Modeste Mignon Part 20

"No doubt he came to Havre to inquire about the Mignons in the interests of his friend the poet," said Modeste, looking furtively at her father.

"It was certainly he whom we saw in church."

Madame Dumay and Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, accepted this as the natural explanation of Ernest's journey.

CHAPTER XIX. OF WHICH THE AUTHOR THINKS A GOOD DEAL

"Do you know, Ernest," cried Ca.n.a.lis, when they had driven a short distance from the house, "I don't see any marriageable woman in society in Paris who compares with that adorable girl."

"Ah, that ends it!" replied Ernest. "She loves you, or she will love you if you desire it. Your fame won half the battle. Well, you may now have it all your own way. You shall go there alone in future. Modeste despises me; she is right to do so; and I don't see any reason why I should condemn myself to see, to love, desire, and adore that which I can never possess."

After a few consoling remarks, dashed with his own satisfaction at having made a new version of Caesar's phrase, Ca.n.a.lis divulged a desire to break with the d.u.c.h.esse de Chaulieu. La Briere, totally unable to keep up the conversation, made the beauty of the night an excuse to be set down, and then rushed like one possessed to the seash.o.r.e, where he stayed till past ten, in a half-demented state, walking hurriedly up and down, talking aloud in broken sentences, sometimes standing still or sitting down, without noticing the uneasiness of two custom-house officers who were on the watch. After loving Modeste's wit and intellect and her aggressive frankness, he now joined adoration of her beauty--that is to say, love without reason, love inexplicable--to all the other reasons which had drawn him ten days earlier, to the church in Havre.

He returned to the Chalet, where the Pyrenees hounds barked at him till he was forced to relinquish the pleasure of gazing at Modeste's windows.

In love, such things are of no more account to the lover than the work which is covered by the last layer of color is to an artist; yet they make up the whole of love, just as the hidden toil is the whole of art.

Out of them arise the great painter and the true lover whom the woman and the public end, sometimes too late, by adoring.

"Well then!" he cried aloud, "I will stay, I will suffer, I will love her for myself only, in solitude. Modeste shall be my sun, my life; I will breathe with her breath, rejoice in her joys and bear her griefs, be she even the wife of that egoist, Ca.n.a.lis."

"That's what I call loving, monsieur," said a voice which came from a shrub by the side of the road. "Ha, ha, so all the world is in love with Mademoiselle de La Bastie?"

And Butscha suddenly appeared and looked at La Briere. La Briere checked his anger when, by the light of the moon, he saw the dwarf, and he made a few steps without replying.

"Soldiers who serve in the same company ought to be good comrades,"

remarked Butscha. "You don't love Ca.n.a.lis; neither do I."

"He is my friend," replied Ernest.

"Ha, you are the little secretary?"

"You are to know, monsieur, that I am no man's secretary. I have the honor to be of counsel to a supreme court of this kingdom."

"I have the honor to salute Monsieur de La Briere," said Butscha. "I myself have the honor to be head clerk to Latournelle, chief councillor of Havre, and my position is a better one than yours. Yes, I have had the happiness of seeing Mademoiselle Modeste de La Bastie nearly every evening for the last four years, and I expect to live near her, as a king's servant lives in the Tuileries. If they offered me the throne of Russia I should answer, 'I love the sun too well.' Isn't that telling you, monsieur, that I care more for her than for myself? I am looking after her interests with the most honorable intentions. Do you believe that the proud d.u.c.h.esse de Chaulieu would cast a favorable eye on the happiness of Madame de Ca.n.a.lis if her waiting-woman, who is in love with Monsieur Germain, not liking that charming valet's absence in Havre, were to say to her mistress while brushing her hair--"

"Who do you know about all this?" said La Briere, interrupting Butscha.

"In the first place, I am clerk to a notary," answered Butscha. "But haven't you seen my hump? It is full of resources, monsieur. I have made myself cousin to Mademoiselle Philoxene Jacmin, born at Honfleur, where my mother was born, a Jacmin,--there are eight branches of the Jacmins at Honfleur. So my cousin Philoxene, enticed by the bait of a highly improbable fortune, has told me a good many things."

"The d.u.c.h.ess is vindictive?" said La Briere.

"Vindictive as a queen, Philoxene says; she has never yet forgiven the duke for being nothing more than her husband," replied Butscha. "She hates as she loves. I know all about her character, her tastes, her toilette, her religion, and her manners; for Philoxene stripped her for me, soul and corset. I went to the opera expressly to see her, and I didn't grudge the ten francs it cost me--I don't mean the play. If my imaginary cousin had not told me the d.u.c.h.ess had seen her fifty summers, I should have thought I was over-generous in giving her thirty; she has never known a winter, that d.u.c.h.ess!"

"Yes," said La Briere, "she is a cameo--preserved because it is stone.

Ca.n.a.lis would be in a bad way if the d.u.c.h.ess were to find out what he is doing here; and I hope, monsieur, that you will go no further in this business of spying, which is unworthy of an honest man."

"Monsieur," said Butscha, proudly; "for me Modeste is my country. I do not spy; I foresee, I take precautions. The d.u.c.h.ess will come here if it is desirable, or she will stay tranquilly where she is, according to what I judge best."

"You?"

"I."

"And how, pray?"

"Ha, that's it!" said the little hunchback, plucking a blade of gra.s.s.

"See here! this herb believes that men build palaces for it to grow in; it wedges its way between the closest blocks of marble, and brings them down, just as the ma.s.ses forced into the edifice of feudality have brought it to the ground. The power of the feeble life that can creep everywhere is greater than that of the mighty behind their cannons. I am one of three who have sworn that Modeste shall be happy, and we would sell our honor for her. Adieu, monsieur. If you truly love Mademoiselle de La Bastie, forget this conversation and shake hands with me, for I think you've got a heart. I longed to see the Chalet, and I got here just as SHE was putting out her light. I saw the dogs rush at you, and I overheard your words, and that is why I take the liberty of saying we serve in the same regiment--that of loyal devotion."

"Monsieur," said La Briere, wringing the hunchback's hand, "would you have the friendliness to tell me if Mademoiselle Modeste ever loved any one WITH LOVE before she wrote to Ca.n.a.lis?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Butscha in an altered voice; "that thought is an insult.

And even now, who knows if she really loves? does she know herself?

She is enamored of genius, of the soul and intellect of that seller of verses, that literary quack; but she will study him, we shall all study him; and I know how to make the man's real character peep out from under that turtle-sh.e.l.l of fine manners,--we'll soon see the petty little head of his ambition and his vanity!" cried Butscha, rubbing his hands. "So, unless mademoiselle is desperately taken with him--"

"Oh! she was seized with admiration when she saw him, as if he were something marvellous," exclaimed La Briere, letting the secret of his jealousy escape him.

"If he is a loyal, honest fellow, and loves her; if he is worthy of her; if he renounces his d.u.c.h.ess," said Butscha,--"then I'll manage the d.u.c.h.ess! Here, my dear sir, take this road, and you will get home in ten minutes."

But as they parted, Butscha turned back and hailed poor Ernest, who, as a true lover, would gladly have stayed there all night talking of Modeste.

"Monsieur," said Butscha, "I have not yet had the honor of seeing our great poet. I am very curious to observe that magnificent phenomenon in the exercise of his functions. Do me the favor to bring him to the Chalet to-morrow evening, and stay as long as possible; for it takes more than an hour for a man to show himself for what he is. I shall be the first to see if he loves, if he can love, or if he ever will love Mademoiselle Modeste."

"You are very young to--"

"--to be a professor," said Butscha, cutting short La Briere. "Ha, monsieur, deformed folks are born a hundred years old. And besides, a sick man who has long been sick, knows more than his doctor; he knows the disease, and that is more than can be said for the best of doctors.

Well, so it is with a man who cherishes a woman in his heart when the woman is forced to disdain him for his ugliness or his deformity; he ends by knowing so much of love that he becomes seductive, just as the sick man recovers his health; stupidity alone is incurable. I have had neither father nor mother since I was six years old; I am now twenty-five. Public charity has been my mother, the procureur du roi my father. Oh! don't be troubled," he added, seeing Ernest's gesture; "I am much more lively than my situation. Well, for the last six years, ever since a woman's eye first told me I had no right to love, I do love, and I study women. I began with the ugly ones, for it is best to take the bull by the horns. So I took my master's wife, who has certainly been an angel to me, for my first study. Perhaps I did wrong; but I couldn't help it. I pa.s.sed her through my alembic and what did I find? this thought, crouching at the bottom of her heart, 'I am not so ugly as they think me'; and if a man were to work upon that thought he could bring her to the edge of the abyss, pious as she is."

"And have you studied Modeste?"

"I thought I told you," replied Butscha, "that my life belongs to her, just as France belongs to the king. Do you now understand what you called my spying in Paris? No one but me really knows what n.o.bility, what pride, what devotion, what mysterious grace, what unwearying kindness, what true religion, gaiety, wit, delicacy, knowledge, and courtesy there are in the soul and in the heart of that adorable creature!"

Butscha drew out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, and La Briere pressed his hand for a long time.

"I live in the sunbeam of her existence; it comes from her, it is absorbed in me; that is how we are united,--as nature is to G.o.d, by the Light and by the Word. Adieu, monsieur; never in my life have I talked in this way; but seeing you beneath her windows, I felt in my heart that you loved her as I love her."

Without waiting for an answer Butscha quitted the poor lover, into whose heart his words had put an inexpressible balm. Ernest resolved to make a friend of him, not suspecting that the chief object of the clerk's loquacity was to gain communication with some one connected with Ca.n.a.lis. Ernest was rocked to sleep that night by the ebb and flow of thoughts and resolutions and plans for his future conduct, whereas Ca.n.a.lis slept the sleep of the conqueror, which is the sweetest of slumbers after that of the just.

At breakfast next morning, the friends agreed to spend the evening of the following day at the Chalet and initiate themselves into the delights of provincial whist. To get rid of the day they ordered their horses, purchased by Germain at a large price, and started on a voyage of discovery round the country, which was quite as unknown to them as China; for the most foreign thing to Frenchmen in France is France itself.

By dint of reflecting on his position as an unfortunate and despised lover, Ernest went through something of the same process as Modeste's first letter had forced upon him. Though sorrow is said to develop virtue, it only develops it in virtuous persons; that cleaning-out of the conscience takes place only in persons who are by nature clean.

La Briere vowed to endure his sufferings in Spartan silence, to act worthily, and give way to no baseness; while Ca.n.a.lis, fascinated by the enormous "dot," was telling himself to take every means of captivating the heiress. Selfishness and devotion, the key-notes of the two characters, therefore took, by the action of a moral law which is often very odd in its effects, certain measures that were contrary to their respective natures. The selfish man put on self-abnegation; the man who thought chiefly of others took refuge on the Aventinus of pride. That phenomenon is often seen in political life. Men frequently turn their characters wrong side out, and it sometimes happens that the public is unable to tell which is the right side.

After dinner the two friends heard of the arrival of the grand equerry, who was presented at the Chalet the same evening by Latournelle.

Mademoiselle d'Herouville had contrived to wound that worthy man by sending a footmen to tell him to come to her, instead of sending her nephew in person; thus depriving the notary of a distinguished visit he would certainly have talked about for the rest of his natural life. So Latournelle curtly informed the grand equerry, when he proposed to drive him to the Chalet, that he was engaged to take Madame Latournelle.

Guessing from the little man's sulky manner that there was some blunder to repair, the duke said graciously:--

"Then I shall have the pleasure, if you will allow me, of taking Madame Latournelle also."

Disregarding Mademoiselle d'Herouville's haughty shrug, the duke left the room with the notary. Madame Latournelle, half-crazed with joy at seeing the gorgeous carriage at her door, with footmen in royal livery letting down the steps, was too agitated on hearing that the grand equerry had called for her, to find her gloves, her parasol, her absurdity, or her usual air of pompous dignity. Once in the carriage, however, and while expressing confused thanks and civilities to the little duke, she suddenly exclaimed, from a thought in her kind heart,--