Modeste Mignon

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Till we meet.--Your colonel and friend,

Charles Mignon.


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

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

"Nothing else could make Dumay hurry himself."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XII

A DECLARATION OF LOVE,--SET TO MUSIC

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

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

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

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

THE MAIDEN'S SONG

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

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

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

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

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

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

"She loves," persisted Madame Mignon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hush!" murmured Madame Mignon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, monsieur, none."

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

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

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

"Monsieur Butscha!"

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

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

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

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

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

Modeste looked at her dwarf with a perfectly stupid astonishment.

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

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

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

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

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

"Go, and I will trust you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XIII

A FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF MONSIEUR DE LA BRIERE

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

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