This visit of the great surgeon was the event of the day, and it left a
luminous trace in Modeste’s soul. The young enthusiast ardently admired
the man whose life belonged to others, and in whom the habit of studying
physical suffering had destroyed the manifestations of egoism. That
evening, when Gobenheim, the Latournelles, and Butscha, Canalis,
Ernest, and the Duc d’Herouville were gathered in the salon, they all
congratulated the Mignon family on the hopes which Desplein encouraged.
The conversation, in which the Modeste of her letters was once more in
the ascendant, turned naturally on the man whose genius, unfortunately
for his fame, was appreciable only by the faculty and men of science.
Gobenheim contributed a phrase which is the sacred chrism of genius as
interpreted in these days by public economists and bankers,--
“He makes a mint of money.”
“They say he is very grasping,” added Canalis.
The praises which Modeste showered on Desplein had annoyed the poet.
Vanity acts like a woman,--they both think they are defrauded when love
or praise is bestowed on others. Voltaire was jealous of the wit of a
roue whom Paris admired for two days; and even a duchess takes offence
at a look bestowed upon her maid. The avarice excited by these two
sentiments is such that a fraction of them given to the poor is thought
robbery.
“Do you think, monsieur,” said Modeste, smiling, “that we should judge
genius by ordinary standards?”
“Perhaps we ought first of all to define the man of genius,” replied
Canalis. “One of the conditions of genius is invention,--invention of a
form, a system, a force. Napoleon was an inventor, apart from his other
conditions of genius. He invented his method of making war. Walter Scott
is an inventor, Linnaeus is an inventor, Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire and
Cuvier are inventors. Such men are men of genius of the first rank. They
renew, increase, or modify both science and art. But Desplein is merely
a man whose vast talent consists in properly applying laws already
known; in observing, by means of a natural gift, the limits laid down
for each temperament, and the time appointed by Nature for an operation.
He has not founded, like Hippocrates, the science itself. He has
invented no system, as did Galen, Broussais, and Rasori. He is merely an
executive genius, like Moscheles on the piano, Paganini on the violin,
or Farinelli on his own larynx,--men who have developed enormous
faculties, but who have not created music. You must permit me to
discriminate between Beethoven and la Catalani: to one belongs the
immortal crown of genius and of martyrdom, to the other innumerable
five-franc pieces; one we can pay in coin, but the world remains
throughout all time a debtor to the other. Each day increases our debt
to Moliere, but Baron’s comedies have been overpaid.”
“I think you make the prerogative of ideas too exclusive,” said Ernest
de La Briere, in a quiet and melodious voice, which formed a sudden
contrast to the peremptory tones of the poet, whose flexible organ had
abandoned its caressing notes for the strident and magisterial voice
of the rostrum. “Genius must be estimated according to its utility;
and Parmentier, who brought potatoes into general use, Jacquart, the
inventor of silk looms; Papin, who first discovered the elastic quality
of steam, are men of genius, to whom statues will some day be erected.
They have changed, or they will change in a certain sense, the face of
the State. It is in that sense that Desplein will always be considered
a man of genius by thinkers; they see him attended by a generation of
sufferers whose pains are stifled by his hand.”
That Ernest should give utterance to this opinion was enough to make
Modeste oppose it.
“If that be so, monsieur,” she said, “then the man who could discover a
way to mow wheat without injuring the straw, by a machine that could do
the work of ten men, would be a man of genius.”
“Yes, my daughter,” said Madame Mignon; “and the poor would bless him
for cheaper bread,--he that is blessed by the poor is blessed of God.”
“That is putting utility above art,” said Modeste, shaking her head.
“Without utility what would become of art?” said Charles Mignon. “What
would it rest on? what would it live on? Where would you lodge, and how
would you pay the poet?”
“Oh! my dear papa, such opinions are fearfully flat and antediluvian!
I am not surprised that Gobenheim and Monsieur de La Briere, who are
interested in the solution of social problems should think so; but you,
whose life has been the most useless poetry of the century,--useless
because the blood you shed all over Europe, and the horrible sufferings
exacted by your colossus, did not prevent France from losing ten
departments acquired under the Revolution,--how can _you_ give in to
such excessively pig-tail notions, as the idealists say? It is plain
you’ve just come from China.”
The impertinence of Modeste’s speech was heightened by a little air
of contemptuous disdain which she purposely put on, and which fairly
astounded Madame Mignon, Madame Latournelle, and Dumay. As for Madame
Latournelle, she opened her eyes so wide she no longer saw anything.
Butscha, whose alert attention was comparable to that of a spy, looked
at Monsieur Mignon, expecting to see him flush with sudden and violent
indignation.
“A little more, young lady, and you will be wanting in respect for your
father,” said the colonel, smiling, and noticing Butscha’s look. “See
what it is to spoil one’s children!”
“I am your only child,” she said saucily.
“Child, indeed,” remarked the notary, significantly.
“Monsieur,” said Modeste, turning upon him, “my father is delighted to
have me for his governess; he gave me life and I give him knowledge; he
will soon owe me something.”
“There seems occasion for it,” said Madame Mignon.
“But mademoiselle is right,” said Canalis, rising and standing before
the fireplace in one of the finest attitudes of his collection. “God,
in his providence, has given food and clothing to man, but he has not
directly given him art. He says to man: ‘To live, thou must bow thyself
to earth; to think, thou shalt lift thyself to Me.’ We have as much need
of the life of the soul as of the life of the body,--hence, there are
two utilities. It is true we cannot be shod by books or clothed by
poems. An epic song is not, if you take the utilitarian view, as useful
as the broth of a charity kitchen. The noblest ideas will not sail a
vessel in place of canvas. It is quite true that the cotton-gin gives us
calicoes for thirty sous a yard less than we ever paid before; but that
machine and all other industrial perfections will not breathe the breath
of life into a people, will not tell futurity of a civilization that
once existed. Art, on the contrary, Egyptian, Mexican, Grecian, Roman
art, with their masterpieces--now called useless!--reveal the existence
of races back in the vague immense of time, beyond where the great
intermediary nations, denuded of men of genius, have disappeared,
leaving not a line nor a trace behind them! The works of genius are the
‘summum’ of civilization, and presuppose utility. Surely a pair of boots
are not as agreeable to your eyes as a fine play at the theatre; and you
don’t prefer a windmill to the church of Saint-Ouen, do you? Well then,
nations are imbued with the same feelings as the individual man, and
the man’s cherished desire is to survive himself morally just as he
propagates himself physically. The survival of a people is the work of
its men of genius. At this very moment France is proving, energetically,
the truth of that theory. She is, undoubtedly, excelled by England in
commerce, industry, and navigation, and yet she is, I believe, at the
head of the world,--by reason of her artists, her men of talent, and the
good taste of her products. There is no artist and no superior intellect
that does not come to Paris for a diploma. There is no school of
painting at this moment but that of France; and we shall reign far
longer and perhaps more securely by our books than by our swords. In La
Briere’s system, on the other hand, all that is glorious and lovely must
be suppressed,--woman’s beauty, music, painting, poetry. Society will
not be overthrown, that is true, but, I ask you, who would willingly
accept such a life? All useful things are ugly and forbidding. A kitchen
is indispensable, but you take care not to sit there; you live in the
salon, which you adorn, like this, with superfluous things. Of what
_use_, let me ask you, are these charming wall-paintings, this carved
wood-work? There is nothing beautiful but that which seems to us
useless. We called the sixteenth century the Renascence with admirable
truth of language. That century was the dawn of a new era. Men will
continue to speak of it when all remembrance of anterior centuries had
passed away,--their only merit being that they once existed, like the
million beings who count as the rubbish of a generation.”
“Rubbish! yes, that may be, but my rubbish is dear to me,” said the
Duc d’Herouville, laughing, during the silent pause which followed the
poet’s pompous oration.
“Let me ask,” said Butscha, attacking Canalis, “does art, the sphere in
which, according to you, genius is required to evolve itself, exist at
all? Is it not a splendid lie, a delusion, of the social man? Do I want
a landscape scene of Normandy in my bedroom when I can look out and see
a better one done by God himself? Our dreams make poems more glorious
than Iliads. For an insignificant sum of money I can find at Valogne, at
Carentan, in Provence, at Arles, many a Venus as beautiful as those
of Titian. The police gazette publishes tales, differing somewhat
from those of Walter Scott, but ending tragically with blood, not ink.
Happiness and virtue exist above and beyond both art and genius.”
“Bravo, Butscha!” cried Madame Latournelle.
“What did he say?” asked Canalis of La Briere, failing to gather from
the eyes and attitude of Mademoiselle Mignon the usual signs of artless
admiration.
The contemptuous indifference which Modeste had exhibited toward La
Briere, and above all, her disrespectful speeches to her father, so
depressed the young man that he made no answer to Canalis; his eyes,
fixed sorrowfully on Modeste, were full of deep meditation. The Duc
d’Herouville took up Butscha’s argument and reproduced it with much
intelligence, saying finally that the ecstasies of Saint-Theresa were
far superior to the creations of Lord Byron.
“Oh, Monsieur le duc,” exclaimed Modeste, “hers was a purely personal
poetry, whereas the genius of Lord Byron and Moliere benefit the world.”
“How do you square that opinion with those of Monsieur le baron?” cried
Charles Mignon, quickly. “Now you are insisting that genius must be
useful, and benefit the world as though it were cotton,--but perhaps you
think logic as antediluvian as your poor old father.”
Butscha, La Briere, and Madame Latournelle exchanged glances that were
more than half derisive, and drove Modeste to a pitch of irritation that
kept her silent for a moment.
“Mademoiselle, do not mind them,” said Canalis, smiling upon her, “we
are neither beaten, nor caught in a contradiction. Every work of art,
let it be in literature, music, painting, sculpture, or architecture,
implies a positive social utility, equal to that of all other commercial
products. Art is pre-eminently commerce; presupposes it, in short. An
author pockets ten thousand francs for his book; the making of books
means the manufactory of paper, a foundry, a printing-office, a
bookseller,--in other words, the employment of thousands of men. The
execution of a symphony of Beethoven or an opera by Rossini requires
human arms and machinery and manufactures. The cost of a monument is
an almost brutal case in point. In short, I may say that the works of
genius have an extremely costly basis and are, necessarily, useful to
the workingman.”
Astride of that theme, Canalis spoke for some minutes with a fine luxury
of metaphor, and much inward complacency as to his phrases; but it
happened with him, as with many another great speaker, that he found
himself at last at the point from which the conversation started, and in
full agreement with La Briere without perceiving it.
“I see with much pleasure, my dear baron,” said the little duke, slyly,
“that you will make an admirable constitutional minister.”
“Oh!” said Canalis, with the gesture of a great man, “what is the use
of all these discussions? What do they prove?--the eternal verity of one
axiom: All things are true, all things are false. Moral truths as well
as human beings change their aspect according to their surroundings, to
the point of being actually unrecognizable.”
“Society exists through settled opinions,” said the Duc d’Herouville.
“What laxity!” whispered Madame Latournelle to her husband.
“He is a poet,” said Gobenheim, who overheard her.
Canalis, who was ten leagues above the heads of his audience, and who
may have been right in his last philosophical remark, took the sort
of coldness which now overspread the surrounding faces of a symptom of
provincial ignorance; but seeing that Modeste understood him, he
was content, being wholly unaware that monologue is particularly
disagreeable to country-folk, whose principal desire it is to exhibit
the manner of life and the wit and wisdom of the provinces to Parisians.
“It is long since you have seen the Duchesse de Chaulieu?” asked the
duke, addressing Canalis, as if to change the conversation.
“I left her about six days ago.”
“Is she well?” persisted the duke.
“Perfectly well.”
“Have the kindness to remember me to her when you write.”
“They say she is charming,” remarked Modeste, addressing the duke.
“Monsieur le baron can speak more confidently than I,” replied the grand
equerry.
“More than charming,” said Canalis, making the best of the duke’s
perfidy; “but I am partial, mademoiselle; she has been a friend to me
for the last ten years; I owe all that is good in me to her; she has
saved me from the dangers of the world. Moreover, Monsieur le Duc de
Chaulieu launched me in my present career. Without the influence of that
family the king and the princesses would have forgotten a poor poet
like me; therefore my affection for the duchess must always be full of
gratitude.”
His voice quivered.
“We ought to love the woman who has led you to write those sublime
poems, and who inspires you with such noble feelings,” said Modeste,
quite affected. “Who can think of a poet without a muse!”
“He would be without a heart,” replied Canalis. “He would write barren
verses like Voltaire, who never loved any one but Voltaire.”
“I thought you did me the honor to say, in Paris,” interrupted Dumay,
“that you never felt the sentiments you expressed.”
“The shoe fits, my soldier,” replied the poet, smiling; “but let me tell
you that it is quite possible to have a great deal of feeling both in
the intellectual life and in real life. My good friend here, La Briere,
is madly in love,” continued Canalis, with a fine show of generosity,
looking at Modeste. “I, who certainly love as much as he,--that is, I
think so unless I delude myself,--well, I can give to my love a literary
form in harmony with its character. But I dare not say, mademoiselle,”
he added, turning to Modeste with too studied a grace, “that to-morrow I
may not be without inspiration.”
Thus the poet triumphed over all obstacles. In honor of his love he
rode a-tilt at the hindrances that were thrown in his way, and Modeste
remained wonder-struck at the Parisian wit that scintillated in his
declamatory discourse, of which she had hitherto known little or
nothing.
“What an acrobat!” whispered Butscha to Latournelle, after listening
to a magnificent tirade on the Catholic religion and the happiness
of having a pious wife,--served up in response to a remark by Madame
Mignon.
Modeste’s eyes were blindfolded as it were; Canalis’s elocution and the
close attention which she was predetermined to pay to him prevented her
from seeing that Butscha was carefully noting the declamation, the want
of simplicity, the emphasis that took the place of feeling, and the
curious incoherencies in the poet’s speech which led the dwarf to make
his rather cruel comment. At certain points of Canalis’s discourse, when
Monsieur Mignon, Dumay, Butscha, and Latournelle wondered at the
man’s utter want of logic, Modeste admired his suppleness, and said to
herself, as she dragged him after her through the labyrinth of fancy,
“He loves me!” Butscha, in common with the other spectators of what
we must call a stage scene, was struck with the radiant defect of all
egoists, which Canalis, like many men accustomed to perorate, allowed to
be too plainly seen. Whether he understood beforehand what the person he
was speaking to meant to say, whether he was not listening, or whether
he had the faculty of listening when he was thinking of something
else, it is certain that Melchior’s face wore an absent-minded look in
conversation, which disconcerted the ideas of others and wounded their
vanity. Not to listen is not merely a want of politeness, it is a mark
of disrespect. Canalis pushed this habit too far; for he often forgot
to answer a speech which required an answer, and passed, without the
ordinary transitions of courtesy, to the subject, whatever it was, that
preoccupied him. Though such impertinence is accepted without protest
from a man of marked distinction, it stirs a leaven of hatred and
vengeance in many hearts; in those of equals it even goes so far as to
destroy a friendship. If by chance Melchior was forced to listen, he
fell into another fault; he merely lent his attention, and never
gave it. Though this may not be so mortifying, it shows a kind of
semi-concession which is almost as unsatisfactory to the hearer and
leaves him dissatisfied. Nothing brings more profit in the commerce
of society than the small change of attention. He that heareth let him
hear, is not only a gospel precept, it is an excellent speculation;
follow it, and all will be forgiven you, even vice. Canalis took a great
deal of trouble in his anxiety to please Modeste; but though he was
compliant enough with her, he fell back into his natural self with the
others.
Modeste, pitiless for the ten martyrs she was making, begged Canalis to
read some of his poems; she wanted, she said, a specimen of his gift for
reading, of which she had heard so much. Canalis took the volume which
she gave him, and cooed (for that is the proper word) a poem which is
generally considered his finest,--an imitation of Moore’s “Loves of the
Angels,” entitled “Vitalis,” which Monsieur and Madame Dumay, Madame
Latournelle, and Gobenheim welcomed with a few yawns.
“If you are a good whist-player, monsieur,” said Gobenheim, flourishing
five cards held like a fan, “I must say I have never met a man as
accomplished as you.”
The remark raised a laugh, for it was the translation of everybody’s
thought.
“I play it sufficiently well to live in the provinces for the rest of my
days,” replied Canalis. “That, I think, is enough, and more than enough
literature and conversation for whist-players,” he added, throwing the
volume impatiently on a table.
This little incident serves to show what dangers environ a drawing-room
hero when he steps, like Canalis, out of his sphere; he is like the
favorite actor of a second-rate audience, whose talent is lost when he
leaves his own boards and steps upon those of an upper-class theatre.
CHAPTER XXI. MODESTE PLAYS HER PART
The game opened with the baron and the duke, Gobenheim and Latournelle
as partners. Modeste took a seat near the poet, to Ernest’s deep
disappointment; he watched the face of the wayward girl, and marked the
progress of the fascination which Canalis exerted over her. La
Briere had not the gift of seduction which Melchior possessed. Nature
frequently denies it to true hearts, who are, as a rule, timid. This
gift demands fearlessness, an alacrity of ways and means that might be
called the trapeze of the mind; a little mimicry goes with it; in fact
there is always, morally speaking, something of the comedian in a poet.
There is a vast difference between expressing sentiments we do not feel,
though we may imagine all their variations, and feigning to feel them
when bidding for success on the theatre of private life. And yet, though
the necessary hypocrisy of a man of the world may have gangrened a poet,
he ends by carrying the faculties of his talent into the expression of
any required sentiment, just as a great man doomed to solitude ends by
infusing his heart into his mind.
“He is after the millions,” thought La Briere, sadly; “and he can play
passion so well that Modeste will believe him.”
Instead of endeavoring to appear more amiable and wittier than his
rival, Ernest imitated the Duc d’Herouville, and was gloomy, anxious,
and watchful; but whereas the courier studied the freaks of the young
heiress, Ernest simply fell a prey to the pains of dark and concentrated
jealousy. He had not yet been able to obtain a glance from his idol.
After a while he left the room with Butscha.
“It is all over!” he said; “she is caught by him; I am more disagreeable
to her, and moreover, she is right. Canalis is charming; there’s
intellect in his silence, passion in his eyes, poetry in his
rhodomontades.”
“Is he an honest man?” asked Butscha.
“Oh, yes,” replied La Briere. “He is loyal and chivalrous, and capable
of getting rid, under Modeste’s influence, of those affectations which
Madame de Chaulieu has taught him.”
“You are a fine fellow,” said the hunchback; “but is he capable of
loving,--will he love her?”
“I don’t know,” answered La Briere. “Has she said anything about me?” he
asked after a moment’s silence.
“Yes,” said Butscha, and he repeated Modeste’s speech about disguises.
Poor Ernest flung himself upon a bench and held his head in his hands.
He could not keep back his tears, and he did not wish Butscha to see
them; but the dwarf was the very man to guess his emotion.
“What troubles you?” he asked.
“She is right!” cried Ernest, springing up; “I am a wretch.”
And he related the deception into which Canalis had led him when
Modeste’s first letter was received, carefully pointing out to Butscha
that he had wished to undeceive the young girl before she herself
took off the mask, and apostrophizing, in rather juvenile fashion, his
luckless destiny. Butscha sympathetically understood the love in the
flavor and vigor of his simple language, and in his deep and genuine
anxiety.
“But why don’t you show yourself to Mademoiselle Modeste for what you
are?” he said; “why do you let your rival do his exercises?”
“Have you never felt your throat tighten when you wished to speak to
her?” cried La Briere; “is there never a strange feeling in the roots of
your hair and on the surface of your skin when she looks at you,--even
if she is thinking of something else?”
“But you had sufficient judgment to show displeasure when she as good as
told her excellent father that he was a dolt.”
“Monsieur, I love her too well not to have felt a knife in my heart when
I heard her contradicting her own perfections.”
“Canalis supported her.”
“If she had more self-love than heart there would be nothing for a man
to regret in losing her,” answered La Briere.
At this moment, Modeste, followed by Canalis, who had lost the rubber,
came out with her father and Madame Dumay to breathe the fresh air of
the starry night. While his daughter walked about with the poet, Charles
Mignon left her and came up to La Briere.
“Your friend, monsieur, ought to have been a lawyer,” he said, smiling
and looking attentively at the young man.
“You must not judge a poet as you would an ordinary man,--as you would
me, for example, Monsieur le comte,” said La Briere. “A poet has a
mission. He is obliged by his nature to see the poetry of questions,
just as he expresses that of things. When you think him inconsistent
with himself he is really faithful to his vocation. He is a painter
copying with equal truth a Madonna and a courtesan. Moliere is as true
to nature in his old men as in his young ones, and Moliere’s judgment
was assuredly a sound and healthy one. These witty paradoxes might be
dangerous for second-rate minds, but they have no real influence on the
character of great men.”
Charles Mignon pressed La Briere’s hand.
“That adaptability, however, leads a man to excuse himself in his own
eyes for actions that are diametrically opposed to each other; above
all, in politics.”
“Ah, mademoiselle,” Canalis was at this moment saying, in a caressing
voice, replying to a roguish remark of Modeste, “do not think that a
multiplicity of emotions can in any way lessen the strength of feelings.
Poets, even more than other men, must needs love with constancy and
faith. You must not be jealous of what is called the Muse. Happy is the
wife of a man whose days are occupied. If you heard the complaints of
women who have to endure the burden of an idle husband, either a man
without duties, or one so rich as to have nothing to do, you would know
that the highest happiness of a Parisian wife is freedom,--the right
to rule in her own home. Now we writers and men of functions and
occupations, we leave the sceptre to our wives; we cannot descend to
the tyranny of little minds; we have something better to do. If I ever
marry,--which I assure you is a catastrophe very remote at the present
moment,--I should wish my wife to enjoy the same moral freedom that
a mistress enjoys, and which is perhaps the real source of her
attraction.”
Canalis talked on, displaying the warmth of his fancy and all his
graces, for Modeste’s benefit, as he spoke of love, marriage, and the
adoration of women, until Monsieur Mignon, who had rejoined them, seized
the opportunity of a slight pause to take his daughter’s arm and lead
her up to Ernest de La Briere, whom he had been advising to seek an open
explanation with her.
“Mademoiselle,” said Ernest, in a voice that was scarcely his own,
“it is impossible for me to remain any longer under the weight of
your displeasure. I do not defend myself; I do not seek to justify my
conduct; I desire only to make you see that _before_ reading your most
flattering letter, addressed to the individual and no longer to the
poet,--the last which you sent to me,--I wished, and I told you in my
note written at Havre that I wished, to correct the error under which
you were acting. All the feelings that I have had the happiness to
express to you are sincere. A hope dawned on me in Paris when your
father told me he was comparatively poor,--but now that all is lost, now
that nothing is left for me but endless regrets, why should I stay
here where all is torture? Let me carry away with me one smile to live
forever in my heart.”
“Monsieur,” answered Modeste, who seemed cold and absent-minded, “I am
not the mistress of this house; but I certainly should deeply regret to
retain any one where he finds neither pleasure nor happiness.”
She left La Briere and took Madame Dumay’s arm to re-enter the house. A
few moments later all the actors in this domestic scene reassembled in
the salon, and were a good deal surprised to see Modeste sitting beside
the Duc d’Herouville and coquetting with him like an accomplished
Parisian woman. She watched his play, gave him the advice he wanted, and
found occasion to say flattering things by ranking the merits of noble
birth with those of genius and beauty. Canalis thought he knew the
reason of this change; he had tried to pique Modeste by calling marriage
a catastrophe, and showing that he was aloof from it; but like others
who play with fire, he had burned his fingers. Modeste’s pride and her
present disdain frightened him, and he endeavored to recover his ground,
exhibiting a jealousy which was all the more visible because it was
artificial. Modeste, implacable as an angel, tasted the sweets of power,
and, naturally enough, abused it. The Duc d’Herouville had never known
such a happy evening; a woman smiled on him! At eleven o’clock, an
unheard-of hour at the Chalet, the three suitors took their leave,--the
duke thinking Modeste charming, Canalis believing her excessively
coquettish, and La Briere heart-broken by her cruelty.
For eight days the heiress continued to be to her three lovers very
much what she had been during that evening; so that the poet appeared
to carry the day against his rivals, in spite of certain freaks and
caprices which from time to time gave the Duc d’Herouville a little
hope. The disrespect she showed to her father, and the great liberties
she took with him; her impatience with her blind mother, to whom she
seemed to grudge the little services which had once been the delight
of her filial piety,--seemed the result of a capricious nature and a
heedless gaiety indulged from childhood. When Modeste went too far, she
turned round and openly took herself to task, ascribing her impertinence
and levity to a spirit of independence. She acknowledged to the duke
and Canalis her distaste for obedience, and professed to regard it as an
obstacle to her marriage; thus investigating the nature of her suitors,
after the manner of those who dig into the earth in search of metals,
coal, tufa, or water.
“I shall never,” she said, the evening before the day on which the
family were to move into the villa, “find a husband who will put up with
my caprices as my father does; his kindness never flags. I am sure no
one will ever be as indulgent to me as my precious mother.”
“They know that you love them, mademoiselle,” said La Briere.
“You may be very sure, mademoiselle, that your husband will know the
full value of his treasure,” added the duke.
“You have spirit and resolution enough to discipline a husband,” cried
Canalis, laughing.
Modeste smiled as Henri IV. must have smiled after drawing out the
characters of his three principal ministers, for the benefit of a
foreign ambassador, by means of three answers to an insidious question.
On the day of the dinner, Modeste, led away by the preference she
bestowed on Canalis, walked alone with him up and down the gravelled
space which lay between the house and the lawn with its flower-beds.
From the gestures of the poet, and the air and manner of the young
heiress, it was easy to see that she was listening favorably to him.
The two demoiselles d’Herouville hastened to interrupt the scandalous
tete-a-tete; and with the natural cleverness of women under such
circumstances, they turned the conversation on the court, and the
distinction of an appointment under the crown,--pointing out the
difference that existed between appointments in the household of the
king and those of the crown. They tried to intoxicate Modeste’s mind by
appealing to her pride, and describing one of the highest stations to
which a woman could aspire.
“To have a duke for a son,” said the elder lady, “is an actual
advantage. The title is a fortune that we secure to our children without
the possibility of loss.”
“How is it, then,” said Canalis, displeased at his tete-a-tete being
thus broken in upon, “that Monsieur le duc has had so little success in
a matter where his title would seem to be of special service to him?”
The two ladies cast a look at Canalis as full of venom as the tooth of a
snake, and they were so disconcerted by Modeste’s amused smile that they
were actually unable to reply.
“Monsieur le duc has never blamed you,” she said to Canalis, “for the
humility with which you bear your fame; why should you attack him for
his modesty?”
“Besides, we have never yet met a woman worthy of my nephew’s rank,”
said Mademoiselle d’Herouville. “Some had only the wealth of the
position; others, without fortune, had the wit and birth. I must admit
that we have done well to wait till God granted us an opportunity to
meet one in whom we find the noble blood, the mind, and fortune of a
Duchesse d’Herouville.”
“My dear Modeste,” said Helene d’Herouville, leading her new friend
apart, “there are a thousand barons in the kingdom, just as there are a
hundred poets in Paris, who are worth as much as he; he is so little of
a great man that even I, a poor girl forced to take the veil for want
of a ‘dot,’ I would not take him. You don’t know what a young man is who
has been for ten years in the hands of a Duchesse de Chaulieu. None but
an old woman of sixty could put up with the little ailments of which,
they say, the great poet is always complaining,--a habit in Louis XIV.
that became a perfectly insupportable annoyance. It is true the duchess
does not suffer from it as much as a wife, who would have him always
about her.”
Then, practising a well-known manoeuvre peculiar to her sex, Helene
d’Herouville repeated in a low voice all the calumnies which women
jealous of the Duchesse de Chaulieu were in the habit of spreading about
the poet. This little incident, common as it is in the intercourse of
women, will serve to show with what fury the hounds were after Modeste’s
wealth.
Ten days saw a great change in the opinions at the Chalet as to the
three suitors for Mademoiselle de La Bastie’s hand. This change,
which was much to the disadvantage of Canalis, came about through
considerations of a nature which ought to make the holders of any kind
of fame pause, and reflect. No one can deny, if we remember the passion
with which people seek for autographs, that public curiosity is greatly
excited by celebrity. Evidently most provincials never form an exact
idea in their own minds of how illustrious Parisians put on their
cravats, walk on the boulevards, stand gaping at nothing, or eat
a cutlet; because, no sooner do they perceive a man clothed in the
sunbeams of fashion or resplendent with some dignity that is more or
less fugitive (though always envied), than they cry out, “Look at
that!” “How queer!” and other depreciatory exclamations. In a word, the
mysterious charm that attaches to every kind of fame, even that which
is most justly due, never lasts. It is, and especially with superficial
people who are envious or sarcastic, a sensation which passes off with
the rapidity of lightning, and never returns. It would seem as though
fame, like the sun, hot and luminous at a distance, is cold as the
summit of an alp when you approach it. Perhaps man is only really great
to his peers; perhaps the defects inherent in his constitution disappear
sooner to the eyes of his equals than to those of vulgar admirers. A
poet, if he would please in ordinary life, must put on the fictitious
graces of those who are able to make their insignificances forgotten
by charming manners and complying speeches. The poet of the faubourg
Saint-Germain, who did not choose to bow before this social dictum, was
made before long to feel that an insulting provincial indifference
had succeeded to the dazed fascination of the earlier evenings. The
prodigality of his wit and wisdom had produced upon these worthy souls
somewhat the effect which a shopful of glass-ware produces on the eye;
in other words, the fire and brilliancy of Canalis’s eloquence soon
wearied people who, to use their own words, “cared more for the solid.”
Forced after a while to behave like an ordinary man, the poet found an
unexpected stumbling-block on ground where La Briere had already won the
suffrage of the worthy people who at first had thought him sulky. They
felt the need of compensating themselves for Canalis’s reputation by
preferring his friend. The best of men are influenced by such feelings
as these. The simple and straightforward young fellow jarred no one’s
self-love; coming to know him better they discovered his heart, his
modesty, his silent and sure discretion, and his excellent bearing.
The Duc d’Herouville considered him, as a political element, far above
Canalis. The poet, ill-balanced, ambitious, and restless as Tasso,
loved luxury, grandeur, and ran into debt; while the young lawyer,
whose character was equable and well-balanced, lived soberly, was useful
without proclaiming it, awaited rewards without begging for them, and
laid by his money.
Canalis had moreover laid himself open in a special way to the bourgeois
eyes that were watching him. For two or three days he had shown signs
of impatience; he had given way to depression, to states of melancholy
without apparent reason, to those capricious changes of temper which
are the natural results of the nervous temperament of poets. These
originalities (we use the provincial word) came from the uneasiness
that his conduct toward the Duchesse de Chaulieu which grew daily less
explainable, caused him. He knew he ought to write to her, but could not
resolve on doing so. All these fluctuations were carefully remarked
and commented on by the gentle American, and the excellent Madame
Latournelle, and they formed the topic of many a discussion between
these two ladies and Madame Mignon. Canalis felt the effects of these
discussions without being able to explain them. The attention paid
to him was not the same, the faces surrounding him no longer wore the
entranced look of the earlier days; while at the same time Ernest was
evidently gaining ground.
For the last two days the poet had endeavored to fascinate Modeste only,
and he took advantage of every moment when he found himself alone with
her, to weave the web of passionate language around his love. Modeste’s
blush, as she listened to him on the occasion we have just mentioned,
showed the demoiselles d’Herouville the pleasure with which she was
listening to sweet conceits that were sweetly said; and they, horribly
uneasy at the sight, had immediate recourse to the “ultima ratio” of
women in such cases, namely, those calumnies which seldom miss their
object. Accordingly, when the party met at the dinner-table the poet
saw a cloud on the brow of his idol; he knew that Mademoiselle
d’Herouville’s malignity allowed him to lose no time, and he resolved
to offer himself as a husband at the first moment when he could find
himself alone with Modeste.
Overhearing a few acid though polite remarks exchanged between the poet
and the two noble ladies, Gobenheim nudged Butscha with his elbow,
and said in an undertone, motioning towards the poet and the grand
equerry,--
“They’ll demolish one another!”
“Canalis has genius enough to demolish himself all alone,” answered the
dwarf.