Modeste Mignon, Honoré de Balzac [booksvooks txt] 📗

but it is to them that you must address yourself."

"But," exclaimed Canalis, "tell me that if I obtain their consent, you will ask nothing better than to obey them."

"I know beforehand," she replied, "that my father has certain fancies which may wound the proper pride of an old family like yours. He wishes to have his own title and name borne by his grandsons."

"Ah! dear Modeste, what sacrifices would I not make to commit my life to the guardian care of an angel like you."

"You will permit me not to decide in a moment the fate of my whole life," she said, turning to rejoin the demoiselles d'Herouville.

Those noble ladies were just then engaged in flattering the vanity of little Latournelle, intending to win him over to their interests. Mademoiselle d'Herouville, to whom we shall in future confine the family name, to distinguish her from her niece Helene, was giving the notary to understand that the post of judge of the Supreme Court in Havre, which Charles X. would bestow as she desired, was an office worthy of his legal talent and his well-known probity. Butscha, meanwhile, who had been walking about with La Briere, was greatly alarmed at the progress Canalis was evidently making, and he waylaid Modeste at the lower step of the portico when the whole party returned to the house to endure the torments of their inevitable whist.

"Mademoiselle," he said, in a low whisper, "I do hope you don't call him Melchior."

"I'm very near it, my Black Dwarf," she said, with a smile that might have made an angel swear.

"Good God!" exclaimed Butscha, letting fall his hands, which struck the marble steps.

"Well! and isn't he worth more than that spiteful and gloomy secretary in whom you take such an interest?" she retorted, assuming, at the mere thought of Ernest, the haughty manner whose secret belongs exclusively to young girls,--as if their virginity lent them wings to fly to heaven. "Pray, would your little La Briere accept me without a fortune?" she said, after a pause.

"Ask your father," replied Butscha, who walked a few steps from the house, to get Modeste at a safe distance from the windows. "Listen to me, mademoiselle. You know that he who speaks to you is ready to give not only his life but his honor for you, at any moment, and at all times. Therefore you may believe in him; you can confide to him that which you may not, perhaps, be willing to say to your father. Tell me, has that sublime Canalis been making you the disinterested offer that you now fling as a reproach at poor Ernest?"

"Yes."

"Do you believe it?"

"That question, my manikin," she replied, giving him one of the ten or a dozen nicknames she had invented for him, "strikes me as undervaluing the strength of my self-love."

"Ah, you are laughing, my dear Mademoiselle Modeste; then there's no danger: I hope you are only making a fool of him."

"Pray what would you think of me, Monsieur Butscha, if I allowed myself to make fun of those who do me the honor to wish to marry me? You ought to know, master Jean, that even if a girl affects to despise the most despicable attentions, she is flattered by them."

"Then I flatter you?" said the young man, looking up at her with a face that was illuminated like a city for a festival.

"You?" she said; "you give me the most precious of all friendships,--a feeling as disinterested as that of a mother for her child. Compare yourself to no one; for even my father is obliged to be devoted to me." She paused. "I cannot say that I love you, in the sense which men give to that word, but what I do give you is eternal and can know no change."

"Then," said Butscha, stooping to pick up a pebble that he might kiss the hem of her garment, "suffer me to watch over you as a dragon guards a treasure. The poet was covering you just now with the lace-work of his precious phrases, the tinsel of his promises; he chanted his love on the best strings of his lyre, I know he did. If, as soon as this noble lover finds out how small your fortune is, he makes a sudden change in his behavior, and is cold and embarrassed, will you still marry him? shall you still esteem him?"

"He would be another Francisque Althor," she said, with a gesture of bitter disgust.

"Let me have the pleasure of producing that change of scene," said Butscha. "Not only shall it be sudden, but I believe I can change it back and make your poet as loving as before,--nay, it is possible to make him blow alternately hot and cold upon your heart, just as gracefully as he has talked on both sides of an argument in one evening without ever finding it out."

"If you are right," she said, "who can be trusted?"

"One who truly loves you."

"The little duke?"

Butscha looked at Modeste. The pair walked some distance in silence; the girl was impenetrable and not an eyelash quivered.

"Mademoiselle, permit me to be the exponent of the thoughts that are lying at the bottom of your heart like sea-mosses under the waves, and which you do not choose to gather up."

"Eh!" said Modeste, "so my intimate friend and counsellor thinks himself a mirror, does he?"

"No, an echo," he answered, with a gesture of sublime humility. "The duke loves you, but he loves you too much. If I, a dwarf, have understood the infinite delicacy of your heart, it would be repugnant to you to be worshipped like a saint in her shrine. You are eminently a woman; you neither want a man perpetually at your feet of whom you are eternally sure, nor a selfish egoist like Canalis, who will always prefer himself to you. Why? ah, that I don't know. But I will make myself a woman, an old woman, and find out the meaning of the plan which I have read in your eyes, and which perhaps is in the heart of every girl. Nevertheless, in your great soul you feel the need of worshipping. When a man is at your knees, you cannot put yourself at his. You can't advance in that way, as Voltaire might say. The little duke has too many genuflections in his moral being and the poet has too few,--indeed, I might say, none at all. Ha, I have guessed the mischief in your smiles when you talk to the grand equerry, and when he talks to you and you answer him. You would never be unhappy with the duke, and everybody will approve your choice, if you do choose him; but you will never love him. The ice of egotism, and the burning heat of ecstasy both produce indifference in the heart of every woman. It is evident to my mind that no such perpetual worship will give you the infinite delights which you are dreaming of in marriage,--in some marriage where obedience will be your pride, where noble little sacrifices can be made and hidden, where the heart is full of anxieties without a cause, and successes are awaited with eager hope, where each new chance for magnanimity is hailed with joy, where souls are comprehended to their inmost recesses, and where the woman protects with her love the man who protects her."

"You are a sorcerer!" exclaimed Modeste.

"Neither will you find that sweet equality of feeling, that continual sharing of each other's life, that certainty of pleasing which makes marriage tolerable, if you take Canalis,--a man who thinks of himself only, whose 'I' is the one string to his lute, whose mind is so fixed on himself that he has hitherto taken no notice of your father or the duke,--a man of second-rate ambitions, to whom your dignity and your devotion will matter nothing, who will make you a mere appendage to his household, and who already insults you by his indifference to your behavior; yes, if you permitted yourself to go so far as to box your mother's ears Canalis would shut his eyes to it, and deny your crime even to himself, because he thirsts for your money. And so, mademoiselle, when I spoke of the man who truly loves you I was not thinking of the great poet who is nothing but a little comedian, nor of the duke, who might be a good marriage for you, but never a husband--"

"Butscha, my heart is a blank page on which you are yourself writing all that you read there," cried Modeste, interrupting him. "You are carried away by your provincial hatred for everything that obliges you to look higher than your own head. You can't forgive a poet for being a statesman, for possessing the gift of speech, for having a noble future before him,--and you calumniate his intentions."

"His!--mademoiselle, he will turn his back upon you with the baseness of an Althor."

"Make him play that pretty little comedy, and--"

"That I will! he shall play it through and through within three days,--on Wednesday,--recollect, Wednesday! Until then, mademoiselle, amuse yourself by listening to the little tunes of the lyre, so that the discords and the false notes may come out all the more distinctly."

Modeste ran gaily back to the salon, where La Briere, who was sitting by the window, where he had doubtless been watching his idol, rose to his feet as if a groom of the chambers had suddenly announced, "The Queen." It was a movement of spontaneous respect, full of that living eloquence that lies in gesture even more than in speech. Spoken love cannot compare with acts of love; and every young girl of twenty has the wisdom of fifty in applying the axiom. In it lies the great secret of attraction. Instead of looking Modeste in the face, as Canalis who paid her public homage would have done, the neglected lover followed her with a furtive look between his eyelids, humble after the manner of Butscha, and almost timid. The young heiress observed it, as she took her place by Canalis, to whose game she proceeded to pay attention. During a conversation which ensued, La Briere heard Modeste say to her father that she should ride out for the first time on the following Wednesday; and she also reminded him that she had no whip in keeping with her new equipments. The young man flung a lightning glance at the dwarf, and a few minutes later the two were pacing the terrace.

"It is nine o'clock," cried Ernest. "I shall start for Paris at full gallop; I can get there to-morrow morning by ten. My dear Butscha, from you she will accept anything, for she is attached to you; let me give her a riding-whip in your name. If you will do me this immense kindness, you shall have not only my friendship but my devotion."

"Ah, you are very happy," said Butscha, ruefully; "you have money, you!"

"Tell Canalis not to expect me, and that he must find some pretext to account for my absence."

An hour later Ernest had ridden out of Havre. He reached Paris in twelve hours, where his first act was to secure a place in the mail-coach for Havre on the following evening. Then he went to three of the chief jewellers in Paris and compared all the whip-handles that they could offer; he was in search of some artistic treasure that was regally superb. He found one at last, made by Stidmann for a Russian, who was