Modeste Mignon

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"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."