his loss and also the terrible results on your mother's health and

eyesight; prepare him for the shock he has to meet. I will engage to
get the letter into his hands before he reaches Havre, for he will

have to pass through Paris on his way. Write him a long letter; you
have plenty of time. I will take the letter on Monday; Monday I shall

probably go to Paris."
Modeste was so afraid that Canalis and Dumay would meet that she

started hastily for the house to write to her poet and put off the
rendezvous.

"Mademoiselle," said Dumay, in a very humble manner and barring
Modeste's way, "may your father find his daughter with no other

feelings in her heart than those she had for him and for her mother
before he was obliged to leave her."

"I have sworn to myself, to my sister, and to my mother to be the joy,
the consolation, and the glory of my father, and I SHALL KEEP MY

OATH!" replied Modeste with a haughty and disdainful glance at Dumay.
"Do not trouble my delight in the thought of my father's return with

insulting suspicions. You cannot prevent a girl's heart from beating--
you don't want me to be a mummy, do you?" she said. "My hand belongs

to my family, but my heart is my own. If I love any one, my father and
my mother will know it. Does that satisfy you, monsieur?"

"Thank you, mademoiselle; you restore me to life," said Dumay, "but
you might still call me Dumay, even when you box my ears!"

"Swear to me," said her mother, "that you have not engaged a word or a
look with any young man."

"I can swear that, my dear mother," said Modeste, laughing, and
looking at Dumay who was watching her and smiling to himself like a

mischievous girl.
"She must be false indeed if you are right," cried Dumay, when Modeste

had left them and gone into the house.
"My daughter Modeste may have faults," said her mother, "but falsehood

is not one of them; she is incapable of saying what is not true."
"Well! then let us feel easy," continued Dumay, "and believe that

misfortune has closed his account with us."
"God grant it!" answered Madame Mignon. "You will see HIM, Dumay; but

I shall only hear him. There is much of sadness in my joy."
CHAPTER XII

A DECLARATION OF LOVE,--SET TO MUSIC
At this moment Modeste, happy as she was in the return of her father,

was, nevertheless, pacing her room disconsolate as Perrette on seeing
her eggs broken. She had hoped her father would bring back a much

larger fortune than Dumay had mentioned. Nothing could satisfy her
new-found ambition on behalf of her poet less than at least half the

six millions she had talked of in her second letter. Trebly agitated
by her two joys and the grief caused by her comparativepoverty, she

seated herself at the piano, that confidant of so many young girls,
who tell out their wishes and provocations on the keys, expressing

them by the notes and tones of their music. Dumay was talking with his
wife in the garden under the windows, telling her the secret of their

own wealth, and questioning her as to her desires and her intentions.
Madame Dumay had, like her husband, no other family than the Mignons.

Husband and wife agreed, therefore, to go and live in Provence, if the
Comte de La Bastie really meant to live in Provence, and to leave

their money to whichever of Modeste's children might need it most.
"Listen to Modeste," said Madame Mignon, addressing them. "None but a

girl in love can compose such airs without having studied music."
Houses may burn, fortunes be engulfed, fathers return from distant

lands, empires may crumble away, the cholera may ravage cities, but a
maiden's love wings its way as nature pursues hers, or that alarming

acid which chemistry has lately discovered, and which will presently
eat through the globe, if nothing stops it.

Modeste, under the inspiration of her present situation, was putting
to music certain stanzas which we are compelled to quote here--albeit

they are printed in the second volume of the edition Dauriat had
mentioned--because, in order to adapt them to her music, which had the

inexpressible charm of sentiment so admired in great singers, Modeste
had taken liberties with the lines in a manner that may astonish the

admirers of a poet so famous for the correctness, sometimes too
precise, of his measures.

THE MAIDEN'S SONG
Hear, arise! the lark is shaking

Sunlit wings that heavenward rise;
Sleep no more; the violet, waking,

Wafts her incense to the skies.
Flowers revived, their eyes unclosing,

See themselves in drops of dew
In each calyx-cup reposing,--

Pearls of a day their mirror true.
Breeze divine, the god of roses,

Passed by night to bless their bloom;
See! for him each bud uncloses,

Glows, and yields its rich perfume.
Then arise! the lark is shaking

Sunlit wings that heavenward rise;
Nought is sleeping--Heart, awaking,

Lift thine incense to the skies.
"It is very pretty," said Madame Dumay. "Modeste is a musician, and

that's the whole of it."
"The devil is in her!" cried the cashier, into whose heart the

suspicion of the mother forced its way and made him shiver.
"She loves," persisted Madame Mignon.

By succeeding, through the undeniable testimony of the song, in making
the cashier a sharer in her belief as to the state of Modeste's heart,

Madame Mignon destroyed the happiness the return and the prosperity of
his master had brought him. The poor Breton went down the hill to

Havre and to his desk in Gobenheim's counting-room with a heavy heart;
then, before returning to dinner, he went to see Latournelle, to tell

his fears, and beg once more for the notary's advice and assistance.
"Yes, my dear friend," said Dumay, when they parted on the steps of

the notary's door, "I now agree with madame; she loves,--yes, I am
sure of it; and the devil knows the rest. I am dishonored."

"Don't make yourself unhappy, Dumay," answered the little notary.
"Among us all we can surely get the better of the little puss; sooner

or later, every girl in love betrays herself,--you may be sure of
that. But we will talk about it this evening."

Thus it happened that all those devoted to the Mignon family were
fully as disquieted and uncertain as they were before the old soldier

tried the experiment which he expected would be so decisive. The ill-
success of his past efforts so stimulated Dumay's sense of duty, that

he determined not to go to Paris to see after his own fortune as
announced by his patron, until he had guessed the riddle of Modeste's

heart. These friends, to whom feelings were more precious than
interests, well knew that unless the daughter were pure and innocent,

the father would die of grief when he came to know the death of
Bettina and the blindness of his wife. The distress of poor Dumay made

such an impression on the Latournelles that they even forgot their
parting with Exupere, whom they had sent off that morning to Paris.

During dinner, while the three were alone, Monsieur and Madame
Latournelle and Butscha turned the problem over and over in their

minds, and discussed every aspect of it.
"If Modeste loved any one in Havre she would have shown some fear

yesterday," said Madame Latournelle; "her lover, therefore, lives
somewhere else."

"She swore to her mother this morning," said the notary, "in presence
of Dumay, that she had not exchanged a look or a word with any living

soul."
"Then she loves after my fashion!" exclaimed Butscha.

"And how is that, my poor lad?" asked Madame Latournelle.
"Madame," said the little cripple, "I love alone and afar--oh! as far

as from here to the stars."
"How do you manage it, you silly fellow?" said Madame Latournelle,

laughing.
"Ah, madame!" said Butscha, "what you call my hump is the socket of my