An hour later, Modeste, charmingly equipped in a bottle-green cassimere
habit, a small hat with a green veil, buckskin gloves, and velvet boots
which met the lace frills of her drawers, and mounted on an elegantly
caparisoned little horse, was exhibiting to her father and the Duc
d’Herouville the beautiful present she had just received; she was
evidently delighted with an attention of a kind that particularly
flatters women.
“Did it come from you, Monsieur le duc?” she said, holding the sparkling
handle toward him. “There was a card with it, saying, ‘Guess if you
can,’ and some asterisks. Francoise and Dumay credit Butscha with this
charming surprise; but my dear Butscha is not rich enough to buy such
rubies. And as for papa (to whom I said, as I remember, on Sunday
evening, that I had no whip), he sent to Rouen for this one,”--pointing
to a whip in her father’s hand, with a top like a cone of turquoise, a
fashion then in vogue which has since become vulgar.
“I would give ten years of my old age, mademoiselle, to have the right
to offer you that beautiful jewel,” said the duke, courteously.
“Ah, here comes the audacious giver!” cried Modeste, as Canalis rode
up. “It is only a poet who knows where to find such choice things.
Monsieur,” she said to Melchior, “my father will scold you, and say that
you justify those who accuse you of extravagance.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Canalis, with apparent simplicity, “so that is why La
Briere rode at full gallop from Havre to Paris?”
“Does your secretary take such liberties?” said Modeste, turning pale,
and throwing the whip to Francoise with an impetuosity that expressed
scorn. “Give me your whip, papa.”
“Poor Ernest, who lies there on his bed half-dead with fatigue!” said
Canalis, overtaking the girl, who had already started at a gallop. “You
are pitiless, mademoiselle. ‘I have’ (the poor fellow said to me) ‘only
this one chance to remain in her memory.’”
“And should you think well of a woman who could take presents from half
the parish?” said Modeste.
She was surprised to receive no answer to this inquiry, and attributed
the poet’s inattention to the noise of the horse’s feet.
“How you delight in tormenting those who love you,” said the duke. “Your
nobility of soul and your pride are so inconsistent with your faults
that I begin to suspect you calumniate yourself, and do those naughty
things on purpose.”
“Ah! have you only just found that out, Monsieur le duc?” she exclaimed,
laughing. “You have the sagacity of a husband.”
They rode half a mile in silence. Modeste was a good deal astonished not
to receive the fire of the poet’s eyes. The evening before, as she was
pointing out to him an admirable effect of setting sunlight across the
water, she had said, remarking his inattention, “Well, don’t you see
it?”--to which he replied, “I can see only your hand”; but now his
admiration for the beauties of nature seemed a little too intense to be
natural.
“Does Monsieur de La Briere know how to ride?” she asked, for the
purpose of teasing him.
“Not very well, but he gets along,” answered the poet, cold as Gobenheim
before the colonel’s return.
At a cross-road, which Monsieur Mignon made them take through a lovely
valley to reach a height overlooking the Seine, Canalis let Modeste and
the duke pass him, and then reined up to join the colonel.
“Monsieur le comte,” he said, “you are an open-hearted soldier, and
I know you will regard my frankness as a title to your esteem. When
proposals of marriage, with all their brutal,--or, if you please, too
civilized--discussions, are carried on by third parties, it is an injury
to all. We are both gentlemen, and both discreet; and you, like myself,
have passed beyond the age of surprises. Let us therefore speak as
intimates. I will set you the example. I am twenty-nine years old,
without landed estates, and full of ambition. Mademoiselle Modeste,
as you must have perceived, pleases me extremely. Now, in spite of the
little defects which your dear girl likes to assume--”
“--not counting those she really possesses,” said the colonel,
smiling,--
“--I should gladly make her my wife, and I believe I could render her
happy. The question of money is of the utmost importance to my future,
which hangs to-day in the balance. All young girls expect to be loved
_whether or no_--fortune or no fortune. But you are not the man to marry
your dear Modeste without a ‘dot,’ and my situation does not allow me
to make a marriage of what is called love unless with a woman who has
a fortune at least equal to mine. I have, from my emoluments and
sinecures, from the Academy and from my works, about thirty thousand
francs a year, a large income for a bachelor. If my wife brought me as
much more, I should still be in about the same condition that I am now.
Shall you give Mademoiselle a million?”
“Ah, monsieur, we have not reached that point as yet,” said the colonel,
Jesuitically.
“Then suppose,” said Canalis, quickly, “that we go no further; we will
let the matter drop. You shall have no cause to complain of me, Monsieur
le comte; the world shall consider me among the unfortunate suitors of
your charming daughter. Give me your word of honor to say nothing on
the subject to any one, not even to Mademoiselle Modeste, because,” he
added, throwing a word of promise to the ear, “my circumstances may so
change that I can ask you for her without ‘dot.’”
“I promise you that,” said the colonel. “You know, monsieur, with what
assurance the public, both in Paris and the provinces, talk of fortunes
that they make and unmake. People exaggerate both happiness and
unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say
we are. There is nothing sure and certain in business except investments
in land. I am awaiting the accounts of my agents with very great
impatience. The sale of my merchandise and my ship, and the settlement
of my affairs in China, are not yet concluded; and I cannot know the
full amount of my fortune for at least six months. I did, however, say
to Monsieur de La Briere in Paris that I would guarantee a ‘dot’ of two
hundred thousand francs in ready money. I wish to entail my estates, and
enable my grandchildren to inherit my arms and title.”
Canalis did not listen to this statement after the opening sentence.
The four riders, having now reached a wider road, went abreast and soon
reached a stretch of table-land, from which the eye took in on one side
the rich valley of the Seine toward Rouen, and on the other an horizon
bounded only by the sea.
“Butscha was right, God is the greatest of all landscape painters,” said
Canalis, contemplating the view, which is unique among the many fine
scenes that have made the shores of the Seine so justly celebrated.
“Above all do we feel that, my dear baron,” said the duke, “on
hunting-days, when nature has a voice, and a lively tumult breaks
the silence; at such times the landscape, changing rapidly as we ride
through it, seems really sublime.”
“The sun is the inexhaustible palette,” said Modeste, looking at the
poet in a species of bewilderment.
A remark that she presently made on his absence of mind gave him
an opportunity of saying that he was just then absorbed in his own
thoughts,--an excuse that authors have more reason for giving than other
men.
“Are we really made happy by carrying our lives into the midst of
the world, and swelling them with all sorts of fictitious wants and
over-excited vanities?” said Modeste, moved by the aspect of the fertile
and billowy country to long for a philosophically tranquil life.
“That is a bucolic, mademoiselle, which is only written on tablets of
gold,” said the poet.
“And sometimes under garret-roofs,” remarked the colonel.
Modeste threw a piercing glance at Canalis, which he was unable to
sustain; she was conscious of a ringing in her ears, darkness seemed to
spread before her, and then she suddenly exclaimed in icy tones:--
“Ah! it is Wednesday!”
“I do not say this to flatter your passing caprice, mademoiselle,” said
the duke, to whom the little scene, so tragical for Modeste, had left
time for thought; “but I declare I am so profoundly disgusted with the
world and the Court and Paris that had I a Duchesse d’Herouville, gifted
with the wit and graces of mademoiselle, I would gladly bind myself to
live like a philosopher at my chateau, doing good around me, draining my
marshes, educating my children--”
“That, Monsieur le duc, will be set to the account of your great
goodness,” said Modeste, letting her eyes rest steadily on the noble
gentleman. “You flatter me in not thinking me frivolous, and in
believing that I have enough resources within myself to be able to live
in solitude. It is perhaps my lot,” she added, glancing at Canalis, with
an expression of pity.
“It is the lot of all insignificant fortunes,” said the poet. “Paris
demands Babylonian splendor. Sometimes I ask myself how I have ever
managed to keep it up.”
“The king does that for both of us,” said the duke, candidly; “we live
on his Majesty’s bounty. If my family had not been allowed, after the
death of Monsieur le Grand, as they call Cinq-Mars, to keep his office
among us, we should have been obliged to sell Herouville to the Black
Brethren. Ah, believe me, mademoiselle, it is a bitter humiliation to me
to have to think of money in marrying.”
The simple honesty of this confession came from his heart, and the
regret was so sincere that it touched Modeste.
“In these days,” said the poet, “no man in France, Monsieur le duc, is
rich enough to marry a woman for herself, her personal worth, her grace,
or her beauty--”
The colonel looked at Canalis with a curious eye, after first watching
Modeste, whose face no longer expressed the slightest astonishment.
“For persons of high honor,” he said slowly, “it is a noble employment
of wealth to repair the ravages of time and destiny, and restore the old
historic families.”
“Yes, papa,” said Modeste, gravely.
The colonel invited the duke and Canalis to dine with him sociably
in their riding-dress, promising them to make no change himself.
When Modeste went to her room to make her toilette, she looked at the
jewelled whip she had disdained in the morning.
“What workmanship they put into such things nowadays!” she said to
Francoise Cochet, who had become her waiting-maid.
“That poor young man, mademoiselle, who has got a fever--”
“Who told you that?”
“Monsieur Butscha. He came here this afternoon and asked me to say to
you that he hoped you would notice he had kept his word on the appointed
day.”
Modeste came down into the salon dressed with royal simplicity.
“My dear father,” she said aloud, taking the colonel by the arm, “please
go and ask after Monsieur de La Briere’s health, and take him back his
present. You can say that my small means, as well as my natural tastes,
forbid my wearing ornaments which are only fit for queens or courtesans.
Besides, I can only accept gifts from a bridegroom. Beg him to keep the
whip until you know whether you are rich enough to buy it back.”
“My little girl has plenty of good sense,” said the colonel, kissing his
daughter on the forehead.
Canalis took advantage of a conversation which began between the duke
and Madame Mignon to escape to the terrace, where Modeste joined him,
influenced by curiosity, though the poet believed her desire to become
Madame de Canalis had brought her there. Rather alarmed at the indecency
with which he had just executed what soldiers call a “volte-face,” and
which, according to the laws of ambition, every man in his position
would have executed quite as brutally, he now endeavored, as the
unfortunate Modeste approached him, to find plausible excuses for his
conduct.
“Dear Modeste,” he began, in a coaxing tone, “considering the terms on
which we stand to each other, shall I displease you if I say that
your replies to the Duc d’Herouville were very painful to a man in
love,--above all, to a poet whose soul is feminine, nervous, full of the
jealousies of true passion. I should make a poor diplomatist indeed if
I had not perceived that your first coquetries, your little premeditated
inconsistencies, were only assumed for the purpose of studying our
characters--”
Modeste raised her head with the rapid, intelligent, half-coquettish
motion of a wild animal, in whom instinct produces such miracles of
grace.
“--and therefore when I returned home and thought them over, they never
misled me. I only marvelled at a cleverness so in harmony with your
character and your countenance. Do not be uneasy, I never doubted that
your assumed duplicity covered an angelic candor. No, your mind, your
education, have in no way lessened the precious innocence which we
demand in a wife. You are indeed a wife for a poet, a diplomatist, a
thinker, a man destined to endure the chances and changes of life; and
my admiration is equalled only by the attachment I feel to you. I now
entreat you--if yesterday you were not playing a little comedy when
you accepted the love of a man whose vanity will change to pride if
you accept him, one whose defects will become virtues under your divine
influence--I entreat you do not excite a passion which, in him, amounts
to vice. Jealousy is a noxious element in my soul, and you have revealed
to me its strength; it is awful, it destroys everything--Oh! I do not
mean the jealousy of an Othello,” he continued, noticing Modeste’s
gesture. “No, no; my thoughts were of myself: I have been so indulged
on that point. You know the affection to which I owe all the happiness I
have ever enjoyed,--very little at the best” (he sadly shook his head).
“Love is symbolized among all nations as a child, because it fancies
the world belongs to it, and it cannot conceive otherwise. Well, Nature
herself set the limit to that sentiment. It was still-born. A tender,
maternal soul guessed and calmed the painful constriction of my
heart,--for a woman who feels, who knows, that she is past the joys of
love becomes angelic in her treatment of others. The duchess has never
made me suffer in my sensibilities. For ten years not a word, not a
look, that could wound me! I attach more value to words, to thoughts,
to looks, than ordinary men. If a look is to me a treasure beyond all
price, the slightest doubt is deadly poison; it acts instantaneously,
my love dies. I believe--contrary to the mass of men, who delight in
trembling, hoping, expecting--that love can only exist in perfect,
infantile, and infinite security. The exquisite purgatory, where women
delight to send us by their coquetry, is a base happiness to which I
will not submit: to me, love is either heaven or hell. If it is hell,
I will have none of it. I feel an affinity with the azure skies of
Paradise within my soul. I can give myself without reserve, without
secrets, doubts or deceptions, in the life to come; and I demand
reciprocity. Perhaps I offend you by these doubts. Remember, however,
that I am only talking of myself--”
“--a good deal, but never too much,” said Modeste, offended in every
hole and corner of her pride by this discourse, in which the Duchesse de
Chaulieu served as a dagger. “I am so accustomed to admire you, my dear
poet.”
“Well, then, can you promise me the same canine fidelity which I offer
to you? Is it not beautiful? Is it not just what you have longed for?”
“But why, dear poet, do you not marry a deaf-mute, and one who is also
something of an idiot? I ask nothing better than to please my husband.
But you threaten to take away from a girl the very happiness you so
kindly arrange for her; you are tearing away every gesture, every word,
every look; you cut the wings of your bird, and then expect it to
hover about you. I know poets are accused of inconsistency--oh! very
unjustly,” she added, as Canalis made a gesture of denial; “that alleged
defect which comes from the brilliant activity of their minds which
commonplace people cannot take into account. I do not believe, however,
that a man of genius can invent such irreconcilable conditions and call
his invention life. You are requiring the impossible solely for
the pleasure of putting me in the wrong,--like the enchanters in
fairy-tales, who set tasks to persecuted young girls whom the good
fairies come and deliver.”
“In this case the good fairy would be true love,” said Canalis in a curt
tone, aware that his elaborate excuse for a rupture was seen through by
the keen and delicate mind which Butscha had piloted so well.
“My dear poet, you remind me of those fathers who inquire into a
girl’s ‘dot’ before they are willing to name that of their son. You are
quarrelling with me without knowing whether you have the slightest right
to do so. Love is not gained by such dry arguments as yours. The poor
duke on the contrary abandons himself to it like my Uncle Toby; with
this difference, that I am not the Widow Wadman,--though widow indeed
of many illusions as to poetry at the present moment. Ah, yes, we young
girls will not believe in anything that disturbs our world of fancy! I
was warned of all this beforehand. My dear poet, you are attempting to
get up a quarrel which is unworthy of you. I no longer recognize the
Melchior of yesterday.”
“Because Melchior has discovered a spirit of ambition in you which--”
Modeste looked at him from head to foot with an imperial eye.
“But I shall be peer of France and ambassador as well as he,” added
Canalis.
“Do you take me for a bourgeois,” she said, beginning to mount the steps
of the portico; but she instantly turned back and added, “That is less
impertinent than to take me for a fool. The change in your conduct comes
from certain silly rumors which you have heard in Havre, and which my
maid Francoise has repeated to me.”
“Ah, Modeste, how can you think it?” said Canalis, striking a dramatic
attitude. “Do you think me capable of marrying you only for your money?”
“If I do you that wrong after your edifying remarks on the banks of the
Seine can you easily undeceive me,” she said, annihilating him with her
scorn.
“Ah!” thought the poet, as he followed her into the house, “if you
think, my little girl, that I’m to be caught in that net, you take me
to be younger than I am. Dear, dear, what a fuss about an artful little
thing whose esteem I value about as much as that of the king of Borneo.
But she has given me a good reason for the rupture by accusing me of
such unworthy sentiments. Isn’t she sly? La Briere will get a burden on
his back--idiot that he is! And five years hence it will be a good joke
to see them together.”
The coldness which this altercation produced between Modeste and Canalis
was visible to all eyes that evening. The poet went off early, on the
ground of La Briere’s illness, leaving the field to the grand equerry.
About eleven o’clock Butscha, who had come to walk home with Madame
Latournelle, whispered in Modeste’s ear, “Was I right?”
“Alas, yes,” she said.
“But I hope you have left the door half open, so that he can come back;
we agreed upon that, you know.”
“Anger got the better of me,” said Modeste. “Such meanness sent the
blood to my head and I told him what I thought of him.”
“Well, so much the better. When you are both so angry that you can’t
speak civilly to each other I engage to make him desperately in love and
so pressing that you will be deceived yourself.”
“Come, come, Butscha; he is a great poet; he is a gentleman; he is a man
of intellect.”
“Your father’s eight millions are more to him than all that.”
“Eight millions!” exclaimed Modeste.
“My master, who has sold his practice, is going to Provence to attend
to the purchase of lands which your father’s agent has suggested to him.
The sum that is to be paid for the estate of La Bastie is four millions;
your father has agreed to it. You are to have a ‘dot’ of two millions
and another million for an establishment in Paris, a hotel and
furniture. Now, count up.”
“Ah! then I can be Duchesse d’Herouville!” cried Modeste, glancing at
Butscha.
“If it hadn’t been for that comedian of a Canalis you would have kept
HIS whip, thinking it came from me,” said the dwarf, indirectly pleading
La Briere’s cause.
“Monsieur Butscha, may I ask if I am to marry to please you?” said
Modeste, laughing.
“That fine fellow loves you as well as I do,--and you loved him for
eight days,” retorted Butscha; “and HE has got a heart.”
“Can he compete, pray, with an office under the Crown? There are but
six, grand almoner, chancellor, grand chamberlain, grand master, high
constable, grand admiral,--but they don’t appoint high constables any
longer.”
“In six months, mademoiselle, the masses--who are made up of wicked
Butschas--could send all those grand dignities to the winds. Besides,
what signifies nobility in these days? There are not a thousand real
noblemen in France. The d’Herouvilles are descended from a tipstaff
in the time of Robert of Normandy. You will have to put up with many a
vexation from the old aunt with the furrowed face. Look here,--as you
are so anxious for the title of duchess,--you belong to the Comtat, and
the Pope will certainly think as much of you as he does of all those
merchants down there; he’ll sell you a duchy with some name ending in
‘ia’ or ‘agno.’ Don’t play away your happiness for an office under the
Crown.”