that we love one another at least as much as you and mamma love each
other. Well, I admit that it was not all exactly
conventional; I did,
if you WILL have me say so, wrong--"
"I have read your letters," said her father, interrupting her, "and I
know exactly how far your lover justified you in your own eyes for a
proceeding which might be permissible in some woman who understood
life, and who was led away by strong
passion, but which in a young
girl of twenty was a
monstrous piece of wrong-doing."
"Yes, wrong-doing for
commonplace people, for the narrow-minded
Gobenheims, who
measure life with a square rule. Please let us keep to
the
artistic and
poetic life, papa. We young girls have only two ways
to act; we must let a man know we love him by mincing and simpering,
or we must go to him
frankly. Isn't the last way grand and noble? We
French girls are delivered over by our families like so much
merchandise, at sixty days' sight, sometimes thirty, like Mademoiselle
Vilquin; but in England, and Switzerland, and Germany, they follow
very much the plan I have adopted. Now what have you got to say to
that? Am I not half German?"
"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
charmingcompanion, 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,