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Title: Modeste Mignon

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: October, 1998  [Etext #1482]
Posting Date: February 26, 2010
Last Updated: November 22, 2016

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODESTE MIGNON ***




Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





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






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