"That, Monsieur le duc, will be set to the account of your great goodness," said Modeste, letting her eyes rest steadily on the noble gentleman. "You flatter me in not thinking me frivolous, and in believing that I have enough resources within myself to be able to live in solitude. It is perhaps my lot," she added, glancing at Canalis, with an expression of pity.

"It is the lot of all insignificant fortunes," said the poet. "Paris demands Babylonian splendor. Sometimes I ask myself how I have ever managed to keep it up."

"The king does that for both of us," said the duke, candidly; "we live on his Majesty's bounty. If my family had not been allowed, after the death of Monsieur le Grand, as they call Cinq-Mars, to keep his office among us, we should have been obliged to sell Herouville to the Black Brethren. Ah, believe me, mademoiselle, it is a bitter humiliation to me to have to think of money in marrying."

The simple honesty of this confession came from his heart, and the regret was so sincere that it touched Modeste.

"In these days," said the poet, "no man in France, Monsieur le duc, is rich enough to marry a woman for herself, her personal worth, her grace, or her beauty—"

The colonel looked at Canalis with a curious eye, after first watching Modeste, whose face no longer expressed the slightest astonishment.

"For persons of high honor," he said slowly, "it is a noble employment of wealth to repair the ravages of time and destiny, and restore the old historic families."

"Yes, papa," said Modeste, gravely.

The colonel invited the duke and Canalis to dine with him sociably in their riding-dress, promising them to make no change himself. When Modeste went to her room to make her toilette, she looked at the jewelled whip she had disdained in the morning.

"What workmanship they put into such things nowadays!" she said to Francoise Cochet, who had become her waiting-maid.

"That poor young man, mademoiselle, who has got a fever—"

"Who told you that?"

"Monsieur Butscha. He came here this afternoon and asked me to say to you that he hoped you would notice he had kept his word on the appointed day."

Modeste came down into the salon dressed with royal simplicity.

"My dear father," she said aloud, taking the colonel by the arm, "please go and ask after Monsieur de La Briere's health, and take him back his present. You can say that my small means, as well as my natural tastes, forbid my wearing ornaments which are only fit for queens or courtesans. Besides, I can only accept gifts from a bridegroom. Beg him to keep the whip until you know whether you are rich enough to buy it back."

"My little girl has plenty of good sense," said the colonel, kissing his daughter on the forehead.

Canalis took advantage of a conversation which began between the duke and Madame Mignon to escape to the terrace, where Modeste joined him, influenced by curiosity, though the poet believed her desire to become Madame de Canalis had brought her there. Rather alarmed at the indecency with which he had just executed what soldiers call a "volte-face," and which, according to the laws of ambition, every man in his position would have executed quite as brutally, he now endeavored, as the unfortunate Modeste approached him, to find plausible excuses for his conduct.

"Dear Modeste," he began, in a coaxing tone, "considering the terms on which we stand to each other, shall I displease you if I say that your replies to the Duc d'Herouville were very painful to a man in love,—above all, to a poet whose soul is feminine, nervous, full of the jealousies of true passion. I should make a poor diplomatist indeed if I had not perceived that your first coquetries, your little premeditated inconsistencies, were only assumed for the purpose of studying our characters—"

Modeste raised her head with the rapid, intelligent, half-coquettish motion of a wild animal, in whom instinct produces such miracles of grace.

"—and therefore when I returned home and thought them over, they never misled me. I only marvelled at a cleverness so in harmony with your character and your countenance. Do not be uneasy, I never doubted that your assumed duplicity covered an angelic candor. No, your mind, your education, have in no way lessened the precious innocence which we demand in a wife. You are indeed a wife for a poet, a diplomatist, a thinker, a man destined to endure the chances and changes of life; and my admiration is equalled only by the attachment I feel to you. I now entreat you—if yesterday you were not playing a little comedy when you accepted the love of a man whose vanity will change to pride if you accept him, one whose defects will become virtues under your divine influence—I entreat you do not excite a passion which, in him, amounts to vice. Jealousy is a noxious element in my soul, and you have revealed to me its strength; it is awful, it destroys everything—Oh! I do not mean the jealousy of an Othello," he continued, noticing Modeste's gesture. "No, no; my thoughts were of myself: I have been so indulged on that point. You know the affection to which I owe all the happiness I have ever enjoyed,—very little at the best" (he sadly shook his head). "Love is symbolized among all nations as a child, because it fancies the world belongs to it, and it cannot conceive otherwise. Well, Nature herself set the limit to that sentiment. It was still-born. A tender, maternal soul guessed and calmed the painful constriction of my heart,—for a woman who feels, who knows, that she is past the joys of love becomes angelic in her treatment of others. The duchess has never made me suffer in my sensibilities. For ten years not a word, not a look, that could wound me! I attach more value to words, to thoughts, to looks, than ordinary men. If a look is to me a treasure beyond all price, the slightest doubt is deadly poison; it acts instantaneously, my love dies. I believe—contrary to the mass of men, who delight in trembling, hoping, expecting—that love can only exist in perfect, infantile, and infinite security. The exquisite purgatory, where women delight to send us by their coquetry, is a base happiness to which I will not submit: to me, love is either heaven or hell. If it is hell, I will have none of it. I feel an affinity with the azure skies of Paradise within my soul. I can give myself without reserve, without secrets, doubts or deceptions, in the life to come; and I demand reciprocity. Perhaps I offend you by these doubts. Remember, however, that I am only talking of myself—"

"—a good deal, but never too much," said Modeste, offended in every hole and corner of her pride by this discourse, in which the Duchesse de Chaulieu served as a dagger. "I am so accustomed to admire you, my dear poet."

"Well, then, can you promise me the same canine fidelity which I offer to you? Is it not beautiful? Is it not just what you have longed for?"

"But why, dear poet, do you not marry a deaf-mute, and one who is also something of an idiot? I ask nothing better than to please my husband. But you threaten to take away from a girl the very happiness you so kindly arrange for her; you are tearing away every gesture, every word, every look; you cut the wings of your bird, and then expect it to hover about you. I know poets are accused of inconsistency—oh! very unjustly," she added, as Canalis made a gesture of denial; "that alleged defect which comes from the brilliant activity of their minds which commonplace people cannot take into account. I do not believe, however, that a man of genius can invent such irreconcilable conditions and call his invention life. You are requiring the impossible solely for the pleasure of putting me in the wrong,—like the enchanters in fairy-tales, who set tasks to persecuted young girls whom the good fairies come and deliver."

"In this case the good fairy would be true love," said Canalis in a curt tone, aware that his elaborate excuse for a rupture was seen through by the keen and delicate mind which Butscha had piloted so well.

"My dear poet, you remind me of those fathers who inquire into a girl's 'dot' before they are willing to name that of their son. You are quarrelling with me without knowing whether you have the slightest right to do so. Love is not gained by such dry arguments as yours. The poor duke on the contrary abandons himself to it like my Uncle Toby; with this difference, that I am not the Widow Wadman,—though widow indeed of many illusions as to poetry at the present moment. Ah, yes, we young girls will not believe in anything that disturbs our world of fancy! I was warned of all this beforehand. My dear poet, you are attempting to get up a quarrel which is unworthy of you. I no longer recognize the Melchior of yesterday."

"Because Melchior has discovered a spirit of ambition in you which—"

Modeste looked at him from head to foot with an imperial eye.

"But I shall be peer of France and ambassador as well as he," added Canalis.

"Do you take me for a bourgeois," she said, beginning to mount the steps of the portico; but she instantly turned back and added, "That is less impertinent than to take me for a fool. The change in your conduct comes from certain silly rumors which you have heard in Havre, and which my maid Francoise has repeated to me."

"Ah, Modeste, how can you think it?" said Canalis, striking a dramatic attitude. "Do you think me capable of marrying you only for your money?"

"If I do you that wrong after your edifying remarks on the banks of the Seine can you easily undeceive me," she said, annihilating him with her scorn.

"Ah!" thought the poet, as he followed her into the house, "if you think, my little girl, that I'm to be caught in that net, you take me to be younger than I am. Dear, dear, what a fuss about an artful little thing whose esteem I value about as much as that of the king of Borneo. But she has given me a good reason for the rupture by accusing me of such unworthy sentiments. Isn't she sly? La Briere will get a burden on his back—idiot that he is! And five years hence it will be a good joke to see them together."

The coldness which this altercation produced between Modeste and Canalis was visible to all eyes that evening. The poet went off early, on the ground of La Briere's illness, leaving the field to the grand equerry. About eleven o'clock Butscha, who had come to walk home with Madame Latournelle, whispered in Modeste's ear, "Was I right?"

"Alas, yes," she said.

"But I hope you have left the door half open, so that he can come back; we agreed upon that, you know."

"Anger got the better of me," said Modeste. "Such meanness sent the blood to my head and I told him what I thought of him."

"Well, so much the better. When you are both so angry that you can't speak civilly to each other I engage to make him desperately in love and so pressing that you will be deceived yourself."

"Come, come, Butscha; he is a great poet; he is a gentleman; he is a man of intellect."

"Your father's eight millions are more to him than all that."

"Eight millions!" exclaimed Modeste.

"My master, who has sold his practice, is going to Provence to attend to the purchase of lands which your father's agent has suggested to him. The sum that is to be paid for the estate of La Bastie is four millions; your father has agreed to it. You are to have a 'dot' of two millions and another million for an establishment in Paris, a hotel and furniture. Now, count up."

"Ah! then I can be Duchesse d'Herouville!" cried Modeste, glancing at Butscha.

"If it hadn't been for that comedian of a Canalis you would have kept HIS whip, thinking it came from me," said the dwarf, indirectly pleading La Briere's cause.

"Monsieur Butscha, may I ask if I am to marry to please you?" said Modeste, laughing.

"That fine fellow loves you as well as I do,—and you loved him for eight days," retorted Butscha; "and HE has got a heart."

"Can he compete, pray, with an office under the Crown? There are but six, grand almoner, chancellor, grand chamberlain, grand master, high constable, grand admiral,—but they don't appoint high constables any longer."

"In six months, mademoiselle, the masses—who are made up of wicked Butschas—could send all those grand dignities to the winds. Besides, what signifies nobility in these days? There are not a thousand real noblemen in France. The d'Herouvilles are descended from a tipstaff in the time of Robert of Normandy. You will have to put up with many a vexation from the old aunt with the furrowed face. Look here,—as you are so anxious for the title of duchess,—you belong to the Comtat, and the Pope will certainly think as much of you as he does of all those merchants down there; he'll sell you a duchy with some name ending in 'ia' or 'agno.' Don't play away your happiness for an office under the Crown."



CHAPTER XXV. A DIPLOMATIC LETTER

The poet's reflections during the night were thoroughly matter of fact. He sincerely saw nothing worse in life than the situation of a married man without money. Still trembling at the danger he had been led into by his vanity, his desire to get the better of the duke, and his belief in the Mignon millions, he began to ask himself what the duchess must be thinking of his stay in Havre, aggravated by the fact that he had not written to her for fourteen days, whereas in Paris they exchanged four or five letters a week.

"And that poor woman is working hard to get me appointed commander of the Legion and ambassador to the Court of Baden!" he cried.

Thereupon, with that promptitude of decision which results—in poets as well as in speculators—from a lively intuition of the future, he sat down and composed the following letter:—

To Madame la Duchesse de Chaulieu:

My dear Eleonore,—You have doubtless been surprised at not hearing from me; but the stay I am making in this place is not altogether on account of my health. I have been trying to do a good turn to our little friend La Briere. The poor fellow has fallen in love with a certain Mademoiselle Modeste de La Bastie, a rather pale, insignificant, and thread-papery little thing, who, by the way, has the vice of liking literature, and calls herself a poet to excuse the caprices and humors of a rather sullen nature. You know Ernest,—he is so easy to catch that I have been afraid to leave him to himself. Mademoiselle de La Bastie was inclined to coquet with your Melchior, and was only too ready to become your rival, though her arms are thin, and she has no more bust than most girls; moreover, her hair is as dead and colorless as that of Madame de Rochefide, and her eyes small, gray, and very suspicious. I put a stop—perhaps rather brutally—to the attentions of Mademoiselle Immodeste; but love, such as mine for you, demanded it. What care I for all the women on earth, —compared to you, what are they?

The people with whom I pass my time, and who form the circle round the heiress, are so thoroughly bourgeois that they almost turn my stomach. Pity me; imagine! I pass my evenings with notaries, notaresses, cashiers, provincial money-lenders—ah! what a change from my evenings in the rue de Grenelle. The alleged fortune of the father, lately returned from China, has brought to Havre that indefatigable suitor, the grand equerry, hungry after the millions, which he wants, they say, to drain his marshes. The king does not know what a fatal present he made the duke in those waste lands. His Grace, who has not yet found out that the lady had only a small fortune, is jealous of me; for La Briere is quietly making progress with his idol under cover of his friend, who serves as a blind.

Notwithstanding Ernest's romantic ecstasies, I myself, a poet, think chiefly of the essential thing, and I have been making some inquiries which darken the prospects of our friend. If my angel would like absolution for some of our little sins, she will try to find out the facts of the case by sending for Mongenod, the banker, and questioning him, with the dexterity that characterizes her, as to the father's fortune? Monsieur Mignon, formerly colonel of cavalry in the Imperial guard, has been for the last seven years a correspondent of the Mongenods. It is said that he gives his daughter a "dot" of two hundred thousand francs, and before I make the offer on Ernest's behalf I am anxious to get the rights of the story. As soon as the affair is arranged I shall return to Paris. I know a way to settle everything to the advantage of our young lover,—simply by the transmission of the father-in-law's title, and no one, I think, can more readily obtain that favor than Ernest, both on account of his own services and the influence which you and I and the duke can exert for him. With his tastes, Ernest, who of course will step into my office when I go to Baden, will be perfectly happy in Paris with twenty-five thousand francs a year, a permanent place, and a wife—luckless fellow!

Ah, dearest, how I long for the rue de Grenelle! Fifteen days of absence! when they do not kill love, they revive all the ardor of its earlier days, and you know, better than I, perhaps, the reasons that make my love eternal,—my bones will love thee in the grave! Ah! I cannot bear this separation. If I am forced to stay here another ten days, I shall make a flying visit of a few hours to Paris.

Has the duke obtained for me the thing we wanted; and shall you, my dearest life, be ordered to drink the Baden waters next year? The billing and cooing of the "handsome disconsolate," compared with the accents of our happy love—so true and changeless for now ten years!—have given me a great contempt for marriage. I had never seen the thing so near. Ah, dearest! what the world calls a "false step" brings two beings nearer together than the law—does it not?

The concluding idea served as a text for two pages of reminiscences and aspirations a little too confidential for publication.

The evening before the day on which Canalis put the above epistle into the post, Butscha, under the name of Jean Jacmin, had received a letter from his fictitious cousin, Philoxene, and had mailed his answer, which thus preceded the letter of the poet by about twelve hours. Terribly anxious for the last two weeks, and wounded by Melchior's silence, the duchess herself dictated Philoxene's letter to her cousin, and the moment she had read the answer, rather too explicit for her quinquagenary vanity, she sent for the banker and made close inquiries as to the exact fortune of Monsieur Mignon. Finding herself betrayed and abandoned for the millions, Eleonore gave way to a paroxysm of anger, hatred, and cold vindictiveness. Philoxene knocked at the door of the sumptuous room, and entering found her mistress with her eyes full of tears,—so unprecedented a phenomenon in the fifteen years she had waited upon her that the woman stopped short stupefied.

"We expiate the happiness of ten years in ten minutes," she heard the duchess say.

"A letter from Havre, madame."

Eleonore read the poet's prose without noticing the presence of Philoxene, whose amazement became still greater when she saw the dawn of fresh serenity on the duchess's face as she read further and further into the letter. Hold out a pole no thicker than a walking-stick to a drowning man, and he will think it a high-road of safety. The happy Eleonore believed in Canalis's good faith when she had read through the four pages in which love and business, falsehood and truth, jostled each other. She who, a few moments earlier, had sent for her husband to prevent Melchior's appointment while there was still time, was now seized with a spirit of generosity that amounted almost to the sublime.

"Poor fellow!" she thought; "he has not had one faithless thought; he loves me as he did on the first day; he tells me all—Philoxene!" she cried, noticing her maid, who was standing near and pretending to arrange the toilet-table.

"Madame la duchesse?"

"A mirror, child!"

Eleonore looked at herself, saw the fine razor-like lines traced on her brow, which disappeared at a little distance; she sighed, and in that sigh she felt she bade adieu to love. A brave thought came into her mind, a manly thought, outside of all the pettiness of women,—a thought which intoxicates for a moment, and which explains, perhaps, the clemency of the Semiramis of Russia when she married her young and beautiful rival to Momonoff.

"Since he has not been faithless, he shall have the girl and her millions," she thought,—"provided Mademoiselle Mignon is as ugly as he says she is."

Three raps, circumspectly given, announced the duke, and his wife went herself to the door to let him in.

"Ah! I see you are better, my dear," he cried, with the counterfeit joy that courtiers assume so readily, and by which fools are so readily taken in.

"My dear Henri," she answered, "why is it you have not yet obtained that appointment for Melchior,—you who sacrificed so much to the king in taking a ministry which you knew could only last one year."

The duke glanced at Philoxene, who showed him by an almost imperceptible sign the letter from Havre on the dressing-table.

"You would be terribly bored at Baden and come back at daggers drawn with Melchior," said the duke.

"Pray why?"

"Why, you would always be together," said the former diplomat, with comic good-humor.

"Oh, no," she said; "I am going to marry him."

"If we can believe d'Herouville, our dear Canalis stands in no need of your help in that direction," said the duke, smiling. "Yesterday Grandlieu read me some passages from a letter the grand equerry had written him. No doubt they were dictated by the aunt for the express purpose of their reaching you, for Mademoiselle d'Herouville, always on the scent of a 'dot,' knows that Grandlieu and I play whist nearly every evening. That good little d'Herouville wants the Prince de Cadignan to go down and give a royal hunt in Normandy, and endeavor to persuade the king to be present, so as to turn the head of the damozel when she sees herself the object of such a grand affair. In short, two words from Charles X. would settle the matter. D'Herouville says the girl has incomparable beauty—"

"Henri, let us go to Havre!" cried the duchess, interrupting him.

"Under what pretext?" said her husband, gravely; he was one of the confidants of Louis XVIII.

"I never saw a hunt."

"It would be all very well if the king went; but it is a terrible bore to go so far, and he will not do it; I have just been speaking with him about it."

"Perhaps Madame would go?"

"That would be better," returned the duke, "I dare say the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse would help you to persuade her from Rosny. If she goes the king will not be displeased at the use of his hunting equipage. Don't go to Havre, my dear," added the duke, paternally, "that would be giving yourself away. Come, here's a better plan, I think. Gaspard's chateau of Rosembray is on the other side of the forest of Brotonne; why not give him a hint to invite the whole party?"

"He invite them?" said Eleonore.

"I mean, of course, the duchess; she is always engaged in pious works with Mademoiselle d'Herouville; give that old maid a hint, and get her to speak to Gaspard."

"You are a love of a man," cried Eleonore; "I'll write to the old maid and to Diane at once, for we must get hunting things made,—a riding hat is so becoming. Did you win last night at the English embassy?"

"Yes," said the duke; "I cleared myself."

"Henri, above all things, stop proceedings about Melchior's two appointments."

After writing half a dozen lines to the beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse, and a short hint to Mademoiselle d'Herouville, Eleonore sent the following answer like the lash of a whip through the poet's lies.

To Monsieur le Baron de Canalis:—

My dear poet,—Mademoiselle de La Bastie is very beautiful; Mongenod has proved to me that her father has millions. I did think of marrying you to her; I am therefore much displeased at your want of confidence. If you had any intention of marrying La Briere when you went to Havre it is surprising that you said nothing to me about it before you started. And why have you omitted writing to a friend who is so easily made anxious as I? Your letter arrived a trifle late; I had already seen the banker. You are a child, Melchior, and you are playing tricks with us. It is not right. The duke himself is quite indignant at your proceedings; he thinks you less than a gentleman, which casts some reflections on your mother's honor.

Now, I intend to see things for myself. I shall, I believe, have the honor of accompanying Madame to the hunt which the Duc d'Herouville proposes to give for Mademoiselle de La Bastie. I will manage to have you invited to Rosembray, for the meet will probably take place in Duc de Verneuil's park.

Pray believe, my dear poet, that I am none the less, for life,

Your friend, Eleonore de M.

"There, Ernest, just look at that!" cried Canalis, tossing the letter at Ernest's nose across the breakfast-table; "that's the two thousandth love-letter I have had from that woman, and there isn't even a 'thou' in it. The illustrious Eleonore has never compromised herself more than she does there. Marry, and try your luck! The worst marriage in the world is better than this sort of halter. Ah, I am the greatest Nicodemus that ever tumbled out of the moon! Modeste has millions, and I've lost her; for we can't get back from the poles, where we are to-day, to the tropics, where we were three days ago! Well, I am all the more anxious for your triumph over the grand equerry, because I told the duchess I came here only for your sake; and so I shall do my best for you."

"Alas, Melchior, Modeste must needs have so noble, so grand, so well-balanced a nature to resist the glories of the Court, and all these splendors cleverly displayed for her honor and glory by the duke, that I cannot believe in the existence of such perfection,—and yet, if she is still the Modeste of her letters, there might be hope!"

"Well, well, you are a happy fellow, you young Boniface, to see the world and your mistress through green spectacles!" cried Canalis, marching off to pace up and down the garden.

Caught between two lies, the poet was at a loss what to do.

"Play by rule, and you lose!" he cried presently, sitting down in the kiosk. "Every man of sense would have acted as I did four days ago, and got himself out of the net in which I saw myself. At such times people don't disentangle nets, they break through them! Come, let us be calm, cold, dignified, affronted. Honor requires it; English stiffness is the only way to win her back. After all, if I have to retire finally, I can always fall back on my old happiness; a fidelity of ten years can't go unrewarded. Eleonore will arrange me some good marriage."



CHAPTER XXVI. TRUE LOVE

The hunt was destined to be not only a meet of the hounds, but a meeting of all the passions excited by the colonel's millions and Modeste's beauty; and while it was in prospect there was truce between the adversaries. During the days required for the arrangement of this forestrial solemnity, the salon of the villa Mignon presented the tranquil picture of a united family. Canalis, cut short in his role of injured love by Modeste's quick perceptions, wished to appear courteous; he laid aside his pretensions, gave no further specimens of his oratory, and became, what all men of intellect can be when they renounce affectation, perfectly charming. He talked finances with Gobenheim, and war with the colonel, Germany with Madame Mignon, and housekeeping with Madame Latournelle,—endeavoring to bias them all in favor of La Briere. The Duc d'Herouville left the field to his rivals, for he was obliged to go to Rosembray to consult with the Duc de Verneuil, and see that the orders of the Royal Huntsman, the Prince de Cadignan, were carried out. And yet the comic element was not altogether wanting. Modeste found herself between the depreciatory hints of Canalis as to the gallantry of the grand equerry, and the exaggerations of the two Mesdemoiselles d'Herouville, who passed every evening at the villa. Canalis made Modeste take notice that, instead of being the heroine of the hunt, she would be scarcely noticed. Madame would be attended by the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, daughter-in-law of the Prince de Cadignan, by the Duchesse de Chaulieu, and other great ladies of the Court, among whom she could produce no sensation; no doubt the officers in garrison at Rouen would be invited, etc. Helene, on the other hand, was incessantly telling her new friend, whom she already looked upon as a sister-in-law, that she was to be presented to Madame; undoubtedly the Duc de Verneuil would invite her father and herself to stay at Rosembray; if the colonel wished to obtain a favor of the king,—a peerage, for instance,—the opportunity was unique, for there was hope of the king himself being present on the third day; she would be delighted with the charming welcome with which the beauties of the Court, the Duchesses de Chaulieu, de Maufrigneuse, de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu, and other ladies, were prepared to meet her. It was in fact an excessively amusing little warfare, with its marches and countermarches and stratagems,—all of which were keenly enjoyed by the Dumays, the Latournelles, Gobenheim, and Butscha, who, in conclave assembled, said horrible things of these noble personages, cruelly noting and intelligently studying all their little meannesses.

The promises on the d'Herouville side were, however, confirmed by the arrival of an invitation, couched in flattering terms, from the Duc de Verneuil and the Master of the Hunt to Monsieur le Comte de La Bastie and his daughter, to stay at Rosembray and be present at a grand hunt on the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, of November following.

La Briere, full of dark presentiments, craved the presence of Modeste with an eagerness whose bitter joys are known only to lovers who feel that they are parted, and parted fatally from those they love. Flashes of joy came to him intermingled with melancholy meditations on the one theme, "I have lost her," and made him all the more interesting to those who watched him, because his face and his whole person were in keeping with his profound feeling. There is nothing more poetic than a living elegy, animated by a pair of eyes, walking about, and sighing without rhymes.

The Duc d'Herouville arrived at last to arrange for Modeste's departure; after crossing the Seine she was to be conveyed in the duke's caleche, accompanied by the Demoiselles d'Herouville. The duke was charmingly courteous, he begged Canalis and La Briere to be of the party, assuring them, as he did the colonel, that he had taken particular care that hunters should be provided for them. The colonel invited the three lovers to breakfast on the morning of the start. Canalis then began to put into execution a plan that he had been maturing in his own mind for the last few days; namely, to quietly reconquer Modeste, and throw over the duchess, La Briere, and the duke. A graduate of diplomacy could hardly remain stuck in the position in which he found himself. On the other hand La Briere had come to the resolution of bidding Modeste an eternal farewell. Each suitor was therefore on the watch to slip in a last word, like the defendant's counsel to the court before judgment is pronounced; for all felt that the three weeks' struggle was approaching its conclusion. After dinner on the evening before the start was to be made, the colonel had taken his daughter by the arm and made her feel the necessity of deciding.

"Our position with the d'Herouville family will be quite intolerable at Rosembray," he said to her. "Do you mean to be a duchess?"

"No, father," she answered.

"Then do you love Canalis?"

"No, papa, a thousand times no!" she exclaimed with the impatience of a child.

The colonel looked at her with a sort of joy.

"Ah, I have not influenced you," cried the true father, "and I will now confess that I chose my son-in-law in Paris when, having made him believe that I had but little fortune, he grasped my hand and told me I took a weight from his mind—"

"Who is it you mean?" asked Modeste, coloring.

"The man of fixed principles and sound moralities," said her father, slyly, repeating the words which had dissolved poor Modeste's dream on the day after his return.

"I was not even thinking of him, papa. Please leave me at liberty to refuse the duke myself; I understand him, and I know how to soothe him."

"Then your choice is not made?"

"Not yet; there is another syllable or two in the charade of my destiny still to be guessed; but after I have had a glimpse of court life at Rosembray I will tell you my secret."

"Ah! Monsieur de La Briere," cried the colonel, as the young man approached them along the garden path in which they were walking, "I hope you are going to this hunt?"

"No, colonel," answered Ernest. "I have come to take leave of you and of mademoiselle; I return to Paris—"

"You have no curiosity," said Modeste, interrupting, and looking at him.

"A wish—that I cannot expect—would suffice to keep me," he replied.

"If that is all, you must stay to please me; I wish it," said the colonel, going forward to meet Canalis, and leaving his daughter and La Briere together for a moment.

"Mademoiselle," said the young man, raising his eyes to hers with the boldness of a man without hope, "I have an entreaty to make to you."

"To me?"

"Let me carry away with me your forgiveness. My life can never be happy; it must be full of remorse for having lost my happiness—no doubt by my own fault; but, at least,—"

"Before we part forever," said Modeste, interrupting a la Canalis, and speaking in a voice of some emotion, "I wish to ask you one thing; and though you once disguised yourself, I think you cannot be so base as to deceive me now."

The taunt made him turn pale, and he cried out, "Oh, you are pitiless!"

"Will you be frank?"

"You have the right to ask me that degrading question," he said, in a voice weakened by the violent palpitation of his heart.

"Well, then, did you read my letters to Monsieur de Canalis?"

"No, mademoiselle; and I allowed your father to read them it was to justify my love by showing him how it was born, and how sincere my efforts were to cure you of your fancy."

"But how came the idea of that unworthy masquerade ever to arise?" she said, with a sort of impatience.

La Briere related truthfully the scene in the poet's study which Modeste's first letter had occasioned, and the sort of challenge that resulted from his expressing a favorable opinion of a young girl thus led toward a poet's fame, as a plant seeks its share of the sun.

"You have said enough," said Modeste, restraining some emotion. "If you have not my heart, monsieur, you have at least my esteem."

These simple words gave the young man a violent shock; feeling himself stagger, he leaned against a tree, like a man deprived for a moment of reason. Modest, who had left him, turned her head and came hastily back.

"What is the matter?" she asked, taking his hand to prevent him from falling.

"Forgive me—I thought you despised me."

"But," she answered, with a distant and disdainful manner, "I did not say that I loved you."

And she left him again. But this time, in spite of her harshness, La Briere thought he walked on air; the earth softened under his feet, the trees bore flowers; the skies were rosy, the air cerulean, as they are in the temples of Hymen in those fairy pantomimes which finish happily. In such situations every woman is a Janus, and sees behind her without turning round; and thus Modeste perceived on the face of her lover the indubitable symptoms of a love like Butscha's,—surely the "ne plus ultra" of a woman's hope. Moreover, the great value which La Briere attached to her opinion filled Modeste with an emotion that was inestimably sweet.

"Mademoiselle," said Canalis, leaving the colonel and waylaying Modeste, "in spite of the little value you attach to my sentiments, my honor is concerned in effacing a stain under which I have suffered too long. Here is a letter which I received from the Duchesse de Chaulieu five days after my arrival in Havre."

He let Modeste read the first lines of the letter we have seen, which the duchess began by saying that she had seen Mongenod, and now wished to marry her poet to Modeste; then he tore that passage from the body of the letter, and placed the fragment in her hand.

"I cannot let you read the rest," he said, putting the paper in his pocket; "but I confide these few lines to your discretion, so that you may verify the writing. A young girl who could accuse me of ignoble sentiments is quite capable of suspecting some collusion, some trickery. Ah, Modeste," he said, with tears in his voice, "your poet, the poet of Madame de Chaulieu, has no less poetry in his heart than in his mind. You are about to see the duchess; suspend your judgment of me till then."

He left Modeste half bewildered.

"Oh, dear!" she said to herself; "it seems they are all angels—and not marriageable; the duke is the only one that belongs to humanity."

"Mademoiselle Modeste," said Butscha, appearing with a parcel under his arm, "this hunt makes me very uneasy. I dreamed your horse ran away with you, and I have been to Rouen to see if I could get a Spanish bit which, they tell me, a horse can't take between his teeth. I entreat you to use it. I have shown it to the colonel, and he has thanked me more than there is any occasion for."

"Poor, dear Butscha!" cried Modeste, moved to tears by this maternal care.

Butscha went skipping off like a man who has just heard of the death of a rich uncle.

"My dear father," said Modeste, returning to the salon; "I should like to have that beautiful whip,—suppose you were to ask Monsieur de La Briere to exchange it for your picture by Van Ostade."

Modeste looked furtively at Ernest, while the colonel made him this proposition, standing before the picture which was the sole thing he possessed in memory of his campaigns, having bought it of a burgher at Rabiston; and she said to herself as La Briere left the room precipitately, "He will be at the hunt."

A curious thing happened. Modeste's three lovers each and all went to Rosembray with their hearts full of hope, and captivated by her many perfections.

Rosembray,—an estate lately purchased by the Duc de Verneuil, with the money which fell to him as his share of the thousand millions voted as indemnity for the sale of the lands of the emigres,—is remarkable for its chateau, whose magnificence compares only with that of Mesniere or of Balleroy. This imposing and noble edifice is approached by a wide avenue of four rows of venerable elms, from which the visitor enters an immense rising court-yard, like that at Versailles, with magnificent iron railings and two lodges, and adorned with rows of large orange-trees in their tubs. Facing this court-yard, the chateau presents, between two fronts of the main building which retreat on either side of this projection, a double row of nineteen tall windows, with carved arches and diamond panes, divided from each other by a series of fluted pilasters surmounted by an entablature which hides an Italian roof, from which rise several stone chimneys masked by carved trophies of arms. Rosembray was built, under Louis XIV., by a "fermier-general" named Cottin. The facade toward the park differs from that on the court-yard by having a narrower projection in the centre, with columns between five windows, above which rises a magnificent pediment. The family of Marigny, to whom the estates of this Cottin were brought in marriage by Mademoiselle Cottin, her father's sole heiress, ordered a sunrise to be carved on this pediment by Coysevox. Beneath it are two angels unwinding a scroll, on which is cut this motto in honor of the Grand Monarch, "Sol nobis benignus."

From the portico, reached by two grand circular and balustraded flights of steps, the view extends over an immense fish-pond, as long and wide as the grand canal at Versailles, beginning at the foot of a grass-plot which compares well with the finest English lawns, and bordered with beds and baskets now filled with the brilliant flowers of autumn. On either side of the piece of water two gardens, laid out in the French style, display their squares and long straight paths, like brilliant pages written in the ciphers of Lenotre. These gardens are backed to their whole length by a border of nearly thirty acres of woodland. From the terrace the view is bounded by a forest belonging to Rosembray and contiguous to two other forests, one of which belongs to the Crown, the other to the State. It would be difficult to find a nobler landscape.



CHAPTER XXVII. A GIRL'S REVENGE

Modeste's arrival at Rosembray made a certain sensation in the avenue when the carriage with the liveries of France came in sight, accompanied by the grand equerry, the colonel, Canalis, and La Briere on horseback, preceded by an outrider in full dress, and followed by six servants,—among whom were the Negroes and the mulatto,—and the britzka of the colonel for the two waiting-women and the luggage. The carriage was drawn by four horses, ridden by postilions dressed with an elegance specially commanded by the grand equerry, who was often better served than the king himself. As Modeste, dazzled by the magnificence of the great lords, entered and beheld this lesser Versailles, she suddenly remembered her approaching interview with the celebrated duchesses, and began to fear that she might seem awkward, or provincial, or parvenue; in fact, she lost her self-possession, and heartily repented having wished for a hunt.

Fortunately, however, as the carriage drew up, Modeste saw an old man, in a blond wig frizzed into little curls, whose calm, plump, smooth face wore a fatherly smile and an expression of monastic cheerfulness which the half-veiled glance of the eye rendered almost noble. This was the Duc de Verneuil, master of Rosembray. The duchess, a woman of extreme piety, the only daughter of a rich and deceased chief-justice, spare and erect, and the mother of four children, resembled Madame Latournelle,—if the imagination can go so far as to adorn the notary's wife with the graces of a bearing that was truly abbatial.

"Ah, good morning, dear Hortense!" said Mademoiselle d'Herouville, kissing the duchess with the sympathy that united their haughty natures; "let me present to you and to the dear duke our little angel, Mademoiselle de La Bastie."

"We have heard so much of you, mademoiselle," said the duchess, "that we were in haste to receive you."

"And regret the time lost," added the Duc de Verneuil, with courteous admiration.

"Monsieur le Comte de La Bastie," said the grand equerry, taking the colonel by the arm and presenting him to the duke and duchess, with an air of respect in his tone and gesture.

"I am glad to welcome you, Monsieur le comte!" said Monsieur de Verneuil. "You possess more than one treasure," he added, looking at Modeste.

The duchess took Modeste under her arm and led her into an immense salon, where a dozen or more women were grouped about the fireplace. The men of the party remained with the duke on the terrace, except Canalis, who respectfully made his way to the superb Eleonore. The Duchesse de Chaulieu, seated at an embroidery-frame, was showing Mademoiselle de Verneuil how to shade a flower.

If Modeste had run a needle through her finger when handling a pin-cushion she could not have felt a sharper prick than she received from the cold and haughty and contemptuous stare with which Madame de Chaulieu favored her. For an instant she saw nothing but that one woman, and she saw through her. To understand the depths of cruelty to which these charming creatures, whom our passions deify, can go, we must see women with each other. Modeste would have disarmed almost any other than Eleonore by the perfectly stupid and involuntary admiration which her face betrayed. Had she not known the duchess's age she would have thought her a woman of thirty-six; but other and greater astonishments awaited her.

The poet had run plump against a great lady's anger. Such anger is the worst of sphinxes; the face is radiant, all the rest menacing. Kings themselves cannot make the exquisite politeness of a mistress's cold anger capitulate when she guards it with steel armor. Canalis tried to cling to the steel, but his fingers slipped on the polished surface, like his words on the heart; and the gracious face, the gracious words, the gracious bearing of the duchess hid the steel of her wrath, now fallen to twenty-five below zero, from all observers. The appearance of Modeste in her sublime beauty, and dressed as well as Diane de Maufrigneuse herself, had fired the train of gunpowder which reflection had been laying in Eleonore's mind.

All the women had gone to the windows to see the new wonder get out of the royal carriage, attended by her three suitors.

"Do not let us seem so curious," Madame de Chaulieu had said, cut to the heart by Diane's exclamation,—"She is divine! where in the world does she come from?"—and with that the bevy flew back to their seats, resuming their composure, though Eleonore's heart was full of hungry vipers all clamorous for a meal.

Mademoiselle d'Herouville said in a low voice and with much meaning to the Duchesse de Verneuil, "Eleonore receives her Melchior very ungraciously."

"The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse thinks there is a coolness between them," said Laure de Verneuil, with simplicity.

Charming phrase! so often used in the world of society,—how the north wind blows through it.

"Why so?" asked Modeste of the pretty young girl who had lately left the Sacre-Coeur.

"The great poet," said the pious duchess—making a sign to her daughter to be silent—"left Madame de Chaulieu without a letter for more than two weeks after he went to Havre, having told her that he went there for his health—"

Modeste made a hasty movement, which caught the attention of Laure, Helene, and Mademoiselle d'Herouville.

"—and during that time," continued the devout duchess, "she was endeavoring to have him appointed commander of the Legion of honor, and minister at Baden."

"Oh, that was shameful in Canalis; he owes everything to her," exclaimed Mademoiselle d'Herouville.

"Why did not Madame de Chaulieu come to Havre?" asked Modeste of Helene, innocently.

"My dear," said the Duchesse de Verneuil, "she would let herself be cut in little pieces without saying a word. Look at her,—she is regal; her head would smile, like Mary Stuart's, after it was cut off; in fact, she has some of that blood in her veins."

"Did she not write to him?" asked Modeste.

"Diane tells me," answered the duchess, prompted by a nudge from Mademoiselle d'Herouville, "that in answer to Canalis's first letter she made a cutting reply a few days ago."

This explanation made Modeste blush with shame for the man before her; she longed, not to crush him under her feet, but to revenge herself by one of those malicious acts that are sharper than a dagger's thrust. She looked haughtily at the Duchesse de Chaulieu—

"Monsieur Melchior!" she said.

All the women snuffed the air and looked alternately at the duchess, who was talking in an undertone to Canalis over the embroidery-frame, and then at the young girl so ill brought up as to disturb a lovers' meeting,—a think not permissible in any society. Diane de Maufrigneuse nodded, however, as much as to say, "The child is in the right of it." All the women ended by smiling at each other; they were enraged with a woman who was fifty-six years old and still handsome enough to put her fingers into the treasury and steal the dues of youth. Melchior looked at Modeste with feverish impatience, and made the gesture of a master to a valet, while the duchess lowered her head with the movement of a lioness disturbed at a meal; her eyes, fastened on the canvas, emitted red flames in the direction of the poet, which stabbed like epigrams, for each word revealed to her a triple insult.

"Monsieur Melchior!" said Modeste again in a voice that asserted its right to be heard.

"What, mademoiselle?" demanded the poet.

Forced to rise, he remained standing half-way between the embroidery frame, which was near a window, and the fireplace where Modeste was seated with the Duchesse de Verneuil on a sofa. What bitter reflections came into his ambitious mind, as he caught a glance from Eleonore. If he obeyed Modeste all was over, and forever, between himself and his protectress. Not to obey her was to avow his slavery, to lose the chances of his twenty-five days of base manoeuvring, and to disregard the plainest laws of decency and civility. The greater the folly, the more imperatively the duchess exacted it. Modeste's beauty and money thus pitted against Eleonore's rights and influence made this hesitation between the man and his honor as terrible to witness as the peril of a matador in the arena. A man seldom feels such palpitations as those which now came near causing Canalis an aneurism, except, perhaps, before the green table, where his fortune or his ruin is about to be decided.

"Mademoiselle d'Herouville hurried me from the carriage, and I left behind me," said Modeste to Canalis, "my handkerchief—"

Canalis shrugged his shoulders significantly.

"And," continued Modeste, taking no notice of his gesture, "I had tied into one corner of it the key of a desk which contains the fragment of an important letter; have the kindness, Monsieur Melchior, to get it for me."

Between an angel and a tiger equally enraged Canalis, who had turned livid, no longer hesitated,—the tiger seemed to him the least dangerous of the two; and he was about to do as he was told, and commit himself irretrievably, when La Briere appeared at the door of the salon, seeming to his anguished mind like the archangel Gabriel tumbling from heaven.

"Ernest, here, Mademoiselle de La Bastie wants you," said the poet, hastily returning to his chair by the embroidery frame.

Ernest rushed to Modeste without bowing to any one; he saw only her, took his commission with undisguised joy, and darted from the room, with the secret approbation of every woman present.

"What an occupation for a poet!" said Modeste to Helene d'Herouville, glancing toward the embroidery at which the duchess was now working savagely.

"If you speak to her, if you ever look at her, all is over between us," said the duchess to the poet in a low voice, not at all satisfied with the very doubtful termination which Ernest's arrival had put to the scene; "and remember, if I am not present, I leave behind me eyes that will watch you."

So saying, the duchess, a woman of medium height, but a little too stout, like all women over fifty who retain their beauty, rose and walked toward the group which surrounded Diane de Maufrigneuse, stepping daintily on little feet that were as slender and nervous as a deer's. Beneath her plumpness could be seen the exquisite delicacy of such women, which comes from the vigor of their nervous systems controlling and vitalizing the development of flesh. There is no other way to explain the lightness of her step, and the incomparable nobility of her bearing. None but the women whose quarterings begin with Noah know, as Eleonore did, how to be majestic in spite of a buxom tendency. A philosopher might have pitied Philoxene, while admiring the graceful lines of the bust and the minute care bestowed upon a morning dress, which was worn with the elegance of a queen and the easy grace of a young girl. Her abundant hair, still undyed, was simply wound about her head in plaits; she bared her snowy throat and shoulders, exquisitely modelled, and her celebrated hand and arm, with pardonable pride. Modeste, together with all other antagonists of the duchess, recognized in her a woman of whom they were forced to say, "She eclipses us." In fact, Eleonore was one of the "grandes dames" now so rare. To endeavor to explain what august quality there was in the carriage of the head, what refinement and delicacy in the curve of the throat, what harmony in her movements, and nobility in her bearing, what grandeur in the perfect accord of details with the whole being, and in the arts, now a second nature, which render a woman grand and even sacred,—to explain all these things would simply be to attempt to analyze the sublime. People enjoy such poetry as they enjoy that of Paganini; they do not explain to themselves the medium, they know the cause is in the spirit that remains invisible.

Madame de Chaulieu bowed her head in salutation of Helene and her aunt; then, saying to Diane, in a pure and equable tone of voice, without a trace of emotion, "Is it not time to dress, duchess?" she made her exit, accompanied by her daughter-in-law and Mademoiselle d'Herouville. As she left the room she spoke in an undertone to the old maid, who pressed her arm, saying, "You are charming,"—which meant, "I am all gratitude for the service you have just done us." After that, Mademoiselle d'Herouville returned to the salon to play her part of spy, and her first glance apprised Canalis that the duchess had made him no empty threat. That apprentice in diplomacy became aware that his science was not sufficient for a struggle of this kind, and his wit served him to take a more honest position, if not a worthier one. When Ernest returned, bringing Modeste's handkerchief, the poet seized his arm and took him out on the terrace.

"My dear friend," he said, "I am not only the most unfortunate man in the world, but I am also the most ridiculous; and I come to you to get me out of the hornet's nest into which I have run myself. Modeste is a demon; she sees my difficulty and she laughs at it; she has just spoken to me of a fragment of a letter of Madame de Chaulieu, which I had the folly to give her; if she shows it I can never make my peace with Eleonore. Therefore, will you at once ask Modeste to send me back that paper, and tell her, from me, that I make no pretensions to her hand. Say I count upon her delicacy, upon her propriety as a young girl, to behave to me as if we had never known each other. I beg her not to speak to me; I implore her to treat me harshly,—though I hardly dare ask her to feign a jealous anger, which would help my interests amazingly. Go, I will wait here for an answer."



CHAPTER XXVIII. MODESTE BEHAVES WITH DIGNITY

On re-entering the salon Ernest de La Briere found a young officer of the company of the guard d'Havre, the Vicomte de Serizy, who had just arrived from Rosny to announce that Madame was obliged to be present at the opening of the Chambers. We know the importance then attached to this constitutional solemnity, at which Charles X. delivered his speech, surrounded by the royal family,—Madame la Dauphine and Madame being present in their gallery. The choice of the emissary charged with the duty of expressing the princess's regrets was an attention to Diane, who was then an object of adoration to this charming young man, son of a minister of state, gentleman in ordinary of the chamber, only son and heir to an immense fortune. The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse permitted his attentions solely for the purpose of attracting notice to the age of his mother, Madame de Serizy, who was said, in those chronicles that are whispered behind the fans, to have deprived her of the heart of the handsome Lucien de Rubempre.

"You will do us the pleasure, I hope, to remain at Rosembray," said the severe duchess to the young officer.

While giving ear to every scandal, the devout lady shut her eyes to the derelictions of her guests who had been carefully selected by the duke; indeed, it is surprising how much these excellent women will tolerate under pretence of bringing the lost sheep back to the fold by their indulgence.

"We reckoned without our constitutional government," said the grand equerry; "and Rosembray, Madame la duchesse, will lose a great honor."

"We shall be more at our ease," said a tall thin old man, about seventy-five years of age, dressed in blue cloth, and wearing his hunting-cap by permission of the ladies. This personage, who closely resembled the Duc de Bourbon, was no less than the Prince de Cadignan, Master of the Hunt, and one of the last of the great French lords. Just as La Briere was endeavoring to slip behind the sofa and obtain a moment's intercourse with Modeste, a man of thirty-eight, short, fat, and very common in appearance, entered the room.

"My son, the Prince de Loudon," said the Duchesse de Verneuil to Modeste, who could not restrain the expression of amazement that overspread her young face on seeing the man who bore the historical name that the hero of La Vendee had rendered famous by his bravery and the martyrdom of his death.

"Gaspard," said the duchess, calling her son to her. The young prince came at once, and his mother continued, motioning to Modeste, "Mademoiselle de La Bastie, my friend."

The heir presumptive, whose marriage with Desplein's only daughter had lately been arranged, bowed to the young girl without seeming struck, as his father had been, with her beauty. Modeste was thus enabled to compare the youth of to-day with the old age of a past epoch; for the old Prince de Cadignan had already said a few words which made her feel that he rendered as true a homage to womanhood as to royalty. The Duc de Rhetore, the eldest son of the Duchesse de Chaulieu, chiefly remarkable for manners that were equally impertinent and free and easy, bowed to Modeste rather cavalierly. The reason of this contrast between the fathers and the sons is to be found, probably, in the fact that young men no longer feel themselves great beings, as their forefathers did, and they dispense with the duties of greatness, knowing well that they are now but the shadow of it. The fathers retain the inherent politeness of their vanished grandeur, like the mountain-tops still gilded by the sun when all is twilight in the valley.

Ernest was at last able to slip a word into Modeste's ear, and she rose immediately.

"My dear," said the duchesse, thinking she was going to dress, and pulling a bell-rope, "they shall show you your apartment."

Ernest accompanied Modeste to the foot of the grand staircase, presenting the request of the luckless poet, and endeavoring to touch her feelings by describing Melchior's agony.

"You see, he loves—he is a captive who thought he could break his chain."

"Love in such a rapid seeker after fortune!" retorted Modeste.

"Mademoiselle, you are at the entrance of life; you do not know its defiles. The inconsistencies of a man who falls under the dominion of a woman much older than himself should be forgiven, for he is really not accountable. Think how many sacrifices Canalis has made to her. He has sown too much seed of that kind to resign the harvest; the duchess represents to him ten years of devotion and happiness. You made him forget all that, and unfortunately, he has more vanity than pride; he did not reflect on what he was losing until he met Madame Chaulieu here to-day. If you really understood him, you would help him. He is a child, always mismanaging his life. You call him a seeker after fortune, but he seeks very badly; like all poets, he is a victim of sensations; he is childish, easily dazzled like a child by anything that shines, and pursuing its glitter. He used to love horses and pictures, and he craved fame,—well, he sold his pictures to buy armor and old furniture of the Renaissance and Louis XV.; just now he is seeking political power. Admit that his hobbies are noble things."

"You have said enough," replied Modeste; "come," she added, seeing her father, whom she called with a motion of her head to give her his arm; "come with me, and I will give you that scrap of paper; you shall carry it to the great man and assure him of my condescension to his wishes, but on one condition,—you must thank him in my name for the pleasure I have taken in seeing one of the finest of the German plays performed in my honor. I have learned that Goethe's masterpiece is neither Faust nor Egmont—" and then, as Ernest looked at the malicious girl with a puzzled air, she added: "It is Torquato Tasso! Tell Monsieur de Canalis to re-read it," she added smiling; "I particularly desire that you will repeat to your friend word for word what I say; for it is not an epigram, it is the justification of his conduct,—with this trifling difference, that he will, I trust, become more and more reasonable, thanks to the folly of his Eleonore."

The duchess's head-woman conducted Modeste and her father to their apartment, where Francoise Cochet had already put everything in order, and the choice elegance of which astounded the colonel, more especially after he heard from Francoise that there were thirty other apartments in the chateau decorated with the same taste.

"This is what I call a proper country-house," said Modeste.

"The Comte de La Bastie must build you one like it," replied her father.

"Here, monsieur," said Modeste, giving the bit of paper to Ernest; "carry it to our friend and put him out of his misery."

The word our friend struck the young man's heart. He looked at Modeste to see if there was anything real in the community of interests which she seemed to admit, and she, understanding perfectly what his look meant, added, "Come, go at once, your friend is waiting."

La Briere colored excessively, and left the room in a state of doubt and anxiety less endurable than despair. The path that approaches happiness is, to the true lover, like the narrow way which Catholic poetry has called the entrance to Paradise,—expressing thus a dark and gloomy passage, echoing with the last cries of earthly anguish.

An hour later this illustrious company were all assembled in the salon; some were playing whist, others conversing; the women had their embroideries in hand, and all were waiting the announcement of dinner. The Prince de Cadignan was drawing Monsieur Mignon out upon China, and his campaigns under the empire, and making him talk about the Portendueres, the L'Estorades, and the Maucombes, Provencal families; he blamed him for not seeking service, and assured him that nothing would be easier than to restore him to his rank as colonel of the Guard.

"A man of your birth and your fortune ought not to belong to the present Opposition," said the prince, smiling.

This society of distinguished persons not only pleased Modeste, but it enabled her to acquire, during her stay, a perfection of manners which without this revelation she would have lacked all her life. Show a clock to an embryo mechanic, and you reveal to him the whole mechanism; he thus develops the germs of his faculty which lie dormant within him. In like manner Modeste had the instinct to appropriate the distinctive qualities of Madame de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Chaulieu. For her, the sight of these women was an education; whereas a bourgeois would merely have ridiculed their ways or made them absurd by clumsy imitation. A well-born, well-educated, and right-minded young woman like Modeste fell naturally into connection with these people, and saw at once the differences that separate the aristocratic world from the bourgeois world, the provinces from the faubourg Saint-Germain; she caught the almost imperceptible shadings; in short, she perceived the grace of the "grande dame" without doubting that she could herself acquire it. She noticed also that her father and La Briere appeared infinitely better in this Olympus than Canalis. The great poet, abdicating his real and incontestable power, that of the mind, became nothing more than a courtier seeking a ministry, intriguing for an order, and forced to please the whole galaxy. Ernest de La Briere, without ambitions, was able to be himself; while Melchior became, to use a vulgar expression, a mere toady, and courted the Prince de Loudon, the Duc de Rhetore, the Vicomte de Serizy, or the Duc de Maufrigneuse, like a man not free to assert himself, as did Colonel Mignon, who was justly proud of his campaigns, and of the confidence of the Emperor Napoleon. Modeste took note of the strained efforts of the man of real talent, seeking some witticism that should raise a laugh, some clever speech, some compliment with which to flatter these grand personages, whom it was his interest to please. In a word, to Modeste's eyes the peacock plucked out his tail-feathers.

Toward the middle of the evening the young girl sat down with the grand equerry in a corner of the salon. She led him there purposely to end a suit which she could no longer encourage if she wished to retain her self-respect.

"Monsieur le duc, if you really knew me," she said, "you would understand how deeply I am touched by your attentions. It is because of the profound respect I feel for your character, and the friendship which a soul like yours inspires in mine, that I cannot endure to wound your self-love. Before your arrival in Havre I loved sincerely, deeply, and forever, one who is worthy of being loved, and my affection for whom is still a secret; but I wish you to know—and in saying this I am more sincere than most young girls—that had I not already formed this voluntary attachment, you would have been my choice, for I recognize your noble and beautiful qualities. A few words which your aunt and sister have said to me as to your intentions lead me to make this frank avowal. If you think it desirable, a letter from my mother shall recall me, on pretence of her illness, to-morrow morning before the hunt begins. Without your consent I do not choose to be present at a fete which I owe to your kindness, and where, if my secret should escape me, you might feel hurt and defrauded. You will ask me why I have come here at all. I could not withstand the invitation. Be generous enough not to reproach me for what was almost a necessary curiosity. But this is not the chief, not the most delicate thing I have to say to you. You have firm friends in my father and myself,—more so than perhaps you realize; and as my fortune was the first cause that brought you to me, I wish to say—but without intending to use it as a sedative to calm the grief which gallantry requires you to testify—that my father has thought over the affair of the marshes, his friend Dumay thinks your project feasible, and they have already taken steps to form a company. Gobenheim, Dumay, and my father have subscribed fifteen hundred thousand francs, and undertake to get the rest from capitalists, who will feel it in their interest to take up the matter. If I have not the honor of becoming the Duchesse d'Herouville, I have almost the certainty of enabling you to choose her, free from all trammels in your choice, and in a higher sphere than mine. Oh! let me finish," she cried, at a gesture from the duke.

"Judging by my nephew's emotion," whispered Mademoiselle d'Herouville to her niece, "it is easy to see you have a sister."

"Monsieur le duc, all this was settled in my mind the day of our first ride, when I heard you deplore your situation. This is what I have wished to say to you. That day determined my future life. Though you did not make the conquest of a woman, you have at least gained faithful friends at Ingouville—if you will deign to accord us that title."

This little discourse, which Modeste had carefully thought over, was said with so much charm of soul that the tears came to the grand equerry's eyes; he seized her hand and kissed it.

"Stay during the hunt," he said; "my want of merit has accustomed me to these refusals; but while accepting your friendship and that of the colonel, you must let me satisfy myself by the judgment of competent scientific men, that the draining of those marshes will be no risk to the company you speak of, before I agree to the generous offer of your friends. You are a noble girl, and though my heart aches to think I can only be your friend, I will glory in that title, and prove it to you at all times and in all seasons."

"In that case, Monsieur le duc, let us keep our secret. My choice will not be known, at least I think not, until after my mother's complete recovery. I should like our first blessing to come from her eyes."



CHAPTER XXIX. CONCLUSION

"Ladies," said the Prince de Cadignan, as the guests were about to separate for the night, "I know that several of you propose to follow the hounds with us to-morrow, and it becomes my duty to tell you that if you will be Dianas you must rise, like Diana, with the dawn. The meet is for half-past eight o'clock. I have in the course of my life seen many women display greater courage than men, but for a few seconds only; and you will need a strong dose of resolution to keep you on horseback the whole day, barring a halt for breakfast, which we shall take, like true hunters and huntresses, on the nail. Are you still determined to show yourselves trained horse-women?"

"Prince, it is necessary for me to do so," said Modeste, adroitly.

"I answer for myself," said the Duchesse de Chaulieu.

"And I for my daughter Diane; she is worthy of her name," added the prince. "So, then, you all persist in your intentions? However, I shall arrange, for the sake of Madame and Mademoiselle de Verneuil and others of the party who stay at home, to drive the stag to the further end of the pond."

"Make yourself quite easy, mesdames," said the Prince de Loudon, when the Royal Huntsman had left the room; "that breakfast 'on the nail' will take place under a comfortable tent."

The next day, at dawn, all signs gave promise of a glorious day. The skies, veiled by a slight gray vapor, showed spaces of purest blue, and would surely be swept clear before mid-day by the northwest wind, which was already playing with the fleecy cloudlets. As the hunting party left the chateau, the Master of the Hunt, the Duc de Rhetore, and the Prince de Loudon, who had no ladies to escort, rode in the advance, noticing the white masses of the chateau, with its rising chimneys relieved against the brilliant red-brown foliage which the trees in Normandy put on at the close of a fine autumn.

"The ladies are fortunate in their weather," remarked the Duc de Rhetore.

"Oh, in spite of all their boasting," replied the Prince de Cadignan, "I think they will let us hunt without them!"

"So they might, if each had not a squire," said the duke.

At this moment the attention of these determined huntsmen—for the Prince de Loudon and the Duc de Rhetore are of the race of Nimrod, and the best shots of the faubourg Saint-Germain—was attracted by a loud altercation; and they spurred their horses to an open space at the entrance to the forest of Rosembray, famous for its mossy turf, which was appointed for the meet. The cause of the quarrel was soon apparent. The Prince de Loudon, afflicted with anglomania, had brought out his own hunting establishment, which was exclusively Britannic, and placed it under orders of the Master of the Hunt. Now, one of his men, a little Englishman,—fair, pale, insolent, and phlegmatic, scarcely able to speak a word of French, and dressed with a neatness which distinguishes all Britons, even those of the lower classes,—had posted himself on one side of this open space. John Barry wore a short frock-coat, buttoned tightly at the waist, made of scarlet cloth, with buttons bearing the De Verneuil arms, white leather breeches, top-boots, a striped waistcoat, and a collar and cape of black velvet. He held in his hand a small hunting-whip, and hanging to his wrist by a silken cord was a brass horn. This man, the first whipper-in, was accompanied by two thorough-bred dogs,—fox-hounds, white, with liver spots, long in the leg, fine in the muzzle, with slender heads, and little ears at their crests. The huntsman—famous in the English county from which the Prince de Loudon had obtained him at great cost—was in charge of an establishment of fifteen horses and sixty English hounds, which cost the Duc de Verneuil, who was nothing of a huntsman, but chose to indulge his son in this essentially royal taste, an enormous sum of money to keep up.

Now, when John arrived on the ground, he found himself forestalled by three other whippers-in, in charge of two of the royal packs of hounds which had been brought there in carts. They were the three best huntsmen of the Prince de Cadignan, and presented, both in character and in their distinctively French costume, a marked contrast to the representative of insolent Albion. These favorites of the Prince, each wearing full-brimmed, three-cornered hats, very flat and very wide-spreading, beneath which grinned their swarthy, tanned, and wrinkled faces, lighted by three pairs of twinkling eyes, were noticeably lean, sinewy, and vigorous, like men in whom sport had become a passion. All three were supplied with immense horns of Dampierre, wound with green worsted cords, leaving only the brass tubes visible; but they controlled their dogs by the eye and voice. Those noble animals were far more faithful and submissive subjects than the human lieges whom the king was at that moment addressing; all were marked with white, black, or liver spots, each having as distinctive a countenance as the soldiers of Napoleon, their eyes flashing like diamonds at the slightest noise. One of them, brought from Poitou, was short in the back, deep in the shoulder, low-jointed, and lop-eared; the other, from England, white, fine as a greyhound with no belly, small ears, and built for running. Both were young, impatient, and yelping eagerly, while the old hounds, on the contrary, covered with scars, lay quietly with their heads on their forepaws, and their ears to the earth like savages.

As the Englishman came up, the royal dogs and huntsmen looked at each other as though they said, "If we cannot hunt by ourselves his Majesty's service is insulted."

Beginning with jests, the quarrel presently grew fiercer between Monsieur Jacquin La Roulie, the old French whipper-in, and John Barry, the young islander. The two princes guessed from afar the subject of the altercation, and the Master of the Hunt, setting spurs to his horse, brought it to an end by saying, in a voice of authority:—

"Who drew the wood?"

"I, monseigneur," said the Englishman.

"Very good," said the Prince de Cadignan, proceeding to take Barry's report.

Dogs and men became silent and respectful before the Royal Huntsman, as though each recognized his dignity as supreme. The prince laid out the day's work; for it is with a hunt as it is with a battle, and the Master of Charles X.'s hounds was the Napoleon of forests. Thanks to the admirable system which he has introduced into French venery, he was able to turn his thoughts exclusively to the science and strategy of it. He now quietly assigned a special duty to the Prince de Loudon's establishment, that of driving the stag to water, when, as he expected, the royal hounds had sent it into the Crown forest which outlined the horizon directly in front of the chateau. The prince knew well how to soothe the self-love of his old huntsmen by giving them the most arduous part of the work, and also that of the Englishman, whom he employed at his own speciality, affording him a chance to show the fleetness of his horses and dogs in the open. The two national systems were thus face to face and allowed to do their best under each other's eyes.

"Does monseigneur wish us to wait any longer?" said La Roulie, respectfully.

"I know what you mean, old friend," said the prince. "It is late, but—"

"Here come the ladies," said the second whipper-in.

At that moment the cavalcade of sixteen riders was seen to approach at the head of which were the green veils of the four ladies. Modeste, accompanied by her father, the grand equerry, and La Briere, was in the advance, beside the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse whom the Vicomte de Serizy escorted. Behind them rode the Duchesse de Chaulieu, flanked by Canalis, on whom she was smiling without a trace of rancor. When they had reached the open space where the huntsmen with their red coats and brass bugles, surrounded by the hounds, made a picture worthy of Van der Meulen, the Duchesse de Chaulieu, who, in spite of her embonpoint, sat her horse admirably, rode up to Modeste, finding it more for her dignity not to avoid that young person, to whom the evening before she had not said a single word.

When the Master of the Hunt finished his compliments to the ladies on their amazing punctuality, Eleonore deigned to observe the magnificent whip which sparked in Modeste's little hand, and graciously asked leave to look at it.

"I have never seen anything of the kind more beautiful," she said, showing it to Diane de Maufrigneuse. "It is in keeping with its possessor," she added, returning it to Modeste.

"You must admit, Madame la duchesse," answered Mademoiselle de La Bastie, with a tender and malicious glance at La Briere, "that it is a rather strange gift from the hand of a future husband."

"I should take it," said Madame de Maufrigneuse, "as a declaration of my rights, in remembrance of Louis XIV."

La Briere's eyes were suffused, and for a moment he dropped his reins; but a second glance from Modeste ordered him not to betray his happiness. The hunt now began.

The Duc d'Herouville took occasion to say in a low voice to his fortunate rival; "Monsieur, I hope that you will make your wife happy; if I can be useful to you in any way, command my services; I should be only too glad to contribute to the happiness of so charming a pair."

This great day, in which such vast interests of heart and fortune were decided, caused but one anxiety to the Master of the Hunt,—namely, whether or not the stag would cross the pond and be killed on the lawn before the house; for huntsmen of his calibre are like great chess-players who can predict a checkmate under certain circumstances. The happy old man succeeded to the height of his wishes; the run was magnificent, and the ladies released him from his attendance upon them for the hunt of the next day but one,—which, however, turned out to be rainy.

The Duc de Verneuil's guests stayed five days at Rosembray. On the last day the Gazette de France announced the appointment of Monsieur le Baron de Canalis to the rank of commander of the Legion of honor, and to the post of minister at Carlsruhe.

When, early in the month of December, Madame de La Bastie, operated upon by Desplein, recovered her sight and saw Ernest de La Briere for the first time, she pressed Modeste's hand and whispered in her ear, "I should have chosen him myself."

Toward the last of February all the deeds for the estates in Provence were signed by Latournelle, and about that time the family of La Bastie obtained the marked honor of the king's signature to the marriage contract and to the ordinance transmitting their title and arms to La Briere, who henceforth took the name of La Briere-La Bastie. The estate of La Bastie was entailed by letters-patent issued about the end of April. La Briere's witnesses on the occasion of his marriage were Canalis and the minister whom he had served for five years as secretary. Those of the bride were the Duc d'Herouville and Desplein, whom the Mignons long held in grateful remembrance, after giving him magnificent and substantial proofs of their regard.

Later, in the course of this long history of our manners and customs, we may again meet Monsieur and Madame de La Briere-La Bastie; and those who have the eyes to see, will then behold how sweet, how easy, is the marriage yoke with an educated and intelligent woman; for Modeste, who had the wit to avoid the follies of pedantry, is the pride and happiness of her husband, as she is of her family and of all those who surround her.



ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Beaupre, Fanny A Start in Life The Muse of the Department Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Bixiou, Jean-Jacques The Purse A Bachelor's Establishment The Government Clerks Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Firm of Nucingen The Muse of the Department Cousin Betty The Member for Arcis Beatrix A Man of Business Gaudissart II. The Unconscious Humorists Cousin Pons

Blondet, Emile Jealousies of a Country Town A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve The Firm of Nucingen The Peasantry

Bridau, Joseph The Purse A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Start in Life Another Study of Woman Pierre Grassou Letters of Two Brides Cousin Betty The Member for Arcis

Cadignan, Prince de The Secrets of a Princess

Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de Letters of Two Brides A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Magic Skin Another Study of Woman A Start in Life Beatrix The Unconscious Humorists The Member for Arcis

Chatillonest, De A Woman of Thirty

Chaulieu, Henri, Duc de Letters of Two Brides A Bachelor's Establishment Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Thirteen

Dauriat A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Desplein The Atheist's Mass Cousin Pons Lost Illusions The Thirteen The Government Clerks Pierrette A Bachelor's Establishment The Seamy Side of History Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine

Estourny, Charles d' Scenes from a Courtesan's Life A Man of Business

Fontaine, Comte de The Chouans The Ball at Sceaux Cesar Birotteau The Government Clerks

Grandlieu, Duc Ferdinand de The Gondreville Mystery The Thirteen A Bachelor's Establishment Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Herouville, Duc d' The Hated Son Jealousies of a Country Town Cousin Betty

La Bastie la Briere, Ernest de The Government Clerks

La Bastie la Briere, Madame Ernest de (Modeste) The Member for Arcis Cousin Betty

Loudon, Prince de The Chouans

Marsay, Henri de The Thirteen The Unconscious Humorists Another Study of Woman The Lily of the Valley Father Goriot Jealousies of a Country Town Ursule Mirouet A Marriage Settlement Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Letters of Two Brides The Ball at Sceaux The Secrets of a Princess The Gondreville Mystery A Daughter of Eve

Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de The Secrets of a Princess Jealousies of a Country Town The Muse of the Department Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Letters of Two Brides Another Study of Woman The Gondreville Mystery The Member for Arcis

Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de Father Goriot The Thirteen Eugenie Grandet Cesar Birotteau Melmoth Reconciled Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Commission in Lunacy Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Firm of Nucingen Another Study of Woman A Daughter of Eve The Member for Arcis

Schinner, Hippolyte The Purse A Bachelor's Establishment Pierre Grassou A Start in Life Albert Savarus The Government Clerks The Imaginary Mistress The Unconscious Humorists

Serizy, Comte Hugret de A Start in Life A Bachelor's Establishment Honorine Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Serizy, Vicomte de A Start in Life The Imaginary Mistress

Sommervieux, Theodore de At the Sign of the Cat and Racket The Government Clerks

Stidmann Beatrix The Member for Arcis Cousin Betty Cousin Pons The Unconscious Humorists

THE END