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

Forced after a while to behave like an ordinary man, the poet found an unexpected stumbling-block on ground where La Briere had already won the suffrage of the worthy people who at first had thought him sulky. They felt the need of compensating themselves for Canalis’s reputation by preferring his friend. The best of men are influenced by such feelings as these. The simple and straightforward young fellow jarred no one’s self-love; coming to know him better they discovered his heart, his modesty, his silent and sure discretion, and his excellent bearing. The Duc d’Herouville considered him, as a political element, far above Canalis. The poet, ill-balanced, ambitious, and restless as Tasso, loved luxury, grandeur, and ran into debt; while the young lawyer, whose character was equable and well-balanced, lived soberly, was useful without proclaiming it, awaited rewards without begging for them, and laid by his money.

Canalis had moreover laid himself open in a special way to the bourgeois eyes that were watching him. For two or three days he had shown signs of impatience; he had given way to depression, to states of melancholy without apparent reason, to those capricious changes of temper which are the natural results of the nervous temperament of poets. These originalities (we use the provincial word) came from the uneasiness that his conduct toward the Duchesse de Chaulieu which grew daily less explainable, caused him. He knew he ought to write to her, but could not resolve on doing so. All these fluctuations were carefully remarked and commented on by the gentle American, and the excellent Madame Latournelle, and they formed the topic of many a discussion between these two ladies and Madame Mignon. Canalis felt the effects of these discussions without being able to explain them. The attention paid to him was not the same, the faces surrounding him no longer wore the entranced look of the earlier days; while at the same time Ernest was evidently gaining ground.

For the last two days the poet had endeavored to fascinate Modeste only, and he took advantage of every moment when he found himself alone with her, to weave the web of passionate language around his love. Modeste’s blush, as she listened to him on the occasion we have just mentioned, showed the demoiselles d’Herouville the pleasure with which she was listening to sweet conceits that were sweetly said; and they, horribly uneasy at the sight, had immediate recourse to the “ultima ratio” of women in such cases, namely, those calumnies which seldom miss their object. Accordingly, when the party met at the dinner-table the poet saw a cloud on the brow of his idol; he knew that Mademoiselle d’Herouville’s malignity allowed him to lose no time, and he resolved to offer himself as a husband at the first moment when he could find himself alone with Modeste.

Overhearing a few acid though polite remarks exchanged between the poet and the two noble ladies, Gobenheim nudged Butscha with his elbow, and said in an undertone, motioning towards the poet and the grand equerry, —

“They’ll demolish one another!”

“Canalis has genius enough to demolish himself all alone,” answered the dwarf.

CHAPTER XXII. A RIDDLE GUESSED

During the dinner, which was magnificent and admirably well served, the duke obtained a signal advantage over Canalis. Modeste, who had received her habit and other equestrian equipments the night before, spoke of taking rides about the country. A turn of the conversation led her to express the wish to see a hunt with hounds, a pleasure she had never yet enjoyed. The duke at once proposed to arrange a hunt in one of the crown forests, which lay a few leagues from Havre. Thanks to his intimacy with the Prince de Cadignan, Master of the Hunt, he saw his chance of displaying an almost regal pomp before Modeste’s eyes, and alluring her with a glimpse of court fascinations, to which she could be introduced by marriage. Glances were exchanged between the duke and the two demoiselles d’Herouville, which plainly said, “The heiress is ours!” and the poet, who detected them, and who had nothing but his personal splendors to depend on, determined all the more firmly to obtain some pledge of affection at once. Modeste, on the other hand, half-frightened at being thus pushed beyond her intentions by the d’Herouvilles, walked rather markedly apart with Melchior, when the company adjourned to the park after dinner. With the pardonable curiosity of a young girl, she let him suspect the calumnies which Helene had poured into her ears; but on Canalis’s exclamation of anger, she begged him to keep silence about them, which he promised.

“These stabs of the tongue,” he said, “are considered fair in the great world. They shock your upright nature; but as for me, I laugh at them; I am even pleased. These ladies must feel that the duke’s interests are in great peril, when they have recourse to such warfare.”

Making the most of the advantage Modeste had thus given him, Canalis entered upon his defence with such warmth, such eagerness, and with a passion so exquisitely expressed, as he thanked her for a confidence in which he could venture to see the dawn of love, that she found herself suddenly as much compromised with the poet as she feared to be with the grand equerry. Canalis, feeling the necessity of prompt action, declared himself plainly. He uttered vows and protestations in which his poetry shone like a moon, invoked for the occasion, and illuminating his allusions to the beauty of his mistress and the charms of her evening dress. This counterfeit enthusiasm, in which the night, the foliage, the heavens and the earth, and Nature herself played a part, carried the eager lover beyond all bounds; for he dwelt on his disinterestedness, and revamped in his own charming style, Diderot’s famous apostrophe to “Sophie and fifteen hundred francs!” and the well-worn “love in a cottage” of every lover who knows perfectly well the length of the father-in-law’s purse.

“Monsieur,” said Modeste, after listening with delight to the melody of this concerto; “the freedom granted to me by my parents has allowed me to listen to you; but it is to them that you must address yourself.”

“But,” exclaimed Canalis, “tell me that if I obtain their consent, you will ask nothing better than to obey them.”

“I know beforehand,” she replied, “that my father has certain fancies which may wound the proper pride of an old family like yours. He wishes to have his own title and name borne by his grandsons.”

“Ah! dear Modeste, what sacrifices would I not make to commit my life to the guardian care of an angel like you.”

“You will permit me not to decide in a moment the fate of my whole life,” she said, turning to rejoin the demoiselles d’Herouville.

Those noble ladies were just then engaged in flattering the vanity of little Latournelle, intending to win him over to their interests. Mademoiselle d’Herouville, to whom we shall in future confine the family name, to distinguish her from her niece Helene, was giving the notary to understand that the post of judge of the Supreme Court in Havre, which Charles X. would bestow as she desired, was an office worthy of his legal talent and his well-known probity. Butscha, meanwhile, who had been walking about with La Briere, was greatly alarmed at the progress Canalis was evidently making, and he waylaid Modeste at the lower step of the portico when the whole party returned to the house to endure the torments of their inevitable whist.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, in a low whisper, “I do hope you don’t call him Melchior.”

“I’m very near it, my Black Dwarf,” she said, with a smile that might have made an angel swear.

“Good God!” exclaimed Butscha, letting fall his hands, which struck the marble steps.