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

“A beautiful woman may feel as distrustful as the ugliest,” said Butscha, as if speaking to himself; “Modeste is clever enough to fear she may be loved only for her beauty.”

Hunchbacks are extraordinary creations, due entirely to society for, according to Nature’s plan, feeble or aborted beings ought to perish. The curvature or distortion of the spinal column creates in these outwardly deformed subjects as it were a storage-battery, where the nerve currents accumulate more abundantly than under normal conditions, — where they develop, and whence they are emitted, so to say, in lightning flashes, to energize the interior being. From this, forces result which are sometimes brought to light by magnetism, though they are far more frequently lost in the vague spaces of the spiritual world. It is rare to find a deformed person who is not gifted with some special faculty, — a whimsical or sparkling gaiety perhaps, an utter malignity, or an almost sublime goodness. Like instruments which the hand of art can never fully waken, these beings, highly privileged though they know it not, live within themselves, as Butscha lived, provided their natural forces so magnificently concentrated have not been spent in the struggle they have been forced to maintain, against tremendous odds, to keep alive. This explains many superstitions, the popular legends of gnomes, frightful dwarfs, deformed fairies, — all that race of bottles, as Rabelais called them, containing elixirs and precious balms.

Butscha, therefore, had very nearly found the key to the puzzle. With all the anxious solicitude of a hopeless lover, a vassal ever ready to die, — like the soldiers alone and abandoned in the snows of Russia, who still cried out, “Long live the Emperor,” — he meditated how to capture Modeste’s secret for his own private knowledge. So thinking, he followed his patrons to the Chalet that evening, with a cloud of care upon his brow: for he knew it was most important to hide from all these watchful eyes and ears the net, whatever it might be, in which he should entrap his lady. It would have to be, he thought, by some intercepted glance, some sudden start or quiver, as when a surgeon lays his finger on a hidden sore. That evening Gobenheim did not appear, and Butscha was Dumay’s partner against Monsieur and Madame Latournelle. During the few moment’s of Modeste’s absence, about nine o’clock, to prepare for her mother’s bedtime, Madame Mignon and her friends spoke openly to one another; but the poor clerk, depressed by the conviction of Modeste’s love, which had now seized upon him as upon the rest, seemed as remote from the discussion as Gobenheim had been the night before.

“Well, what’s the matter with you, Butscha?” cried Madame Latournelle; “one would really think you hadn’t a friend in the world.”

Tears shone in the eyes of the poor fellow, who was the son of a Swedish sailor, and whose mother was dead.

“I have no one in the world but you,” he answered with a troubled voice; “and your compassion is so much a part of your religion that I can never lose it — and I will never deserve to lose it.”

This answer struck the sensitive chord of true delicacy in the minds of all present.

“We love you, Monsieur Butscha,” said Madame Mignon, with much feeling in her voice.

“I’ve six hundred thousand francs of my own, this day,” cried Dumay, “and you shall be a notary and the successor of Latournelle.”

The American wife took the hand of the poor hunchback and pressed it.

“What! you have six hundred thousand francs!” exclaimed Latournelle, pricking up his ears as Dumay let fall the words; “and you allow these ladies to live as they do! Modeste ought to have a fine horse; and why doesn’t she continue to take lessons in music, and painting, and — ”

“Why, he has only had the money a few hours!” cried the little wife.

“Hush!” murmured Madame Mignon.

While these words were exchanged, Butscha’s august mistress turned towards him, preparing to make a speech: —

“My son,” she said, “you are so surrounded by true affection that I never thought how my thoughtless use of that familiar phrase might be construed; but you must thank me for my little blunder, because it has served to show you what friends your noble qualities have won.”

“Then you must have news from Monsieur Mignon,” resumed the notary.

“He is on his way home,” said Madame Mignon; “but let us keep the secret to ourselves. When my husband learns how faithful Butscha has been to us, how he has shown us the warmest and the most disinterested friendship when others have given us the cold shoulder, he will not let you alone provide for him, Dumay. And so, my friend,” she added, turning her blind face toward Butscha; “you can begin at once to negotiate with Latournelle.”

“He’s of legal age, twenty-five and a half years. As for me, it will be paying a debt, my boy, to make the purchase easy for you,” said the notary.

Butscha was kissing Madame Mignon’s hand, and his face was wet with tears as Modeste opened the door of the salon.

“What are you doing to my Black Dwarf?” she demanded. “Who is making him unhappy?”

“Ah! Mademoiselle Mignon, do we luckless fellows, cradled in misfortune, ever weep for grief? They have just shown me as much affection as I could feel for them if they were indeed my own relations. I’m to be a notary; I shall be rich. Ha! ha! the poor Butscha may become the rich Butscha. You don’t know what audacity there is in this abortion,” he cried.

With that he gave himself a resounding blow on the cavity of his chest and took up a position before the fireplace, after casting a glance at Modeste, which slipped like a ray of light between his heavy half-closed eyelids. He perceived, in this unexpected incident, a chance of interrogating the heart of his sovereign. Dumay thought for a moment that the clerk dared to aspire to Modeste, and he exchanged a rapid glance with the others, who understood him, and began to eye the little man with a species of terror mingled with curiosity.

“I, too, have my dreams,” said Butscha, not taking his eyes from Modeste.

The young girl lowered her eyelids with a movement that was a revelation to the young man.

“You love romance,” he said, addressing her. “Let me, in this moment of happiness, tell you mine; and you shall tell me in return whether the conclusion of the tale I have invented for my life is possible. To me wealth would bring greater happiness than to other men; for the highest happiness I can imagine would be to enrich the one I loved. You, mademoiselle, who know so many things, tell me if it is possible for a man to make himself beloved independently of his person, be it handsome or ugly, and for his spirit only?”

Modeste raised her eyes and looked at Butscha. It was a piercing and questioning glance; for she shared Dumay’s suspicion of Butscha’s motive.

“Let me be rich, and I will seek some beautiful poor girl, abandoned like myself, who has suffered, who knows what misery is. I will write to her and console her, and be her guardian spirit; she shall read my heart, my soul; she shall possess by double wealth, my two wealths, — my gold, delicately offered, and my thought robed in all the splendor which the accident of birth has denied to my grotesque body. But I myself shall remain hidden like the cause that science seeks. God himself may not be glorious to the eye. Well, naturally, the maiden will be curious; she will wish to see me; but I shall tell her that I am a monster of ugliness; I shall picture myself hideous.”

At these words Modeste gave Butscha a glance that looked him through and through. If she had said aloud, “What do you know of my love?” she could not have been more explicit.