 CHAPTER XII. A DECLARATION OF LOVE SET TO MUSIC. At this moment, modest, happy as she was in the return of her father, was nevertheless pacing a 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 newfound 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 confident 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 her 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 province, if the commie de la Bastille really meant to live in province, and to leave their money to whichever of modest's children might need at most. Listen to modest, said Madame Mignon, addressing them. None but a girl in love can compose such heirs without having studied music. Houses may burn, fortunes may be engulfed, fathers return from distant lands, empires may crumble away, the Chloria 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. Modest, 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 Duryat had mentioned, because in order to adapt them to her music, which had the inexpressible charm of sentiment so admired in great singers, Modest 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. Here arise the lark is shaking, sunlit wings that heavenward rise, sleep no more, the violet waking, wefts her incense to the skies, flowers revived, their eyes unclosing, see themselves in drops of dew, in each calque's cup reposing, pearls of a day their mirror true, breeze divine, the god of roses, past by night to bless their bloom, see for them each bud uncloses, glows and yields its rich perfume, then arise the lark is shaking, sunlit wings that heavenward rise, knot is sleeping, heart awaking, lifthine incense to the skies. It is very pretty said Madame Dumé, Modest 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 share in her belief, as to the state of Modest's heart. Madame Mignon destroyed the happiness, the return and the prosperity of his master had brought him. The poor Brenton went down the hill, to hover, and to his desk in Galdenheim's counting-room, with a heavy heart. Then before returning to dinner, he went to see La Tournelle, to tell his fears and beg once more for the notary's advice and assistance. Yes, my dear friend, said Dumé, when they parted on the steps of the notary's door. I now agree with Madame, she loves, yes, I'm sure of it. The devil knows the rest, I am dishonored. Don't make yourself unhappy, Dumé, answered the little notary. Among us, all we can surely get the better of the little pus. 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. All those devoted to the Mignon family were fully as disquieted, as disquieted, and uncertain as they were before the old soldier tried the experiment which he expected wouldn't be so decisive. The ill-success of his past efforts so stimulated Dumé'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 modest'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 Dumé made such an impression on the latornels that they even forgot their parting with ex-supére, whom they set off that morning to Paris during dinner while the three were alone, Montseur and Madame Latornel and Boucher turned the problem over and over in their minds, and discussed every aspect of it. If modest loved anyone in Havre, she would have shown some fear yesterday, said Madame Latornel. Her lover, therefore, lives somewhere else. She swore to her mother this morning, said the notary, in presence of Dumé, that she had not exchanged a look or a word with any living soul. Then she loves after my fashion, exclaimed Boucher, and how is that, my poor lad, asked Madame Latornel. Madame, said the little cripple, I love alone an affair, oh, as far as from here to the stars. How do you manage it, you silly fellow, asked Madame Latornel, laughing. Ah, Madame, said Boucher, what will you call my hump, is the socket of my wings. So that is the explanation of your seal, is it, cried the notary. Boucher's seal was a star, and under it the words, Fulgin's Siqueur, shining one I follow thee, the model of the house of Chastillonist. A beautiful woman may feel as distressedful as the ugliest, said Boucher, as if speaking to himself. Modest is clever enough to fear she may be loved only for her beauty. Hunchback's 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 if it were a storage battery where the nerve currents accumulate more abundantly than under normal conditions where they develop and once they are emitted, so to say, in lighting flashes to energize the interior being. Illuminous forces result, which are sometimes brought to light by magnetism, through 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 sparking gaiety perhaps, in utter malignity, or in almost sublime goodness, like instruments which the hand of an art can never fully waken, these beings highly privileged, though they know it not, lived within themselves, as boots shall lift, 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 dwarves, deformed fairies, all that race of bottles, as rabbalace called them, containing elixirs and precious balms. Boots shall, therefore, had very nearly found the key to the puzzle, with all the anxious solitude of a hopeless lover, a vassal ever ready to die, like the soldiers alone and abandoned in the snow of Russia. Who still cried out, long lived the emperor, he meditated how to capture Madest'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 entap 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 Goldenheim did not appear, and Bustra was Dumes' partner against Monsignor and Madame Latournel. During the few moments of Madest'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 Madest's love, which had now seized upon him, as upon the rest, seemed as remote from the discussion as Goldenheim had been the night before. Well, that's the matter with you, Bustra, cried Madame Latournel. 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, Monsignor Bustra, said Madame Mignon, with much feeling in her voice. I have six hundred thousand francs of my own this day, cried Dumes, and you shall be a notary and the successor of Latournel. The American wife took the hand of the poor hunchback and pressed it. What? You have six hundred thousand francs, exclaimed Latournel, pricking up his ears as Dumes let fall the words, and you allow these ladies to live as they do. Madès thought 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, Bustra's august mistress turned towards him, preparing to make a speech. My son, she said, you are so surrounded by a true affection that I never thought how my thoughtless use of that familiar phrase might be constructed, 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 Monsignor 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 Bustra has spent 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 due may. And so, my friend, she added, turning her blind face toward Bustra, you can begin at once to negotiate with Latournel. He is 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. Bustra was kissing Madame Mignon's hand, and his face was wet with tears as Modus opened the door of the salon. What are you doing with my black dwarf, she demanded. Who is making him unhappy? Ah, Madame Moiselle 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 am to be a notary, I shall be rich. Ha ha, the poor Bustra may become the rich Bustra. 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 Modus, 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. Dumé thought for a moment that the clerk dared to aspire to Modus, and he exchanged a rapid glance with the others, who misunderstood him, and began to eye the little man with a species of terror mingled with curiosity. I too have my dreams, said Bustra, not taking his eyes from Modus. 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? Modus raised her eyes and looked at Bustra. It was a piercing and questioning glance, for she shared Dumé's suspicion of Bustra'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 will be her guardian spirit. She shall read my heart, my soul. She shall possess my 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, Modus gave Bustra a glance that looked in 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 love for the poem of my heart, if someday such love may make a woman think of me only slightly deformed, I ask to you, mad moisselle, 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 she sought to know. Well, if that be so, he went on. If we enrich the one we love, if we please, the spirit and withdrawal of the body is not that the way to make oneself beloved. At any rate, it is the dream of your poor dwarf, a dream of yesterday. For today your mother gives me the key to future wealth by promising me the means of buying a practice. But before I become another gob and heim, I seek to know whether this dream could be really carried out. What do you say, mad moisselle? You? Mades 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 Boucher whispered Madame Latournel to her husband. Do you think he is going mad? You want to realize the story of beauty and the beast, said Mades 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 the transformation met 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, Boucher resumed his seat, remarking to the three wisp 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 mama, it is nearly ten o'clock, said Mades. Madame Mignin said good night, sweet friends, and went to bed. They who wish to love in secret may have, Pyrenian hounds, mothers, Dumes, and Latournel to spy upon them, and yet not be in any danger. But when it comes to a lover, ah, that is a diamond, cut diamond, flame against flame, mind to mind, an equation whose terms are mutual. On Sunday morning, Boucher arrived at the chalet, before Madame Latournel, who always came to take Mades to church, and he proceeded to blockade the house in expectation of the postman. Have you a letter for mademoiselle Mignin? He said to that humble functionary when he appeared, no monsieur, none. This house had been a good customer to the post of late, remarked the clerk. You may well say that, replied the ma'am. Mades 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 post, ma'am. She ran downstairs, went into the little garden, and called in an interpretive voice, Monsieur Boucher. Here am I, mademoiselle, said the cripple, reaching the gate as Mades 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 a glance, and a gesture of a queen? Yes, mademoiselle, he answered proudly, ah, I never is expected, he continued in a low tone, that the grub should be of service to a star. But so it is, would you rather that your mother and Monsignor Dumé and Madame Latournel 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 villageant watchdog. 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 Dumé, keeper of the hen roost, take Boucher to watch outside. Poor Boucher, who doesn't ask for anything, not so much as a bone? Well, I've gave you a trial, said Madest, 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 Monsignor Arthur. Listen to me, mademoiselle, said Boucher, interrupting Madest respectfully. I will go and take a walk on the seashore, for you don't want me to go to church today. That's what it is. Madest looked at her dwarf with a perfectly stupid astonishment. Mademoiselle, you have wrapped your face in cotton wool and a silk hinkerchief. And there's nothing the matter with you. And you have put that thick veil on your bonnet, to see someone yourself without being seen. Where did you acquire all that perspicacity, cried Madest 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 St. Edress. 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 reassurge you may, and the latornells, 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 today? Do you venture to question me, after all I have done you the honor to say, and to ask of you? Busjaboud, without another word, and departed to find his master, in all the rapture being taken into the service of his goddess. Half an hour later, Monsegure and Madame, Latornell, came to Fetch Modest, 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 Modest. I would rather not. I have bubbled myself up, and I don't think it will do me any harm to go out. And Mademoiselle Mignan, marched off beside Latornell, refusing to take his arm, lest she should be questioned, about the outward trembling, which betrayed her inward agitation. As the thought of at last seeing her great poet, one look, the first, was not about to decide her fate. End of Chapter 12 Recording by Chris Caron Section XIII of Modest Mignan by Henri de Balzac translated by Catherine Prescott Wormley This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Section XIII of Modest Mignan by Henri de Balzac read by Don W. Jenkins Chapter XIII A full-length portrait of Monceur de la Brière Is there in the life of a 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 Brière, 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, bittersweet, grown in the heart of a forest, the joy of the scant sun rays, the joy, as Cannelly says in the maiden song, of the plant itself whose eyes unclosing see its own image within its breast? Such emotions, now taking place in Libriere, tend to show that, like other poor fellows for whom life begins in a toiling 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 mustache and imperial la marasin. 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, Mamzal de la Breyre. 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 darch 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 Breyre was then slight, he belonged to the class of temperaments which begin after they are thirty to take 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 Canales. 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 clasped 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 sulfur-colored waistcoat which left to sight an exquisitely fine shirt with opal buttons, a black cravat, and a small blue shirt-out 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 hunts 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 cert out, 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 Breire turned about to examine the tall and imposing Madame La Tournée, 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 his 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 La Tournée 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 footfall of a gentleman on the pavement of the aisle. The service over, Labriere was making a circuit of the church, where no one remained now 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 La Tournée's 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 scutches, he asked the name of the owner and was told that he was Mansur La Tournée, 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. Port Ernest thus had his trouble for his pains. He dared not wonder about Ingeville. Moreover, he made it a point of honour to obey orders, and he therefore went back to Paris, previously writing a letter which François Cochette duly delivered on the morrow with the Havre postmark. It was the custom of Mansur and Madame La Tournée to dine at the chalet every Sunday when they brought back Modeste after Vespers. So, as soon as the Ingeville had felt a little better, they started for Ingeville, accompanied by Bouchka. Once at home the happy Modeste forgot her pretendid illness and her disguise and dressed herself charmingly, humming as she came down to dinner. Not as sleeping, heart-awaking, lifeline incense to the skies. Bouchka 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. Canalise, Mama, she answered, fleshing rosy red from her throat to her forehead. Canalise 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 heirs. No, no, interrupted Madame Mignon. The music is your own, my daughter. Modest feeling that she grew more and more crimson went off into the garden, calling Bouchka 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 Bouchka. 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 percent 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 Modest, crossing her hands on her breast and looking up to heaven. Twice you have given me life. Ah, Mamzell, said Bouchka, you love a poet. That kind of man is more or less of a narcissist. Will he know how to love you? A phrase-maker, always busy in fitting words together, and must be a boar. Mamzell, a poet, is no more poetry than a seed as a flower. Bouchka, 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 that you might be right, said the dwarf, clasping his hands, and happy. That man shall have, as you have, a servant in Jean Bouchka. I will not be notary. I shall give that up. I shall study the sciences. Why? Ah, Mamzell, to train up your children, if you ordain 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 sulfur waistcoat which puzzled you so, LaTorne, 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. Modest never raised her veil, and her clothes were huddled on like a beggar woman. 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 De Mine. Not at all, said the notary. It is now as clear as day. My child, said Madame Mignon to Modest as she came into the room followed by Butchka, did you see a well-dressed young man at church this morning with a white rose in his buttonhole? I saw him, said Butchka, quickly perceiving by everybody's strained attention that Modest was likely to fall into a trap. It was Gryndo, 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 Saint-Adressa. Oh, an architect was he. He puzzled me, said Modest, for whom Butchka had thus gained time to recover herself. De Mine looked a scant, said Butchka. Modest, fully worn, recovered her impenetrable composure. De Mine's distrust was now thoroughly aroused, and he resolved to go to the mayor's office early in the morning and ascertain if the architect had really been in Havre the previous day. Butchka, on the other hand, was equally determined to go to Paris and find out something about Canales. Gobenheim came to play wist, and by his presence subdued and compressed all this fermentation of feelings. Modest 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 Monserre de Canales. 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, Monserre. 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. Its 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 Habras 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. 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. 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? 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 molded to hands of a gentleman, your step along the nave. All, all, is so printed in my memory that sixty years hence I shall see the various trifles of this day of days. The color of the atmosphere, the ray of sunshine 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 Abbey Marceline married us then. The happiness above that of the earth, which I feel in this new world of unexpected emotions, can only be equaled by the joy of telling it to you, of sending it back to him who ported 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 Habra, well I am, through an irreparable misfortune, its sole eras. But you are not to look down upon us, descendant of an arrogant night. The arms of the Mignon de la Bastille will do no dishonor to those of Canales. We bear gulls on a bend sable, four basants oar, quarterly four crosses, patriarchal oar, a cardinal's hat as crest, and the fiochi 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 hear in avow, I am named modeste. Therefore I have not deceived you by signing o dest em. 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 and 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 Yves de Ferre was indeed your unknown damoiselle. But how little the modeste of today 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 of my father, now returning rich and prosperous, will authorize, has raised me from 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. Today 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 Montseur de la Gramande. My cherished poet, I will be thy mignon, happier far than the mignon of Goethe, for thou wilt leave me in my own land, in thy heart. Just as I write this pledge of our betrothal, a nightingale in the Vilquine Park answers for thee. Tell me quick that his note, so pure, so clear, so full, which fills my heart with joy and love like an enunciation, does not light to me. My father will pass through Paris on his way from Marseille. The house of Manganode 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 Bastille, Father of your Modeste. P.S., above all, do not come to Habra 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, Mamzelle Modeste said the voice of Demaye at her door. Writing to my father, she answered, did you not tell me you should start in the morning? Demaye 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 Cauchy, terrified at seeing the Habra 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 Mamzelle, oh, to S. to M., my heart tells me that you were the woman so carefully veiled and disguised, and seated between Montchure and Madame La Tournée, 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. Ah, what power of affection is in me to keep me here in this hotel instead of mounting to Ingeville which I can see from my windows. Will you ever love me as I love you, to leave Habra in such uncertainty? I am 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 Francois 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. XIV of Modeste Mignon by Henri de Balzac Translated by Catherine Prescott-Wormley This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section XIV of Modeste Mignon by Henri de Balzac Read by Don W. Jenkins Chapter XIV Matters Grown Complicated During these little events, other little events were going on in Habra, which caused Modeste to forget her present uneasiness. De Ma went down to Habra early in the morning and soon discovered that no architect had been in town the day before. Furious at Butchka's lie, which revealed the conspiracy of which he was resolved to know the meaning, he rushed from the mayor's office to his friend Lattonelle. Where's your Master Butchka, he demanded of the notary, when he saw the clerk was not in his place? Butchka, my dear fellow, has gone to Paris. He heard of 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 De Ma. Butchka 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 Lattonelle, frightened at De Ma's rage. After stating the facts on which his suspicions were founded, De Ma begged Madame Lattonelle 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 Marseille— Here, see for yourself, he said, offering the paper. The patina mignon, Captain Mignon, arrived October 6. It is now the seventeenth, and the Colonel is sure to be in Paris. De Ma requested Goebenheim to do without him in the future, and then went back to the chalet which he reached just as Modeste was sealing her two letters to her father and cannellies. 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 De Ma 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 Buchka's connivance. Madame, he cried, he is a serpent whom we have warmed in our bosons. There is 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 cannellies, and came downstairs with the letter for her lover in her hand to see De Ma before he started for Paris. What has happened to my black dwarf? Why are you talking so loud? she said, appearing at the door. Mamzelle, Buchka has gone to Paris, and you no doubt know why. To carry on that affair of the little architect with the sulfur 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 De Ma. Is that the letter for your father, Mamzelle? He added, holding out his hand. I will take it to the mongernauds. God grant the colonel and I may not pass each other on the road. Modeste gave him the letter. De Ma looked mechanically at the address. Mon cher Le Baron de Cannellies, rue de Paris, Poissonnaire, number twenty-nine, 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 De Ma. Give me back that letter. Mon cher De Ma said to Modeste, erecting herself like a lioness defending her cubs. There it is, Mamzelle, he replied. Modeste put it into the bosom of her dress, and gave De Ma the one intended for her father. I know what you are capable of, De Ma, she said, and if you take one step against Mon cher de Cannellies, I shall take another out of this house to which I will never return. You will kill your mother, Mamzelle, replied De Ma, 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 Bertone, 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 soul 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, sob, Modeste. She thereupon related everything to her mother, read her the letters and their answers, and shed the rows of her palm 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 two indulgent mother, Modeste fell upon her breast in tears. Oh, mother, she said amid her sobs, you whose heart, all golden poetry, is a chosen vessel, chosen of God, to hold the 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 son 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 La Tournée, and Madame de Mai, 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 Brière, but especially those who, knowing their own value, also know that they are neither love 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 in 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'm 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 dense forth 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 worries 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, Maudeste is right! He took up her letter, and he re-read it. He saw his fairest of the fair. He talked with her. Then, in the midst of his ecstasy, a dreadful thought came to him. She thinks me kind of lease, and she has a million of money. Down went his happiness, just as a somnambulist, having attained the peak of a roof, here's his 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 into! La Breire 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 honour. He had once resolved to find Maudeste's father, if he were in Paris, and to confess all to him, and to let Canalise know the serious results of their Parisian jest. To a sensitive nature like his, Maudeste's large fortune was in itself a determining reason. He could not allow it to be even suspected that the ardour 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 Chantereyne to find the banker Monjonaud, 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 Breire was inquiring about the father of his beloved from the head of the house of Monjonaud, and getting information that might be useful to him in his strange position, a scene was taking place in Canalise's study, which the ex-lieutenants' hasty departure from Havre may have led the reader to foresee. Like a true soldier of the imperial school, Dumas, 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, of a fune 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 Butchka. 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 Mont-sur-Le-Baronne was not visible. There is, added the man, a meeting of the Council of State to-day at which Mont-sur-Le-Baronne is obliged to be present. Is this really the house of Mont-sur-Canallice, said Dumas, a writer of poetry? Mont-sur-Le-Baronne de-Canallice, 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. Dumas, 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 the weight 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 severer's vase, which was engraved, The Gift of Madame La Dauphine. These mute admonitions brought Dumas to his senses, while the valet went to ask his Master if he would receive a person who had come from Habra expressly to see him, a stranger named Dumas. What sort of a man? asked Canelis. He is well dressed, and wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. Canelis made a sign of assent, and the valet retreated, then returned and announced, Monsieur Dumas. When he heard himself announced, when he was actually in the presence of Canelis, 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, Dumas 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 Dumas, who remained standing. If you have a great deal to say, interrupted Canelis, I must ask you to be seated. As Canelis himself plunged into an armchair à la Voltaire, crossed his legs, raised the upper one to the level of his eye, and looked fixedly at Dumas, 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 Dumas, 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. Canelis, who had been busy during the last three months with serious matters of his own, almost 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 Dumas. Monsieur answered Canelis, 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 am 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 Duchess de Chaleu, who received it from the King of Spain. I use it to hold the letters I received 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 the 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, whom a bachelor monster, 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 the 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 our 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 Dumai. 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 Saro Manchur. Dumai 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 kibika, and God knows what I have 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. Dumai 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 file that praise had broken over his head. Ah, my soldier, he said solemnly, laying his hands on Dumai'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 rushed to buy, exclaiming, Divine, delicious, charming, food for the soul! Social nature, like nature itself, is a great forgetter. You will be quite surprised ten years hence at what you have done today. 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 common place of fair. You call yourself a poet, cried Demi, 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 Harvard to Paris to see Connolly's without carrying something back with you, warrior. Connolly's had the form and action of a Homeric hero. Learn this from the poet. Every noble sentiment in a 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 Demi, 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 Demi. Will you give me your word that you do not know Mamzell Modeste Mignon? This is the first time that name ever struck my ear, replied Connolly's. Ah, Monsieur, said Demi, 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 someone has been using your name. You ought to have had a letter yesterday from Havre. I received none. Be sure, mon sure, that I will help you, said Connolly, so far as I have the opportunity of doing so. Demi withdrew, his heart torn with anxiety, believing that the wretched Butchka had worn the skin of the poet to deceive Modeste, whereas Butchka himself keen-witted as a prince, seeking revenge, and far cleverer than any paid spy, was ferreting out the life and actions of Connolly's, 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 Labriere entered his friend's study. Naturally Connolly's told him of the visit of the man from Havre. Ha! said her nest. Modeste Mignon, that is just what I have come to speak of. Abba! cried Connolly's. 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 the heart and mind worthy of Clarissa. She has seen me. I have pleased her, and she thinks me the great Connolly's. But that is not all. Modeste Mignon is of high birth, and Mongenode has just told me that her father, the comp de la Bastille, has something like six millions. The father is here now, and I have asked him through Mongenode for an interview at two o'clock. Mongenode is about 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 Connolly's 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 alludes me. Connolly's looked at the carpet that her nest might not read his eyes. Could I, he continued after a pause to regain his self-position, how could I have divined that flower from a pretty sheet of perfume 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 asked, looking at LeBriere. 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. Connolly's 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, Connolly's, I have never really known you till this moment. Did you expect to? It takes some time to go around the world, replied the poet with his pompous irony. But think, said LeBriere, of this enormous fortune. Ah, my friend, is it not well invested in you? cried Connolly's, accompanying the words with the charming gesture. Melchior, said LeBriere, I am yours for life and death. He wrung the poet's hand and left him abruptly, for he was in haste to meet Montchure Mignon. Chapter 15 A Father Steps In The comp de la Bastille 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 Demi 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 suffused the eyes of a man of sixty, but do not fall. Tears soon dried, yet quick to start again. The last dues of the human autumn. To have children, to have a wife, to adore them, what is it but to have many hearts and bear 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 oneself over bound hand and foot to sorrow. If I meet that destournee, 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 Canales himself it might not be so bad, but that scupine 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 window of the Hotel de Princesse, 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 in Evaded, and his many griefs, had silvered Charles Mignon's head, his handsome soldierly face, so pure and outline and now bronzed by the sons of China and the southern seas, had acquired an air of dignity, which his present grief rendered almost sublime. Monsignor 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 Brille was announced by one of the servants whom Monsir de la Bastille had attached to himself during the last four years. You have come, Monsir, from my friend Monsignor, he asked? Yes, replied Ernest, growing timid when he saw before him a face as somber as Othello's. My name is Ernest de la Brille, 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 Monsir de la Bastille, asked the Count? Monsir, I love her, and I have the unhoped for happiness of being loved by her. Hear me, Monsir, 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 honour, 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 Canalise. When Monsir Mignon had finished reading the letters, the unfortunate lover, pale and suppliant, actually trembled under the fiery glance of the Provençal. Monsir 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, Monsir, cried Ernest, rising and grasping Monsir 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 Monsir 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 Monsir Mignon 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 Labrière 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. Monsir, he said at last, you are bound to submit holy to the judgment which you have come here to seek, otherwise you are now playing a farce. Oh, Monsir, listen to me, said the father, nailing Labrière 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 Canales and yourself? I rely upon your honour 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 Canales, 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 Bastille. I go to Havre tomorrow, and I shall expect you three days later. Adieu, Montchure. Poor Lebrière went back to Canales 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 Montchure de la Taliran 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 have replied to middle-class women and silly women and crafty creatures who wanted autographs. I have tired myself to death with mask-ball intrigues, at the very moment when God was sending me a soul of price and angel with golden wings. Bah! I'll make a poem on it, and perhaps the chance will come again. Heaven's the luck of that little Lebrière strutting about in my luster. 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 of beauty, a mignon de la Bastille, an aristocratic divinity loving poetry, and the poet, and I, who showed my muscle as a man of the world, who did those all-see-day 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. Lebrière entered the room as Canelise reached this point in his meditations. He was gloom personified. Well, what's the matter, said Canelise? The father exacts that his daughter shall choose between the two Canelise. Poor boy, cried the poet, laughing. He's a clever fellow, that father. I have pledged my honour that I will take you to Havera, said Lebrière, piteously. My dear fellow, said Canelise, if it is a question of your honour, you may count on me. I'll ask for leave of absence for a month. Modeste is so beautiful, exclaimed Lebrière, 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 Canelise, within human gaiety. That evening, after dinner, Charles Mignon and Dumas were flying by virtue of three francs to each pastelion, from Paris to Havera. The father had eased the watchdog's mind as to Modeste and her love affairs. The guard was relieved, and Butchka's innocence established. It is all for the best, my old Dumas, said the Count, who had been making certain inquiries of Montgenaud, respecting Canelise and Lebrière. 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, a lesson given by the father to the daughter. The two friends kept up a long conversation all the way from Paris to Havera, which put the Colonel in possession of the facts relating to his family during the past four years, and informing Dumas that this plane, the great surgeon, was coming to Havera 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 postillian'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 the 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 Dumas's departure for Paré. 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 the wife, kept at a little distance, coming from time to time to kiss her father's forehead, and when she kissed it over much she seemed to mean that she was kissing it for two, for Batina and herself. All 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. Dumas's rather sly and pregnant silence made Modeste somewhat uneasy as to the upshot of his journey to Paré. 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. Tomorrow, 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, Mamzelle de la Bastille. His last words accompanied by a smile which reappeared like an echo on Dumas's lips were all that gave Modeste any clue 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 in 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 Mama would never have allowed it. And do you think, my daughter, that it was proper? Though you have been educating your mind in this fatal way, how is it your good sense, and your intellect did not, in default of Modeste, 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 and cold blood, and that sort of coquetry is headlove, 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, pouty. Oh, your conduct is temerity, is it? A temerity that my mother practiced 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, 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 calm me, 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 a 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 de Anglement, 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 organ 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 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 de Tanger's. 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 Mama 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 the 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 wrongdoing. Yes, wrongdoing for commonplace people, for the narrow-minded Goebenheims 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 Mamzelle Wilkeen. 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? Modest 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 gentle woman? 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 disdainé? Would you still love him? 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? Is it positively la me des infants 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 mon sur de Canales 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. The 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 Canales, who is he then, said Modeste, in a changed voice? The secretary. His name is Ernest de la Breire. He is not a nobleman, but he is one of those plain men with fixed principles and sound morality to 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 ringing 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 have fallen into the hands of one of those poets who, as Dumaises, light their cigars with them. Oh, you are going too far! Canales told him so. Has Dumais seen Canales? 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 in 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 and which he ought to die. This ridicule stopped Modeste's effervescence for a moment, and at 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 wrongdoing 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! Monsur Ernest de la Breire is, to my thinking, fully the equal of the Baron de Canales. He is the 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 Canales. Oh, Papa! Did you not swear just now to obey me and 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. Recording by Nadine Gerdboulet, Modeste Mignon by Honourie de Balzac, translated by Catherine Prescott-Wormley, Chapter 16, Disenchanted The poor girl had fallen humiliated from the harp she had scaled in search of her eagle's nest into the mud of the swamp below, where, to use the poetic language of another 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 her shyest 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-Mendragora. Modeste suddenly found herself brought down from the mystic height of her love to a straight, flat road bordered with ditches, in short, the workday paths 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 dissolution. 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 the sort of savage pleasure in letting her soul suffer to the utmost. Poor Butcher 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 brown 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 perilous, and changes all the physical conditions of the strongest life. Such was the case with Modest. 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 la tonnelle. Canalis, excessively delighted at the idea of a rich marriage, was determined to neglect nothing that might help him to cut out labrières, without, however, giving labrières 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 labrières, in the most natural manner, to take a little country house at Angouville for a month, and live there together on pretence of requiring seer. As soon as labrières, 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 Avre, telling him to see Monsieur la Tournelle, 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 seer to restore his health, injured as it was by the double toys 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 said 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 la Tournelle, 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 Brière. 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 Brière was not as well treated as Monsieur le Baron himself, and after all, you know, Monsieur de la Brière is the 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 Avre, 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 Canalise had instructed him to be. Pour en la Brière 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. Canalise 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 Canalise 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 Letonel to Mignon on the sixth day. The baron's valet has hired Madame Amourise Ville at Saint-Vique, all furnished for 700 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 Butcher. 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 cogetry 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 Jume about his interview with the poet. She inveigled him into relating its every detail, and she did not think canadise 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-worth 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 her in. She particularly said before her mind the satisfaction of humiliating Monsieur de l'Abrillière. Modeste is saved, said Madame Mignon to her husband. She wants to revenge herself on the false cannellies 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 l'Abrillière with extreme politeness. End of chapter 16