"Ah, mademoiselle, to train up your children, if you will deign to make me their tutor. But, oh! if you would only listen to some advice. Let me take up this matter; let me look into the life and habits of this man,--find out if he is kind, or bad-tempered, or gentle, if he commands the respect which you merit in a husband, if he is able to love utterly, preferring you to everything, even his own talent--"

"What does that signify if I love him?"

"Ah, true!" cried the dwarf.

At that instant Madame Mignon was saying to her friends,--

"My daughter saw the man she loves this morning."

"Then it must have been that sulphur waistcoat which puzzled you so, Latournelle," said his wife. "The young man had a pretty white rose in his b.u.t.tonhole."

"Ah!" sighed the mother, "the sign of recognition."

"And he also wore the ribbon of an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a charming young man. But we are all deceiving ourselves; Modeste never raised her veil, and her clothes were huddled on like a beggar-woman's--"

"And she said she was ill," cried the notary; "but she has taken off her m.u.f.flings and is just as well as she ever was."

"It is incomprehensible!" said Dumay.

"Not at all," said the notary; "it is now as clear as day."

"My child," said Madame Mignon to Modeste, as she came into the room, followed by Butscha, "did you see a well-dressed young man at church this morning, with a white rose in his b.u.t.ton-hole?"

"I saw him," said Butscha quickly, perceiving by everybody's strained attention that Modeste was likely to fall into a trap. "It was Grindot, the famous architect, with whom the town is in treaty for the restoration of the church. He has just come from Paris, and I met him this morning examining the exterior as I was on my way to Sainte-Adresse."

"Oh, an architect, was he? he puzzled me," said Modeste, for whom Butscha had thus gained time to recover herself.

Dumay looked askance at Butscha. Modeste, fully warned, recovered her impenetrable composure. Dumay's distrust was now thoroughly aroused, and he resolved to go the mayor's office early in the morning and ascertain if the architect had really been in Havre the previous day. Butscha, on the other hand, was equally determined to go to Paris and find out something about Ca.n.a.lis.

Gobenheim came to play whist, and by his presence subdued and compressed all this fermentation of feelings. Modeste awaited her mother's bedtime with impatience. She intended to write, but never did so except at night. Here is the letter which love dictated to her while all the world was sleeping:--

To Monsieur de Ca.n.a.lis,--Ah! my friend, my well-beloved! What atrocious falsehoods those portraits in the shop-windows are! And I, who made that horrible lithograph my joy!--I am humbled at the thought of loving one so handsome. No; it is impossible that those Parisian women are so stupid as not to have seen their dreams fulfilled in you. You neglected! you unloved! I do not believe a word of all that you have written me about your lonely and obscure life, your hunger for an idol,--sought in vain until now. You have been too well loved, monsieur; your brow, white and smooth as a magnolia leaf, reveals it; and it is I who must be neglected,--for who am I? Ah! why have you called me to life? I felt for a moment as though the heavy burden of the flesh was leaving me; my soul had broken the crystal which held it captive; it pervaded my whole being; the cold silence of material things had ceased; all things in nature had a voice and spoke to me. The old church was luminous. It's arched roof, brilliant with gold and azure like those of an Italian cathedral, sparkled above my head. Melodies such as the angels sang to martyrs, quieting their pains, sounded from the organ. The rough pavements of Havre seemed to my feet a flowery mead; the sea spoke to me with a voice of sympathy, like an old friend whom I had never truly understood. I saw clearly how the roses in my garden had long adored me and bidden me love; they lifted their heads and smiled as I came back from church. I heard your name, "Melchior," chiming in the flower-bells; I saw it written on the clouds. Yes, yes, I live, I am living, thanks to thee,--my poet, more beautiful than that cold, conventional Lord Byron, with a face as dull as the English climate. One glance of thine, thine Orient glance, pierced through my double veil and sent thy blood to my heart, and from thence to my head and feet.

Ah! that is not the life our mother gave us. A hurt to thee would hurt me too at the very instant it was given,--my life exists by thy thought only. I know now the purpose of the divine faculty of music; the angels invented it to utter love. Ah, my Melchior, to have genius and to have beauty is too much; a man should be made to choose between them at his birth.

When I think of the treasures of tenderness and affection which you have given me, and more especially for the last month, I ask myself if I dream. No, but you hide some mystery; what woman can yield you up to me and not die? Ah! jealousy has entered my heart with love,--love in which I could not have believed. How could I have imagined so mighty a conflagration? And now--strange and inconceivable revulsion!--I would rather you were ugly.

What follies I committed after I came home! The yellow dahlias reminded me of your waistcoat, the white roses were my loving friends; I bowed to them with a look that belonged to you, like all that is of me. The very color of the gloves, moulded to hands of a gentleman, your step along the nave,--all, all, is so printed on my memory that sixty years hence I shall see the veriest trifles of this day of days,--the color of the atmosphere, the ray of sunshine that flickered on a certain pillar; I shall hear the prayer your step interrupted; I shall inhale the incense of the altar; forever I shall feel above our heads the priestly hands that blessed us both as you pa.s.sed by me at the closing benediction. The good Abbe Marcelin married us then! The happiness, above that of earth, which I feel in this new world of unexpected emotions can only be equalled by the joy of telling it to you, of sending it back to him who poured it into my heart with the lavishness of the sun itself. No more veils, no more disguises, my beloved. Come back to me, oh, come back soon. With joy I now unmask.

You have no doubt heard of the house of Mignon in Havre? Well, I am, through an irreparable misfortune, its sole heiress. But you are not to look down upon us, descendant of an Auvergne knight; the arms of the Mignon de La Bastie will do no dishonor to those of Ca.n.a.lis. We bear gules, on a bend sable four bezants or; quarterly four crosses patriarchal or; a cardinal's hat as crest, and the fiocchi for supports. Dear, I will be faithful to our motto: "Una fides, unus Dominus!"--the true faith, and one only Master.

Perhaps, my friend, you will find some irony in my name, after all that I have done, and all that I herein avow. I am named Modeste.

Therefore I have not deceived you by signing "O. d'Este M."

Neither have I misled you about our fortune; it will amount, I believe, to the sum which rendered you so virtuous. I know that to you money is a consideration of small importance; therefore I speak of it without reserve. Let me tell you how happy it makes me to give freedom of action to our happiness,--to be able to say, when the fancy for travel takes us, "Come, let us go in a comfortable carriage, sitting side by side, without a thought of money"--happy, in short, to tell the king, "I have the fortune which you require in your peers." Thus Modeste Mignon can be of service to you, and her gold will have the n.o.blest of uses.

As to your servant herself,--you did see her once, at her window.

Yes, "the fairest daughter of Eve the fair" was indeed your unknown damozel; but how little the Modeste of to-day resembles her of that long past era! That one was in her shroud, this one --have I made you know it?--has received from you the life of life.

Love, pure, and sanctioned, the love my father, now returning rich and prosperous, will authorize, has raised me with its powerful yet childlike hand from the grave in which I slept. You have wakened me as the sun wakens the flowers. The eyes of your beloved are no longer those of the little Modeste so daring in her ignorance,--no, they are dimmed with the sight of happiness, and the lids close over them. To-day I tremble lest I can never deserve my fate. The king has come in his glory; my lord has now a subject who asks pardon for the liberties she has taken, like the gambler with loaded dice after cheating Monsieur de Grammont.

My cherished poet! I will be thy Mignon--happier far than the Mignon of Goethe, for thou wilt leave me in mine own land,--in thy heart. Just as I write this pledge of our betrothal a nightingale in the Vilquin park answers for thee. Ah, tell me quick that his note, so pure, so clear, so full, which fills my heart with joy and love like an Annunciation, does not lie to me.

My father will pa.s.s through Paris on his way from Ma.r.s.eilles; the house of Mongenod, with whom he corresponds, will know his address. Go to him, my Melchior, tell him that you love me; but do not try to tell him how I love you,--let that be forever between ourselves and G.o.d. I, my dear one, am about to tell everything to my mother. Her heart will justify my conduct; she will rejoice in our secret poem, so romantic, human and divine in one.

You have the confession of the daughter; you must now obtain the consent of the Comte de La Bastie, father of your

Modeste.

P.S.--Above all, do not come to Havre without having first obtained my father's consent. If you love me you will not fail to find him on his way through Paris.

"What are you doing, up at this hour, Mademoiselle Modeste?" said the voice of Dumay at her door.

"Writing to my father," she answered; "did you not tell me you should start in the morning?"

Dumay had nothing to say to that, and he went to bed, while Modeste wrote another long letter, this time to her father.

On the morrow, Francois Cochet, terrified at seeing the Havre postmark on the envelope which Ernest had mailed the night before, brought her young mistress the following letter and took away the one which Modeste had written:--

To Mademoiselle O. d'Este M.,--My heart tells me that you were the woman so carefully veiled and disguised, and seated between Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, who have but one child, a son.

Ah, my love, if you have only a modest station, without distinction, without importance, without money even, you do not know how happy that would make me. You ought to understand me by this time; why will you not tell me the truth? I am no poet, --except in heart, through love, through you. Oh! what power of affection there is in me to keep me here in this hotel, instead of mounting to Ingouville which I can see from my windows. Will you ever love me as I love you? To leave Havre in such uncertainty! Am I not punished for loving you as if I had committed a crime? But I obey you blindly. Let me have a letter quickly, for if you have been mysterious, I have returned you mystery for mystery, and I must at last throw off my disguise, show you the poet that I am, and abdicate my borrowed glory.

This letter made Modeste terribly uneasy. She could not get back the one which Francoise had carried away before she came to the last words, whose meaning she now sought by reading them again and again; but she went to her own room and wrote an answer in which she demanded an immediate explanation.

CHAPTER XIV. MATTERS GROWN COMPLICATED

During these little events other little events were going on in Havre, which caused Modeste to forget her present uneasiness. Dumay went down to Havre early in the morning, and soon discovered that no architect had been in town the day before. Furious at Butscha's lie, which revealed a conspiracy of which he was resolved to know the meaning, he rushed from the mayor's office to his friend Latournelle.

"Where's your Master Butscha?" he demanded of the notary, when he saw that the clerk was not in his place.

"Butscha, my dear fellow, has gone to Paris. He heard some news of his father this morning on the quays, from a Swedish sailor. It seems the father went to the Indies and served a prince, or something, and he is now in Paris."

"Lies! it's all a trick! infamous! I'll find that d.a.m.ned cripple if I've got to go express to Paris for him," cried Dumay. "Butscha is deceiving us; he knows something about Modeste, and hasn't told us. If he meddles in this thing he shall never be a notary. I'll roll him in the mud from which he came, I'll--"

"Come, come, my friend; never hang a man before you try him," said Latournelle, frightened at Dumay's rage.

After stating the facts on which his suspicions were founded, Dumay begged Madame Latournelle to go and stay at the Chalet during his absence.

"You will find the colonel in Paris," said the notary. "In the shipping news quoted this morning in the Journal of Commerce, I found under the head of Ma.r.s.eilles--here, see for yourself," he said, offering the paper. "'The Bettina Mignon, Captain Mignon, arrived October 6'; it is now the 17th, and the colonel is sure to be in Paris."

Dumay requested Gobenheim to do without him in future, and then went back to the Chalet, which he reached just as Modeste was sealing her two letters, to her father and Ca.n.a.lis. Except for the address the letters were precisely alike both in weight and appearance. Modeste thought she had laid that to her father over that to her Melchior, but had, in fact, done exactly the reverse. This mistake, so often made in the little things of life, occasioned the discovery of her secret by Dumay and her mother. The former was talking vehemently to Madame Mignon in the salon, and revealing to her his fresh fears caused by Modeste's duplicity and Butscha's connivance.

"Madame," he cried, "he is a serpent whom we have warmed in our bosoms; there's no place in his contorted little body for a soul!"

Modeste put the letter for her father into the pocket of her ap.r.o.n, supposing it to be that for Ca.n.a.lis, and came downstairs with the letter for her lover in her hand, to see Dumay before he started for Paris.