by the impulse of a
+  lofty and intelligent mind, you have wished to understand the life
+  of a man to whom you attribute the gift of genius, to the end that
+  you may create a friendship withdrawn from the ordinary relations
+  of life, with a soul in communion with your own, disregarding thus
+  the ordinary trammels of your sex,--then, assuredly, you are an
+  exception. The law which rightly limits the actions of the crowd
+  is too limited for you. But in that case, the remark in my first
+  letter returns in greater force,--you have done too much or not
+  enough.
+
+  Accept once more my thanks for the service you have rendered me,
+  that of compelling me to sound my heart. You have corrected in me
+  the false idea, only too common in France, that marriage should be
+  a means of fortune. While I struggled with my conscience a sacred
+  voice spoke to me. I swore solemnly to make my fortune myself, and
+  not be led by motives of cupidity in choosing the companion of my
+  life. I have also reproached myself for the blamable curiosity you
+  have excited in me. You have not six millions. There is no
+  concealment possible in Havre for a young lady who possesses such
+  a fortune; you would be discovered at once by the pack of hounds
+  of great families whom I see in Paris on the hunt after heiresses,
+  and who have already sent one, the grand equerry, the young duke,
+  among the Vilquins. Therefore, believe me, the sentiments I have
+  now expressed are fixed in my mind as a rule of life, from which I
+  have abstracted all influences of romance or of actual fact. Prove
+  to me, therefore, that you have one of those souls which may be
+  forgiven for its disobedience to the common law, by perceiving and
+  comprehending the spirit of this letter as you did that of my
+  first letter. If you are destined to a middle-class life, obey the
+  iron law which holds society together. Lifted in mind above other
+  women, I admire you; but if you seek to obey an impulse which you
+  ought to repress, I pity you. The all-wise moral of that great
+  domestic epic “Clarissa Harlowe” is that legitimate and honorable
+  love led the poor victim to her ruin because it was conceived,
+  developed, and pursued beyond the boundaries of family restraint.
+  The family, however cruel and even foolish it may be, is in the
+  right against the Lovelaces. The family is Society. Believe me,
+  the glory of a young girl, of a woman, must always be that of
+  repressing her most ardent impulses within the narrow sphere of
+  conventions. If I had a daughter able to become a Madame de Stael
+  I should wish her dead at fifteen. Can you imagine a daughter of
+  yours flaunting on the stage of fame, exhibiting herself to win
+  the plaudits of a crowd, and not suffer anguish at the thought? No
+  matter to what heights a woman can rise by the inward poetry of
+  her soul, she must sacrifice the outer signs of superiority on the
+  altar of her home. Her impulse, her genius, her aspirations toward
+  Good, the whole poem of a young girl’s being, should belong to the
+  man she accepts and the children whom she brings into the world. I
+  think I perceive in you a secret desire to widen the narrow circle
+  of the life to which all women are condemned, and to put love and
+  passion into marriage. Ah! it is a lovely dream! it is not
+  impossible; it is difficult, but if realized, may it not be to the
+  despair of souls--forgive me the hackneyed word--“incompris”?
+
+  If you seek a platonic friendship it will be to your sorrow in
+  after years. If your letter was a jest, discontinue it. Perhaps
+  this little romance is to end here--is it? It has not been without
+  fruit. My sense of duty is aroused, and you, on your side, will
+  have learned something of Society. Turn your thoughts to real
+  life; throw the enthusiasms you have culled from literature into
+  the virtues of your sex.
+
+  Adieu, mademoiselle. Do me the honor to grant me your esteem.
+  Having seen you, or one whom I believe to be you, I have known
+  that your letter was simply natural; a flower so lovely turns to
+  the sun--of poetry. Yes, love poetry as you love flowers, music,
+  the grandeur of the sea, the beauties of nature; love them as an
+  adornment of the soul, but remember what I have had the honor of
+  telling you as to the nature of poets. Be cautious not to marry,
+  as you say, a dunce, but seek the partner whom God has made for
+  you. There are souls, believe me, who are fit to appreciate you,
+  and to make you happy. If I were rich, if you were poor, I would
+  lay my heart and my fortunes at your feet; for I believe your soul
+  to be full of riches and of loyalty; to you I could confide my
+  life and my honor in absolute security.
+
+  Once more, adieu, adieu, fairest daughter of Eve the fair.
+
+The reading of this letter, swallowed like a drop of water in the
+desert, lifted the mountain which weighed heavily on Modeste’s heart:
+then she saw the mistake she had made in arranging her plan, and
+repaired it by giving Francoise some envelopes directed to herself, in
+which the maid could put the letters which came from Paris and drop them
+again into the box. Modeste resolved to receive the postman herself on
+the steps of the Chalet at the hour when he made his delivery.
+
+As to the feelings that this reply, in which the noble heart of poor
+La Briere beat beneath the brilliant phantom of Canalis, excited in
+Modeste, they were as multifarious and confused as the waves which
+rushed to die along the shore while with her eyes fixed on the wide
+ocean she gave herself up to the joy of having (if we dare say so)
+harpooned an angelic soul in the Parisian Gulf, of having divined that
+hearts of price might still be found in harmony with genius, and, above
+all, for having followed the magic voice of intuition.
+
+A vast interest was now about to animate her life. The wires of her cage
+were broken: the bolts and bars of the pretty Chalet--where were they?
+Her thoughts took wings.
+
+“Oh, father!” she cried, looking out to the horizon. “Come back and make
+us rich and happy.”
+
+The answer which Ernest de La Briere received some five days later will
+tell the reader more than any elaborate disquisition of ours.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE POWER OF THE UNSEEN
+
+  To Monsieur de Canalis:
+
+  My friend,--Suffer me to give you that name,--you have delighted
+  me; I would not have you other than you are in this letter, the
+  first--oh, may it not be the last! Who but a poet could have
+  excused and understood a young girl so delicately?
+
+  I wish to speak with the sincerity that dictated the first lines
+  of your letter. And first, let me say that most fortunately you do
+  not know me. I can joyfully assure you than I am neither that
+  hideous Mademoiselle Vilquin nor the very noble and withered
+  Mademoiselle d’Herouville who floats between twenty and forty
+  years of age, unable to decide on a satisfactory date. The
+  Cardinal d’Herouville flourished in the history of the Church at
+  least a century before the cardinal of whom we boast as our only
+  family glory,--for I take no account of lieutenant-generals, and
+  abbes who write trumpery little verses.
+
+  Moreover, I do not live in the magnificent villa Vilquin; there is
+  not in my veins, thank God, the ten-millionth of a drop of that
+  chilly blood which flows behind a counter. I come on one side from
+  Germany, on the other from the south of France; my mind has a
+  Teutonic love of reverie, my blood the vivacity of Provence. I am
+  noble on my father’s and on my mother’s side. On my mother’s I
+  derive from every page of the Almanach de Gotha. In short, my
+  precautions are well taken. It is not in any man’s power, nor even
+  in the power of the law, to unmask my incognito. I shall remain
+  veiled, unknown.
+
+  As to my person and as to my “belongings,” as the Normans say,
+  make yourself easy. I am at least as handsome as the little girl
+  (ignorantly happy) on whom your eyes chanced to light during your
+  visit to Havre; and I do not call myself poverty-stricken,
+  although ten sons of peers may not accompany me on my walks. I
+  have seen the humiliating comedy of the heiress sought for her
+  millions played on my account. In short, make no attempt, even on
+  a wager, to reach me. Alas! though free as air, I am watched and
+  guarded,--by myself, in the first place, and secondly, by people
+  of nerve and courage who would not hesitate to put a knife in your
+  heart if you tried to penetrate my retreat. I do not say this to
+  excite your courage or stimulate your curiosity; I believe I have
+  no need of such incentives to interest you and attach you to me.
+
+  I will now reply to the second edition, considerably enlarged, of
+  your first sermon.
+
+  Will you have a confession? I said to myself when I saw you so
+  distrustful, and mistaking me for Corinne (whose improvisations
+  bore me dreadfully), that in all probability dozes of Muses had
+  already led you, rashly curious, into their valleys, and begged
+  you to taste the fruits of their boarding-school Parnassus. Oh!
+  you are perfectly safe with me, my friend; I may love poetry, but
+  I have no little verses in my pocket-book, and my stockings are,
+  and will remain, immaculately white. You shall not be pestered
+  with the “Flowers of my Heart” in one or more volumes. And,
+  finally, should it ever happen that I say to you the word “Come!”
+   you will not find--you know it now--an old maid, no, nor a poor
+  and ugly one.
+
+  Ah! my friend, if you only knew how I regret that you came to
+  Havre! You have lowered the charm of what you call my romance. God
+  alone knew the treasure I was reserving for the man noble enough,
+  and trusting enough, and perspicacious enough to come--having
+  faith in my letters, having penetrated step by step into the
+  depths of my heart--to come to our first meeting with the
+  simplicity of a child: for that was what I dreamed to be the
+  innocence of a man of genius. And now you have spoiled my
+  treasure! But I forgive you; you live in Paris and, as you say,
+  there is always a man within a poet.
+
+  Because I tell you this will you think me some little girl who
+  cultivates a garden-full of illusions? You, who are witty and
+  wise, have you not guessed that when Mademoiselle d’Este received
+  your pedantic lesson she said to herself: “No, dear poet, my first
+  letter was not the pebble which a vagabond child flings about the
+  highway to frighten the owner of the adjacent fruit-trees, but a
+  net carefully and prudently thrown by a fisherman seated on a rock
+  above the sea, hoping and expecting a miraculous draught.”
+
+  All that you say so beautifully about the family has my approval.
+  The man who is able to please me, and of whom I believe myself
+  worthy, will have my heart and my life,--with the consent of my
+  parents, for I will neither grieve them, nor take them unawares:
+  happily, I am certain of reigning over them; and, besides, they
+  are wholly without prejudice. Indeed, in every way, I feel myself
+  protected against any delusions in my dream. I have built the
+  fortress with my own hands, and I have let it be fortified by the
+  boundless devotion of those who watch over me as if I were a
+  treasure,--not that I am unable to defend myself in the open, if
+  need be; for, let me say, circumstances have furnished me with
+  armor of proof on which is engraved the word “Disdain.” I have the
+  deepest horror of all that is calculating,--of all that is not
+  pure, disinterested, and wholly noble. I worship the beautiful,
+  the ideal, without being romantic; though I HAVE been, in my heart
+  of hearts, in my dreams. But I recognize the truth of the various
+  things, just even to vulgarity, which you have written me about
+  Society and social life.
+
+  For the time being we are, and we can only be, two friends. Why
+  seek an unseen friend? you ask. Your person may be unknown to me,
+  but your mind, your heart I _know_; they please me, and I feel an
+  infinitude of thoughts within my soul which need a man of genius
+  for their confidant. I do not wish the poem of my heart to be
+  wasted; I would have it known to you as it is to God. What a
+  precious thing is a true comrade, one to whom we can tell all! You
+  will surely not reject the unpublished leaflets of a young girl’s
+  thoughts when they fly to you like the pretty insects fluttering
+  to the sun? I am sure you have never before met with this good
+  fortune of the soul,--the honest confidences of an honest girl.
+  Listen to her prattle; accept the music that she sings to you in
+  her own heart. Later, if our souls are sisters, if our characters
+  warrant the attempt, a white-haired old serving-man shall await
+  you by the wayside and lead you to the cottage, the villa, the
+  castle, the palace--I don’t know yet what sort of bower it will
+  be, nor what its color, nor whether this conclusion will ever be
+  possible; but you will admit, will you not? that it is poetic, and
+  that Mademoiselle d’Este has a complying disposition. Has she not
+  left you free? Has she gone with jealous feet to watch you in the
+  salons of Paris? Has she imposed upon you the labors of some high
+  emprise, such as paladins sought voluntarily in the olden time?
+  No, she asks a perfectly spiritual and mystic alliance. Come to me
+  when you are unhappy, wounded, weary. Tell me all, hide nothing; I
+  have balms for all your ills. I am twenty years of age, dear
+  friend, but I have the sense of fifty, and unfortunately I have
+  known through the experience of another all the horrors and the
+  delights of love. I know what baseness the human heart can
+  contain, what infamy; yet I myself am an honest girl. No, I have
+  no illusions; but I have something better, something real,--I have
+  beliefs and a religion. See! I open the ball of our confidences.
+
+  Whoever I marry--provided I choose him for myself--may sleep in
+  peace or go to the East Indies sure that he will find me on his
+  return working at the tapestry which I began before he left me;
+  and in every stitch he shall read a verse of the poem of which he
+  has been the hero. Yes, I have resolved within my heart never to
+  follow my husband where he does not wish me to go. I will be the
+  divinity of his hearth. That is my religion of humanity. But why
+  should I not test and choose the man to whom I am to be like the
+  life to the body? Is a man ever impeded by life? What can that
+  woman be who thwarts the man she loves?--an illness, a disease,
+  not life. By life, I mean that joyous health which makes each hour
+  a pleasure.
+
+  But to return to your letter, which will always be precious to me.
+  Yes, jesting apart, it contains that which I desired, an
+  expression of prosaic sentiments which are as necessary to family
+  life as air to the lungs; and without which no happiness is
+  possible. To act as an honest man, to think as a poet, to love as
+  women love, that is what I longed for in my friend, and it is now
+  no longer a chimera.
+
+  Adieu, my friend. I am poor at this moment. That is one of the
+  reasons why I cling to my concealment, my mask, my impregnable
+  fortress. I have read your last verses in the “Revue,”--ah! with
+  what delight, now that I am initiated in the austere loftiness of
+  your secret soul.
+
+  Will it make you unhappy to know that a young girl prays for you;
+  that you are her solitary thought,--without a rival except in her
+  father and mother? Can there be any reason why you should reject
+  these pages full of you, written for you, seen by no eye but
+  yours? Send me their counterpart. I am so little of a woman yet
+  that your confidences--provided they are full and true--will
+  suffice for the happiness of your
+
+O. d’Este M.
+
+
+“Good heavens! can I be in love already?” cried the young secretary,
+when he perceived that he had held the above letter in his hands more
+than an hour after reading it. “What shall I do? She thinks she is
+writing to the great poet! Can I continue the deception? Is she a woman
+of forty, or a girl of twenty?”
+
+Ernest was now fascinated by the great gulf of the unseen. The unseen
+is the obscurity of infinitude, and nothing is more alluring. In that
+sombre vastness fires flash, and furrow and color the abyss with fancies
+like those of Martin. For a busy man like Canalis, an adventure of this
+kind is swept away like a harebell by a mountain torrent, but in the
+more unoccupied life of the young secretary, this charming girl, whom
+his imagination persistently connected with the blonde beauty at
+the window, fastened upon his heart, and did as much mischief in his
+regulated life as a fox in a poultry-yard. La Briere allowed himself
+to be preoccupied by this mysterious correspondent; and he answered her
+last letter with another, a pretentious and carefully studied epistle,
+in which, however, passion begins to reveal itself through pique.
+
+  Mademoiselle,--Is it quite loyal in you to enthrone yourself in
+  the heart of a poor poet with a latent intention of abandoning him
+  if he is not exactly what you wish, leaving him to endless
+  regrets,--showing him for a moment an image of perfection, were it
+  only assumed, and at any rate giving him a foretaste of happiness?
+  I was very short-sighted in soliciting this letter, in which you
+  have begun to unfold the elegant fabric of your thoughts. A man
+  can easily become enamored with a mysterious unknown who combines
+  such fearlessness with such originality, so much imagination with
+  so much feeling. Who would not wish to know you after reading your
+  first confidence? It requires a strong effort on my part to retain
+  my senses in thinking of you, for you combine all that can trouble
+  the head or the heart of man. I therefore make the most of the
+  little self-possession you have left me to offer you my humble
+  remonstrances.
+
+  Do you really believe, mademoiselle, that letters, more or less
+  true in relation to the life of the writers, more or less
+  insincere,--for those which we write to each other are the
+  expressions of the moment at which we pen them, and not of the
+  general tenor of our lives,--do you believe, I say, that beautiful
+  as they may be, they can at all replace the representation that we
+  could make of ourselves to each other by the revelations of daily
+  intercourse? Man is dual. There is a life invisible, that of the
+  heart, to which letters may suffice; and there is a life material,
+  to which more importance is, alas, attached than you are aware of
+  at your age. These two existences must, however, be made to
+  harmonize in the ideal which you cherish; and this, I may remark
+  in passing, is very rare.
+
+  The pure, spontaneous, disinterested homage of a solitary soul
+  which is both educated and chaste, is one of those celestial
+  flowers whose color and fragrance console for every grief, for
+  every wound, for every betrayal which makes up the life of a
+  literary man; and I thank you with an impulse equal to your own.
+  But after this poetical exchange of my griefs for the pearls of
+  your charity, what next? what do you expect? I have neither the
+  genius nor the splendid position of Lord Byron; above all, I have
+  not the halo of his fictitious damnation and his false social
+  woes. But what could you have hoped from him in like
+  circumstances? His friendship? Well, he who ought to have felt
+  only pride was eaten up by vanity of every kind,--sickly,
+  irritable vanity which discouraged friendship. I, a thousand-fold
+  more insignificant than he, may I not have discordances of
+  character, and make friendship a burden heavy indeed to bear? In
+  exchange for your reveries, what will you gain? The
+  dissatisfaction of a life which will not be wholly yours. The
+  compact is madness. Let me tell you why. In the first place, your
+  projected poem is a plagiarism. A young German girl, who was not,
+  like you, semi-German, but altogether so, adored Goethe with the
+  rash intoxication of girlhood. She made him her friend, her
+  religion, her god, knowing at the same time that he was married.
+  Madame Goethe, a worthy German woman, lent herself to this worship
+  with a sly good-nature which did not cure Bettina. But what was
+  the end of it all? The young ecstatic married a man who was
+  younger and handsomer than Goethe. Now, between ourselves, let us
+  admit that a young girl who should make herself the handmaid of a
+  man of genius, his equal through comprehension, and should piously
+  worship him till death, like one of those divine figures sketched
+  by the masters on the shutters of their mystic shrines, and who,
+  when Germany lost him, should have retired to some solitude away
+  from men, like the friend of Lord Bolingbroke,--let us admit, I
+  say, that the young girl would have lived forever, inlaid in the
+  glory of the poet as Mary Magdalene in the cross and triumph of
+  our Lord. If that is sublime, what say you to the reverse of the
+  picture? As I am neither Goethe nor Lord Byron, the colossi of
+  poetry and egotism, but simply the author of a few esteemed
+  verses, I cannot expect the honors of a cult. Neither am I
+  disposed to be a martyr. I have ambition, and I have a heart; I am
+  still young and I have my career to make. See me for what I am.
+  The bounty of the king and the protection of his ministers give me
+  sufficient means of living. I have the outward bearing of a very
+  ordinary man. I go to the soirees in Paris like any other
+  empty-headed fop; and if I drive, the wheels of my carriage do not
+  roll on the solid ground, absolutely indispensable in these days,
+  of property invested in the funds. But if I am not rich, neither do
+  I have the reliefs and consolations of life in a garret, the toil
+  uncomprehended, the fame in penury, which belong to men who are
+  worth far more than I,--D’Arthez, for instance.
+
+  Ah! what prosaic conclusions will your young enthusiasm find to
+  these enchanting visions. Let us stop here. If I have had the
+  happiness of seeming to you a terrestrial paragon, you have been
+  to me a thing of light and a beacon, like those stars that shine
+  for  a moment and disappear. May nothing ever tarnish this episode
+  of our lives. Were we to continue it I might love you; I might
+  conceive one of those mad passions which rend all obstacles, which
+  light fires in the heart whose violence is greater than their
+  duration. And suppose I succeeded in pleasing you? we should end
+  our tale in the common vulgar way,--marriage, a household,
+  children, Belise and Henriette Chrysale together!--could it be?
+  Therefore, adieu.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE MARRIAGE OF SOULS
+
+  To Monsieur de Canalis:
+
+  My Friend,--Your letter gives me as much pain as pleasure. But
+  perhaps some day we shall find nothing but pleasure in writing to
+  each other. Understand me thoroughly. The soul speaks to God and
+  asks him for many things; he is mute. I seek to obtain in you the
+  answers that God does not make to me. Cannot the friendship of
+  Mademoiselle de Gournay and Montaigne be revived in us? Do you not
+  remember the household of Sismonde de Sismondi in Geneva? The most
+  lovely home ever known, as I have been told; something like that
+  of the Marquis de Pescaire and his wife,--happy to old age. Ah!
+  friend, is it impossible that two hearts, two harps, should exist
+  as in a symphony, answering each other from a distance, vibrating
+  with delicious melody in unison? Man alone of all creation is in
+  himself the harp, the musician, and the listener. Do you think to
+  find me uneasy and jealous like ordinary women? I know that you go
+  into the world and meet the handsomest and the wittiest women in
+  Paris. May I not suppose that some one of those mermaids has
+  deigned to clasp you in her cold and scaly arms, and that she has
+  inspired the answer whose prosaic opinions sadden me? There is
+  something in life more beautiful than the garlands of Parisian
+  coquetry; there grows a flower far up those Alpine peaks called
+  men of genius, the glory of humanity, which they fertilize with
+  the dews their lofty heads draw from the skies. I seek to
+  cultivate that flower and make it bloom; for its wild yet gentle
+  fragrance can never fail,--it is eternal.
+
+  Do me the honor to believe that there is nothing low or
+  commonplace in me. Were I Bettina, for I know to whom you allude,
+  I should never have become Madame von Arnim; and had I been one of
+  Lord Byron’s many loves, I should be at this moment in a cloister.
+  You have touched me to the quick. You do not know me, but you
+  shall know me. I feel within me something that is sublime, of
+  which I dare speak without vanity. God has put into my soul the
+  roots of that Alpine flower born on the summits of which I speak,
+  and I cannot plant it in an earthen pot upon my window-sill and
+  see it die. No, that glorious flower-cup, single in its beauty,
+  intoxicating in its fragrance, shall not be dragged through the
+  vulgarities of life! it is yours--yours, before any eye has
+  blighted it, yours forever! Yes, my poet, to you belong my
+  thoughts,--all, those that are secret, those that are gayest; my
+  heart is yours without reserve and with its infinite affection. If
+  you should personally not please me, I shall never marry. I can
+  live in the life of the heart, I can exist on your mind, your
+  sentiments; they please me, and I will always be what I am, your
+  friend. Yours is a noble moral nature; I have recognized it, I
+  have appreciated it, and that suffices me. In that is all my
+  future. Do not laugh at a young and pretty handmaiden who shrinks
+  not from the thought of being some day the old companion of a
+  poet,--a sort of mother perhaps, or a housekeeper; the guide of
+  his judgment and a source of his wealth. This handmaiden--so
+  devoted, so precious to the lives of such as you--is Friendship,
+  pure, disinterested friendship, to whom you will tell all, who
+  listens and sometimes shakes her head; who knits by the light of
+  the lamp and waits to be present when the poet returns home soaked
+  with rain, or vexed in mind. Such shall be my destiny if I do not
+  find that of a happy wife attached forever to her husband; I smile
+  alike at the thought of either fate. Do you believe France will be
+  any the worse if Mademoiselle d’Este does not give it two or three
+  sons, and never becomes a Madame Vilquin-something-or-other? As
+  for me, I shall never be an old maid. I shall make myself a
+  mother, by taking care of others and by my secret co-operation in
+  the existence of a great man, to whom also I shall carry all my
+  thoughts and all my earthly efforts.
+
+  I have the deepest horror of commonplaceness. If I am free, if I
+  am rich (and I know that I am young and pretty), I will never
+  belong to any ninny just because he is the son of a peer of
+  France, nor to a merchant who could ruin himself and me in a day,
+  nor to a handsome creature who would be a sort of woman in the
+  household, nor to a man of any kind who would make me blush twenty
+  times a day for being his. Make yourself easy on that point. My
+  father adores my wishes; he will never oppose them. If I please my
+  poet, and he pleases me, the glorious structure of our love shall
+  be built so high as to be inaccessible to any kind of misfortune.
+  I am an eaglet; and you will see it in my eyes.
+
+  I shall not repeat what I have already said, but I will put its
+  substance in the least possible number of words, and confess to
+  you that I should be the happiest of women if I were imprisoned by
+  love as I am now imprisoned by the wish and will of a father. Ah!
+  my friend, may we bring to a real end the romance that has come to
+  us through the first exercise of my will: listen to its
+  argument:--
+
+  A young girl with a lively imagination, locked up in a tower, is
+  weary with longing to run loose in the park where her eyes only
+  are allowed to rove. She invents a way to loosen her bars; she
+  jumps from the casement; she scales the park wall; she frolics
+  along the neighbor’s sward--it is the Everlasting comedy. Well,
+  that young girl is my soul, the neighbor’s park is your genius. Is
+  it not all very natural? Was there ever a neighbor that did not
+  complain that unknown feet broke down his trellises? I leave it to
+  my poet to answer.
+
+  But does the lofty reasoner after the fashion of Moliere want
+  still better reasons? Well, here they are. My dear Geronte,
+  marriages are usually made in defiance of common-sense. Parents
+  make inquiries about a young man. If the Leander--who is supplied
+  by some friend, or caught in a ball-room--is not a thief, and has
+  no visible rent in his reputation, if he has the necessary
+  fortune, if he comes from a college or a law-school and so fulfils
+  the popular ideas of education, and if he wears his clothes with a
+  gentlemanly air, he is allowed to meet the young lady, whose
+  mother has ordered her to guard her tongue, to let no sign of her
+  heart or soul appear on her face, which must wear the smile of a
+  danseuse finishing a pirouette. These commands are coupled with
+  instructions as to the danger of revealing her real character, and
+  the additional advice of not seeming alarmingly well educated. If
+  the settlements have all been agreed upon, the parents are
+  good-natured enough to let the pair see each other for a few
+  moments; they are allowed to talk or walk together, but always
+  without the slightest freedom, and knowing that they are bound by
+  rigid rules. The man is as much dressed up in soul as he is in body,
+  and so is the young girl. This pitiable comedy, mixed with bouquets,
+  jewels, and theatre-parties is called “paying your addresses.” It
+  revolts me: I desire that actual marriage shall be the result of a
+  previous and long marriage of souls. A young girl, a woman, has
+  throughout her life only this one moment when reflection, second
+  sight, and experience are necessary to her. She plays her liberty,
+  her happiness, and she is not allowed to throw the dice; she risks
+  her all, and is forced to be a mere spectator. I have the right,
+  the will, the power to make my own unhappiness, and I use them, as
+  did my mother, who, won by beauty and led by instinct, married the
+  most generous, the most liberal, the most loving of men. I know
+  that you are free, a poet, and noble-looking. Be sure that I
+  should not have chosen one of your brothers in Apollo who was
+  already married. If my mother was won by beauty, which is perhaps
+  the spirit of form, why should I not be attracted by the spirit
+  and the form united? Shall I not know you better by studying you
+  in this correspondence than I could through the vulgar experience
+  of “receiving your addresses”? This is the question, as Hamlet
+  says.
+
+  But my proceedings, dear Chrysale, have at least the merit of not
+  binding us personally. I know that love has its illusions, and
+  every illusion its to-morrow. That is why there are so many
+  partings among lovers vowed to each other for life. The proof of
+  love lies in two things,--suffering and happiness. When, after
+  passing through these double trials of life two beings have shown
+  each other their defects as well as their good qualities, when
+  they have really observed each other’s character, then they may go
+  to their grave hand in hand. My dear Argante, who told you that
+  our little drama thus begun was to have no future? In any case
+  shall we not have enjoyed the pleasures of our correspondence?
+
+  I await your orders, monseigneur, and I am with all my heart,
+
+  Your handmaiden,
+
+  O. d’Este M.
+
+
+  To Mademoiselle O. d’Este M.,--You are a witch, a spirit, and I
+  love you! Is that what you desire of me, most original of girls?
+  Perhaps you are only seeking to amuse your provincial leisure with
+  the follies which are you able to make a poet commit. If so, you
+  have done a bad deed. Your two letters have enough of the spirit
+  of mischief in them to force this doubt into the mind of a
+  Parisian. But I am no longer master of myself; my life, my future
+  depend on the answer you will make me. Tell me if the certainty of
+  an unbounded affection, oblivious of all social conventions, will
+  touch you,--if you will suffer me to seek you. There is anxiety
+  enough and uncertainty enough in the question as to whether I can
+  personally please you. If your reply is favorable I change my
+  life, I bid adieu to all the irksome pleasures which we have the
+  folly to call happiness. Happiness, my dear and beautiful unknown,
+  is what you dream it to be,--a fusion of feelings, a perfect
+  accordance of souls, the imprint of a noble ideal (such as God
+  does permit us to form in this low world) upon the trivial round
+  of daily life whose habits we must needs obey, a constancy of
+  heart more precious far than what we call fidelity. Can we say
+  that we make sacrifices when the end in view is our eternal good,
+  the dream of poets, the dream of maidens, the poem which, at the
+  entrance of life when thought essays its wings, each noble
+  intellect has pondered and caressed only to see it shivered to
+  fragments on some stone of stumbling as hard as it is vulgar?--for
+  to the great majority of men, the foot of reality steps instantly
+  on that mysterious egg so seldom hatched.
+
+  I cannot speak to you any more of myself; not of my past life, nor
+  of my character, nor of an affection almost maternal on one side,
+  filial on mine, which you have already seriously changed--an
+  effect upon my life which must explain my use of the word
+  “sacrifice.” You have already rendered me forgetful, if not
+  ungrateful; does that satisfy you? Oh, speak! Say to me one word,
+  and I will love you till my eyes close in death, as the Marquis de
+  Pescaire loved his wife, as Romeo loved Juliet, and faithfully.
+  Our life will be, for me at least, that “felicity untroubled”
+   which Dante made the very element of his Paradiso,--a poem far
+  superior to his Inferno. Strange, it is not myself that I doubt in
+  the long reverie through which, like you, I follow the windings of
+  a dreamed existence; it is you. Yes, dear, I feel within me the
+  power to love, and to love endlessly,--to march to the grave with
+  gentle slowness and a smiling eye, with my beloved on my arm, and
+  with never a cloud upon the sunshine of our souls. Yes, I dare to
+  face our mutual old age, to see ourselves with whitening heads,
+  like the venerable historian of Italy, inspired always with the
+  same affection but transformed in soul by our life’s seasons. Hear
+  me, I can no longer be your friend only. Though Chrysale, Geronte,
+  and Argante re-live, you say, in me, I am not yet old enough to
+  drink from the cup held to my lips by the sweet hands of a veiled
+  woman without a passionate desire to tear off the domino and the
+  mask and see the face. Either write me no more, or give me hope.
+  Let me see you, or let me go. Must I bid you adieu? Will you
+  permit me to sign myself,
+
+  Your Friend?
+
+
+  To Monsieur de Canalis,--What flattery! with what rapidity is the
+  grave Anselme transformed into a handsome Leander! To what must I
+  attribute such a change? to this black which I put upon this
+  white? to these ideas which are to the flowers of my soul what a
+  rose drawn in charcoal is to the roses in the garden? Or is it to
+  a recollection of the young girl whom you took for me, and who is
+  personally as like me as a waiting-woman is like her mistress?
+  Have we changed roles? Have I the sense? have you the fancy? But a
+  truce with jesting.
+
+  Your letter has made me know the elating pleasures of the soul;
+  the first that I have known outside of my family affections. What,
+  says a poet, are the ties of blood which are so strong in ordinary
+  minds, compared to those divinely forged within us by mysterious
+  sympathies? Let me thank you--no, we must not thank each other for
+  such things--but God bless you for the happiness you have given
+  me; be happy in the joy you have shed into my soul. You explain to
+  me some of the apparent injustices in social life. There is
+  something, I know not what, so dazzling, so virile in glory, that
+  it belongs only to man; God forbids us women to wear its halo, but
+  he makes love our portion, giving us the tenderness which soothes
+  the brow scorched by his lightnings. I have felt my mission, and
+  you have now confirmed it.
+
+  Sometimes, my friend, I rise in the morning in a state of
+  inexpressible sweetness; a sort of peace, tender and divine, gives
+  me an idea of heaven. My first thought is then like a benediction.
+  I call these mornings my little German wakings, in opposition to
+  my Southern sunsets, full of heroic deeds, battles, Roman fetes
+  and ardent poems. Well, after reading your letter, so full of
+  feverish impatience, I felt in my heart all the freshness of my
+  celestial wakings, when I love the air about me and all nature,
+  and fancy that I am destined to die for one I love. One of your
+  poems, “The Maiden’s Song,” paints these delicious moments, when
+  gaiety is tender, when aspiration is a need; it is one of my
+  favorites. Do you want me to put all my flatteries into one?--well
+  then, I think you worthy to be _me_!
+
+  Your letter, though short, enables me to read within you. Yes, I
+  have guessed your tumultuous struggles, your piqued curiosity,
+  your projects; but I do not yet know you well enough to satisfy
+  your wishes. Hear me, dear; the mystery in which I am shrouded
+  allows me to use that word, which lets you see to the bottom of my
+  heart. Hear me: if we once meet, adieu to our mutual
+  comprehension! Will you make a compact with me? Was the first
+  disadvantageous to you? But remember it won you my esteem, and it
+  is a great deal, my friend, to gain an admiration lined throughout
+  with esteem. Here is the compact: write me your life in a few
+  words; then tell me what you do in Paris, day by day, with no
+  reservations, and as if you were talking to some old friend. Well,
+  having done that, I will take a step myself--I will see you, I
+  promise you that. And it is a great deal.
+
+  This, dear, is no intrigue, no adventure; no gallantry, as you men
+  say, can come of it, I warn you frankly. It involves my life, and
+  more than that,--something that causes me remorse for the many
+  thoughts that fly to you in flocks--it involves my father’s and my
+  mother’s life. I adore them, and my choice must please them; they
+  must find a son in you.
+
+  Tell me, to what extent can the superb spirits of your kind, to
+  whom God has given the wings of his angels, without always adding
+  their amiability,--how far can they bend under a family yoke, and
+  put up with its little miseries? That is a text I have meditated
+  upon. Ah! though I said to my heart before I came to you, Forward!
+  Onward! it did not tremble and palpitate any the less on the way;
+  and I did not conceal from myself the stoniness of the path nor
+  the Alpine difficulties I had to encounter. I thought of all in my
+  long, long meditations. Do I not know that eminent men like you
+  have known the love they have inspired quite as well as that which
+  they themselves have felt; that they have had many romances in
+  their lives,--you particularly, who send forth those airy visions
+  of your soul that women rush to buy? Yet still I cried to myself,
+  “Onward!” because I have studied, more than you give me credit
+  for, the geography of the great summits of humanity, which you
+  tell me are so cold. Did you not say that Goethe and Byron were
+  the colossi of egoism and poetry? Ah, my friend, there you shared
+  a mistake into which superficial minds are apt to fall; but in you
+  perhaps it came from generosity, false modesty, or the desire to
+  escape from me. Vulgar minds may mistake the effect of toil for
+  the development of personal character, but you must not. Neither
+  Lord Byron, nor Goethe, nor Walter Scott, nor Cuvier, nor any
+  inventor, belongs to himself, he is the slave of his idea. And
+  this mysterious power is more jealous than a woman; it sucks their
+  blood, it makes them live, it makes them die for its sake. The
+  visible developments of their hidden existence do seem, in their
+  results, like egotism; but who shall dare to say that the man who
+  has abnegated self to give pleasure, instruction, or grandeur to
+  his epoch, is an egoist? Is a mother selfish when she immolates
+  all things to her child? Well, the detractors of genius do not
+  perceive its fecund maternity, that is all. The life of a poet is
+  so perpetual a sacrifice that he needs a gigantic organization to
+  bear even the ordinary pleasures of life. Therefore, into what
+  sorrows may he not fall when, like Moliere, he wishes to live the
+  life of feeling in its most poignant crises; to me, remembering
+  his personal life, Moliere’s comedy is horrible.
+
+  The generosity of genius seems to me half divine; and I place you
+  in this noble family of alleged egoists. Ah! if I had found
+  self-interest, ambition, a seared nature where I now can see my
+  best loved flowers of the soul, you know not what long anguish I
+  should have had to bear. I met with disappointment before I was
+  sixteen. What would have become of me had I learned at twenty that
+  fame is a lie, that he whose books express the feelings hidden in
+  my heart was incapable of feeling them himself? Oh! my friend, do
+  you know what would have become of me? Shall I take you into the
+  recesses of my soul? I should have gone to my father and said,
+  “Bring me the son-in-law whom you desire; my will abdicates,--marry
+  me to whom you please.” And the man might have been a notary,
+  banker, miser, fool, dullard, wearisome as a rainy day, common as
+  the usher of a school, a manufacturer, or some brave soldier without
+  two ideas,--he would have had a resigned and attentive servant in
+  me. But what an awful suicide! never could my soul have expanded
+  in the life-giving rays of a beloved sun. No murmur should have
+  revealed to my father, or my mother, or my children the suicide of
+  the creature who at this instant is shaking her fetters, casting
+  lightnings from her eyes, and flying towards you with eager wing.
+  See, she is there, at the angle of your desk, like Polyhymnia,
+  breathing the air of your presence, and glancing about her with a
+  curious eye. Sometimes in the fields where my husband would have
+  taken me to walk, I should have wept, apart and secretly, at sight
+  of a glorious morning; and in my heart, or hidden in a
+  bureau-drawer, I might have kept some treasure, the comfort of poor
+  girls ill-used by love, sad, poetic souls,--but ah! I have _you_, I
+  believe in _you_, my friend. That belief straightens all my thoughts
+  and fancies, even the most fantastic, and sometimes--see how far
+  my frankness leads me--I wish I were in the middle of the book we
+  are just beginning; such persistency do I feel in my sentiments,
+  such strength in my heart to love, such constancy sustained by
+  reason, such heroism for the duties for which I was created,--if
+  indeed love can ever be transmuted into duty.
+
+  If you were able to follow me to the exquisite retreat where I
+  fancy ourselves happy, if you knew my plans and projects, the
+  dreadful word “folly!” might escape you, and I should be cruelly
+  punished for sending poetry to a poet. Yes, I wish to be a spring
+  of waters inexhaustible as a fertile land for the twenty years
+  that nature allows me to shine. I want to drive away satiety by
+  charm. I mean to be courageous for my friend as most women are for
+  the world. I wish to vary happiness. I wish to put intelligence
+  into tenderness, and to give piquancy to fidelity. I am filled
+  with ambition to kill the rivals of the past, to conjure away all
+  outside griefs by a wife’s gentleness, by her proud abnegation, to
+  take a lifelong care of the nest,--such as birds can only take for
+  a few weeks.
+
+  Tell me, do you now think me to blame for my first letter? The
+  mysterious wind of will drove me to you, as the tempest brings the
+  little rose-tree to the pollard window. In your letter, which I
+  hold here upon my heart, you cried out, like your ancestor when he
+  departed for the Crusades, “God wills it.”
+
+  Ah! but you will cry out, “What a chatterbox!” All the people
+  round me say, on the contrary, “Mademoiselle is very taciturn.”
+
+O. d’Este M.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. WHAT COMES OF CORRESPONDENCE
+
+The foregoing letters seemed very original to the persons from whom the
+author of the “Comedy of Human Life” obtained them; but their interest
+in this duel, this crossing of pens between two minds, may not be
+shared. For every hundred readers, eighty might weary of the battle.
+The respect due to the majority in every nation under a constitutional
+government, leads us, therefore, to suppress eleven other letters
+exchanged between Ernest and Modeste during the month of September. If,
+later on, some flattering majority should arise to claim them, let us
+hope that we can then find means to insert them in their proper place.
+
+Urged by a mind that seemed as aggressive as the heart was lovable, the
+truly chivalrous feelings of the poor secretary gave themselves free
+play in these suppressed letters, which seem, perhaps, more beautiful
+than they really are, because the imagination is charmed by a sense of
+the communion of two free souls. Ernest’s whole life was now wrapped up
+in these sweet scraps of paper; they were to him what banknotes are to a
+miser; while in Modeste’s soul a deep love took the place of her delight
+in agitating a glorious life, and being, in spite of distance, its
+mainspring. Ernest’s heart was the complement of Canalis’s glory. Alas!
+it often takes two men to make a perfect lover, just as in literature
+we compose a type by collecting the peculiarities of several similar
+characters. How many a time a woman has been heard to say in her own
+salon after close and intimate conversations:--
+
+“Such a one is my ideal as to soul, and I love the other who is only a
+dream of the senses.”
+
+The last letter written by Modeste, which here follows, gives us
+a glimpse of the enchanted isle to which the meanderings of this
+correspondence had led the two lovers.
+
+  To Monsieur de Canalis,--Be at Havre next Sunday; go to church;
+  after the morning service, walk once or twice round the nave, and
+  go out without speaking to any one; but wear a white rose in your
+  button-hole. Then return to Paris, where you shall receive an
+  answer. I warn you that this answer will not be what you wish;
+  for, as I told you, the future is not yet mine. But should I not
+  indeed be mad and foolish to say yes without having seen you? When
+  I have seen you I can say no without wounding you; I can make sure
+  that you shall not see me.
+
+This letter had been sent off the evening before the day when the
+abortive struggle between Dumay and Modeste had taken place. The happy
+girl was impatiently awaiting Sunday, when her eyes were to vindicate or
+condemn her heart and her actions,--a solemn moment in the life of any
+woman, and which three months of close communion of souls now rendered
+as romantic as the most imaginative maiden could have wished. Every one,
+except the mother, had taken this torpor of expectation for the calm of
+innocence. No matter how firmly family laws and religious precepts may
+bind, there will always be the Clarissas and the Julies, whose souls
+like flowing cups o’erlap the brim under some spiritual pressure.
+Modeste was glorious in the savage energy with which she repressed her
+exuberant youthful happiness and remained demurely quiet. Let us say
+frankly that the memory of her sister was more potent upon her than any
+social conventions; her will was iron in the resolve to bring no grief
+upon her father and her mother. But what tumultuous heavings were within
+her breast! no wonder that a mother guessed them.
+
+On the following day Modeste and Madame Dumay took Madame Mignon about
+mid-day to a seat in the sun among the flowers. The blind woman turned
+her wan and blighted face toward the ocean; she inhaled the odors of
+the sea and took the hand of her daughter who remained beside her. The
+mother hesitated between forgiveness and remonstrance ere she put the
+important question; for she comprehended the girl’s love and recognized,
+as the pretended Canalis had done, that Modeste was exceptional in
+nature.
+
+“God grant that your father return in time! If he delays much longer he
+will find none but you to love him. Modeste, promise me once more never
+to leave him,” she said in a fond maternal tone.
+
+Modeste lifted her mother’s hands to her lips and kissed them gently,
+replying: “Need I say it again?”
+
+“Ah, my child! I did this thing myself. I left my father to follow my
+husband; and yet my father was all alone; I was all the child he had. Is
+that why God has so punished me? What I ask of you is to marry as your
+father wishes, to cherish him in your heart, not to sacrifice him to
+your own happiness, but to make him the centre of your home. Before
+losing my sight, I wrote him all my wishes, and I know he will execute
+them. I enjoined him to keep his property intact and in his own hands;
+not that I distrust you, my Modeste, for a moment, but who can be sure
+of a son-in-law? Ah! my daughter, look at me; was I reasonable? One
+glance of the eye decided my life. Beauty, so often deceitful, in my
+case spoke true; but even were it the same with you, my poor child,
+swear to me that you will let your father inquire into the character,
+the habits, the heart, and the previous life of the man you distinguish
+with your love--if, by chance, there is such a man.”
+
+“I will never marry without the consent of my father,” answered Modeste.
+
+“You see, my darling,” said Madame Mignon after a long pause, “that if I
+am dying by inches through Bettina’s wrong-doing, your father would not
+survive yours, no, not for a moment. I know him; he would put a pistol
+to his head,--there could be no life, no happiness on earth for him.”
+
+Modeste walked a few steps away from her mother, but immediately came
+back.
+
+“Why did you leave me?” demanded Madame Mignon.
+
+“You made me cry, mamma,” answered Modeste.
+
+“Ah, my little darling, kiss me. You love no one here? you have no
+lover, have you?” she asked, holding Modeste on her lap, heart to heart.
+
+“No, my dear mamma,” said the little Jesuit.
+
+“Can you swear it?”
+
+“Oh, yes!” cried Modeste.
+
+Madame Mignon said no more; but she still doubted.
+
+“At least, if you do choose your husband, you will tell your father?”
+ she resumed.
+
+“I promised that to my sister, and to you, mother. What evil do you
+think I could commit while I wear that ring upon my finger and read
+those words: ‘Think of Bettina?’ Poor sister!”
+
+At these words a truce of silence came between the pair; the mother’s
+blighted eyes rained tears which Modeste could not check, though she
+threw herself upon her knees, and cried: “Forgive me! oh, forgive me,
+mother!”
+
+At this instant the excellent Dumay was coming up the hill of Ingouville
+on the double-quick,--a fact quite abnormal in the present life of the
+cashier.
+
+Three letters had brought ruin to the Mignons; a single letter now
+restored their fortunes. Dumay had received from a sea-captain just
+arrived from the China Seas the following letter containing the first
+news of his patron and friend, Charles Mignon:--
+
+  To Monsieur Jean Dumay:
+
+  My Dear Dumay,--I shall quickly follow, barring the chances of the
+  voyage, the vessel which carries this letter. In fact, I should
+  have taken it, but I did not wish to leave my own ship to which I
+  am accustomed.
+
+  I told you that no new was to be good news. But the first words of
+  this letter ought to make you a happy man. I have made seven
+  millions at the least. I am bringing back a large part of it in
+  indigo, one third in safe London securities, and another third in
+  good solid gold. Your remittances helped me to make the sum I had
+  settled in my own mind much sooner than I expected. I wanted two
+  millions for my daughters and a competence for myself.
+
+  I have been engaged in the opium trade with the largest houses in
+  Canton, all ten times richer than ever I was. You have no idea, in
+  Europe, what these rich East India merchants are. I went to Asia
+  Minor and purchased opium at low prices, and from thence to Canton
+  where I delivered my cargoes to the companies who control the
+  trade. My last expedition was to the Philippine Islands where I
+  exchanged opium for indigo of the first quality. In fact, I may
+  have half a million more than I stated, for I reckoned the indigo
+  at what it cost me. I have always been well in health; not the
+  slightest illness. That is the result of working for one’s
+  children. Since the second year I have owned a pretty little brig
+  of seven hundred tons, called the “Mignon.” She is built of oak,
+  double-planked, and copper-fastened; and all the interior fittings
+  were done to suit me. She is, in fact, an additional piece of
+  property.
+
+  A sea-life and the active habits required by my business have kept
+  me in good health. To tell you all this is the same as telling it
+  to my two daughters and my dear wife. I trust that the wretched
+  man who took away my Bettina deserted her when he heard of my
+  ruin; and that I shall find the poor lost lamb at the Chalet. My
+  three dear women and my Dumay! All four of you have been ever
+  present in my thoughts for the last three years. You are a rich
+  man, now, Dumay. Your share, outside of my own fortune, amounts to
+  five hundred and sixty thousand francs, for which I send you
+  herewith a check, which can only be paid to you in person by the
+  Mongenods, who have been duly advised from New York.
+
+  A few short months, and I shall see you all again, and all well, I
+  trust. My dear Dumay, if I write this letter to you it is because
+  I am anxious to keep my fortune a secret for the present. I
+  therefore leave to you the happiness of preparing my dear angels
+  for my return. I have had enough of commerce; and I am resolved to
+  leave Havre. My intention is to buy back the estate of La Bastie,
+  and to entail it, so as to establish an estate yielding at least a
+  hundred thousand francs a year, and then to ask the king to grant
+  that one of my sons-in-law may succeed to my name and title. You
+  know, my poor Dumay, what a terrible misfortune overtook us
+  through the fatal reputation of a large fortune,--my daughter’s
+  honor was lost. I have therefore resolved that the amount of my
+  present fortune shall not be known. I shall not disembark at
+  Havre, but at Marseilles. I shall sell my indigo, and negotiate
+  for the purchase of La Bastie through the house of Mongenod in
+  Paris. I shall put my funds in the Bank of France and return to
+  the Chalet giving out that I have a considerable fortune in
+  merchandise. My daughters will be supposed to have two or three
+  hundred thousand francs. To choose which of my sons-in-law is
+  worthy to succeed to my title and estates and to live with us, is
+  now the object of my life; but both of them must be, like you and
+  me, honest, loyal, and firm men, and absolutely honorable.
+
+  My dear old fellow, I have never doubted you for a moment. We have
+  gone through wars and commerce together and now we will undertake
+  agriculture; you shall be my bailiff. You will like that, will you
+  not? And so, old friend, I leave it to your discretion to tell
+  what you think best to my wife and daughters; I rely upon your
+  prudence. In four years great changes may have taken place in
+  their characters.
+
+  Adieu, my old Dumay. Say to my daughters and to my wife that I
+  have never failed to kiss them in my thoughts morning and evening
+  since I left them. The second check for forty thousand francs
+  herewith enclosed is for my wife and children.
+
+  Till we meet.--Your colonel and friend,
+
+  Charles Mignon.
+
+
+“Your father is coming,” said Madame Mignon to her daughter.
+
+“What makes you think so, mamma?” asked Modeste.
+
+“Nothing else could make Dumay hurry himself.”
+
+“Victory! victory!” cried the lieutenant as soon as he reached the
+garden gate. “Madame, the colonel has not been ill a moment; he is
+coming back--coming back on the ‘Mignon,’ a fine ship of his own, which
+together with its cargo is worth, he tells me, eight or nine hundred
+thousand francs. But he requires secrecy from all of us; his heart is
+still wrung by the misfortunes of our dear departed girl.”
+
+“He has still to learn her death,” said Madame Mignon.
+
+“He attributes her disaster, and I think he is right, to the rapacity of
+young men after great fortunes. My poor colonel expects to find the lost
+sheep here. Let us be happy among ourselves but say nothing to any
+one, not even to Latournelle, if that is possible. Mademoiselle,” he
+whispered in Modeste’s ear, “write to your father and tell him of his
+loss and also the terrible results on your mother’s health and eyesight;
+prepare him for the shock he has to meet. I will engage to get the
+letter into his hands before he reaches Havre, for he will have to pass
+through Paris on his way. Write him a long letter; you have plenty of
+time. I will take the letter on Monday; Monday I shall probably go to
+Paris.”
+
+Modeste was so afraid that Canalis and Dumay would meet that she started
+hastily for the house to write to her poet and put off the rendezvous.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said Dumay, in a very humble manner and barring
+Modeste’s way, “may your father find his daughter with no other feelings
+in her heart than those she had for him and for her mother before he was
+obliged to leave her.”
+
+“I have sworn to myself, to my sister, and to my mother to be the
+joy, the consolation, and the glory of my father, and _I shall keep my
+oath_!” replied Modeste with a haughty and disdainful glance at Dumay.
+“Do not trouble my delight in the thought of my father’s return
+with insulting suspicions. You cannot prevent a girl’s heart from
+beating--you don’t want me to be a mummy, do you?” she said. “My hand
+belongs to my family, but my heart is my own. If I love any one, my
+father and my mother will know it. Does that satisfy you, monsieur?”
+
+“Thank you, mademoiselle; you restore me to life,” said Dumay, “but you
+might still call me Dumay, even when you box my ears!”
+
+“Swear to me,” said her mother, “that you have not engaged a word or a
+look with any young man.”
+
+“I can swear that, my dear mother,” said Modeste, laughing, and looking
+at Dumay who was watching her and smiling to himself like a mischievous
+girl.
+
+“She must be false indeed if you are right,” cried Dumay, when Modeste
+had left them and gone into the house.
+
+“My daughter Modeste may have faults,” said her mother, “but falsehood
+is not one of them; she is incapable of saying what is not true.”
+
+“Well! then let us feel easy,” continued Dumay, “and believe that
+misfortune has closed his account with us.”
+
+“God grant it!” answered Madame Mignon. “You will see _him_, Dumay; but
+I shall only hear him. There is much of sadness in my joy.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. A DECLARATION OF LOVE,--SET TO MUSIC
+
+At this moment Modeste, happy as she was in the return of her father,
+was, nevertheless, pacing her room disconsolate as Perrette on seeing
+her eggs broken. She had hoped her father would bring back a much larger
+fortune than Dumay had mentioned. Nothing could satisfy her new-found
+ambition on behalf of her poet less than at least half the six millions
+she had talked of in her second letter. Trebly agitated by her two joys
+and the grief caused by her comparative poverty, she seated herself at
+the piano, that confidant of so many young girls, who tell out their
+wishes and provocations on the keys, expressing them by the notes and
+tones of their music. Dumay was talking with his wife in the garden
+under the windows, telling her the secret of their own wealth, and
+questioning her as to her desires and her intentions. Madame Dumay had,
+like her husband, no other family than the Mignons. Husband and wife
+agreed, therefore, to go and live in Provence, if the Comte de La Bastie
+really meant to live in Provence, and to leave their money to whichever
+of Modeste’s children might need it most.
+
+“Listen to Modeste,” said Madame Mignon, addressing them. “None but a
+girl in love can compose such airs without having studied music.”
+
+Houses may burn, fortunes be engulfed, fathers return from distant
+lands, empires may crumble away, the cholera may ravage cities, but a
+maiden’s love wings its way as nature pursues hers, or that alarming
+acid which chemistry has lately discovered, and which will presently eat
+through the globe, if nothing stops it.
+
+Modeste, under the inspiration of her present situation, was putting to
+music certain stanzas which we are compelled to quote here--albeit
+they are printed in the second volume of the edition Dauriat had
+mentioned--because, in order to adapt them to her music, which had the
+inexpressible charm of sentiment so admired in great singers, Modeste
+had taken liberties with the lines in a manner that may astonish the
+admirers of a poet so famous for the correctness, sometimes too precise,
+of his measures.
+
+  THE MAIDEN’S SONG
+
+  Hear, arise! the lark is shaking
+    Sunlit wings that heavenward rise;
+  Sleep no more; the violet, waking,
+    Wafts her incense to the skies.
+
+  Flowers revived, their eyes unclosing,
+    See themselves in drops of dew
+  In each calyx-cup reposing,
+    Pearls of a day their mirror true.
+
+  Breeze divine, the god of roses,
+    Passed by night to bless their bloom;
+  See! for him each bud uncloses,
+    Glows, and yields its rich perfume.
+
+  Then arise! the lark is shaking
+    Sunlit wings that heavenward rise;
+  Nought is sleeping--Heart, awaking,
+    Lift thine incense to the skies.
+
+“It is very pretty,” said Madame Dumay. “Modeste is a musician, and
+that’s the whole of it.”
+
+“The devil is in her!” cried the cashier, into whose heart the suspicion
+of the mother forced its way and made him shiver.
+
+“She loves,” persisted Madame Mignon.
+
+By succeeding, through the undeniable testimony of the song, in making
+the cashier a sharer in her belief as to the state of Modeste’s heart,
+Madame Mignon destroyed the happiness the return and the prosperity of
+his master had brought him. The poor Breton went down the hill to Havre
+and to his desk in Gobenheim’s counting-room with a heavy heart; then,
+before returning to dinner, he went to see Latournelle, to tell his
+fears, and beg once more for the notary’s advice and assistance.
+
+“Yes, my dear friend,” said Dumay, when they parted on the steps of the
+notary’s door, “I now agree with madame; she loves,--yes, I am sure of
+it; and the devil knows the rest. I am dishonored.”
+
+“Don’t make yourself unhappy, Dumay,” answered the little notary. “Among
+us all we can surely get the better of the little puss; sooner or later,
+every girl in love betrays herself,--you may be sure of that. But we
+will talk about it this evening.”
+
+Thus it happened that all those devoted to the Mignon family were fully
+as disquieted and uncertain as they were before the old soldier tried
+the experiment which he expected would be so decisive. The ill-success
+of his past efforts so stimulated Dumay’s sense of duty, that he
+determined not to go to Paris to see after his own fortune as announced
+by his patron, until he had guessed the riddle of Modeste’s heart. These
+friends, to whom feelings were more precious than interests, well knew
+that unless the daughter were pure and innocent, the father would die of
+grief when he came to know the death of Bettina and the blindness of
+his wife. The distress of poor Dumay made such an impression on the
+Latournelles that they even forgot their parting with Exupere, whom they
+had sent off that morning to Paris. During dinner, while the three were
+alone, Monsieur and Madame Latournelle and Butscha turned the problem
+over and over in their minds, and discussed every aspect of it.
+
+“If Modeste loved any one in Havre she would have shown some fear
+yesterday,” said Madame Latournelle; “her lover, therefore, lives
+somewhere else.”
+
+“She swore to her mother this morning,” said the notary, “in presence
+of Dumay, that she had not exchanged a look or a word with any living
+soul.”
+
+“Then she loves after my fashion!” exclaimed Butscha.
+
+“And how is that, my poor lad?” asked Madame Latournelle.
+
+“Madame,” said the little cripple, “I love alone and afar--oh! as far as
+from here to the stars.”
+
+“How do you manage it, you silly fellow?” said Madame Latournelle,
+laughing.
+
+“Ah, madame!” said Butscha, “what you call my hump is the socket of my
+wings.”
+
+“So that is the explanation of your seal, is it?” cried the notary.
+
+Butscha’s seal was a star, and under it the words “Fulgens,
+sequar,”--“Shining One, I follow thee,”--the motto of the house of
+Chastillonest.
+
+“A beautiful woman may feel as distrustful as the ugliest,” said
+Butscha, as if speaking to himself; “Modeste is clever enough to fear
+she may be loved only for her beauty.”
+
+Hunchbacks are extraordinary creations, due entirely to society for,
+according to Nature’s plan, feeble or aborted beings ought to perish.
+The curvature or distortion of the spinal column creates in these
+outwardly deformed subjects as it were a storage-battery, where
+the nerve currents accumulate more abundantly than under normal
+conditions,--where they develop, and whence they are emitted, so to say,
+in lightning flashes, to energize the interior being. From this, forces
+result which are sometimes brought to light by magnetism, though they
+are far more frequently lost in the vague spaces of the spiritual world.
+It is rare to find a deformed person who is not gifted with some special
+faculty,--a whimsical or sparkling gaiety perhaps, an utter malignity,
+or an almost sublime goodness. Like instruments which the hand of art
+can never fully waken, these beings, highly privileged though they know
+it not, live within themselves, as Butscha lived, provided their natural
+forces so magnificently concentrated have not been spent in the struggle
+they have been forced to maintain, against tremendous odds, to keep
+alive. This explains many superstitions, the popular legends of gnomes,
+frightful dwarfs, deformed fairies,--all that race of bottles, as
+Rabelais called them, containing elixirs and precious balms.
+
+Butscha, therefore, had very nearly found the key to the puzzle. With
+all the anxious solicitude of a hopeless lover, a vassal ever ready to
+die,--like the soldiers alone and abandoned in the snows of Russia, who
+still cried out, “Long live the Emperor,”--he meditated how to capture
+Modeste’s secret for his own private knowledge. So thinking, he followed
+his patrons to the Chalet that evening, with a cloud of care upon his
+brow: for he knew it was most important to hide from all these watchful
+eyes and ears the net, whatever it might be, in which he should entrap
+his lady. It would have to be, he thought, by some intercepted glance,
+some sudden start or quiver, as when a surgeon lays his finger on a
+hidden sore. That evening Gobenheim did not appear, and Butscha was
+Dumay’s partner against Monsieur and Madame Latournelle. During the few
+moment’s of Modeste’s absence, about nine o’clock, to prepare for her
+mother’s bedtime, Madame Mignon and her friends spoke openly to one
+another; but the poor clerk, depressed by the conviction of Modeste’s
+love, which had now seized upon him as upon the rest, seemed as remote
+from the discussion as Gobenheim had been the night before.
+
+“Well, what’s the matter with you, Butscha?” cried Madame Latournelle;
+“one would really think you hadn’t a friend in the world.”
+
+Tears shone in the eyes of the poor fellow, who was the son of a Swedish
+sailor, and whose mother was dead.
+
+“I have no one in the world but you,” he answered with a troubled voice;
+“and your compassion is so much a part of your religion that I can never
+lose it--and I will never deserve to lose it.”
+
+This answer struck the sensitive chord of true delicacy in the minds of
+all present.
+
+“We love you, Monsieur Butscha,” said Madame Mignon, with much feeling
+in her voice.
+
+“I’ve six hundred thousand francs of my own, this day,” cried Dumay,
+“and you shall be a notary and the successor of Latournelle.”
+
+The American wife took the hand of the poor hunchback and pressed it.
+
+“What! you have six hundred thousand francs!” exclaimed Latournelle,
+pricking up his ears as Dumay let fall the words; “and you allow these
+ladies to live as they do! Modeste ought to have a fine horse; and why
+doesn’t she continue to take lessons in music, and painting, and--”
+
+“Why, he has only had the money a few hours!” cried the little wife.
+
+“Hush!” murmured Madame Mignon.
+
+While these words were exchanged, Butscha’s august mistress turned
+towards him, preparing to make a speech:--
+
+“My son,” she said, “you are so surrounded by true affection that I
+never thought how my thoughtless use of that familiar phrase might be
+construed; but you must thank me for my little blunder, because it has
+served to show you what friends your noble qualities have won.”
+
+“Then you must have news from Monsieur Mignon,” resumed the notary.
+
+“He is on his way home,” said Madame Mignon; “but let us keep the secret
+to ourselves. When my husband learns how faithful Butscha has been
+to us, how he has shown us the warmest and the most disinterested
+friendship when others have given us the cold shoulder, he will not let
+you alone provide for him, Dumay. And so, my friend,” she added, turning
+her blind face toward Butscha; “you can begin at once to negotiate with
+Latournelle.”
+
+“He’s of legal age, twenty-five and a half years. As for me, it will
+be paying a debt, my boy, to make the purchase easy for you,” said the
+notary.
+
+Butscha was kissing Madame Mignon’s hand, and his face was wet with
+tears as Modeste opened the door of the salon.
+
+“What are you doing to my Black Dwarf?” she demanded. “Who is making him
+unhappy?”
+
+“Ah! Mademoiselle Mignon, do we luckless fellows, cradled in misfortune,
+ever weep for grief? They have just shown me as much affection as I
+could feel for them if they were indeed my own relations. I’m to be a
+notary; I shall be rich. Ha! ha! the poor Butscha may become the rich
+Butscha. You don’t know what audacity there is in this abortion,” he
+cried.
+
+With that he gave himself a resounding blow on the cavity of his chest
+and took up a position before the fireplace, after casting a glance at
+Modeste, which slipped like a ray of light between his heavy half-closed
+eyelids. He perceived, in this unexpected incident, a chance of
+interrogating the heart of his sovereign. Dumay thought for a moment
+that the clerk dared to aspire to Modeste, and he exchanged a rapid
+glance with the others, who understood him, and began to eye the little
+man with a species of terror mingled with curiosity.
+
+“I, too, have my dreams,” said Butscha, not taking his eyes from
+Modeste.
+
+The young girl lowered her eyelids with a movement that was a revelation
+to the young man.
+
+“You love romance,” he said, addressing her. “Let me, in this moment of
+happiness, tell you mine; and you shall tell me in return whether the
+conclusion of the tale I have invented for my life is possible. To me
+wealth would bring greater happiness than to other men; for the highest
+happiness I can imagine would be to enrich the one I loved. You,
+mademoiselle, who know so many things, tell me if it is possible for a
+man to make himself beloved independently of his person, be it handsome
+or ugly, and for his spirit only?”
+
+Modeste raised her eyes and looked at Butscha. It was a piercing and
+questioning glance; for she shared Dumay’s suspicion of Butscha’s
+motive.
+
+“Let me be rich, and I will seek some beautiful poor girl, abandoned
+like myself, who has suffered, who knows what misery is. I will write
+to her and console her, and be her guardian spirit; she shall read my
+heart, my soul; she shall possess by double wealth, my two wealths,--my
+gold, delicately offered, and my thought robed in all the splendor which
+the accident of birth has denied to my grotesque body. But I myself
+shall remain hidden like the cause that science seeks. God himself may
+not be glorious to the eye. Well, naturally, the maiden will be curious;
+she will wish to see me; but I shall tell her that I am a monster of
+ugliness; I shall picture myself hideous.”
+
+At these words Modeste gave Butscha a glance that looked him through and
+through. If she had said aloud, “What do you know of my love?” she could
+not have been more explicit.
+
+“If I have the honor of being loved for the poem of my heart, if some
+day such love may make a woman think me only slightly deformed, I
+ask you, mademoiselle, shall I not be happier than the handsomest of
+men,--as happy as a man of genius beloved by some celestial being like
+yourself.”
+
+The color which suffused the young girl’s face told the cripple nearly
+all he sought to know.
+
+“Well, if that be so,” he went on, “if we enrich the one we love, if
+we please the spirit and withdraw the body, is not that the way to make
+one’s self beloved? At any rate it is the dream of your poor dwarf,--a
+dream of yesterday; for to-day your mother gives me the key to future
+wealth by promising me the means of buying a practice. But before I
+become another Gobenheim, I seek to know whether this dream could be
+really carried out. What do you say, mademoiselle, _you_?”
+
+Modeste was so astonished that she did not notice the question. The trap
+of the lover was much better baited than that of the soldier, for the
+poor girl was rendered speechless.
+
+“Poor Butscha!” whispered Madame Latournelle to her husband. “Do you
+think he is going mad?”
+
+“You want to realize the story of Beauty and the Beast,” said Modeste at
+length; “but you forget that the Beast turned into Prince Charming.”
+
+“Do you think so?” said the dwarf. “Now I have always thought that
+that transformation meant the phenomenon of the soul made visible,
+obliterating the form under the light of the spirit. If I were not loved
+I should stay hidden, that is all. You and yours, madame,” he continued,
+addressing his mistress, “instead of having a dwarf at your service,
+will now have a life and a fortune.”
+
+So saying, Butscha resumed his seat, remarking to the three
+whist-players with an assumption of calmness, “Whose deal is it?” but
+within his soul he whispered sadly to himself: “She wants to be loved
+for herself; she corresponds with some pretended great man; how far has
+it gone?”
+
+“Dear mamma, it is nearly ten o’clock,” said Modeste.
+
+Madame Mignon said good-night to her friends, and went to bed.
+
+They who wish to love in secret may have Pyrenean hounds, mothers,
+Dumays, and Latournelles to spy upon them, and yet not be in any danger;
+but when it comes to a lover!--ah! that is diamond cut diamond, flame
+against flame, mind to mind, an equation whose terms are mutual.
+
+On Sunday morning Butscha arrived at the Chalet before Madame
+Latournelle, who always came to take Modeste to church, and he proceeded
+to blockade the house in expectation of the postman.
+
+“Have you a letter for Mademoiselle Mignon?” he said to that humble
+functionary when he appeared.
+
+“No, monsieur, none.”
+
+“This house has been a good customer to the post of late,” remarked the
+clerk.
+
+“You may well say that,” replied the man.
+
+Modeste both heard and saw the little colloquy from her chamber window,
+where she always posted herself behind the blinds at this particular
+hour to watch for the postman. She ran downstairs, went into the little
+garden, and called in an imperative voice:--
+
+“Monsieur Butscha!”
+
+“Here am I, mademoiselle,” said the cripple, reaching the gate as
+Modeste herself opened it.
+
+“Will you be good enough to tell me whether among your various titles to
+a woman’s affection you count that of the shameless spying in which you
+are now engaged?” demanded the girl, endeavoring to crush her slave with
+the glance and gesture of a queen.
+
+“Yes, mademoiselle,” he answered proudly. “Ah! I never expected,”
+ he continued in a low tone, “that the grub could be of service to a
+star,--but so it is. Would you rather that your mother and Monsieur
+Dumay and Madame Latournelle had guessed your secret than one, excluded
+as it were from life, who seeks to be to you one of those flowers that
+you cut and wear for a moment? They all know you love; but I, I alone,
+_know how_. Use me as you would a vigilant watch-dog; I will obey you,
+protect you, and never bark; neither will I condemn you. I ask only
+to be of service to you. Your father has made Dumay keeper of the
+hen-roost, take Butscha to watch outside,--poor Butscha, who doesn’t ask
+for anything, not so much as a bone.”
+
+“Well, I’ve give you a trial,” said Modeste, whose strongest desire was
+to get rid of so clever a watcher. “Please go at once to all the hotels
+in Graville and in Havre, and ask if a gentleman has arrived from
+England named Monsieur Arthur--”
+
+“Listen to me, mademoiselle,” said Butscha, interrupting Modeste
+respectfully. “I will go and take a walk on the seashore, for you don’t
+want me to go to church to-day; that’s what it is.”
+
+Modeste looked at her dwarf with a perfectly stupid astonishment.
+
+“Mademoiselle, you have wrapped your face in cotton-wool and a silk
+handkerchief, but there’s nothing the matter with you; and you have put
+that thick veil on your bonnet to see some one yourself without being
+seen.”
+
+“Where did you acquire all that perspicacity?” cried Modeste, blushing.
+
+“Moreover, mademoiselle, you have not put on your corset; a cold in the
+head wouldn’t oblige you to disfigure your waist and wear half a dozen
+petticoats, nor hide your hands in these old gloves, and your pretty
+feet in those hideous shoes, nor dress yourself like a beggar-woman,
+nor--”
+
+“That’s enough,” she said. “How am I to be certain that you will obey
+me?”
+
+“My master is obliged to go to Sainte-Adresse. He does not like it, but
+he is so truly good he won’t deprive me of my Sunday; I will offer to go
+for him.”
+
+“Go, and I will trust you.”
+
+“You are sure I can do nothing for you in Havre?”
+
+“Nothing. Hear me, mysterious dwarf,--look,” she continued, pointing to
+the cloudless sky; “can you see a single trace of that bird that flew
+by just now? No; well then, my actions are pure as the air is pure, and
+leave no stain behind them. You may reassure Dumay and the Latournelles,
+and my mother. That hand,” she said, holding up a pretty delicate hand,
+with the points of the rosy fingers, through which the light shone,
+slightly turning back, “will never be given, it will never even be
+kissed by what people call a lover until my father has returned.”
+
+“Why don’t you want me in the church to-day?”
+
+“Do you venture to question me after all I have done you the honor to
+say, and to ask of you?”
+
+Butscha bowed without another word, and departed to find his master, in
+all the rapture of being taken into the service of his goddess.
+
+Half an hour later, Monsieur and Madame Latournelle came to fetch
+Modeste, who complained of a horrible toothache.
+
+“I really have not had the courage to dress myself,” she said.
+
+“Well then,” replied the worthy chaperone, “stay at home.”
+
+“Oh, no!” said Modeste. “I would rather not. I have bundled myself up,
+and I don’t think it will do me any harm to go out.”
+
+And Mademoiselle Mignon marched off beside Latournelle, refusing to take
+his arm lest she should be questioned about the outward trembling which
+betrayed her inward agitation at the thought of at last seeing her great
+poet. One look, the first,--was it not about to decide her fate?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. A FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF MONSIEUR DE LA BRIERE
+
+Is there in the life of man a more delightful moment than that of a
+first rendezvous? Are the sensations then hidden at the bottom of our
+hearts and finding their first expression ever renewed? Can we feel
+again the nameless pleasures that we felt when, like Ernest de
+La Briere, we looked up our sharpest razors, our finest shirt, an
+irreproachable collar, and our best clothes? We deify the garments
+associated with that all-supreme moment. We weave within us poetic
+fancies quite equal to those of the woman; and the day when either party
+guesses them they take wings to themselves and fly away. Are not such
+things like the flower of wild fruits, bitter-sweet, grown in the heart
+of a forest, the joy of the scant sun-rays, the joy, as Canalis says in
+the “Maiden’s Song,” of the plant itself whose eyes unclosing see its
+own image within its breast?
+
+Such emotions, now taking place in La Briere, tend to show that, like
+other poor fellows for whom life begins in toil and care, he had never
+yet been loved. Arriving at Havre overnight, he had gone to bed at once,
+like a true coquette, to obliterate all traces of fatigue; and now,
+after taking his bath, he had put himself into a costume carefully
+adapted to show him off to the best advantage. This is, perhaps, the
+right moment to exhibit a full-length portrait of him, if only to
+justify the last letter that Modeste was still to write to him.
+
+Born of a good family in Toulouse, and allied by marriage to the
+minister who first took him under his protection, Ernest had that air of
+good-breeding which comes of an education begun in the cradle; and the
+habit of managing business affairs gave him a certain sedateness which
+was not pedantic,--though pedantry is the natural outgrowth of premature
+gravity. He was of ordinary height; his face, which won upon all who saw
+him by its delicacy and sweetness, was warm in the flesh-tints, though
+without color, and relieved by a small moustache and imperial a la
+Mazarin. Without this evidence of virility he might have resembled a
+young woman in disguise, so refined was the shape of his face and the
+cut of his lips, so feminine the transparent ivory of a set of teeth,
+regular enough to have seemed artificial. Add to these womanly points a
+habit of speech as gentle as the expression of the face; as gentle,
+too, as the blue eyes with their Turkish eyelids, and you will readily
+understand how it was that the minister occasionally called his young
+secretary Mademoiselle de La Briere. The full, clear forehead, well
+framed by abundant black hair, was dreamy, and did not contradict the
+character of the face, which was altogether melancholy. The prominent
+arch of the upper eyelid, though very beautifully cut, overshadowed
+the glance of the eye, and added a physical sadness,--if we may so call
+it,--produced by the droop of the lid over the eyeball. This inward
+doubt or eclipse--which is put into language by the word modesty--was
+expressed in his whole person. Perhaps we shall be able to make his
+appearance better understood if we say that the logic of design required
+greater length in the oval of his head, more space between the chin,
+which ended abruptly, and the forehead, which was reduced in height
+by the way in which the hair grew. The face had, in short, a rather
+compressed appearance. Hard work had already drawn furrows between the
+eyebrows, which were somewhat too thick and too near together, like
+those of a jealous nature. Though La Briere was then slight, he belonged
+to the class of temperaments which begin, after they are thirty, to take
+on an unexpected amount of flesh.
+
+The young man would have seemed to a student of French history a very
+fair representative of the royal and almost inconceivable figure of
+Louis XIII.,--that historical figure of melancholy modesty without
+known cause; pallid beneath the crown; loving the dangers of war and
+the fatigues of hunting, but hating work; timid with his mistress to the
+extent of keeping away from her; so indifferent as to allow the head
+of his friend to be cut off,--a figure that nothing can explain but his
+remorse for having avenged his father on his mother. Was he a Catholic
+Hamlet, or merely the victim of incurable disease? But the undying worm
+which gnawed at the king’s vitals was in Ernest’s case simply distrust
+of himself,--the timidity of a man to whom no woman had ever said, “Ah,
+how I love thee!” and, above all, the spirit of self-devotion without
+an object. After hearing the knell of the monarchy in the fall of his
+patron’s ministry, the poor fellow had next fallen upon a rock covered
+with exquisite mosses, named Canalis; he was, therefore, still seeking
+a power to love, and this spaniel-like search for a master gave him
+outwardly the air of a king who has met with his. This play of feeling,
+and a general tone of suffering in the young man’s face made it more
+really beautiful than he was himself aware of; for he had always
+been annoyed to find himself classed by women among the “handsome
+disconsolate,”--a class which has passed out of fashion in these days,
+when every man seeks to blow his own trumpet and put himself in the
+advance.
+
+The self-distrustful Ernest now rested his immediate hopes on the
+fashionable clothes he intended to wear. He put on, for this sacred
+interview, where everything depended on a first impression, a pair
+of black trousers and carefully polished boots, a sulphur-colored
+waistcoat, which left to sight an exquisitely fine shirt with opal
+buttons, a black cravat, and a small blue surtout coat which seemed
+glued to his back and shoulders by some newly-invented process.
+The ribbon of the Legion of honor was in his buttonhole. He wore a
+well-fitting pair of kid gloves of the Florentine bronze color, and
+carried his cane and hat in the left hand with a gesture and air that
+was worthy of the Grand Monarch, and enabled him to show, as the
+sacred precincts required, his bare head with the light falling on his
+carefully arranged hair. He stationed himself before the service began
+in the church porch, from whence he could examine the church, and the
+Christians--more particularly the female Christians--who dipped their
+fingers in the holy water.
+
+An inward voice cried to Modeste as she entered, “It is he!” That
+surtout, and indeed the whole bearing of the young man were essentially
+Parisian; the ribbon, the gloves, the cane, the very perfume of his hair
+were not of Havre. So when La Briere turned about to examine the
+tall and imposing Madame Latournelle, the notary, and the bundled-up
+(expression sacred to women) figure of Modeste, the poor child, though
+she had carefully tutored herself for the event, received a violent blow
+on her heart when her eyes rested on this poetic figure, illuminated by
+the full light of day as it streamed through the open door. She could
+not be mistaken; a small white rose nearly hid the ribbon of the Legion.
+Would he recognize his unknown mistress muffled in an old bonnet with
+a double veil? Modeste was so in fear of love’s clairvoyance that she
+began to stoop in her walk like an old woman.
+
+“Wife,” said little Latournelle as they took their seats, “that
+gentleman does not belong to Havre.”
+
+“So many strangers come here,” answered his wife.
+
+“But,” said the notary, “strangers never come to look at a church like
+ours, which is less than two centuries old.”
+
+Ernest remained in the porch throughout the service without seeing any
+woman who realized his hopes. Modeste, on her part, could not control
+the trembling of her limbs until Mass was nearly over. She was in the
+grasp of a joy that none but she herself could depict. At last she heard
+the foot-fall of a gentleman on the pavement of the aisle. The service
+over, La Briere was making a circuit of the church, where no one now
+remained but the punctiliously pious, whom he proceeded to subject to
+a shrewd and keen analysis. Ernest noticed that a prayer-book shook
+violently in the hands of a veiled woman as he passed her; as she alone
+kept her face hidden his suspicions were aroused, and then confirmed by
+Modeste’s dress, which the lover’s eye now scanned and noted. He left
+the church with the Latournelles and followed them at a distance to
+the rue Royale, where he saw them enter a house accompanied by Modeste,
+whose custom it was to stay with her friends till the hour of vespers.
+After examining the little house, which was ornamented with scutcheons,
+he asked the name of the owner, and was told that he was Monsieur
+Latournelle, the chief notary in Havre. As Ernest lounged along the rue
+Royale hoping for a glimpse into the house, Modeste caught sight of him,
+and thereupon declared herself too ill to go to vespers. Poor
+Ernest thus had his trouble for his pains. He dared not wander about
+Ingouville; moreover, he made it a point of honor to obey orders, and
+he therefore went back to Paris, previously writing a letter which
+Francoise Cochet duly delivered on the morrow with the Havre postmark.
+
+It was the custom of Monsieur and Madame Latournelle to dine at the
+Chalet every Sunday when they brought back Modeste after vespers. So, as
+soon as the invalid felt a little better, they started for Ingouville,
+accompanied by Butscha. Once at home, the happy Modeste forgot her
+pretended illness and her disguise, and dressed herself charmingly,
+humming as she came down to dinner,--
+
+  “Nought is sleeping--Heart! awaking,
+  Lift thine incense to the skies.”
+
+Butscha shuddered slightly when he caught sight of her, so changed did
+she seem to him. The wings of love were fastened to her shoulders; she
+had the air of a nymph, a Psyche; her cheeks glowed with the divine
+color of happiness.
+
+“Who wrote the words to which you have put that pretty music?” asked her
+mother.
+
+“Canalis, mamma,” she answered, flushing rosy red from her throat to her
+forehead.
+
+“Canalis!” cried the dwarf, to whom the inflections of the girl’s voice
+and her blush told the only thing of which he was still ignorant. “He,
+that great poet, does he write songs?”
+
+“They are only simple verses,” she said, “which I have ventured to set
+to German airs.”
+
+“No, no,” interrupted Madame Mignon, “the music is your own, my
+daughter.”
+
+Modeste, feeling that she grew more and more crimson, went off into the
+garden, calling Butscha after her.
+
+“You can do me a great service,” she said. “Dumay is keeping a secret
+from my mother and me as to the fortune which my father is bringing back
+with him; and I want to know what it is. Did not Dumay send papa when
+he first went away over five hundred thousand francs? Yes. Well, papa is
+not the kind of man to stay away four years and only double his capital.
+It seems he is coming back on a ship of his own, and Dumay’s share
+amounts to almost six hundred thousand francs.”
+
+“There is no need to question Dumay,” said Butscha. “Your father lost,
+as you know, about four millions when he went away, and he has doubtless
+recovered them. He would of course give Dumay ten per cent of his
+profits; the worthy man admitted the other day how much it was, and my
+master and I think that in that case the colonel’s fortune must amount
+to six or seven millions--”
+
+“Oh, papa!” cried Modeste, crossing her hands on her breast and looking
+up to heaven, “twice you have given me life!”
+
+“Ah, mademoiselle!” said Butscha, “you love a poet. That kind of man
+is more or less of a Narcissus. Will he know how to love you? A
+phrase-maker, always busy in fitting words together, must be a bore.
+Mademoiselle, a poet is no more poetry than a seed is a flower.”
+
+“Butscha, I never saw so handsome a man.”
+
+“Beauty is a veil which often serves to hide imperfections.”
+
+“He has the most angelic heart of heaven--”
+
+“I pray God you may be right,” said the dwarf, clasping his hands,
+“--and happy! That man shall have, as you have, a servant in Jean
+Butscha. I will not be notary; I shall give that up; I shall study the
+sciences.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Ah, mademoiselle, to train up your children, if you will deign to make
+me their tutor. But, oh! if you would only listen to some advice. Let
+me take up this matter; let me look into the life and habits of this
+man,--find out if he is kind, or bad-tempered, or gentle, if he commands
+the respect which you merit in a husband, if he is able to love utterly,
+preferring you to everything, even his own talent--”
+
+“What does that signify if I love him?”
+
+“Ah, true!” cried the dwarf.
+
+At that instant Madame Mignon was saying to her friends,--
+
+“My daughter saw the man she loves this morning.”
+
+“Then it must have been that sulphur waistcoat which puzzled you so,
+Latournelle,” said his wife. “The young man had a pretty white rose in
+his buttonhole.”
+
+“Ah!” sighed the mother, “the sign of recognition.”
+
+“And he also wore the ribbon of an officer of the Legion of honor. He is
+a charming young man. But we are all deceiving ourselves; Modeste
+never raised her veil, and her clothes were huddled on like a
+beggar-woman’s--”
+
+“And she said she was ill,” cried the notary; “but she has taken off her
+mufflings and is just as well as she ever was.”
+
+“It is incomprehensible!” said Dumay.
+
+“Not at all,” said the notary; “it is now as clear as day.”
+
+“My child,” said Madame Mignon to Modeste, as she came into the room,
+followed by Butscha, “did you see a well-dressed young man at church
+this morning, with a white rose in his button-hole?”
+
+“I saw him,” said Butscha quickly, perceiving by everybody’s strained
+attention that Modeste was likely to fall into a trap. “It was
+Grindot, the famous architect, with whom the town is in treaty for the
+restoration of the church. He has just come from Paris, and I met
+him this morning examining the exterior as I was on my way to
+Sainte-Adresse.”
+
+“Oh, an architect, was he? he puzzled me,” said Modeste, for whom
+Butscha had thus gained time to recover herself.
+
+Dumay looked askance at Butscha. Modeste, fully warned, recovered her
+impenetrable composure. Dumay’s distrust was now thoroughly aroused, and
+he resolved to go the mayor’s office early in the morning and ascertain
+if the architect had really been in Havre the previous day. Butscha,
+on the other hand, was equally determined to go to Paris and find out
+something about Canalis.
+
+Gobenheim came to play whist, and by his presence subdued and compressed
+all this fermentation of feelings. Modeste awaited her mother’s bedtime
+with impatience. She intended to write, but never did so except at
+night. Here is the letter which love dictated to her while all the world
+was sleeping:--
+
+  To Monsieur de Canalis,--Ah! my friend, my well-beloved! What
+  atrocious falsehoods those portraits in the shop-windows are! And
+  I, who made that horrible lithograph my joy!--I am humbled at the
+  thought of loving one so handsome. No; it is impossible that those
+  Parisian women are so stupid as not to have seen their dreams
+  fulfilled in you. You neglected! you unloved! I do not believe a
+  word of all that you have written me about your lonely and obscure
+  life, your hunger for an idol,--sought in vain until now. You have
+  been too well loved, monsieur; your brow, white and smooth as a
+  magnolia leaf, reveals it; and it is I who must be neglected,--for
+  who am I? Ah! why have you called me to life? I felt for a moment
+  as though the heavy burden of the flesh was leaving me; my soul
+  had broken the crystal which held it captive; it pervaded my whole
+  being; the cold silence of material things had ceased; all things
+  in nature had a voice and spoke to me. The old church was
+  luminous. It’s arched roof, brilliant with gold and azure like
+  those of an Italian cathedral, sparkled above my head. Melodies
+  such as the angels sang to martyrs, quieting their pains, sounded
+  from the organ. The rough pavements of Havre seemed to my feet a
+  flowery mead; the sea spoke to me with a voice of sympathy, like
+  an old friend whom I had never truly understood. I saw clearly how
+  the roses in my garden had long adored me and bidden me love; they
+  lifted their heads and smiled as I came back from church. I heard
+  your name, “Melchior,” chiming in the flower-bells; I saw it
+  written on the clouds. Yes, yes, I live, I am living, thanks to
+  thee,--my poet, more beautiful than that cold, conventional Lord
+  Byron, with a face as dull as the English climate. One glance of
+  thine, thine Orient glance, pierced through my double veil and
+  sent thy blood to my heart, and from thence to my head and feet.
+  Ah! that is not the life our mother gave us. A hurt to thee would
+  hurt me too at the very instant it was given,--my life exists by
+  thy thought only. I know now the purpose of the divine faculty of
+  music; the angels invented it to utter love. Ah, my Melchior, to
+  have genius and to have beauty is too much; a man should be made
+  to choose between them at his birth.
+
+  When I think of the treasures of tenderness and affection which
+  you have given me, and more especially for the last month, I ask
+  myself if I dream. No, but you hide some mystery; what woman can
+  yield you up to me and not die? Ah! jealousy has entered my heart
+  with love,--love in which I could not have believed. How could I
+  have imagined so mighty a conflagration? And now--strange and
+  inconceivable revulsion!--I would rather you were ugly.
+
+  What follies I committed after I came home! The yellow dahlias
+  reminded me of your waistcoat, the white roses were my loving
+  friends; I bowed to them with a look that belonged to you, like
+  all that is of me. The very color of the gloves, moulded to hands
+  of a gentleman, your step along the nave,--all, all, is so printed
+  on my memory that sixty years hence I shall see the veriest
+  trifles of this day of days,--the color of the atmosphere, the ray
+  of sunshine that flickered on a certain pillar; I shall hear the
+  prayer your step interrupted; I shall inhale the incense of the
+  altar; forever I shall feel above our heads the priestly hands
+  that blessed us both as you passed by me at the closing
+  benediction. The good Abbe Marcelin married us then! The
+  happiness, above that of earth, which I feel in this new world of
+  unexpected emotions can only be equalled by the joy of telling it
+  to you, of sending it back to him who poured it into my heart with
+  the lavishness of the sun itself. No more veils, no more
+  disguises, my beloved. Come back to me, oh, come back soon. With
+  joy I now unmask.
+
+  You have no doubt heard of the house of Mignon in Havre? Well, I
+  am, through an irreparable misfortune, its sole heiress. But you
+  are not to look down upon us, descendant of an Auvergne knight;
+  the arms of the Mignon de La Bastie will do no dishonor to those
+  of Canalis. We bear gules, on a bend sable four bezants or;
+  quarterly four crosses patriarchal or; a cardinal’s hat as crest,
+  and the fiocchi for supports. Dear, I will be faithful to our
+  motto: “Una fides, unus Dominus!”--the true faith, and one only
+  Master.
+
+  Perhaps, my friend, you will find some irony in my name, after all
+  that I have done, and all that I herein avow. I am named Modeste.
+  Therefore I have not deceived you by signing “O. d’Este M.”
+   Neither have I misled you about our fortune; it will amount, I
+  believe, to the sum which rendered you so virtuous. I know that to
+  you money is a consideration of small importance; therefore I
+  speak of it without reserve. Let me tell you how happy it makes me
+  to give freedom of action to our happiness,--to be able to say,
+  when the fancy for travel takes us, “Come, let us go in a
+  comfortable carriage, sitting side by side, without a thought of
+  money”--happy, in short, to tell the king, “I have the fortune
+  which you require in your peers.” Thus Modeste Mignon can be of
+  service to you, and her gold will have the noblest of uses.
+
+  As to your servant herself,--you did see her once, at her window.
+  Yes, “the fairest daughter of Eve the fair” was indeed your
+  unknown damozel; but how little the Modeste of to-day resembles
+  her of that long past era! That one was in her shroud, this one
+  --have I made you know it?--has received from you the life of life.
+  Love, pure, and sanctioned, the love my father, now returning
+  rich and prosperous, will authorize, has raised me with its
+  powerful yet childlike hand from the grave in which I slept. You
+  have wakened me as the sun wakens the flowers. The eyes of your
+  beloved are no longer those of the little Modeste so daring in her
+  ignorance,--no, they are dimmed with the sight of happiness, and
+  the lids close over them. To-day I tremble lest I can never
+  deserve my fate. The king has come in his glory; my lord has now a
+  subject who asks pardon for the liberties she has taken, like the
+  gambler with loaded dice after cheating Monsieur de Grammont.
+
+  My cherished poet! I will be thy Mignon--happier far than the
+  Mignon of Goethe, for thou wilt leave me in mine own land,--in thy
+  heart. Just as I write this pledge of our betrothal a nightingale
+  in the Vilquin park answers for thee. Ah, tell me quick that his
+  note, so pure, so clear, so full, which fills my heart with joy
+  and love like an Annunciation, does not lie to me.
+
+  My father will pass through Paris on his way from Marseilles; the
+  house of Mongenod, with whom he corresponds, will know his
+  address. Go to him, my Melchior, tell him that you love me; but do
+  not try to tell him how I love you,--let that be forever between
+  ourselves and God. I, my dear one, am about to tell everything to
+  my mother. Her heart will justify my conduct; she will rejoice in
+  our secret poem, so romantic, human and divine in one.
+
+  You have the confession of the daughter; you must now obtain the
+  consent of the Comte de La Bastie, father of your
+
+Modeste.
+
+
+  P.S.--Above all, do not come to Havre without having first
+  obtained my father’s consent. If you love me you will not fail to
+  find him on his way through Paris.
+
+
+“What are you doing, up at this hour, Mademoiselle Modeste?” said the
+voice of Dumay at her door.
+
+“Writing to my father,” she answered; “did you not tell me you should
+start in the morning?”
+
+Dumay had nothing to say to that, and he went to bed, while Modeste
+wrote another long letter, this time to her father.
+
+On the morrow, Francois Cochet, terrified at seeing the Havre postmark
+on the envelope which Ernest had mailed the night before, brought her
+young mistress the following letter and took away the one which Modeste
+had written:--
+
+  To Mademoiselle O. d’Este M.,--My heart tells me that you were the
+  woman so carefully veiled and disguised, and seated between
+  Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, who have but one child, a son.
+  Ah, my love, if you have only a modest station, without
+  distinction, without importance, without money even, you do not
+  know how happy that would make me. You ought to understand me by
+  this time; why will you not tell me the truth? I am no poet,
+  --except in heart, through love, through you. Oh! what power of
+  affection there is in me to keep me here in this hotel, instead of
+  mounting to Ingouville which I can see from my windows. Will you
+  ever love me as I love you? To leave Havre in such uncertainty! Am
+  I not punished for loving you as if I had committed a crime? But I
+  obey you blindly. Let me have a letter quickly, for if you have
+  been mysterious, I have returned you mystery for mystery, and I
+  must at last throw off my disguise, show you the poet that I am,
+  and abdicate my borrowed glory.
+
+This letter made Modeste terribly uneasy. She could not get back the
+one which Francoise had carried away before she came to the last words,
+whose meaning she now sought by reading them again and again; but
+she went to her own room and wrote an answer in which she demanded an
+immediate explanation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. MATTERS GROWN COMPLICATED
+
+During these little events other little events were going on in Havre,
+which caused Modeste to forget her present uneasiness. Dumay went down
+to Havre early in the morning, and soon discovered that no architect had
+been in town the day before. Furious at Butscha’s lie, which revealed a
+conspiracy of which he was resolved to know the meaning, he rushed from
+the mayor’s office to his friend Latournelle.
+
+“Where’s your Master Butscha?” he demanded of the notary, when he saw
+that the clerk was not in his place.
+
+“Butscha, my dear fellow, has gone to Paris. He heard some news of his
+father this morning on the quays, from a Swedish sailor. It seems the
+father went to the Indies and served a prince, or something, and he is
+now in Paris.”
+
+“Lies! it’s all a trick! infamous! I’ll find that damned cripple if I’ve
+got to go express to Paris for him,” cried Dumay. “Butscha is deceiving
+us; he knows something about Modeste, and hasn’t told us. If he meddles
+in this thing he shall never be a notary. I’ll roll him in the mud from
+which he came, I’ll--”
+
+“Come, come, my friend; never hang a man before you try him,” said
+Latournelle, frightened at Dumay’s rage.
+
+After stating the facts on which his suspicions were founded, Dumay
+begged Madame Latournelle to go and stay at the Chalet during his
+absence.
+
+“You will find the colonel in Paris,” said the notary. “In the shipping
+news quoted this morning in the Journal of Commerce, I found under
+the head of Marseilles--here, see for yourself,” he said, offering the
+paper. “‘The Bettina Mignon, Captain Mignon, arrived October 6’; it is
+now the 17th, and the colonel is sure to be in Paris.”
+
+Dumay requested Gobenheim to do without him in future, and then went
+back to the Chalet, which he reached just as Modeste was sealing her two
+letters, to her father and Canalis. Except for the address the letters
+were precisely alike both in weight and appearance. Modeste thought she
+had laid that to her father over that to her Melchior, but had, in fact,
+done exactly the reverse. This mistake, so often made in the little
+things of life, occasioned the discovery of her secret by Dumay and her
+mother. The former was talking vehemently to Madame Mignon in the salon,
+and revealing to her his fresh fears caused by Modeste’s duplicity and
+Butscha’s connivance.
+
+“Madame,” he cried, “he is a serpent whom we have warmed in our bosoms;
+there’s no place in his contorted little body for a soul!”
+
+Modeste put the letter for her father into the pocket of her apron,
+supposing it to be that for Canalis, and came downstairs with the letter
+for her lover in her hand, to see Dumay before he started for Paris.
+
+“What has happened to my Black Dwarf? why are you talking so loud!” she
+said, appearing at the door.
+
+“Mademoiselle, Butscha has gone to Paris, and you, no doubt, know
+why,--to carry on that affair of the little architect with the sulphur
+waistcoat, who, unluckily for the hunchback’s lies, has never been
+here.”
+
+Modeste was struck dumb; feeling sure that the dwarf had departed on
+a mission of inquiry as to her poet’s morals, she turned pale, and sat
+down.
+
+“I’m going after him; I shall find him,” continued Dumay. “Is that the
+letter for your father, mademoiselle?” he added, holding out his hand.
+“I will take it to the Mongenods. God grant the colonel and I may not
+pass each other on the road.”
+
+Modeste gave him the letter. Dumay looked mechanically at the address.
+
+“‘Monsieur le Baron de Canalis, rue de Paradis-Poissoniere, No. 29’!” he
+cried out; “what does that mean?”
+
+“Ah, my daughter! that is the man you love,” exclaimed Madame Mignon;
+“the stanzas you set to music were his--”
+
+“And that’s his portrait that you have in a frame upstairs,” added
+Dumay.
+
+“Give me back that letter, Monsieur Dumay,” said Modeste, erecting
+herself like a lioness defending her cubs.
+
+“There it is, mademoiselle,” he replied.
+
+Modeste put it into the bosom of her dress, and gave Dumay the one
+intended for her father.
+
+“I know what you are capable of, Dumay,” she said; “and if you take
+one step against Monsieur de Canalis, I shall take another out of this
+house, to which I will never return.”
+
+“You will kill your mother, mademoiselle,” replied Dumay, who left the
+room and called his wife.
+
+The poor mother was indeed half-fainting,--struck to the heart by
+Modeste’s words.
+
+“Good-bye, wife,” said the Breton, kissing the American. “Take care of
+the mother; I go to save the daughter.”
+
+He made his preparations for the journey in a few minutes, and started
+for Havre. An hour later he was travelling post to Paris, with the haste
+that nothing but passion or speculation can get out of wheels.
+
+Recovering herself under Modeste’s tender care, Madame Mignon went up to
+her bedroom leaning on the arm of her daughter, to whom she said, as her
+sole reproach, when they were alone:--
+
+“My unfortunate child, see what you have done! Why did you conceal
+anything from me? Am I so harsh?”
+
+“Oh! I was just going to tell it to you comfortably,” sobbed Modeste.
+
+She thereupon related everything to her mother, read her the letters
+and their answers, and shed the rose of her poem petal by petal into the
+heart of the kind German woman. When this confidence, which took half
+the day, was over, when she saw something that was almost a smile on the
+lips of the too indulgent mother, Modeste fell upon her breast in tears.
+
+“Oh, mother!” she said amid her sobs, “you, whose heart, all gold and
+poetry, is a chosen vessel, chosen of God to hold a sacred love, a
+single and celestial love that endures for life; you, whom I wish to
+imitate by loving no one but my husband,--you will surely understand
+what bitter tears I am now shedding. This butterfly, this Psyche of my
+thoughts, this dual soul which I have nurtured with maternal care, my
+love, my sacred love, this living mystery of mysteries--it is about to
+fall into vulgar hands, and they will tear its diaphanous wings and rend
+its veil under the miserable pretext of enlightening me, of discovering
+whether genius is as prudent as a banker, whether my Melchior has saved
+his money, or whether he has some entanglement to shake off; they
+want to find out if he is guilty to bourgeois eyes of youthful
+indiscretions,--which to the sun of our love are like the clouds of the
+dawn. Oh! what will come of it? what will they do? See! feel my hand, it
+burns with fever. Ah! I shall never survive it.”
+
+And Modeste, really taken with a chill, was forced to go to bed, causing
+serious uneasiness to her mother, Madame Latournelle, and Madame Dumay,
+who took good care of her during the journey of the lieutenant to
+Paris,--to which city the logic of events compels us to transport our
+drama for a moment.
+
+Truly modest minds, like that of Ernest de La Briere, but especially
+those who, knowing their own value, also know that they are neither
+loved nor appreciated, can understand the infinite joy to which the
+young secretary abandoned himself on reading Modeste’s letter. Could
+it be that after thinking him lofty and witty in soul, his young, his
+artless, his tricksome mistress now thought him handsome? This flattery
+is the flattery supreme. And why? Beauty is, undoubtedly, the signature
+of the master to the work into which he has put his soul; it is the
+divine spirit manifested. And to see it where it is not, to create it by
+the power of an inward look,--is not that the highest reach of love?
+And so the poor youth cried aloud with all the rapture of an applauded
+author, “At last I am beloved!” When a woman, be she maid, wife, or
+widow, lets the charming words escape her, “Thou art handsome,” the
+words may be false, but the man opens his thick skull to their subtle
+poison, and thenceforth he is attached by an everlasting tie to the
+pretty flatterer, the true or the deceived judge; she becomes his
+particular world, he thirsts for her continual testimony, and he never
+wearies of it, even if he is a crowned prince. Ernest walked proudly
+up and down his room; he struck a three-quarter, full-face, and profile
+attitude before the glass; he tried to criticise himself; but a voice,
+diabolically persuasive, whispered to him, “Modeste is right.” He took
+up her letter and re-read it; he saw his fairest of the fair; he talked
+with her; then, in the midst of his ecstacy, a dreadful thought came to
+him:--
+
+“She thinks me Canalis, and she has a million of money!”
+
+Down went his happiness, just as a somnambulist, having attained the
+peak of a roof, hears a voice, awakes, and falls crushed upon the
+pavement.
+
+“Without the halo of fame I shall be hideous in her eyes,” he cried;
+“what a maddening situation I have put myself in!”
+
+La Briere was too much the man of his letters which we have read, his
+heart was too noble and pure to allow him to hesitate at the call of
+honor. He at once resolved to find Modeste’s father, if he were in
+Paris, and confess all to him, and to let Canalis know the serious
+results of their Parisian jest. To a sensitive nature like his,
+Modeste’s large fortune was in itself a determining reason. He could not
+allow it to be even suspected that the ardor of the correspondence, so
+sincere on his part, had in view the capture of a “dot.” Tears were in
+his eyes as he made his way to the rue Chantereine to find the banker
+Mongenod, whose fortune and business connections were partly the work of
+the minister to whom Ernest owed his start in life.
+
+At the hour when La Briere was inquiring about the father of his beloved
+from the head of the house of Mongenod, and getting information that
+might be useful to him in his strange position, a scene was taking place
+in Canalis’s study which the ex-lieutenant’s hasty departure from Havre
+may have led the reader to foresee.
+
+Like a true soldier of the imperial school, Dumay, whose Breton blood
+had boiled all the way to Paris, considered a poet to be a poor stick of
+a fellow, of no consequence whatever,--a buffoon addicted to choruses,
+living in a garret, dressed in black clothes that were white at every
+seam, wearing boots that were occasionally without soles, and linen that
+was unmentionable, and whose fingers knew more about ink than soap; in
+short, one who looked always as if he had tumbled from the moon,
+except when scribbling at a desk, like Butscha. But the seething of the
+Breton’s heart and brain received a violent application of cold water
+when he entered the courtyard of the pretty house occupied by the poet
+and saw a groom washing a carriage, and also, through the windows of a
+handsome dining-room, a valet dressed like a banker, to whom the groom
+referred him, and who answered, looking the stranger over from head to
+foot, that Monsieur le baron was not visible. “There is,” added the man,
+“a meeting of the council of state to-day, at which Monsieur le baron is
+obliged to be present.”
+
+“Is this really the house of Monsieur Canalis,” said Dumay, “a writer of
+poetry?”
+
+“Monsieur le baron de Canalis,” replied the valet, “is the great poet
+of whom you speak; but he is also the president of the court of Claims
+attached to the ministry of foreign affairs.”
+
+Dumay, who had come to box the ears of a scribbling nobody, found
+himself confronted by a high functionary of the state. The salon
+where he was told to wait offered, as a topic for his meditations, the
+insignia of the Legion of honor glittering on a black coat which the
+valet had left upon a chair. Presently his eyes were attracted by the
+beauty and brilliancy of a silver-gilt cup bearing the words “Given by
+_Madame_.” Then he beheld before him, on a pedestal, a Sevres vase on
+which was engraved, “The gift of Madame la _Dauphine_.”
+
+These mute admonitions brought Dumay to his senses while the valet went
+to ask his master if he would receive a person who had come from Havre
+expressly to see him,--a stranger named Dumay.
+
+“What sort of a man?” asked Canalis.
+
+“He is well-dressed, and wears the ribbon of the Legion of honor.”
+
+Canalis made a sign of assent, and the valet retreated, and then
+returned and announced, “Monsieur Dumay.”
+
+When he heard himself announced, when he was actually in presence of
+Canalis, in a study as gorgeous as it was elegant, with his feet on a
+carpet far handsomer than any in the house of Mignon, and when he met
+the studied glance of the poet who was playing with the tassels of a
+sumptuous dressing-gown, Dumay was so completely taken aback that he
+allowed the great poet to have the first word.
+
+“To what do I owe the honor of your visit, monsieur?”
+
+“Monsieur,” began Dumay, who remained standing.
+
+“If you have a good deal to say,” interrupted Canalis, “I must ask you
+to be seated.”
+
+And Canalis himself plunged into an armchair a la Voltaire, crossed his
+legs, raised the upper one to the level of his eye and looked fixedly at
+Dumay, who became, to use his own martial slang, “bayonetted.”
+
+“I am listening, monsieur,” said the poet; “my time is precious,--the
+ministers are expecting me.”
+
+“Monsieur,” said Dumay, “I shall be brief. You have seduced--how, I do
+not know--a young lady in Havre, young, beautiful, and rich; the
+last and only hope of two noble families; and I have come to ask your
+intentions.”
+
+Canalis, who had been busy during the last three months with serious
+matters of his own, and was trying to get himself made commander of the
+Legion of honor and minister to a German court, had completely forgotten
+Modeste’s letter.”
+
+“I!” he exclaimed.
+
+“You!” repeated Dumay.
+
+“Monsieur,” answered Canalis, smiling; “I know no more of what you are
+talking about than if you had said it in Hebrew. I seduce a young
+girl! I, who--” and a superb smile crossed his features. “Come, come,
+monsieur, I’m not such a child as to steal fruit over the hedges when I
+have orchards and gardens of my own where the finest peaches ripen. All
+Paris knows where my affections are set. Very likely there may be some
+young girl in Havre full of enthusiasm for my verses,--of which they are
+not worthy; that would not surprise me at all; nothing is more common.
+See! look at that lovely coffer of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl,
+and edged with that iron-work as fine as lace. That coffer belonged
+to Pope Leo X., and was given to me by the Duchesse de Chaulieu, who
+received it from the king of Spain. I use it to hold the letters I
+receive from ladies and young girls living in every quarter of Europe.
+Oh! I assure you I feel the utmost respect for these flowers of the
+soul, cut and sent in moments of enthusiasm that are worthy of all
+reverence. Yes, to me the impulse of a heart is a noble and sublime
+thing! Others--scoffers--light their cigars with such letters, or give
+them to their wives for curl-papers; but I, who am a bachelor, monsieur,
+I have too much delicacy not to preserve these artless offerings--so
+fresh, so disinterested--in a tabernacle of their own. In fact, I guard
+them with a species of veneration, and at my death they will be burned
+before my eyes. People may call that ridiculous, but I do not care. I am
+grateful; these proofs of devotion enable me to bear the criticisms and
+annoyances of a literary life. When I receive a shot in the back from
+some enemy lurking under cover of a daily paper, I look at that casket
+and think,--here and there in this wide world there are hearts whose
+wounds have been healed, or soothed, or dressed by me!”
+
+This bit of poetry, declaimed with all the talent of a great actor,
+petrified the lieutenant, whose eyes opened to their utmost extent, and
+whose astonishment delighted the poet.
+
+“I will permit you,” continued the peacock, spreading his tail, “out of
+respect for your position, which I fully appreciate, to open that coffer
+and look for the letter of your young lady. Though I know I am right, I
+remember names, and I assure you you are mistaken in thinking--”
+
+“And this is what a poor child comes to in this gulf of Paris!” cried
+Dumay,--“the darling of her parents, the joy of her friends, the hope
+of all, petted by all, the pride of a family, who has six persons so
+devoted to her that they would willingly make a rampart of their lives
+and fortunes between her and sorrow. Monsieur,” Dumay remarked after a
+pause, “you are a great poet, and I am only a poor soldier. For fifteen
+years I served my country in the ranks; I have had the wind of many a
+bullet in my face; I have crossed Siberia and been a prisoner there; the
+Russians flung me on a kibitka, and God knows what I suffered. I have
+seen thousands of my comrades die,--but you, you have given me a chill
+to the marrow of my bones, such as I never felt before.”
+
+Dumay fancied that his words moved the poet, but in fact they only
+flattered him,--a thing which at this period of his life had become
+almost an impossibility; for his ambitious mind had long forgotten the
+first perfumed phial that praise had broken over his head.
+
+“Ah, my soldier!” he said solemnly, laying his hand on Dumay’s shoulder,
+and thinking to himself how droll it was to make a soldier of the empire
+tremble, “this young girl may be all in all to you, but to society at
+large what is she? nothing. At this moment the greatest mandarin in
+China may be yielding up the ghost and putting half the universe in
+mourning, and what is that to you? The English are killing thousands of
+people in India more worthy than we are; why, at this very moment while
+I am speaking to you some ravishing woman is being burned alive,--did
+that make you care less for your cup of coffee this morning at
+breakfast? Not a day passes in Paris that some mother in rags does not
+cast her infant on the world to be picked up by whoever finds it; and
+yet see! here is this delicious tea in a cup that cost five louis, and
+I write verses which Parisian women rush to buy, exclaiming, ‘Divine!
+delicious! charming! food for the soul!’ Social nature, like Nature
+herself, is a great forgetter. You will be quite surprised ten years
+hence at what you have done to-day. You are here in a city where people
+die, where they marry, where they adore each other at an assignation,
+where young girls suffocate themselves, where the man of genius with
+his cargo of thoughts teeming with humane beneficence goes to the
+bottom,--all side by side, sometimes under the same roof, and yet
+ignorant of each other, ignorant and indifferent. And here you come
+among us and ask us to expire with grief at this commonplace affair.”
+
+“You call yourself a poet!” cried Dumay, “but don’t you feel what you
+write?”
+
+“Good heavens! if we endured the joys or the woes we sing we should
+be as worn out in three months as a pair of old boots,” said the poet,
+smiling. “But stay, you shall not come from Havre to Paris to see
+Canalis without carrying something back with you. Warrior!” (Canalis had
+the form and action of an Homeric hero) “learn this from the poet: Every
+noble sentiment in man is a poem so exclusively individual that his
+nearest friend, his other self, cares nothing for it. It is a treasure
+which is his alone, it is--”
+
+“Forgive me for interrupting you,” said Dumay, who was gazing at the
+poet with horror, “but did you ever come to Havre?”
+
+“I was there for a day and a night in the spring of 1824 on my way to
+London.”
+
+“You are a man of honor,” continued Dumay; “will you give me your word
+that you do not know Mademoiselle Modeste Mignon?”
+
+“This is the first time that name ever struck my ear,” replied Canalis.
+
+“Ah, monsieur!” said Dumay, “into what dark intrigue am I about to
+plunge? Can I count upon you to help me in my inquiries?--for I am
+certain that some one has been using your name. You ought to have had a
+letter yesterday from Havre.”
+
+“I received none. Be sure, monsieur, that I will help you,” said
+Canalis, “so far as I have the opportunity of doing so.”
+
+Dumay withdrew, his heart torn with anxiety, believing that the wretched
+Butscha had worn the skin of the poet to deceive Modeste; whereas
+Butscha himself, keen-witted as a prince seeking revenge, and far
+cleverer than any paid spy, was ferretting out the life and actions
+of Canalis, escaping notice by his insignificance, like an insect that
+bores its way into the sap of a tree.
+
+The Breton had scarcely left the poet’s house when La Briere entered his
+friend’s study. Naturally, Canalis told him of the visit of the man from
+Havre.
+
+“Ha!” said Ernest, “Modeste Mignon; that is just what I have come to
+speak of.”
+
+“Ah, bah!” cried Canalis; “have I had a triumph by proxy?”
+
+“Yes; and here is the key to it. My friend, I am loved by the sweetest
+girl in all the world,--beautiful enough to shine beside the greatest
+beauties in Paris, with a heart and mind worthy of Clarissa. She has
+seen me; I have pleased her, and she thinks me the great Canalis. But
+that is not all. Modeste Mignon is of high birth, and Mongenod has just
+told me that her father, the Comte de La Bastie, has something like six
+millions. The father is here now, and I have asked him through Mongenod
+for an interview at two o’clock. Mongenod is to give him a hint, just
+a word, that it concerns the happiness of his daughter. But you will
+readily understand that before seeing the father I feel I ought to make
+a clean breast of it to you.”
+
+“Among the plants whose flowers bloom in the sunshine of fame,” said
+Canalis, impressively, “there is one, and the most magnificent, which
+bears like the orange-tree a golden fruit amid the mingled perfumes of
+beauty and of mind; a lovely plant, a true tenderness, a perfect bliss,
+and--it eludes me.” Canalis looked at the carpet that Ernest might
+not read his eyes. “Could I,” he continued after a pause to regain his
+self-possession, “how could I have divined that flower from a pretty
+sheet of perfumed paper, that true heart, that young girl, that woman in
+whom love wears the livery of flattery, who loves us for ourselves, who
+offers us felicity? It needed but an angel or a demon to perceive
+her; and what am I but the ambitious head of a Court of Claims! Ah, my
+friend, fame makes us the target of a thousand arrows. One of us
+owes his rich marriage to an hydraulic piece of poetry, while I, more
+seductive, more a woman’s man than he, have missed mine,--for, do you
+love her, poor girl?” he said, looking up at La Briere.
+
+“Oh!” ejaculated the young man.
+
+“Well then,” said the poet, taking his secretary’s arm and leaning
+heavily upon it, “be happy, Ernest. By a mere accident I have been not
+ungrateful to you. You are richly rewarded for your devotion, and I will
+generously further your happiness.”
+
+Canalis was furious; but he could not behave otherwise than with
+propriety, and he made the best of his disappointment by mounting it as
+a pedestal.
+
+“Ah, Canalis, I have never really known you till this moment.”
+
+“Did you expect to? It takes some time to go round the world,” replied
+the poet with his pompous irony.
+
+“But think,” said La Briere, “of this enormous fortune.”
+
+“Ah, my friend, is it not well invested in you?” cried Canalis,
+accompanying the words with a charming gesture.
+
+“Melchior,” said La Briere, “I am yours for life and death.”
+
+He wrung the poet’s hand and left him abruptly, for he was in haste to
+meet Monsieur Mignon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. A FATHER STEPS IN
+
+The Comte de La Bastie was at this moment overwhelmed with the sorrows
+which lay in wait for him as their prey. He had learned from his
+daughter’s letter of Bettina’s death and of his wife’s infirmity, and
+Dumay related to him, when they met, his terrible perplexity as to
+Modeste’s love affairs.
+
+“Leave me to myself,” he said to his faithful friend.
+
+As the lieutenant closed the door, the unhappy father threw himself on a
+sofa, with his head in his hands, weeping those slow, scanty tears which
+suffuse the eyes of a man of sixty, but do not fall,--tears soon dried,
+yet quick to start again,--the last dews of the human autumn.
+
+“To have children, to have a wife, to adore them--what is it but to have
+many hearts and bare them to a dagger?” he cried, springing up with the
+bound of a tiger and walking up and down the room. “To be a father is
+to give one’s self over, bound hand and foot to sorrow. If I meet that
+D’Estourny I will kill him. To have daughters!--one gives her life to a
+scoundrel, the other, my Modeste, falls a victim to whom? a coward, who
+deceives her with the gilded paper of a poet. If it were Canalis himself
+it might not be so bad; but that Scapin of a lover!--I will strangle him
+with my two hands,” he cried, making an involuntary gesture of furious
+determination. “And what then? suppose my Modeste were to die of grief?”
+
+He gazed mechanically out of the windows of the hotel des Princes, and
+then returned to the sofa, where he sat motionless. The fatigues of
+six voyages to India, the anxieties of speculation, the dangers he
+had encountered and evaded, and his many griefs, had silvered Charles
+Mignon’s head. His handsome soldierly face, so pure in outline and now
+bronzed by the suns of China and the southern seas, had acquired an air
+of dignity which his present grief rendered almost sublime.
+
+“Mongenod told me he felt confidence in the young man who is coming to
+ask me for my daughter,” he thought at last; and at this moment Ernest
+de La Briere was announced by one of the servants whom Monsieur de La
+Bastie had attached to himself during the last four years.
+
+“You have come, monsieur, from my friend Mongenod?” he said.
+
+“Yes,” replied Ernest, growing timid when he saw before him a face as
+sombre as Othello’s. “My name is Ernest de La Briere, related to the
+family of the late cabinet minister, and his private secretary during
+his term of office. On his dismissal, his Excellency put me in the Court
+of Claims, to which I am legal counsel, and where I may possibly succeed
+as chief--”
+
+“And how does all this concern Mademoiselle de La Bastie?” asked the
+count.
+
+“Monsieur, I love her; and I have the unhoped-for happiness of being
+loved by her. Hear me, monsieur,” cried Ernest, checking a violent
+movement on the part of the angry father. “I have the strangest
+confession to make to you, a shameful one for a man of honor; but the
+worst punishment of my conduct, natural enough in itself, is not
+the telling of it to you; no, I fear the daughter even more than the
+father.”
+
+Ernest then related simply, and with the nobleness that comes of
+sincerity, all the facts of his little drama, not omitting the twenty or
+more letters, which he had brought with him, nor the interview which he
+had just had with Canalis. When Monsieur Mignon had finished reading the
+letters, the unfortunate lover, pale and suppliant, actually trembled
+under the fiery glance of the Provencal.
+
+“Monsieur,” said the latter, “in this whole matter there is but one
+error, but that is cardinal. My daughter will not have six millions;
+at the utmost, she will have a marriage portion of two hundred thousand
+francs, and very doubtful expectations.”
+
+“Ah, monsieur!” cried Ernest, rising and grasping Monsieur Mignon’s
+hand; “you take a load from my breast. Nothing can now hinder my
+happiness. I have friends, influence; I shall certainly be chief of
+the Court of Claims. Had Mademoiselle Mignon no more than ten thousand
+francs, if I had even to make a settlement on her, she should still be
+my wife; and to make her happy as you, monsieur, have made your wife
+happy, to be to you a real son (for I have no father), are the deepest
+desires of my heart.”
+
+Charles Mignon stepped back three paces and fixed upon La Briere a look
+which entered the eyes of the young man as a dagger enters its sheath;
+he stood silent a moment, recognizing the absolute candor, the pure
+truthfulness of that open nature in the light of the young man’s
+inspired eyes. “Is fate at last weary of pursuing me?” he asked himself.
+“Am I to find in this young man the pearl of sons-in-law?” He walked up
+and down the room in strong agitation.
+
+“Monsieur,” he said at last, “you are bound to submit wholly to the
+judgment which you have come here to seek, otherwise you are now playing
+a farce.”
+
+“Oh, monsieur!”
+
+“Listen to me,” said the father, nailing La Briere where he stood with a
+glance. “I shall be neither harsh, nor hard, nor unjust. You shall have
+the advantages and the disadvantages of the false position in which you
+have placed yourself. My daughter believes that she loves one of the
+great poets of the day, whose fame is really that which has attracted
+her. Well, I, her father, intend to give her the opportunity to choose
+between the celebrity which has been a beacon to her, and the poor
+reality which the irony of fate has flung at her feet. Ought she not
+to choose between Canalis and yourself? I rely upon your honor not to
+repeat what I have told you as to the state of my affairs. You may each
+come, I mean you and your friend the Baron de Canalis, to Havre for the
+last two weeks of October. My house will be open to both of you, and my
+daughter must have an opportunity to study you. You must yourself bring
+your rival, and not disabuse him as to the foolish tales he will hear
+about the wealth of the Comte de La Bastie. I go to Havre to-morrow, and
+I shall expect you three days later. Adieu, monsieur.”
+
+Poor La Briere went back to Canalis with a dragging step. The poet,
+meantime, left to himself, had given way to a current of thought out
+of which had come that secondary impulse which Monsieur de Talleyrand
+valued so much. The first impulse is the voice of nature, the second
+that of society.
+
+“A girl worth six millions,” he thought to himself, “and my eyes were
+not able to see that gold shining in the darkness! With such a fortune
+I could be peer of France, count, marquis, ambassador. I’ve replied
+to middle-class women and silly women, and crafty creatures who wanted
+autographs; I’ve tired myself to death with masked-ball intrigues,--at
+the very moment when God was sending me a soul of price, an angel with
+golden wings! Bah! I’ll make a poem on it, and perhaps the chance will
+come again. Heavens! the luck of that little La Briere,--strutting about
+in my lustre--plagiarism! I’m the cast and he’s to be the statue, is
+he? It is the old fable of Bertrand and Raton. Six millions, a beauty,
+a Mignon de La Bastie, an aristocratic divinity loving poetry and the
+poet! And I, who showed my muscle as man of the world, who did those
+Alcide exercises to silence by moral force the champion of physical
+force, that old soldier with a heart, that friend of this very young
+girl, whom he’ll now go and tell that I have a heart of iron!--I, to
+play Napoleon when I ought to have been seraphic! Good heavens! True, I
+shall have my friend. Friendship is a beautiful thing. I have kept him,
+but at what a price! Six millions, that’s the cost of it; we can’t have
+many friends if we pay all that for them.”
+
+La Briere entered the room as Canalis reached this point in his
+meditations. He was gloom personified.
+
+“Well, what’s the matter?” said Canalis.
+
+“The father exacts that his daughter shall choose between the two
+Canalis--”
+
+“Poor boy!” cried the poet, laughing, “he’s a clever fellow, that
+father.”
+
+“I have pledged my honor that I will take you to Havre,” said La Briere,
+piteously.
+
+“My dear fellow,” said Canalis, “if it is a question of your honor you
+may count on me. I’ll ask for leave of absence for a month.”
+
+“Modeste is so beautiful!” exclaimed La Briere, in a despairing tone.
+“You will crush me out of sight. I wondered all along that fate should
+be so kind to me; I knew it was all a mistake.”
+
+“Bah! we will see about that,” said Canalis with inhuman gaiety.
+
+That evening, after dinner, Charles Mignon and Dumay, were flying,
+by virtue of three francs to each postilion, from Paris to Havre.
+The father had eased the watch-dog’s mind as to Modeste and her love
+affairs; the guard was relieved, and Butscha’s innocence established.
+
+“It is all for the best, my old Dumay,” said the count, who had been
+making certain inquiries of Mongenod respecting Canalis and La Briere.
+“We are going to have two actors for one part!” he cried gaily.
+
+Nevertheless, he requested his old comrade to be absolutely silent about
+the comedy which was now to be played at the Chalet,--a comedy it might
+be, but also a gentle punishment, or, if you prefer it, a lesson given
+by the father to the daughter.
+
+The two friends kept up a long conversation all the way from Paris to
+Havre, which put the colonel in possession of the facts relating to his
+family during the past four years, and informing Dumay that Desplein,
+the great surgeon, was coming to Havre at the end of the present month
+to examine the cataract on Madame Mignon’s eyes, and decide if it were
+possible to restore her sight.
+
+A few moments before the breakfast-hour at the Chalet, the clacking of
+a postilion’s whip apprised the family that the two soldiers were
+arriving; only a father’s joy at returning after long absence could be
+heralded with such clatter, and it brought all the women to the garden
+gate. There is many a father and many a child--perhaps more fathers than
+children--who will understand the delights of such an arrival, and that
+happy fact shows that literature has no need to depict it. Perhaps all
+gentle and tender emotions are beyond the range of literature.
+
+Not a word that could trouble the peace of the family was uttered on
+this joyful day. Truce was tacitly established between father, mother,
+and child as to the so-called mysterious love which had paled Modeste’s
+cheeks,--for this was the first day she had left her bed since Dumay’s
+departure for Paris. The colonel, with the charming delicacy of a
+true soldier, never left his wife’s side nor released her hand; but he
+watched Modeste with delight, and was never weary of noting her refined,
+elegant, and poetic beauty. Is it not by such seeming trifles that we
+recognize a man of feeling? Modeste, who feared to interrupt the subdued
+joy of the husband and wife kept at a little distance, coming from time
+to time to kiss her father’s forehead, and when she kissed it overmuch
+she seemed to mean that she was kissing it for two,--for Bettina and
+herself.
+
+“Oh, my darling, I understand you,” said the colonel, pressing her hand
+as she assailed him with kisses.
+
+“Hush!” whispered the young girl, glancing at her mother.
+
+Dumay’s rather sly and pregnant silence made Modeste somewhat uneasy as
+to the upshot of his journey to Paris. She looked at him furtively
+every now and then, without being able to get beneath his epidermis.
+The colonel, like a prudent father, wanted to study the character of
+his only daughter, and above all consult his wife, before entering on a
+conference upon which the happiness of the whole family depended.
+
+“To-morrow, my precious child,” he said as they parted for the night,
+“get up early, and we will go and take a walk on the seashore. We have
+to talk about your poems, Mademoiselle de La Bastie.”
+
+His last words, accompanied by a smile, which reappeared like an echo
+on Dumay’s lips, were all that gave Modeste any clew to what was coming;
+but it was enough to calm her uneasiness and keep her awake far into the
+night with her head full of suppositions; this, however, did not prevent
+her from being dressed and ready in the morning long before the colonel.
+
+“You know all, my kind papa?” she said as soon as they were on the road
+to the beach.
+
+“I know all, and a good deal more than you do,” he replied.
+
+After that remark father and daughter went some little way in silence.
+
+“Explain to me, my child, how it happens that a girl whom her mother
+idolizes could have taken such an important step as to write to a
+stranger without consulting her.”
+
+“Oh, papa! because mamma would never have allowed it.”
+
+“And do you think, my daughter, that that was proper? Though you have
+been educating your mind in this fatal way, how is it that your good
+sense and your intellect did not, in default of modesty, step in and
+show you that by acting as you did you were throwing yourself at a man’s
+head. To think that my daughter, my only remaining child, should lack
+pride and delicacy! Oh, Modeste, you made your father pass two hours in
+hell when he heard of it; for, after all, your conduct has been the
+same as Bettina’s without the excuse of a heart’s seduction; you were
+a coquette in cold blood, and that sort of coquetry is head-love, the
+worst vice of French women.”
+
+“I, without pride!” said Modeste, weeping; “but _he_ has not yet seen
+me.”
+
+“_He_ knows your name.”
+
+“I did not tell it to him till my eyes had vindicated the
+correspondence, lasting three months, during which our souls had spoken
+to each other.”
+
+“Oh, my dear misguided angel, you have mixed up a species of reason
+with a folly that has compromised your own happiness and that of your
+family.”
+
+“But, after all, papa, happiness is the absolution of my temerity,” she
+said, pouting.
+
+“Oh! your conduct is temerity, is it?”
+
+“A temerity that my mother practised before me,” she retorted quickly.
+
+“Rebellious child! your mother after seeing me at a ball told her
+father, who adored her, that she thought she could be happy with me. Be
+honest, Modeste; is there any likeness between a love hastily conceived,
+I admit, but under the eyes of a father, and your mad action of writing
+to a stranger?”
+
+“A stranger, papa? say rather one of our greatest poets, whose character
+and whose life are exposed to the strongest light of day, to detraction,
+to calumny,--a man robed in fame, and to whom, my dear father, I was a
+mere literary and dramatic personage, one of Shakespeare’s women, until
+the moment when I wished to know if the man himself were as beautiful as
+his soul.”
+
+“Good God! my poor child, you are turning marriage into poetry. But if,
+from time immemorial, girls have been cloistered in the bosom of their
+families, if God, if social laws put them under the stern yoke of
+parental sanction, it is, mark my words, to spare them the misfortunes
+that this very poetry which charms and dazzles you, and which you are
+therefore unable to judge of, would entail upon them. Poetry is indeed
+one of the pleasures of life, but it is not life itself.”
+
+“Papa, that is a suit still pending before the Court of Facts; the
+struggle is forever going on between our hearts and the claims of
+family.”
+
+“Alas for the child that finds her happiness in resisting them,” said
+the colonel, gravely. “In 1813 I saw one of my comrades, the Marquis
+d’Aiglemont, marry his cousin against the wishes of her father, and the
+pair have since paid dear for the obstinacy which the young girl took
+for love. The family must be sovereign in marriage.”
+
+“My poet has told me all that,” she answered. “He played Orgon for some
+time; and he was brave enough to disparage the personal lives of poets.”
+
+“I have read your letters,” said Charles Mignon, with the flicker of a
+malicious smile on his lips that made Modeste very uneasy, “and I ought
+to remark that your last epistle was scarcely permissible in any woman,
+even a Julie d’Etanges. Good God! what harm novels do!”
+
+“We should live them, my dear father, whether people wrote them or not;
+I think it is better to read them. There are not so many adventures in
+these days as there were under Louis XIV. and Louis XV., and so they
+publish fewer novels. Besides, if you have read those letters, you must
+know that I have chosen the most angelic soul, the most sternly upright
+man for your son-in-law, and you must have seen that we love one another
+at least as much as you and mamma love each other. Well, I admit that it
+was not all exactly conventional; I did, if you _will_ have me say so,
+wrong--”
+
+“I have read your letters,” said her father, interrupting her, “and I
+know exactly how far your lover justified you in your own eyes for a
+proceeding which might be permissible in some woman who understood life,
+and who was led away by strong passion, but which in a young girl of
+twenty was a monstrous piece of wrong-doing.”
+
+“Yes, wrong-doing for commonplace people, for the narrow-minded
+Gobenheims, who measure life with a square rule. Please let us keep to
+the artistic and poetic life, papa. We young girls have only two ways to
+act; we must let a man know we love him by mincing and simpering, or we
+must go to him frankly. Isn’t the last way grand and noble? We French
+girls are delivered over by our families like so much merchandise, at
+sixty days’ sight, sometimes thirty, like Mademoiselle Vilquin; but in
+England, and Switzerland, and Germany, they follow very much the plan
+I have adopted. Now what have you got to say to that? Am I not half
+German?”
+
+“Child!” cried the colonel, looking at her; “the supremacy of France
+comes from her sound common-sense, from the logic to which her noble
+language constrains her mind. France is the reason of the whole world.
+England and Germany are romantic in their marriage customs,--though even
+there noble families follow our customs. You certainly do not mean to
+deny that your parents, who know life, who are responsible for your
+soul and for your happiness, have no right to guard you from the
+stumbling-blocks that are in your way? Good heavens!” he continued,
+speaking half to himself, “is it their fault, or is it ours? Ought we
+to hold our children under an iron yoke? Must we be punished for the
+tenderness that leads us to make them happy, and teaches our hearts how
+to do so?”
+
+Modeste watched her father out of the corner of her eye as she listened
+to this species of invocation, uttered in a broken voice.
+
+“Was it wrong,” she said, “in a girl whose heart was free, to choose for
+her husband not only a charming companion, but a man of noble genius,
+born to an honorable position, a gentleman; the equal of myself, a
+gentlewoman?”
+
+“You love him?” asked her father.
+
+“Father!” she said, laying her head upon his breast, “would you see me
+die?”
+
+“Enough!” said the old soldier. “I see your love is inextinguishable.”
+
+“Yes, inextinguishable.”
+
+“Can nothing change it?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“No circumstances, no treachery, no betrayal? You mean that you will
+love him in spite of everything, because of his personal attractions?
+Even though he proved a D’Estourny, would you love him still?”
+
+“Oh, my father! you do not know your daughter. Could I love a coward, a
+man without honor, without faith?”
+
+“But suppose he had deceived you?”
+
+“He? that honest, candid soul, half melancholy? You are joking, father,
+or else you have never met him.”
+
+“But you see now that your love is not inextinguishable, as you chose
+to call it. I have already made you admit that circumstances could alter
+your poem; don’t you now see that fathers are good for something?”
+
+“You want to give me a lecture, papa; it is positively l’Ami des Enfants
+over again.”
+
+“Poor deceived girl,” said her father, sternly; “it is no lecture of
+mine, I count for nothing in it; indeed, I am only trying to soften the
+blow.”
+
+“Father, don’t play tricks with my life,” exclaimed Modeste, turning
+pale.
+
+“Then, my daughter, summon all your courage. It is you who have been
+playing tricks with your life, and life is now tricking you.”
+
+Modeste looked at her father in stupid amazement.
+
+“Suppose that young man whom you love, whom you saw four days ago at
+church in Havre, was a deceiver?”
+
+“Never!” she cried; “that noble head, that pale face full of poetry--”
+
+“--was a lie,” said the colonel interrupting her. “He was no more
+Monsieur de Canalis than I am that sailor over there putting out to
+sea.”
+
+“Do you know what you are killing in me?” she said in a low voice.
+
+“Comfort yourself, my child; though accident has put the punishment of
+your fault into the fault itself, the harm done is not irreparable.
+The young man whom you have seen, and with whom you exchanged hearts
+by correspondence, is a loyal and honorable fellow; he came to me and
+confided everything. He loves you, and I have no objection to him as a
+son-in-law.”
+
+“If he is not Canalis, who is he then?” said Modeste in a changed voice.
+
+“The secretary; his name is Ernest de La Briere. He is not a nobleman;
+but he is one of those plain men with fixed principles and sound
+morality who satisfy parents. However, that is not the point; you
+have seen him and nothing can change your heart; you have chosen him,
+comprehend his soul, it is as beautiful as he himself.”
+
+The count was interrupted by a heavy sigh from Modeste. The poor girl
+sat with her eyes fixed on the sea, pale and rigid as death, as if a
+pistol shot had struck her in those fatal words, _a plain man, with
+fixed principles and sound morality_.
+
+“Deceived!” she said at last.
+
+“Like your poor sister, but less fatally.”
+
+“Let us go home, father,” she said, rising from the hillock on which
+they were sitting. “Papa, hear me, I swear before God to obey your
+wishes, whatever they may be, in the _affair_ of my marriage.”
+
+“Then you don’t love him any longer?” asked her father.
+
+“I loved an honest man, with no falsehood on his face, upright as
+yourself, incapable of disguising himself like an actor, with the paint
+of another man’s glory on his cheeks.”
+
+“You said nothing could change you”; remarked the colonel, ironically.
+
+“Ah, do not trifle with me!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands and
+looking at her father in distressful anxiety; “don’t you see that you
+are wringing my heart and destroying my beliefs with your jokes.”
+
+“God forbid! I have told you the exact truth.”
+
+“You are very kind, father,” she said after a pause, and with a sort of
+solemnity.
+
+“He has kept your letters,” resumed the colonel; “now suppose the rash
+caresses of your soul had fallen into the hands of one of those poets
+who, as Dumay says, light their cigars with them?”
+
+“Oh!--you are going too far.”
+
+“Canalis told him so.”
+
+“Has Dumay seen Canalis?”
+
+“Yes,” answered her father.
+
+The two walked along in silence.
+
+“So that is why that _gentleman_,” resumed Modeste, “told me so much
+harm of poets and poetry; no wonder the little secretary said--Why,” she
+added, interrupting herself, “his virtues, his noble qualities, his fine
+sentiments are nothing but an epistolary theft! The man who steals glory
+and a name may very likely--”
+
+“--break locks, steal purses, and cut people’s throats on the highway,”
+ cried the colonel. “Ah, you young girls, that’s just like you,--with
+your peremptory opinions and your ignorance of life. A man who once
+deceives a woman was born under the scaffold on which he ought to die.”
+
+This ridicule stopped Modeste’s effervescence for a moment and least,
+and again there was silence.
+
+“My child,” said the colonel, presently, “men in society, as in nature
+everywhere, are made to win the hearts of women, and women must
+defend themselves. You have chosen to invert the parts. Was that wise?
+Everything is false in a false position. The first wrong-doing was
+yours. No, a man is not a monster because he seeks to please a woman; it
+is our right to win her by aggression with all its consequences, short
+of crime and cowardice. A man may have many virtues even if he does
+deceive a woman; if he deceives her, it is because he finds her wanting
+in some of the treasures that he sought in her. None but a queen, an
+actress, or a woman placed so far above a man that she seems to him a
+queen, can go to him of herself without incurring blame--and for a young
+girl to do it! Why, she is false to all that God has given her that is
+sacred and lovely and noble,--no matter with what grace or what poetry
+or what precautions she surrounds her fault.”
+
+“To seek the master and find the servant!” she said bitterly, “oh! I can
+never recover from it!”
+
+“Nonsense! Monsieur Ernest de La Briere is, to my thinking, fully the
+equal of the Baron de Canalis. He was private secretary of a cabinet
+minister, and he is now counsel for the Court of Claims; he has a heart,
+and he adores you, but--he _does not write verses_. No, I admit, he is
+not a poet; but for all that he may have a heart full of poetry. At
+any rate, my dear girl,” added her father, as Modeste made a gesture of
+disgust, “you are to see both of them, the sham and the true Canalis--”
+
+“Oh, papa!--”
+
+“Did you not swear just now to obey me in everything, even in the
+_affair_ of your marriage? Well, I allow you to choose which of the two
+you like best for a husband. You have begun by a poem, you shall finish
+with a bucolic, and try if you can discover the real character of these
+gentlemen here, in the country, on a few hunting or fishing excursions.”
+
+Modeste bowed her head and walked home with her father, listening to
+what he said but replying only in monosyllables.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. DISENCHANTED
+
+The poor girl had fallen humiliated from the alp she had scaled in
+search of her eagle’s nest, into the mud of the swamp below, where (to
+use the poetic language of an author of our day) “after feeling the
+soles of her feet too tender to tread the broken glass of reality,
+Imagination--which in that delicate bosom united the whole of womanhood,
+from the violet-hidden reveries of a chaste young girl to the passionate
+desires of the sex--had led her into enchanted gardens where, oh, bitter
+sight! she now saw, springing from the ground, not the sublime flower
+of her fancy, but the hairy, twisted limbs of the black mandragora.”
+ Modeste suddenly found herself brought down from the mystic heights of
+her love to a straight, flat road bordered with ditches,--in short the
+work-day path of common life. What ardent, aspiring soul would not have
+been bruised and broken by such a fall? Whose feet were these at which
+she had shed her thoughts? The Modeste who re-entered the Chalet was no
+more the Modeste who had left it two hours earlier than an actress in
+the street is like an actress on the boards. She fell into a state of
+numb depression that was pitiful to see. The sun was darkened, nature
+veiled itself, even the flowers no longer spoke to her. Like all young
+girls with a tendency to extremes, she drank too deeply of the cup of
+disillusion. She fought against reality, and would not bend her neck
+to the yoke of family and conventions; it was, she felt, too heavy,
+too hard, too crushing. She would not listen to the consolations of her
+father and mother, and tasted a sort of savage pleasure in letting her
+soul suffer to the utmost.
+
+“Poor Butscha was right,” she said one evening.
+
+The words indicate the distance she travelled in a short space of time
+and in gloomy sadness across the barren plain of reality. Sadness, when
+caused by the overgrowth of hope, is a disease,--sometimes a fatal one.
+It would be no mean object for physiology to search out in what ways
+and by what means Thought produces the same internal disorganization as
+poison; and how it is that despair affects the appetite, destroys the
+pylorus, and changes all the physical conditions of the strongest life.
+Such was the case with Modeste. In three short days she became the image
+of morbid melancholy; she did not sing, she could not be made to smile.
+Charles Mignon, becoming uneasy at the non-arrival of the two friends,
+thought of going to fetch them, when, on the evening of the fifth day,
+he received news of their movements through Latournelle.
+
+Canalis, excessively delighted at the idea of a rich marriage, was
+determined to neglect nothing that might help him to cut out La Briere,
+without, however, giving La Briere a chance to reproach him for having
+violated the laws of friendship. The poet felt that nothing would lower
+a lover so much in the eyes of a young girl as to exhibit him in a
+subordinate position; and he therefore proposed to La Briere, in the
+most natural manner, to take a little country-house at Ingouville for a
+month, and live there together on pretence of requiring sea-air. As
+soon as La Briere, who at first saw nothing amiss in the proposal, had
+consented, Canalis declared that he should pay all expenses, and he sent
+his valet to Havre, telling him to see Monsieur Latournelle and get
+his assistance in choosing the house,--well aware that the notary would
+repeat all particulars to the Mignons. Ernest and Canalis had, as may
+well be supposed, talked over all the aspects of the affair, and the
+rather prolix Ernest had given a good many useful hints to his rival.
+The valet, understanding his master’s wishes, fulfilled them to the
+letter; he trumpeted the arrival of the great poet, for whom the doctors
+advised sea-air to restore his health, injured as it was by the double
+toils of literature and politics. This important personage wanted a
+house, which must have at least such and such a number of rooms, as he
+would bring with him a secretary, cook, two servants, and a coachman,
+not counting himself, Germain Bonnet, the valet. The carriage, selected
+and hired for a month by Canalis, was a pretty one; and Germain
+set about finding a pair of fine horses which would also answer as
+saddle-horses,--for, as he said, monsieur le baron and his secretary
+took horseback exercise. Under the eyes of little Latournelle, who went
+with him to various houses, Germain made a good deal of talk about the
+secretary, rejecting two or three because there was no suitable room for
+Monsieur de La Briere.
+
+“Monsieur le baron,” he said to the notary, “makes his secretary quite
+his best friend. Ah! I should be well scolded if Monsieur de La Briere
+was not as well treated as monsieur le baron himself; and after all, you
+know, Monsieur de La Briere is a lawyer in my master’s court.”
+
+Germain never appeared in public unless punctiliously dressed in
+black, with spotless gloves, well-polished boots, and otherwise as well
+apparelled as a lawyer. Imagine the effect he produced in Havre, and the
+idea people took of the great poet from this sample of him! The valet
+of a man of wit and intellect ends by getting a little wit and intellect
+himself which has rubbed off from his master. Germain did not overplay
+his part; he was simple and good-humored, as Canalis had instructed him
+to be. Poor La Briere was in blissful ignorance of the harm Germain
+was doing to his prospects, and the depreciation his consent to the
+arrangement had brought upon him; it is, however, true that some inkling
+of the state of things rose to Modeste’s ears from these lower regions.
+
+Canalis had arranged to bring his secretary in his own carriage, and
+Ernest’s unsuspicious nature did not perceive that he was putting
+himself in a false position until too late to remedy it. The delay in
+the arrival of the pair which had troubled Charles Mignon was caused by
+the painting of the Canalis arms on the panels of the carriage, and by
+certain orders given to a tailor; for the poet neglected none of the
+innumerable details which might, even the smallest of them, influence a
+young girl.
+
+“It is all right,” said Latournelle to Mignon on the sixth day. “The
+baron’s valet has hired Madame Amaury’s villa at Sanvic, all furnished,
+for seven hundred francs; he has written to his master that he may
+start, and that all will be ready on his arrival. So the two gentlemen
+will be here Sunday. I have also had a letter from Butscha; here it is;
+it’s not long: ‘My dear master,--I cannot get back till Sunday. Between
+now and then I have some very important inquiries to make which concern
+the happiness of a person in whom you take an interest.’”
+
+The announcement of this arrival did not rouse Modeste from her gloom;
+the sense of her fall and the bewilderment of her mind were still
+too great, and she was not nearly as much of a coquette as her father
+thought her to be. There is, in truth, a charming and permissible
+coquetry, that of the soul, which may claim to be love’s politeness.
+Charles Mignon, when scolding his daughter, failed to distinguish
+between the mere desire of pleasing and the love of the mind,--the
+thirst for love, and the thirst for admiration. Like every true colonel
+of the Empire he saw in this correspondence, rapidly read, only the
+young girl who had thrown herself at the head of a poet; but in the
+letters which we were forced to lack of space to suppress, a better
+judge would have admired the dignified and gracious reserve which
+Modeste had substituted for the rather aggressive and light-minded tone
+of her first letters. The father, however, was only too cruelly right on
+one point. Modeste’s last letter, which we have read, had indeed spoken
+as though the marriage were a settled fact, and the remembrance of that
+letter filled her with shame; she thought her father very harsh and
+cruel to force her to receive a man unworthy of her, yet to whom
+her soul had flown, as it were, bare. She questioned Dumay about his
+interview with the poet, she inveigled him into relating its every
+detail, and she did not think Canalis as barbarous as the lieutenant had
+declared him. The thought of the beautiful casket which held the letters
+of the thousand and one women of this literary Don Juan made her smile,
+and she was strongly tempted to say to her father: “I am not the only
+one to write to him; the elite of my sex send their leaves for the
+laurel wreath of the poet.”
+
+During this week Modeste’s character underwent a transformation. The
+catastrophe--and it was a great one to her poetic nature--roused a
+faculty of discernment and also the malice latent in her girlish heart,
+in which her suitors were about to encounter a formidable adversary. It
+is a fact that when a young woman’s heart is chilled her head becomes
+clear; she observes with great rapidity of judgment, and with a tinge of
+pleasantry which Shakespeare’s Beatrice so admirably represents in “Much
+Ado about Nothing.” Modeste was seized with a deep disgust for men, now
+that the most distinguished among them had betrayed her hopes. When a
+woman loves, what she takes for disgust is simply the ability to see
+clearly; but in matters of sentiment she is never, especially if she is
+a young girl, in a condition to see clearly. If she cannot admire, she
+despises. And so, after passing through terrible struggles of the soul,
+Modeste necessarily put on the armor on which, as she had once declared,
+the word “Disdain” was engraved. After reaching that point she was able,
+in the character of uninterested spectator, to take part in what she was
+pleased to call the “farce of the suitors,” a performance in which she
+herself was about to play the role of heroine. She particularly set
+before her mind the satisfaction of humiliating Monsieur de La Briere.
+
+“Modeste is saved,” said Madame Mignon to her husband; “she wants to
+revenge herself on the false Canalis by trying to love the real one.”
+
+Such in truth was Modeste’s plan. It was so utterly commonplace that her
+mother, to whom she confided her griefs, advised her on the contrary to
+treat Monsieur de La Briere with extreme politeness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. A THIRD SUITOR
+
+“Those two young men,” said Madame Latournelle, on the Saturday evening,
+“have no idea how many spies they have on their tracks. We are eight in
+all, on the watch.”
+
+“Don’t say two young men, wife; say three!” cried little Latournelle,
+looking round him. “Gobenheim is not here, so I can speak out.”
+
+Modeste raised her head, and everybody, imitating Modeste, raised theirs
+and looked at the notary.
+
+“Yes, a third lover--and he is something like a lover--offers himself as
+a candidate.”
+
+“Bah!” exclaimed the colonel.
+
+“I speak of no less a person,” said Latournelle, pompously, “than
+Monsieur le Duc d’Herouville, Marquis de Saint-Sever, Duc de Nivron,
+Comte de Bayeux, Vicomte d’Essigny, grand equerry and peer of France,
+knight of the Spur and the Golden Fleece, grandee of Spain, and son of
+the last governor of Normandy. He saw Mademoiselle Modeste at the time
+when he was staying with the Vilquins, and he regretted then--as his
+notary, who came from Bayeux yesterday, tells me--that she was not
+rich enough for him; for his father recovered nothing but the estate of
+Herouville on his return to France, and that is saddled with a sister.
+The young duke is thirty-three years old. I am definitively charged to
+lay these proposals before you, Monsieur le comte,” added the notary,
+turning respectfully to the colonel.
+
+“Ask Modeste if she wants another bird in her cage,” replied the count;
+“as far as I am concerned, I am willing that my lord the grand equerry
+shall pay her attention.”
+
+Notwithstanding the care with which Charles Mignon avoided seeing
+people, and though he stayed in the Chalet and never went out without
+Modeste, Gobenheim had reported Dumay’s wealth; for Dumay had said to
+him when giving up his position as cashier: “I am to be bailiff for my
+colonel, and all my fortune, except what my wife needs, is to go to
+the children of our little Modeste.” Every one in Havre had therefore
+propounded the same question that the notary had already put to himself:
+“If Dumay’s share in the profits is six hundred thousand francs, and
+he is going to be Monsieur Mignon’s bailiff, then Monsieur Mignon must
+certainly have a colossal fortune. He arrived at Marseilles on a ship of
+his own, loaded with indigo; and they say at the Bourse that the cargo,
+not counting the ship, is worth more than he gives out as his whole
+fortune.”
+
+The colonel was unwilling to dismiss the servants he had brought back
+with him, whom he had chosen with care during his travels; and he
+therefore hired a house for them in the lower part of Ingouville, where
+he installed his valet, cook, and coachman, all Negroes, and three
+mulattos on whose fidelity he could rely. The coachman was told to
+search for saddle-horses for Mademoiselle and for his master, and for
+carriage-horses for the caleche in which the colonel and the lieutenant
+had returned to Havre. That carriage, bought in Paris, was of the
+latest fashion, and bore the arms of La Bastie, surmounted by a count’s
+coronet. These things, insignificant in the eyes of a man who for four
+years had been accustomed to the unbridled luxury of the Indies and of
+the English merchants at Canton, were the subject of much comment
+among the business men of Havre and the inhabitants of Ingouville and
+Graville. Before five days had elapsed the rumor of them ran from one
+end of Normandy to the other like a train of gunpowder touched by fire.
+
+“Monsieur Mignon has come back from China with millions,” some one said
+in Rouen; “and it seems he was made a count in mid-ocean.”
+
+“But he was the Comte de La Bastie before the Revolution,” answered
+another.
+
+“So they call him a liberal just because he was plain Charles Mignon for
+twenty-five years! What are we coming to?” said a third.
+
+Modeste was considered, therefore, notwithstanding the silence of her
+parents and friends, as the richest heiress in Normandy, and all eyes
+began once more to see her merits. The aunt and sister of the Duc
+d’Herouville confirmed in the aristocratic salons of Bayeux Monsieur
+Charles Mignon’s right to the title and arms of count, derived from
+Cardinal Mignon, for whom the Cardinal’s hat and tassels were added as a
+crest. They had seen Mademoiselle de La Bastie when they were staying
+at the Vilquins, and their solicitude for the impoverished head of their
+house now became active.
+
+“If Mademoiselle de La Bastie is really as rich as she is beautiful,”
+ said the aunt of the young duke, “she is the best match in the province.
+_She_ at least is noble.”
+
+The last words were aimed at the Vilquins, with whom they had not been
+able to come to terms, after incurring the humiliation of staying in
+that bourgeois household.
+
+Such were the little events which, contrary to the rules of Aristotle
+and of Horace, precede the introduction of another person into our
+story; but the portrait and the biography of this personage, this
+late arrival, shall not be long, taking into consideration his own
+diminutiveness. The grand equerry shall not take more space here than
+he will take in history. Monsieur le Duc d’Herouville, offspring of the
+matrimonial autumn of the last governor of Normandy, was born during the
+emigration in 1799, at Vienna. The old marechal, father of the present
+duke, returned with the king in 1814, and died in 1819, before he was
+able to marry his son. He could only leave him the vast chateau of
+Herouville, the park, a few dependencies, and a farm which he had bought
+back with some difficulty; all of which returned a rental of about
+fifteen thousand francs a year. Louis XVIII. gave the post of grand
+equerry to the son, who, under Charles X., received the usual pension of
+twelve thousand francs which was granted to the pauper peers of France.
+But what were these twenty-seven thousand francs a year and the salary
+of grand equerry to such a family? In Paris, of course, the young duke
+used the king’s coaches, and had a mansion provided for him in the rue
+Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, near the royal stables; his salary paid for
+his winters in the city, and his twenty-seven thousand francs for the
+summers in Normandy. If this noble personage was still a bachelor he was
+less to blame than his aunt, who was not versed in La Fontaine’s fables.
+Mademoiselle d’Herouville made enormous pretensions wholly out of
+keeping with the spirit of the times; for great names, without the money
+to keep them up, can seldom win rich heiresses among the higher French
+nobility, who are themselves embarrassed to provide for their sons under
+the new law of the equal division of property. To marry the young Duc
+d’Herouville, it was necessary to conciliate the great banking-houses;
+but the haughty pride of the daughter of the house alienated these
+people by cutting speeches. During the first years of the Restoration,
+from 1817 to 1825, Mademoiselle d’Herouville, though in quest of
+millions, refused, among others, the daughter of Mongenod the banker,
+with whom Monsieur de Fontaine afterwards contented himself.
+
+At last, having lost several good opportunities to establish her nephew,
+entirely through her own fault, she was just considering whether the
+property of the Nucingens was not too basely acquired, or whether she
+should lend herself to the ambition of Madame de Nucingen, who wished
+to make her daughter a duchess. The king, anxious to restore the
+d’Herouvilles to their former splendor, had almost brought about this
+marriage, and when it failed he openly accused Mademoiselle d’Herouville
+of folly. In this way the aunt made the nephew ridiculous, and the
+nephew, in his own way, was not less absurd. When great things disappear
+they leave crumbs, “frusteaux,” Rabelais would say, behind them; and
+the French nobility of this century has left us too many such fragments.
+Neither the clergy nor the nobility have anything to complain of in this
+long history of manners and customs. Those great and magnificent social
+necessities have been well represented; but we ought surely to renounce
+the noble title of historian if we are not impartial, if we do not here
+depict the present degeneracy of the race of nobles, although we have
+already done so elsewhere,--in the character of the Comte de Mortsauf
+(in “The Lily of the Valley”), in the “Duchesse de Langeais,” and the
+very nobleness of the nobility in the “Marquis d’Espard.” How then could
+it be that the race of heroes and valiant men belonging to the proud
+house of Herouville, who gave the famous marshal to the nation,
+cardinals to the church, great leaders to the Valois, knights to Louis
+XIV., was reduced to a little fragile being smaller than Butscha? That
+is a question which we ask ourselves in more than one salon in Paris
+when we hear the greatest names of France announced, and see the
+entrance of a thin, pinched, undersized young man, scarcely possessing
+the breath of life, or a premature old one, or some whimsical creature
+in whom an observer can with great difficulty trace the signs of a past
+grandeur. The dissipations of the reign of Louis XV., the orgies of that
+fatal and egotistic period, have produced an effete generation, in which
+manners alone survive the nobler vanished qualities,--forms, which are
+the sole heritage our nobles have preserved. The abandonment in which
+Louis XVI. was allowed to perish may thus be explained, with some slight
+reservations, as a wretched result of the reign of Madame de Pompadour.
+
+The grand equerry, a fair young man with blue eyes and a pallid face,
+was not without a certain dignity of thought; but his thin, undersized
+figure, and the follies of his aunt who had taken him to the Vilquins
+and elsewhere to pay his court, rendered him extremely diffident. The
+house of Herouville had already been threatened with extinction by the
+deed of a deformed being (see the “Enfant Maudit” in “Philosophical
+Studies”). The grand marshal, that being the family term for the member
+who was made duke by Louis XIII., married at the age of eighty. The
+young duke admired women, but he placed them too high and respected them
+too much; in fact, he adored them, and was only at his ease with those
+whom he could not respect. This characteristic caused him to lead a
+double life. He found compensation with women of easy virtue for the
+worship to which he surrendered himself in the salons, or, if you like,
+the boudoirs, of the faubourg Saint-Germain. Such habits and his puny
+figure, his suffering face with its blue eyes turning upward in ecstasy,
+increased the ridicule already bestowed upon him,--very unjustly
+bestowed, as it happened, for he was full of wit and delicacy; but his
+wit, which never sparkled, only showed itself when he felt at ease.
+Fanny Beaupre, an actress who was supposed to be his nearest friend (at
+a price), called him “a sound wine so carefully corked that you break
+all your corkscrews.” The beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, whom the
+grand equerry could only worship, annihilated him with a speech which,
+unfortunately, was repeated from mouth to mouth, like all such pretty
+and malicious sayings.
+
+“He always seems to me,” she said, “like one of those jewels of fine
+workmanship which we exhibit but never wear, and keep in cotton-wool.”
+
+Everything about him, even to his absurdly contrasting title of
+grand equerry, amused the good-natured king, Charles X., and made him
+laugh,--although the Duc d’Herouville justified his appointment in the
+matter of being a fine horseman. Men are like books, often understood
+and appreciated too late. Modeste had seen the duke during his fruitless
+visit to the Vilquins, and many of these reflections passed through
+her mind as she watched him come and go. But under the circumstances in
+which she now found herself, she saw plainly that the courtship of
+the Duc d’Herouville would save her from being at the mercy of either
+Canalis.
+
+“I see no reason,” she said to Latournelle, “why the Duc d’Herouville
+should not be received. I have passed, in spite of our indigence,” she
+continued, with a mischievous look at her father, “to the condition
+of heiress. Haven’t you observed Gobenheim’s glances? They have quite
+changed their character within a week. He is in despair at not being
+able to make his games of whist count for mute adoration of my charms.”
+
+“Hush, my darling!” cried Madame Latournelle, “here he comes.”
+
+“Old Althor is in despair,” said Gobenheim to Monsieur Mignon as he
+entered.
+
+“Why?” asked the count.
+
+“Vilquin is going to fail; and the Bourse thinks you are worth several
+millions. What ill-luck for his son!”
+
+“No one knows,” said Charles Mignon, coldly, “what my liabilities in
+India are; and I do not intend to take the public into my confidence as
+to my private affairs. Dumay,” he whispered to his friend, “if Vilquin
+is embarrassed we could get back the villa by paying him what he gave
+for it.”
+
+Such was the general state of things, due chiefly to accident, when on
+Sunday morning Canalis and La Briere arrived, with a courier in advance,
+at the villa of Madame Amaury. It was known that the Duc d’Herouville,
+his sister, and his aunt were coming the following Tuesday to occupy,
+also under pretext of ill-health, a hired house at Graville. This
+assemblage of suitors made the wits of the Bourse remark that, thanks to
+Mademoiselle Mignon, rents would rise at Ingouville. “If this goes on,
+she will have a hospital here,” said the younger Mademoiselle Vilquin,
+vexed at not becoming a duchess.
+
+The everlasting comedy of “The Heiress,” about to be played at the
+Chalet, might very well be called, in view of Modeste’s frame of mind,
+“The Designs of a Young Girl”; for since the overthrow of her illusions
+she had fully made up her mind to give her hand to no man whose
+qualifications did not fully satisfy her.
+
+The two rivals, still intimate friends, intended to pay their first
+visit at the Chalet on the evening of the day succeeding their arrival.
+They had spent Sunday and part of Monday in unpacking and arranging
+Madame Amaury’s house for a month’s stay. The poet, always calculating
+effects, wished to make the most of the probable excitement which his
+arrival would case in Havre, and which would of course echo up to the
+Mignons. Therefore, in his role of a man needing rest, he did not leave
+the house. La Briere went twice to walk past the Chalet, though always
+with a sense of despair, for he feared to displease Modeste, and the
+future seemed to him dark with clouds. The two friends came down to
+dinner on Monday dressed for the momentous visit. La Briere wore the
+same clothes he had so carefully selected for the famous Sunday; but
+he now felt like the satellite of a planet, and resigned himself to
+the uncertainties of his situation. Canalis, on the other hand, had
+carefully attended to his black coat, his orders, and all those little
+drawing-room elegancies, which his intimacy with the Duchesse de
+Chaulieu and the fashionable world of the faubourg had brought to
+perfection. He had gone into the minutiae of dandyism, while poor La
+Briere was about to present himself with the negligence of a man without
+hope. Germain, as he waited at dinner could not help smiling to himself
+at the contrast. After the second course, however, the valet came in
+with a diplomatic, that is to say, uneasy air.
+
+“Does Monsieur le baron know,” he said to Canalis in a low voice, “that
+Monsieur the grand equerry is coming to Graville to get cured of the
+same illness which has brought Monsieur de La Briere and Monsieur le
+baron to the sea-shore?”
+
+“What, the little Duc d’Herouville?”
+
+“Yes, monsieur.”
+
+“Is he coming for Mademoiselle de La Bastie?” asked La Briere, coloring.
+
+“So it appears, monsieur.”
+
+“We are cheated!” cried Canalis looking at La Briere.
+
+“Ah!” retorted Ernest quickly, “that is the first time you have said,
+‘we’ since we left Paris: it has been ‘I’ all along.”
+
+“You understood me,” cried Canalis, with a burst of laughter. “But
+we are not in a position to struggle against a ducal coronet, nor the
+duke’s title, nor against the waste lands which the Council of State
+have just granted, on my report, to the house of Herouville.”
+
+“His grace,” said La Briere, with a spice of malice that was
+nevertheless serious, “will furnish you with compensation in the person
+of his sister.”
+
+At this instant, the Comte de La Bastie was announced; the two young men
+rose at once, and La Briere hastened forward to present Canalis.
+
+“I wished to return the visit that you paid me in Paris,” said the count
+to the young lawyer, “and I knew that by coming here I should have the
+double pleasure of greeting one of our great living poets.”
+
+“Great!--Monsieur,” replied the poet, smiling, “no one can be great in a
+century prefaced by the reign of a Napoleon. We are a tribe of would-be
+great poets; besides, second-rate talent imitates genius nowadays, and
+renders real distinction impossible.”
+
+“Is that the reason why you have thrown yourself into politics?” asked
+the count.
+
+“It is the same thing in that sphere,” said the poet; “there are no
+statesmen in these days, only men who handle events more or less. Look
+at it, monsieur; under the system of government that we derive from the
+Charter, which makes a tax-list of more importance than a coat-of-arms,
+there is absolutely nothing solid except that which you went to seek in
+China,--wealth.”
+
+Satisfied with himself and with the impression he was making on the
+prospective father-in-law, Canalis turned to Germain.
+
+“Serve the coffee in the salon,” he said, inviting Monsieur de La Bastie
+to leave the dining-room.
+
+“I thank you for this visit, monsieur le comte,” said La Briere; “it
+saves me from the embarrassment of presenting my friend to you in your
+own house. You have a heart, and you have also a quick mind.”
+
+“Bah! the ready wit of Provence, that is all,” said Charles Mignon.
+
+“Ah, do you come from Provence?” cried Canalis.
+
+“You must pardon my friend,” said La Briere; “he has not studied, as I
+have, the history of La Bastie.”
+
+At the word _friend_ Canalis threw a searching glance at Ernest.
+
+“If your health will allow,” said the count to the poet, “I shall hope
+to receive you this evening under my roof; it will be a day to mark,
+as the old writer said ‘albo notanda lapillo.’ Though we cannot duly
+receive so great a fame in our little house, yet your visit will gratify
+my daughter, whose admiration for your poems has even led her to set
+them to music.”
+
+“You have something better than fame in your house,” said Canalis; “you
+have beauty, if I am to believe Ernest.”
+
+“Yes, a good daughter; but you will find her rather countrified,” said
+Charles Mignon.
+
+“A country girl sought by the Duc d’Herouville,” remarked Canalis,
+dryly.
+
+“Oh!” replied Monsieur Mignon, with the perfidious good-humor of a
+Southerner, “I leave my daughter free. Dukes, princes, commoners,--they
+are all the same to me, even men of genius. I shall make no pledges, and
+whoever my Modeste chooses will be my son-in-law, or rather my son,” he
+added, looking at La Briere. “It could not be otherwise. Madame de La
+Bastie is German. She has never adopted our etiquette, and I let my
+two women lead me their own way. I have always preferred to sit in
+the carriage rather than on the box. I can make a joke of all this at
+present, for we have not yet seen the Duc d’Herouville, and I do not
+believe in marriages arranged by proxy, any more than I believe in
+choosing my daughter’s husband.”
+
+“That declaration is equally encouraging and discouraging to two young
+men who are searching for the philosopher’s stone of happiness in
+marriage,” said Canalis.
+
+“Don’t you consider it useful, necessary, and even politic to stipulate
+for perfect freedom of action for parents, daughters, and suitors?”
+ asked Charles Mignon.
+
+Canalis, at a sign from La Briere, kept silence. The conversation
+presently became unimportant, and after a few turns round the garden the
+count retired, urging the visit of the two friends.
+
+“That’s our dismissal,” cried Canalis; “you saw it as plainly as I did.
+Well, in his place, I should not hesitate between the grand equerry and
+either of us, charming as we are.”
+
+“I don’t think so,” said La Briere. “I believe that frank soldier came
+here to satisfy his desire to see you, and to warn us of his neutrality
+while receiving us in his house. Modeste, in love with your fame, and
+misled by my person, stands, as it were, between the real and the ideal,
+between poetry and prose. I am, unfortunately, the prose.”
+
+“Germain,” said Canalis to the valet, who came to take away the coffee,
+“order the carriage in half an hour. We will take a drive before we go
+to the Chalet.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. A SPLENDID FIRST APPEARANCE
+
+The two young men were equally impatient to see Modeste, but La Briere
+dreaded the interview, while Canalis approached it with the confidence
+of self-conceit. The eagerness with which La Briere had met the
+father, and the flattery of his attention to the family pride of the
+ex-merchant, showed Canalis his own maladroitness, and determined him to
+select a special role. The great poet resolved to pretend indifference,
+though all the while displaying his seductive powers; to appear to
+disdain the young lady, and thus pique her self-love. Trained by
+the handsome Duchesse de Chaulieu, he was bound to be worthy of his
+reputation as a man who knew women, when, in fact, he did not know them
+at all,--which is often the case with those who are the happy victims
+of an exclusive passion. While poor Ernest, gloomily ensconced in his
+corner of the caleche, gave way to the terrors of genuine love, and
+foresaw instinctively the anger, contempt, and disdain of an injured and
+offended young girl, Canalis was preparing himself, not less silently,
+like an actor making ready for an important part in a new play;
+certainly neither of them presented the appearance of a happy man.
+Important interests were involved for Canalis. The mere suggestion of
+his desire to marry would bring about a rupture of the tie which had
+bound him for the last ten years to the Duchesse de Chaulieu. Though
+he had covered the purpose of his journey with the vulgar pretext of
+needing rest,--in which, by the bye, women never believe, even when
+it is true,--his conscience troubled him somewhat; but the word
+“conscience” seemed so Jesuitical to La Briere that he shrugged his
+shoulders when the poet mentioned his scruples.
+
+“Your conscience, my friend, strikes me as nothing more nor less than a
+dread of losing the pleasures of vanity, and some very real advantages
+and habits by sacrificing the affections of Madame de Chaulieu; for, if
+you were sure of succeeding with Modeste, you would renounce without the
+slightest compunction the wilted aftermath of a passion that has been
+mown and well-raked for the last eight years. If you simply mean that
+you are afraid of displeasing your protectress, should she find out the
+object of your stay here, I believe you. To renounce the duchess and yet
+not succeed at the Chalet is too heavy a risk. You take the anxiety of
+this alternative for remorse.”
+
+“You have no comprehension of feelings,” said the poet, irritably, like
+a man who hears truth when he expects a compliment.
+
+“That is what a bigamist should tell the jury,” retorted La Briere,
+laughing.
+
+This epigram made another disagreeable impression on Canalis. He began
+to think La Briere too witty and too free for a secretary.
+
+The arrival of an elegant caleche, driven by a coachman in the Canalis
+livery, made the more excitement at the Chalet because the two suitors
+were expected, and all the personages of this history were assembled to
+receive them, except the duke and Butscha.
+
+“Which is the poet?” asked Madame Latournelle of Dumay in the embrasure
+of a window, where she stationed herself as soon as she heard the
+wheels.
+
+“The one who walks like a drum-major,” answered the lieutenant.
+
+“Ah!” said the notary’s wife, examining Canalis, who was swinging his
+body like a man who knows he is being looked at. The fault lay with the
+great lady who flattered him incessantly and spoiled him,--as all women
+older than their adorers invariably spoil and flatter them; Canalis in
+his moral being was a sort of Narcissus. When a woman of a certain age
+wishes to attach a man forever, she begins by deifying his defects, so
+as to cut off all possibility of rivalry; for a rival is never, at the
+first approach, aware of the super-fine flattery to which the man is
+accustomed. Coxcombs are the product of this feminine manoeuvre, when
+they are not fops by nature. Canalis, taken young by the handsome
+duchess, vindicated his affectations to his own mind by telling himself
+that they pleased that “grande dame,” whose taste was law. Such shades
+of character may be excessively faint, but it is improper for the
+historian not to point them out. For instance, Melchior possessed a
+talent for reading which was greatly admired, and much injudicious
+praise had given him a habit of exaggeration, which neither poets nor
+actors are willing to check, and which made people say of him (always
+through De Marsay) that he no longer declaimed, he bellowed his verses;
+lengthening the sounds that he might listen to himself. In the slang of
+the green-room, Canalis “dragged the time.” He was fond of exchanging
+glances with his hearers, throwing himself into postures of
+self-complacency and practising those tricks of demeanor which actors
+call “balancoires,”--the picturesque phrase of an artistic people.
+Canalis had his imitators, and was in fact the head of a school of
+his kind. This habit of declamatory chanting slightly affected his
+conversation, as we have seen in his interview with Dumay. The moment
+the mind becomes finical the manners follow suit, and the great poet
+ended by studying his demeanor, inventing attitudes, looking furtively
+at himself in mirrors, and suiting his discourse to the particular
+pose which he happened to have taken up. He was so preoccupied with the
+effect he wished to produce, that a practical joke, Blondet, had bet
+once or twice, and won the wager, that he could nonplus him at any
+moment by merely looking fixedly at his hair, or his boots, or the tails
+of his coats.
+
+These airs and graces, which started in life with a passport of flowery
+youth, now seemed all the more stale and old because Melchior himself
+was waning. Life in the world of fashion is quite as exhausting to men
+as it is to women, and perhaps the twenty years by which the duchess
+exceeded her lover’s age, weighed more heavily upon him than upon her;
+for to the eyes of the world she was always handsome,--without rouge,
+without wrinkles, and without heart. Alas! neither men nor women have
+friends who are friendly enough to warn them of the moment when the
+fragrance of their modesty grows stale, when the caressing glance is
+but an echo of the stage, when the expression of the face changes from
+sentiment to sentimentality, and the artifices of the mind show their
+rusty edges. Genius alone renews its skin like a snake; and in the
+matter of charm, as in everything else, it is only the heart that never
+grows old. People who have hearts are simple in all their ways. Now
+Canalis, as we know, had a shrivelled heart. He misused the beauty of
+his glance by giving it, without adequate reason, the fixity that comes
+to the eyes in meditation. In short, applause was to him a business, in
+which he was perpetually on the lookout for gain. His style of paying
+compliments, charming to superficial people, seemed insulting to
+others of more delicacy, by its triteness and the cool assurance of
+its cut-and-dried flattery. As a matter of fact, Melchior lied like a
+courtier. He remarked without blushing to the Duc de Chaulieu, who made
+no impression whatever when he was obliged to address the Chamber as
+minister of foreign affairs, “Your excellency was truly sublime!” Many
+men like Canalis are purged of their affectations by the administration
+of non-success in little doses.
+
+These defects, slight in the gilded salons of the faubourg
+Saint-Germain, where every one contributes his or her quota of
+absurdity, and where these particular forms of exaggerated speech
+and affected diction--magniloquence, if you please to call it so--are
+surrounded by excessive luxury and sumptuous toilettes, which are to
+some extent their excuse, were certain to be far more noticed in the
+provinces, whose own absurdities are of a totally different type.
+Canalis, by nature over-strained and artificial, could not change his
+form; in fact, he had had time to grow stiff in the mould into which the
+duchess had poured him; moreover, he was thoroughly Parisian, or, if
+you prefer it, truly French. The Parisian is amazed that everything
+everywhere is not as it in Paris; the Frenchman, as it is in France.
+Good taste, on the contrary, demands that we adapt ourselves to the
+customs of foreigners without losing too much of our own character,--as
+did Alcibiades, that model of a gentleman. True grace is elastic; it
+lends itself to circumstances; it is in harmony with all social centres;
+it wears a robe of simple material in the streets, noticeable only by
+its cut, in preference to the feathers and flounces of middle-class
+vulgarity. Now Canalis, instigated by a woman who loved herself much
+more than she loved him, wished to lay down the law and be, everywhere,
+such as he himself might see fit to be. He believed he carried his own
+public with him wherever he went,--an error shared by several of the
+great men of Paris.
+
+While the poet made a studied and effective entrance into the salon of
+the Chalet, La Briere slipped in behind him like a person of no account.
+
+“Ha! do I see my soldier?” said Canalis, perceiving Dumay, after
+addressing a compliment to Madame Mignon, and bowing to the other women.
+“Your anxieties are relieved, are they not?” he said, offering his hand
+effusively; “I comprehend them to their fullest extent after seeing
+mademoiselle. I spoke to you of terrestrial creatures, not of angels.”
+
+All present seemed by their attitudes to ask the meaning of this speech.
+
+“I shall always consider it a triumph,” resumed the poet, observing that
+everybody wished for an explanation, “to have stirred to mention one
+of those men of iron whom Napoleon had the eye to find and make the
+supporting piles on which he tried to build an empire, too colossal
+to be lasting: for such structures time alone is the cement. But this
+triumph--why should I be proud of it?--I count for nothing. It was the
+triumph of ideas over facts. Your battles, my dear Monsieur Dumay, your
+heroic charges, Monsieur le comte, nay, war itself was the form in which
+Napoleon’s idea clothed itself. Of all of these things, what remains?
+The sod that covers them knows nothing; harvests come and go without
+revealing their resting-place; were it not for the historian, the
+writer, futurity would have no knowledge of those heroic days. Therefore
+your fifteen years of war are now ideas and nothing more; that which
+preserves the Empire forever is the poem that the poets make of them. A
+nation that can win such battles must know how to sing them.”
+
+Canalis paused, to gather by a glance that ran round the circle the
+tribute of amazement which he expected of provincials.
+
+“You must be aware, monsieur, of the regret I feel at not seeing you,”
+ said Madame Mignon, “since you compensate me with the pleasure of
+hearing you.”
+
+Modeste, determined to think Canalis sublime, sat motionless with
+amazement; the embroidery slipped from her fingers, which held it only
+by the needleful of thread.
+
+“Modeste, this is Monsieur Ernest de La Briere. Monsieur Ernest, my
+daughter,” said the count, thinking the secretary too much in the
+background.
+
+The young girl bowed coldly, giving Ernest a glance that was meant to
+prove to every one present that she saw him for the first time.
+
+“Pardon me, monsieur,” she said without blushing; “the great admiration
+I feel for the greatest of our poets is, in the eyes of my friends, a
+sufficient excuse for seeing only him.”
+
+The pure, fresh voice, with accents like that of Mademoiselle Mars,
+charmed the poor secretary, already dazzled by Modeste’s beauty, and
+in his sudden surprise he answered by a phrase that would have been
+sublime, had it been true.
+
+“He is my friend,” he said.
+
+“Ah, then you do pardon me,” she replied.
+
+“He is more than a friend,” cried Canalis taking Ernest by the shoulder
+and leaning upon it like Alexander on Hephaestion, “we love each other
+as though we were brothers--”
+
+Madame Latournelle cut short the poet’s speech by pointing to Ernest
+and saying aloud to her husband, “Surely that is the gentleman we saw at
+church.”
+
+“Why not?” said Charles Mignon, quickly, observing that Ernest reddened.
+
+Modeste coldly took up her embroidery.
+
+“Madame may be right; I have been twice in Havre lately,” replied La
+Briere, sitting down by Dumay.
+
+Canalis, charmed with Modeste’s beauty, mistook the admiration she
+expressed, and flattered himself he had succeeded in producing his
+desired effects.
+
+“I should think a man without heart, if he had no devoted friend near
+him,” said Modeste, to pick up the conversation interrupted by Madame
+Latournelle’s awkwardness.
+
+“Mademoiselle, Ernest’s devotion makes me almost think myself worth
+something,” said Canalis; “for my dear Pylades is full of talent; he
+was the right hand of the greatest minister we have had since the peace.
+Though he holds a fine position, he is good enough to be my tutor in the
+science of politics; he teaches me to conduct affairs and feeds me with
+his experience, when all the while he might aspire to a much better
+situation. Oh! he is worth far more than I.” At a gesture from Modeste
+he continued gracefully: “Yes, the poetry that I express he carries in
+his heart; and if I speak thus openly before him it is because he has
+the modesty of a nun.”
+
+“Enough, oh, enough!” cried La Briere, who hardly knew which way to
+look. “My dear Canalis, you remind me of a mother who is seeking to
+marry off her daughter.”
+
+“How is it, monsieur,” said Charles Mignon, addressing Canalis, “that
+you can even think of becoming a political character?”
+
+“It is abdication,” said Modeste, “for a poet; politics are the resource
+of matter-of-fact men.”
+
+“Ah, mademoiselle, the rostrum is to-day the greatest theatre of the
+world; it has succeeded the tournaments of chivalry, it is now the
+meeting-place for all intellects, just as the army has been the
+rallying-point of courage.”
+
+Canalis stuck spurs into his charger and talked for ten minutes on
+political life: “Poetry was but a preface to the statesman.” “To-day the
+orator has become a sublime reasoner, the shepherd of ideas.” “A poet
+may point the way to nations or individuals, but can he ever cease to be
+himself?” He quoted Chateaubriand and declared that he would one day be
+greater on the political side than on the literary. “The forum of France
+was to be the pharos of humanity.” “Oral battles supplanted fields of
+battle: there were sessions of the Chamber finer than any Austerlitz,
+and orators were seen to be as lofty as generals; they spent their
+lives, their courage, their strength, as freely as those who went to
+war.” “Speech was surely one of the most prodigal outlets of the vital
+fluid that man had ever known,” etc.
+
+This improvisation of modern commonplaces, clothed in sonorous phrases
+and newly invented words, and intended to prove that the Comte de
+Canalis was becoming one of the glories of the French government, made
+a deep impression upon the notary and Gobenheim, and upon Madame
+Latournelle and Madame Mignon. Modeste looked as though she were at the
+theatre, in an attitude of enthusiasm for an actor,--very much like
+that of Ernest toward herself; for though the secretary knew all these
+high-sounding phrases by heart, he listened through the eyes, as it
+were, of the young girl, and grew more and more madly in love with
+her. To this true lover, Modeste was eclipsing all the Modestes he had
+created as he read her letters and answered them.
+
+This visit, the length of which was predetermined by Canalis, careful
+not to allow his admirers a chance to get surfeited, ended by an
+invitation to dinner on the following Monday.
+
+“We shall not be at the Chalet,” said the Comte de La Bastie. “Dumay
+will have sole possession of it. I return to the villa, having bought it
+back under a deed of redemption within six months, which I have to-day
+signed with Monsieur Vilquin.”
+
+“I hope,” said Dumay, “that Vilquin will not be able to return to you
+the sum you have just lent him, and that the villa will remain yours.”
+
+“It is an abode in keeping with your fortune,” said Canalis.
+
+“You mean the fortune that I am supposed to have,” replied Charles
+Mignon, hastily.
+
+“It would be too sad,” said Canalis, turning to Modeste with a charming
+little bow, “if this Madonna were not framed in a manner worthy of her
+divine perfections.”
+
+That was the only thing Canalis said to Modeste. He affected not to
+look at her, and behaved like a man to whom all idea of marriage was
+interdicted.
+
+“Ah! my dear Madame Mignon,” cried the notary’s wife, as soon as the
+gravel was heard to grit under the feet of the Parisians, “what an
+intellect!”
+
+“Is he rich?--that is the question,” said Gobenheim.
+
+Modeste was at the window, not losing a single movement of the great
+poet, and paying no attention to his companion. When Monsieur Mignon
+returned to the salon, and Modeste, having received a last bow from the
+two friends as the carriage turned, went back to her seat, a weighty
+discussion took place, such as provincials invariably hold over
+Parisians after a first interview. Gobenheim repeated his phrase, “Is
+he rich?” as a chorus to the songs of praise sung by Madame Latournelle,
+Modeste, and her mother.
+
+“Rich!” exclaimed Modeste; “what can that signify! Do you not see that
+Monsieur de Canalis is one of those men who are destined for the highest
+places in the State. He has more than fortune; he possesses that which
+gives fortune.”
+
+“He will be minister or ambassador,” said Monsieur Mignon.
+
+“That won’t hinder tax-payers from having to pay the costs of his
+funeral,” remarked the notary.
+
+“How so?” asked Charles Mignon.
+
+“He strikes me as a man who will waste all the fortunes with whose gifts
+Mademoiselle Modeste so liberally endows him,” answered Latournelle.
+
+“Modeste can’t avoid being liberal to a poet who called her a Madonna,”
+ said Dumay, sneering, and faithful to the repulsion with which Canalis
+had originally inspired him.
+
+Gobenheim arranged the whist-table with all the more persistency
+because, since the return of Monsieur Mignon, Latournelle and Dumay had
+allowed themselves to play for ten sous points.
+
+“Well, my little darling,” said the father to the daughter in the
+embrasure of a window. “Admit that papa thinks of everything. If you
+send your orders this evening to your former dressmaker in Paris, and
+all your other furnishing people, you shall show yourself eight days
+hence in all the splendor of an heiress. Meantime we will install
+ourselves in the villa. You already have a pretty horse, now order a
+habit; you owe that amount of civility to the grand equerry.”
+
+“All the more because there will be a number of us to ride,” said
+Modeste, who was recovering the colors of health.
+
+“The secretary did not say much,” remarked Madame Mignon.
+
+“A little fool,” said Madame Latournelle; “the poet has an attentive
+word for everybody. He thanked Monsieur Latournelle for his help in
+choosing the house; and said he must have taken counsel with a woman of
+good taste. But the other looked as gloomy as a Spaniard, and kept his
+eyes fixed on Modeste as though he would like to swallow her whole. If
+he had even looked at me I should have been afraid of him.”
+
+“He had a pleasant voice,” said Madame Mignon.
+
+“No doubt he came to Havre to inquire about the Mignons in the interests
+of his friend the poet,” said Modeste, looking furtively at her father.
+“It was certainly he whom we saw in church.”
+
+Madame Dumay and Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, accepted this as the
+natural explanation of Ernest’s journey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. OF WHICH THE AUTHOR THINKS A GOOD DEAL
+
+“Do you know, Ernest,” cried Canalis, when they had driven a short
+distance from the house, “I don’t see any marriageable woman in society
+in Paris who compares with that adorable girl.”
+
+“Ah, that ends it!” replied Ernest. “She loves you, or she will love you
+if you desire it. Your fame won half the battle. Well, you may now
+have it all your own way. You shall go there alone in future. Modeste
+despises me; she is right to do so; and I don’t see any reason why I
+should condemn myself to see, to love, desire, and adore that which I
+can never possess.”
+
+After a few consoling remarks, dashed with his own satisfaction at
+having made a new version of Caesar’s phrase, Canalis divulged a desire
+to break with the Duchesse de Chaulieu. La Briere, totally unable to
+keep up the conversation, made the beauty of the night an excuse to be
+set down, and then rushed like one possessed to the seashore, where he
+stayed till past ten, in a half-demented state, walking hurriedly up
+and down, talking aloud in broken sentences, sometimes standing still
+or sitting down, without noticing the uneasiness of two custom-house
+officers who were on the watch. After loving Modeste’s wit and
+intellect and her aggressive frankness, he now joined adoration of her
+beauty--that is to say, love without reason, love inexplicable--to all
+the other reasons which had drawn him ten days earlier, to the church in
+Havre.
+
+He returned to the Chalet, where the Pyrenees hounds barked at him till
+he was forced to relinquish the pleasure of gazing at Modeste’s windows.
+In love, such things are of no more account to the lover than the work
+which is covered by the last layer of color is to an artist; yet they
+make up the whole of love, just as the hidden toil is the whole of art.
+Out of them arise the great painter and the true lover whom the woman
+and the public end, sometimes too late, by adoring.
+
+“Well then!” he cried aloud, “I will stay, I will suffer, I will love
+her for myself only, in solitude. Modeste shall be my sun, my life; I
+will breathe with her breath, rejoice in her joys and bear her griefs,
+be she even the wife of that egoist, Canalis.”
+
+“That’s what I call loving, monsieur,” said a voice which came from a
+shrub by the side of the road. “Ha, ha, so all the world is in love with
+Mademoiselle de La Bastie?”
+
+And Butscha suddenly appeared and looked at La Briere. La Briere checked
+his anger when, by the light of the moon, he saw the dwarf, and he made
+a few steps without replying.
+
+“Soldiers who serve in the same company ought to be good comrades,”
+ remarked Butscha. “You don’t love Canalis; neither do I.”
+
+“He is my friend,” replied Ernest.
+
+“Ha, you are the little secretary?”
+
+“You are to know, monsieur, that I am no man’s secretary. I have the
+honor to be of counsel to a supreme court of this kingdom.”
+
+“I have the honor to salute Monsieur de La Briere,” said Butscha. “I
+myself have the honor to be head clerk to Latournelle, chief councillor
+of Havre, and my position is a better one than yours. Yes, I have had
+the happiness of seeing Mademoiselle Modeste de La Bastie nearly every
+evening for the last four years, and I expect to live near her, as a
+king’s servant lives in the Tuileries. If they offered me the throne of
+Russia I should answer, ‘I love the sun too well.’ Isn’t that telling
+you, monsieur, that I care more for her than for myself? I am looking
+after her interests with the most honorable intentions. Do you believe
+that the proud Duchesse de Chaulieu would cast a favorable eye on the
+happiness of Madame de Canalis if her waiting-woman, who is in love with
+Monsieur Germain, not liking that charming valet’s absence in Havre,
+were to say to her mistress while brushing her hair--”
+
+“Who do you know about all this?” said La Briere, interrupting Butscha.
+
+“In the first place, I am clerk to a notary,” answered Butscha. “But
+haven’t you seen my hump? It is full of resources, monsieur. I have made
+myself cousin to Mademoiselle Philoxene Jacmin, born at Honfleur, where
+my mother was born, a Jacmin,--there are eight branches of the Jacmins
+at Honfleur. So my cousin Philoxene, enticed by the bait of a highly
+improbable fortune, has told me a good many things.”
+
+“The duchess is vindictive?” said La Briere.
+
+“Vindictive as a queen, Philoxene says; she has never yet forgiven the
+duke for being nothing more than her husband,” replied Butscha. “She
+hates as she loves. I know all about her character, her tastes, her
+toilette, her religion, and her manners; for Philoxene stripped her for
+me, soul and corset. I went to the opera expressly to see her, and I
+didn’t grudge the ten francs it cost me--I don’t mean the play. If my
+imaginary cousin had not told me the duchess had seen her fifty summers,
+I should have thought I was over-generous in giving her thirty; she has
+never known a winter, that duchess!”
+
+“Yes,” said La Briere, “she is a cameo--preserved because it is stone.
+Canalis would be in a bad way if the duchess were to find out what he
+is doing here; and I hope, monsieur, that you will go no further in this
+business of spying, which is unworthy of an honest man.”
+
+“Monsieur,” said Butscha, proudly; “for me Modeste is my country. I do
+not spy; I foresee, I take precautions. The duchess will come here if
+it is desirable, or she will stay tranquilly where she is, according to
+what I judge best.”
+
+“You?”
+
+“I.”
+
+“And how, pray?”
+
+“Ha, that’s it!” said the little hunchback, plucking a blade of grass.
+“See here! this herb believes that men build palaces for it to grow in;
+it wedges its way between the closest blocks of marble, and brings
+them down, just as the masses forced into the edifice of feudality have
+brought it to the ground. The power of the feeble life that can creep
+everywhere is greater than that of the mighty behind their cannons. I
+am one of three who have sworn that Modeste shall be happy, and we would
+sell our honor for her. Adieu, monsieur. If you truly love Mademoiselle
+de La Bastie, forget this conversation and shake hands with me, for I
+think you’ve got a heart. I longed to see the Chalet, and I got here
+just as SHE was putting out her light. I saw the dogs rush at you, and
+I overheard your words, and that is why I take the liberty of saying we
+serve in the same regiment--that of loyal devotion.”
+
+“Monsieur,” said La Briere, wringing the hunchback’s hand, “would you
+have the friendliness to tell me if Mademoiselle Modeste ever loved any
+one WITH LOVE before she wrote to Canalis?”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Butscha in an altered voice; “that thought is an insult.
+And even now, who knows if she really loves? does she know herself?
+She is enamored of genius, of the soul and intellect of that seller of
+verses, that literary quack; but she will study him, we shall all study
+him; and I know how to make the man’s real character peep out from under
+that turtle-shell of fine manners,--we’ll soon see the petty little head
+of his ambition and his vanity!” cried Butscha, rubbing his hands. “So,
+unless mademoiselle is desperately taken with him--”
+
+“Oh! she was seized with admiration when she saw him, as if he were
+something marvellous,” exclaimed La Briere, letting the secret of his
+jealousy escape him.
+
+“If he is a loyal, honest fellow, and loves her; if he is worthy of
+her; if he renounces his duchess,” said Butscha,--“then I’ll manage the
+duchess! Here, my dear sir, take this road, and you will get home in ten
+minutes.”
+
+But as they parted, Butscha turned back and hailed poor Ernest, who,
+as a true lover, would gladly have stayed there all night talking of
+Modeste.
+
+“Monsieur,” said Butscha, “I have not yet had the honor of seeing our
+great poet. I am very curious to observe that magnificent phenomenon
+in the exercise of his functions. Do me the favor to bring him to the
+Chalet to-morrow evening, and stay as long as possible; for it takes
+more than an hour for a man to show himself for what he is. I shall be
+the first to see if he loves, if he can love, or if he ever will love
+Mademoiselle Modeste.”
+
+“You are very young to--”
+
+“--to be a professor,” said Butscha, cutting short La Briere. “Ha,
+monsieur, deformed folks are born a hundred years old. And besides, a
+sick man who has long been sick, knows more than his doctor; he knows
+the disease, and that is more than can be said for the best of doctors.
+Well, so it is with a man who cherishes a woman in his heart when the
+woman is forced to disdain him for his ugliness or his deformity; he
+ends by knowing so much of love that he becomes seductive, just as the
+sick man recovers his health; stupidity alone is incurable. I have
+had neither father nor mother since I was six years old; I am now
+twenty-five. Public charity has been my mother, the procureur du roi my
+father. Oh! don’t be troubled,” he added, seeing Ernest’s gesture; “I am
+much more lively than my situation. Well, for the last six years, ever
+since a woman’s eye first told me I had no right to love, I do love, and
+I study women. I began with the ugly ones, for it is best to take the
+bull by the horns. So I took my master’s wife, who has certainly been
+an angel to me, for my first study. Perhaps I did wrong; but I couldn’t
+help it. I passed her through my alembic and what did I find? this
+thought, crouching at the bottom of her heart, ‘I am not so ugly as they
+think me’; and if a man were to work upon that thought he could bring
+her to the edge of the abyss, pious as she is.”
+
+“And have you studied Modeste?”
+
+“I thought I told you,” replied Butscha, “that my life belongs to her,
+just as France belongs to the king. Do you now understand what you
+called my spying in Paris? No one but me really knows what nobility,
+what pride, what devotion, what mysterious grace, what unwearying
+kindness, what true religion, gaiety, wit, delicacy, knowledge, and
+courtesy there are in the soul and in the heart of that adorable
+creature!”
+
+Butscha drew out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, and La Briere
+pressed his hand for a long time.
+
+“I live in the sunbeam of her existence; it comes from her, it is
+absorbed in me; that is how we are united,--as nature is to God, by the
+Light and by the Word. Adieu, monsieur; never in my life have I talked
+in this way; but seeing you beneath her windows, I felt in my heart that
+you loved her as I love her.”
+
+Without waiting for an answer Butscha quitted the poor lover, into whose
+heart his words had put an inexpressible balm. Ernest resolved to make
+a friend of him, not suspecting that the chief object of the clerk’s
+loquacity was to gain communication with some one connected with
+Canalis. Ernest was rocked to sleep that night by the ebb and flow
+of thoughts and resolutions and plans for his future conduct, whereas
+Canalis slept the sleep of the conqueror, which is the sweetest of
+slumbers after that of the just.
+
+At breakfast next morning, the friends agreed to spend the evening
+of the following day at the Chalet and initiate themselves into the
+delights of provincial whist. To get rid of the day they ordered their
+horses, purchased by Germain at a large price, and started on a voyage
+of discovery round the country, which was quite as unknown to them
+as China; for the most foreign thing to Frenchmen in France is France
+itself.
+
+By dint of reflecting on his position as an unfortunate and despised
+lover, Ernest went through something of the same process as Modeste’s
+first letter had forced upon him. Though sorrow is said to develop
+virtue, it only develops it in virtuous persons; that cleaning-out of
+the conscience takes place only in persons who are by nature clean.
+La Briere vowed to endure his sufferings in Spartan silence, to act
+worthily, and give way to no baseness; while Canalis, fascinated by the
+enormous “dot,” was telling himself to take every means of captivating
+the heiress. Selfishness and devotion, the key-notes of the two
+characters, therefore took, by the action of a moral law which is often
+very odd in its effects, certain measures that were contrary to their
+respective natures. The selfish man put on self-abnegation; the man who
+thought chiefly of others took refuge on the Aventinus of pride. That
+phenomenon is often seen in political life. Men frequently turn their
+characters wrong side out, and it sometimes happens that the public is
+unable to tell which is the right side.
+
+After dinner the two friends heard of the arrival of the grand equerry,
+who was presented at the Chalet the same evening by Latournelle.
+Mademoiselle d’Herouville had contrived to wound that worthy man by
+sending a footmen to tell him to come to her, instead of sending her
+nephew in person; thus depriving the notary of a distinguished visit he
+would certainly have talked about for the rest of his natural life. So
+Latournelle curtly informed the grand equerry, when he proposed to
+drive him to the Chalet, that he was engaged to take Madame Latournelle.
+Guessing from the little man’s sulky manner that there was some blunder
+to repair, the duke said graciously:--
+
+“Then I shall have the pleasure, if you will allow me, of taking Madame
+Latournelle also.”
+
+Disregarding Mademoiselle d’Herouville’s haughty shrug, the duke left
+the room with the notary. Madame Latournelle, half-crazed with joy at
+seeing the gorgeous carriage at her door, with footmen in royal livery
+letting down the steps, was too agitated on hearing that the grand
+equerry had called for her, to find her gloves, her parasol, her
+absurdity, or her usual air of pompous dignity. Once in the carriage,
+however, and while expressing confused thanks and civilities to the
+little duke, she suddenly exclaimed, from a thought in her kind heart,--
+
+“But Butscha, where is he?”
+
+“Let us take Butscha,” said the duke, smiling.
+
+When the people on the quays, attracted in groups by the splendor of the
+royal equipage, saw the funny spectacle, the three little men with the
+spare gigantic woman, they looked at one another and laughed.
+
+“If you melt all three together, they might make one man fit to mate
+with that big cod-fish,” said a sailor from Bordeaux.
+
+“Is there any other thing you would like to take with you, madame?”
+ asked the duke, jestingly, while the footman awaited his orders.
+
+“No, monseigneur,” she replied, turning scarlet and looking at her
+husband as much as to say, “What did I do wrong?”
+
+“Monsieur le duc honors me by considering that I am a thing,” said
+Butscha; “a poor clerk is usually thought to be a nonentity.”
+
+Though this was said with a laugh, the duke colored and did not answer.
+Great people are to blame for joking with their social inferiors.
+Jesting is a game, and games presuppose equality; it is to obviate any
+inconvenient results of this temporary equality that players have the
+right, after the game is over, not to recognize each other.
+
+The visit of the grand equerry had the ostensible excuse of an important
+piece of business; namely, the retrieval of an immense tract of waste
+land left by the sea between the mouths of the two rivers, which
+tract had just been adjudged by the Council of State to the house of
+Herouville. The matter was nothing less than putting flood-gates with
+double bridges, draining three or four hundred acres, cutting canals,
+and laying out roadways. When the duke had explained the condition of
+the land, Charles Mignon remarked that time must be allowed for the
+soil, which was still moving, to settle and grow solid in a natural way.
+
+“Time, which has providentially enriched your house, Monsieur le duc,
+can alone complete the work,” he said, in conclusion. “It would be
+prudent to let fifty years elapse before you reclaim the land.”
+
+“Do not let that be your final word, Monsieur le comte,” said the duke.
+“Come to Herouville and see things for yourself.”
+
+Charles Mignon replied that every capitalist should take time to examine
+into such matters with a cool head, thus giving the duke a pretext for
+his visits to the Chalet. The sight of Modeste made a lively impression
+on the young man, and he asked the favor of receiving her at Herouville
+with her father, saying that his sister and his aunt had heard much of
+her, and wished to make her acquaintance. On this the count proposed
+to present his daughter to those ladies himself, and invited the whole
+party to dinner on the day of his return to the villa. The duke accepted
+the invitation. The blue ribbon, the title, and above all, the ecstatic
+glances of the noble gentleman had an effect upon Modeste; but she
+appeared to great advantage in carriage, dignity, and conversation. The
+duke withdrew reluctantly, carrying with him an invitation to visit the
+Chalet every evening,--an invitation based on the impossibility of a
+courtier of Charles X. existing for a single evening without his rubber.
+
+The following evening, therefore, Modeste was to see all three of her
+lovers. No matter what young girls may say, and though the logic of
+the heart may lead them to sacrifice everything to preference, it is
+extremely flattering to their self-love to see a number of rival
+adorers around them,--distinguished or celebrated men, or men of ancient
+lineage,--all endeavoring to shine and to please. Suffer as Modeste may
+in general estimation, it must be told she subsequently admitted that
+the sentiments expressed in her letters paled before the pleasure of
+seeing three such different minds at war with one another,--three men
+who, taken separately, would each have done honor to the most exacting
+family. Yet this luxury of self-love was checked by a misanthropical
+spitefulness, resulting from the terrible wound she had
+received,--although by this time she was beginning to think of that
+wound as a disappointment only. So when her father said to her,
+laughing, “Well, Modeste, do you want to be a duchess?” she answered,
+with a mocking curtsey,--
+
+“Sorrows have made me philosophical.”
+
+“Do you mean to be only a baroness?” asked Butscha.
+
+“Or a viscountess?” said her father.
+
+“How could that be?” she asked quickly.
+
+“If you accept Monsieur de La Briere, he has enough merit and influence
+to obtain permission from the king to bear my titles and arms.”
+
+“Oh, if it comes to disguising himself, _he_ will not make any
+difficulty,” said Modeste, scornfully.
+
+Butscha did not understand this epigram, whose meaning could only be
+guessed by Monsieur and Madame Mignon and Dumay.
+
+“When it is a question of marriage, all men disguise themselves,”
+ remarked Latournelle, “and women set them the example. I’ve heard
+it said ever since I came into the world that ‘Monsieur this or
+Mademoiselle that has made a good marriage,’--meaning that the other
+side had made a bad one.”
+
+“Marriage,” said Butscha, “is like a lawsuit; there’s always one side
+discontented. If one dupes the other, certainly half the husbands in the
+world are playing a comedy at the expense of the other half.”
+
+“From which you conclude, Sieur Butscha?” inquired Modeste.
+
+“To pay the utmost attention to the manoeuvres of the enemy,” answered
+the clerk.
+
+“What did I tell you, my darling?” said Charles Mignon, alluding to
+their conversation on the seashore.
+
+“Men play as many parts to get married as mothers make their daughters
+play to get rid of them,” said Latournelle.
+
+“Then you approve of stratagems?” said Modeste.
+
+“On both sides,” cried Gobenheim, “and that brings it even.”
+
+This conversation was carried on by fits and starts, as they say, in the
+intervals of cutting and dealing the cards; and it soon turned chiefly
+on the merits of the Duc d’Herouville, who was thought very good-looking
+by little Latournelle, little Dumay, and little Butscha. Without the
+foregoing discussion on the lawfulness of matrimonial tricks, the
+reader might possibly find the forthcoming account of the evening so
+impatiently awaited by Butscha, somewhat too long.
+
+Desplein, the famous surgeon, arrived the next morning, and stayed only
+long enough to send to Havre for fresh horses and have them put-to,
+which took about an hour. After examining Madame Mignon’s eyes, he
+decided that she could recover her sight, and fixed a suitable time, a
+month later, to perform the operation. This important consultation took
+place before the assembled members of the Chalet, who stood trembling
+and expectant to hear the verdict of the prince of science. That
+illustrious member of the Academy of Sciences put about a dozen brief
+questions to the blind woman as he examined her eyes in the strong light
+from a window. Modeste was amazed at the value which a man so celebrated
+attached to time, when she saw the travelling-carriage piled with books
+which the great surgeon proposed to read during the journey; for he had
+left Paris the evening before, and had spent the night in sleeping and
+travelling. The rapidity and clearness of Desplein’s judgment on each
+answer made by Madame Mignon, his succinct tone, his decisive manner,
+gave Modeste her first real idea of a man of genius. She perceived
+the enormous difference between a second-rate man, like Canalis, and
+Desplein, who was even more than a superior man. A man of genius finds
+in the consciousness of his talent and in the solidity of his fame an
+arena of his own, where his legitimate pride can expand and exercise
+itself without interfering with others. Moreover, his perpetual struggle
+with men and things leave them no time for the coxcombry of fashionable
+genius, which makes haste to gather in the harvests of a fugitive
+season, and whose vanity and self-love are as petty and exacting as a
+custom-house which levies tithes on all that comes in its way.
+
+Modeste was the more enchanted by this great practical genius, because
+he was evidently charmed with the exquisite beauty of Modeste,--he,
+through whose hands so many women had passed, and who had long since
+examined the sex, as it were, with magnifier and scalpel.
+
+“It would be a sad pity,” he said, with an air of gallantry which he
+occasionally put on, and which contrasted with his assumed brusqueness,
+“if a mother were deprived of the sight of so charming a daughter.”
+
+Modeste insisted on serving the simple breakfast which was all the
+great surgeon would accept. She accompanied her father and Dumay to the
+carriage stationed at the garden-gate, and said to Desplein at parting,
+her eyes shining with hope,--
+
+“And will my dear mamma really see me?”
+
+“Yes, my little sprite, I’ll promise you that,” he answered, smiling;
+“and I am incapable of deceiving you, for I, too, have a daughter.”
+
+The horses started and carried him off as he uttered the last words with
+unexpected grace and feeling. Nothing is more charming than the peculiar
+unexpectedness of persons of talent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. THE POET DOES HIS EXERCISES
+
+This visit of the great surgeon was the event of the day, and it left a
+luminous trace in Modeste’s soul. The young enthusiast ardently admired
+the man whose life belonged to others, and in whom the habit of studying
+physical suffering had destroyed the manifestations of egoism. That
+evening, when Gobenheim, the Latournelles, and Butscha, Canalis,
+Ernest, and the Duc d’Herouville were gathered in the salon, they all
+congratulated the Mignon family on the hopes which Desplein encouraged.
+The conversation, in which the Modeste of her letters was once more in
+the ascendant, turned naturally on the man whose genius, unfortunately
+for his fame, was appreciable only by the faculty and men of science.
+Gobenheim contributed a phrase which is the sacred chrism of genius as
+interpreted in these days by public economists and bankers,--
+
+“He makes a mint of money.”
+
+“They say he is very grasping,” added Canalis.
+
+The praises which Modeste showered on Desplein had annoyed the poet.
+Vanity acts like a woman,--they both think they are defrauded when love
+or praise is bestowed on others. Voltaire was jealous of the wit of a
+roue whom Paris admired for two days; and even a duchess takes offence
+at a look bestowed upon her maid. The avarice excited by these two
+sentiments is such that a fraction of them given to the poor is thought
+robbery.
+
+“Do you think, monsieur,” said Modeste, smiling, “that we should judge
+genius by ordinary standards?”
+
+“Perhaps we ought first of all to define the man of genius,” replied
+Canalis. “One of the conditions of genius is invention,--invention of a
+form, a system, a force. Napoleon was an inventor, apart from his other
+conditions of genius. He invented his method of making war. Walter Scott
+is an inventor, Linnaeus is an inventor, Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire and
+Cuvier are inventors. Such men are men of genius of the first rank. They
+renew, increase, or modify both science and art. But Desplein is merely
+a man whose vast talent consists in properly applying laws already
+known; in observing, by means of a natural gift, the limits laid down
+for each temperament, and the time appointed by Nature for an operation.
+He has not founded, like Hippocrates, the science itself. He has
+invented no system, as did Galen, Broussais, and Rasori. He is merely an
+executive genius, like Moscheles on the piano, Paganini on the violin,
+or Farinelli on his own larynx,--men who have developed enormous
+faculties, but who have not created music. You must permit me to
+discriminate between Beethoven and la Catalani: to one belongs the
+immortal crown of genius and of martyrdom, to the other innumerable
+five-franc pieces; one we can pay in coin, but the world remains
+throughout all time a debtor to the other. Each day increases our debt
+to Moliere, but Baron’s comedies have been overpaid.”
+
+“I think you make the prerogative of ideas too exclusive,” said Ernest
+de La Briere, in a quiet and melodious voice, which formed a sudden
+contrast to the peremptory tones of the poet, whose flexible organ had
+abandoned its caressing notes for the strident and magisterial voice
+of the rostrum. “Genius must be estimated according to its utility;
+and Parmentier, who brought potatoes into general use, Jacquart, the
+inventor of silk looms; Papin, who first discovered the elastic quality
+of steam, are men of genius, to whom statues will some day be erected.
+They have changed, or they will change in a certain sense, the face of
+the State. It is in that sense that Desplein will always be considered
+a man of genius by thinkers; they see him attended by a generation of
+sufferers whose pains are stifled by his hand.”
+
+That Ernest should give utterance to this opinion was enough to make
+Modeste oppose it.
+
+“If that be so, monsieur,” she said, “then the man who could discover a
+way to mow wheat without injuring the straw, by a machine that could do
+the work of ten men, would be a man of genius.”
+
+“Yes, my daughter,” said Madame Mignon; “and the poor would bless him
+for cheaper bread,--he that is blessed by the poor is blessed of God.”
+
+“That is putting utility above art,” said Modeste, shaking her head.
+
+“Without utility what would become of art?” said Charles Mignon. “What
+would it rest on? what would it live on? Where would you lodge, and how
+would you pay the poet?”
+
+“Oh! my dear papa, such opinions are fearfully flat and antediluvian!
+I am not surprised that Gobenheim and Monsieur de La Briere, who are
+interested in the solution of social problems should think so; but you,
+whose life has been the most useless poetry of the century,--useless
+because the blood you shed all over Europe, and the horrible sufferings
+exacted by your colossus, did not prevent France from losing ten
+departments acquired under the Revolution,--how can _you_ give in to
+such excessively pig-tail notions, as the idealists say? It is plain
+you’ve just come from China.”
+
+The impertinence of Modeste’s speech was heightened by a little air
+of contemptuous disdain which she purposely put on, and which fairly
+astounded Madame Mignon, Madame Latournelle, and Dumay. As for Madame
+Latournelle, she opened her eyes so wide she no longer saw anything.
+Butscha, whose alert attention was comparable to that of a spy, looked
+at Monsieur Mignon, expecting to see him flush with sudden and violent
+indignation.
+
+“A little more, young lady, and you will be wanting in respect for your
+father,” said the colonel, smiling, and noticing Butscha’s look. “See
+what it is to spoil one’s children!”
+
+“I am your only child,” she said saucily.
+
+“Child, indeed,” remarked the notary, significantly.
+
+“Monsieur,” said Modeste, turning upon him, “my father is delighted to
+have me for his governess; he gave me life and I give him knowledge; he
+will soon owe me something.”
+
+“There seems occasion for it,” said Madame Mignon.
+
+“But mademoiselle is right,” said Canalis, rising and standing before
+the fireplace in one of the finest attitudes of his collection. “God,
+in his providence, has given food and clothing to man, but he has not
+directly given him art. He says to man: ‘To live, thou must bow thyself
+to earth; to think, thou shalt lift thyself to Me.’ We have as much need
+of the life of the soul as of the life of the body,--hence, there are
+two utilities. It is true we cannot be shod by books or clothed by
+poems. An epic song is not, if you take the utilitarian view, as useful
+as the broth of a charity kitchen. The noblest ideas will not sail a
+vessel in place of canvas. It is quite true that the cotton-gin gives us
+calicoes for thirty sous a yard less than we ever paid before; but that
+machine and all other industrial perfections will not breathe the breath
+of life into a people, will not tell futurity of a civilization that
+once existed. Art, on the contrary, Egyptian, Mexican, Grecian, Roman
+art, with their masterpieces--now called useless!--reveal the existence
+of races back in the vague immense of time, beyond where the great
+intermediary nations, denuded of men of genius, have disappeared,
+leaving not a line nor a trace behind them! The works of genius are the
+‘summum’ of civilization, and presuppose utility. Surely a pair of boots
+are not as agreeable to your eyes as a fine play at the theatre; and you
+don’t prefer a windmill to the church of Saint-Ouen, do you? Well then,
+nations are imbued with the same feelings as the individual man, and
+the man’s cherished desire is to survive himself morally just as he
+propagates himself physically. The survival of a people is the work of
+its men of genius. At this very moment France is proving, energetically,
+the truth of that theory. She is, undoubtedly, excelled by England in
+commerce, industry, and navigation, and yet she is, I believe, at the
+head of the world,--by reason of her artists, her men of talent, and the
+good taste of her products. There is no artist and no superior intellect
+that does not come to Paris for a diploma. There is no school of
+painting at this moment but that of France; and we shall reign far
+longer and perhaps more securely by our books than by our swords. In La
+Briere’s system, on the other hand, all that is glorious and lovely must
+be suppressed,--woman’s beauty, music, painting, poetry. Society will
+not be overthrown, that is true, but, I ask you, who would willingly
+accept such a life? All useful things are ugly and forbidding. A kitchen
+is indispensable, but you take care not to sit there; you live in the
+salon, which you adorn, like this, with superfluous things. Of what
+_use_, let me ask you, are these charming wall-paintings, this carved
+wood-work? There is nothing beautiful but that which seems to us
+useless. We called the sixteenth century the Renascence with admirable
+truth of language. That century was the dawn of a new era. Men will
+continue to speak of it when all remembrance of anterior centuries had
+passed away,--their only merit being that they once existed, like the
+million beings who count as the rubbish of a generation.”
+
+“Rubbish! yes, that may be, but my rubbish is dear to me,” said the
+Duc d’Herouville, laughing, during the silent pause which followed the
+poet’s pompous oration.
+
+“Let me ask,” said Butscha, attacking Canalis, “does art, the sphere in
+which, according to you, genius is required to evolve itself, exist at
+all? Is it not a splendid lie, a delusion, of the social man? Do I want
+a landscape scene of Normandy in my bedroom when I can look out and see
+a better one done by God himself? Our dreams make poems more glorious
+than Iliads. For an insignificant sum of money I can find at Valogne, at
+Carentan, in Provence, at Arles, many a Venus as beautiful as those
+of Titian. The police gazette publishes tales, differing somewhat
+from those of Walter Scott, but ending tragically with blood, not ink.
+Happiness and virtue exist above and beyond both art and genius.”
+
+“Bravo, Butscha!” cried Madame Latournelle.
+
+“What did he say?” asked Canalis of La Briere, failing to gather from
+the eyes and attitude of Mademoiselle Mignon the usual signs of artless
+admiration.
+
+The contemptuous indifference which Modeste had exhibited toward La
+Briere, and above all, her disrespectful speeches to her father, so
+depressed the young man that he made no answer to Canalis; his eyes,
+fixed sorrowfully on Modeste, were full of deep meditation. The Duc
+d’Herouville took up Butscha’s argument and reproduced it with much
+intelligence, saying finally that the ecstasies of Saint-Theresa were
+far superior to the creations of Lord Byron.
+
+“Oh, Monsieur le duc,” exclaimed Modeste, “hers was a purely personal
+poetry, whereas the genius of Lord Byron and Moliere benefit the world.”
+
+“How do you square that opinion with those of Monsieur le baron?” cried
+Charles Mignon, quickly. “Now you are insisting that genius must be
+useful, and benefit the world as though it were cotton,--but perhaps you
+think logic as antediluvian as your poor old father.”
+
+Butscha, La Briere, and Madame Latournelle exchanged glances that were
+more than half derisive, and drove Modeste to a pitch of irritation that
+kept her silent for a moment.
+
+“Mademoiselle, do not mind them,” said Canalis, smiling upon her, “we
+are neither beaten, nor caught in a contradiction. Every work of art,
+let it be in literature, music, painting, sculpture, or architecture,
+implies a positive social utility, equal to that of all other commercial
+products. Art is pre-eminently commerce; presupposes it, in short. An
+author pockets ten thousand francs for his book; the making of books
+means the manufactory of paper, a foundry, a printing-office, a
+bookseller,--in other words, the employment of thousands of men. The
+execution of a symphony of Beethoven or an opera by Rossini requires
+human arms and machinery and manufactures. The cost of a monument is
+an almost brutal case in point. In short, I may say that the works of
+genius have an extremely costly basis and are, necessarily, useful to
+the workingman.”
+
+Astride of that theme, Canalis spoke for some minutes with a fine luxury
+of metaphor, and much inward complacency as to his phrases; but it
+happened with him, as with many another great speaker, that he found
+himself at last at the point from which the conversation started, and in
+full agreement with La Briere without perceiving it.
+
+“I see with much pleasure, my dear baron,” said the little duke, slyly,
+“that you will make an admirable constitutional minister.”
+
+“Oh!” said Canalis, with the gesture of a great man, “what is the use
+of all these discussions? What do they prove?--the eternal verity of one
+axiom: All things are true, all things are false. Moral truths as well
+as human beings change their aspect according to their surroundings, to
+the point of being actually unrecognizable.”
+
+“Society exists through settled opinions,” said the Duc d’Herouville.
+
+“What laxity!” whispered Madame Latournelle to her husband.
+
+“He is a poet,” said Gobenheim, who overheard her.
+
+Canalis, who was ten leagues above the heads of his audience, and who
+may have been right in his last philosophical remark, took the sort
+of coldness which now overspread the surrounding faces of a symptom of
+provincial ignorance; but seeing that Modeste understood him, he
+was content, being wholly unaware that monologue is particularly
+disagreeable to country-folk, whose principal desire it is to exhibit
+the manner of life and the wit and wisdom of the provinces to Parisians.
+
+“It is long since you have seen the Duchesse de Chaulieu?” asked the
+duke, addressing Canalis, as if to change the conversation.
+
+“I left her about six days ago.”
+
+“Is she well?” persisted the duke.
+
+“Perfectly well.”
+
+“Have the kindness to remember me to her when you write.”
+
+“They say she is charming,” remarked Modeste, addressing the duke.
+
+“Monsieur le baron can speak more confidently than I,” replied the grand
+equerry.
+
+“More than charming,” said Canalis, making the best of the duke’s
+perfidy; “but I am partial, mademoiselle; she has been a friend to me
+for the last ten years; I owe all that is good in me to her; she has
+saved me from the dangers of the world. Moreover, Monsieur le Duc de
+Chaulieu launched me in my present career. Without the influence of that
+family the king and the princesses would have forgotten a poor poet
+like me; therefore my affection for the duchess must always be full of
+gratitude.”
+
+His voice quivered.
+
+“We ought to love the woman who has led you to write those sublime
+poems, and who inspires you with such noble feelings,” said Modeste,
+quite affected. “Who can think of a poet without a muse!”
+
+“He would be without a heart,” replied Canalis. “He would write barren
+verses like Voltaire, who never loved any one but Voltaire.”
+
+“I thought you did me the honor to say, in Paris,” interrupted Dumay,
+“that you never felt the sentiments you expressed.”
+
+“The shoe fits, my soldier,” replied the poet, smiling; “but let me tell
+you that it is quite possible to have a great deal of feeling both in
+the intellectual life and in real life. My good friend here, La Briere,
+is madly in love,” continued Canalis, with a fine show of generosity,
+looking at Modeste. “I, who certainly love as much as he,--that is, I
+think so unless I delude myself,--well, I can give to my love a literary
+form in harmony with its character. But I dare not say, mademoiselle,”
+ he added, turning to Modeste with too studied a grace, “that to-morrow I
+may not be without inspiration.”
+
+Thus the poet triumphed over all obstacles. In honor of his love he
+rode a-tilt at the hindrances that were thrown in his way, and Modeste
+remained wonder-struck at the Parisian wit that scintillated in his
+declamatory discourse, of which she had hitherto known little or
+nothing.
+
+“What an acrobat!” whispered Butscha to Latournelle, after listening
+to a magnificent tirade on the Catholic religion and the happiness
+of having a pious wife,--served up in response to a remark by Madame
+Mignon.
+
+Modeste’s eyes were blindfolded as it were; Canalis’s elocution and the
+close attention which she was predetermined to pay to him prevented her
+from seeing that Butscha was carefully noting the declamation, the want
+of simplicity, the emphasis that took the place of feeling, and the
+curious incoherencies in the poet’s speech which led the dwarf to make
+his rather cruel comment. At certain points of Canalis’s discourse, when
+Monsieur Mignon, Dumay, Butscha, and Latournelle wondered at the
+man’s utter want of logic, Modeste admired his suppleness, and said to
+herself, as she dragged him after her through the labyrinth of fancy,
+“He loves me!” Butscha, in common with the other spectators of what
+we must call a stage scene, was struck with the radiant defect of all
+egoists, which Canalis, like many men accustomed to perorate, allowed to
+be too plainly seen. Whether he understood beforehand what the person he
+was speaking to meant to say, whether he was not listening, or whether
+he had the faculty of listening when he was thinking of something
+else, it is certain that Melchior’s face wore an absent-minded look in
+conversation, which disconcerted the ideas of others and wounded their
+vanity. Not to listen is not merely a want of politeness, it is a mark
+of disrespect. Canalis pushed this habit too far; for he often forgot
+to answer a speech which required an answer, and passed, without the
+ordinary transitions of courtesy, to the subject, whatever it was, that
+preoccupied him. Though such impertinence is accepted without protest
+from a man of marked distinction, it stirs a leaven of hatred and
+vengeance in many hearts; in those of equals it even goes so far as to
+destroy a friendship. If by chance Melchior was forced to listen, he
+fell into another fault; he merely lent his attention, and never
+gave it. Though this may not be so mortifying, it shows a kind of
+semi-concession which is almost as unsatisfactory to the hearer and
+leaves him dissatisfied. Nothing brings more profit in the commerce
+of society than the small change of attention. He that heareth let him
+hear, is not only a gospel precept, it is an excellent speculation;
+follow it, and all will be forgiven you, even vice. Canalis took a great
+deal of trouble in his anxiety to please Modeste; but though he was
+compliant enough with her, he fell back into his natural self with the
+others.
+
+Modeste, pitiless for the ten martyrs she was making, begged Canalis to
+read some of his poems; she wanted, she said, a specimen of his gift for
+reading, of which she had heard so much. Canalis took the volume which
+she gave him, and cooed (for that is the proper word) a poem which is
+generally considered his finest,--an imitation of Moore’s “Loves of the
+Angels,” entitled “Vitalis,” which Monsieur and Madame Dumay, Madame
+Latournelle, and Gobenheim welcomed with a few yawns.
+
+“If you are a good whist-player, monsieur,” said Gobenheim, flourishing
+five cards held like a fan, “I must say I have never met a man as
+accomplished as you.”
+
+The remark raised a laugh, for it was the translation of everybody’s
+thought.
+
+“I play it sufficiently well to live in the provinces for the rest of my
+days,” replied Canalis. “That, I think, is enough, and more than enough
+literature and conversation for whist-players,” he added, throwing the
+volume impatiently on a table.
+
+This little incident serves to show what dangers environ a drawing-room
+hero when he steps, like Canalis, out of his sphere; he is like the
+favorite actor of a second-rate audience, whose talent is lost when he
+leaves his own boards and steps upon those of an upper-class theatre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. MODESTE PLAYS HER PART
+
+The game opened with the baron and the duke, Gobenheim and Latournelle
+as partners. Modeste took a seat near the poet, to Ernest’s deep
+disappointment; he watched the face of the wayward girl, and marked the
+progress of the fascination which Canalis exerted over her. La
+Briere had not the gift of seduction which Melchior possessed. Nature
+frequently denies it to true hearts, who are, as a rule, timid. This
+gift demands fearlessness, an alacrity of ways and means that might be
+called the trapeze of the mind; a little mimicry goes with it; in fact
+there is always, morally speaking, something of the comedian in a poet.
+There is a vast difference between expressing sentiments we do not feel,
+though we may imagine all their variations, and feigning to feel them
+when bidding for success on the theatre of private life. And yet, though
+the necessary hypocrisy of a man of the world may have gangrened a poet,
+he ends by carrying the faculties of his talent into the expression of
+any required sentiment, just as a great man doomed to solitude ends by
+infusing his heart into his mind.
+
+“He is after the millions,” thought La Briere, sadly; “and he can play
+passion so well that Modeste will believe him.”
+
+Instead of endeavoring to appear more amiable and wittier than his
+rival, Ernest imitated the Duc d’Herouville, and was gloomy, anxious,
+and watchful; but whereas the courier studied the freaks of the young
+heiress, Ernest simply fell a prey to the pains of dark and concentrated
+jealousy. He had not yet been able to obtain a glance from his idol.
+After a while he left the room with Butscha.
+
+“It is all over!” he said; “she is caught by him; I am more disagreeable
+to her, and moreover, she is right. Canalis is charming; there’s
+intellect in his silence, passion in his eyes, poetry in his
+rhodomontades.”
+
+“Is he an honest man?” asked Butscha.
+
+“Oh, yes,” replied La Briere. “He is loyal and chivalrous, and capable
+of getting rid, under Modeste’s influence, of those affectations which
+Madame de Chaulieu has taught him.”
+
+“You are a fine fellow,” said the hunchback; “but is he capable of
+loving,--will he love her?”
+
+“I don’t know,” answered La Briere. “Has she said anything about me?” he
+asked after a moment’s silence.
+
+“Yes,” said Butscha, and he repeated Modeste’s speech about disguises.
+
+Poor Ernest flung himself upon a bench and held his head in his hands.
+He could not keep back his tears, and he did not wish Butscha to see
+them; but the dwarf was the very man to guess his emotion.
+
+“What troubles you?” he asked.
+
+“She is right!” cried Ernest, springing up; “I am a wretch.”
+
+And he related the deception into which Canalis had led him when
+Modeste’s first letter was received, carefully pointing out to Butscha
+that he had wished to undeceive the young girl before she herself
+took off the mask, and apostrophizing, in rather juvenile fashion, his
+luckless destiny. Butscha sympathetically understood the love in the
+flavor and vigor of his simple language, and in his deep and genuine
+anxiety.
+
+“But why don’t you show yourself to Mademoiselle Modeste for what you
+are?” he said; “why do you let your rival do his exercises?”
+
+“Have you never felt your throat tighten when you wished to speak to
+her?” cried La Briere; “is there never a strange feeling in the roots of
+your hair and on the surface of your skin when she looks at you,--even
+if she is thinking of something else?”
+
+“But you had sufficient judgment to show displeasure when she as good as
+told her excellent father that he was a dolt.”
+
+“Monsieur, I love her too well not to have felt a knife in my heart when
+I heard her contradicting her own perfections.”
+
+“Canalis supported her.”
+
+“If she had more self-love than heart there would be nothing for a man
+to regret in losing her,” answered La Briere.
+
+At this moment, Modeste, followed by Canalis, who had lost the rubber,
+came out with her father and Madame Dumay to breathe the fresh air of
+the starry night. While his daughter walked about with the poet, Charles
+Mignon left her and came up to La Briere.
+
+“Your friend, monsieur, ought to have been a lawyer,” he said, smiling
+and looking attentively at the young man.
+
+“You must not judge a poet as you would an ordinary man,--as you would
+me, for example, Monsieur le comte,” said La Briere. “A poet has a
+mission. He is obliged by his nature to see the poetry of questions,
+just as he expresses that of things. When you think him inconsistent
+with himself he is really faithful to his vocation. He is a painter
+copying with equal truth a Madonna and a courtesan. Moliere is as true
+to nature in his old men as in his young ones, and Moliere’s judgment
+was assuredly a sound and healthy one. These witty paradoxes might be
+dangerous for second-rate minds, but they have no real influence on the
+character of great men.”
+
+Charles Mignon pressed La Briere’s hand.
+
+“That adaptability, however, leads a man to excuse himself in his own
+eyes for actions that are diametrically opposed to each other; above
+all, in politics.”
+
+“Ah, mademoiselle,” Canalis was at this moment saying, in a caressing
+voice, replying to a roguish remark of Modeste, “do not think that a
+multiplicity of emotions can in any way lessen the strength of feelings.
+Poets, even more than other men, must needs love with constancy and
+faith. You must not be jealous of what is called the Muse. Happy is the
+wife of a man whose days are occupied. If you heard the complaints of
+women who have to endure the burden of an idle husband, either a man
+without duties, or one so rich as to have nothing to do, you would know
+that the highest happiness of a Parisian wife is freedom,--the right
+to rule in her own home. Now we writers and men of functions and
+occupations, we leave the sceptre to our wives; we cannot descend to
+the tyranny of little minds; we have something better to do. If I ever
+marry,--which I assure you is a catastrophe very remote at the present
+moment,--I should wish my wife to enjoy the same moral freedom that
+a mistress enjoys, and which is perhaps the real source of her
+attraction.”
+
+Canalis talked on, displaying the warmth of his fancy and all his
+graces, for Modeste’s benefit, as he spoke of love, marriage, and the
+adoration of women, until Monsieur Mignon, who had rejoined them, seized
+the opportunity of a slight pause to take his daughter’s arm and lead
+her up to Ernest de La Briere, whom he had been advising to seek an open
+explanation with her.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said Ernest, in a voice that was scarcely his own,
+“it is impossible for me to remain any longer under the weight of
+your displeasure. I do not defend myself; I do not seek to justify my
+conduct; I desire only to make you see that _before_ reading your most
+flattering letter, addressed to the individual and no longer to the
+poet,--the last which you sent to me,--I wished, and I told you in my
+note written at Havre that I wished, to correct the error under which
+you were acting. All the feelings that I have had the happiness to
+express to you are sincere. A hope dawned on me in Paris when your
+father told me he was comparatively poor,--but now that all is lost, now
+that nothing is left for me but endless regrets, why should I stay
+here where all is torture? Let me carry away with me one smile to live
+forever in my heart.”
+
+“Monsieur,” answered Modeste, who seemed cold and absent-minded, “I am
+not the mistress of this house; but I certainly should deeply regret to
+retain any one where he finds neither pleasure nor happiness.”
+
+She left La Briere and took Madame Dumay’s arm to re-enter the house. A
+few moments later all the actors in this domestic scene reassembled in
+the salon, and were a good deal surprised to see Modeste sitting beside
+the Duc d’Herouville and coquetting with him like an accomplished
+Parisian woman. She watched his play, gave him the advice he wanted, and
+found occasion to say flattering things by ranking the merits of noble
+birth with those of genius and beauty. Canalis thought he knew the
+reason of this change; he had tried to pique Modeste by calling marriage
+a catastrophe, and showing that he was aloof from it; but like others
+who play with fire, he had burned his fingers. Modeste’s pride and her
+present disdain frightened him, and he endeavored to recover his ground,
+exhibiting a jealousy which was all the more visible because it was
+artificial. Modeste, implacable as an angel, tasted the sweets of power,
+and, naturally enough, abused it. The Duc d’Herouville had never known
+such a happy evening; a woman smiled on him! At eleven o’clock, an
+unheard-of hour at the Chalet, the three suitors took their leave,--the
+duke thinking Modeste charming, Canalis believing her excessively
+coquettish, and La Briere heart-broken by her cruelty.
+
+For eight days the heiress continued to be to her three lovers very
+much what she had been during that evening; so that the poet appeared
+to carry the day against his rivals, in spite of certain freaks and
+caprices which from time to time gave the Duc d’Herouville a little
+hope. The disrespect she showed to her father, and the great liberties
+she took with him; her impatience with her blind mother, to whom she
+seemed to grudge the little services which had once been the delight
+of her filial piety,--seemed the result of a capricious nature and a
+heedless gaiety indulged from childhood. When Modeste went too far, she
+turned round and openly took herself to task, ascribing her impertinence
+and levity to a spirit of independence. She acknowledged to the duke
+and Canalis her distaste for obedience, and professed to regard it as an
+obstacle to her marriage; thus investigating the nature of her suitors,
+after the manner of those who dig into the earth in search of metals,
+coal, tufa, or water.
+
+“I shall never,” she said, the evening before the day on which the
+family were to move into the villa, “find a husband who will put up with
+my caprices as my father does; his kindness never flags. I am sure no
+one will ever be as indulgent to me as my precious mother.”
+
+“They know that you love them, mademoiselle,” said La Briere.
+
+“You may be very sure, mademoiselle, that your husband will know the
+full value of his treasure,” added the duke.
+
+“You have spirit and resolution enough to discipline a husband,” cried
+Canalis, laughing.
+
+Modeste smiled as Henri IV. must have smiled after drawing out the
+characters of his three principal ministers, for the benefit of a
+foreign ambassador, by means of three answers to an insidious question.
+
+On the day of the dinner, Modeste, led away by the preference she
+bestowed on Canalis, walked alone with him up and down the gravelled
+space which lay between the house and the lawn with its flower-beds.
+From the gestures of the poet, and the air and manner of the young
+heiress, it was easy to see that she was listening favorably to him.
+The two demoiselles d’Herouville hastened to interrupt the scandalous
+tete-a-tete; and with the natural cleverness of women under such
+circumstances, they turned the conversation on the court, and the
+distinction of an appointment under the crown,--pointing out the
+difference that existed between appointments in the household of the
+king and those of the crown. They tried to intoxicate Modeste’s mind by
+appealing to her pride, and describing one of the highest stations to
+which a woman could aspire.
+
+“To have a duke for a son,” said the elder lady, “is an actual
+advantage. The title is a fortune that we secure to our children without
+the possibility of loss.”
+
+“How is it, then,” said Canalis, displeased at his tete-a-tete being
+thus broken in upon, “that Monsieur le duc has had so little success in
+a matter where his title would seem to be of special service to him?”
+
+The two ladies cast a look at Canalis as full of venom as the tooth of a
+snake, and they were so disconcerted by Modeste’s amused smile that they
+were actually unable to reply.
+
+“Monsieur le duc has never blamed you,” she said to Canalis, “for the
+humility with which you bear your fame; why should you attack him for
+his modesty?”
+
+“Besides, we have never yet met a woman worthy of my nephew’s rank,”
+ said Mademoiselle d’Herouville. “Some had only the wealth of the
+position; others, without fortune, had the wit and birth. I must admit
+that we have done well to wait till God granted us an opportunity to
+meet one in whom we find the noble blood, the mind, and fortune of a
+Duchesse d’Herouville.”
+
+“My dear Modeste,” said Helene d’Herouville, leading her new friend
+apart, “there are a thousand barons in the kingdom, just as there are a
+hundred poets in Paris, who are worth as much as he; he is so little of
+a great man that even I, a poor girl forced to take the veil for want
+of a ‘dot,’ I would not take him. You don’t know what a young man is who
+has been for ten years in the hands of a Duchesse de Chaulieu. None but
+an old woman of sixty could put up with the little ailments of which,
+they say, the great poet is always complaining,--a habit in Louis XIV.
+that became a perfectly insupportable annoyance. It is true the duchess
+does not suffer from it as much as a wife, who would have him always
+about her.”
+
+Then, practising a well-known manoeuvre peculiar to her sex, Helene
+d’Herouville repeated in a low voice all the calumnies which women
+jealous of the Duchesse de Chaulieu were in the habit of spreading about
+the poet. This little incident, common as it is in the intercourse of
+women, will serve to show with what fury the hounds were after Modeste’s
+wealth.
+
+Ten days saw a great change in the opinions at the Chalet as to the
+three suitors for Mademoiselle de La Bastie’s hand. This change,
+which was much to the disadvantage of Canalis, came about through
+considerations of a nature which ought to make the holders of any kind
+of fame pause, and reflect. No one can deny, if we remember the passion
+with which people seek for autographs, that public curiosity is greatly
+excited by celebrity. Evidently most provincials never form an exact
+idea in their own minds of how illustrious Parisians put on their
+cravats, walk on the boulevards, stand gaping at nothing, or eat
+a cutlet; because, no sooner do they perceive a man clothed in the
+sunbeams of fashion or resplendent with some dignity that is more or
+less fugitive (though always envied), than they cry out, “Look at
+that!” “How queer!” and other depreciatory exclamations. In a word, the
+mysterious charm that attaches to every kind of fame, even that which
+is most justly due, never lasts. It is, and especially with superficial
+people who are envious or sarcastic, a sensation which passes off with
+the rapidity of lightning, and never returns. It would seem as though
+fame, like the sun, hot and luminous at a distance, is cold as the
+summit of an alp when you approach it. Perhaps man is only really great
+to his peers; perhaps the defects inherent in his constitution disappear
+sooner to the eyes of his equals than to those of vulgar admirers. A
+poet, if he would please in ordinary life, must put on the fictitious
+graces of those who are able to make their insignificances forgotten
+by charming manners and complying speeches. The poet of the faubourg
+Saint-Germain, who did not choose to bow before this social dictum, was
+made before long to feel that an insulting provincial indifference
+had succeeded to the dazed fascination of the earlier evenings. The
+prodigality of his wit and wisdom had produced upon these worthy souls
+somewhat the effect which a shopful of glass-ware produces on the eye;
+in other words, the fire and brilliancy of Canalis’s eloquence soon
+wearied people who, to use their own words, “cared more for the solid.”
+
+Forced after a while to behave like an ordinary man, the poet found an
+unexpected stumbling-block on ground where La Briere had already won the
+suffrage of the worthy people who at first had thought him sulky. They
+felt the need of compensating themselves for Canalis’s reputation by
+preferring his friend. The best of men are influenced by such feelings
+as these. The simple and straightforward young fellow jarred no one’s
+self-love; coming to know him better they discovered his heart, his
+modesty, his silent and sure discretion, and his excellent bearing.
+The Duc d’Herouville considered him, as a political element, far above
+Canalis. The poet, ill-balanced, ambitious, and restless as Tasso,
+loved luxury, grandeur, and ran into debt; while the young lawyer,
+whose character was equable and well-balanced, lived soberly, was useful
+without proclaiming it, awaited rewards without begging for them, and
+laid by his money.
+
+Canalis had moreover laid himself open in a special way to the bourgeois
+eyes that were watching him. For two or three days he had shown signs
+of impatience; he had given way to depression, to states of melancholy
+without apparent reason, to those capricious changes of temper which
+are the natural results of the nervous temperament of poets. These
+originalities (we use the provincial word) came from the uneasiness
+that his conduct toward the Duchesse de Chaulieu which grew daily less
+explainable, caused him. He knew he ought to write to her, but could not
+resolve on doing so. All these fluctuations were carefully remarked
+and commented on by the gentle American, and the excellent Madame
+Latournelle, and they formed the topic of many a discussion between
+these two ladies and Madame Mignon. Canalis felt the effects of these
+discussions without being able to explain them. The attention paid
+to him was not the same, the faces surrounding him no longer wore the
+entranced look of the earlier days; while at the same time Ernest was
+evidently gaining ground.
+
+For the last two days the poet had endeavored to fascinate Modeste only,
+and he took advantage of every moment when he found himself alone with
+her, to weave the web of passionate language around his love. Modeste’s
+blush, as she listened to him on the occasion we have just mentioned,
+showed the demoiselles d’Herouville the pleasure with which she was
+listening to sweet conceits that were sweetly said; and they, horribly
+uneasy at the sight, had immediate recourse to the “ultima ratio” of
+women in such cases, namely, those calumnies which seldom miss their
+object. Accordingly, when the party met at the dinner-table the poet
+saw a cloud on the brow of his idol; he knew that Mademoiselle
+d’Herouville’s malignity allowed him to lose no time, and he resolved
+to offer himself as a husband at the first moment when he could find
+himself alone with Modeste.
+
+Overhearing a few acid though polite remarks exchanged between the poet
+and the two noble ladies, Gobenheim nudged Butscha with his elbow,
+and said in an undertone, motioning towards the poet and the grand
+equerry,--
+
+“They’ll demolish one another!”
+
+“Canalis has genius enough to demolish himself all alone,” answered the
+dwarf.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. A RIDDLE GUESSED
+
+During the dinner, which was magnificent and admirably well served, the
+duke obtained a signal advantage over Canalis. Modeste, who had received
+her habit and other equestrian equipments the night before, spoke of
+taking rides about the country. A turn of the conversation led her to
+express the wish to see a hunt with hounds, a pleasure she had never yet
+enjoyed. The duke at once proposed to arrange a hunt in one of the crown
+forests, which lay a few leagues from Havre. Thanks to his intimacy
+with the Prince de Cadignan, Master of the Hunt, he saw his chance of
+displaying an almost regal pomp before Modeste’s eyes, and alluring her
+with a glimpse of court fascinations, to which she could be introduced
+by marriage. Glances were exchanged between the duke and the two
+demoiselles d’Herouville, which plainly said, “The heiress is ours!”
+ and the poet, who detected them, and who had nothing but his personal
+splendors to depend on, determined all the more firmly to obtain some
+pledge of affection at once. Modeste, on the other hand, half-frightened
+at being thus pushed beyond her intentions by the d’Herouvilles, walked
+rather markedly apart with Melchior, when the company adjourned to the
+park after dinner. With the pardonable curiosity of a young girl, she
+let him suspect the calumnies which Helene had poured into her ears; but
+on Canalis’s exclamation of anger, she begged him to keep silence about
+them, which he promised.
+
+“These stabs of the tongue,” he said, “are considered fair in the great
+world. They shock your upright nature; but as for me, I laugh at them; I
+am even pleased. These ladies must feel that the duke’s interests are in
+great peril, when they have recourse to such warfare.”
+
+Making the most of the advantage Modeste had thus given him, Canalis
+entered upon his defence with such warmth, such eagerness, and with a
+passion so exquisitely expressed, as he thanked her for a confidence in
+which he could venture to see the dawn of love, that she found herself
+suddenly as much compromised with the poet as she feared to be with the
+grand equerry. Canalis, feeling the necessity of prompt action, declared
+himself plainly. He uttered vows and protestations in which his poetry
+shone like a moon, invoked for the occasion, and illuminating his
+allusions to the beauty of his mistress and the charms of her evening
+dress. This counterfeit enthusiasm, in which the night, the foliage,
+the heavens and the earth, and Nature herself played a part, carried the
+eager lover beyond all bounds; for he dwelt on his disinterestedness,
+and revamped in his own charming style, Diderot’s famous apostrophe
+to “Sophie and fifteen hundred francs!” and the well-worn “love in
+a cottage” of every lover who knows perfectly well the length of the
+father-in-law’s purse.
+
+“Monsieur,” said Modeste, after listening with delight to the melody of
+this concerto; “the freedom granted to me by my parents has allowed me
+to listen to you; but it is to them that you must address yourself.”
+
+“But,” exclaimed Canalis, “tell me that if I obtain their consent, you
+will ask nothing better than to obey them.”
+
+“I know beforehand,” she replied, “that my father has certain fancies
+which may wound the proper pride of an old family like yours. He wishes
+to have his own title and name borne by his grandsons.”
+
+“Ah! dear Modeste, what sacrifices would I not make to commit my life to
+the guardian care of an angel like you.”
+
+“You will permit me not to decide in a moment the fate of my whole
+life,” she said, turning to rejoin the demoiselles d’Herouville.
+
+Those noble ladies were just then engaged in flattering the vanity
+of little Latournelle, intending to win him over to their interests.
+Mademoiselle d’Herouville, to whom we shall in future confine the family
+name, to distinguish her from her niece Helene, was giving the notary to
+understand that the post of judge of the Supreme Court in Havre, which
+Charles X. would bestow as she desired, was an office worthy of his
+legal talent and his well-known probity. Butscha, meanwhile, who had
+been walking about with La Briere, was greatly alarmed at the progress
+Canalis was evidently making, and he waylaid Modeste at the lower step
+of the portico when the whole party returned to the house to endure the
+torments of their inevitable whist.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” he said, in a low whisper, “I do hope you don’t call him
+Melchior.”
+
+“I’m very near it, my Black Dwarf,” she said, with a smile that might
+have made an angel swear.
+
+“Good God!” exclaimed Butscha, letting fall his hands, which struck the
+marble steps.
+
+“Well! and isn’t he worth more than that spiteful and gloomy secretary
+in whom you take such an interest?” she retorted, assuming, at the mere
+thought of Ernest, the haughty manner whose secret belongs exclusively
+to young girls,--as if their virginity lent them wings to fly to heaven.
+“Pray, would your little La Briere accept me without a fortune?” she
+said, after a pause.
+
+“Ask your father,” replied Butscha, who walked a few steps from the
+house, to get Modeste at a safe distance from the windows. “Listen to
+me, mademoiselle. You know that he who speaks to you is ready to give
+not only his life but his honor for you, at any moment, and at all
+times. Therefore you may believe in him; you can confide to him that
+which you may not, perhaps, be willing to say to your father. Tell me,
+has that sublime Canalis been making you the disinterested offer that
+you now fling as a reproach at poor Ernest?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Do you believe it?”
+
+“That question, my manikin,” she replied, giving him one of the ten or
+a dozen nicknames she had invented for him, “strikes me as undervaluing
+the strength of my self-love.”
+
+“Ah, you are laughing, my dear Mademoiselle Modeste; then there’s no
+danger: I hope you are only making a fool of him.”
+
+“Pray what would you think of me, Monsieur Butscha, if I allowed myself
+to make fun of those who do me the honor to wish to marry me? You ought
+to know, master Jean, that even if a girl affects to despise the most
+despicable attentions, she is flattered by them.”
+
+“Then I flatter you?” said the young man, looking up at her with a face
+that was illuminated like a city for a festival.
+
+“You?” she said; “you give me the most precious of all friendships,--a
+feeling as disinterested as that of a mother for her child. Compare
+yourself to no one; for even my father is obliged to be devoted to me.”
+ She paused. “I cannot say that I love you, in the sense which men give
+to that word, but what I do give you is eternal and can know no change.”
+
+“Then,” said Butscha, stooping to pick up a pebble that he might kiss
+the hem of her garment, “suffer me to watch over you as a dragon guards
+a treasure. The poet was covering you just now with the lace-work of his
+precious phrases, the tinsel of his promises; he chanted his love on the
+best strings of his lyre, I know he did. If, as soon as this noble lover
+finds out how small your fortune is, he makes a sudden change in his
+behavior, and is cold and embarrassed, will you still marry him? shall
+you still esteem him?”
+
+“He would be another Francisque Althor,” she said, with a gesture of
+bitter disgust.
+
+“Let me have the pleasure of producing that change of scene,” said
+Butscha. “Not only shall it be sudden, but I believe I can change it
+back and make your poet as loving as before,--nay, it is possible
+to make him blow alternately hot and cold upon your heart, just as
+gracefully as he has talked on both sides of an argument in one evening
+without ever finding it out.”
+
+“If you are right,” she said, “who can be trusted?”
+
+“One who truly loves you.”
+
+“The little duke?”
+
+Butscha looked at Modeste. The pair walked some distance in silence; the
+girl was impenetrable and not an eyelash quivered.
+
+“Mademoiselle, permit me to be the exponent of the thoughts that are
+lying at the bottom of your heart like sea-mosses under the waves, and
+which you do not choose to gather up.”
+
+“Eh!” said Modeste, “so my intimate friend and counsellor thinks himself
+a mirror, does he?”
+
+“No, an echo,” he answered, with a gesture of sublime humility.
+“The duke loves you, but he loves you too much. If I, a dwarf, have
+understood the infinite delicacy of your heart, it would be repugnant
+to you to be worshipped like a saint in her shrine. You are eminently a
+woman; you neither want a man perpetually at your feet of whom you
+are eternally sure, nor a selfish egoist like Canalis, who will always
+prefer himself to you. Why? ah, that I don’t know. But I will make
+myself a woman, an old woman, and find out the meaning of the plan which
+I have read in your eyes, and which perhaps is in the heart of every
+girl. Nevertheless, in your great soul you feel the need of worshipping.
+When a man is at your knees, you cannot put yourself at his. You can’t
+advance in that way, as Voltaire might say. The little duke has too many
+genuflections in his moral being and the poet has too few,--indeed, I
+might say, none at all. Ha, I have guessed the mischief in your smiles
+when you talk to the grand equerry, and when he talks to you and you
+answer him. You would never be unhappy with the duke, and everybody will
+approve your choice, if you do choose him; but you will never love
+him. The ice of egotism, and the burning heat of ecstasy both produce
+indifference in the heart of every woman. It is evident to my mind that
+no such perpetual worship will give you the infinite delights which you
+are dreaming of in marriage,--in some marriage where obedience will be
+your pride, where noble little sacrifices can be made and hidden,
+where the heart is full of anxieties without a cause, and successes are
+awaited with eager hope, where each new chance for magnanimity is hailed
+with joy, where souls are comprehended to their inmost recesses, and
+where the woman protects with her love the man who protects her.”
+
+“You are a sorcerer!” exclaimed Modeste.
+
+“Neither will you find that sweet equality of feeling, that continual
+sharing of each other’s life, that certainty of pleasing which makes
+marriage tolerable, if you take Canalis,--a man who thinks of himself
+only, whose ‘I’ is the one string to his lute, whose mind is so fixed
+on himself that he has hitherto taken no notice of your father or the
+duke,--a man of second-rate ambitions, to whom your dignity and your
+devotion will matter nothing, who will make you a mere appendage to
+his household, and who already insults you by his indifference to your
+behavior; yes, if you permitted yourself to go so far as to box your
+mother’s ears Canalis would shut his eyes to it, and deny your
+crime even to himself, because he thirsts for your money. And so,
+mademoiselle, when I spoke of the man who truly loves you I was not
+thinking of the great poet who is nothing but a little comedian, nor of
+the duke, who might be a good marriage for you, but never a husband--”
+
+“Butscha, my heart is a blank page on which you are yourself writing all
+that you read there,” cried Modeste, interrupting him. “You are carried
+away by your provincial hatred for everything that obliges you to
+look higher than your own head. You can’t forgive a poet for being a
+statesman, for possessing the gift of speech, for having a noble future
+before him,--and you calumniate his intentions.”
+
+“His!--mademoiselle, he will turn his back upon you with the baseness of
+an Althor.”
+
+“Make him play that pretty little comedy, and--”
+
+“That I will! he shall play it through and through within three
+days,--on Wednesday,--recollect, Wednesday! Until then, mademoiselle,
+amuse yourself by listening to the little tunes of the lyre, so that the
+discords and the false notes may come out all the more distinctly.”
+
+Modeste ran gaily back to the salon, where La Briere, who was sitting by
+the window, where he had doubtless been watching his idol, rose to his
+feet as if a groom of the chambers had suddenly announced, “The Queen.”
+ It was a movement of spontaneous respect, full of that living eloquence
+that lies in gesture even more than in speech. Spoken love cannot
+compare with acts of love; and every young girl of twenty has the
+wisdom of fifty in applying the axiom. In it lies the great secret of
+attraction. Instead of looking Modeste in the face, as Canalis who paid
+her public homage would have done, the neglected lover followed her with
+a furtive look between his eyelids, humble after the manner of Butscha,
+and almost timid. The young heiress observed it, as she took her place
+by Canalis, to whose game she proceeded to pay attention. During a
+conversation which ensued, La Briere heard Modeste say to her father
+that she should ride out for the first time on the following Wednesday;
+and she also reminded him that she had no whip in keeping with her new
+equipments. The young man flung a lightning glance at the dwarf, and a
+few minutes later the two were pacing the terrace.
+
+“It is nine o’clock,” cried Ernest. “I shall start for Paris at full
+gallop; I can get there to-morrow morning by ten. My dear Butscha, from
+you she will accept anything, for she is attached to you; let me give
+her a riding-whip in your name. If you will do me this immense kindness,
+you shall have not only my friendship but my devotion.”
+
+“Ah, you are very happy,” said Butscha, ruefully; “you have money, you!”
+
+“Tell Canalis not to expect me, and that he must find some pretext to
+account for my absence.”
+
+An hour later Ernest had ridden out of Havre. He reached Paris in twelve
+hours, where his first act was to secure a place in the mail-coach
+for Havre on the following evening. Then he went to three of the chief
+jewellers in Paris and compared all the whip-handles that they could
+offer; he was in search of some artistic treasure that was regally
+superb. He found one at last, made by Stidmann for a Russian, who was
+unable to pay for it when finished,--a fox-head in gold, with a ruby of
+exorbitant value; all his savings went into the purchase, the cost of
+which was seven thousand francs. Ernest gave a drawing of the arms of
+La Bastie, and allowed the shop-people twenty hours to engrave them.
+The handle, a masterpiece of delicate workmanship, was fitted to an
+india-rubber whip and put into a morocco case lined with velvet, on
+which two M.’s interlaced were stamped in gold.
+
+La Briere got back to Havre by the mail-coach Wednesday morning in
+time to breakfast with Canalis. The poet had concealed his secretary’s
+absence by declaring that he was busy with some work sent from Paris.
+Butscha, who met La Briere at the coach-door, took the box containing
+the precious work of art to Francoise Cochet, with instructions to place
+it on Modeste’s dressing-table.
+
+“Of course you will accompany Mademoiselle Modeste on her ride to-day?”
+ said Butscha, who went to Canalis’s house to let La Briere know by a
+wink that the whip had gone to its destination.
+
+“I?” answered Ernest; “no, I am going to bed.”
+
+“Bah!” exclaimed Canalis, looking at him. “I don’t know what to make of
+you.”
+
+Breakfast was then served, and the poet naturally invited their visitor
+to stay and take it. Butscha complied, having seen in the expression of
+the valet’s face the success of a trick in which we shall see the first
+fruits of his promise to Modeste.
+
+“Monsieur is very right to detain the clerk of Monsieur Latournelle,”
+ whispered Germain in his master’s ear.
+
+Canalis and Germain went into the salon on a sign that passed between
+them.
+
+“I went out this morning to see the men fish, monsieur,” said the
+valet,--“an excursion proposed to me by the captain of a smack, whose
+acquaintance I have made.”
+
+Germain did not acknowledge that he had the bad taste to play billiards
+in a cafe,--a fact of which Butscha had taken advantage to surround him
+with friends of his own and manage him as he pleased.
+
+“Well?” said Canalis, “to the point,--quick!”
+
+“Monsieur le baron, I heard a conversation about Monsieur Mignon, which
+I encouraged as far as I could; for no one, of course, knew that I
+belong to you. Ah! monsieur, judging by the talk of the quays, you are
+running your head into a noose. The fortune of Mademoiselle de La Bastie
+is, like her name, modest. The vessel on which the father returned does
+not belong to him, but to rich China merchants to whom he renders an
+account. They even say things that are not at all flattering to Monsieur
+Mignon’s honor. Having heard that you and Monsieur le duc were rivals
+for Mademoiselle de La Bastie’s hand, I have taken the liberty to warn
+you; of the two, wouldn’t it be better that his lordship should gobble
+her? As I came home I walked round the quays, and into that theatre-hall
+where the merchants meet; I slipped boldly in and out among them. Seeing
+a well-dressed stranger, those worthy fellows began to talk to me of
+Havre, and I got them, little by little, to speak of Colonel Mignon.
+What they said only confirms the stories the fishermen told me; and I
+feel that I should fail in my duty if I keep silence. That is why I did
+not get home in time to dress monsieur this morning.”
+
+“What am I to do?” cried Canalis, who remembered his proposals to
+Modeste the night before, and did not see how he could get out of them.
+
+“Monsieur knows my attachment to him,” said Germain, perceiving that the
+poet was quite thrown off his balance; “he will not be surprised if I
+give him a word of advice. There is that clerk; try to get the truth out
+of him. Perhaps he’ll unbutton after a bottle or two of champagne, or at
+any rate a third. It would be strange indeed if monsieur, who will one
+day be ambassador, as Philoxene has heard Madame la duchesse say time
+and time again, couldn’t turn a little notary’s clerk inside out.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. BUTSCHA DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF
+
+At this instant Butscha, the hidden prompter of the fishing part, was
+requesting the secretary to say nothing about his trip to Paris, and not
+to interfere in any way with what he, Butscha, might do. The dwarf
+had already made use of an unfavorable feeling lately roused against
+Monsieur Mignon in Havre in consequence of his reserve and his
+determination to keep silence as to the amount of his fortune. The
+persons who were most bitter against him even declared calumniously that
+he had made over a large amount of property to Dumay to save it from the
+just demands of his associates in China. Butscha took advantage of this
+state of feeling. He asked the fishermen, who owed him many a good turn,
+to keep the secret and lend him their tongues. They served him well.
+The captain of the fishing-smack told Germain that one of his cousins,
+a sailor, had just returned from Marseilles, where he had been paid off
+from the brig in which Monsieur Mignon returned to France. The brig had
+been sold to the account of some other person than Monsieur Mignon, and
+the cargo was only worth three or four hundred thousand francs at the
+utmost.
+
+“Germain,” said Canalis, as the valet was leaving the room, “serve
+champagne and claret. A member of the legal fraternity of Havre must
+carry away with him proper ideas of a poet’s hospitality. Besides, he
+has got a wit that is equal to Figaro’s,” added Canalis, laying his
+hand on the dwarf’s shoulder, “and we must make it foam and sparkle with
+champagne; you and I, Ernest, will not spare the bottle either. Faith,
+it is over two years since I’ve been drunk,” he added, looking at La
+Briere.
+
+“Not drunk with wine, you mean,” said Butscha, looking keenly at him,
+“yes, I can believe that. You get drunk every day on yourself, you drink
+in so much praise. Ha, you are handsome, you are a poet, you are famous
+in your lifetime, you have the gift of an eloquence that is equal to
+your genius, and you please all women,--even my master’s wife. Admired
+by the finest sultana-valide that I ever saw in my life (and I never
+saw but her) you can, if you choose, marry Mademoiselle de La Bastie.
+Goodness! the mere inventory of your present advantages, not to speak
+of the future (a noble title, peerage, embassy!), is enough to make me
+drunk already,--like the men who bottle other men’s wine.”
+
+“All such social distinctions,” said Canalis, “are of little use without
+the one thing that gives them value,--wealth. Here we can talk as men
+with men; fine sentiments only do in verse.”
+
+“That depends on circumstances,” said the dwarf, with a knowing gesture.
+
+“Ah! you writer of conveyances,” said the poet, smiling at the
+interruption, “you know as well as I do that ‘cottage’ rhymes with
+‘pottage,’--and who would like to live on that for the rest of his
+days?”
+
+At table Butscha played the part of Trigaudin, in the “Maison en
+loterie,” in a way that alarmed Ernest, who did not know the waggery of
+a lawyer’s office, which is quite equal to that of an atelier. Butscha
+poured forth the scandalous gossip of Havre, the private history of
+fortune and boudoirs, and the crimes committed code in hand, which are
+called in Normandy, “getting out of a thing as best you can.” He spared
+no one; and his liveliness increased with the torrents of wine which
+poured down his throat like rain through a gutter.
+
+“Do you know, La Briere,” said Canalis, filling Butscha’s glass, “that
+this fellow would make a capital secretary to the embassy?”
+
+“And oust his chief!” cried the dwarf flinging a look at Canalis whose
+insolence was lost in the gurgling of carbonic acid gas. “I’ve little
+enough gratitude and quite enough scheming to get astride of your
+shoulders. Ha, ha, a poet carrying a hunchback! that’s been seen, often
+seen--on book-shelves. Come, don’t look at me as if I were swallowing
+swords. My dear great genius, you’re a superior man; you know that
+gratitude is the word of fools; they stick it in the dictionary, but it
+isn’t in the human heart; pledges are worth nothing, except on a certain
+mount that is neither Pindus nor Parnassus. You think I owe a great deal
+to my master’s wife, who brought me up. Bless you, the whole town has
+paid her for that in praises, respect, and admiration,--the very best
+of coin. I don’t recognize any service that is only the capital of
+self-love. Men make a commerce of their services, and gratitude
+goes down on the debit side,--that’s all. As to schemes, they are my
+divinity. What?” he exclaimed, at a gesture of Canalis, “don’t you
+admire the faculty which enables a wily man to get the better of a
+man of genius? it takes the closest observation of his vices, and his
+weaknesses, and the wit to seize the happy moment. Ask diplomacy if
+its greatest triumphs are not those of craft over force? If I were your
+secretary, Monsieur le baron, you’d soon be prime-minister, because
+it would be my interest to have you so. Do you want a specimen of my
+talents in that line? Well then, listen; you love Mademoiselle Modeste
+distractedly, and you’ve good reason to do so. The girl has my fullest
+esteem; she is a true Parisian. Sometimes we get a few real Parisians
+born down here in the provinces. Well, Modeste is just the woman to help
+a man’s career. She’s got _that_ in her,” he cried, with a turn of his
+wrist in the air. “But you’ve a dangerous competitor in the duke; what
+will you give me to get him out of Havre within three days?”
+
+“Finish this bottle,” said the poet, refilling Butscha’s glass.
+
+“You’ll make me drunk,” said the dwarf, tossing off his ninth glass of
+champagne. “Have you a bed where I could sleep it off? My master is
+as sober as the camel that he is, and Madame Latournelle too. They are
+brutal enough, both of them, to scold me; and they’d have the rights of
+it too--there are those deeds I ought to be drawing!--” Then, suddenly
+returning to his previous ideas, after the fashion of a drunken man, he
+exclaimed, “and I’ve such a memory; it is on a par with my gratitude.”
+
+“Butscha!” cried the poet, “you said just now you had no gratitude; you
+contradict yourself.”
+
+“Not at all,” he replied. “To forget a thing means almost always
+recollecting it. Come, come, do you want me to get rid of the duke? I’m
+cut out for a secretary.”
+
+“How could you manage it?” said Canalis, delighted to find the
+conversation taking this turn of its own accord.
+
+“That’s none of your business,” said the dwarf, with a portentous
+hiccough.
+
+Butscha’s head rolled between his shoulders, and his eyes turned from
+Germain to La Briere, and from La Briere to Canalis, after the manner of
+men who, knowing they are tipsy, wish to see what other men are thinking
+of them; for in the shipwreck of drunkenness it is noticeable that
+self-love is the last thing that goes to the bottom.
+
+“Ha! my great poet, you’re a pretty good trickster yourself; but you
+are not deep enough. What do you mean by taking me for one of your own
+readers,--you who sent your friend to Paris, full gallop, to inquire
+into the property of the Mignon family? Ha, ha! I hoax, thou hoaxest, we
+hoax--Good! But do me the honor to believe that I’m deep enough to keep
+the secrets of my own business. As the head-clerk of a notary, my heart
+is a locked box, padlocked! My mouth never opens to let out anything
+about a client. I know all, and I know nothing. Besides, my passion is
+well known. I love Modeste; she is my pupil, and she must make a good
+marriage. I’ll fool the duke, if need be; and you shall marry--”
+
+“Germain, coffee and liqueurs,” said Canalis.
+
+“Liqueurs!” repeated Butscha with a wave of his hand, and the air of a
+sham virgin repelling seduction; “Ah, those poor deeds! one of ‘em was a
+marriage contract; and that second clerk of mine is as stupid as--as--an
+epithalamium, and he’s capable of digging his penknife right through the
+bride’s paraphernalia; he thinks he’s a handsome man because he’s five
+feet six,--idiot!”
+
+“Here is some creme de the, a liqueur of the West Indies,” said Canalis.
+“You, whom Mademoiselle Modeste consults--”
+
+“Yes, she consults me.”
+
+“Well, do you think she loves me?” asked the poet.
+
+“Loves you? yes, more than she loves the duke,” answered the dwarf,
+rousing himself from a stupor which was admirably played. “She loves
+you for your disinterestedness. She told me she was ready to make the
+greatest sacrifices for your sake; to give up dress and spend as little
+as possible on herself, and devote her life to showing you that in
+marrying her you hadn’t done so” (hiccough) “bad a thing for yourself.
+She’s as right as a trivet,--yes, and well informed. She knows
+everything, that girl.”
+
+“And she has three hundred thousand francs?”
+
+“There may be quite as much as that,” cried the dwarf, enthusiastically.
+“Papa Mignon,--mignon by name, mignon by nature, and that’s why I
+respect him,--well, he would rob himself of everything to marry his
+daughter. Your Restoration” (hiccough) “has taught him how to live on
+half-pay; he’d be quite content to live with Dumay on next to nothing,
+if he could rake and scrape enough together to give the little one three
+hundred thousand francs. But don’t let’s forget that Dumay is going to
+leave all his money to Modeste. Dumay, you know, is a Breton, and
+that fact clinches the matter; he won’t go back from his word, and
+his fortune is equal to the colonel’s. But I don’t approve of Monsieur
+Mignon’s taking back that villa, and, as they often ask my advice, I
+told them so. ‘You sink too much in it,’ I said; ‘if Vilquin does not
+buy it back there’s two hundred thousand francs which won’t bring you a
+penny; it only leaves you a hundred thousand to get along with, and it
+isn’t enough.’ The colonel and Dumay are consulting about it now. But
+nevertheless, between you and me, Modeste is sure to be rich. I hear
+talk on the quays against it; but that’s all nonsense; people are
+jealous. Why, there’s no such ‘dot’ in Havre,” cried Butscha, beginning
+to count on his fingers. “Two to three hundred thousand in ready money,”
+ bending back the thumb of his left hand with the forefinger of his
+right, “that’s one item; the reversion of the villa Mignon, that’s
+another; ‘tertio,’ Dumay’s property!” doubling down his middle finger.
+“Ha! little Modeste may count upon her six hundred thousand francs
+as soon as the two old soldiers have got their marching orders for
+eternity.”
+
+This coarse and candid statement, intermingled with a variety of
+liqueurs, sobered Canalis as much as it appeared to befuddle Butscha.
+To the latter, a young provincial, such a fortune must of course seem
+colossal. He let his head fall into the palm of his right hand, and
+putting his elbows majestically on the table, blinked his eyes and
+continued talking to himself:--
+
+“In twenty years, thanks to that Code, which pillages fortunes under
+what they call ‘Successions,’ an heiress worth a million will be as rare
+as generosity in a money-lender. Suppose Modeste does want to spend all
+the interest of her own money,--well, she is so pretty, so sweet and
+pretty; why she’s--you poets are always after metaphors--she’s a weasel
+as tricky as a monkey.”
+
+“How came you to tell me she had six millions?” said Canalis to La
+Briere, in a low voice.
+
+“My friend,” said Ernest, “I do assure you that I was bound to silence
+by an oath; perhaps, even now, I ought not to say as much as that.”
+
+“Bound! to whom?”
+
+“To Monsieur Mignon.”
+
+“Ernest! you who know how essential fortune is to me--”
+
+Butscha snored.
+
+“--who know my situation, and all that I shall lose in the Duchesse de
+Chaulieu, by this attempt at marrying, YOU could coldly let me plunge
+into such a thing as this?” exclaimed Canalis, turning pale. “It was a
+question of friendship; and ours was a compact entered into long before
+you ever saw that crafty Mignon.”
+
+“My dear fellow,” said Ernest, “I love Modeste too well to--”
+
+“Fool! then take her,” cried the poet, “and break your oath.”
+
+“Will you promise me on your word of honor to forget what I now tell
+you, and to behave to me as though this confidence had never been made,
+whatever happens?”
+
+“I’ll swear that, by my mother’s memory.”
+
+“Well then,” said La Briere, “Monsieur Mignon told me in Paris that he
+was very far from having the colossal fortune which the Mongenods told
+me about and which I mentioned to you. The colonel intends to give two
+hundred thousand francs to his daughter. And now, Melchior, I ask you,
+was the father really distrustful of us, as you thought; or was he
+sincere? It is not for me to answer those questions. If Modeste without
+a fortune deigns to choose me, she will be my wife.”
+
+“A blue-stocking! educated till she is a terror! a girl who has read
+everything, who knows everything,--in theory,” cried Canalis, hastily,
+noticing La Briere’s gesture, “a spoiled child, brought up in luxury in
+her childhood, and weaned of it for five years. Ah! my poor friend, take
+care what you are about.”
+
+“Ode and Code,” said Butscha, waking up, “you do the ode and I the code;
+there’s only a C’s difference between us. Well, now, code comes from
+‘coda,’ a tail,--mark that word! See here! a bit of good advice is worth
+your wine and your cream of tea. Father Mignon--he’s cream, too; the
+cream of honest men--he is going with his daughter on this riding party;
+do you go up frankly and talk ‘dot’ to him. He’ll answer plainly, and
+you’ll get at the truth, just as surely as I’m drunk, and you’re a great
+poet,--but no matter for that; we are to leave Havre together, that’s
+settled, isn’t it? I’m to be your secretary in place of that little
+fellow who sits there grinning at me and thinking I’m drunk. Come, let’s
+go, and leave him to marry the girl.”
+
+Canalis rose to leave the room to dress for the excursion.
+
+“Hush, not a word,--he is going to commit suicide,” whispered Butscha,
+sober as a judge, to La Briere as he made the gesture of a street boy
+at Canalis’s back. “Adieu, my chief!” he shouted, in stentorian tones,
+“will you allow me to take a snooze in that kiosk down in the garden?”
+
+“Make yourself at home,” answered the poet.
+
+Butscha, pursued by the laughter of the three servants of the
+establishment, gained the kiosk by walking over the flower-beds and
+round the vases with the perverse grace of an insect describing its
+interminable zig-zags as it tries to get out of a closed window. When he
+had clambered into the kiosk, and the servants had retired, he sat down
+on a wooden bench and wallowed in the delights of his triumph. He had
+completely fooled a great man; he had not only torn off his mask, but
+he had made him untie the strings himself; and he laughed like an author
+over his own play,--that is to say, with a true sense of the immense
+value of his “vis comica.”
+
+“Men are tops!” he cried, “you’ve only to find the twine to wind ‘em
+up with. But I’m like my fellows,” he added, presently. “I should faint
+away if any one came and said to me ‘Mademoiselle Modeste has been
+thrown from her horse, and has broken her leg.’”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. THE POET FEELS THAT HE IS LOVED TOO WELL
+
+An hour later, Modeste, charmingly equipped in a bottle-green cassimere
+habit, a small hat with a green veil, buckskin gloves, and velvet boots
+which met the lace frills of her drawers, and mounted on an elegantly
+caparisoned little horse, was exhibiting to her father and the Duc
+d’Herouville the beautiful present she had just received; she was
+evidently delighted with an attention of a kind that particularly
+flatters women.
+
+“Did it come from you, Monsieur le duc?” she said, holding the sparkling
+handle toward him. “There was a card with it, saying, ‘Guess if you
+can,’ and some asterisks. Francoise and Dumay credit Butscha with this
+charming surprise; but my dear Butscha is not rich enough to buy such
+rubies. And as for papa (to whom I said, as I remember, on Sunday
+evening, that I had no whip), he sent to Rouen for this one,”--pointing
+to a whip in her father’s hand, with a top like a cone of turquoise, a
+fashion then in vogue which has since become vulgar.
+
+“I would give ten years of my old age, mademoiselle, to have the right
+to offer you that beautiful jewel,” said the duke, courteously.
+
+“Ah, here comes the audacious giver!” cried Modeste, as Canalis rode
+up. “It is only a poet who knows where to find such choice things.
+Monsieur,” she said to Melchior, “my father will scold you, and say that
+you justify those who accuse you of extravagance.”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Canalis, with apparent simplicity, “so that is why La
+Briere rode at full gallop from Havre to Paris?”
+
+“Does your secretary take such liberties?” said Modeste, turning pale,
+and throwing the whip to Francoise with an impetuosity that expressed
+scorn. “Give me your whip, papa.”
+
+“Poor Ernest, who lies there on his bed half-dead with fatigue!” said
+Canalis, overtaking the girl, who had already started at a gallop. “You
+are pitiless, mademoiselle. ‘I have’ (the poor fellow said to me) ‘only
+this one chance to remain in her memory.’”
+
+“And should you think well of a woman who could take presents from half
+the parish?” said Modeste.
+
+She was surprised to receive no answer to this inquiry, and attributed
+the poet’s inattention to the noise of the horse’s feet.
+
+“How you delight in tormenting those who love you,” said the duke. “Your
+nobility of soul and your pride are so inconsistent with your faults
+that I begin to suspect you calumniate yourself, and do those naughty
+things on purpose.”
+
+“Ah! have you only just found that out, Monsieur le duc?” she exclaimed,
+laughing. “You have the sagacity of a husband.”
+
+They rode half a mile in silence. Modeste was a good deal astonished not
+to receive the fire of the poet’s eyes. The evening before, as she was
+pointing out to him an admirable effect of setting sunlight across the
+water, she had said, remarking his inattention, “Well, don’t you see
+it?”--to which he replied, “I can see only your hand”; but now his
+admiration for the beauties of nature seemed a little too intense to be
+natural.
+
+“Does Monsieur de La Briere know how to ride?” she asked, for the
+purpose of teasing him.
+
+“Not very well, but he gets along,” answered the poet, cold as Gobenheim
+before the colonel’s return.
+
+At a cross-road, which Monsieur Mignon made them take through a lovely
+valley to reach a height overlooking the Seine, Canalis let Modeste and
+the duke pass him, and then reined up to join the colonel.
+
+“Monsieur le comte,” he said, “you are an open-hearted soldier, and
+I know you will regard my frankness as a title to your esteem. When
+proposals of marriage, with all their brutal,--or, if you please, too
+civilized--discussions, are carried on by third parties, it is an injury
+to all. We are both gentlemen, and both discreet; and you, like myself,
+have passed beyond the age of surprises. Let us therefore speak as
+intimates. I will set you the example. I am twenty-nine years old,
+without landed estates, and full of ambition. Mademoiselle Modeste,
+as you must have perceived, pleases me extremely. Now, in spite of the
+little defects which your dear girl likes to assume--”
+
+“--not counting those she really possesses,” said the colonel,
+smiling,--
+
+“--I should gladly make her my wife, and I believe I could render her
+happy. The question of money is of the utmost importance to my future,
+which hangs to-day in the balance. All young girls expect to be loved
+_whether or no_--fortune or no fortune. But you are not the man to marry
+your dear Modeste without a ‘dot,’ and my situation does not allow me
+to make a marriage of what is called love unless with a woman who has
+a fortune at least equal to mine. I have, from my emoluments and
+sinecures, from the Academy and from my works, about thirty thousand
+francs a year, a large income for a bachelor. If my wife brought me as
+much more, I should still be in about the same condition that I am now.
+Shall you give Mademoiselle a million?”
+
+“Ah, monsieur, we have not reached that point as yet,” said the colonel,
+Jesuitically.
+
+“Then suppose,” said Canalis, quickly, “that we go no further; we will
+let the matter drop. You shall have no cause to complain of me, Monsieur
+le comte; the world shall consider me among the unfortunate suitors of
+your charming daughter. Give me your word of honor to say nothing on
+the subject to any one, not even to Mademoiselle Modeste, because,” he
+added, throwing a word of promise to the ear, “my circumstances may so
+change that I can ask you for her without ‘dot.’”
+
+“I promise you that,” said the colonel. “You know, monsieur, with what
+assurance the public, both in Paris and the provinces, talk of fortunes
+that they make and unmake. People exaggerate both happiness and
+unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say
+we are. There is nothing sure and certain in business except investments
+in land. I am awaiting the accounts of my agents with very great
+impatience. The sale of my merchandise and my ship, and the settlement
+of my affairs in China, are not yet concluded; and I cannot know the
+full amount of my fortune for at least six months. I did, however, say
+to Monsieur de La Briere in Paris that I would guarantee a ‘dot’ of two
+hundred thousand francs in ready money. I wish to entail my estates, and
+enable my grandchildren to inherit my arms and title.”
+
+Canalis did not listen to this statement after the opening sentence.
+The four riders, having now reached a wider road, went abreast and soon
+reached a stretch of table-land, from which the eye took in on one side
+the rich valley of the Seine toward Rouen, and on the other an horizon
+bounded only by the sea.
+
+“Butscha was right, God is the greatest of all landscape painters,” said
+Canalis, contemplating the view, which is unique among the many fine
+scenes that have made the shores of the Seine so justly celebrated.
+
+“Above all do we feel that, my dear baron,” said the duke, “on
+hunting-days, when nature has a voice, and a lively tumult breaks
+the silence; at such times the landscape, changing rapidly as we ride
+through it, seems really sublime.”
+
+“The sun is the inexhaustible palette,” said Modeste, looking at the
+poet in a species of bewilderment.
+
+A remark that she presently made on his absence of mind gave him
+an opportunity of saying that he was just then absorbed in his own
+thoughts,--an excuse that authors have more reason for giving than other
+men.
+
+“Are we really made happy by carrying our lives into the midst of
+the world, and swelling them with all sorts of fictitious wants and
+over-excited vanities?” said Modeste, moved by the aspect of the fertile
+and billowy country to long for a philosophically tranquil life.
+
+“That is a bucolic, mademoiselle, which is only written on tablets of
+gold,” said the poet.
+
+“And sometimes under garret-roofs,” remarked the colonel.
+
+Modeste threw a piercing glance at Canalis, which he was unable to
+sustain; she was conscious of a ringing in her ears, darkness seemed to
+spread before her, and then she suddenly exclaimed in icy tones:--
+
+“Ah! it is Wednesday!”
+
+“I do not say this to flatter your passing caprice, mademoiselle,” said
+the duke, to whom the little scene, so tragical for Modeste, had left
+time for thought; “but I declare I am so profoundly disgusted with the
+world and the Court and Paris that had I a Duchesse d’Herouville, gifted
+with the wit and graces of mademoiselle, I would gladly bind myself to
+live like a philosopher at my chateau, doing good around me, draining my
+marshes, educating my children--”
+
+“That, Monsieur le duc, will be set to the account of your great
+goodness,” said Modeste, letting her eyes rest steadily on the noble
+gentleman. “You flatter me in not thinking me frivolous, and in
+believing that I have enough resources within myself to be able to live
+in solitude. It is perhaps my lot,” she added, glancing at Canalis, with
+an expression of pity.
+
+“It is the lot of all insignificant fortunes,” said the poet. “Paris
+demands Babylonian splendor. Sometimes I ask myself how I have ever
+managed to keep it up.”
+
+“The king does that for both of us,” said the duke, candidly; “we live
+on his Majesty’s bounty. If my family had not been allowed, after the
+death of Monsieur le Grand, as they call Cinq-Mars, to keep his office
+among us, we should have been obliged to sell Herouville to the Black
+Brethren. Ah, believe me, mademoiselle, it is a bitter humiliation to me
+to have to think of money in marrying.”
+
+The simple honesty of this confession came from his heart, and the
+regret was so sincere that it touched Modeste.
+
+“In these days,” said the poet, “no man in France, Monsieur le duc, is
+rich enough to marry a woman for herself, her personal worth, her grace,
+or her beauty--”
+
+The colonel looked at Canalis with a curious eye, after first watching
+Modeste, whose face no longer expressed the slightest astonishment.
+
+“For persons of high honor,” he said slowly, “it is a noble employment
+of wealth to repair the ravages of time and destiny, and restore the old
+historic families.”
+
+“Yes, papa,” said Modeste, gravely.
+
+The colonel invited the duke and Canalis to dine with him sociably
+in their riding-dress, promising them to make no change himself.
+When Modeste went to her room to make her toilette, she looked at the
+jewelled whip she had disdained in the morning.
+
+“What workmanship they put into such things nowadays!” she said to
+Francoise Cochet, who had become her waiting-maid.
+
+“That poor young man, mademoiselle, who has got a fever--”
+
+“Who told you that?”
+
+“Monsieur Butscha. He came here this afternoon and asked me to say to
+you that he hoped you would notice he had kept his word on the appointed
+day.”
+
+Modeste came down into the salon dressed with royal simplicity.
+
+“My dear father,” she said aloud, taking the colonel by the arm, “please
+go and ask after Monsieur de La Briere’s health, and take him back his
+present. You can say that my small means, as well as my natural tastes,
+forbid my wearing ornaments which are only fit for queens or courtesans.
+Besides, I can only accept gifts from a bridegroom. Beg him to keep the
+whip until you know whether you are rich enough to buy it back.”
+
+“My little girl has plenty of good sense,” said the colonel, kissing his
+daughter on the forehead.
+
+Canalis took advantage of a conversation which began between the duke
+and Madame Mignon to escape to the terrace, where Modeste joined him,
+influenced by curiosity, though the poet believed her desire to become
+Madame de Canalis had brought her there. Rather alarmed at the indecency
+with which he had just executed what soldiers call a “volte-face,” and
+which, according to the laws of ambition, every man in his position
+would have executed quite as brutally, he now endeavored, as the
+unfortunate Modeste approached him, to find plausible excuses for his
+conduct.
+
+“Dear Modeste,” he began, in a coaxing tone, “considering the terms on
+which we stand to each other, shall I displease you if I say that
+your replies to the Duc d’Herouville were very painful to a man in
+love,--above all, to a poet whose soul is feminine, nervous, full of the
+jealousies of true passion. I should make a poor diplomatist indeed if
+I had not perceived that your first coquetries, your little premeditated
+inconsistencies, were only assumed for the purpose of studying our
+characters--”
+
+Modeste raised her head with the rapid, intelligent, half-coquettish
+motion of a wild animal, in whom instinct produces such miracles of
+grace.
+
+“--and therefore when I returned home and thought them over, they never
+misled me. I only marvelled at a cleverness so in harmony with your
+character and your countenance. Do not be uneasy, I never doubted that
+your assumed duplicity covered an angelic candor. No, your mind, your
+education, have in no way lessened the precious innocence which we
+demand in a wife. You are indeed a wife for a poet, a diplomatist, a
+thinker, a man destined to endure the chances and changes of life; and
+my admiration is equalled only by the attachment I feel to you. I now
+entreat you--if yesterday you were not playing a little comedy when
+you accepted the love of a man whose vanity will change to pride if
+you accept him, one whose defects will become virtues under your divine
+influence--I entreat you do not excite a passion which, in him, amounts
+to vice. Jealousy is a noxious element in my soul, and you have revealed
+to me its strength; it is awful, it destroys everything--Oh! I do not
+mean the jealousy of an Othello,” he continued, noticing Modeste’s
+gesture. “No, no; my thoughts were of myself: I have been so indulged
+on that point. You know the affection to which I owe all the happiness I
+have ever enjoyed,--very little at the best” (he sadly shook his head).
+“Love is symbolized among all nations as a child, because it fancies
+the world belongs to it, and it cannot conceive otherwise. Well, Nature
+herself set the limit to that sentiment. It was still-born. A tender,
+maternal soul guessed and calmed the painful constriction of my
+heart,--for a woman who feels, who knows, that she is past the joys of
+love becomes angelic in her treatment of others. The duchess has never
+made me suffer in my sensibilities. For ten years not a word, not a
+look, that could wound me! I attach more value to words, to thoughts,
+to looks, than ordinary men. If a look is to me a treasure beyond all
+price, the slightest doubt is deadly poison; it acts instantaneously,
+my love dies. I believe--contrary to the mass of men, who delight in
+trembling, hoping, expecting--that love can only exist in perfect,
+infantile, and infinite security. The exquisite purgatory, where women
+delight to send us by their coquetry, is a base happiness to which I
+will not submit: to me, love is either heaven or hell. If it is hell,
+I will have none of it. I feel an affinity with the azure skies of
+Paradise within my soul. I can give myself without reserve, without
+secrets, doubts or deceptions, in the life to come; and I demand
+reciprocity. Perhaps I offend you by these doubts. Remember, however,
+that I am only talking of myself--”
+
+“--a good deal, but never too much,” said Modeste, offended in every
+hole and corner of her pride by this discourse, in which the Duchesse de
+Chaulieu served as a dagger. “I am so accustomed to admire you, my dear
+poet.”
+
+“Well, then, can you promise me the same canine fidelity which I offer
+to you? Is it not beautiful? Is it not just what you have longed for?”
+
+“But why, dear poet, do you not marry a deaf-mute, and one who is also
+something of an idiot? I ask nothing better than to please my husband.
+But you threaten to take away from a girl the very happiness you so
+kindly arrange for her; you are tearing away every gesture, every word,
+every look; you cut the wings of your bird, and then expect it to
+hover about you. I know poets are accused of inconsistency--oh! very
+unjustly,” she added, as Canalis made a gesture of denial; “that alleged
+defect which comes from the brilliant activity of their minds which
+commonplace people cannot take into account. I do not believe, however,
+that a man of genius can invent such irreconcilable conditions and call
+his invention life. You are requiring the impossible solely for
+the pleasure of putting me in the wrong,--like the enchanters in
+fairy-tales, who set tasks to persecuted young girls whom the good
+fairies come and deliver.”
+
+“In this case the good fairy would be true love,” said Canalis in a curt
+tone, aware that his elaborate excuse for a rupture was seen through by
+the keen and delicate mind which Butscha had piloted so well.
+
+“My dear poet, you remind me of those fathers who inquire into a
+girl’s ‘dot’ before they are willing to name that of their son. You are
+quarrelling with me without knowing whether you have the slightest right
+to do so. Love is not gained by such dry arguments as yours. The poor
+duke on the contrary abandons himself to it like my Uncle Toby; with
+this difference, that I am not the Widow Wadman,--though widow indeed
+of many illusions as to poetry at the present moment. Ah, yes, we young
+girls will not believe in anything that disturbs our world of fancy! I
+was warned of all this beforehand. My dear poet, you are attempting to
+get up a quarrel which is unworthy of you. I no longer recognize the
+Melchior of yesterday.”
+
+“Because Melchior has discovered a spirit of ambition in you which--”
+
+Modeste looked at him from head to foot with an imperial eye.
+
+“But I shall be peer of France and ambassador as well as he,” added
+Canalis.
+
+“Do you take me for a bourgeois,” she said, beginning to mount the steps
+of the portico; but she instantly turned back and added, “That is less
+impertinent than to take me for a fool. The change in your conduct comes
+from certain silly rumors which you have heard in Havre, and which my
+maid Francoise has repeated to me.”
+
+“Ah, Modeste, how can you think it?” said Canalis, striking a dramatic
+attitude. “Do you think me capable of marrying you only for your money?”
+
+“If I do you that wrong after your edifying remarks on the banks of the
+Seine can you easily undeceive me,” she said, annihilating him with her
+scorn.
+
+“Ah!” thought the poet, as he followed her into the house, “if you
+think, my little girl, that I’m to be caught in that net, you take me
+to be younger than I am. Dear, dear, what a fuss about an artful little
+thing whose esteem I value about as much as that of the king of Borneo.
+But she has given me a good reason for the rupture by accusing me of
+such unworthy sentiments. Isn’t she sly? La Briere will get a burden on
+his back--idiot that he is! And five years hence it will be a good joke
+to see them together.”
+
+The coldness which this altercation produced between Modeste and Canalis
+was visible to all eyes that evening. The poet went off early, on the
+ground of La Briere’s illness, leaving the field to the grand equerry.
+About eleven o’clock Butscha, who had come to walk home with Madame
+Latournelle, whispered in Modeste’s ear, “Was I right?”
+
+“Alas, yes,” she said.
+
+“But I hope you have left the door half open, so that he can come back;
+we agreed upon that, you know.”
+
+“Anger got the better of me,” said Modeste. “Such meanness sent the
+blood to my head and I told him what I thought of him.”
+
+“Well, so much the better. When you are both so angry that you can’t
+speak civilly to each other I engage to make him desperately in love and
+so pressing that you will be deceived yourself.”
+
+“Come, come, Butscha; he is a great poet; he is a gentleman; he is a man
+of intellect.”
+
+“Your father’s eight millions are more to him than all that.”
+
+“Eight millions!” exclaimed Modeste.
+
+“My master, who has sold his practice, is going to Provence to attend
+to the purchase of lands which your father’s agent has suggested to him.
+The sum that is to be paid for the estate of La Bastie is four millions;
+your father has agreed to it. You are to have a ‘dot’ of two millions
+and another million for an establishment in Paris, a hotel and
+furniture. Now, count up.”
+
+“Ah! then I can be Duchesse d’Herouville!” cried Modeste, glancing at
+Butscha.
+
+“If it hadn’t been for that comedian of a Canalis you would have kept
+HIS whip, thinking it came from me,” said the dwarf, indirectly pleading
+La Briere’s cause.
+
+“Monsieur Butscha, may I ask if I am to marry to please you?” said
+Modeste, laughing.
+
+“That fine fellow loves you as well as I do,--and you loved him for
+eight days,” retorted Butscha; “and HE has got a heart.”
+
+“Can he compete, pray, with an office under the Crown? There are but
+six, grand almoner, chancellor, grand chamberlain, grand master, high
+constable, grand admiral,--but they don’t appoint high constables any
+longer.”
+
+“In six months, mademoiselle, the masses--who are made up of wicked
+Butschas--could send all those grand dignities to the winds. Besides,
+what signifies nobility in these days? There are not a thousand real
+noblemen in France. The d’Herouvilles are descended from a tipstaff
+in the time of Robert of Normandy. You will have to put up with many a
+vexation from the old aunt with the furrowed face. Look here,--as you
+are so anxious for the title of duchess,--you belong to the Comtat, and
+the Pope will certainly think as much of you as he does of all those
+merchants down there; he’ll sell you a duchy with some name ending in
+‘ia’ or ‘agno.’ Don’t play away your happiness for an office under the
+Crown.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. A DIPLOMATIC LETTER
+
+The poet’s reflections during the night were thoroughly matter of fact.
+He sincerely saw nothing worse in life than the situation of a married
+man without money. Still trembling at the danger he had been led into by
+his vanity, his desire to get the better of the duke, and his belief in
+the Mignon millions, he began to ask himself what the duchess must be
+thinking of his stay in Havre, aggravated by the fact that he had not
+written to her for fourteen days, whereas in Paris they exchanged four
+or five letters a week.
+
+“And that poor woman is working hard to get me appointed commander of
+the Legion and ambassador to the Court of Baden!” he cried.
+
+Thereupon, with that promptitude of decision which results--in poets as
+well as in speculators--from a lively intuition of the future, he sat
+down and composed the following letter:--
+
+  To Madame la Duchesse de Chaulieu:
+
+  My dear Eleonore,--You have doubtless been surprised at not
+  hearing from me; but the stay I am making in this place is not
+  altogether on account of my health. I have been trying to do a
+  good turn to our little friend La Briere. The poor fellow has
+  fallen in love with a certain Mademoiselle Modeste de La Bastie, a
+  rather pale, insignificant, and thread-papery little thing, who,
+  by the way, has the vice of liking literature, and calls herself a
+  poet to excuse the caprices and humors of a rather sullen nature.
+  You know Ernest,--he is so easy to catch that I have been afraid
+  to leave him to himself. Mademoiselle de La Bastie was inclined to
+  coquet with your Melchior, and was only too ready to become your
+  rival, though her arms are thin, and she has no more bust than
+  most girls; moreover, her hair is as dead and colorless as that of
+  Madame de Rochefide, and her eyes small, gray, and very
+  suspicious. I put a stop--perhaps rather brutally--to the
+  attentions of Mademoiselle Immodeste; but love, such as mine for
+  you, demanded it. What care I for all the women on earth,
+  --compared to you, what are they?
+
+  The people with whom I pass my time, and who form the circle round
+  the heiress, are so thoroughly bourgeois that they almost turn my
+  stomach. Pity me; imagine! I pass my evenings with notaries,
+  notaresses, cashiers, provincial money-lenders--ah! what a change
+  from my evenings in the rue de Grenelle. The alleged fortune of
+  the father, lately returned from China, has brought to Havre that
+  indefatigable suitor, the grand equerry, hungry after the
+  millions, which he wants, they say, to drain his marshes. The king
+  does not know what a fatal present he made the duke in those waste
+  lands. His Grace, who has not yet found out that the lady had only
+  a small fortune, is jealous of _me_; for La Briere is quietly making
+  progress with his idol under cover of his friend, who serves as a
+  blind.
+
+  Notwithstanding Ernest’s romantic ecstasies, I myself, a poet,
+  think chiefly of the essential thing, and I have been making some
+  inquiries which darken the prospects of our friend. If my angel
+  would like absolution for some of our little sins, she will try to
+  find out the facts of the case by sending for Mongenod, the
+  banker, and questioning him, with the dexterity that characterizes
+  her, as to the father’s fortune? Monsieur Mignon, formerly colonel
+  of cavalry in the Imperial guard, has been for the last seven
+  years a correspondent of the Mongenods. It is said that he gives
+  his daughter a “dot” of two hundred thousand francs, and before I
+  make the offer on Ernest’s behalf I am anxious to get the rights
+  of the story. As soon as the affair is arranged I shall return to
+  Paris. I know a way to settle everything to the advantage of our
+  young lover,--simply by the transmission of the father-in-law’s
+  title, and no one, I think, can more readily obtain that favor
+  than Ernest, both on account of his own services and the influence
+  which you and I and the duke can exert for him. With his tastes,
+  Ernest, who of course will step into my office when I go to Baden,
+  will be perfectly happy in Paris with twenty-five thousand francs
+  a year, a permanent place, and a wife--luckless fellow!
+
+  Ah, dearest, how I long for the rue de Grenelle! Fifteen days of
+  absence! when they do not kill love, they revive all the ardor of
+  its earlier days, and you know, better than I, perhaps, the
+  reasons that make my love eternal,--my bones will love thee in the
+  grave! Ah! I cannot bear this separation. If I am forced to stay
+  here another ten days, I shall make a flying visit of a few hours
+  to Paris.
+
+  Has the duke obtained for me the thing we wanted; and shall you,
+  my dearest life, be ordered to drink the Baden waters next year?
+  The billing and cooing of the “handsome disconsolate,” compared
+  with the accents of our happy love--so true and changeless for now
+  ten years!--have given me a great contempt for marriage. I had
+  never seen the thing so near. Ah, dearest! what the world calls a
+  “false step” brings two beings nearer together than the law--does
+  it not?
+
+The concluding idea served as a text for two pages of reminiscences and
+aspirations a little too confidential for publication.
+
+The evening before the day on which Canalis put the above epistle into
+the post, Butscha, under the name of Jean Jacmin, had received a letter
+from his fictitious cousin, Philoxene, and had mailed his answer, which
+thus preceded the letter of the poet by about twelve hours. Terribly
+anxious for the last two weeks, and wounded by Melchior’s silence,
+the duchess herself dictated Philoxene’s letter to her cousin, and
+the moment she had read the answer, rather too explicit for her
+quinquagenary vanity, she sent for the banker and made close inquiries
+as to the exact fortune of Monsieur Mignon. Finding herself betrayed and
+abandoned for the millions, Eleonore gave way to a paroxysm of anger,
+hatred, and cold vindictiveness. Philoxene knocked at the door of the
+sumptuous room, and entering found her mistress with her eyes full
+of tears,--so unprecedented a phenomenon in the fifteen years she had
+waited upon her that the woman stopped short stupefied.
+
+“We expiate the happiness of ten years in ten minutes,” she heard the
+duchess say.
+
+“A letter from Havre, madame.”
+
+Eleonore read the poet’s prose without noticing the presence of
+Philoxene, whose amazement became still greater when she saw the dawn
+of fresh serenity on the duchess’s face as she read further and further
+into the letter. Hold out a pole no thicker than a walking-stick to
+a drowning man, and he will think it a high-road of safety. The happy
+Eleonore believed in Canalis’s good faith when she had read through the
+four pages in which love and business, falsehood and truth, jostled
+each other. She who, a few moments earlier, had sent for her husband
+to prevent Melchior’s appointment while there was still time, was now
+seized with a spirit of generosity that amounted almost to the sublime.
+
+“Poor fellow!” she thought; “he has not had one faithless thought; he
+loves me as he did on the first day; he tells me all--Philoxene!”
+ she cried, noticing her maid, who was standing near and pretending to
+arrange the toilet-table.
+
+“Madame la duchesse?”
+
+“A mirror, child!”
+
+Eleonore looked at herself, saw the fine razor-like lines traced on her
+brow, which disappeared at a little distance; she sighed, and in that
+sigh she felt she bade adieu to love. A brave thought came into her
+mind, a manly thought, outside of all the pettiness of women,--a
+thought which intoxicates for a moment, and which explains, perhaps,
+the clemency of the Semiramis of Russia when she married her young and
+beautiful rival to Momonoff.
+
+“Since he has not been faithless, he shall have the girl and her
+millions,” she thought,--“provided Mademoiselle Mignon is as ugly as he
+says she is.”
+
+Three raps, circumspectly given, announced the duke, and his wife went
+herself to the door to let him in.
+
+“Ah! I see you are better, my dear,” he cried, with the counterfeit
+joy that courtiers assume so readily, and by which fools are so readily
+taken in.
+
+“My dear Henri,” she answered, “why is it you have not yet obtained that
+appointment for Melchior,--you who sacrificed so much to the king in
+taking a ministry which you knew could only last one year.”
+
+The duke glanced at Philoxene, who showed him by an almost imperceptible
+sign the letter from Havre on the dressing-table.
+
+“You would be terribly bored at Baden and come back at daggers drawn
+with Melchior,” said the duke.
+
+“Pray why?”
+
+“Why, you would always be together,” said the former diplomat, with
+comic good-humor.
+
+“Oh, no,” she said; “I am going to marry him.”
+
+“If we can believe d’Herouville, our dear Canalis stands in no need
+of your help in that direction,” said the duke, smiling. “Yesterday
+Grandlieu read me some passages from a letter the grand equerry had
+written him. No doubt they were dictated by the aunt for the express
+purpose of their reaching you, for Mademoiselle d’Herouville, always on
+the scent of a ‘dot,’ knows that Grandlieu and I play whist nearly every
+evening. That good little d’Herouville wants the Prince de Cadignan to
+go down and give a royal hunt in Normandy, and endeavor to persuade the
+king to be present, so as to turn the head of the damozel when she sees
+herself the object of such a grand affair. In short, two words from
+Charles X. would settle the matter. D’Herouville says the girl has
+incomparable beauty--”
+
+“Henri, let us go to Havre!” cried the duchess, interrupting him.
+
+“Under what pretext?” said her husband, gravely; he was one of the
+confidants of Louis XVIII.
+
+“I never saw a hunt.”
+
+“It would be all very well if the king went; but it is a terrible bore
+to go so far, and he will not do it; I have just been speaking with him
+about it.”
+
+“Perhaps _Madame_ would go?”
+
+“That would be better,” returned the duke, “I dare say the Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse would help you to persuade her from Rosny. If she goes the
+king will not be displeased at the use of his hunting equipage. Don’t
+go to Havre, my dear,” added the duke, paternally, “that would be giving
+yourself away. Come, here’s a better plan, I think. Gaspard’s chateau of
+Rosembray is on the other side of the forest of Brotonne; why not give
+him a hint to invite the whole party?”
+
+“He invite them?” said Eleonore.
+
+“I mean, of course, the duchess; she is always engaged in pious works
+with Mademoiselle d’Herouville; give that old maid a hint, and get her
+to speak to Gaspard.”
+
+“You are a love of a man,” cried Eleonore; “I’ll write to the old maid
+and to Diane at once, for we must get hunting things made,--a riding hat
+is so becoming. Did you win last night at the English embassy?”
+
+“Yes,” said the duke; “I cleared myself.”
+
+“Henri, above all things, stop proceedings about Melchior’s two
+appointments.”
+
+After writing half a dozen lines to the beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse,
+and a short hint to Mademoiselle d’Herouville, Eleonore sent the
+following answer like the lash of a whip through the poet’s lies.
+
+  To Monsieur le Baron de Canalis:--
+
+  My dear poet,--Mademoiselle de La Bastie is very beautiful;
+  Mongenod has proved to me that her father has millions. I did
+  think of marrying you to her; I am therefore much displeased at
+  your want of confidence. If you had any intention of marrying La
+  Briere when you went to Havre it is surprising that you said
+  nothing to me about it before you started. And why have you
+  omitted writing to a friend who is so easily made anxious as I?
+  Your letter arrived a trifle late; I had already seen the banker.
+  You are a child, Melchior, and you are playing tricks with us. It
+  is not right. The duke himself is quite indignant at your
+  proceedings; he thinks you less than a gentleman, which casts some
+  reflections on your mother’s honor.
+
+  Now, I intend to see things for myself. I shall, I believe, have
+  the honor of accompanying _Madame_ to the hunt which the Duc
+  d’Herouville proposes to give for Mademoiselle de La Bastie. I
+  will manage to have you invited to Rosembray, for the meet will
+  probably take place in Duc de Verneuil’s park.
+
+  Pray believe, my dear poet, that I am none the less, for life,
+
+  Your friend,      Eleonore de M.
+
+
+“There, Ernest, just look at that!” cried Canalis, tossing the letter
+at Ernest’s nose across the breakfast-table; “that’s the two thousandth
+love-letter I have had from that woman, and there isn’t even a ‘thou’ in
+it. The illustrious Eleonore has never compromised herself more than she
+does there. Marry, and try your luck! The worst marriage in the world
+is better than this sort of halter. Ah, I am the greatest Nicodemus that
+ever tumbled out of the moon! Modeste has millions, and I’ve lost
+her; for we can’t get back from the poles, where we are to-day, to the
+tropics, where we were three days ago! Well, I am all the more anxious
+for your triumph over the grand equerry, because I told the duchess I
+came here only for your sake; and so I shall do my best for you.”
+
+“Alas, Melchior, Modeste must needs have so noble, so grand, so
+well-balanced a nature to resist the glories of the Court, and all these
+splendors cleverly displayed for her honor and glory by the duke, that I
+cannot believe in the existence of such perfection,--and yet, if she is
+still the Modeste of her letters, there might be hope!”
+
+“Well, well, you are a happy fellow, you young Boniface, to see the
+world and your mistress through green spectacles!” cried Canalis,
+marching off to pace up and down the garden.
+
+Caught between two lies, the poet was at a loss what to do.
+
+“Play by rule, and you lose!” he cried presently, sitting down in the
+kiosk. “Every man of sense would have acted as I did four days ago, and
+got himself out of the net in which I saw myself. At such times people
+don’t disentangle nets, they break through them! Come, let us be calm,
+cold, dignified, affronted. Honor requires it; English stiffness is the
+only way to win her back. After all, if I have to retire finally, I can
+always fall back on my old happiness; a fidelity of ten years can’t go
+unrewarded. Eleonore will arrange me some good marriage.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. TRUE LOVE
+
+The hunt was destined to be not only a meet of the hounds, but a meeting
+of all the passions excited by the colonel’s millions and Modeste’s
+beauty; and while it was in prospect there was truce between the
+adversaries. During the days required for the arrangement of this
+forestrial solemnity, the salon of the villa Mignon presented the
+tranquil picture of a united family. Canalis, cut short in his role of
+injured love by Modeste’s quick perceptions, wished to appear courteous;
+he laid aside his pretensions, gave no further specimens of his
+oratory, and became, what all men of intellect can be when they renounce
+affectation, perfectly charming. He talked finances with Gobenheim, and
+war with the colonel, Germany with Madame Mignon, and housekeeping with
+Madame Latournelle,--endeavoring to bias them all in favor of La Briere.
+The Duc d’Herouville left the field to his rivals, for he was obliged
+to go to Rosembray to consult with the Duc de Verneuil, and see that the
+orders of the Royal Huntsman, the Prince de Cadignan, were carried out.
+And yet the comic element was not altogether wanting. Modeste found
+herself between the depreciatory hints of Canalis as to the gallantry
+of the grand equerry, and the exaggerations of the two Mesdemoiselles
+d’Herouville, who passed every evening at the villa. Canalis made
+Modeste take notice that, instead of being the heroine of the hunt, she
+would be scarcely noticed. _Madame_ would be attended by the Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse, daughter-in-law of the Prince de Cadignan, by the Duchesse
+de Chaulieu, and other great ladies of the Court, among whom she could
+produce no sensation; no doubt the officers in garrison at Rouen would
+be invited, etc. Helene, on the other hand, was incessantly telling her
+new friend, whom she already looked upon as a sister-in-law, that she
+was to be presented to _Madame_; undoubtedly the Duc de Verneuil would
+invite her father and herself to stay at Rosembray; if the colonel
+wished to obtain a favor of the king,--a peerage, for instance,--the
+opportunity was unique, for there was hope of the king himself being
+present on the third day; she would be delighted with the charming
+welcome with which the beauties of the Court, the Duchesses de Chaulieu,
+de Maufrigneuse, de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu, and other ladies, were prepared
+to meet her. It was in fact an excessively amusing little warfare, with
+its marches and countermarches and stratagems,--all of which were keenly
+enjoyed by the Dumays, the Latournelles, Gobenheim, and Butscha, who,
+in conclave assembled, said horrible things of these noble personages,
+cruelly noting and intelligently studying all their little meannesses.
+
+The promises on the d’Herouville side were, however, confirmed by the
+arrival of an invitation, couched in flattering terms, from the Duc de
+Verneuil and the Master of the Hunt to Monsieur le Comte de La Bastie
+and his daughter, to stay at Rosembray and be present at a grand hunt on
+the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, of November following.
+
+La Briere, full of dark presentiments, craved the presence of Modeste
+with an eagerness whose bitter joys are known only to lovers who feel
+that they are parted, and parted fatally from those they love. Flashes
+of joy came to him intermingled with melancholy meditations on the one
+theme, “I have lost her,” and made him all the more interesting to those
+who watched him, because his face and his whole person were in keeping
+with his profound feeling. There is nothing more poetic than a living
+elegy, animated by a pair of eyes, walking about, and sighing without
+rhymes.
+
+The Duc d’Herouville arrived at last to arrange for Modeste’s departure;
+after crossing the Seine she was to be conveyed in the duke’s caleche,
+accompanied by the Demoiselles d’Herouville. The duke was charmingly
+courteous, he begged Canalis and La Briere to be of the party, assuring
+them, as he did the colonel, that he had taken particular care that
+hunters should be provided for them. The colonel invited the three
+lovers to breakfast on the morning of the start. Canalis then began to
+put into execution a plan that he had been maturing in his own mind for
+the last few days; namely, to quietly reconquer Modeste, and throw over
+the duchess, La Briere, and the duke. A graduate of diplomacy could
+hardly remain stuck in the position in which he found himself. On the
+other hand La Briere had come to the resolution of bidding Modeste an
+eternal farewell. Each suitor was therefore on the watch to slip in a
+last word, like the defendant’s counsel to the court before judgment is
+pronounced; for all felt that the three weeks’ struggle was approaching
+its conclusion. After dinner on the evening before the start was to be
+made, the colonel had taken his daughter by the arm and made her feel
+the necessity of deciding.
+
+“Our position with the d’Herouville family will be quite intolerable at
+Rosembray,” he said to her. “Do you mean to be a duchess?”
+
+“No, father,” she answered.
+
+“Then do you love Canalis?”
+
+“No, papa, a thousand times no!” she exclaimed with the impatience of a
+child.
+
+The colonel looked at her with a sort of joy.
+
+“Ah, I have not influenced you,” cried the true father, “and I will
+now confess that I chose my son-in-law in Paris when, having made him
+believe that I had but little fortune, he grasped my hand and told me I
+took a weight from his mind--”
+
+“Who is it you mean?” asked Modeste, coloring.
+
+“_The man of fixed principles and sound moralities_,” said her father,
+slyly, repeating the words which had dissolved poor Modeste’s dream on
+the day after his return.
+
+“I was not even thinking of him, papa. Please leave me at liberty to
+refuse the duke myself; I understand him, and I know how to soothe him.”
+
+“Then your choice is not made?”
+
+“Not yet; there is another syllable or two in the charade of my destiny
+still to be guessed; but after I have had a glimpse of court life at
+Rosembray I will tell you my secret.”
+
+“Ah! Monsieur de La Briere,” cried the colonel, as the young man
+approached them along the garden path in which they were walking, “I
+hope you are going to this hunt?”
+
+“No, colonel,” answered Ernest. “I have come to take leave of you and of
+mademoiselle; I return to Paris--”
+
+“You have no curiosity,” said Modeste, interrupting, and looking at him.
+
+“A wish--that I cannot expect--would suffice to keep me,” he replied.
+
+“If that is all, you must stay to please me; I wish it,” said the
+colonel, going forward to meet Canalis, and leaving his daughter and La
+Briere together for a moment.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said the young man, raising his eyes to hers with the
+boldness of a man without hope, “I have an entreaty to make to you.”
+
+“To me?”
+
+“Let me carry away with me your forgiveness. My life can never be happy;
+it must be full of remorse for having lost my happiness--no doubt by my
+own fault; but, at least,--”
+
+“Before we part forever,” said Modeste, interrupting a la Canalis, and
+speaking in a voice of some emotion, “I wish to ask you one thing; and
+though you once disguised yourself, I think you cannot be so base as to
+deceive me now.”
+
+The taunt made him turn pale, and he cried out, “Oh, you are pitiless!”
+
+“Will you be frank?”
+
+“You have the right to ask me that degrading question,” he said, in a
+voice weakened by the violent palpitation of his heart.
+
+“Well, then, did you read my letters to Monsieur de Canalis?”
+
+“No, mademoiselle; and I allowed your father to read them it was to
+justify my love by showing him how it was born, and how sincere my
+efforts were to cure you of your fancy.”
+
+“But how came the idea of that unworthy masquerade ever to arise?” she
+said, with a sort of impatience.
+
+La Briere related truthfully the scene in the poet’s study which
+Modeste’s first letter had occasioned, and the sort of challenge that
+resulted from his expressing a favorable opinion of a young girl thus
+led toward a poet’s fame, as a plant seeks its share of the sun.
+
+“You have said enough,” said Modeste, restraining some emotion. “If you
+have not my heart, monsieur, you have at least my esteem.”
+
+These simple words gave the young man a violent shock; feeling himself
+stagger, he leaned against a tree, like a man deprived for a moment of
+reason. Modest, who had left him, turned her head and came hastily back.
+
+“What is the matter?” she asked, taking his hand to prevent him from
+falling.
+
+“Forgive me--I thought you despised me.”
+
+“But,” she answered, with a distant and disdainful manner, “I did not
+say that I loved you.”
+
+And she left him again. But this time, in spite of her harshness, La
+Briere thought he walked on air; the earth softened under his feet, the
+trees bore flowers; the skies were rosy, the air cerulean, as they are
+in the temples of Hymen in those fairy pantomimes which finish happily.
+In such situations every woman is a Janus, and sees behind her without
+turning round; and thus Modeste perceived on the face of her lover the
+indubitable symptoms of a love like Butscha’s,--surely the “ne plus
+ultra” of a woman’s hope. Moreover, the great value which La Briere
+attached to her opinion filled Modeste with an emotion that was
+inestimably sweet.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said Canalis, leaving the colonel and waylaying Modeste,
+“in spite of the little value you attach to my sentiments, my honor is
+concerned in effacing a stain under which I have suffered too long. Here
+is a letter which I received from the Duchesse de Chaulieu five days
+after my arrival in Havre.”
+
+He let Modeste read the first lines of the letter we have seen, which
+the duchess began by saying that she had seen Mongenod, and now wished
+to marry her poet to Modeste; then he tore that passage from the body of
+the letter, and placed the fragment in her hand.
+
+“I cannot let you read the rest,” he said, putting the paper in his
+pocket; “but I confide these few lines to your discretion, so that you
+may verify the writing. A young girl who could accuse me of ignoble
+sentiments is quite capable of suspecting some collusion, some trickery.
+Ah, Modeste,” he said, with tears in his voice, “your poet, the poet of
+Madame de Chaulieu, has no less poetry in his heart than in his mind.
+You are about to see the duchess; suspend your judgment of me till
+then.”
+
+He left Modeste half bewildered.
+
+“Oh, dear!” she said to herself; “it seems they are all angels--and not
+marriageable; the duke is the only one that belongs to humanity.”
+
+“Mademoiselle Modeste,” said Butscha, appearing with a parcel under his
+arm, “this hunt makes me very uneasy. I dreamed your horse ran away with
+you, and I have been to Rouen to see if I could get a Spanish bit which,
+they tell me, a horse can’t take between his teeth. I entreat you to
+use it. I have shown it to the colonel, and he has thanked me more than
+there is any occasion for.”
+
+“Poor, dear Butscha!” cried Modeste, moved to tears by this maternal
+care.
+
+Butscha went skipping off like a man who has just heard of the death of
+a rich uncle.
+
+“My dear father,” said Modeste, returning to the salon; “I should like
+to have that beautiful whip,--suppose you were to ask Monsieur de La
+Briere to exchange it for your picture by Van Ostade.”
+
+Modeste looked furtively at Ernest, while the colonel made him this
+proposition, standing before the picture which was the sole thing he
+possessed in memory of his campaigns, having bought it of a burgher
+at Rabiston; and she said to herself as La Briere left the room
+precipitately, “He will be at the hunt.”
+
+A curious thing happened. Modeste’s three lovers each and all went to
+Rosembray with their hearts full of hope, and captivated by her many
+perfections.
+
+Rosembray,--an estate lately purchased by the Duc de Verneuil, with the
+money which fell to him as his share of the thousand millions voted as
+indemnity for the sale of the lands of the emigres,--is remarkable for
+its chateau, whose magnificence compares only with that of Mesniere or
+of Balleroy. This imposing and noble edifice is approached by a wide
+avenue of four rows of venerable elms, from which the visitor enters
+an immense rising court-yard, like that at Versailles, with magnificent
+iron railings and two lodges, and adorned with rows of large
+orange-trees in their tubs. Facing this court-yard, the chateau
+presents, between two fronts of the main building which retreat on
+either side of this projection, a double row of nineteen tall windows,
+with carved arches and diamond panes, divided from each other by a
+series of fluted pilasters surmounted by an entablature which hides an
+Italian roof, from which rise several stone chimneys masked by
+carved trophies of arms. Rosembray was built, under Louis XIV., by a
+“fermier-general” named Cottin. The facade toward the park differs from
+that on the court-yard by having a narrower projection in the centre,
+with columns between five windows, above which rises a magnificent
+pediment. The family of Marigny, to whom the estates of this Cottin were
+brought in marriage by Mademoiselle Cottin, her father’s sole heiress,
+ordered a sunrise to be carved on this pediment by Coysevox. Beneath it
+are two angels unwinding a scroll, on which is cut this motto in honor
+of the Grand Monarch, “Sol nobis benignus.”
+
+From the portico, reached by two grand circular and balustraded flights
+of steps, the view extends over an immense fish-pond, as long and wide
+as the grand canal at Versailles, beginning at the foot of a grass-plot
+which compares well with the finest English lawns, and bordered with
+beds and baskets now filled with the brilliant flowers of autumn. On
+either side of the piece of water two gardens, laid out in the French
+style, display their squares and long straight paths, like brilliant
+pages written in the ciphers of Lenotre. These gardens are backed to
+their whole length by a border of nearly thirty acres of woodland. From
+the terrace the view is bounded by a forest belonging to Rosembray and
+contiguous to two other forests, one of which belongs to the Crown, the
+other to the State. It would be difficult to find a nobler landscape.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. A GIRL’S REVENGE
+
+Modeste’s arrival at Rosembray made a certain sensation in the avenue
+when the carriage with the liveries of France came in sight, accompanied
+by the grand equerry, the colonel, Canalis, and La Briere on
+horseback, preceded by an outrider in full dress, and followed by six
+servants,--among whom were the Negroes and the mulatto,--and the britzka
+of the colonel for the two waiting-women and the luggage. The carriage
+was drawn by four horses, ridden by postilions dressed with an elegance
+specially commanded by the grand equerry, who was often better served
+than the king himself. As Modeste, dazzled by the magnificence of the
+great lords, entered and beheld this lesser Versailles, she suddenly
+remembered her approaching interview with the celebrated duchesses, and
+began to fear that she might seem awkward, or provincial, or parvenue;
+in fact, she lost her self-possession, and heartily repented having
+wished for a hunt.
+
+Fortunately, however, as the carriage drew up, Modeste saw an old man,
+in a blond wig frizzed into little curls, whose calm, plump, smooth face
+wore a fatherly smile and an expression of monastic cheerfulness which
+the half-veiled glance of the eye rendered almost noble. This was the
+Duc de Verneuil, master of Rosembray. The duchess, a woman of extreme
+piety, the only daughter of a rich and deceased chief-justice, spare
+and erect, and the mother of four children, resembled Madame
+Latournelle,--if the imagination can go so far as to adorn the notary’s
+wife with the graces of a bearing that was truly abbatial.
+
+“Ah, good morning, dear Hortense!” said Mademoiselle d’Herouville,
+kissing the duchess with the sympathy that united their haughty
+natures; “let me present to you and to the dear duke our little angel,
+Mademoiselle de La Bastie.”
+
+“We have heard so much of you, mademoiselle,” said the duchess, “that we
+were in haste to receive you.”
+
+“And regret the time lost,” added the Duc de Verneuil, with courteous
+admiration.
+
+“Monsieur le Comte de La Bastie,” said the grand equerry, taking the
+colonel by the arm and presenting him to the duke and duchess, with an
+air of respect in his tone and gesture.
+
+“I am glad to welcome you, Monsieur le comte!” said Monsieur de
+Verneuil. “You possess more than one treasure,” he added, looking at
+Modeste.
+
+The duchess took Modeste under her arm and led her into an immense
+salon, where a dozen or more women were grouped about the fireplace. The
+men of the party remained with the duke on the terrace, except Canalis,
+who respectfully made his way to the superb Eleonore. The Duchesse de
+Chaulieu, seated at an embroidery-frame, was showing Mademoiselle de
+Verneuil how to shade a flower.
+
+If Modeste had run a needle through her finger when handling a
+pin-cushion she could not have felt a sharper prick than she received
+from the cold and haughty and contemptuous stare with which Madame de
+Chaulieu favored her. For an instant she saw nothing but that one woman,
+and she saw through her. To understand the depths of cruelty to which
+these charming creatures, whom our passions deify, can go, we must see
+women with each other. Modeste would have disarmed almost any other than
+Eleonore by the perfectly stupid and involuntary admiration which
+her face betrayed. Had she not known the duchess’s age she would have
+thought her a woman of thirty-six; but other and greater astonishments
+awaited her.
+
+The poet had run plump against a great lady’s anger. Such anger is the
+worst of sphinxes; the face is radiant, all the rest menacing. Kings
+themselves cannot make the exquisite politeness of a mistress’s cold
+anger capitulate when she guards it with steel armor. Canalis tried to
+cling to the steel, but his fingers slipped on the polished surface,
+like his words on the heart; and the gracious face, the gracious words,
+the gracious bearing of the duchess hid the steel of her wrath, now
+fallen to twenty-five below zero, from all observers. The appearance
+of Modeste in her sublime beauty, and dressed as well as Diane de
+Maufrigneuse herself, had fired the train of gunpowder which reflection
+had been laying in Eleonore’s mind.
+
+All the women had gone to the windows to see the new wonder get out of
+the royal carriage, attended by her three suitors.
+
+“Do not let us seem so curious,” Madame de Chaulieu had said, cut to the
+heart by Diane’s exclamation,--“She is divine! where in the world
+does she come from?”--and with that the bevy flew back to their seats,
+resuming their composure, though Eleonore’s heart was full of hungry
+vipers all clamorous for a meal.
+
+Mademoiselle d’Herouville said in a low voice and with much meaning
+to the Duchesse de Verneuil, “Eleonore receives her Melchior very
+ungraciously.”
+
+“The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse thinks there is a coolness between them,”
+ said Laure de Verneuil, with simplicity.
+
+Charming phrase! so often used in the world of society,--how the north
+wind blows through it.
+
+“Why so?” asked Modeste of the pretty young girl who had lately left the
+Sacre-Coeur.
+
+“The great poet,” said the pious duchess--making a sign to her daughter
+to be silent--“left Madame de Chaulieu without a letter for more than
+two weeks after he went to Havre, having told her that he went there for
+his health--”
+
+Modeste made a hasty movement, which caught the attention of Laure,
+Helene, and Mademoiselle d’Herouville.
+
+“--and during that time,” continued the devout duchess, “she was
+endeavoring to have him appointed commander of the Legion of honor, and
+minister at Baden.”
+
+“Oh, that was shameful in Canalis; he owes everything to her,” exclaimed
+Mademoiselle d’Herouville.
+
+“Why did not Madame de Chaulieu come to Havre?” asked Modeste of Helene,
+innocently.
+
+“My dear,” said the Duchesse de Verneuil, “she would let herself be cut
+in little pieces without saying a word. Look at her,--she is regal; her
+head would smile, like Mary Stuart’s, after it was cut off; in fact, she
+has some of that blood in her veins.”
+
+“Did she not write to him?” asked Modeste.
+
+“Diane tells me,” answered the duchess, prompted by a nudge from
+Mademoiselle d’Herouville, “that in answer to Canalis’s first letter she
+made a cutting reply a few days ago.”
+
+This explanation made Modeste blush with shame for the man before her;
+she longed, not to crush him under her feet, but to revenge herself by
+one of those malicious acts that are sharper than a dagger’s thrust. She
+looked haughtily at the Duchesse de Chaulieu--
+
+“Monsieur Melchior!” she said.
+
+All the women snuffed the air and looked alternately at the duchess, who
+was talking in an undertone to Canalis over the embroidery-frame,
+and then at the young girl so ill brought up as to disturb a lovers’
+meeting,--a thing not permissible in any society. Diane de Maufrigneuse
+nodded, however, as much as to say, “The child is in the right of it.”
+ All the women ended by smiling at each other; they were enraged with a
+woman who was fifty-six years old and still handsome enough to put her
+fingers into the treasury and steal the dues of youth. Melchior looked
+at Modeste with feverish impatience, and made the gesture of a master
+to a valet, while the duchess lowered her head with the movement of a
+lioness disturbed at a meal; her eyes, fastened on the canvas, emitted
+red flames in the direction of the poet, which stabbed like epigrams,
+for each word revealed to her a triple insult.
+
+“Monsieur Melchior!” said Modeste again in a voice that asserted its
+right to be heard.
+
+“What, mademoiselle?” demanded the poet.
+
+Forced to rise, he remained standing half-way between the embroidery
+frame, which was near a window, and the fireplace where Modeste was
+seated with the Duchesse de Verneuil on a sofa. What bitter reflections
+came into his ambitious mind, as he caught a glance from Eleonore. If
+he obeyed Modeste all was over, and forever, between himself and his
+protectress. Not to obey her was to avow his slavery, to lose the
+chances of his twenty-five days of base manoeuvring, and to disregard
+the plainest laws of decency and civility. The greater the folly, the
+more imperatively the duchess exacted it. Modeste’s beauty and money
+thus pitted against Eleonore’s rights and influence made this hesitation
+between the man and his honor as terrible to witness as the peril of
+a matador in the arena. A man seldom feels such palpitations as those
+which now came near causing Canalis an aneurism, except, perhaps, before
+the green table, where his fortune or his ruin is about to be decided.
+
+“Mademoiselle d’Herouville hurried me from the carriage, and I left
+behind me,” said Modeste to Canalis, “my handkerchief--”
+
+Canalis shrugged his shoulders significantly.
+
+“And,” continued Modeste, taking no notice of his gesture, “I had tied
+into one corner of it the key of a desk which contains the fragment of
+an important letter; have the kindness, Monsieur Melchior, to get it for
+me.”
+
+Between an angel and a tiger equally enraged Canalis, who had turned
+livid, no longer hesitated,--the tiger seemed to him the least dangerous
+of the two; and he was about to do as he was told, and commit himself
+irretrievably, when La Briere appeared at the door of the salon, seeming
+to his anguished mind like the archangel Gabriel tumbling from heaven.
+
+“Ernest, here, Mademoiselle de La Bastie wants you,” said the poet,
+hastily returning to his chair by the embroidery frame.
+
+Ernest rushed to Modeste without bowing to any one; he saw only her,
+took his commission with undisguised joy, and darted from the room, with
+the secret approbation of every woman present.
+
+“What an occupation for a poet!” said Modeste to Helene d’Herouville,
+glancing toward the embroidery at which the duchess was now working
+savagely.
+
+“If you speak to her, if you ever look at her, all is over between us,”
+ said the duchess to the poet in a low voice, not at all satisfied with
+the very doubtful termination which Ernest’s arrival had put to the
+scene; “and remember, if I am not present, I leave behind me eyes that
+will watch you.”
+
+So saying, the duchess, a woman of medium height, but a little too
+stout, like all women over fifty who retain their beauty, rose and
+walked toward the group which surrounded Diane de Maufrigneuse, stepping
+daintily on little feet that were as slender and nervous as a deer’s.
+Beneath her plumpness could be seen the exquisite delicacy of such
+women, which comes from the vigor of their nervous systems controlling
+and vitalizing the development of flesh. There is no other way to
+explain the lightness of her step, and the incomparable nobility of her
+bearing. None but the women whose quarterings begin with Noah know,
+as Eleonore did, how to be majestic in spite of a buxom tendency. A
+philosopher might have pitied Philoxene, while admiring the graceful
+lines of the bust and the minute care bestowed upon a morning dress,
+which was worn with the elegance of a queen and the easy grace of a
+young girl. Her abundant hair, still undyed, was simply wound about her
+head in plaits; she bared her snowy throat and shoulders, exquisitely
+modelled, and her celebrated hand and arm, with pardonable pride.
+Modeste, together with all other antagonists of the duchess, recognized
+in her a woman of whom they were forced to say, “She eclipses us.” In
+fact, Eleonore was one of the “grandes dames” now so rare. To endeavor
+to explain what august quality there was in the carriage of the head,
+what refinement and delicacy in the curve of the throat, what harmony in
+her movements, and nobility in her bearing, what grandeur in the perfect
+accord of details with the whole being, and in the arts, now a second
+nature, which render a woman grand and even sacred,--to explain all
+these things would simply be to attempt to analyze the sublime. People
+enjoy such poetry as they enjoy that of Paganini; they do not explain to
+themselves the medium, they know the cause is in the spirit that remains
+invisible.
+
+Madame de Chaulieu bowed her head in salutation of Helene and her aunt;
+then, saying to Diane, in a pure and equable tone of voice, without a
+trace of emotion, “Is it not time to dress, duchess?” she made her exit,
+accompanied by her daughter-in-law and Mademoiselle d’Herouville. As she
+left the room she spoke in an undertone to the old maid, who pressed her
+arm, saying, “You are charming,”--which meant, “I am all gratitude
+for the service you have just done us.” After that, Mademoiselle
+d’Herouville returned to the salon to play her part of spy, and her
+first glance apprised Canalis that the duchess had made him no empty
+threat. That apprentice in diplomacy became aware that his science was
+not sufficient for a struggle of this kind, and his wit served him
+to take a more honest position, if not a worthier one. When Ernest
+returned, bringing Modeste’s handkerchief, the poet seized his arm and
+took him out on the terrace.
+
+“My dear friend,” he said, “I am not only the most unfortunate man in
+the world, but I am also the most ridiculous; and I come to you to get
+me out of the hornet’s nest into which I have run myself. Modeste is a
+demon; she sees my difficulty and she laughs at it; she has just spoken
+to me of a fragment of a letter of Madame de Chaulieu, which I had
+the folly to give her; if she shows it I can never make my peace with
+Eleonore. Therefore, will you at once ask Modeste to send me back that
+paper, and tell her, from me, that I make no pretensions to her hand.
+Say I count upon her delicacy, upon her propriety as a young girl, to
+behave to me as if we had never known each other. I beg her not to speak
+to me; I implore her to treat me harshly,--though I hardly dare ask her
+to feign a jealous anger, which would help my interests amazingly. Go, I
+will wait here for an answer.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. MODESTE BEHAVES WITH DIGNITY
+
+On re-entering the salon Ernest de La Briere found a young officer of
+the company of the guard d’Havre, the Vicomte de Serizy, who had just
+arrived from Rosny to announce that _Madame_ was obliged to be present
+at the opening of the Chambers. We know the importance then attached to
+this constitutional solemnity, at which Charles X. delivered his speech,
+surrounded by the royal family,--Madame la Dauphine and _Madame_ being
+present in their gallery. The choice of the emissary charged with the
+duty of expressing the princess’s regrets was an attention to Diane,
+who was then an object of adoration to this charming young man, son of
+a minister of state, gentleman in ordinary of the chamber, only son and
+heir to an immense fortune. The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse permitted his
+attentions solely for the purpose of attracting notice to the age of
+his mother, Madame de Serizy, who was said, in those chronicles that
+are whispered behind the fans, to have deprived her of the heart of the
+handsome Lucien de Rubempre.
+
+“You will do us the pleasure, I hope, to remain at Rosembray,” said the
+severe duchess to the young officer.
+
+While giving ear to every scandal, the devout lady shut her eyes to the
+derelictions of her guests who had been carefully selected by the duke;
+indeed, it is surprising how much these excellent women will tolerate
+under pretence of bringing the lost sheep back to the fold by their
+indulgence.
+
+“We reckoned without our constitutional government,” said the grand
+equerry; “and Rosembray, Madame la duchesse, will lose a great honor.”
+
+“We shall be more at our ease,” said a tall thin old man, about
+seventy-five years of age, dressed in blue cloth, and wearing his
+hunting-cap by permission of the ladies. This personage, who closely
+resembled the Duc de Bourbon, was no less than the Prince de Cadignan,
+Master of the Hunt, and one of the last of the great French lords.
+Just as La Briere was endeavoring to slip behind the sofa and obtain a
+moment’s intercourse with Modeste, a man of thirty-eight, short, fat,
+and very common in appearance, entered the room.
+
+“My son, the Prince de Loudon,” said the Duchesse de Verneuil to
+Modeste, who could not restrain the expression of amazement that
+overspread her young face on seeing the man who bore the historical name
+that the hero of La Vendee had rendered famous by his bravery and the
+martyrdom of his death.
+
+“Gaspard,” said the duchess, calling her son to her. The young
+prince came at once, and his mother continued, motioning to Modeste,
+“Mademoiselle de La Bastie, my friend.”
+
+The heir presumptive, whose marriage with Desplein’s only daughter had
+lately been arranged, bowed to the young girl without seeming struck,
+as his father had been, with her beauty. Modeste was thus enabled to
+compare the youth of to-day with the old age of a past epoch; for the
+old Prince de Cadignan had already said a few words which made her feel
+that he rendered as true a homage to womanhood as to royalty. The Duc de
+Rhetore, the eldest son of the Duchesse de Chaulieu, chiefly remarkable
+for manners that were equally impertinent and free and easy, bowed
+to Modeste rather cavalierly. The reason of this contrast between the
+fathers and the sons is to be found, probably, in the fact that young
+men no longer feel themselves great beings, as their forefathers did,
+and they dispense with the duties of greatness, knowing well that they
+are now but the shadow of it. The fathers retain the inherent politeness
+of their vanished grandeur, like the mountain-tops still gilded by the
+sun when all is twilight in the valley.
+
+Ernest was at last able to slip a word into Modeste’s ear, and she rose
+immediately.
+
+“My dear,” said the duchesse, thinking she was going to dress, and
+pulling a bell-rope, “they shall show you your apartment.”
+
+Ernest accompanied Modeste to the foot of the grand staircase,
+presenting the request of the luckless poet, and endeavoring to touch
+her feelings by describing Melchior’s agony.
+
+“You see, he loves--he is a captive who thought he could break his
+chain.”
+
+“Love in such a rapid seeker after fortune!” retorted Modeste.
+
+“Mademoiselle, you are at the entrance of life; you do not know its
+defiles. The inconsistencies of a man who falls under the dominion of a
+woman much older than himself should be forgiven, for he is really not
+accountable. Think how many sacrifices Canalis has made to her. He
+has sown too much seed of that kind to resign the harvest; the duchess
+represents to him ten years of devotion and happiness. You made him
+forget all that, and unfortunately, he has more vanity than pride; he
+did not reflect on what he was losing until he met Madame Chaulieu here
+to-day. If you really understood him, you would help him. He is a child,
+always mismanaging his life. You call him a seeker after fortune, but
+he seeks very badly; like all poets, he is a victim of sensations; he
+is childish, easily dazzled like a child by anything that shines, and
+pursuing its glitter. He used to love horses and pictures, and he craved
+fame,--well, he sold his pictures to buy armor and old furniture of the
+Renaissance and Louis XV.; just now he is seeking political power. Admit
+that his hobbies are noble things.”
+
+“You have said enough,” replied Modeste; “come,” she added, seeing her
+father, whom she called with a motion of her head to give her his arm;
+“come with me, and I will give you that scrap of paper; you shall carry
+it to the great man and assure him of my condescension to his wishes,
+but on one condition,--you must thank him in my name for the pleasure I
+have taken in seeing one of the finest of the German plays performed in
+my honor. I have learned that Goethe’s masterpiece is neither Faust
+nor Egmont--” and then, as Ernest looked at the malicious girl with a
+puzzled air, she added: “It is Torquato Tasso! Tell Monsieur de Canalis
+to re-read it,” she added smiling; “I particularly desire that you
+will repeat to your friend word for word what I say; for it is not an
+epigram, it is the justification of his conduct,--with this trifling
+difference, that he will, I trust, become more and more reasonable,
+thanks to the folly of his Eleonore.”
+
+The duchess’s head-woman conducted Modeste and her father to their
+apartment, where Francoise Cochet had already put everything in order,
+and the choice elegance of which astounded the colonel, more especially
+after he heard from Francoise that there were thirty other apartments in
+the chateau decorated with the same taste.
+
+“This is what I call a proper country-house,” said Modeste.
+
+“The Comte de La Bastie must build you one like it,” replied her father.
+
+“Here, monsieur,” said Modeste, giving the bit of paper to Ernest;
+“carry it to our friend and put him out of his misery.”
+
+The word _our_ friend struck the young man’s heart. He looked at Modeste
+to see if there was anything real in the community of interests which
+she seemed to admit, and she, understanding perfectly what his look
+meant, added, “Come, go at once, your friend is waiting.”
+
+La Briere colored excessively, and left the room in a state of doubt and
+anxiety less endurable than despair. The path that approaches happiness
+is, to the true lover, like the narrow way which Catholic poetry has
+called the entrance to Paradise,--expressing thus a dark and gloomy
+passage, echoing with the last cries of earthly anguish.
+
+An hour later this illustrious company were all assembled in the
+salon; some were playing whist, others conversing; the women had their
+embroideries in hand, and all were waiting the announcement of dinner.
+The Prince de Cadignan was drawing Monsieur Mignon out upon China,
+and his campaigns under the empire, and making him talk about the
+Portendueres, the L’Estorades, and the Maucombes, Provencal families; he
+blamed him for not seeking service, and assured him that nothing would
+be easier than to restore him to his rank as colonel of the Guard.
+
+“A man of your birth and your fortune ought not to belong to the present
+Opposition,” said the prince, smiling.
+
+This society of distinguished persons not only pleased Modeste, but it
+enabled her to acquire, during her stay, a perfection of manners which
+without this revelation she would have lacked all her life. Show a clock
+to an embryo mechanic, and you reveal to him the whole mechanism; he
+thus develops the germs of his faculty which lie dormant within him.
+In like manner Modeste had the instinct to appropriate the distinctive
+qualities of Madame de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Chaulieu. For her, the
+sight of these women was an education; whereas a bourgeois would merely
+have ridiculed their ways or made them absurd by clumsy imitation. A
+well-born, well-educated, and right-minded young woman like Modeste
+fell naturally into connection with these people, and saw at once the
+differences that separate the aristocratic world from the bourgeois
+world, the provinces from the faubourg Saint-Germain; she caught the
+almost imperceptible shadings; in short, she perceived the grace of the
+“grande dame” without doubting that she could herself acquire it. She
+noticed also that her father and La Briere appeared infinitely better
+in this Olympus than Canalis. The great poet, abdicating his real
+and incontestable power, that of the mind, became nothing more than
+a courtier seeking a ministry, intriguing for an order, and forced to
+please the whole galaxy. Ernest de La Briere, without ambitions, was
+able to be himself; while Melchior became, to use a vulgar expression,
+a mere toady, and courted the Prince de Loudon, the Duc de Rhetore, the
+Vicomte de Serizy, or the Duc de Maufrigneuse, like a man not free
+to assert himself, as did Colonel Mignon, who was justly proud of his
+campaigns, and of the confidence of the Emperor Napoleon. Modeste took
+note of the strained efforts of the man of real talent, seeking some
+witticism that should raise a laugh, some clever speech, some compliment
+with which to flatter these grand personages, whom it was his interest
+to please. In a word, to Modeste’s eyes the peacock plucked out his
+tail-feathers.
+
+Toward the middle of the evening the young girl sat down with the grand
+equerry in a corner of the salon. She led him there purposely to end
+a suit which she could no longer encourage if she wished to retain her
+self-respect.
+
+“Monsieur le duc, if you really knew me,” she said, “you would
+understand how deeply I am touched by your attentions. It is because of
+the profound respect I feel for your character, and the friendship which
+a soul like yours inspires in mine, that I cannot endure to wound your
+self-love. Before your arrival in Havre I loved sincerely, deeply, and
+forever, one who is worthy of being loved, and my affection for whom
+is still a secret; but I wish you to know--and in saying this I am
+more sincere than most young girls--that had I not already formed this
+voluntary attachment, you would have been my choice, for I recognize
+your noble and beautiful qualities. A few words which your aunt and
+sister have said to me as to your intentions lead me to make this frank
+avowal. If you think it desirable, a letter from my mother shall recall
+me, on pretence of her illness, to-morrow morning before the hunt
+begins. Without your consent I do not choose to be present at a fete
+which I owe to your kindness, and where, if my secret should escape me,
+you might feel hurt and defrauded. You will ask me why I have come here
+at all. I could not withstand the invitation. Be generous enough not to
+reproach me for what was almost a necessary curiosity. But this is not
+the chief, not the most delicate thing I have to say to you. You have
+firm friends in my father and myself,--more so than perhaps you realize;
+and as my fortune was the first cause that brought you to me, I wish
+to say--but without intending to use it as a sedative to calm the grief
+which gallantry requires you to testify--that my father has thought
+over the affair of the marshes, his friend Dumay thinks your project
+feasible, and they have already taken steps to form a company.
+Gobenheim, Dumay, and my father have subscribed fifteen hundred thousand
+francs, and undertake to get the rest from capitalists, who will feel
+it in their interest to take up the matter. If I have not the honor
+of becoming the Duchesse d’Herouville, I have almost the certainty of
+enabling you to choose her, free from all trammels in your choice,
+and in a higher sphere than mine. Oh! let me finish,” she cried, at a
+gesture from the duke.
+
+“Judging by my nephew’s emotion,” whispered Mademoiselle d’Herouville to
+her niece, “it is easy to see you have a sister.”
+
+“Monsieur le duc, all this was settled in my mind the day of our first
+ride, when I heard you deplore your situation. This is what I have
+wished to say to you. That day determined my future life. Though you
+did not make the conquest of a woman, you have at least gained faithful
+friends at Ingouville--if you will deign to accord us that title.”
+
+This little discourse, which Modeste had carefully thought over,
+was said with so much charm of soul that the tears came to the grand
+equerry’s eyes; he seized her hand and kissed it.
+
+“Stay during the hunt,” he said; “my want of merit has accustomed me
+to these refusals; but while accepting your friendship and that of the
+colonel, you must let me satisfy myself by the judgment of competent
+scientific men, that the draining of those marshes will be no risk to
+the company you speak of, before I agree to the generous offer of your
+friends. You are a noble girl, and though my heart aches to think I can
+only be your friend, I will glory in that title, and prove it to you at
+all times and in all seasons.”
+
+“In that case, Monsieur le duc, let us keep our secret. My choice will
+not be known, at least I think not, until after my mother’s complete
+recovery. I should like our first blessing to come from her eyes.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. CONCLUSION
+
+“Ladies,” said the Prince de Cadignan, as the guests were about to
+separate for the night, “I know that several of you propose to follow
+the hounds with us to-morrow, and it becomes my duty to tell you that if
+you will be Dianas you must rise, like Diana, with the dawn. The meet is
+for half-past eight o’clock. I have in the course of my life seen many
+women display greater courage than men, but for a few seconds only; and
+you will need a strong dose of resolution to keep you on horseback the
+whole day, barring a halt for breakfast, which we shall take, like true
+hunters and huntresses, on the nail. Are you still determined to show
+yourselves trained horse-women?”
+
+“Prince, it is necessary for me to do so,” said Modeste, adroitly.
+
+“I answer for myself,” said the Duchesse de Chaulieu.
+
+“And I for my daughter Diane; she is worthy of her name,” added the
+prince. “So, then, you all persist in your intentions? However, I shall
+arrange, for the sake of Madame and Mademoiselle de Verneuil and others
+of the party who stay at home, to drive the stag to the further end of
+the pond.”
+
+“Make yourself quite easy, mesdames,” said the Prince de Loudon, when
+the Royal Huntsman had left the room; “that breakfast ‘on the nail’ will
+take place under a comfortable tent.”
+
+The next day, at dawn, all signs gave promise of a glorious day. The
+skies, veiled by a slight gray vapor, showed spaces of purest blue, and
+would surely be swept clear before mid-day by the northwest wind, which
+was already playing with the fleecy cloudlets. As the hunting party left
+the chateau, the Master of the Hunt, the Duc de Rhetore, and the Prince
+de Loudon, who had no ladies to escort, rode in the advance, noticing
+the white masses of the chateau, with its rising chimneys relieved
+against the brilliant red-brown foliage which the trees in Normandy put
+on at the close of a fine autumn.
+
+“The ladies are fortunate in their weather,” remarked the Duc de
+Rhetore.
+
+“Oh, in spite of all their boasting,” replied the Prince de Cadignan, “I
+think they will let us hunt without them!”
+
+“So they might, if each had not a squire,” said the duke.
+
+At this moment the attention of these determined huntsmen--for the
+Prince de Loudon and the Duc de Rhetore are of the race of Nimrod, and
+the best shots of the faubourg Saint-Germain--was attracted by a loud
+altercation; and they spurred their horses to an open space at the
+entrance to the forest of Rosembray, famous for its mossy turf, which
+was appointed for the meet. The cause of the quarrel was soon apparent.
+The Prince de Loudon, afflicted with anglomania, had brought out his own
+hunting establishment, which was exclusively Britannic, and placed it
+under orders of the Master of the Hunt. Now, one of his men, a little
+Englishman,--fair, pale, insolent, and phlegmatic, scarcely able to
+speak a word of French, and dressed with a neatness which distinguishes
+all Britons, even those of the lower classes,--had posted himself on one
+side of this open space. John Barry wore a short frock-coat, buttoned
+tightly at the waist, made of scarlet cloth, with buttons bearing the De
+Verneuil arms, white leather breeches, top-boots, a striped waistcoat,
+and a collar and cape of black velvet. He held in his hand a small
+hunting-whip, and hanging to his wrist by a silken cord was a
+brass horn. This man, the first whipper-in, was accompanied by two
+thorough-bred dogs,--fox-hounds, white, with liver spots, long in the
+leg, fine in the muzzle, with slender heads, and little ears at their
+crests. The huntsman--famous in the English county from which the
+Prince de Loudon had obtained him at great cost--was in charge of an
+establishment of fifteen horses and sixty English hounds, which cost the
+Duc de Verneuil, who was nothing of a huntsman, but chose to indulge his
+son in this essentially royal taste, an enormous sum of money to keep
+up.
+
+Now, when John arrived on the ground, he found himself forestalled by
+three other whippers-in, in charge of two of the royal packs of hounds
+which had been brought there in carts. They were the three best huntsmen
+of the Prince de Cadignan, and presented, both in character and in their
+distinctively French costume, a marked contrast to the representative
+of insolent Albion. These favorites of the Prince, each wearing
+full-brimmed, three-cornered hats, very flat and very wide-spreading,
+beneath which grinned their swarthy, tanned, and wrinkled faces, lighted
+by three pairs of twinkling eyes, were noticeably lean, sinewy, and
+vigorous, like men in whom sport had become a passion. All three were
+supplied with immense horns of Dampierre, wound with green worsted
+cords, leaving only the brass tubes visible; but they controlled their
+dogs by the eye and voice. Those noble animals were far more faithful
+and submissive subjects than the human lieges whom the king was at that
+moment addressing; all were marked with white, black, or liver spots,
+each having as distinctive a countenance as the soldiers of Napoleon,
+their eyes flashing like diamonds at the slightest noise. One of them,
+brought from Poitou, was short in the back, deep in the shoulder,
+low-jointed, and lop-eared; the other, from England, white, fine as a
+greyhound with no belly, small ears, and built for running. Both were
+young, impatient, and yelping eagerly, while the old hounds, on the
+contrary, covered with scars, lay quietly with their heads on their
+forepaws, and their ears to the earth like savages.
+
+As the Englishman came up, the royal dogs and huntsmen looked at each
+other as though they said, “If we cannot hunt by ourselves his Majesty’s
+service is insulted.”
+
+Beginning with jests, the quarrel presently grew fiercer between
+Monsieur Jacquin La Roulie, the old French whipper-in, and John Barry,
+the young islander. The two princes guessed from afar the subject of
+the altercation, and the Master of the Hunt, setting spurs to his horse,
+brought it to an end by saying, in a voice of authority:--
+
+“Who drew the wood?”
+
+“I, monseigneur,” said the Englishman.
+
+“Very good,” said the Prince de Cadignan, proceeding to take Barry’s
+report.
+
+Dogs and men became silent and respectful before the Royal Huntsman, as
+though each recognized his dignity as supreme. The prince laid out the
+day’s work; for it is with a hunt as it is with a battle, and the
+Master of Charles X.’s hounds was the Napoleon of forests. Thanks to the
+admirable system which he has introduced into French venery, he was able
+to turn his thoughts exclusively to the science and strategy of it.
+He now quietly assigned a special duty to the Prince de Loudon’s
+establishment, that of driving the stag to water, when, as he expected,
+the royal hounds had sent it into the Crown forest which outlined the
+horizon directly in front of the chateau. The prince knew well how to
+soothe the self-love of his old huntsmen by giving them the most arduous
+part of the work, and also that of the Englishman, whom he employed at
+his own speciality, affording him a chance to show the fleetness of his
+horses and dogs in the open. The two national systems were thus face to
+face and allowed to do their best under each other’s eyes.
+
+“Does monseigneur wish us to wait any longer?” said La Roulie,
+respectfully.
+
+“I know what you mean, old friend,” said the prince. “It is late, but--”
+
+“Here come the ladies,” said the second whipper-in.
+
+At that moment the cavalcade of sixteen riders was seen to approach
+at the head of which were the green veils of the four ladies. Modeste,
+accompanied by her father, the grand equerry, and La Briere, was in the
+advance, beside the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse whom the Vicomte de Serizy
+escorted. Behind them rode the Duchesse de Chaulieu, flanked by Canalis,
+on whom she was smiling without a trace of rancor. When they had reached
+the open space where the huntsmen with their red coats and brass bugles,
+surrounded by the hounds, made a picture worthy of Van der Meulen, the
+Duchesse de Chaulieu, who, in spite of her embonpoint, sat her horse
+admirably, rode up to Modeste, finding it more for her dignity not to
+avoid that young person, to whom the evening before she had not said a
+single word.
+
+When the Master of the Hunt finished his compliments to the ladies on
+their amazing punctuality, Eleonore deigned to observe the magnificent
+whip which sparked in Modeste’s little hand, and graciously asked leave
+to look at it.
+
+“I have never seen anything of the kind more beautiful,” she said,
+showing it to Diane de Maufrigneuse. “It is in keeping with its
+possessor,” she added, returning it to Modeste.
+
+“You must admit, Madame la duchesse,” answered Mademoiselle de La
+Bastie, with a tender and malicious glance at La Briere, “that it is a
+rather strange gift from the hand of a future husband.”
+
+“I should take it,” said Madame de Maufrigneuse, “as a declaration of my
+rights, in remembrance of Louis XIV.”
+
+La Briere’s eyes were suffused, and for a moment he dropped his
+reins; but a second glance from Modeste ordered him not to betray his
+happiness. The hunt now began.
+
+The Duc d’Herouville took occasion to say in a low voice to his
+fortunate rival; “Monsieur, I hope that you will make your wife happy;
+if I can be useful to you in any way, command my services; I should be
+only too glad to contribute to the happiness of so charming a pair.”
+
+This great day, in which such vast interests of heart and fortune were
+decided, caused but one anxiety to the Master of the Hunt,--namely,
+whether or not the stag would cross the pond and be killed on the
+lawn before the house; for huntsmen of his calibre are like great
+chess-players who can predict a checkmate under certain circumstances.
+The happy old man succeeded to the height of his wishes; the run was
+magnificent, and the ladies released him from his attendance upon them
+for the hunt of the next day but one,--which, however, turned out to be
+rainy.
+
+The Duc de Verneuil’s guests stayed five days at Rosembray. On the last
+day the Gazette de France announced the appointment of Monsieur le Baron
+de Canalis to the rank of commander of the Legion of honor, and to the
+post of minister at Carlsruhe.
+
+When, early in the month of December, Madame de La Bastie, operated upon
+by Desplein, recovered her sight and saw Ernest de La Briere for the
+first time, she pressed Modeste’s hand and whispered in her ear, “I
+should have chosen him myself.”
+
+Toward the last of February all the deeds for the estates in Provence
+were signed by Latournelle, and about that time the family of La Bastie
+obtained the marked honor of the king’s signature to the marriage
+contract and to the ordinance transmitting their title and arms to La
+Briere, who henceforth took the name of La Briere-La Bastie. The estate
+of La Bastie was entailed by letters-patent issued about the end of
+April. La Briere’s witnesses on the occasion of his marriage were
+Canalis and the minister whom he had served for five years as secretary.
+Those of the bride were the Duc d’Herouville and Desplein, whom the
+Mignons long held in grateful remembrance, after giving him magnificent
+and substantial proofs of their regard.
+
+Later, in the course of this long history of our manners and customs, we
+may again meet Monsieur and Madame de La Briere-La Bastie; and those
+who have the eyes to see, will then behold how sweet, how easy, is the
+marriage yoke with an educated and intelligent woman; for Modeste, who
+had the wit to avoid the follies of pedantry, is the pride and happiness
+of her husband, as she is of her family and of all those who surround
+her.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Beaupre, Fanny  A Start in Life
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+
+Bixiou, Jean-Jacques  The Purse
+  A Bachelor’s Establishment
+  The Government Clerks
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Member for Arcis
+  Beatrix
+  A Man of Business
+  Gaudissart II.
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Blondet, Emile  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  The Peasantry
+
+Bridau, Joseph  The Purse
+  A Bachelor’s Establishment
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Start in Life
+  Another Study of Woman
+  Pierre Grassou
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Cadignan, Prince de  The Secrets of a Princess
+
+Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de  Letters of Two Brides
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Magic Skin
+  Another Study of Woman
+  A Start in Life
+  Beatrix
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Chatillonest, De  A Woman of Thirty
+
+Chaulieu, Henri, Duc de  Letters of Two Brides
+  A Bachelor’s Establishment
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+  The Thirteen
+
+Dauriat  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+
+Desplein  The Atheist’s Mass
+  Cousin Pons
+  Lost Illusions
+  The Thirteen
+  The Government Clerks
+  Pierrette
+  A Bachelor’s Establishment
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+  Honorine
+
+Estourny, Charles d’  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+  A Man of Business
+
+Fontaine, Comte de  The Chouans
+  The Ball at Sceaux
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Government Clerks
+
+Grandlieu, Duc Ferdinand de  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Thirteen
+  A Bachelor’s Establishment
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+
+Herouville, Duc d’  The Hated Son
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  Cousin Betty
+
+La Bastie la Briere, Ernest de  The Government Clerks
+
+La Bastie la Briere, Madame Ernest de (Modeste)  The Member for Arcis
+  Cousin Betty
+
+Loudon, Prince de  The Chouans
+
+Marsay, Henri de  The Thirteen
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Lily of the Valley
+  Father Goriot
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  A Marriage Settlement
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Ball at Sceaux
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de  The Secrets of a Princess
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de  Father Goriot
+  The Thirteen
+  Eugenie Grandet
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Melmoth Reconciled
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  Another Study of Woman
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Schinner, Hippolyte  The Purse
+  A Bachelor’s Establishment
+  Pierre Grassou
+  A Start in Life
+  Albert Savarus
+  The Government Clerks
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Serizy, Comte Hugret de  A Start in Life
+  A Bachelor’s Establishment
+  Honorine
+  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+
+Serizy, Vicomte de  A Start in Life
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+
+Sommervieux, Theodore de  At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+  The Government Clerks
+
+Stidmann  Beatrix
+  The Member for Arcis
+  Cousin Betty
+  Cousin Pons
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Modeste Mignon, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1482 ***