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

Canalis paused, to gather by a glance that ran round the circle the tribute of amazement which he expected of provincials.

“You must be aware, monsieur, of the regret I feel at not seeing you,” said Madame Mignon, “since you compensate me with the pleasure of hearing you.”

Modeste, determined to think Canalis sublime, sat motionless with amazement; the embroidery slipped from her fingers, which held it only by the needleful of thread.

“Modeste, this is Monsieur Ernest de La Briere. Monsieur Ernest, my daughter,” said the count, thinking the secretary too much in the background.

The young girl bowed coldly, giving Ernest a glance that was meant to prove to every one present that she saw him for the first time.

“Pardon me, monsieur,” she said without blushing; “the great admiration I feel for the greatest of our poets is, in the eyes of my friends, a sufficient excuse for seeing only him.”

The pure, fresh voice, with accents like that of Mademoiselle Mars, charmed the poor secretary, already dazzled by Modeste’s beauty, and in his sudden surprise he answered by a phrase that would have been sublime, had it been true.

“He is my friend,” he said.

“Ah, then you do pardon me,” she replied.

“He is more than a friend,” cried Canalis taking Ernest by the shoulder and leaning upon it like Alexander on Hephaestion, “we love each other as though we were brothers — ”

Madame Latournelle cut short the poet’s speech by pointing to Ernest and saying aloud to her husband, “Surely that is the gentleman we saw at church.”

“Why not?” said Charles Mignon, quickly, observing that Ernest reddened.

Modeste coldly took up her embroidery.

“Madame may be right; I have been twice in Havre lately,” replied La Briere, sitting down by Dumay.

Canalis, charmed with Modeste’s beauty, mistook the admiration she expressed, and flattered himself he had succeeded in producing his desired effects.

“I should think a man without heart, if he had no devoted friend near him,” said Modeste, to pick up the conversation interrupted by Madame Latournelle’s awkwardness.

“Mademoiselle, Ernest’s devotion makes me almost think myself worth something,” said Canalis; “for my dear Pylades is full of talent; he was the right hand of the greatest minister we have had since the peace. Though he holds a fine position, he is good enough to be my tutor in the science of politics; he teaches me to conduct affairs and feeds me with his experience, when all the while he might aspire to a much better situation. Oh! he is worth far more than I.” At a gesture from Modeste he continued gracefully: “Yes, the poetry that I express he carries in his heart; and if I speak thus openly before him it is because he has the modesty of a nun.”

“Enough, oh, enough!” cried La Briere, who hardly knew which way to look. “My dear Canalis, you remind me of a mother who is seeking to marry off her daughter.”

“How is it, monsieur,” said Charles Mignon, addressing Canalis, “that you can even think of becoming a political character?”

“It is abdication,” said Modeste, “for a poet; politics are the resource of matter-of-fact men.”

“Ah, mademoiselle, the rostrum is to-day the greatest theatre of the world; it has succeeded the tournaments of chivalry, it is now the meeting-place for all intellects, just as the army has been the rallying-point of courage.”

Canalis stuck spurs into his charger and talked for ten minutes on political life: “Poetry was but a preface to the statesman.” “To-day the orator has become a sublime reasoner, the shepherd of ideas.” “A poet may point the way to nations or individuals, but can he ever cease to be himself?” He quoted Chateaubriand and declared that he would one day be greater on the political side than on the literary. “The forum of France was to be the pharos of humanity.” “Oral battles supplanted fields of battle: there were sessions of the Chamber finer than any Austerlitz, and orators were seen to be as lofty as generals; they spent their lives, their courage, their strength, as freely as those who went to war.” “Speech was surely one of the most prodigal outlets of the vital fluid that man had ever known,” etc.

This improvisation of modern commonplaces, clothed in sonorous phrases and newly invented words, and intended to prove that the Comte de Canalis was becoming one of the glories of the French government, made a deep impression upon the notary and Gobenheim, and upon Madame Latournelle and Madame Mignon. Modeste looked as though she were at the theatre, in an attitude of enthusiasm for an actor, — very much like that of Ernest toward herself; for though the secretary knew all these high-sounding phrases by heart, he listened through the eyes, as it were, of the young girl, and grew more and more madly in love with her. To this true lover, Modeste was eclipsing all the Modestes he had created as he read her letters and answered them.

This visit, the length of which was predetermined by Canalis, careful not to allow his admirers a chance to get surfeited, ended by an invitation to dinner on the following Monday.

“We shall not be at the Chalet,” said the Comte de La Bastie. “Dumay will have sole possession of it. I return to the villa, having bought it back under a deed of redemption within six months, which I have to-day signed with Monsieur Vilquin.”

“I hope,” said Dumay, “that Vilquin will not be able to return to you the sum you have just lent him, and that the villa will remain yours.”

“It is an abode in keeping with your fortune,” said Canalis.

“You mean the fortune that I am supposed to have,” replied Charles Mignon, hastily.

“It would be too sad,” said Canalis, turning to Modeste with a charming little bow, “if this Madonna were not framed in a manner worthy of her divine perfections.”

That was the only thing Canalis said to Modeste. He affected not to look at her, and behaved like a man to whom all idea of marriage was interdicted.

“Ah! my dear Madame Mignon,” cried the notary’s wife, as soon as the gravel was heard to grit under the feet of the Parisians, “what an intellect!”

“Is he rich? — that is the question,” said Gobenheim.

Modeste was at the window, not losing a single movement of the great poet, and paying no attention to his companion. When Monsieur Mignon returned to the salon, and Modeste, having received a last bow from the two friends as the carriage turned, went back to her seat, a weighty discussion took place, such as provincials invariably hold over Parisians after a first interview. Gobenheim repeated his phrase, “Is he rich?” as a chorus to the songs of praise sung by Madame Latournelle, Modeste, and her mother.

“Rich!” exclaimed Modeste; “what can that signify! Do you not see that Monsieur de Canalis is one of those men who are destined for the highest places in the State. He has more than fortune; he possesses that which gives fortune.”

“He will be minister or ambassador,” said Monsieur Mignon.

“That won’t hinder tax-payers from having to pay the costs of his funeral,” remarked the notary.

“How so?” asked Charles Mignon.

“He strikes me as a man who will waste all the fortunes with whose gifts Mademoiselle Modeste so liberally endows him,” answered Latournelle.

“Modeste can’t avoid being liberal to a poet who called her a Madonna,” said Dumay, sneering, and faithful to the repulsion with which Canalis had originally inspired him.

Gobenheim arranged the whist-table with all the more persistency because, since the return of Monsieur Mignon, Latournelle and Dumay had allowed themselves to play for ten sous points.

“Well, my little darling,” said the father to the daughter in the embrasure of a window. “Admit that papa thinks of everything. If you send your orders this evening to your former dressmaker in Paris, and all your other furnishing people, you shall show yourself eight days hence in all the splendor of an heiress. Meantime we will install ourselves in the villa. You already have a pretty horse, now order a habit; you owe that amount of civility to the grand equerry.”