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

“Child!” cried the colonel, looking at her; “the supremacy of France comes from her sound common-sense, from the logic to which her noble language constrains her mind. France is the reason of the whole world. England and Germany are romantic in their marriage customs, — though even there noble families follow our customs. You certainly do not mean to deny that your parents, who know life, who are responsible for your soul and for your happiness, have no right to guard you from the stumbling-blocks that are in your way? Good heavens!” he continued, speaking half to himself, “is it their fault, or is it ours? Ought we to hold our children under an iron yoke? Must we be punished for the tenderness that leads us to make them happy, and teaches our hearts how to do so?”

Modeste watched her father out of the corner of her eye as she listened to this species of invocation, uttered in a broken voice.

“Was it wrong,” she said, “in a girl whose heart was free, to choose for her husband not only a charming companion, but a man of noble genius, born to an honorable position, a gentleman; the equal of myself, a gentlewoman?”

“You love him?” asked her father.

“Father!” she said, laying her head upon his breast, “would you see me die?”

“Enough!” said the old soldier. “I see your love is inextinguishable.”

“Yes, inextinguishable.”

“Can nothing change it?”

“Nothing.”

“No circumstances, no treachery, no betrayal? You mean that you will love him in spite of everything, because of his personal attractions? Even though he proved a D’Estourny, would you love him still?”

“Oh, my father! you do not know your daughter. Could I love a coward, a man without honor, without faith?”

“But suppose he had deceived you?”

“He? that honest, candid soul, half melancholy? You are joking, father, or else you have never met him.”

“But you see now that your love is not inextinguishable, as you chose to call it. I have already made you admit that circumstances could alter your poem; don’t you now see that fathers are good for something?”

“You want to give me a lecture, papa; it is positively l’Ami des Enfants over again.”

“Poor deceived girl,” said her father, sternly; “it is no lecture of mine, I count for nothing in it; indeed, I am only trying to soften the blow.”

“Father, don’t play tricks with my life,” exclaimed Modeste, turning pale.

“Then, my daughter, summon all your courage. It is you who have been playing tricks with your life, and life is now tricking you.”

Modeste looked at her father in stupid amazement.

“Suppose that young man whom you love, whom you saw four days ago at church in Havre, was a deceiver?”

“Never!” she cried; “that noble head, that pale face full of poetry — ”

“ — was a lie,” said the colonel interrupting her. “He was no more Monsieur de Canalis than I am that sailor over there putting out to sea.”

“Do you know what you are killing in me?” she said in a low voice.

“Comfort yourself, my child; though accident has put the punishment of your fault into the fault itself, the harm done is not irreparable. The young man whom you have seen, and with whom you exchanged hearts by correspondence, is a loyal and honorable fellow; he came to me and confided everything. He loves you, and I have no objection to him as a son-in-law.”

“If he is not Canalis, who is he then?” said Modeste in a changed voice.

“The secretary; his name is Ernest de La Briere. He is not a nobleman; but he is one of those plain men with fixed principles and sound morality who satisfy parents. However, that is not the point; you have seen him and nothing can change your heart; you have chosen him, comprehend his soul, it is as beautiful as he himself.”

The count was interrupted by a heavy sigh from Modeste. The poor girl sat with her eyes fixed on the sea, pale and rigid as death, as if a pistol shot had struck her in those fatal words, a plain man, with fixed principles and sound morality .

“Deceived!” she said at last.

“Like your poor sister, but less fatally.”

“Let us go home, father,” she said, rising from the hillock on which they were sitting. “Papa, hear me, I swear before God to obey your wishes, whatever they may be, in the affair of my marriage.”

“Then you don’t love him any longer?” asked her father.

“I loved an honest man, with no falsehood on his face, upright as yourself, incapable of disguising himself like an actor, with the paint of another man’s glory on his cheeks.”

“You said nothing could change you”; remarked the colonel, ironically.

“Ah, do not trifle with me!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands and looking at her father in distressful anxiety; “don’t you see that you are wringing my heart and destroying my beliefs with your jokes.”

“God forbid! I have told you the exact truth.”

“You are very kind, father,” she said after a pause, and with a sort of solemnity.

“He has kept your letters,” resumed the colonel; “now suppose the rash caresses of your soul had fallen into the hands of one of those poets who, as Dumay says, light their cigars with them?”

“Oh! — you are going too far.”

“Canalis told him so.”

“Has Dumay seen Canalis?”

“Yes,” answered her father.

The two walked along in silence.

“So that is why that gentleman ,” resumed Modeste, “told me so much harm of poets and poetry; no wonder the little secretary said — Why,” she added, interrupting herself, “his virtues, his noble qualities, his fine sentiments are nothing but an epistolary theft! The man who steals glory and a name may very likely — ”

“ — break locks, steal purses, and cut people’s throats on the highway,” cried the colonel. “Ah, you young girls, that’s just like you, — with your peremptory opinions and your ignorance of life. A man who once deceives a woman was born under the scaffold on which he ought to die.”

This ridicule stopped Modeste’s effervescence for a moment and least, and again there was silence.

“My child,” said the colonel, presently, “men in society, as in nature everywhere, are made to win the hearts of women, and women must defend themselves. You have chosen to invert the parts. Was that wise? Everything is false in a false position. The first wrong-doing was yours. No, a man is not a monster because he seeks to please a woman; it is our right to win her by aggression with all its consequences, short of crime and cowardice. A man may have many virtues even if he does deceive a woman; if he deceives her, it is because he finds her wanting in some of the treasures that he sought in her. None but a queen, an actress, or a woman placed so far above a man that she seems to him a queen, can go to him of herself without incurring blame — and for a young girl to do it! Why, she is false to all that God has given her that is sacred and lovely and noble, — no matter with what grace or what poetry or what precautions she surrounds her fault.”

“To seek the master and find the servant!” she said bitterly, “oh! I can never recover from it!”

“Nonsense! Monsieur Ernest de La Briere is, to my thinking, fully the equal of the Baron de Canalis. He was private secretary of a cabinet minister, and he is now counsel for the Court of Claims; he has a heart, and he adores you, but — he does not write verses . No, I admit, he is not a poet; but for all that he may have a heart full of poetry. At any rate, my dear girl,” added her father, as Modeste made a gesture of disgust, “you are to see both of them, the sham and the true Canalis — ”