receive so great a fame in our little house, yet your visit will

gratify my daughter, whose admiration for your poems has even led her
to set them to music."

"You have something better than fame in your house," said Canalis;
"you have beauty, if I am to believe Ernest."

"Yes, a good daughter; but you will find her rather countrified," said
Charles Mignon.

"A country girl sought by the Duc d'Herouville," remarked Canalis,
dryly.

"Oh!" replied Monsieur Mignon, with the perfidious good-humor of a
Southerner, "I leave my daughter free. Dukes, princes, commoners,--

they are all the same to me, even men of genius. I shall make no
pledges, and whoever my Modeste chooses will be my son-in-law, or

rather my son," he added, looking at La Briere. "It could not be
otherwise. Madame de La Bastie is German. She has never adopted our

etiquette, and I let my two women lead me their own way. I have always
preferred to sit in the carriage rather than on the box. I can make a

joke of all this at present, for we have not yet seen the Duc
d'Herouville, and I do not believe in marriages arranged by proxy, any

more than I believe in choosing my daughter's husband."
"That declaration is equally encouraging and discouraging to two young

men who are searching for the philosopher's stone of happiness in
marriage," said Canalis.

"Don't you consider it useful, necessary, and even politic to
stipulate for perfect freedom of action for parents, daughters, and

suitors?" asked Charles Mignon.
Canalis, at a sign from La Briere, kept silence. The conversation

presently became unimportant, and after a few turns round the garden
the count retired, urging the visit of the two friends.

"That's our dismissal," cried Canalis; "you saw it as plainly as I
did. Well, in his place, I should not hesitate between the grand

equerry and either of us, charming as we are."
"I don't think so," said La Briere. "I believe that frank soldier came

here to satisfy his desire to see you, and to warn us of his
neutrality while receiving us in his house. Modeste, in love with your

fame, and misled by my person, stands, as it were, between the real
and the ideal, between poetry and prose. I am, unfortunately, the

prose."
"Germain," said Canalis to the valet, who came to take away the

coffee, "order the carriage in half an hour. We will take a drive
before we go to the Chalet."

CHAPTER XVIII
A SPLENDID FIRST APPEARANCE

The two young men were equallyimpatient to see Modeste, but La Briere
dreaded the interview, while Canalis approached it with the confidence

of self-conceit. The eagerness with which La Briere had met the
father, and the flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery of his attention to the family pride of the

ex-merchant, showed Canalis his own maladroitness, and determined him
to select a special role. The great poet resolved to pretend

indifference, though all the while displaying his seductive powers; to
appear to disdain the young lady, and thus pique her self-love.

Trained by the handsome Duchesse de Chaulieu, he was bound to be
worthy of his reputation as a man who knew women, when, in fact, he

did not know them at all,--which is often the case with those who are
the happy victims of an exclusivepassion. While poor Ernest, gloomily

ensconced in his corner of the caleche, gave way to the terrors of
genuine love, and foresaw instinctively the anger, contempt, and

disdain of an injured and offended young girl, Canalis was preparing
himself, not less silently, like an actor making ready for an

important part in a new play; certainly neither of them presented the
appearance of a happy man. Important interests were involved for

Canalis. The mere suggestion of his desire to marry would bring about
a rupture of the tie which had bound him for the last ten years to the

Duchesse de Chaulieu. Though he had covered the purpose of his journey
with the vulgar pretext of needing rest,--in which, by the bye, women

never believe, even when it is true,--his conscience troubled him
somewhat; but the word "conscience" seemed so Jesuitical to La Briere

that he shrugged his shoulders when the poet mentioned his scruples.
"Your conscience, my friend, strikes me as nothing more nor less than

a dread of losing the pleasures of vanity, and some very real
advantages and habits by sacrificing the affections of Madame de

Chaulieu; for, if you were sure of succeeding with Modeste, you would
renounce without the slightest compunction the wilted aftermath of a

passion that has been mown and well-raked for the last eight years. If
you simply mean that you are afraid of displeasing your protectress,

should she find out the object of your stay here, I believe you. To
renounce the duchess and yet not succeed at the Chalet is too heavy a

risk. You take the anxiety of this alternative for remorse."
"You have no comprehension of feelings," said the poet, irritably,

like a man who hears truth when he expects a compliment.
"That is what a bigamist should tell the jury," retorted La Briere,

laughing.
This epigram made another disagreeableimpression on Canalis. He began

to think La Briere too witty and too free for a secretary.
The arrival of an elegant caleche, driven by a coachman in the Canalis

livery, made the more excitement at the Chalet because the two suitors
were expected, and all the personages of this history were assembled

to receive them, except the duke and Butscha.
"Which is the poet?" asked Madame Latournelle of Dumay in the

embrasure of a window, where she stationed herself as soon as she
heard the wheels.

"The one who walks like a drum-major," answered the lieutenant.
"Ah!" said the notary's wife, examining Canalis, who was swinging his

body like a man who knows he is being looked at. The fault lay with
the great lady who flattered him incessantly and spoiled him,--as all

women older than their adorers invariably spoil and flatter them;
Canalis in his moral being was a sort of Narcissus. When a woman of a

certain age wishes to attach a man forever, she begins by deifying his
defects, so as to cut off all possibility of rivalry; for a rival is

never, at the first approach, aware of the super-fine flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery to
which the man is accustomed. Coxcombs are the product of this feminine

manoeuvre, when they are not fops by nature. Canalis, taken young by
the handsome duchess, vindicated his affectations to his own mind by

telling himself that they pleased that "grande dame," whose taste was
law. Such shades of character may be excessively faint, but it is

improper for the historian not to point them out. For instance,
Melchior possessed a talent for reading which was greatly admired, and

much injudicious praise had given him a habit of exaggeration, which
neither poets nor actors are willing to check, and which made people

say of him (always through De Marsay) that he no longer declaimed, he
bellowed his verses; lengthening the sounds that he might listen to

himself. In the slang of the green-room, Canalis "dragged the time."
He was fond of exchanging glances with his hearers, throwing himself

into postures of self-complacency and practising those tricks of
demeanor which actors call "balancoires,"--the picturesquephrase of

an artistic people. Canalis had his imitators, and was in fact the
head of a school of his kind. This habit of declamatory chanting

slightly affected his conversation, as we have seen in his interview
with Dumay. The moment the mind becomes finical the manners follow

suit, and the great poet ended by studying his demeanor, inventing
attitudes, looking furtively at himself in mirrors, and suiting his

discourse to the particular pose which he happened to have taken up.
He was so preoccupied with the effect he wished to produce, that a

practical joke, Blondet, had bet once or twice, and won the wager,
that he could nonplus him at any moment by merely looking fixedly at

his hair, or his boots, or the tails of his coats.
These airs and graces, which started in life with a passport of

flowery youth, now seemed all the more stale and old because Melchior
himself was waning. Life in the world of fashion is quite as

exhausting to men as it is to women, and perhaps the twenty years by
which the duchess exceeded her lover's age, weighed more heavily upon

him than upon her; for to the eyes of the world she was always
handsome,--without rouge, without wrinkles, and without heart. Alas!

neither men nor women have friends who are friendly enough to warn
them of the moment when the fragrance of their modesty grows stale,