The generosity of genius seems to me half divine; and I place you in this noble family of alleged egoists. Ah! if I had found self-interest, ambition, a seared nature where I now can see my best loved flowers of the soul, you know not what long anguish I should have had to bear. I met with disappointment before I was sixteen. What would have become of me had I learned at twenty that fame is a lie, that he whose books express the feelings hidden in my heart was incapable of feeling them himself? Oh! my friend, do you know what would have become of me? Shall I take you into the recesses of my soul? I should have gone to my father and said, "Bring me the son-in-law whom you desire; my will abdicates,—marry me to whom you please." And the man might have been a notary, banker, miser, fool, dullard, wearisome as a rainy day, common as the usher of a school, a manufacturer, or some brave soldier without two ideas,—he would have had a resigned and attentive servant in me. But what an awful suicide! never could my soul have expanded in the life-giving rays of a beloved sun. No murmur should have revealed to my father, or my mother, or my children the suicide of the creature who at this instant is shaking her fetters, casting lightnings from her eyes, and flying towards you with eager wing. See, she is there, at the angle of your desk, like Polyhymnia, breathing the air of your presence, and glancing about her with a curious eye. Sometimes in the fields where my husband would have taken me to walk, I should have wept, apart and secretly, at sight of a glorious morning; and in my heart, or hidden in a bureau-drawer, I might have kept some treasure, the comfort of poor girls ill-used by love, sad, poetic souls,—but ah! I have you, I believe in you, my friend. That belief straightens all my thoughts and fancies, even the most fantastic, and sometimes—see how far my frankness leads me—I wish I were in the middle of the book we are just beginning; such persistency do I feel in my sentiments, such strength in my heart to love, such constancy sustained by reason, such heroism for the duties for which I was created,—if indeed love can ever be transmuted into duty.

If you were able to follow me to the exquisite retreat where I fancy ourselves happy, if you knew my plans and projects, the dreadful word "folly!" might escape you, and I should be cruelly punished for sending poetry to a poet. Yes, I wish to be a spring of waters inexhaustible as a fertile land for the twenty years that nature allows me to shine. I want to drive away satiety by charm. I mean to be courageous for my friend as most women are for the world. I wish to vary happiness. I wish to put intelligence into tenderness, and to give piquancy to fidelity. I am filled with ambition to kill the rivals of the past, to conjure away all outside griefs by a wife's gentleness, by her proud abnegation, to take a lifelong care of the nest,—such as birds can only take for a few weeks.

Tell me, do you now think me to blame for my first letter? The mysterious wind of will drove me to you, as the tempest brings the little rose-tree to the pollard window. In your letter, which I hold here upon my heart, you cried out, like your ancestor when he departed for the Crusades, "God wills it."

Ah! but you will cry out, "What a chatterbox!" All the people round me say, on the contrary, "Mademoiselle is very taciturn."

O. d'Este M.



CHAPTER XI. WHAT COMES OF CORRESPONDENCE

The foregoing letters seemed very original to the persons from whom the author of the "Comedy of Human Life" obtained them; but their interest in this duel, this crossing of pens between two minds, may not be shared. For every hundred readers, eighty might weary of the battle. The respect due to the majority in every nation under a constitutional government, leads us, therefore, to suppress eleven other letters exchanged between Ernest and Modeste during the month of September. If, later on, some flattering majority should arise to claim them, let us hope that we can then find means to insert them in their proper place.

Urged by a mind that seemed as aggressive as the heart was lovable, the truly chivalrous feelings of the poor secretary gave themselves free play in these suppressed letters, which seem, perhaps, more beautiful than they really are, because the imagination is charmed by a sense of the communion of two free souls. Ernest's whole life was now wrapped up in these sweet scraps of paper; they were to him what banknotes are to a miser; while in Modeste's soul a deep love took the place of her delight in agitating a glorious life, and being, in spite of distance, its mainspring. Ernest's heart was the complement of Canalis's glory. Alas! it often takes two men to make a perfect lover, just as in literature we compose a type by collecting the peculiarities of several similar characters. How many a time a woman has been heard to say in her own salon after close and intimate conversations:—

"Such a one is my ideal as to soul, and I love the other who is only a dream of the senses."

The last letter written by Modeste, which here follows, gives us a glimpse of the enchanted isle to which the meanderings of this correspondence had led the two lovers.

To Monsieur de Canalis,—Be at Havre next Sunday; go to church; after the morning service, walk once or twice round the nave, and go out without speaking to any one; but wear a white rose in your button-hole. Then return to Paris, where you shall receive an answer. I warn you that this answer will not be what you wish; for, as I told you, the future is not yet mine. But should I not indeed be mad and foolish to say yes without having seen you? When I have seen you I can say no without wounding you; I can make sure that you shall not see me.

This letter had been sent off the evening before the day when the abortive struggle between Dumay and Modeste had taken place. The happy girl was impatiently awaiting Sunday, when her eyes were to vindicate or condemn her heart and her actions,—a solemn moment in the life of any woman, and which three months of close communion of souls now rendered as romantic as the most imaginative maiden could have wished. Every one, except the mother, had taken this torpor of expectation for the calm of innocence. No matter how firmly family laws and religious precepts may bind, there will always be the Clarissas and the Julies, whose souls like flowing cups o'erlap the brim under some spiritual pressure. Modeste was glorious in the savage energy with which she repressed her exuberant youthful happiness and remained demurely quiet. Let us say frankly that the memory of her sister was more potent upon her than any social conventions; her will was iron in the resolve to bring no grief upon her father and her mother. But what tumultuous heavings were within her breast! no wonder that a mother guessed them.

On the following day Modeste and Madame Dumay took Madame Mignon about mid-day to a seat in the sun among the flowers. The blind woman turned her wan and blighted face toward the ocean; she inhaled the odors of the sea and took the hand of her daughter who remained beside her. The mother hesitated between forgiveness and remonstrance ere she put the important question; for she comprehended the girl's love and recognized, as the pretended Canalis had done, that Modeste was exceptional in nature.

"God grant that your father return in time! If he delays much longer he will find none but you to love him. Modeste, promise me once more never to leave him," she said in a fond maternal tone.

Modeste lifted her mother's hands to her lips and kissed them gently, replying: "Need I say it again?"

"Ah, my child! I did this thing myself. I left my father to follow my husband; and yet my father was all alone; I was all the child he had. Is that why God has so punished me? What I ask of you is to marry as your father wishes, to cherish him in your heart, not to sacrifice him to your own happiness, but to make him the centre of your home. Before losing my sight, I wrote him all my wishes, and I know he will execute them. I enjoined him to keep his property intact and in his own hands; not that I distrust you, my Modeste, for a moment, but who can be sure of a son-in-law? Ah! my daughter, look at me; was I reasonable? One glance of the eye decided my life. Beauty, so often deceitful, in my case spoke true; but even were it the same with you, my poor child, swear to me that you will let your father inquire into the character, the habits, the heart, and the previous life of the man you distinguish with your love—if, by chance, there is such a man."

"I will never marry without the consent of my father," answered Modeste.

"You see, my darling," said Madame Mignon after a long pause, "that if I am dying by inches through Bettina's wrong-doing, your father would not survive yours, no, not for a moment. I know him; he would put a pistol to his head,—there could be no life, no happiness on earth for him."

Modeste walked a few steps away from her mother, but immediately came back.

"Why did you leave me?" demanded Madame Mignon.

"You made me cry, mamma," answered Modeste.

"Ah, my little darling, kiss me. You love no one here? you have no lover, have you?" she asked, holding Modeste on her lap, heart to heart.

"No, my dear mamma," said the little Jesuit.

"Can you swear it?"

"Oh, yes!" cried Modeste.

Madame Mignon said no more; but she still doubted.

"At least, if you do choose your husband, you will tell your father?" she resumed.

"I promised that to my sister, and to you, mother. What evil do you think I could commit while I wear that ring upon my finger and read those words: 'Think of Bettina?' Poor sister!"

At these words a truce of silence came between the pair; the mother's blighted eyes rained tears which Modeste could not check, though she threw herself upon her knees, and cried: "Forgive me! oh, forgive me, mother!"

At this instant the excellent Dumay was coming up the hill of Ingouville on the double-quick,—a fact quite abnormal in the present life of the cashier.

Three letters had brought ruin to the Mignons; a single letter now restored their fortunes. Dumay had received from a sea-captain just arrived from the China Seas the following letter containing the first news of his patron and friend, Charles Mignon:—

To Monsieur Jean Dumay:

My Dear Dumay,—I shall quickly follow, barring the chances of the voyage, the vessel which carries this letter. In fact, I should have taken it, but I did not wish to leave my own ship to which I am accustomed.

I told you that no new was to be good news. But the first words of this letter ought to make you a happy man. I have made seven millions at the least. I am bringing back a large part of it in indigo, one third in safe London securities, and another third in good solid gold. Your remittances helped me to make the sum I had settled in my own mind much sooner than I expected. I wanted two millions for my daughters and a competence for myself.

I have been engaged in the opium trade with the largest houses in Canton, all ten times richer than ever I was. You have no idea, in Europe, what these rich East India merchants are. I went to Asia Minor and purchased opium at low prices, and from thence to Canton where I delivered my cargoes to the companies who control the trade. My last expedition was to the Philippine Islands where I exchanged opium for indigo of the first quality. In fact, I may have half a million more than I stated, for I reckoned the indigo at what it cost me. I have always been well in health; not the slightest illness. That is the result of working for one's children. Since the second year I have owned a pretty little brig of seven hundred tons, called the "Mignon." She is built of oak, double-planked, and copper-fastened; and all the interior fittings were done to suit me. She is, in fact, an additional piece of property.

A sea-life and the active habits required by my business have kept me in good health. To tell you all this is the same as telling it to my two daughters and my dear wife. I trust that the wretched man who took away my Bettina deserted her when he heard of my ruin; and that I shall find the poor lost lamb at the Chalet. My three dear women and my Dumay! All four of you have been ever present in my thoughts for the last three years. You are a rich man, now, Dumay. Your share, outside of my own fortune, amounts to five hundred and sixty thousand francs, for which I send you herewith a check, which can only be paid to you in person by the Mongenods, who have been duly advised from New York.

A few short months, and I shall see you all again, and all well, I trust. My dear Dumay, if I write this letter to you it is because I am anxious to keep my fortune a secret for the present. I therefore leave to you the happiness of preparing my dear angels for my return. I have had enough of commerce; and I am resolved to leave Havre. My intention is to buy back the estate of La Bastie, and to entail it, so as to establish an estate yielding at least a hundred thousand francs a year, and then to ask the king to grant that one of my sons-in-law may succeed to my name and title. You know, my poor Dumay, what a terrible misfortune overtook us through the fatal reputation of a large fortune,—my daughter's honor was lost. I have therefore resolved that the amount of my present fortune shall not be known. I shall not disembark at Havre, but at Marseilles. I shall sell my indigo, and negotiate for the purchase of La Bastie through the house of Mongenod in Paris. I shall put my funds in the Bank of France and return to the Chalet giving out that I have a considerable fortune in merchandise. My daughters will be supposed to have two or three hundred thousand francs. To choose which of my sons-in-law is worthy to succeed to my title and estates and to live with us, is now the object of my life; but both of them must be, like you and me, honest, loyal, and firm men, and absolutely honorable.

My dear old fellow, I have never doubted you for a moment. We have gone through wars and commerce together and now we will undertake agriculture; you shall be my bailiff. You will like that, will you not? And so, old friend, I leave it to your discretion to tell what you think best to my wife and daughters; I rely upon your prudence. In four years great changes may have taken place in their characters.

Adieu, my old Dumay. Say to my daughters and to my wife that I have never failed to kiss them in my thoughts morning and evening since I left them. The second check for forty thousand francs herewith enclosed is for my wife and children.

Till we meet.—Your colonel and friend,

Charles Mignon.

"Your father is coming," said Madame Mignon to her daughter.

"What makes you think so, mamma?" asked Modeste.

"Nothing else could make Dumay hurry himself."

"Victory! victory!" cried the lieutenant as soon as he reached the garden gate. "Madame, the colonel has not been ill a moment; he is coming back—coming back on the 'Mignon,' a fine ship of his own, which together with its cargo is worth, he tells me, eight or nine hundred thousand francs. But he requires secrecy from all of us; his heart is still wrung by the misfortunes of our dear departed girl."

"He has still to learn her death," said Madame Mignon.

"He attributes her disaster, and I think he is right, to the rapacity of young men after great fortunes. My poor colonel expects to find the lost sheep here. Let us be happy among ourselves but say nothing to any one, not even to Latournelle, if that is possible. Mademoiselle," he whispered in Modeste's ear, "write to your father and tell him of his loss and also the terrible results on your mother's health and eyesight; prepare him for the shock he has to meet. I will engage to get the letter into his hands before he reaches Havre, for he will have to pass through Paris on his way. Write him a long letter; you have plenty of time. I will take the letter on Monday; Monday I shall probably go to Paris."

Modeste was so afraid that Canalis and Dumay would meet that she started hastily for the house to write to her poet and put off the rendezvous.

"Mademoiselle," said Dumay, in a very humble manner and barring Modeste's way, "may your father find his daughter with no other feelings in her heart than those she had for him and for her mother before he was obliged to leave her."

"I have sworn to myself, to my sister, and to my mother to be the joy, the consolation, and the glory of my father, and I shall keep my oath!" replied Modeste with a haughty and disdainful glance at Dumay. "Do not trouble my delight in the thought of my father's return with insulting suspicions. You cannot prevent a girl's heart from beating—you don't want me to be a mummy, do you?" she said. "My hand belongs to my family, but my heart is my own. If I love any one, my father and my mother will know it. Does that satisfy you, monsieur?"

"Thank you, mademoiselle; you restore me to life," said Dumay, "but you might still call me Dumay, even when you box my ears!"

"Swear to me," said her mother, "that you have not engaged a word or a look with any young man."

"I can swear that, my dear mother," said Modeste, laughing, and looking at Dumay who was watching her and smiling to himself like a mischievous girl.

"She must be false indeed if you are right," cried Dumay, when Modeste had left them and gone into the house.

"My daughter Modeste may have faults," said her mother, "but falsehood is not one of them; she is incapable of saying what is not true."

"Well! then let us feel easy," continued Dumay, "and believe that misfortune has closed his account with us."

"God grant it!" answered Madame Mignon. "You will see him, Dumay; but I shall only hear him. There is much of sadness in my joy."



CHAPTER XII. A DECLARATION OF LOVE,—SET TO MUSIC

At this moment Modeste, happy as she was in the return of her father, was, nevertheless, pacing her room disconsolate as Perrette on seeing her eggs broken. She had hoped her father would bring back a much larger fortune than Dumay had mentioned. Nothing could satisfy her new-found ambition on behalf of her poet less than at least half the six millions she had talked of in her second letter. Trebly agitated by her two joys and the grief caused by her comparative poverty, she seated herself at the piano, that confidant of so many young girls, who tell out their wishes and provocations on the keys, expressing them by the notes and tones of their music. Dumay was talking with his wife in the garden under the windows, telling her the secret of their own wealth, and questioning her as to her desires and her intentions. Madame Dumay had, like her husband, no other family than the Mignons. Husband and wife agreed, therefore, to go and live in Provence, if the Comte de La Bastie really meant to live in Provence, and to leave their money to whichever of Modeste's children might need it most.

"Listen to Modeste," said Madame Mignon, addressing them. "None but a girl in love can compose such airs without having studied music."

Houses may burn, fortunes be engulfed, fathers return from distant lands, empires may crumble away, the cholera may ravage cities, but a maiden's love wings its way as nature pursues hers, or that alarming acid which chemistry has lately discovered, and which will presently eat through the globe, if nothing stops it.

Modeste, under the inspiration of her present situation, was putting to music certain stanzas which we are compelled to quote here—albeit they are printed in the second volume of the edition Dauriat had mentioned—because, in order to adapt them to her music, which had the inexpressible charm of sentiment so admired in great singers, Modeste had taken liberties with the lines in a manner that may astonish the admirers of a poet so famous for the correctness, sometimes too precise, of his measures.

THE MAIDEN'S SONG

Hear, arise! the lark is shaking Sunlit wings that heavenward rise; Sleep no more; the violet, waking, Wafts her incense to the skies.

Flowers revived, their eyes unclosing, See themselves in drops of dew In each calyx-cup reposing, Pearls of a day their mirror true.

Breeze divine, the god of roses, Passed by night to bless their bloom; See! for him each bud uncloses, Glows, and yields its rich perfume.

Then arise! the lark is shaking Sunlit wings that heavenward rise; Nought is sleeping—Heart, awaking, Lift thine incense to the skies.

"It is very pretty," said Madame Dumay. "Modeste is a musician, and that's the whole of it."

"The devil is in her!" cried the cashier, into whose heart the suspicion of the mother forced its way and made him shiver.

"She loves," persisted Madame Mignon.

By succeeding, through the undeniable testimony of the song, in making the cashier a sharer in her belief as to the state of Modeste's heart, Madame Mignon destroyed the happiness the return and the prosperity of his master had brought him. The poor Breton went down the hill to Havre and to his desk in Gobenheim's counting-room with a heavy heart; then, before returning to dinner, he went to see Latournelle, to tell his fears, and beg once more for the notary's advice and assistance.

"Yes, my dear friend," said Dumay, when they parted on the steps of the notary's door, "I now agree with madame; she loves,—yes, I am sure of it; and the devil knows the rest. I am dishonored."

"Don't make yourself unhappy, Dumay," answered the little notary. "Among us all we can surely get the better of the little puss; sooner or later, every girl in love betrays herself,—you may be sure of that. But we will talk about it this evening."

Thus it happened that all those devoted to the Mignon family were fully as disquieted and uncertain as they were before the old soldier tried the experiment which he expected would be so decisive. The ill-success of his past efforts so stimulated Dumay's sense of duty, that he determined not to go to Paris to see after his own fortune as announced by his patron, until he had guessed the riddle of Modeste's heart. These friends, to whom feelings were more precious than interests, well knew that unless the daughter were pure and innocent, the father would die of grief when he came to know the death of Bettina and the blindness of his wife. The distress of poor Dumay made such an impression on the Latournelles that they even forgot their parting with Exupere, whom they had sent off that morning to Paris. During dinner, while the three were alone, Monsieur and Madame Latournelle and Butscha turned the problem over and over in their minds, and discussed every aspect of it.

"If Modeste loved any one in Havre she would have shown some fear yesterday," said Madame Latournelle; "her lover, therefore, lives somewhere else."

"She swore to her mother this morning," said the notary, "in presence of Dumay, that she had not exchanged a look or a word with any living soul."

"Then she loves after my fashion!" exclaimed Butscha.

"And how is that, my poor lad?" asked Madame Latournelle.

"Madame," said the little cripple, "I love alone and afar—oh! as far as from here to the stars."

"How do you manage it, you silly fellow?" said Madame Latournelle, laughing.

"Ah, madame!" said Butscha, "what you call my hump is the socket of my wings."

"So that is the explanation of your seal, is it?" cried the notary.

Butscha's seal was a star, and under it the words "Fulgens, sequar,"—"Shining One, I follow thee,"—the motto of the house of Chastillonest.

"A beautiful woman may feel as distrustful as the ugliest," said Butscha, as if speaking to himself; "Modeste is clever enough to fear she may be loved only for her beauty."

Hunchbacks are extraordinary creations, due entirely to society for, according to Nature's plan, feeble or aborted beings ought to perish. The curvature or distortion of the spinal column creates in these outwardly deformed subjects as it were a storage-battery, where the nerve currents accumulate more abundantly than under normal conditions,—where they develop, and whence they are emitted, so to say, in lightning flashes, to energize the interior being. From this, forces result which are sometimes brought to light by magnetism, though they are far more frequently lost in the vague spaces of the spiritual world. It is rare to find a deformed person who is not gifted with some special faculty,—a whimsical or sparkling gaiety perhaps, an utter malignity, or an almost sublime goodness. Like instruments which the hand of art can never fully waken, these beings, highly privileged though they know it not, live within themselves, as Butscha lived, provided their natural forces so magnificently concentrated have not been spent in the struggle they have been forced to maintain, against tremendous odds, to keep alive. This explains many superstitions, the popular legends of gnomes, frightful dwarfs, deformed fairies,—all that race of bottles, as Rabelais called them, containing elixirs and precious balms.

Butscha, therefore, had very nearly found the key to the puzzle. With all the anxious solicitude of a hopeless lover, a vassal ever ready to die,—like the soldiers alone and abandoned in the snows of Russia, who still cried out, "Long live the Emperor,"—he meditated how to capture Modeste's secret for his own private knowledge. So thinking, he followed his patrons to the Chalet that evening, with a cloud of care upon his brow: for he knew it was most important to hide from all these watchful eyes and ears the net, whatever it might be, in which he should entrap his lady. It would have to be, he thought, by some intercepted glance, some sudden start or quiver, as when a surgeon lays his finger on a hidden sore. That evening Gobenheim did not appear, and Butscha was Dumay's partner against Monsieur and Madame Latournelle. During the few moment's of Modeste's absence, about nine o'clock, to prepare for her mother's bedtime, Madame Mignon and her friends spoke openly to one another; but the poor clerk, depressed by the conviction of Modeste's love, which had now seized upon him as upon the rest, seemed as remote from the discussion as Gobenheim had been the night before.

"Well, what's the matter with you, Butscha?" cried Madame Latournelle; "one would really think you hadn't a friend in the world."

Tears shone in the eyes of the poor fellow, who was the son of a Swedish sailor, and whose mother was dead.

"I have no one in the world but you," he answered with a troubled voice; "and your compassion is so much a part of your religion that I can never lose it—and I will never deserve to lose it."

This answer struck the sensitive chord of true delicacy in the minds of all present.

"We love you, Monsieur Butscha," said Madame Mignon, with much feeling in her voice.

"I've six hundred thousand francs of my own, this day," cried Dumay, "and you shall be a notary and the successor of Latournelle."

The American wife took the hand of the poor hunchback and pressed it.

"What! you have six hundred thousand francs!" exclaimed Latournelle, pricking up his ears as Dumay let fall the words; "and you allow these ladies to live as they do! Modeste ought to have a fine horse; and why doesn't she continue to take lessons in music, and painting, and—"

"Why, he has only had the money a few hours!" cried the little wife.

"Hush!" murmured Madame Mignon.

While these words were exchanged, Butscha's august mistress turned towards him, preparing to make a speech:—

"My son," she said, "you are so surrounded by true affection that I never thought how my thoughtless use of that familiar phrase might be construed; but you must thank me for my little blunder, because it has served to show you what friends your noble qualities have won."

"Then you must have news from Monsieur Mignon," resumed the notary.

"He is on his way home," said Madame Mignon; "but let us keep the secret to ourselves. When my husband learns how faithful Butscha has been to us, how he has shown us the warmest and the most disinterested friendship when others have given us the cold shoulder, he will not let you alone provide for him, Dumay. And so, my friend," she added, turning her blind face toward Butscha; "you can begin at once to negotiate with Latournelle."

"He's of legal age, twenty-five and a half years. As for me, it will be paying a debt, my boy, to make the purchase easy for you," said the notary.

Butscha was kissing Madame Mignon's hand, and his face was wet with tears as Modeste opened the door of the salon.

"What are you doing to my Black Dwarf?" she demanded. "Who is making him unhappy?"

"Ah! Mademoiselle Mignon, do we luckless fellows, cradled in misfortune, ever weep for grief? They have just shown me as much affection as I could feel for them if they were indeed my own relations. I'm to be a notary; I shall be rich. Ha! ha! the poor Butscha may become the rich Butscha. You don't know what audacity there is in this abortion," he cried.

With that he gave himself a resounding blow on the cavity of his chest and took up a position before the fireplace, after casting a glance at Modeste, which slipped like a ray of light between his heavy half-closed eyelids. He perceived, in this unexpected incident, a chance of interrogating the heart of his sovereign. Dumay thought for a moment that the clerk dared to aspire to Modeste, and he exchanged a rapid glance with the others, who understood him, and began to eye the little man with a species of terror mingled with curiosity.

"I, too, have my dreams," said Butscha, not taking his eyes from Modeste.

The young girl lowered her eyelids with a movement that was a revelation to the young man.

"You love romance," he said, addressing her. "Let me, in this moment of happiness, tell you mine; and you shall tell me in return whether the conclusion of the tale I have invented for my life is possible. To me wealth would bring greater happiness than to other men; for the highest happiness I can imagine would be to enrich the one I loved. You, mademoiselle, who know so many things, tell me if it is possible for a man to make himself beloved independently of his person, be it handsome or ugly, and for his spirit only?"

Modeste raised her eyes and looked at Butscha. It was a piercing and questioning glance; for she shared Dumay's suspicion of Butscha's motive.

"Let me be rich, and I will seek some beautiful poor girl, abandoned like myself, who has suffered, who knows what misery is. I will write to her and console her, and be her guardian spirit; she shall read my heart, my soul; she shall possess by double wealth, my two wealths,—my gold, delicately offered, and my thought robed in all the splendor which the accident of birth has denied to my grotesque body. But I myself shall remain hidden like the cause that science seeks. God himself may not be glorious to the eye. Well, naturally, the maiden will be curious; she will wish to see me; but I shall tell her that I am a monster of ugliness; I shall picture myself hideous."

At these words Modeste gave Butscha a glance that looked him through and through. If she had said aloud, "What do you know of my love?" she could not have been more explicit.

"If I have the honor of being loved for the poem of my heart, if some day such love may make a woman think me only slightly deformed, I ask you, mademoiselle, shall I not be happier than the handsomest of men,—as happy as a man of genius beloved by some celestial being like yourself."

The color which suffused the young girl's face told the cripple nearly all he sought to know.

"Well, if that be so," he went on, "if we enrich the one we love, if we please the spirit and withdraw the body, is not that the way to make one's self beloved? At any rate it is the dream of your poor dwarf,—a dream of yesterday; for to-day your mother gives me the key to future wealth by promising me the means of buying a practice. But before I become another Gobenheim, I seek to know whether this dream could be really carried out. What do you say, mademoiselle, you?"

Modeste was so astonished that she did not notice the question. The trap of the lover was much better baited than that of the soldier, for the poor girl was rendered speechless.

"Poor Butscha!" whispered Madame Latournelle to her husband. "Do you think he is going mad?"

"You want to realize the story of Beauty and the Beast," said Modeste at length; "but you forget that the Beast turned into Prince Charming."

"Do you think so?" said the dwarf. "Now I have always thought that that transformation meant the phenomenon of the soul made visible, obliterating the form under the light of the spirit. If I were not loved I should stay hidden, that is all. You and yours, madame," he continued, addressing his mistress, "instead of having a dwarf at your service, will now have a life and a fortune."

So saying, Butscha resumed his seat, remarking to the three whist-players with an assumption of calmness, "Whose deal is it?" but within his soul he whispered sadly to himself: "She wants to be loved for herself; she corresponds with some pretended great man; how far has it gone?"

"Dear mamma, it is nearly ten o'clock," said Modeste.

Madame Mignon said good-night to her friends, and went to bed.

They who wish to love in secret may have Pyrenean hounds, mothers, Dumays, and Latournelles to spy upon them, and yet not be in any danger; but when it comes to a lover!—ah! that is diamond cut diamond, flame against flame, mind to mind, an equation whose terms are mutual.

On Sunday morning Butscha arrived at the Chalet before Madame Latournelle, who always came to take Modeste to church, and he proceeded to blockade the house in expectation of the postman.

"Have you a letter for Mademoiselle Mignon?" he said to that humble functionary when he appeared.

"No, monsieur, none."

"This house has been a good customer to the post of late," remarked the clerk.

"You may well say that," replied the man.

Modeste both heard and saw the little colloquy from her chamber window, where she always posted herself behind the blinds at this particular hour to watch for the postman. She ran downstairs, went into the little garden, and called in an imperative voice:—

"Monsieur Butscha!"

"Here am I, mademoiselle," said the cripple, reaching the gate as Modeste herself opened it.

"Will you be good enough to tell me whether among your various titles to a woman's affection you count that of the shameless spying in which you are now engaged?" demanded the girl, endeavoring to crush her slave with the glance and gesture of a queen.

"Yes, mademoiselle," he answered proudly. "Ah! I never expected," he continued in a low tone, "that the grub could be of service to a star,—but so it is. Would you rather that your mother and Monsieur Dumay and Madame Latournelle had guessed your secret than one, excluded as it were from life, who seeks to be to you one of those flowers that you cut and wear for a moment? They all know you love; but I, I alone, know how. Use me as you would a vigilant watch-dog; I will obey you, protect you, and never bark; neither will I condemn you. I ask only to be of service to you. Your father has made Dumay keeper of the hen-roost, take Butscha to watch outside,—poor Butscha, who doesn't ask for anything, not so much as a bone."

"Well, I've give you a trial," said Modeste, whose strongest desire was to get rid of so clever a watcher. "Please go at once to all the hotels in Graville and in Havre, and ask if a gentleman has arrived from England named Monsieur Arthur—"

"Listen to me, mademoiselle," said Butscha, interrupting Modeste respectfully. "I will go and take a walk on the seashore, for you don't want me to go to church to-day; that's what it is."

Modeste looked at her dwarf with a perfectly stupid astonishment.

"Mademoiselle, you have wrapped your face in cotton-wool and a silk handkerchief, but there's nothing the matter with you; and you have put that thick veil on your bonnet to see some one yourself without being seen."

"Where did you acquire all that perspicacity?" cried Modeste, blushing.

"Moreover, mademoiselle, you have not put on your corset; a cold in the head wouldn't oblige you to disfigure your waist and wear half a dozen petticoats, nor hide your hands in these old gloves, and your pretty feet in those hideous shoes, nor dress yourself like a beggar-woman, nor—"

"That's enough," she said. "How am I to be certain that you will obey me?"

"My master is obliged to go to Sainte-Adresse. He does not like it, but he is so truly good he won't deprive me of my Sunday; I will offer to go for him."

"Go, and I will trust you."

"You are sure I can do nothing for you in Havre?"

"Nothing. Hear me, mysterious dwarf,—look," she continued, pointing to the cloudless sky; "can you see a single trace of that bird that flew by just now? No; well then, my actions are pure as the air is pure, and leave no stain behind them. You may reassure Dumay and the Latournelles, and my mother. That hand," she said, holding up a pretty delicate hand, with the points of the rosy fingers, through which the light shone, slightly turning back, "will never be given, it will never even be kissed by what people call a lover until my father has returned."

"Why don't you want me in the church to-day?"

"Do you venture to question me after all I have done you the honor to say, and to ask of you?"

Butscha bowed without another word, and departed to find his master, in all the rapture of being taken into the service of his goddess.

Half an hour later, Monsieur and Madame Latournelle came to fetch Modeste, who complained of a horrible toothache.

"I really have not had the courage to dress myself," she said.

"Well then," replied the worthy chaperone, "stay at home."

"Oh, no!" said Modeste. "I would rather not. I have bundled myself up, and I don't think it will do me any harm to go out."

And Mademoiselle Mignon marched off beside Latournelle, refusing to take his arm lest she should be questioned about the outward trembling which betrayed her inward agitation at the thought of at last seeing her great poet. One look, the first,—was it not about to decide her fate?



CHAPTER XIII. A FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF MONSIEUR DE LA BRIERE

Is there in the life of man a more delightful moment than that of a first rendezvous? Are the sensations then hidden at the bottom of our hearts and finding their first expression ever renewed? Can we feel again the nameless pleasures that we felt when, like Ernest de La Briere, we looked up our sharpest razors, our finest shirt, an irreproachable collar, and our best clothes? We deify the garments associated with that all-supreme moment. We weave within us poetic fancies quite equal to those of the woman; and the day when either party guesses them they take wings to themselves and fly away. Are not such things like the flower of wild fruits, bitter-sweet, grown in the heart of a forest, the joy of the scant sun-rays, the joy, as Canalis says in the "Maiden's Song," of the plant itself whose eyes unclosing see its own image within its breast?

Such emotions, now taking place in La Briere, tend to show that, like other poor fellows for whom life begins in toil and care, he had never yet been loved. Arriving at Havre overnight, he had gone to bed at once, like a true coquette, to obliterate all traces of fatigue; and now, after taking his bath, he had put himself into a costume carefully adapted to show him off to the best advantage. This is, perhaps, the right moment to exhibit a full-length portrait of him, if only to justify the last letter that Modeste was still to write to him.

Born of a good family in Toulouse, and allied by marriage to the minister who first took him under his protection, Ernest had that air of good-breeding which comes of an education begun in the cradle; and the habit of managing business affairs gave him a certain sedateness which was not pedantic,—though pedantry is the natural outgrowth of premature gravity. He was of ordinary height; his face, which won upon all who saw him by its delicacy and sweetness, was warm in the flesh-tints, though without color, and relieved by a small moustache and imperial a la Mazarin. Without this evidence of virility he might have resembled a young woman in disguise, so refined was the shape of his face and the cut of his lips, so feminine the transparent ivory of a set of teeth, regular enough to have seemed artificial. Add to these womanly points a habit of speech as gentle as the expression of the face; as gentle, too, as the blue eyes with their Turkish eyelids, and you will readily understand how it was that the minister occasionally called his young secretary Mademoiselle de La Briere. The full, clear forehead, well framed by abundant black hair, was dreamy, and did not contradict the character of the face, which was altogether melancholy. The prominent arch of the upper eyelid, though very beautifully cut, overshadowed the glance of the eye, and added a physical sadness,—if we may so call it,—produced by the droop of the lid over the eyeball. This inward doubt or eclipse—which is put into language by the word modesty—was expressed in his whole person. Perhaps we shall be able to make his appearance better understood if we say that the logic of design required greater length in the oval of his head, more space between the chin, which ended abruptly, and the forehead, which was reduced in height by the way in which the hair grew. The face had, in short, a rather compressed appearance. Hard work had already drawn furrows between the eyebrows, which were somewhat too thick and too near together, like those of a jealous nature. Though La Briere was then slight, he belonged to the class of temperaments which begin, after they are thirty, to take on an unexpected amount of flesh.

The young man would have seemed to a student of French history a very fair representative of the royal and almost inconceivable figure of Louis XIII.,—that historical figure of melancholy modesty without known cause; pallid beneath the crown; loving the dangers of war and the fatigues of hunting, but hating work; timid with his mistress to the extent of keeping away from her; so indifferent as to allow the head of his friend to be cut off,—a figure that nothing can explain but his remorse for having avenged his father on his mother. Was he a Catholic Hamlet, or merely the victim of incurable disease? But the undying worm which gnawed at the king's vitals was in Ernest's case simply distrust of himself,—the timidity of a man to whom no woman had ever said, "Ah, how I love thee!" and, above all, the spirit of self-devotion without an object. After hearing the knell of the monarchy in the fall of his patron's ministry, the poor fellow had next fallen upon a rock covered with exquisite mosses, named Canalis; he was, therefore, still seeking a power to love, and this spaniel-like search for a master gave him outwardly the air of a king who has met with his. This play of feeling, and a general tone of suffering in the young man's face made it more really beautiful than he was himself aware of; for he had always been annoyed to find himself classed by women among the "handsome disconsolate,"—a class which has passed out of fashion in these days, when every man seeks to blow his own trumpet and put himself in the advance.

The self-distrustful Ernest now rested his immediate hopes on the fashionable clothes he intended to wear. He put on, for this sacred interview, where everything depended on a first impression, a pair of black trousers and carefully polished boots, a sulphur-colored waistcoat, which left to sight an exquisitely fine shirt with opal buttons, a black cravat, and a small blue surtout coat which seemed glued to his back and shoulders by some newly-invented process. The ribbon of the Legion of honor was in his buttonhole. He wore a well-fitting pair of kid gloves of the Florentine bronze color, and carried his cane and hat in the left hand with a gesture and air that was worthy of the Grand Monarch, and enabled him to show, as the sacred precincts required, his bare head with the light falling on his carefully arranged hair. He stationed himself before the service began in the church porch, from whence he could examine the church, and the Christians—more particularly the female Christians—who dipped their fingers in the holy water.

An inward voice cried to Modeste as she entered, "It is he!" That surtout, and indeed the whole bearing of the young man were essentially Parisian; the ribbon, the gloves, the cane, the very perfume of his hair were not of Havre. So when La Briere turned about to examine the tall and imposing Madame Latournelle, the notary, and the bundled-up (expression sacred to women) figure of Modeste, the poor child, though she had carefully tutored herself for the event, received a violent blow on her heart when her eyes rested on this poetic figure, illuminated by the full light of day as it streamed through the open door. She could not be mistaken; a small white rose nearly hid the ribbon of the Legion. Would he recognize his unknown mistress muffled in an old bonnet with a double veil? Modeste was so in fear of love's clairvoyance that she began to stoop in her walk like an old woman.

"Wife," said little Latournelle as they took their seats, "that gentleman does not belong to Havre."

"So many strangers come here," answered his wife.

"But," said the notary, "strangers never come to look at a church like ours, which is less than two centuries old."

Ernest remained in the porch throughout the service without seeing any woman who realized his hopes. Modeste, on her part, could not control the trembling of her limbs until Mass was nearly over. She was in the grasp of a joy that none but she herself could depict. At last she heard the foot-fall of a gentleman on the pavement of the aisle. The service over, La Briere was making a circuit of the church, where no one now remained but the punctiliously pious, whom he proceeded to subject to a shrewd and keen analysis. Ernest noticed that a prayer-book shook violently in the hands of a veiled woman as he passed her; as she alone kept her face hidden his suspicions were aroused, and then confirmed by Modeste's dress, which the lover's eye now scanned and noted. He left the church with the Latournelles and followed them at a distance to the rue Royale, where he saw them enter a house accompanied by Modeste, whose custom it was to stay with her friends till the hour of vespers. After examining the little house, which was ornamented with scutcheons, he asked the name of the owner, and was told that he was Monsieur Latournelle, the chief notary in Havre. As Ernest lounged along the rue Royale hoping for a glimpse into the house, Modeste caught sight of him, and thereupon declared herself too ill to go to vespers. Poor Ernest thus had his trouble for his pains. He dared not wander about Ingouville; moreover, he made it a point of honor to obey orders, and he therefore went back to Paris, previously writing a letter which Francoise Cochet duly delivered on the morrow with the Havre postmark.

It was the custom of Monsieur and Madame Latournelle to dine at the Chalet every Sunday when they brought back Modeste after vespers. So, as soon as the invalid felt a little better, they started for Ingouville, accompanied by Butscha. Once at home, the happy Modeste forgot her pretended illness and her disguise, and dressed herself charmingly, humming as she came down to dinner,—

"Nought is sleeping—Heart! awaking, Lift thine incense to the skies."

Butscha shuddered slightly when he caught sight of her, so changed did she seem to him. The wings of love were fastened to her shoulders; she had the air of a nymph, a Psyche; her cheeks glowed with the divine color of happiness.

"Who wrote the words to which you have put that pretty music?" asked her mother.

"Canalis, mamma," she answered, flushing rosy red from her throat to her forehead.

"Canalis!" cried the dwarf, to whom the inflections of the girl's voice and her blush told the only thing of which he was still ignorant. "He, that great poet, does he write songs?"

"They are only simple verses," she said, "which I have ventured to set to German airs."

"No, no," interrupted Madame Mignon, "the music is your own, my daughter."

Modeste, feeling that she grew more and more crimson, went off into the garden, calling Butscha after her.

"You can do me a great service," she said. "Dumay is keeping a secret from my mother and me as to the fortune which my father is bringing back with him; and I want to know what it is. Did not Dumay send papa when he first went away over five hundred thousand francs? Yes. Well, papa is not the kind of man to stay away four years and only double his capital. It seems he is coming back on a ship of his own, and Dumay's share amounts to almost six hundred thousand francs."

"There is no need to question Dumay," said Butscha. "Your father lost, as you know, about four millions when he went away, and he has doubtless recovered them. He would of course give Dumay ten per cent of his profits; the worthy man admitted the other day how much it was, and my master and I think that in that case the colonel's fortune must amount to six or seven millions—"

"Oh, papa!" cried Modeste, crossing her hands on her breast and looking up to heaven, "twice you have given me life!"

"Ah, mademoiselle!" said Butscha, "you love a poet. That kind of man is more or less of a Narcissus. Will he know how to love you? A phrase-maker, always busy in fitting words together, must be a bore. Mademoiselle, a poet is no more poetry than a seed is a flower."

"Butscha, I never saw so handsome a man."

"Beauty is a veil which often serves to hide imperfections."

"He has the most angelic heart of heaven—"

"I pray God you may be right," said the dwarf, clasping his hands, "—and happy! That man shall have, as you have, a servant in Jean Butscha. I will not be notary; I shall give that up; I shall study the sciences."

"Why?"

"Ah, mademoiselle, to train up your children, if you will deign to make me their tutor. But, oh! if you would only listen to some advice. Let me take up this matter; let me look into the life and habits of this man,—find out if he is kind, or bad-tempered, or gentle, if he commands the respect which you merit in a husband, if he is able to love utterly, preferring you to everything, even his own talent—"

"What does that signify if I love him?"

"Ah, true!" cried the dwarf.

At that instant Madame Mignon was saying to her friends,—

"My daughter saw the man she loves this morning."

"Then it must have been that sulphur waistcoat which puzzled you so, Latournelle," said his wife. "The young man had a pretty white rose in his buttonhole."

"Ah!" sighed the mother, "the sign of recognition."

"And he also wore the ribbon of an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a charming young man. But we are all deceiving ourselves; Modeste never raised her veil, and her clothes were huddled on like a beggar-woman's—"

"And she said she was ill," cried the notary; "but she has taken off her mufflings and is just as well as she ever was."

"It is incomprehensible!" said Dumay.

"Not at all," said the notary; "it is now as clear as day."

"My child," said Madame Mignon to Modeste, as she came into the room, followed by Butscha, "did you see a well-dressed young man at church this morning, with a white rose in his button-hole?"

"I saw him," said Butscha quickly, perceiving by everybody's strained attention that Modeste was likely to fall into a trap. "It was Grindot, the famous architect, with whom the town is in treaty for the restoration of the church. He has just come from Paris, and I met him this morning examining the exterior as I was on my way to Sainte-Adresse."

"Oh, an architect, was he? he puzzled me," said Modeste, for whom Butscha had thus gained time to recover herself.

Dumay looked askance at Butscha. Modeste, fully warned, recovered her impenetrable composure. Dumay's distrust was now thoroughly aroused, and he resolved to go the mayor's office early in the morning and ascertain if the architect had really been in Havre the previous day. Butscha, on the other hand, was equally determined to go to Paris and find out something about Canalis.

Gobenheim came to play whist, and by his presence subdued and compressed all this fermentation of feelings. Modeste awaited her mother's bedtime with impatience. She intended to write, but never did so except at night. Here is the letter which love dictated to her while all the world was sleeping:—

To Monsieur de Canalis,—Ah! my friend, my well-beloved! What atrocious falsehoods those portraits in the shop-windows are! And I, who made that horrible lithograph my joy!—I am humbled at the thought of loving one so handsome. No; it is impossible that those Parisian women are so stupid as not to have seen their dreams fulfilled in you. You neglected! you unloved! I do not believe a word of all that you have written me about your lonely and obscure life, your hunger for an idol,—sought in vain until now. You have been too well loved, monsieur; your brow, white and smooth as a magnolia leaf, reveals it; and it is I who must be neglected,—for who am I? Ah! why have you called me to life? I felt for a moment as though the heavy burden of the flesh was leaving me; my soul had broken the crystal which held it captive; it pervaded my whole being; the cold silence of material things had ceased; all things in nature had a voice and spoke to me. The old church was luminous. It's arched roof, brilliant with gold and azure like those of an Italian cathedral, sparkled above my head. Melodies such as the angels sang to martyrs, quieting their pains, sounded from the organ. The rough pavements of Havre seemed to my feet a flowery mead; the sea spoke to me with a voice of sympathy, like an old friend whom I had never truly understood. I saw clearly how the roses in my garden had long adored me and bidden me love; they lifted their heads and smiled as I came back from church. I heard your name, "Melchior," chiming in the flower-bells; I saw it written on the clouds. Yes, yes, I live, I am living, thanks to thee,—my poet, more beautiful than that cold, conventional Lord Byron, with a face as dull as the English climate. One glance of thine, thine Orient glance, pierced through my double veil and sent thy blood to my heart, and from thence to my head and feet. Ah! that is not the life our mother gave us. A hurt to thee would hurt me too at the very instant it was given,—my life exists by thy thought only. I know now the purpose of the divine faculty of music; the angels invented it to utter love. Ah, my Melchior, to have genius and to have beauty is too much; a man should be made to choose between them at his birth.

When I think of the treasures of tenderness and affection which you have given me, and more especially for the last month, I ask myself if I dream. No, but you hide some mystery; what woman can yield you up to me and not die? Ah! jealousy has entered my heart with love,—love in which I could not have believed. How could I have imagined so mighty a conflagration? And now—strange and inconceivable revulsion!—I would rather you were ugly.

What follies I committed after I came home! The yellow dahlias reminded me of your waistcoat, the white roses were my loving friends; I bowed to them with a look that belonged to you, like all that is of me. The very color of the gloves, moulded to hands of a gentleman, your step along the nave,—all, all, is so printed on my memory that sixty years hence I shall see the veriest trifles of this day of days,—the color of the atmosphere, the ray of sunshine that flickered on a certain pillar; I shall hear the prayer your step interrupted; I shall inhale the incense of the altar; forever I shall feel above our heads the priestly hands that blessed us both as you passed by me at the closing benediction. The good Abbe Marcelin married us then! The happiness, above that of earth, which I feel in this new world of unexpected emotions can only be equalled by the joy of telling it to you, of sending it back to him who poured it into my heart with the lavishness of the sun itself. No more veils, no more disguises, my beloved. Come back to me, oh, come back soon. With joy I now unmask.

You have no doubt heard of the house of Mignon in Havre? Well, I am, through an irreparable misfortune, its sole heiress. But you are not to look down upon us, descendant of an Auvergne knight; the arms of the Mignon de La Bastie will do no dishonor to those of Canalis. We bear gules, on a bend sable four bezants or; quarterly four crosses patriarchal or; a cardinal's hat as crest, and the fiocchi for supports. Dear, I will be faithful to our motto: "Una fides, unus Dominus!"—the true faith, and one only Master.

Perhaps, my friend, you will find some irony in my name, after all that I have done, and all that I herein avow. I am named Modeste. Therefore I have not deceived you by signing "O. d'Este M." Neither have I misled you about our fortune; it will amount, I believe, to the sum which rendered you so virtuous. I know that to you money is a consideration of small importance; therefore I speak of it without reserve. Let me tell you how happy it makes me to give freedom of action to our happiness,—to be able to say, when the fancy for travel takes us, "Come, let us go in a comfortable carriage, sitting side by side, without a thought of money"—happy, in short, to tell the king, "I have the fortune which you require in your peers." Thus Modeste Mignon can be of service to you, and her gold will have the noblest of uses.

As to your servant herself,—you did see her once, at her window. Yes, "the fairest daughter of Eve the fair" was indeed your unknown damozel; but how little the Modeste of to-day resembles her of that long past era! That one was in her shroud, this one —have I made you know it?—has received from you the life of life. Love, pure, and sanctioned, the love my father, now returning rich and prosperous, will authorize, has raised me with its powerful yet childlike hand from the grave in which I slept. You have wakened me as the sun wakens the flowers. The eyes of your beloved are no longer those of the little Modeste so daring in her ignorance,—no, they are dimmed with the sight of happiness, and the lids close over them. To-day I tremble lest I can never deserve my fate. The king has come in his glory; my lord has now a subject who asks pardon for the liberties she has taken, like the gambler with loaded dice after cheating Monsieur de Grammont.

My cherished poet! I will be thy Mignon—happier far than the Mignon of Goethe, for thou wilt leave me in mine own land,—in thy heart. Just as I write this pledge of our betrothal a nightingale in the Vilquin park answers for thee. Ah, tell me quick that his note, so pure, so clear, so full, which fills my heart with joy and love like an Annunciation, does not lie to me.

My father will pass through Paris on his way from Marseilles; the house of Mongenod, with whom he corresponds, will know his address. Go to him, my Melchior, tell him that you love me; but do not try to tell him how I love you,—let that be forever between ourselves and God. I, my dear one, am about to tell everything to my mother. Her heart will justify my conduct; she will rejoice in our secret poem, so romantic, human and divine in one.

You have the confession of the daughter; you must now obtain the consent of the Comte de La Bastie, father of your

Modeste.

P.S.—Above all, do not come to Havre without having first obtained my father's consent. If you love me you will not fail to find him on his way through Paris.

"What are you doing, up at this hour, Mademoiselle Modeste?" said the voice of Dumay at her door.

"Writing to my father," she answered; "did you not tell me you should start in the morning?"

Dumay had nothing to say to that, and he went to bed, while Modeste wrote another long letter, this time to her father.

On the morrow, Francois Cochet, terrified at seeing the Havre postmark on the envelope which Ernest had mailed the night before, brought her young mistress the following letter and took away the one which Modeste had written:—

To Mademoiselle O. d'Este M.,—My heart tells me that you were the woman so carefully veiled and disguised, and seated between Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, who have but one child, a son. Ah, my love, if you have only a modest station, without distinction, without importance, without money even, you do not know how happy that would make me. You ought to understand me by this time; why will you not tell me the truth? I am no poet, —except in heart, through love, through you. Oh! what power of affection there is in me to keep me here in this hotel, instead of mounting to Ingouville which I can see from my windows. Will you ever love me as I love you? To leave Havre in such uncertainty! Am I not punished for loving you as if I had committed a crime? But I obey you blindly. Let me have a letter quickly, for if you have been mysterious, I have returned you mystery for mystery, and I must at last throw off my disguise, show you the poet that I am, and abdicate my borrowed glory.

This letter made Modeste terribly uneasy. She could not get back the one which Francoise had carried away before she came to the last words, whose meaning she now sought by reading them again and again; but she went to her own room and wrote an answer in which she demanded an immediate explanation.



CHAPTER XIV. MATTERS GROWN COMPLICATED

During these little events other little events were going on in Havre, which caused Modeste to forget her present uneasiness. Dumay went down to Havre early in the morning, and soon discovered that no architect had been in town the day before. Furious at Butscha's lie, which revealed a conspiracy of which he was resolved to know the meaning, he rushed from the mayor's office to his friend Latournelle.

"Where's your Master Butscha?" he demanded of the notary, when he saw that the clerk was not in his place.

"Butscha, my dear fellow, has gone to Paris. He heard some news of his father this morning on the quays, from a Swedish sailor. It seems the father went to the Indies and served a prince, or something, and he is now in Paris."

"Lies! it's all a trick! infamous! I'll find that damned cripple if I've got to go express to Paris for him," cried Dumay. "Butscha is deceiving us; he knows something about Modeste, and hasn't told us. If he meddles in this thing he shall never be a notary. I'll roll him in the mud from which he came, I'll—"

"Come, come, my friend; never hang a man before you try him," said Latournelle, frightened at Dumay's rage.

After stating the facts on which his suspicions were founded, Dumay begged Madame Latournelle to go and stay at the Chalet during his absence.

"You will find the colonel in Paris," said the notary. "In the shipping news quoted this morning in the Journal of Commerce, I found under the head of Marseilles—here, see for yourself," he said, offering the paper. "'The Bettina Mignon, Captain Mignon, arrived October 6'; it is now the 17th, and the colonel is sure to be in Paris."

Dumay requested Gobenheim to do without him in future, and then went back to the Chalet, which he reached just as Modeste was sealing her two letters, to her father and Canalis. Except for the address the letters were precisely alike both in weight and appearance. Modeste thought she had laid that to her father over that to her Melchior, but had, in fact, done exactly the reverse. This mistake, so often made in the little things of life, occasioned the discovery of her secret by Dumay and her mother. The former was talking vehemently to Madame Mignon in the salon, and revealing to her his fresh fears caused by Modeste's duplicity and Butscha's connivance.

"Madame," he cried, "he is a serpent whom we have warmed in our bosoms; there's no place in his contorted little body for a soul!"

Modeste put the letter for her father into the pocket of her apron, supposing it to be that for Canalis, and came downstairs with the letter for her lover in her hand, to see Dumay before he started for Paris.

"What has happened to my Black Dwarf? why are you talking so loud!" she said, appearing at the door.

"Mademoiselle, Butscha has gone to Paris, and you, no doubt, know why,—to carry on that affair of the little architect with the sulphur waistcoat, who, unluckily for the hunchback's lies, has never been here."

Modeste was struck dumb; feeling sure that the dwarf had departed on a mission of inquiry as to her poet's morals, she turned pale, and sat down.

"I'm going after him; I shall find him," continued Dumay. "Is that the letter for your father, mademoiselle?" he added, holding out his hand. "I will take it to the Mongenods. God grant the colonel and I may not pass each other on the road."

Modeste gave him the letter. Dumay looked mechanically at the address.

"'Monsieur le Baron de Canalis, rue de Paradis-Poissoniere, No. 29'!" he cried out; "what does that mean?"

"Ah, my daughter! that is the man you love," exclaimed Madame Mignon; "the stanzas you set to music were his—"

"And that's his portrait that you have in a frame upstairs," added Dumay.

"Give me back that letter, Monsieur Dumay," said Modeste, erecting herself like a lioness defending her cubs.

"There it is, mademoiselle," he replied.

Modeste put it into the bosom of her dress, and gave Dumay the one intended for her father.

"I know what you are capable of, Dumay," she said; "and if you take one step against Monsieur de Canalis, I shall take another out of this house, to which I will never return."

"You will kill your mother, mademoiselle," replied Dumay, who left the room and called his wife.

The poor mother was indeed half-fainting,—struck to the heart by Modeste's words.

"Good-bye, wife," said the Breton, kissing the American. "Take care of the mother; I go to save the daughter."

He made his preparations for the journey in a few minutes, and started for Havre. An hour later he was travelling post to Paris, with the haste that nothing but passion or speculation can get out of wheels.

Recovering herself under Modeste's tender care, Madame Mignon went up to her bedroom leaning on the arm of her daughter, to whom she said, as her sole reproach, when they were alone:—

"My unfortunate child, see what you have done! Why did you conceal anything from me? Am I so harsh?"

"Oh! I was just going to tell it to you comfortably," sobbed Modeste.

She thereupon related everything to her mother, read her the letters and their answers, and shed the rose of her poem petal by petal into the heart of the kind German woman. When this confidence, which took half the day, was over, when she saw something that was almost a smile on the lips of the too indulgent mother, Modeste fell upon her breast in tears.

"Oh, mother!" she said amid her sobs, "you, whose heart, all gold and poetry, is a chosen vessel, chosen of God to hold a sacred love, a single and celestial love that endures for life; you, whom I wish to imitate by loving no one but my husband,—you will surely understand what bitter tears I am now shedding. This butterfly, this Psyche of my thoughts, this dual soul which I have nurtured with maternal care, my love, my sacred love, this living mystery of mysteries—it is about to fall into vulgar hands, and they will tear its diaphanous wings and rend its veil under the miserable pretext of enlightening me, of discovering whether genius is as prudent as a banker, whether my Melchior has saved his money, or whether he has some entanglement to shake off; they want to find out if he is guilty to bourgeois eyes of youthful indiscretions,—which to the sun of our love are like the clouds of the dawn. Oh! what will come of it? what will they do? See! feel my hand, it burns with fever. Ah! I shall never survive it."

And Modeste, really taken with a chill, was forced to go to bed, causing serious uneasiness to her mother, Madame Latournelle, and Madame Dumay, who took good care of her during the journey of the lieutenant to Paris,—to which city the logic of events compels us to transport our drama for a moment.

Truly modest minds, like that of Ernest de La Briere, but especially those who, knowing their own value, also know that they are neither loved nor appreciated, can understand the infinite joy to which the young secretary abandoned himself on reading Modeste's letter. Could it be that after thinking him lofty and witty in soul, his young, his artless, his tricksome mistress now thought him handsome? This flattery is the flattery supreme. And why? Beauty is, undoubtedly, the signature of the master to the work into which he has put his soul; it is the divine spirit manifested. And to see it where it is not, to create it by the power of an inward look,—is not that the highest reach of love? And so the poor youth cried aloud with all the rapture of an applauded author, "At last I am beloved!" When a woman, be she maid, wife, or widow, lets the charming words escape her, "Thou art handsome," the words may be false, but the man opens his thick skull to their subtle poison, and thenceforth he is attached by an everlasting tie to the pretty flatterer, the true or the deceived judge; she becomes his particular world, he thirsts for her continual testimony, and he never wearies of it, even if he is a crowned prince. Ernest walked proudly up and down his room; he struck a three-quarter, full-face, and profile attitude before the glass; he tried to criticise himself; but a voice, diabolically persuasive, whispered to him, "Modeste is right." He took up her letter and re-read it; he saw his fairest of the fair; he talked with her; then, in the midst of his ecstacy, a dreadful thought came to him:—

"She thinks me Canalis, and she has a million of money!"

Down went his happiness, just as a somnambulist, having attained the peak of a roof, hears a voice, awakes, and falls crushed upon the pavement.

"Without the halo of fame I shall be hideous in her eyes," he cried; "what a maddening situation I have put myself in!"

La Briere was too much the man of his letters which we have read, his heart was too noble and pure to allow him to hesitate at the call of honor. He at once resolved to find Modeste's father, if he were in Paris, and confess all to him, and to let Canalis know the serious results of their Parisian jest. To a sensitive nature like his, Modeste's large fortune was in itself a determining reason. He could not allow it to be even suspected that the ardor of the correspondence, so sincere on his part, had in view the capture of a "dot." Tears were in his eyes as he made his way to the rue Chantereine to find the banker Mongenod, whose fortune and business connections were partly the work of the minister to whom Ernest owed his start in life.

At the hour when La Briere was inquiring about the father of his beloved from the head of the house of Mongenod, and getting information that might be useful to him in his strange position, a scene was taking place in Canalis's study which the ex-lieutenant's hasty departure from Havre may have led the reader to foresee.

Like a true soldier of the imperial school, Dumay, whose Breton blood had boiled all the way to Paris, considered a poet to be a poor stick of a fellow, of no consequence whatever,—a buffoon addicted to choruses, living in a garret, dressed in black clothes that were white at every seam, wearing boots that were occasionally without soles, and linen that was unmentionable, and whose fingers knew more about ink than soap; in short, one who looked always as if he had tumbled from the moon, except when scribbling at a desk, like Butscha. But the seething of the Breton's heart and brain received a violent application of cold water when he entered the courtyard of the pretty house occupied by the poet and saw a groom washing a carriage, and also, through the windows of a handsome dining-room, a valet dressed like a banker, to whom the groom referred him, and who answered, looking the stranger over from head to foot, that Monsieur le baron was not visible. "There is," added the man, "a meeting of the council of state to-day, at which Monsieur le baron is obliged to be present."

"Is this really the house of Monsieur Canalis," said Dumay, "a writer of poetry?"

"Monsieur le baron de Canalis," replied the valet, "is the great poet of whom you speak; but he is also the president of the court of Claims attached to the ministry of foreign affairs."

Dumay, who had come to box the ears of a scribbling nobody, found himself confronted by a high functionary of the state. The salon where he was told to wait offered, as a topic for his meditations, the insignia of the Legion of honor glittering on a black coat which the valet had left upon a chair. Presently his eyes were attracted by the beauty and brilliancy of a silver-gilt cup bearing the words "Given by Madame." Then he beheld before him, on a pedestal, a Sevres vase on which was engraved, "The gift of Madame la Dauphine."

These mute admonitions brought Dumay to his senses while the valet went to ask his master if he would receive a person who had come from Havre expressly to see him,—a stranger named Dumay.

"What sort of a man?" asked Canalis.

"He is well-dressed, and wears the ribbon of the Legion of honor."

Canalis made a sign of assent, and the valet retreated, and then returned and announced, "Monsieur Dumay."

When he heard himself announced, when he was actually in presence of Canalis, in a study as gorgeous as it was elegant, with his feet on a carpet far handsomer than any in the house of Mignon, and when he met the studied glance of the poet who was playing with the tassels of a sumptuous dressing-gown, Dumay was so completely taken aback that he allowed the great poet to have the first word.

"To what do I owe the honor of your visit, monsieur?"

"Monsieur," began Dumay, who remained standing.

"If you have a good deal to say," interrupted Canalis, "I must ask you to be seated."

And Canalis himself plunged into an armchair a la Voltaire, crossed his legs, raised the upper one to the level of his eye and looked fixedly at Dumay, who became, to use his own martial slang, "bayonetted."

"I am listening, monsieur," said the poet; "my time is precious,—the ministers are expecting me."

"Monsieur," said Dumay, "I shall be brief. You have seduced—how, I do not know—a young lady in Havre, young, beautiful, and rich; the last and only hope of two noble families; and I have come to ask your intentions."

Canalis, who had been busy during the last three months with serious matters of his own, and was trying to get himself made commander of the Legion of honor and minister to a German court, had completely forgotten Modeste's letter."

"I!" he exclaimed.

"You!" repeated Dumay.

"Monsieur," answered Canalis, smiling; "I know no more of what you are talking about than if you had said it in Hebrew. I seduce a young girl! I, who—" and a superb smile crossed his features. "Come, come, monsieur, I'm not such a child as to steal fruit over the hedges when I have orchards and gardens of my own where the finest peaches ripen. All Paris knows where my affections are set. Very likely there may be some young girl in Havre full of enthusiasm for my verses,—of which they are not worthy; that would not surprise me at all; nothing is more common. See! look at that lovely coffer of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and edged with that iron-work as fine as lace. That coffer belonged to Pope Leo X., and was given to me by the Duchesse de Chaulieu, who received it from the king of Spain. I use it to hold the letters I receive from ladies and young girls living in every quarter of Europe. Oh! I assure you I feel the utmost respect for these flowers of the soul, cut and sent in moments of enthusiasm that are worthy of all reverence. Yes, to me the impulse of a heart is a noble and sublime thing! Others—scoffers—light their cigars with such letters, or give them to their wives for curl-papers; but I, who am a bachelor, monsieur, I have too much delicacy not to preserve these artless offerings—so fresh, so disinterested—in a tabernacle of their own. In fact, I guard them with a species of veneration, and at my death they will be burned before my eyes. People may call that ridiculous, but I do not care. I am grateful; these proofs of devotion enable me to bear the criticisms and annoyances of a literary life. When I receive a shot in the back from some enemy lurking under cover of a daily paper, I look at that casket and think,—here and there in this wide world there are hearts whose wounds have been healed, or soothed, or dressed by me!"

This bit of poetry, declaimed with all the talent of a great actor, petrified the lieutenant, whose eyes opened to their utmost extent, and whose astonishment delighted the poet.

"I will permit you," continued the peacock, spreading his tail, "out of respect for your position, which I fully appreciate, to open that coffer and look for the letter of your young lady. Though I know I am right, I remember names, and I assure you you are mistaken in thinking—"

"And this is what a poor child comes to in this gulf of Paris!" cried Dumay,—"the darling of her parents, the joy of her friends, the hope of all, petted by all, the pride of a family, who has six persons so devoted to her that they would willingly make a rampart of their lives and fortunes between her and sorrow. Monsieur," Dumay remarked after a pause, "you are a great poet, and I am only a poor soldier. For fifteen years I served my country in the ranks; I have had the wind of many a bullet in my face; I have crossed Siberia and been a prisoner there; the Russians flung me on a kibitka, and God knows what I suffered. I have seen thousands of my comrades die,—but you, you have given me a chill to the marrow of my bones, such as I never felt before."

Dumay fancied that his words moved the poet, but in fact they only flattered him,—a thing which at this period of his life had become almost an impossibility; for his ambitious mind had long forgotten the first perfumed phial that praise had broken over his head.

"Ah, my soldier!" he said solemnly, laying his hand on Dumay's shoulder, and thinking to himself how droll it was to make a soldier of the empire tremble, "this young girl may be all in all to you, but to society at large what is she? nothing. At this moment the greatest mandarin in China may be yielding up the ghost and putting half the universe in mourning, and what is that to you? The English are killing thousands of people in India more worthy than we are; why, at this very moment while I am speaking to you some ravishing woman is being burned alive,—did that make you care less for your cup of coffee this morning at breakfast? Not a day passes in Paris that some mother in rags does not cast her infant on the world to be picked up by whoever finds it; and yet see! here is this delicious tea in a cup that cost five louis, and I write verses which Parisian women rush to buy, exclaiming, 'Divine! delicious! charming! food for the soul!' Social nature, like Nature herself, is a great forgetter. You will be quite surprised ten years hence at what you have done to-day. You are here in a city where people die, where they marry, where they adore each other at an assignation, where young girls suffocate themselves, where the man of genius with his cargo of thoughts teeming with humane beneficence goes to the bottom,—all side by side, sometimes under the same roof, and yet ignorant of each other, ignorant and indifferent. And here you come among us and ask us to expire with grief at this commonplace affair."

"You call yourself a poet!" cried Dumay, "but don't you feel what you write?"

"Good heavens! if we endured the joys or the woes we sing we should be as worn out in three months as a pair of old boots," said the poet, smiling. "But stay, you shall not come from Havre to Paris to see Canalis without carrying something back with you. Warrior!" (Canalis had the form and action of an Homeric hero) "learn this from the poet: Every noble sentiment in man is a poem so exclusively individual that his nearest friend, his other self, cares nothing for it. It is a treasure which is his alone, it is—"

"Forgive me for interrupting you," said Dumay, who was gazing at the poet with horror, "but did you ever come to Havre?"

"I was there for a day and a night in the spring of 1824 on my way to London."

"You are a man of honor," continued Dumay; "will you give me your word that you do not know Mademoiselle Modeste Mignon?"

"This is the first time that name ever struck my ear," replied Canalis.

"Ah, monsieur!" said Dumay, "into what dark intrigue am I about to plunge? Can I count upon you to help me in my inquiries?—for I am certain that some one has been using your name. You ought to have had a letter yesterday from Havre."

"I received none. Be sure, monsieur, that I will help you," said Canalis, "so far as I have the opportunity of doing so."

Dumay withdrew, his heart torn with anxiety, believing that the wretched Butscha had worn the skin of the poet to deceive Modeste; whereas Butscha himself, keen-witted as a prince seeking revenge, and far cleverer than any paid spy, was ferretting out the life and actions of Canalis, escaping notice by his insignificance, like an insect that bores its way into the sap of a tree.

The Breton had scarcely left the poet's house when La Briere entered his friend's study. Naturally, Canalis told him of the visit of the man from Havre.

"Ha!" said Ernest, "Modeste Mignon; that is just what I have come to speak of."

"Ah, bah!" cried Canalis; "have I had a triumph by proxy?"

"Yes; and here is the key to it. My friend, I am loved by the sweetest girl in all the world,—beautiful enough to shine beside the greatest beauties in Paris, with a heart and mind worthy of Clarissa. She has seen me; I have pleased her, and she thinks me the great Canalis. But that is not all. Modeste Mignon is of high birth, and Mongenod has just told me that her father, the Comte de La Bastie, has something like six millions. The father is here now, and I have asked him through Mongenod for an interview at two o'clock. Mongenod is to give him a hint, just a word, that it concerns the happiness of his daughter. But you will readily understand that before seeing the father I feel I ought to make a clean breast of it to you."

"Among the plants whose flowers bloom in the sunshine of fame," said Canalis, impressively, "there is one, and the most magnificent, which bears like the orange-tree a golden fruit amid the mingled perfumes of beauty and of mind; a lovely plant, a true tenderness, a perfect bliss, and—it eludes me." Canalis looked at the carpet that Ernest might not read his eyes. "Could I," he continued after a pause to regain his self-possession, "how could I have divined that flower from a pretty sheet of perfumed paper, that true heart, that young girl, that woman in whom love wears the livery of flattery, who loves us for ourselves, who offers us felicity? It needed but an angel or a demon to perceive her; and what am I but the ambitious head of a Court of Claims! Ah, my friend, fame makes us the target of a thousand arrows. One of us owes his rich marriage to an hydraulic piece of poetry, while I, more seductive, more a woman's man than he, have missed mine,—for, do you love her, poor girl?" he said, looking up at La Briere.

"Oh!" ejaculated the young man.

"Well then," said the poet, taking his secretary's arm and leaning heavily upon it, "be happy, Ernest. By a mere accident I have been not ungrateful to you. You are richly rewarded for your devotion, and I will generously further your happiness."

Canalis was furious; but he could not behave otherwise than with propriety, and he made the best of his disappointment by mounting it as a pedestal.

"Ah, Canalis, I have never really known you till this moment."

"Did you expect to? It takes some time to go round the world," replied the poet with his pompous irony.

"But think," said La Briere, "of this enormous fortune."

"Ah, my friend, is it not well invested in you?" cried Canalis, accompanying the words with a charming gesture.

"Melchior," said La Briere, "I am yours for life and death."

He wrung the poet's hand and left him abruptly, for he was in haste to meet Monsieur Mignon.



CHAPTER XV. A FATHER STEPS IN

The Comte de La Bastie was at this moment overwhelmed with the sorrows which lay in wait for him as their prey. He had learned from his daughter's letter of Bettina's death and of his wife's infirmity, and Dumay related to him, when they met, his terrible perplexity as to Modeste's love affairs.

"Leave me to myself," he said to his faithful friend.

As the lieutenant closed the door, the unhappy father threw himself on a sofa, with his head in his hands, weeping those slow, scanty tears which suffuse the eyes of a man of sixty, but do not fall,—tears soon dried, yet quick to start again,—the last dews of the human autumn.

"To have children, to have a wife, to adore them—what is it but to have many hearts and bare them to a dagger?" he cried, springing up with the bound of a tiger and walking up and down the room. "To be a father is to give one's self over, bound hand and foot to sorrow. If I meet that D'Estourny I will kill him. To have daughters!—one gives her life to a scoundrel, the other, my Modeste, falls a victim to whom? a coward, who deceives her with the gilded paper of a poet. If it were Canalis himself it might not be so bad; but that Scapin of a lover!—I will strangle him with my two hands," he cried, making an involuntary gesture of furious determination. "And what then? suppose my Modeste were to die of grief?"

He gazed mechanically out of the windows of the hotel des Princes, and then returned to the sofa, where he sat motionless. The fatigues of six voyages to India, the anxieties of speculation, the dangers he had encountered and evaded, and his many griefs, had silvered Charles Mignon's head. His handsome soldierly face, so pure in outline and now bronzed by the suns of China and the southern seas, had acquired an air of dignity which his present grief rendered almost sublime.

"Mongenod told me he felt confidence in the young man who is coming to ask me for my daughter," he thought at last; and at this moment Ernest de La Briere was announced by one of the servants whom Monsieur de La Bastie had attached to himself during the last four years.

"You have come, monsieur, from my friend Mongenod?" he said.

"Yes," replied Ernest, growing timid when he saw before him a face as sombre as Othello's. "My name is Ernest de La Briere, related to the family of the late cabinet minister, and his private secretary during his term of office. On his dismissal, his Excellency put me in the Court of Claims, to which I am legal counsel, and where I may possibly succeed as chief—"

"And how does all this concern Mademoiselle de La Bastie?" asked the count.

"Monsieur, I love her; and I have the unhoped-for happiness of being loved by her. Hear me, monsieur," cried Ernest, checking a violent movement on the part of the angry father. "I have the strangest confession to make to you, a shameful one for a man of honor; but the worst punishment of my conduct, natural enough in itself, is not the telling of it to you; no, I fear the daughter even more than the father."

Ernest then related simply, and with the nobleness that comes of sincerity, all the facts of his little drama, not omitting the twenty or more letters, which he had brought with him, nor the interview which he had just had with Canalis. When Monsieur Mignon had finished reading the letters, the unfortunate lover, pale and suppliant, actually trembled under the fiery glance of the Provencal.

"Monsieur," said the latter, "in this whole matter there is but one error, but that is cardinal. My daughter will not have six millions; at the utmost, she will have a marriage portion of two hundred thousand francs, and very doubtful expectations."

"Ah, monsieur!" cried Ernest, rising and grasping Monsieur Mignon's hand; "you take a load from my breast. Nothing can now hinder my happiness. I have friends, influence; I shall certainly be chief of the Court of Claims. Had Mademoiselle Mignon no more than ten thousand francs, if I had even to make a settlement on her, she should still be my wife; and to make her happy as you, monsieur, have made your wife happy, to be to you a real son (for I have no father), are the deepest desires of my heart."

Charles Mignon stepped back three paces and fixed upon La Briere a look which entered the eyes of the young man as a dagger enters its sheath; he stood silent a moment, recognizing the absolute candor, the pure truthfulness of that open nature in the light of the young man's inspired eyes. "Is fate at last weary of pursuing me?" he asked himself. "Am I to find in this young man the pearl of sons-in-law?" He walked up and down the room in strong agitation.

"Monsieur," he said at last, "you are bound to submit wholly to the judgment which you have come here to seek, otherwise you are now playing a farce."

"Oh, monsieur!"

"Listen to me," said the father, nailing La Briere where he stood with a glance. "I shall be neither harsh, nor hard, nor unjust. You shall have the advantages and the disadvantages of the false position in which you have placed yourself. My daughter believes that she loves one of the great poets of the day, whose fame is really that which has attracted her. Well, I, her father, intend to give her the opportunity to choose between the celebrity which has been a beacon to her, and the poor reality which the irony of fate has flung at her feet. Ought she not to choose between Canalis and yourself? I rely upon your honor not to repeat what I have told you as to the state of my affairs. You may each come, I mean you and your friend the Baron de Canalis, to Havre for the last two weeks of October. My house will be open to both of you, and my daughter must have an opportunity to study you. You must yourself bring your rival, and not disabuse him as to the foolish tales he will hear about the wealth of the Comte de La Bastie. I go to Havre to-morrow, and I shall expect you three days later. Adieu, monsieur."

Poor La Briere went back to Canalis with a dragging step. The poet, meantime, left to himself, had given way to a current of thought out of which had come that secondary impulse which Monsieur de Talleyrand valued so much. The first impulse is the voice of nature, the second that of society.