This letter fell like a cobble-stone on a tulip. A poet, secretary of

claims, getting a stipend in a public office, drawing an annuity,
seeking a decoration, adored by the women of the faubourg Saint-

Germain--was that the muddy minstrel lingering along the quays, sad,
dreamy, worn with toil, and re-entering his garretfraught with

poetry? However, Modeste perceived the irony of the envious
bookseller, who dared to say, "I invented Canalis; I made Nathan!"

Besides, she re-read her hero's poems,--verses extremely seductive,
insincere, and hypocritical, which require a word of analysis, were it

only to explain her infatuation.
Canalis may be distinguished from Lamartine, chief of the angelic

school, by a wheedling tone like that of a sick-nurse, a treacherous
sweetness, and a delightful correctness of diction. If the chief with

his strident cry is an eagle, Canalis, rose and white, is a flamingo.
In him women find the friend they seek, their interpreter, a being who

understands them, who explains them to themselves, and a safe
confidant. The wide margins given by Didot to the last edition were

crowded with Modeste's pencilled sentiments, expressing her sympathy
with this tender and dreamy spirit. Canalis does not possess the gift

of life; he cannot breathe existence into his creations; but he knows
how to calm vague sufferings like those which assailed Modeste. He

speaks to young girls in their own language; he can allay the anguish
of a bleeding wound and lull the moans, even the sobs of woe. His gift

lies not in stirring words, nor in the remedy of strong emotions, he
contents himself with saying in harmonious tones which compel belief,

"I suffer with you; I understand you; come with me; let us weep
together beside the brook, beneath the willows." And they follow him!

They listen to his empty and sonorous poetry like infants to a nurse's
lullaby. Canalis, like Nodier, enchants the reader by an artlessness

which is genuine in the prose writer and artificial in the poet, by
his tact, his smile, the shedding of his rose-leaves, in short by his

infantile philosophy. He imitates so well the language of our early
youth that he leads us back to the prairie-land of our illusions. We

can be pitiless to the eagles, requiring from them the quality of the
diamond, incorruptible perfection; but as for Canalis, we take him for

what he is and let the rest go. He seems a good fellow; the
affectations of the angelic school have answered his purpose and

succeeded, just as a woman succeeds when she plays the ingenue
cleverly, and simulates surprise, youth, innocence betrayed, in short,

the wounded angel.
Modeste, recovering her first impression, renewed her confidence in

that soul, in that countenance as ravishing as the face of Bernadin de
Saint-Pierre. She paid no further attention to the publisher. And so,

about the beginning of the month of August she wrote the following
letter to this Dorat of the sacristy, who still ranks as a star of the

modern Pleiades.
To Monsieur de Canalis,--Many a time, monsieur, I have wished to

write to you; and why? Surely you guess why,--to tell you how much
I admire your genius. Yes, I feel the need of expressing to you

the admiration of a poor country girl, lonely in her little
corner, whose only happiness is to read your thoughts. I have read

Rene, and I come to you. Sadness leads to reverie. How many other
women are sending you the homage of their secret thoughts? What

chance have I for notice among so many? This paper, filled with my
soul,--can it be more to you than the perfumed letters which

already beset you. I come to you with less grace than others, for
I wish to remain unknown and yet to receive your entire confidence

--as though you had long known me.
Answer my letter and be friendly with me. I cannot promise to make

myself known to you, though I do not positively say I will not
some day do so.

What shall I add? Read between the lines of this letter, monsieur,
the great effort which I am making: permit me to offer you my

hand,--that of a friend, ah! a true friend.
Your servant, O. d'Este M.

P.S.--If you do me the favor to answer this letter address your
reply, if you please, to Mademoiselle F. Cochet, "poste restante,"

Havre.
CHAPTER VII

A POET OF THE ANGELIC SCHOOL
All young girls, romantic or otherwise, can imagine the impatience in

which Modeste lived for the next few days. The air was full of tongues
of fire. The trees were like a plumage. She was not conscious of a

body; she hovered in space, the earth melted away under her feet. Full
of admiration for the post-office, she followed her little sheet of

paper on its way; she was happy, as we all are happy at twenty years
of age, in the first exercise of our will. She was possessed, as in

the middle ages. She made pictures in her mind of the poet's abode, of
his study; she saw him unsealing her letter; and then followed myriads

of suppositions.
After sketching the poetry we cannot do less than give the profile of

the poet. Canalis is a short, spare man, with an air of good-breeding,
a dark-complexioned, moon-shaped face, and a rather mean head like

that of a man who has more vanity than pride. He loves luxury, rank,
and splendor. Money is of more importance to him than to most men.

Proud of his birth, even more than of his talent, he destroys the
value of his ancestors by making too much of them in the present day,

--after all, the Canalis are not Navarreins, nor Cadignans, nor
Grandlieus. Nature, however, helps him out in his pretensions. He has

those eyes of Eastern effulgence which we demand in a poet, a delicate
charm of manner, and a vibrant voice; yet a taint of natural

charlatanism destroys the effect of nearly all these advantages; he is
a born comedian. If he puts forward his well-shaped foot, it is

because the attitude has become a habit; if he uses exclamatory terms
they are part of himself; if he poses with high dramatic action he has

made that deportment his second nature. Such defects as these are not
incompatible with a general benevolence and a certain quality of

errant and purely ideal chivalry, which distinguishes the paladin from
the knight. Canalis has not devotion enough for a Don Quixote, but he

has too much elevation of thought not to put himself on the nobler
side of questions and things. His poetry, which takes the town by

storm on all profitable occasions, really injures the man as a poet;
for he is not without mind, but his talent prevents him from

developing it; he is overweighted by his reputation, and is always
aiming to make himself appear greater than he has the credit of being.

Thus, as often happens, the man is entirely out of keeping with the
products of his thought. The author of these naive, caressing, tender

little lyrics, these calm idylls pure and cold as the surface of a
lake, these verses so essentiallyfeminine, is an ambitious little

creature in a tightly buttoned frock-coat, with the air of a diplomat
seeking political influence, smelling of the musk of aristocracy, full

of pretension, thirsting for money, already spoiled by success in two
directions, and wearing the double wreath of myrtle and of laurel. A

government situation worth eight thousand francs, three thousand
francs' annuity from the literary fund, two thousand from the Academy,

three thousand more from the paternalestate (less the taxes and the
cost of keeping it in order),--a total fixed income of fifteen

thousand francs, plus the ten thousand bought in, one year with
another, by his poetry; in all twenty-five thousand francs,--this for

Modeste's hero was so precarious and insufficient an income that he
usually spent five or six thousand francs more every year; but the

king's privy purse and the secret funds of the foreign office had
hitherto supplied the deficit. He wrote a hymn for the king's

coronation which earned him a whole silver service,--having refused a
sum of money on the ground that a Canalis owed his duty to his

sovereign.
But about this time Canalis had, as the journalists say, exhausted his

budget. He felt himself unable to invent any new form of poetry; his
lyre did not have seven strings, it had one; and having played on that

one string so long, the public allowed him no other alternative but to
hang himself with it, or to hold his tongue. De Marsay, who did not

like Canalis, made a remark whose poisoned shaft touched the poet to
the quick of his vanity. "Canalis," he said, "always reminds me of

that brave man whom Frederic the Great called up and commended after a
battle because his trumpet had never ceased tooting its one little

tune." Canalis's ambition was to enter political life, and he made
capital of a journey he had taken to Madrid as secretary to the

embassy of the Duc de Chaulieu, though it was really made, according
to Parisian gossip, in the capacity of "attache to the duchess." How

many times a sarcasm or a single speech has decided the whole course
of a man's life. Colla, the late president of the Cisalpine republic,

and the best lawyer in Piedmont, was told by a friend when he was
forty years of age that he knew nothing of botany. He was piqued,