Modeste Mignon, Honoré de Balzac [booksvooks txt] 📗

honor to believe that I'm deep enough to keep the secrets of my own business. As the head-clerk of a notary, my heart is a locked box, padlocked! My mouth never opens to let out anything about a client. I know all, and I know nothing. Besides, my passion is well known. I love Modeste; she is my pupil, and she must make a good marriage. I'll fool the duke, if need be; and you shall marry--"

"Germain, coffee and liqueurs," said Canalis.

"Liqueurs!" repeated Butscha with a wave of his hand, and the air of a sham virgin repelling seduction; "Ah, those poor deeds! one of 'em was a marriage contract; and that second clerk of mine is as stupid as--as--an epithalamium, and he's capable of digging his penknife right through the bride's paraphernalia; he thinks he's a handsome man because he's five feet six,--idiot!"

"Here is some creme de the, a liqueur of the West Indies," said Canalis. "You, whom Mademoiselle Modeste consults--"

"Yes, she consults me."

"Well, do you think she loves me?" asked the poet.

"Loves you? yes, more than she loves the duke," answered the dwarf, rousing himself from a stupor which was admirably played. "She loves you for your disinterestedness. She told me she was ready to make the greatest sacrifices for your sake; to give up dress and spend as little as possible on herself, and devote her life to showing you that in marrying her you hadn't done so" (hiccough) "bad a thing for yourself. She's as right as a trivet,--yes, and well informed. She knows everything, that girl."

"And she has three hundred thousand francs?"

"There may be quite as much as that," cried the dwarf, enthusiastically. "Papa Mignon,--mignon by name, mignon by nature, and that's why I respect him,--well, he would rob himself of everything to marry his daughter. Your Restoration" (hiccough) "has taught him how to live on half-pay; he'd be quite content to live with Dumay on next to nothing, if he could rake and scrape enough together to give the little one three hundred thousand francs. But don't let's forget that Dumay is going to leave all his money to Modeste. Dumay, you know, is a Breton, and that fact clinches the matter; he won't go back from his word, and his fortune is equal to the colonel's. But I don't approve of Monsieur Mignon's taking back that villa, and, as they often ask my advice, I told them so. 'You sink too much in it,' I said; 'if Vilquin does not buy it back there's two hundred thousand francs which won't bring you a penny; it only leaves you a hundred thousand to get along with, and it isn't enough.' The colonel and Dumay are consulting about it now. But nevertheless, between you and me, Modeste is sure to be rich. I hear talk on the quays against it; but that's all nonsense; people are jealous. Why, there's no such 'dot' in Havre," cried Butscha, beginning to count on his fingers. "Two to three hundred thousand in ready money," bending back the thumb of his left hand with the forefinger of his right, "that's one item; the reversion of the villa Mignon, that's another; 'tertio,' Dumay's property!" doubling down his middle finger. "Ha! little Modeste may count upon her six hundred thousand francs as soon as the two old soldiers have got their marching orders for eternity."

This coarse and candid statement, intermingled with a variety of liqueurs, sobered Canalis as much as it appeared to befuddle Butscha. To the latter, a young provincial, such a fortune must of course seem colossal. He let his head fall into the palm of his right hand, and putting his elbows majestically on the table, blinked his eyes and continued talking to himself:--

"In twenty years, thanks to that Code, which pillages fortunes under what they call 'Successions,' an heiress worth a million will be as rare as generosity in a money-lender. Suppose Modeste does want to spend all the interest of her own money,--well, she is so pretty, so sweet and pretty; why she's--you poets are always after metaphors--she's a weasel as tricky as a monkey."

"How came you to tell me she had six millions?" said Canalis to La Briere, in a low voice.

"My friend," said Ernest, "I do assure you that I was bound to silence by an oath; perhaps, even now, I ought not to say as much as that."

"Bound! to whom?"

"To Monsieur Mignon."

"Ernest! you who know how essential fortune is to me--"

Butscha snored.

"--who know my situation, and all that I shall lose in the Duchesse de Chaulieu, by this attempt at marrying, YOU could coldly let me plunge into such a thing as this?" exclaimed Canalis, turning pale. "It was a question of friendship; and ours was a compact entered into long before you ever saw that crafty Mignon."

"My dear fellow," said Ernest, "I love Modeste too well to--"

"Fool! then take her," cried the poet, "and break your oath."

"Will you promise me on your word of honor to forget what I now tell you, and to behave to me as though this confidence had never been made, whatever happens?"

"I'll swear that, by my mother's memory."

"Well then," said La Briere, "Monsieur Mignon told me in Paris that he was very far from having the colossal fortune which the Mongenods told me about and which I mentioned to you. The colonel intends to give two hundred thousand francs to his daughter. And now, Melchior, I ask you, was the father really distrustful of us, as you thought; or was he sincere? It is not for me to answer those questions. If Modeste without a fortune deigns to choose me, she will be my wife."

"A blue-stocking! educated till she is a terror! a girl who has read everything, who knows everything,--in theory," cried Canalis, hastily, noticing La Briere's gesture, "a spoiled child, brought up in luxury in her childhood, and weaned of it for five years. Ah! my poor friend, take care what you are about."

"Ode and Code," said Butscha, waking up, "you do the ode and I the code; there's only a C's difference between us. Well, now, code comes from 'coda,' a tail,--mark that word! See here! a bit of good advice is worth your wine and your cream of tea. Father Mignon--he's cream, too; the cream of honest men--he is going with his daughter on this riding party; do you go up frankly and talk 'dot' to him. He'll answer plainly, and you'll get at the truth, just as surely as I'm drunk, and you're a great poet,--but no matter for that; we are to leave Havre together, that's settled, isn't it? I'm to be your secretary in place of that little fellow who sits there grinning at me and thinking I'm drunk. Come, let's go, and leave him to marry the girl."

Canalis rose to leave the room to dress for the excursion.

"Hush, not a word,--he is going to commit suicide," whispered Butscha, sober as a judge, to La Briere as he made the gesture of a street boy at Canalis's back. "Adieu, my chief!" he shouted, in stentorian tones, "will you allow me to take a snooze in that kiosk down in the garden?"

"Make yourself at home," answered the poet.

Butscha, pursued by the laughter of the three servants of the establishment, gained the kiosk by walking over the flower-beds and round the vases with the perverse grace of an insect describing its interminable zig-zags as it tries to get out of a closed window. When he had clambered into the kiosk, and the servants had retired, he sat down on a wooden bench and wallowed in the delights of his triumph. He had completely fooled a great man; he had not only torn off his mask, but he had made him untie the strings himself; and he laughed like an author over his own play,--that is to say, with a true sense of the immense value of his "vis comica."

"Men are tops!" he cried, "you've only to find the twine to wind 'em up with. But I'm like my fellows," he added, presently. "I should faint away if any one came and said to me 'Mademoiselle Modeste has been thrown from her horse, and has broken her leg.'"


CHAPTER XXIV. THE POET FEELS THAT HE IS LOVED TOO WELL

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