HONORE DE BALZAC TRANSLATED BY KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY /^ • MODESTE MIGNON ROBERTS BROTHERS 3 SOMERSET STREET BOSTON 1891 Copyright, 1888, By Roberts Brothers. All rights reserved. ©ntbersttg fhrss : John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. Eo a ^olisfj ILalrg. Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through love, witch through fancy, child by faith, aged by experience, man in brain, woman in heart, giant by hope, mother through sor- rows, poet in thy dreams, — to Thee belongs this book, in which thy love, thy fancy, thy experience, thy sorrow, thy hope, thy dreams, are the warp through which is shot a woof less brilliant than the poesy of thy soul, whose ex- pression, when it shines upon thy countenance, is, to those who love thee, what the characters of a lost language are to scholars. DE BALZAC. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. The Chalet 1 II. A Portrait from Life 14 III. Preliminaries 23 IV. A Simple Story 35 V. The Problem still Unsolved .... 46 VI. A Maiden's First Romance 58 VII. A Poet of the Angelic School. ... 70 VIII. Blade to Blade 86 IX. The Power of the Unseen 99 X. The Marriage of Souls 109 XI. What comes of Correspondence . . . 123 XII. A Declaration of Love, — set to Music 133 XIII. A Full-length Portrait of Monsieur de La Briere . 147 XIV. Matters grow Complicated 163 XV. A Father Steps In 179 XVI. Disenchanted 196 XVII. A Third Suitor 203 XVIII. A Splendid First Appearance .... 217 XIX. Of which the Author thinks a good Deal 230 // /' vm CHAPTER XX. XXL XXII. XXIII. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVIL XXVIII. XXIX Contents, PAGE The Poet does his Exercises . . . 245 Modeste Plays her Part 258 A Riddle Guessed 271 Butscha Distinguishes Himself . . . 283 The Poet feels that he is Loved too Well 293 A Diplomatic Letter 307 True Love 317 A Girl's Revenge 327 Modeste behaves with Dignity . . . 336 Conclusion 345 f THE r UNIVERSITY MODESTE MIGNON. CHAPTER I. THE CHALET. At the beginning of October, 1829, Monsieur Simon Babylas Latournelle, notary, was walking up from Havre to Ingouville, arm in arm with his son and ac- companied by his wife, at whose side the head clerk of the lawyer's office, a little hunchback named Jean But- scha, trotted along like a page. When these four per- sonages (two of whom came the same way every evening) reached the elbow of the road where it turns back upon itself like those called in Italy cornice, the notary looked about to see if any one could overhear him either from the terrace above or the path beneath, and when he spoke he lowered his voice as a further precaution. " Exupere," he said to his son, "you must try to carry out intelligently a little manoeuvre which I shall explain to you, but you are not to ask the meaning of it ; and if you guess the meaning I command you to toss it into that Styx which every law} r er and every man who expects to have a hand in the government of his country is bound to keep within him for the secrets 1 2 Modeste Mignon. of others. After you have paid your respects and compliments to Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon, to Monsieur and Madame Dumay, and to Monsieur Gobenheim if he is at the Chalet, and as soon as quiet is restored, Monsieur Dumay will take you aside ; you are then to look attentively at Mademoiselle Modeste (yes, I am willing to allow it) during the whole time he is speaking to you. My worthy friend will ask 30U to go out and take a walk ; at the end of an hour, that is, about nine o'clock, you are to come back in a great hurry ; try to puff as if you were out of breath, and whisper in Monsieur Dumay's ear, quite low, but so that Mademoiselle Modeste is sure to overhear you, these words : ' The young man has come.' " Exupere was to start the next morning for Paris to begin the study of law. This impending departure had induced Latournelle to propose him to his friend Dumay as an accomplice in the important conspiracy which these directions indicate. "Is Mademoiselle Modeste suspected of having a lover?" asked Butscha in a timid voice of Madame Latournelle. u Hush, Butscha," she replied, taking her husband's arm. Madame Latournelle, the daughter of a clerk of the supreme court, feels that her birth authorizes her to claim issue from a parliamentary family. This con- viction explains why the lady, who is somewhat blotched as to complexion, endeavors to assume in her own per- son the majesty of a court whose decrees are recorded in her father's pothooks. She takes snuff, holds her- self as stiff as a ramrod, poses for a person of consid- Modeste Mignon. 3 eration, and resembles nothing so much as a mummy brought momentarily to life by galvanism. She tries to give high-bred tones to her sharp voice, and suc- ceeds no better in doing that than in hiding her general lack of breeding. Her social usefulness seems, how- ever, incontestable when we glance at the » flower-be- decked cap she wears, at the false front frizzling around her forehead, at the gowns of her choice ; for how could shopkeepers dispose of those products if there were no Madame Latournelles? All these absurdities of the worthy woman, who is truly pious and charitable, might have passed unnoticed, if nature, amusing herself as she often does by turning out these ludicrous creations, had not endowed her with the height of a drum-major, and thus held up to view the comicalities of her pro- vincial nature. She has never been out of Havre ; she believes in the infallibility of Havre ; she buys those clothes as well as everything else in Havre ; she pro- claims herself Norman to the veiy tips of her fingers ; she venerates her father, and adores her husband. Little Latournelle was bold enough to marry this huty after she had attained the anti-matrimonial age of thirty-three, and what is more, he had a son by her. As he could have got the sixty thousand francs of her dot in several other ways, the public assigned his un- common intrepidity to a desire to escape an invasion of the Minotaur, against whom his personal qualifica- tions would have insufficiently protected him had he rashly dared his fate by bringing home a young and pretty wife. The fact was, however, that the notary recognized the really fine qualities of Mademoiselle Agnes (she was called Agnes) and reflected to himself 4 Modeste Mignon. that a woman's beauty is soon past and gone to a husband. As to the insignificant youth on whom the clerk of the court bestowed in baptism his Norman name of u Exupere," Madame Latournelle is still so sur- prised at becoming his mother, at the age of thirty-five 3 r ears and seven months, that she would still provide him, if it were necessary, with her breast and her milk, — an hyperbole which alone can fully express her im- passioned maternity. u How handsome he is, that son of mine ! " she says to her little friend Modeste, as they walk to church, with the beautiful Exupere in front of them. " He is like you," Modeste Mignon answers, very much as she might have said, '* What horrid weather ! " This silhouette of Madame Latournelle is quite important as an accessory, inasmuch as for three } r ears she has been the chaperone of the }'oung girl against whom the notary and his friend Dumay are now plotting to set what we have called, in the " Physi- ologic du Mariage," a mouse-trap. As for Latournelle, imagine a worthy little fellow as sly as the purest honor and uprightness would allow him to be, — a man whom any stranger would take for a rascal at sight of his queer pt^siognomy, to which, however, the inhabitants of Havre were well accus- tomed. His eyesight, said to be weak, obliged the worthy man to wear green goggles for the protection of his e3'es, which were constantly inflamed. The arch of each eyebrow, defined by a thin down of hair, surrounded the tortoise-shell rim of the glasses and made a couple of circles as it were, slightly apart. If you have never observed on the human face the effect produced by these circumferences placed one within Modeste Mignon. 5 the other, and separated by a hollow space or line, you can hardly imagine how perplexing such a face will be to you, especially if pale, hollow-cheeked, and terminating in a pointed chin like that of Mephistopheles, — a type which painters give to cats. This double resemblance was observable on the face of Baby las Latournelle. Above the atrocious green spectacles rose a bald crown, all the more crafty in expression because a wig, seemingly endowed with motion, let the white hairs show on all sides of it as it meandered crookedly across the forehead. An observer taking note of this excellent Norman, clothed in black and mounted on his two legs like a beetle on a couple of pins, and know- ing him to be one of the most trustworthy of men, would have sought, without finding it, for the reason of such physical misrepresentation. Jean Butscha, a natural son abandoned by his par- ents and taken care of by the clerk of the court and his daughter, and now, through sheer hard work, head- clerk to the notar} r , fed and lodged h\ his master, who gave him a salary of nine hundred francs, almost a dwarf, and with no semblance of youth, — Jean But- scha made Modeste his idol, and would willingly have given his life for hers. The poor fellow, whose eyes were hollowed between their heavy lids like the touch- holes of a cannon, whose head overweighted his body, with its shock of crisp hair, and whose face was pock- marked, had lived under pitying eyes from the time he was seven years of age. Is not that enough to explain his whole being? Silent, self-contained, pious, exemplary in conduct, he went his way over that vast tract of country named on the map of the heart Love- 6 Modeste Mignon. without-Hope, the sublime and arid steppes of Desire. Modeste had christened this grotesque little being her " Black Dwarf." The nickname sent him to the pages of Walter Scott's novel, and he one day said to Modeste : " Will } T ou accept a rose against the evil da\ T from 3 T our mysterious dwarf? " Modeste instantly sent the soul of her adorer to its humble mud-cabin with a terrible glance, such as young girls bestow on the men who cannot please them. Butscha's conception of him- self was lowly, and, like the wife of his master, he had never been out of Havre. Perhaps it will be well, for the sake of those who have never seen that city, to say a few words as to the present destination of the Latournelle familj T , — the head clerk being included in the latter term. Ingou- ville is to Havre what Montmartre is to Paris, — a high hill at the foot of which the city lies ; with this differ- ence, that the hill and the city are surrounded by the sea and the Seine, that Havre is helplessly circum- scribed by enclosing fortifications, and, in short, that the mouth of the river, the harbor, and the clocks present a very different aspect from the fifty thousand houses of Paris. At the foot of Montmartre an ocean of slate roofs lies in motionless blue billows ; at Ingou- ville the sea is like the same roofs stirred by the wind. This eminence, or line of hills, which coasts the Seine from Rouen to the seashore, leaving a margin of valley land more or less narrow between itself and the river, and containing in its cities, its ravines, its vales, its meadows, veritable treasures of the picturesque, be- came of enormous value in and about Ingouville after the } T ear 1816, the period at which the prosperity of Modeste Mignon. 7 Havre began. This township has become since that time the Auteuil, the Ville-d'Avray, the Montmorency, in short, the suburban residence of the merchants of Havre. Here they build their houses on terraces around its amphitheatre of hills, and breathe the sea air laden with the fragrance of their splendid gardens. Here these bold speculators cast off the burden of their counting-rooms and the atmosphere of their city houses, which are built closely together without open spaces, often without court-yards, — a vice of construction which the increasing population of Havre, the inflexi- ble line of the fortifications, and the enlargement of the docks has forced upon them. The result is, weariness of heart in Havre, cheerfulness and joy at Ingouville. The law of social development has forced up the suburb of Graville like a mushroom. It is to-day more exten- sive than Havre itself, which lies at the foot of its slopes like a serpent. At the crest of the hill Ingouville has but one street, and (as in all such situations) the houses which over- look the river have an immense advantage over those on the other side of the road, whose view they ob- struct, and which present the effect of standing on tip- toe to look over the opposing roofs. However, there exist here, as elsewhere, certain servitudes. Some houses standing at the summit have a finer position or possess legal rights of view which compel their opposite neighbors to keep their buildings down to a required height. Moreover, the openings cut in the capricious rock by roads which follow its declensions and make the amphitheatre habitable, give vistas through which some estates can see the city, or the 8 Modeste Mignon. river, or the sea. Instead of rising to an actual peak, the hill ends abruptly in a cliff. At the end of the street which follows the line of the summit, ravines appear in which a few villages are clustered (Sainte-Adresse and two or three other Saint-somethings) together with several creeks which murmur and flow with the tides of the sea. These half-deserted slopes of Ingouville form a striking contrast to the terraces of fine villas which overlook the valley of the Seine. Is the wind on this side too strong for vegetation? Do the mer- chants shrink from the cost of terracing it? However this may be, the traveller approaching Havre on a steamer is surprised to find a barren coast and tangled gorges to the west of Ingouville, like a beggar in rags beside a perfumed and sumptuously apparelled rich man. In 1829 one of the last houses looking toward the sea, and which in all probability stands about the centre of the Ingouville of to-day, was called, and per- haps is still called, " the Chalet." Originally it was a porter's lodge with a trim little garden in front of it. The owner of the villa to which it belonged — a man- sion with park, gardens, aviaries, hot4iouses, and lawns — took a fancy to put the little dwelling more in keeping with the splendor of his own abode, and he reconstructed it on the model of an ornamental cottage. He divided this cottage from his own lawn, which was bordered and set with flower-beds and formed the terrace of his villa, by a low wall along which he planted a con- cealing hedge. Behind the cottage (called, in spite of all his efforts to prevent it, the Chalet) were the or- chards and kitchen gardens of the villa. The Chalet, Modeste Mignon. 9 without cows or dairy, is separated from the roadway by a wooden fence whose palings are hidden under a luxuriant hedge. On the other side of the road the opposite house, subject to a legal privilege, has a simi- lar hedge and paling, so as to leave an unobstructed view of Havre to the Chalet. This little dwelling was the torment of the present proprietor of the villa, Monsieur Vilquin ; and here is the why and the wherefore. The original creator of the villa, whose sumptuous details cry aloud, " Behold our millions ! " extended his park far into the country for the purpose, as he averred, of getting his garden- ers out of his pockets ; and so, when the Chalet was finished, none but a friend could be allowed to inhabit it. Monsieur Mignon, the next owner of the property, was very much attached to his cashier, Dumay, and the following history will prove that the attachment was mutual ; to him therefore he offered the little dwelling. Dumay, a stickler for legal methods, insisted on signing a lease for three hundred francs for twelve years, and Monsieur Mignon willingly agreed, remarking, — . " M3' dear Dumay, remember, you have now bound yourself to live with me for twelve years." In consequence of certain events which will presently be related, the estates of Monsieur Mignon, formerly the richest merchant in Havre, were sold to Vilquin, one of his business competitors. In his joy at getting possession of the celebrated villa Mignon, the latter forgot to demand the cancelling of the lease. Dumay, anxious not to hinder the sale, would have signed any- thing Vilquin required, but the sale once made, he held to his lease like a vengeance. And there he remained, 10 Mode st e Mignon. in Vilquin's pocket as it were ; at the heart of Vilquin's family life, observing Vilquin, irritating Vilquin, — in short, the gadfly of all the Vilquins. Every morning, when he looked out of his window, Vilquin felt a violent shock of annoyance as his eye lighted on the little gem of a building, the Chalet, which had cost sixty thousand francs and sparkled like a ruby in the sun. That com- parison is very nearly exact. The architect has con- structed the cottage of brilliant red brick pointed with white. The window-frames are painted of a lively green, the woodwork is brown verging on yellow. The roof overhangs by several feet. A pretty gallery, with open- worked balustrade, surmounts the lower floor and projects at the centre of the facade into a veranda with glass sides. The ground-floor has a charming salon and a dining-room, separated from each other by the landing of a staircase built of wood, designed and dec- orated with elegant simplichty. The kitchen is behind the dining-room, and the corresponding room back of the salon, formerly a study, is now the bedroom of Monsieur and Madame Dumay. On the upper floor the architect has managed to get two large bedrooms, each with a dressing-room, to which the veranda serves as a salon ; and above this floor, under the eaves, which are tipped together like a couple of cards, are two ser- vants' rooms with mansard roofs, each lighted by a circular window and tolerabty spacious. Vilquin had been petty enough to build a high wall on the side toward the orchard and kitchen garden ; and in consequence of this piece of spite, the few square feet which the lease secured to the Chalet resembled a Parisian garden. The out-buildings, painted in keeping Modeste Mignon. 11 with the cottage, stood with their backs to the wall of the adjoining property. The interior of this charming dwelling harmonized with its exterior. The salon, floored entirely with iron- wood, was painted in a style that suggested the beauties of Chinese lacquer. On black panels edged with gold, birds of every color, foliage of impossible greens, and fantastic oriental designs glowed and shimmered. The dining-room was entirely sheathed in Northern woods carved and cut in open-work like the beautiful Russian chalets. The little antechamber formed by the landing and the well of the staircase was painted in old oak to represent Gothic ornament. The bedrooms, hung with chintz, were charming in their costly simplicity. The study, where the cashier and his wife now slept, was panelled from top to bottom, on the walls and ceiling, like the cabin of a steamboat. These luxuries of his predecessor excited Vilquin's wrath. He would fain have lodged his daughter and her husband in the cot- tage. This desire, well known to Dumay, will pres- ently serve to illustrate the Breton obstinac}' of the latter. The entrance to the Chalet is by a little trellised iron door, the uprights of which, ending in lance-heads, show for a few inches above the fence and its hedge. The little garden, about as wide as the more pretentious lawn, was just now filled with flowers, roses and dahlias of the choicest kind, and many rare products of the hot-houses, for (another Vilquinard grievance) the ele- gant little hot-house, a very whim of a hot-house, a hot-house representing dignity and style, belonged to the Chalet, and separated, or if you prefer, united it to 12 Modeste Mignon. the villa Vilquin. Dumay consoled himself for the toils of business in taking care of this hot-house, whose ex- otic treasures were one of Modeste's jo\'s. The billiard- room of the villa Vilquin, a species of gallerj-, formerly communicated through an immense aviary with this hot-house. But after the building of the wall which deprived him of a view into the orchards, Dumay bricked up the door of communication. 4i Wall for wall ! " he said. In 1827 Vilquin offered Dumay a salary of six thou- sand francs, and ten thousand more as indemnity, if he would give up the lease. The cashier refused ; though he had but three thousand from Gobenheim, a former clerk of his master. Dumay was a Breton trans- planted by fate into Normandy. Imagine therefore the hatred conceived for the tenants of the Chalet by the Norman Vilquin, a man worth three millions ! What criminal leze-million on the part of a cashier, to hold up to the eyes of such a man the impotence of his wealth ! Vilquin, whose desperation in the matter made him the talk of Havre, had just proposed to give Dumay a pretty house of his own, and had again been refused. Havre itself began to grow uneasy at the man's obstinacy, and a good many persons explained it by the phrase, " Du- may is a Breton." As for the cashier, he thought Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon would be ill-lodged elsewhere. His two idols now inhabited a temple worthy of them ; the sumptuous little cottage gave them a home, where these dethroned royalties could keep the semblance of majesty about them, — a species of dignity usually denied to those who have seen better days. Modeste Mignon. 13 Perhaps as the story goes on, the reader will not re- gret having learned in advance a few particulars as to the home and the habitual companions of Modeste Mignon, for, at her age, people and things have as much influence upon the future life as a person's own character, — indeed, character often receives 'ineffaceable impressions from its surroundings. 14 Modeste Mignon. CHAPTER II. A PORTRAIT FROM LIFE. From the manner with which the Latournelles en- tered the Chalet a stranger would readily have guessed that they came there every evening. " Ah, you are here already," said the notary, per- ceiving the young banker Gobenheim, a connection of Gobenheim-Keller, the head of the great banking-house in Paris. This 3'oung man with a livid face — a blonde of the type with black eyes, whose immovable glance has an indescribable fascination, sober in speech as in con- duct, dressed in black, lean as a consumptive, but nevertheless vigorously framed — visited the family of his former master and the house of his cashier less from affection than from self-interest. Here they played whist at two sous a point ; a dress-coat was not re- quired ; he accepted no refreshment except eau sucree, and consequently had no civilities to return. This ap- parent devotion to the Mignon family allowed it to be supposed that Gobenheim had a heart ; it also released him from the necessity of going into the society of Havre and incurring useless expenses, thus upsetting the orderly economy of his domestic life. This dis- ciple of the golden calf went to bed at half-past ten o'clock and got up at five in the morning. Moreover, Modeste Mignon, 15 being perfectly sure of Latournelle's and Butscha's dis- cretion, he could talk over difficult business matters, obtain the advice of the notary gratis, and get an inkling of the real truth of the gossip of the street. This stolid gold-glutton (the epithet is Butscha's) belonged by na- ture to the class of substances which chemistry terms absorbents. Ever since the catastrophe of the house of Mignon, where the Kellers had placed him to learn the principles of maritime commerce, no one at the Chalet had ever asked him to do the smallest thing, no mat- ter what ; his reply was too well known. The young fellow looked at Modeste precisely as he would have looked at a cheap lithograph. "He's one of the pistons of the big engine called i Commerce/ " said poor Butscha, whose clever mind made itself felt occasionally by such little sayings timidly jerked out. The four Latournelles bowed with the most respect- ful deference to an old lady dressed in black velvet, who did not rise from the armchair in which she was seated, for the reason that both eyes were covered with the yellow film produced by cataract. Madame Mignon may be sketched in one sentence. Her august coun- tenance of the mother of a family attracted instant notice as that of one whose irreproachable life defies the assaults of destiny, which nevertheless makes her the target of its arrows and a member of the unnumbered tribe of Niobes. Her blonde wig, carefully curled and well arranged upon her head, became the cold white face which resembled that of some burgomaster's wife painted by Hals or Mirevelt. The extreme neatness of her dress, the velvet boots, the lace collar, the shawl 16 Modeste Mignon. evenly folded and put on, all bore testimony to the so- licitous care which Modeste bestowed upon her mother. When silence was, as the notary had predicted, re- stored in the pretty salon, Modeste, sitting beside her mother, for whom she was embroidering a kerchief, became for an instant the centre of observation. This curiosity, barely veiled by the commonplace salutations and inquiries of the visitors, would have revealed even to an indifferent person the existence of the domestic plot to which Modeste was expected to fall a victim ; but Gobenheim, more than indifferent, noticed nothing, and proceeded to light the candles on the card-table. The behavior of Dumay made the whole scene terrify- ing to Butscha, to the Latournelles, and above all to Madame Dumay, who knew her husband to be capable of firing a pistol at Modeste's lover as coolly as though he were a mad dog. After dinner that day the cashier had gone to walk followed by two magnificent Pyrenees hounds, whom he suspected of betraying him, and therefore left in charge of a farmer, a former tenant of Monsieur Mignon. On his return, just before the arrival of the Latournelles, he had taken his pistols from his bed's head and placed them on the chimney-piece, concealing this action from Modeste. The young girl took no notice whatever of these preparations, singular as they were. Though short, thick-set, pockmarked, and speaking always in a low voice as if listening to himself, this Breton, a former lieutenant in the Guard, showed the evidence of such resolution, such sang-froid on his face that throughout life, even in the army, no one had ever ventured to trifle with him. His little eyes, of a calm Modeste Mignon. 17 blue, were like bits of steel. His ways, the look on his face, his speech, his carriage, were all in keeping with the short name of Dumay. His physical strength, well- known to every one, put him above all danger of at- tack. He was able to kill a man with a blow of his fist, and had performed that feat at Bautzen', where he found himself, unarmed, face to face with a Saxon at the rear of his company. At the present moment the usually firm yet gentle expression of the man's face had risen to a sort of tragic sublimity ; his lips were pale as the rest of his face, indicating a tumult within him mastered by his Breton will ; a slight sweat, which every one noticed and guessed to be cold, moistened his brow. The notary knew but too well that these signs might result in a drama before the criminal courts. In fact the cashier was pla}ing a part in con- nection with Modeste Mignon, which involved to his mind sentiments of honor and loyalty of far greater im- portance than mere social laws ; and his present con- duct proceeded from one of those compacts which, in case disaster came of it, could be judged only in a higher court than one of earth. The majority of dramas lie really in the ideas which we make to ourselves about things. Events which seem to us dramatic are nothing more than subjects which our souls convert into tragedy or comedy according to the bent of our characters. Madame Latournelle and Madame Dumay, who were appointed to watch Modeste, had a certain assumed stiff- ness of demeanor and a quiver in their voices, which the suspected party did not notice, so absorbed was she in her embroidery. Modeste laid each thread of cotton with a precision that would have made an ordinary 18 Mode st e Mignon. workwoman desperate. Her face expressed the pleas- ure she took in the smooth petals of the flower she was working. The dwarf, seated between his mistress and Gobenheim, restrained his emotion, trying to find means to approach Modeste and whisper a word of warning in her ear. By taking a position in front of Madame Mignon, Madame Latournelle, with the diabolical intelligence of conscientious duty, had isolated Modeste, Madame Mignon, whose blindness always made her silent, was even paler than usual, showing plainly that she was aware of the test to which her daughter was about to be subjected. Perhaps at the last moment she revolted from the stratagem, necessar} r as it might seem to her. Hence her silence ; she was weeping inwardly. Exupere, the spring of the trap, was wholly ignorant of the piece in which he was to play a part. Gobenheim, by reason of his character, remained in a state of indifference equal to that displayed by Modeste. To a spectator who understood the situation, this contrast between the ignorance of some and the palpitating interest of others would have seemed quite poetic. Nowadays romance- writers arrange such effects ; and it is quite within their province to do so, for nature in all ages takes the liberty to be stronger than they. In this instance, as you will see, nature, social nature, which is a second nature within nature, amused herself by making truth more interesting than fiction ; just as mountain tor- rents describe curves which are be} T ond the skill of painters to convey, and accomplish giant deeds in displacing or smoothing stones which are the wonder of architects and sculptors. Modeste Mignon. 19 It was eight o'clock. At that season twilight was still shedding its last gleams ; there was not a cloud in the sky ; the balmy air caressed the earth, the flow- ers gave forth their fragrance, the steps of pedestrians turning homeward sounded along the gravelly road, the sea shone like a mirror, and there was so little wind that the wax candles upon the card-tables sent up a steady flame, although the windows were wide open. This salon, this evening, this dwelling — what a frame for the portrait of the young girl whom these persons were now stuelving with the profound attention of a painter in presence of the Margharita Doni, one of the glories rf the Pitti palace. Modeste, — blossom enclosed, like that of Catullus, — was she worth all these pre- cautions ? You have seen the cage ; behold the bird ! Just twenty years of age, slender and delicate as the sirens which English designers invent for their " Books of Beauty," Modeste was, like her mother before her, the captivating embodiment of a grace too little un- derstood in France, where we choose to call it sentimen- tality, but which among German women is the poetry of the heart coming to the surface of the being and spending itself, — in affectations if the owner is silly, in divine charms of manner if she is spirituelle and intelli- gent. Remarkable for her pale golden hair, Modeste belonged to the type of woman called, perhaps in mem- ory of Eve, the celestial blonde ; whose satiny skin is like a silk paper applied to the flesh, shuddering at the winter of a cold look, expanding in the sunshine of a loving glance, — teaching the hand to be jealous of the eye. Beneath her hair, which was soft and feathery 20 Modeste Mignon. and worn in many curls, the brow, which might have been traced by a compass so pure was its modelling, shone forth discreet, calm to placidit} T , and yet luminous with thought : when and where could another be found so transparently clear or more exquisitely smooth ? It seemed, like a pearl, to have its orient. The eyes, of a blue verging on gray and limpid as the eyes of a child, had all the mischief, all the innocence of childhood, and they harmonized well with the arch of the eyebrows, faintly indicated by lines like those made with a brush on Chinese faces. This candor of the soul was still further evidenced around the eyes, in their corners, and about the temples, by pearly tints threaded with blue, the special privilege of these delicate complexions. The face, whose oval Raphael so often gave to his Madonnas, was remarkable for the sober and virginal tone of the cheeks, soft as a Bengal rose, upon which the long lashes of the diaphanous ej'elids cast shadows that were mingled with light. The throat, bending as she worked, too delicate perhaps, and of milky white- ness, recalled those vanishing lines that Lionardo loved. A few little blemishes here and there, like the patches of the eighteenth century, proved that Modeste was indeed a child of earth, and not a creation dreamed of in Italy by the angelic school. Her lips, delicate yet full, were slightly mocking and somewhat sensuous; the waist, which was supple and yet not fragile, had no terrors for maternity, like those of girls who seek beauty by the fatal pressure of a corset. Steel and dimity and lacings defined but did not create the ser- pentine lines of the elegant figure, graceful as that of a young poplar swaying in fhe wind. Modeste Mignon. 21 A pearl-gray dress with crimson trimmings, made with a long waist, modestty outlined the bust and cov- ered the shoulders, still rather thin, with a chemisette which left nothing to view but the first curves of the throat where it joined the shoulders. Froni the aspect of the young girl's face, at once ethereal and intelligent, where the delicacy of a Greek nose with its rosy nos- trils and firm modelling marked something positive and defined ; where the poetry enthroned upon an almost mystic brow seemed belied at times by the pleasure- loving expression of the mouth ; where candor claimed the depths profound and varied of the eye, and disputed them with a spirit of irony that was trained and edu- cated, — from all these signs an observer would have felt that this young girl, with the keen, alert ear that waked at every sound, with a nostril open to catch the fragrance of the celestial flower of the Ideal, was des- tined to be the battle-ground of a struggle between the poesies of the dawn and the labors of the day ; between fancy and reality, the spirit and the life. Modeste was a pure young girl, inquisitive after knowledge, under- standing her destiny, and filled with chastity, — the Virgin of Spain rather than the Madonna of Raphael. She raised her head when she heard Dumay say to Exupere, " Come here, young man." Seeing them together in the corner of the salon she supposed they were talking of some commission in Paris. Then she looked at the friends who surrounded her, as if surprised by their silence, and exclaimed in her natural manner, " Why are you not playing ?" — with a glance at the green table which the imposing Madame Latournelle called the " altar." 22 Modeste Mignon. "Yes, let us play," said Dumay, having sent off Exupere. " Sit there, Butscha," said Madame Latournelle, sep- arating the head-clerk from the group around Madame Mignon and her daughter by the whole width of the table. " And you, come over here," said Dumay to his wife, making her sit close by him. Madame Dumay, a little American about thirty-six years of age, wiped her eyes furtively ; she adored Mo- deste, and feared a catastrophe. " You are not very lively this evening," remarked Modeste. " We are playing," said Gobenheim, sorting his cards. No matter how interesting this situation may appear, it can be made still more so by explaining Dumay's position toward Modeste. If the brevity of this ex- planation makes it seem rather dry, the reader must pardon its dryness in view of our desire to get through with these preliminaries as speedily as possible, and the necessity of relating the main circumstances which govern all dramas. Modeste Mignon. 23 CHAPTER in. PRELIMINARIES. Jean Francois Bernard Dumay, born at Vannes, started as a soldier for the army of Italy in 1799. His father, president of the revolutionary tribunal of that town, had displayed so much energy in his office that the place became too hot to hold the son when the par- ent, a pettifogging lawyer, perished on the scaffold after the ninth Thermidor. On the death of his mother, who died of the grief this catastrophe occasioned, Jean sold all that he possessed and rushed to Italy at the age of twenty-two, at the very moment when our armies were beginning to yield. On the way he met a young man in the department of Var, who for reasons analogous to his own was in search of glory, believing a battle-field less perilous than his own Provence. Charles Mignon, the last scion of an ancient family, which gave its name to a street in Paris and to a mansion built by Cardinal Mignon, had a shrewd and calculating father, whose one idea was to save his feudal estate of La Bastie in the Comtat from the claws of the Revolution. Like all timid folk of that day, the Comte de La Bastie, now citizen Mignon, found it more wholesome to cut oft other peopled heads than to let his own be cut off. The sham terrorist disappeared after the 9th Thermi- dor, and was then inscribed on the list of emigres. The 24 Modeste Mignon. estate of La Bastie was sold ; the towers and bastions of the old castle were pulled down, and citizen Mignon was soon after discovered at Orleans and put to death with his wife and all his children except Charles, whom he had sent to find a refuge for the family in the Upper Alps. Horrorstruck at the news, Charles waited for better times in a valley of Mont Genevra ; and there he re- mained till 1799, subsisting on a few louis which his father had put into his hand at starting. Finally, when twenty-three years of age, and without other for- tune than his fine presence and that southern beauty which, when it reaches perfection, may be called sub- lime (of which Antinoiis, the favorite of Adrian, ie the type), Charles resolved to wager his Provencal audacity — taking it, like many another youth, for a vo- cation — on the red cloth of war. On his way to the base of the army at Nice he met the Breton. The pair be- came intimate, partly through the similarity of their fortunes, partly from the contrasts in their characters ; they drank from the same cup at the wayside torrents, broke the same biscuit, and were both made sergeants at the peace which followed the battle of Marengo. When the war recommenced, Charles Mignon was promoted into the cavalry and lost sight of his com- rade. In 1812 the last of the Mignon de La Bastie was an officer of the Legion of honor and major of a regiment of cavalry. Taken prisoner by the Russians he was sent, like so many others, to Siberia. He made the journey in compan} 7 with another prisoner, a poor lieutenant, in whom he recognized his old friend Jean Dumay, brave, neglected, undecorated, unhappy, Modeste Mignon. 25 like a million of other woollen epaulets, rank and file — that canvas of men on which Napoleon painted the picture of the Empire. While in Siberia, the lieutenant- colonel, to kill time, taught writing and arithmetic to the Breton, whose early education had seemed a use- less waste of time to Pere Seevola. Charles found in the old comrade of his marching days one of those rare hearts into which a man can pour his griefs while telling his joys. The 3 7 oung Provencal had met the fate which attends all handsome bachelors. In 1804, at Frankfort on the Main, he was adored by Bettina Wallenrod, only daughter of a banker, and he married her with all the more enthusiasm because she was rich and a noted beauty, while he was only a lieutenant with no pros- pects but the extremely problematical future of a sol- dier of fortune of that day. Old Wallenrod, a decayed German baron (there is always a baron in a German bank) delighted to know that the handsome lieutenant was the sole representative of the Mignon de La Bastie, approved the love of the blonde Bettina, whose beauty an artist (at that time there really was one in Frankfort) had lately painted as an ideal head of Germany. Wallen- rod invested enough money in the French funds to give his daughter thirty thousand francs a year, and settled it on his anticipated grandsons, naming them counts of La Bastie- Wallenrod. This dot made only a small hole in his cash-box, the value of money being then very low. But the Empire, pursuing a policy often attempted by other debtors, rarely paid its dividends ; and Charles was rather alarmed at this investment, having less faith than his father-in-law in the imperial : 26 Modeste Mignon. eagle. The phenomenon of belief, or of admiration which is ephemeral belief, is not so easily maintained when in close quarters with the idol. The mechanic dis- trusts the machine which the traveller admires ; and the officers of the army might be called the stokers of the Napoleonic engine, — if, indeed, they were not its fuel. However, the Baron Wallenrod-Tustall-Bartenstild promised to come if necessary to the help of the house- hold. Charles loved Bettina Wallenrod as much as she loved him, and that is saying a good deal ; but when a Provencal is moved to enthusiasm all his feel- ings and attachments are genuine and natural. And how could he fail to adore that blonde beauty, escap- ing, as it were, from the canvas of Diirer, gifted with an angelic nature and endowed with Frankfort wealth ? The pair had four children, of whom only two daugh- ters survived at the time when he poured his griefs into the Breton's heart. Dumay loved these little ones without having seen them, solely through the sympathy so well described by Charlet, which makes a soldier the father of every child. The eldest, named Bettina Caro- line, was born in 1805 ; the other, Marie Modeste, in 1808. The unfortunate lieutenant-colonel, long with- out tidings of these cherished darlings, was sent, at the peace of 1814, across Russia and Prussia on foot, accompanied by the lieutenant. No difference of epaulets could count between the two friends, who reached Frankfort just as Napoleon was disembarking at Cannes. Charles found his wife in Frankfort, in mourning for her father, who had alwa}*s idolized her and tried to keep a smile upon her lips, even by his dying bed. Old Modeste Mignon. 27 Wallenrod was unable to survive the disasters of the Empire. At seventy years of age he speculated in cottons, relying on the genius of Napoleon without comprehending that genius is quite as often beyond as at the bottom of current events. The old man had pur- chased nearly as many bales of cotton as the Emperor had lost men during his magnificent campaign in France. " I tie in goddon," said the father to the daughter, a father of the Goriot type, striving to quiet a grief which distressed him. " I owe no mann any- ding — M and he died, still trying to speak to his daugh- ter in the language that she loved. Thankful to have saved his wife and daughters from the general wreck, Charles Mignon returned to Paris, where the Emperor made him lieutenant-colonel in the cuirassiers of the Guard and commander of the Legion of honor. The colonel dreamed of being count and general after the first victory. Alas ! that hope was quenched in the blood of Waterloo. The colonel, slightly wounded, retired to the Loire, and left Tours before the disbandment of the army. In the spring of 1816 Charles sold his wife's prop- erty out of the funds to the amount of nearly four hun- dred thousand francs, intending to seek his fortune in America, and abandon his own country where persecu- tion was beginning to lay a heavy hand on the soldiers of Napoleon. He went to Havre accompanied by Du- may, whose life he had saved at Waterloo by taking him on the crupper of his saddle in the hurly-burly of the retreat. Dumay shared the opinions and the anxi- eties of his colonel ; the poor fellow idolized the two little girls and followed Charles like a spaniel. The 28 Modeste Mignon. latter, confident that the habit of obedience, the disci- pline of subordination, and the honesty and affection of the lieutenant would make him a useful as well as a faithful retainer, proposed to take him with him in a civil capacity. Dumay was only too happy to be adopted into the family, to which he resolved to cling like the mistletoe to an oak. While waiting for an opportunity to embark, at the same time making choice of a ship and reflecting on the chances offered by the various ports for which they sailed, the colonel heard much talk about the brilliant future which the peace seemed to promise to Havre. As he listened to these conversations among the mer- chants, he foresaw the means of fortune, and without loss of time he set about making himself the owner of landed property, a banker, and a shipping-merchant. He bought land and houses in the town, and de- spatched a vessel to New York freighted with silks purchased in Lyons at reduced prices. He sent Dumay on the ship as his agent ; and when the latter returned, after making a double profit by the sale of the silks and the purchase of cottons at a low valuation, he found the colonel installed with his family in the handsomest house in the rue Royale, and studying the principles of banking with the prodigious activity and intelligence of a native of Provence. This double operation of Dumay's was worth a for- tune to the house of Mignon. The colonel purchased the villa at Ingouville and rewarded his agent with the gift of a modest little house in *the rue Royale. The poor toiler had brought back from New York, together with his cottons, a pretty little wife, attracted it would Modeste Mignon. 29 seem by his French nature. Miss Grummer was worth about four thousand dollars (twenty thousand francs), which sum Dumay placed with his colonel, to whom he now became an alter ego. In a short time he learned to keep his patron's books, a science which, to use his own expression, pertains to the sergeant-majors of com- merce. The simple-hearted soldier, whom fortune had forgotten for twenty years, thought himself the happiest man in the world as the owner of the little house (which his master's liberality had furnished), with twelve hun- dred francs a year from money in the funds, and a salary of three thousand six hundred. Never in his dreams had Lieutenant Dumay hoped for a situation so good as this ; but greater still was the satisfaction he derived from the knowledge that his lucky enter- prise had been the pivot of good fortune to the richest commercial house in Havre. Madame Dumay, a rather pretty little American, had the misfortune to lose all her children at their birth ; and her last confinement was so disastrous as to deprive her of the hope of any other. She therefore attached herself to the two little Mignous, whom Dumay himseli loved, or would have loved, even better than his own children had they lived. Madame Dumay, whose par- ents were farmers accustomed to a life of economy, was quite satisfied to receive only two thousand four hundred francs for her own and her household expenses ; so that every year Dumay laid by two thousand and some extra hundreds with the house of Mignon. When the yearly accounts were made up the colonel alwaj's added something to this little store 03' way of acknowl- edging the cashier's services, until in 1824 the latter 30 Modeste Mignon. had a credit of fifty-eight thousand francs. It was then that Charles Mignon, Comte de La Bastie, a title he never used, crowned his cashier with the final happi- ness of residing at the Chalet, where at the time when this story begins Madame Mignon and her daughter were living in obscurit3 T . The deplorable state of Madame Mignon's health was caused in part by the catastrophe to which the absence of her husband was due. Grief had taken three years to break down the docile German woman ; but it was a grief that gnawed at her heart like a worm at the core of a sound fruit. It is easy to reckon up its obvious causes. Two children, dying in infancy, had a double grave in a soul that could* never forget. The exile of her husband to Siberia was to such a woman a daily death. The failure of the rich house of Wallenrod, and the death of her father, leaving his coffers empty, was to Bettina, then uncertain as to the fate of her husband, a terrible blow. The joy of Charles's return came near kill- ing the tender German flower. After that the second fall of the Empire and the proposed expatriation acted on her feelings like a renewed attack of the same fever. At last, however, after ten 3-ears of continual prosperity, the comforts of her house, which was the finest in. Havre, the dinners, balls, and fetes of a prosperous merchant, the splendors of the villa Mignon, the unbounded re- spect and consideration enjo}*ed b}^ her husband, his absolute affection, giving her an unrivalled love in re- turn for her single-minded love for him, — all these things brought the poor woman back to life. At the moment when her doubts and fears at last left her, when she could look forward to the bright evening of her stormy Modeste Mignon. 31 life, a hidden catastrophe, buried in the heart of the family, and of which we shall presently make mention, came as the precursor of renewed trials. In Januar}', 1826, on the da} 7 when Havre had un- animously chosen Charles Mignon as its deput} 7 , three letters, arriving from New York, Paris, and London fell with the destruction of a hammer upon the crystal palace of his prosperity. In an instant ruin like a vulture swooped down upon their happiness, just as the cold fell in 1812 upon the grand army in Russia. One night sufficed Charles Mignon to decide upon his course, and he spent it in settling his accounts with Dumay. All he owned, not excepting his furniture, would just suffice to pay his creditors. " Havre shall never see me doing nothing," said the colonel to the lieutenant. " Dumay, I take your sixty thousand francs at six per cent." " Three, my colonel." " At nothing, then," cried Mignon, peremptorily ; " you shall have your share in the profits of what I now undertake. The ' Modeste/ which is no longer mine, sails to-morrow, and I sail in her. I commit to you my wife and my daughter. I shall not write. No news must be taken as good news." Dumay, always subordinate, asked no questions of his colonel. "I think," he said to Latournelle with a knowing little glance, " that my colonel has a plan laid out." The following day at dawn he accompanied his mas- ter on board the " Modeste " bound for Constantinople. There, on the poop of the vessel, the Breton said to the Provencal, — 32 Modeste Mignon. " What are your last commands, my colonel?" "That no man shall enter the Chalet," cried the father with strong emotion. " Duma} 7 , guard my last child as though you were a bull-dog. Death to the man who seduces another daughter ! Fear nothing, not even the scaffold — I will be with you." " My colonel, go in peace. I understand 3'ou. You shall find Mademoiselle Modeste on your return such as you now give her to me, or I shall be dead. You know me, and you know your Pyrenees hounds. No man shall reach your daughter. Forgive me for troub- ling you with words." The two soldiers clasped arms like men who had learned to understand each other in the solitudes of Siberia. On the same day the Havre u Courier" published the following terrible, simple, energetic, and honorable notice : — " The house of Charles Mignon suspends payment. But the undersigned, assignees of the estate, undertake to pay all liabilities. On and after this date, holders of notes may ob- tain the usual discount. The sale of the landed estates will fully cover all current indebtedness. " This notice is issued for the honor of the house, and to prevent any disturbance in the money-market of this town. " Monsieur Charles Mignon sailed this morning on the ' Modeste ' for Asia Minor, leaving full powers with the un- dersigned to sell his whole property, both landed and per- sonal. Dumay, assignee of the Bank accounts, Latournelle, notary, assignee of the city and villa property, Gobenheim, assignee of the commercial property." Modeste Mignon. 33 Latournelle owed his prosperity to the kindness of Monsieur Mignon, who lent him one hundred thousand francs in 1817 to buy the finest law practice in Havre. The poor man, who had no pecuniary means, was nearly forty years of age and saw no prospect of being other than head-clerk for the rest of his days. He was the only man in Havre whose devotion could be compared with Dumay's. As for Gobenheim, he profited by the liquidation to get a part of Monsieur Mignon's business, which lifted his own little bank into prominence. While unanimous regrets for the disaster were ex- pressed in counting-rooms, on the wharves, and in private houses, where praises of a man so irreproach- able, honorable, and beneficent filled every mouth, Latournelle and Dumay, silent and active as ants, sold land, turned property into money, paid the debts, and settled up everything. Vilquin showed a good deal of generosity in purchasing the villa, the town-house, and a farm ; and Latournelle made the most of his liberality b}^ getting a good price out of him. Societ3 r wished to show civilities to Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon ; but they had already obeyed the father's last wishes and taken refuge in the Chalet, where they went on the very morning of his departure, the exact hour of which had been concealed from them. Not to be shaken in his resolution by his grief at parting, the brave man said farewell to his wife and daughter while they slept. Three hundred visiting cards were left at the house. A fortnight later, just as Charles had predicted, com- plete forgetfulness settled down upon the Chalet, and proved to these women the wisdom and dignity of his command. 3 34 Modeste Mignon. Dumay sent agents to represent his master in New York, Paris, and London, and followed up the assign- ments of the three banking-houses whose failure had caused the ruin of the Havre house, thus realizing five hundred thousand francs between 1826 and 1828, an eighth of Charles' whole fortune ; then, according to the latter's directions given on the night of his depart- ure, he sent that sum to New York through the house of Mongenod to the credit of Monsieur Charles Mignon. All this was done with military obedience, except in a matter of withholding thirty thousand francs for the per- sonal expenses of Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon as the colonel had ordered him to do, but which Dumay did not do. The Breton sold his own little house for twenty thousand francs, which sum he gave to Madame Mignon, believing that the more capital he sent to his colonel the sooner the latter would return. "He might perish for the want of that thirty thou- sand francs," Dumay remarked to Latournelle, who bought the little house at its full value, where an ap- partment was always kept ready for the inhabitants of the Chalet. Modeste Mignon. 35 CHAPTER IV. A SIMPLE STORY. Such was the result to the celebrated house of Mi- gnon at Havre of the crisis of 1825-26, which convulsed many of the principal business centres in Europe and caused the ruin of several Parisian bankers, among them (as those who remember that crisis will recall) the president of the chamber of commerce. We can now understand how this great disaster, coming suddenly at the close of ten j^ears of domestic happiness, might well have been the death of Bettina Mignon, again separated from her husband and igno- rant of his fate, — to her as adventurous and perilous as the exile to Siberia. But the grief which was dragging her to the grave was far other than these visible sor- rows. The caustic that was slowly eating into her heart lay beneath a stone in the little graveyard of In- gouville, on which was inscribed : — BETTINA CAROLINE MIGNON. DIED AGED TWENTY-TWO. PRAY FOR HER. This inscription is to the young girl whom it covered what many another epitaph has been for the dead lying beneath them, — a table of contents to a hidden book. 36 Modeste Mignon. Here is the book, in its dreadful brevity ; and it will explain the oath exacted and taken when the colonel and the lieutenant bade each other farewell. A young man of charming appearance, named Charles d' Estourny, came to Havre for the commonplace pur- pose of being near the sea, and there he saw Bettina Mignon. A soi-disant fashionable Parisian is never without introductions, and he was invited at the in- stance of a friend of the Mignons to a fete given at Ingouville. He fell in love with Bettina and with her fortune, and in three months he had done the work of seduction and enticed her away. The father of a family of daughters should no more allow a young man whom he does not know to enter his home than he should leave books and papers lying about which he has not read. A young girl's innocence is like milk, which a small matter turns sour, — a clap of thunder, an evil odor, a hot day, a mere breath. When Charles Mignon read his daughter's letter of farewell he instantly despatched Madame Dumay to Paris. The family gave out that a journey to another climate had suddenly been advised for Caroline by their physician ; and the physician himself sustained the excuse, though unable to prevent some gossip in the society of Havre. " Such a vigorous young girl ! with the complexion of a Spaniard, and that black hair ! — she consumptive !" "Yes, they say she committed some imprudence. " " Ah, ah ! " cried a Vilquin. " I am told she came back bathed in perspiration after riding on horseback, and drank iced water; at least, that is what Dr. Troussenard says." By the time Madame Dumay returned to Havre the Modest e Mignon. 37 catastrophe of the failure had taken place, and society paid no further attention to the absence of Bettina or the return of the cashier's wife. At the beginning of 1827 the newspapers rang with the trial of Charles d' Estourny, who was found guilty of cheating at cards. The young corsair escaped into foreign parts without taking thought of Mademoiselle Mignon, who was of little value to him since the failure of the bank. Bet- tina heard of his infamous desertion and of her father's ruin almost at the same time. She returned home struck by death, and wasted away in a short time at the Chalet. Her death at least protected her reputation. The illness that Monsieur Mignon alleged to be the cause of her absence, and the doctor's order which sent her to Nice were now generally believed. Up to the last moment the mother hoped to save her daughter's life. Bettina was her darling and Modeste was the father's. There was something touching in the two preferences. Bettina was the image of Charles, just as Modeste was the reproduction of her mother. Both parents continued their love for each other in their children. Bettina, a daughter of Provence, inherited from her father the beautiful hair, black as a raven's wing, which distinguishes the women of the South, the brown eye, almond-shaped and brilliant as a star, the olive tint, the velvet skin as of some golden fruit, the arched instep, and the Spanish waist from which the short basque skirt fell crisply. Both mother and father were proud of the charming contrast between the sis- ters. " A devil and an angel ! " they said to each other, laughing, little thinking it prophetic. After weeping for a month in the solitude of her 38 Modeste Mignon. chamber, where she admitted no one, the r mother came forth at last with injured eyes. Before losing her sight altogether she persisted, against the wishes of her friends, in visiting her daughter's grave, on which she riveted her gaze in contemplation. That image re- mained vivid in the darkness which now fell upon her, just as the red spectrum of an object shines in our eyes when we close them in full daylight. This ter- rible and double misfortune made Dumay, not less devoted, but more anxious about Modeste, now the only daughter of the father who was unaware of his loss. Madame Dumay, idolizing Modeste, like other women deprived of their children, cast her motherliness about the girl, — yet without disregarding the com- mands of her husband, who distrusted female intimacies. Those commands were brief. " If any man, of any age, or any rank," Duma} 7 said, " speaks to Modeste, ogles her, makes love to her, he is a dead man. I '11 blow his brains out and give myself up to the authorities ; my death may save her. If you don't wish to see m}- head cut off, do you take my place in watching her when I am obliged to go out." For the last three years Dumay had examined his pistols every night. He seemed to have put half the burden of his oath upon the Pyrenean hounds, two animals of uncommon sagacity. One slept inside the Chalet, the other was stationed in a kennel which he never left, and where he never barked; but terrible would have been the moment had the pair made their teeth meet in some unknown adventurer. We can now imagine the sort of life led by mother and daughter at the Chalet. Monsieur and Madame Modeste Mignon. 39 Latournelle, often accompanied 'by Gobenheim, came to call and play whist with Dumay nearly every even- ing. The conversation turned on the gossip of Havre and the petty events of provincial life. The little com- pany separated between nine and ten o'clock. Modeste put her mother to bed, and together they said their pra} T ers, kept up each other's courage, and talked of the dear absent one, the husband and father. After kiss- ing her mother for good-night, the girl went to her own room about ten o'clock. The next morning she prepared her mother for the day with the same care, the same prayers, the same prattle. To her praise be it said that from the day when the terrible infirmity deprived her mother of a sense, Modeste had been like a servant to her, displaying at g all times the same solicitude ; never wearying of the duty, never thinking it monoto- nous. Such constant devotion, combined with a tender- ness rare among young girls, was thoroughly appreciated by those who witnessed it. To the Latournelle family, and to Monsieur and Madame Dumay, Modeste was, in soul, the pearl of price. On sunny days, between breakfast and dinner, Madame Mignon and Madame Dumay took a little walk toward the sea. Modeste accompanied them, for two arms were needed to support the blind mother. About a month before the scene to which this expla- nation is a parenthesis, Madame Mignon had taken counsel with her friends, Madame Latournelle, the notary, and Dumay, while Madame Duma} r carried Modeste in another direction for a longer walk. " Listen to what I have to say," said the blind woman. " My daughter is in love. I feel it ; I see it. 40 Modeste Mignon. A singular change has taken place within her, and I do not see how it is that none of you have perceived it." " In the name of all that 's honorable — "cried the lieutenant. M Don't interrupt me, Dumay. For the last two months Modeste takes as much care of her personal appearance as if she expected to meet a lover. She has grown extremely fastidious about her shoes ; she wants to set off her pretty feet ; she scolds Madame Gobet, the shoemaker. It is the same thing with her milliner, Some daj's my poor darling is absorbed in thought, evidently expectant, as if waiting for some one. Her voice has curt tones when she answers a question, a? though she were interrupted in the cur- rent of her thoughts and secret expectations. Then, if this awaited lover has pome — " 4 ' Good heavens ! *' " Sit down, Dumay/* said the blind woman. "Well, then Modeste is gay. Oh ! she is not gay to your sight ; } T ou cannot catch these gradations ; they are too delicate for eyes that see only the outside of nature. Her gayety is betrayed to me by the tones of her voice, by certain accents which I alone can catch and under- stand. Modeste then, instead of sitting still and thoughtful, gives vent to a wild, inward *cfirUy by impulsive movements, — in short, she is ha^ypy. There is a grace, a charm in the very ideas she utters. Ah, my friends, I know happiness as well as I know sor- row ; I know its signs. By the kiss my Modeste give* me I can guess what is passing within her. I kno\* whether she has received what she was looking for, Ot whether she is uneasy and expectant. There are manj Modest e Mignon. 41 gradations in a kiss, even in that of an innocent young girl, and Modeste is innocence itself; but hers is the innocence of knowledge, not of ignorance. I may be / blind, but my tenderness is all-seeing, and I charge | 3'ou to watch over my daughter." Duma} 7 , now actually ferocious, the notary, in the character of a man bound to ferret out a mystery, Ma- dame Latournelle, the deceived chaperone, and Madame Dumay, alarmed for her husband's safety, became at once a set of spies, and Modeste from this day forth was never left alone for an instant. Dumay passed nights under her window wrapped in his cloak like a jealous > Spaniard ; but with all his military sagacity he was unable to detect the least suspicious sign. Unless she loved the nightingales in the villa park, or some fairy prince, Modeste could have seen no one, and had neither given nor received a signal. Madame Dumay, who never went to bed till she knew Modeste was asleep, watched the road from the upper windows of the Chalet with a vigilance equal to her husband's. Under these eight Argus eyes the blameless child, whose every motion was studied and analyzed, came out of the ordeal so fully acquitted of all criminal conversation that the four friends declared to each other privately that Madame Mignon was foolishly over-anxious. Madame Latournelle, who always took Modeste to church and brought her back again, was commissioned to tell the mother that she was mistaken about her daughter. " Modeste," she said, u is a young girl of very ex- alted ideas ; she works herself into enthusiasm for the poetry of one writer or the prose of another. You 42 Modeste Mignon. have only to judge by the impression made upon her by that scaffold symphony, ' The Last Hours of a Convict