Array The griffin classics - The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac

“Madame, my life is at stake, and you must allow me — not for my sake, but for my wife, my colonel, for all of us — to probe this matter to the bottom, and find out whether it is the mother or the watch-dog who is deceived.”

“It is you who are deceived, Dumay. Ah! if I could but see my daughter!” cried the poor woman.

“But whom is it possible for her to love?” asked the notary. “I’ll answer for my Exupere.”

“It can’t be Gobenheim,” said Dumay, “for since the colonel’s departure he has not spent nine hours a week in this house. Besides, he doesn’t even notice Modeste — that five-franc piece of a man! His uncle Gobenheim-Keller is all the time writing him, ‘Get rich enough to marry a Keller.’ With that idea in his mind you may be sure he doesn’t know which sex Modeste belongs to. No other men ever come here, — for of course I don’t count Butscha, poor little fellow; I love him! He is your Dumay, madame,” said the cashier to Madame Latournelle. “Butscha knows very well that a mere glance at Modeste would cost him a Breton ducking. Not a soul has any communication with this house. Madame Latournelle who takes Modeste to church ever since your — your misfortune, madame, has carefully watched her on the way and all through the service, and has seen nothing suspicious. In short, if I must confess the truth, I have myself raked all the paths about the house every evening for the last month, and found no trace of footsteps in the morning.”

“Rakes are neither costly nor difficult to handle,” remarked the daughter of Germany.

“But the dogs?” cried Dumay.

“Lovers have philters even for dogs,” answered Madame Mignon.

“If you are right, my honor is lost! I may as well blow my brains out,” exclaimed Dumay.

“Why so, Dumay?” said the blind woman.

“Ah, madame, I could never meet my colonel’s eye if he did not find his daughter — now his only daughter — as pure and virtuous as she was when he said to me on the vessel, ‘Let no fear of the scaffold hinder you, Dumay, if the honor of my Modeste is at stake.’”

“Ah! I recognize you both,” said Madame Mignon in a voice of strong emotion.

“I’ll wager my salvation that Modeste is as pure as she was in her cradle,” exclaimed Madame Dumay.

“Well, I shall make certain of it,” replied her husband, “if Madame la Comtesse will allow me to employ certain means; for old troopers understand strategy.”

“I will allow you to do anything that shall enlighten us, provided it does no injury to my last child.”

“What are you going to do, Jean?” asked Madame Dumay; “how can you discover a young girl’s secret if she means to hide it?”

“Obey me, all!” cried the lieutenant, “I shall need every one of you.”

If this rapid sketch were clearly developed it would give a whole picture of manners and customs in which many a family could recognize the events of their own history; but it must suffice as it is to explain the importance of the few details heretofore given about persons and things on the memorable evening when the old soldier had made ready his plot against the young girl, intending to wrench from the recesses of her heart the secret of a love and a lover seen only by a blind mother.

CHAPTER V. THE PROBLEM STILL UNSOLVED

An hour went by in solemn stillness broken only by the cabalistic phrases of the whist-players: “Spades!” “Trumped!” “Cut!” “How are honors?” “Two to four.” “Whose deal?” — phrases which represent in these days the higher emotions of the European aristocracy. Modeste continued to work, without seeming to be surprised at her mother’s silence. Madame Mignon’s handkerchief slipped from her lap to the floor; Butscha precipitated himself upon it, picked it up, and as he returned it whispered in Modeste’s ear, “Take care!” Modeste raised a pair of wondering eyes, whose puzzled glance filled the poor cripple with joy unspeakable. “She is not in love!” he whispered to himself, rubbing his hands till the skin was nearly peeled off. At this moment Exupere tore through the garden and the house, plunged into the salon like an avalanche, and said to Dumay in an audible whisper, “The young man is here!” Dumay sprang for his pistols and rushed out.

“Good God! suppose he kills him!” cried Madame Dumay, bursting into tears.

“What is the matter?” asked Modeste, looking innocently at her friends and not betraying the slightest fear.

“It is all about a young man who is hanging round the house,” cried Madame Latournelle.

“Well!” said Modeste, “why should Dumay kill him?”

“Sancta simplicita!” ejaculated Butscha, looking at his master as proudly as Alexander is made to contemplate Babylon in Lebrun’s great picture.

“Where are you going, Modeste?” asked the mother as her daughter rose to leave the room.

“To get ready for your bedtime, mamma,” answered Modeste, in a voice as pure as the tones of an instrument.

“You haven’t paid your expenses,” said the dwarf to Dumay when he returned.

“Modeste is as pure as the Virgin on our altar,” cried Madame Latournelle.

“Good God! such excitements wear me out,” said Dumay; “and yet I’m a strong man.”

“May I lose that twenty-five sous if I have the slightest idea what you are about,” remarked Gobenheim. “You seem to me to be crazy.”

“And yet it is all about a treasure,” said Butscha, standing on tiptoe to whisper in Gobenheim’s ear.

“Dumay, I am sorry to say that I am still almost certain of what I told you,” persisted Madame Mignon.

“The burden of proof is now on you, madame,” said Dumay, calmly; “it is for you to prove that we are mistaken.”

Discovering that the matter in question was only Modeste’s honor, Gobenheim took his hat, made his bow, and walked off, carrying his ten sous with him, — there being evidently no hope of another rubber.

“Exupere, and you too, Butscha, may leave us,” said Madame Latournelle. “Go back to Havre; you will get there in time for the last piece at the theatre. I’ll pay for your tickets.”

When the four friends were alone with Madame Mignon, Madame Latournelle, after looking at Dumay, who being a Breton understood the mother’s obstinacy, and at her husband who was fingering the cards, felt herself authorized to speak up.

“Madame Mignon, come now, tell us what decisive thing has struck your mind.”

“Ah, my good friend, if you were a musician you would have heard, as I have, the language of love that Modeste speaks.”

The piano of the demoiselles Mignon was among the few articles of furniture which had been moved from the town-house to the Chalet. Modeste often conjured away her troubles by practising, without a master. Born a musician, she played to enliven her mother. She sang by nature, and loved the German airs which her mother taught her. From these lessons and these attempts at self-instruction came a phenomenon not uncommon to natures with a musical vocation; Modeste composed, as far as a person ignorant of the laws of harmony can be said to compose, tender little lyric melodies. Melody is to music what imagery and sentiment are to poetry, a flower that blossoms spontaneously. Consequently, nations have had melodies before harmony, — botany comes later than the flower. In like manner, Modeste, who knew nothing of the painter’s art except what she had seen her sister do in the way of water-color, would have stood subdued and fascinated before the pictures of Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Murillo, Rembrandt, Albert Durer, Holbein, — in other words, before the great ideals of many lands. Lately, for at least a month, Modeste had warbled the songs of nightingales, musical rhapsodies whose poetry and meaning had roused the attention of her mother, already surprised by her sudden eagerness for composition and her fancy for putting airs into certain verses.