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 Ca.n.a.lis. "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 Ca.n.a.lis, 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-cla.s.s 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 Ca.n.a.lis 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 pa.s.sion 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. Ca.n.a.lis is charming; there's intellect in his silence, pa.s.sion 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 Ca.n.a.lis 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."

"Ca.n.a.lis 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 Ca.n.a.lis, 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 a.s.suredly 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," Ca.n.a.lis 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 a.s.sure 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."

Ca.n.a.lis 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 rea.s.sembled 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 n.o.ble birth with those of genius and beauty. Ca.n.a.lis 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, Ca.n.a.lis 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 Ca.n.a.lis 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 Ca.n.a.lis, laughing.

Modeste smiled as Henri IV. must have smiled after drawing out the characters of his three princ.i.p.al ministers, for the benefit of a foreign amba.s.sador, by means of three answers to an insidious question.

On the day of the dinner, Modeste, led away by the preference she bestowed on Ca.n.a.lis, walked alone with him up and down the gravelled s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 t.i.tle is a fortune that we secure to our children without the possibility of loss."

"How is it, then," said Ca.n.a.lis, 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 t.i.tle would seem to be of special service to him?"

The two ladies cast a look at Ca.n.a.lis 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 Ca.n.a.lis, "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 G.o.d granted us an opportunity to meet one in whom we find the n.o.ble blood, the mind, and fortune of a d.u.c.h.esse d'Herouville."