Modeste Mignon Part 14

"I will permit you," continued the peac.o.c.k, spreading his tail, "out of respect for your position, which I fully appreciate, to open that coffer and look for the letter of your young lady. Though I know I am right, I remember names, and I a.s.sure you you are mistaken in thinking--"

"And this is what a poor child comes to in this gulf of Paris!" cried Dumay,--"the darling of her parents, the joy of her friends, the hope of all, petted by all, the pride of a family, who has six persons so devoted to her that they would willingly make a rampart of their lives and fortunes between her and sorrow. Monsieur," Dumay remarked after a pause, "you are a great poet, and I am only a poor soldier. For fifteen years I served my country in the ranks; I have had the wind of many a bullet in my face; I have crossed Siberia and been a prisoner there; the Russians flung me on a kibitka, and G.o.d knows what I suffered. I have seen thousands of my comrades die,--but you, you have given me a chill to the marrow of my bones, such as I never felt before."

Dumay fancied that his words moved the poet, but in fact they only flattered him,--a thing which at this period of his life had become almost an impossibility; for his ambitious mind had long forgotten the first perfumed phial that praise had broken over his head.

"Ah, my soldier!" he said solemnly, laying his hand on Dumay's shoulder, and thinking to himself how droll it was to make a soldier of the empire tremble, "this young girl may be all in all to you, but to society at large what is she? nothing. At this moment the greatest mandarin in China may be yielding up the ghost and putting half the universe in mourning, and what is that to you? The English are killing thousands of people in India more worthy than we are; why, at this very moment while I am speaking to you some ravishing woman is being burned alive,--did that make you care less for your cup of coffee this morning at breakfast? Not a day pa.s.ses in Paris that some mother in rags does not cast her infant on the world to be picked up by whoever finds it; and yet see! here is this delicious tea in a cup that cost five louis, and I write verses which Parisian women rush to buy, exclaiming, 'Divine!

delicious! charming! food for the soul!' Social nature, like Nature herself, is a great forgetter. You will be quite surprised ten years hence at what you have done to-day. You are here in a city where people die, where they marry, where they adore each other at an a.s.signation, where young girls suffocate themselves, where the man of genius with his cargo of thoughts teeming with humane beneficence goes to the bottom,--all side by side, sometimes under the same roof, and yet ignorant of each other, ignorant and indifferent. And here you come among us and ask us to expire with grief at this commonplace affair."

"You call yourself a poet!" cried Dumay, "but don't you feel what you write?"

"Good heavens! if we endured the joys or the woes we sing we should be as worn out in three months as a pair of old boots," said the poet, smiling. "But stay, you shall not come from Havre to Paris to see Ca.n.a.lis without carrying something back with you. Warrior!" (Ca.n.a.lis had the form and action of an Homeric hero) "learn this from the poet: Every n.o.ble sentiment in man is a poem so exclusively individual that his nearest friend, his other self, cares nothing for it. It is a treasure which is his alone, it is--"

"Forgive me for interrupting you," said Dumay, who was gazing at the poet with horror, "but did you ever come to Havre?"

"I was there for a day and a night in the spring of 1824 on my way to London."

"You are a man of honor," continued Dumay; "will you give me your word that you do not know Mademoiselle Modeste Mignon?"

"This is the first time that name ever struck my ear," replied Ca.n.a.lis.

"Ah, monsieur!" said Dumay, "into what dark intrigue am I about to plunge? Can I count upon you to help me in my inquiries?--for I am certain that some one has been using your name. You ought to have had a letter yesterday from Havre."

"I received none. Be sure, monsieur, that I will help you," said Ca.n.a.lis, "so far as I have the opportunity of doing so."

Dumay withdrew, his heart torn with anxiety, believing that the wretched Butscha had worn the skin of the poet to deceive Modeste; whereas Butscha himself, keen-witted as a prince seeking revenge, and far cleverer than any paid spy, was ferretting out the life and actions of Ca.n.a.lis, escaping notice by his insignificance, like an insect that bores its way into the sap of a tree.

The Breton had scarcely left the poet's house when La Briere entered his friend's study. Naturally, Ca.n.a.lis told him of the visit of the man from Havre.

"Ha!" said Ernest, "Modeste Mignon; that is just what I have come to speak of."

"Ah, bah!" cried Ca.n.a.lis; "have I had a triumph by proxy?"

"Yes; and here is the key to it. My friend, I am loved by the sweetest girl in all the world,--beautiful enough to shine beside the greatest beauties in Paris, with a heart and mind worthy of Clarissa. She has seen me; I have pleased her, and she thinks me the great Ca.n.a.lis. But that is not all. Modeste Mignon is of high birth, and Mongenod has just told me that her father, the Comte de La Bastie, has something like six millions. The father is here now, and I have asked him through Mongenod for an interview at two o'clock. Mongenod is to give him a hint, just a word, that it concerns the happiness of his daughter. But you will readily understand that before seeing the father I feel I ought to make a clean breast of it to you."

"Among the plants whose flowers bloom in the sunshine of fame," said Ca.n.a.lis, impressively, "there is one, and the most magnificent, which bears like the orange-tree a golden fruit amid the mingled perfumes of beauty and of mind; a lovely plant, a true tenderness, a perfect bliss, and--it eludes me." Ca.n.a.lis looked at the carpet that Ernest might not read his eyes. "Could I," he continued after a pause to regain his self-possession, "how could I have divined that flower from a pretty sheet of perfumed paper, that true heart, that young girl, that woman in whom love wears the livery of flattery, who loves us for ourselves, who offers us felicity? It needed but an angel or a demon to perceive her; and what am I but the ambitious head of a Court of Claims! Ah, my friend, fame makes us the target of a thousand arrows. One of us owes his rich marriage to an hydraulic piece of poetry, while I, more seductive, more a woman's man than he, have missed mine,--for, do you love her, poor girl?" he said, looking up at La Briere.

"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the young man.

"Well then," said the poet, taking his secretary's arm and leaning heavily upon it, "be happy, Ernest. By a mere accident I have been not ungrateful to you. You are richly rewarded for your devotion, and I will generously further your happiness."

Ca.n.a.lis was furious; but he could not behave otherwise than with propriety, and he made the best of his disappointment by mounting it as a pedestal.

"Ah, Ca.n.a.lis, I have never really known you till this moment."

"Did you expect to? It takes some time to go round the world," replied the poet with his pompous irony.

"But think," said La Briere, "of this enormous fortune."

"Ah, my friend, is it not well invested in you?" cried Ca.n.a.lis, accompanying the words with a charming gesture.

"Melchior," said La Briere, "I am yours for life and death."

He wrung the poet's hand and left him abruptly, for he was in haste to meet Monsieur Mignon.

CHAPTER XV. A FATHER STEPS IN

The Comte de La Bastie was at this moment overwhelmed with the sorrows which lay in wait for him as their prey. He had learned from his daughter's letter of Bettina's death and of his wife's infirmity, and Dumay related to him, when they met, his terrible perplexity as to Modeste's love affairs.

"Leave me to myself," he said to his faithful friend.

As the lieutenant closed the door, the unhappy father threw himself on a sofa, with his head in his hands, weeping those slow, scanty tears which suffuse the eyes of a man of sixty, but do not fall,--tears soon dried, yet quick to start again,--the last dews of the human autumn.

"To have children, to have a wife, to adore them--what is it but to have many hearts and bare them to a dagger?" he cried, springing up with the bound of a tiger and walking up and down the room. "To be a father is to give one's self over, bound hand and foot to sorrow. If I meet that D'Estourny I will kill him. To have daughters!--one gives her life to a scoundrel, the other, my Modeste, falls a victim to whom? a coward, who deceives her with the gilded paper of a poet. If it were Ca.n.a.lis himself it might not be so bad; but that Scapin of a lover!--I will strangle him with my two hands," he cried, making an involuntary gesture of furious determination. "And what then? suppose my Modeste were to die of grief?"

He gazed mechanically out of the windows of the hotel des Princes, and then returned to the sofa, where he sat motionless. The fatigues of six voyages to India, the anxieties of speculation, the dangers he had encountered and evaded, and his many griefs, had silvered Charles Mignon's head. His handsome soldierly face, so pure in outline and now bronzed by the suns of China and the southern seas, had acquired an air of dignity which his present grief rendered almost sublime.

"Mongenod told me he felt confidence in the young man who is coming to ask me for my daughter," he thought at last; and at this moment Ernest de La Briere was announced by one of the servants whom Monsieur de La Bastie had attached to himself during the last four years.

"You have come, monsieur, from my friend Mongenod?" he said.

"Yes," replied Ernest, growing timid when he saw before him a face as sombre as Oth.e.l.lo's. "My name is Ernest de La Briere, related to the family of the late cabinet minister, and his private secretary during his term of office. On his dismissal, his Excellency put me in the Court of Claims, to which I am legal counsel, and where I may possibly succeed as chief--"

"And how does all this concern Mademoiselle de La Bastie?" asked the count.

"Monsieur, I love her; and I have the unhoped-for happiness of being loved by her. Hear me, monsieur," cried Ernest, checking a violent movement on the part of the angry father. "I have the strangest confession to make to you, a shameful one for a man of honor; but the worst punishment of my conduct, natural enough in itself, is not the telling of it to you; no, I fear the daughter even more than the father."

Ernest then related simply, and with the n.o.bleness that comes of sincerity, all the facts of his little drama, not omitting the twenty or more letters, which he had brought with him, nor the interview which he had just had with Ca.n.a.lis. When Monsieur Mignon had finished reading the letters, the unfortunate lover, pale and suppliant, actually trembled under the fiery glance of the Provencal.

"Monsieur," said the latter, "in this whole matter there is but one error, but that is cardinal. My daughter will not have six millions; at the utmost, she will have a marriage portion of two hundred thousand francs, and very doubtful expectations."

"Ah, monsieur!" cried Ernest, rising and grasping Monsieur Mignon's hand; "you take a load from my breast. Nothing can now hinder my happiness. I have friends, influence; I shall certainly be chief of the Court of Claims. Had Mademoiselle Mignon no more than ten thousand francs, if I had even to make a settlement on her, she should still be my wife; and to make her happy as you, monsieur, have made your wife happy, to be to you a real son (for I have no father), are the deepest desires of my heart."

Charles Mignon stepped back three paces and fixed upon La Briere a look which entered the eyes of the young man as a dagger enters its sheath; he stood silent a moment, recognizing the absolute candor, the pure truthfulness of that open nature in the light of the young man's inspired eyes. "Is fate at last weary of pursuing me?" he asked himself.

"Am I to find in this young man the pearl of sons-in-law?" He walked up and down the room in strong agitation.

"Monsieur," he said at last, "you are bound to submit wholly to the judgment which you have come here to seek, otherwise you are now playing a farce."

"Oh, monsieur!"

"Listen to me," said the father, nailing La Briere where he stood with a glance. "I shall be neither harsh, nor hard, nor unjust. You shall have the advantages and the disadvantages of the false position in which you have placed yourself. My daughter believes that she loves one of the great poets of the day, whose fame is really that which has attracted her. Well, I, her father, intend to give her the opportunity to choose between the celebrity which has been a beacon to her, and the poor reality which the irony of fate has flung at her feet. Ought she not to choose between Ca.n.a.lis and yourself? I rely upon your honor not to repeat what I have told you as to the state of my affairs. You may each come, I mean you and your friend the Baron de Ca.n.a.lis, to Havre for the last two weeks of October. My house will be open to both of you, and my daughter must have an opportunity to study you. You must yourself bring your rival, and not disabuse him as to the foolish tales he will hear about the wealth of the Comte de La Bastie. I go to Havre to-morrow, and I shall expect you three days later. Adieu, monsieur."

Poor La Briere went back to Ca.n.a.lis with a dragging step. The poet, meantime, left to himself, had given way to a current of thought out of which had come that secondary impulse which Monsieur de Talleyrand valued so much. The first impulse is the voice of nature, the second that of society.

"A girl worth six millions," he thought to himself, "and my eyes were not able to see that gold shining in the darkness! With such a fortune I could be peer of France, count, marquis, amba.s.sador. I've replied to middle-cla.s.s women and silly women, and crafty creatures who wanted autographs; I've tired myself to death with masked-ball intrigues,--at the very moment when G.o.d was sending me a soul of price, an angel with golden wings! Bah! I'll make a poem on it, and perhaps the chance will come again. Heavens! the luck of that little La Briere,--strutting about in my l.u.s.tre--plagiarism! I'm the cast and he's to be the statue, is he? It is the old fable of Bertrand and Raton. Six millions, a beauty, a Mignon de La Bastie, an aristocratic divinity loving poetry and the poet! And I, who showed my muscle as man of the world, who did those Alcide exercises to silence by moral force the champion of physical force, that old soldier with a heart, that friend of this very young girl, whom he'll now go and tell that I have a heart of iron!--I, to play Napoleon when I ought to have been seraphic! Good heavens! True, I shall have my friend. Friendship is a beautiful thing. I have kept him, but at what a price! Six millions, that's the cost of it; we can't have many friends if we pay all that for them."

La Briere entered the room as Ca.n.a.lis reached this point in his meditations. He was gloom personified.