have made an angel swear.
"Good God!" exclaimed Butscha, letting fall his hands, which struck

the marble steps.
"Well! and isn't he worth more than that spiteful and gloomy secretary

in whom you take such an interest?" she retorted, assuming, at the
mere thought of Ernest, the haughty manner whose secret belongs

exclusively to young girls,--as if their virginity lent them wings to
fly to heaven. "Pray, would your little La Briere accept me without a

fortune?" she said, after a pause.
"Ask your father," replied Butscha, who walked a few steps from the

house, to get Modeste at a safe distance from the windows. "Listen to
me, mademoiselle. You know that he who speaks to you is ready to give

not only his life but his honor for you, at any moment, and at all
times. Therefore you may believe in him; you can confide to him that

which you may not, perhaps, be willing to say to your father. Tell me,
has that sublime Canalis been making you the disinterested offer that

you now fling as a reproach at poor Ernest?"
"Yes."

"Do you believe it?"
"That question, my manikin," she replied, giving him one of the ten or

a dozen nicknames she had invented for him, "strikes me as
undervaluing the strength of my self-love."

"Ah, you are laughing, my dear Mademoiselle Modeste; then there's no
danger: I hope you are only making a fool of him."

"Pray what would you think of me, Monsieur Butscha, if I allowed
myself to make fun of those who do me the honor to wish to marry me?

You ought to know, master Jean, that even if a girl affects to despise
the most despicable attentions, she is flattered by them."

"Then I flatter you?" said the young man, looking up at her with a
face that was illuminated like a city for a festival.

"You?" she said; "you give me the most precious of all friendships,--a
feeling as disinterested as that of a mother for her child. Compare

yourself to no one; for even my father is obliged to be devoted to
me." She paused. "I cannot say that I love you, in the sense which men

give to that word, but what I do give you is eternal and can know no
change."

"Then," said Butscha, stooping to pick up a pebble that he might kiss
the hem of her garment, "suffer me to watch over you as a dragon

guards a treasure. The poet was covering you just now with the lace-
work of his precious phrases, the tinsel of his promises; he chanted

his love on the best strings of his lyre, I know he did. If, as soon
as this noble lover finds out how small your fortune is, he makes a

sudden change in his behavior, and is cold and embarrassed, will you
still marry him? shall you still esteem him?"

"He would be another Francisque Althor," she said, with a gesture of
bitter disgust.

"Let me have the pleasure of producing that change of scene," said
Butscha. "Not only shall it be sudden, but I believe I can change it

back and make your poet as loving as before,--nay, it is possible to
make him blow alternately hot and cold upon your heart, just as

gracefully as he has talked on both sides of an argument in one
evening without ever finding it out."

"If you are right," she said, "who can be trusted?"
"One who truly loves you."

"The little duke?"
Butscha looked at Modeste. The pair walked some distance in silence;

the girl was impenetrable and not an eyelash quivered.
"Mademoiselle, permit me to be the exponent of the thoughts that are

lying at the bottom of your heart like sea-mosses under the waves, and
which you do not choose to gather up."

"Eh!" said Modeste, "so my intimate friend and counsellor thinks
himself a mirror, does he?"

"No, an echo," he answered, with a gesture of sublimehumility. "The
duke loves you, but he loves you too much. If I, a dwarf, have

understood the infinitedelicacy of your heart, it would be repugnant
to you to be worshipped like a saint in her shrine. You are eminently

a woman; you neither want a man perpetually at your feet of whom you
are eternally sure, nor a selfish egoist like Canalis, who will always

prefer himself to you. Why? ah, that I don't know. But I will make
myself a woman, an old woman, and find out the meaning of the plan

which I have read in your eyes, and which perhaps is in the heart of
every girl. Nevertheless, in your great soul you feel the need of

worshipping. When a man is at your knees, you cannot put yourself at
his. You can't advance in that way, as Voltaire might say. The little

duke has too many genuflections in his moral being and the poet has
too few,--indeed, I might say, none at all. Ha, I have guessed the

mischief in your smiles when you talk to the grand equerry, and when
he talks to you and you answer him. You would never be unhappy with

the duke, and everybody will approve your choice, if you do choose
him; but you will never love him. The ice of egotism, and the burning

heat of ecstasy both produce indifference in the heart of every woman.
It is evident to my mind that no such perpetualworship will give you

the infinite delights which you are dreaming of in marriage,--in some
marriage where obedience will be your pride, where noble little

sacrifices can be made and hidden, where the heart is full of
anxieties without a cause, and successes are awaited with eager hope,

where each new chance for magnanimity is hailed with joy, where souls
are comprehended to their inmost recesses, and where the woman

protects with her love the man who protects her."
"You are a sorcerer!" exclaimed Modeste.

"Neither will you find that sweet equality of feeling, that continual
sharing of each other's life, that certainty of pleasing which makes

marriage tolerable, if you take Canalis,--a man who thinks of himself
only, whose 'I' is the one string to his lute, whose mind is so fixed

on himself that he has hitherto taken no notice of your father or the
duke,--a man of second-rate ambitions, to whom your dignity and your

devotion will matter nothing, who will make you a mere appendage to
his household, and who already insults you by his indifference to your

behavior; yes, if you permitted yourself to go so far as to box your
mother's ears Canalis would shut his eyes to it, and deny your crime

even to himself, because he thirsts for your money. And so,
mademoiselle, when I spoke of the man who truly loves you I was not

thinking of the great poet who is nothing but a little comedian, nor
of the duke, who might be a good marriage for you, but never a

husband--"
"Butscha, my heart is a blank page on which you are yourself writing

all that you read there," cried Modeste, interrupting him. "You are
carried away by your provincialhatred for everything that obliges you

to look higher than your own head. You can't forgive a poet for being
a statesman, for possessing the gift of speech, for having a noble

future before him,--and you calumniate his intentions."
"His!--mademoiselle, he will turn his back upon you with the baseness

of an Althor."
"Make him play that pretty little comedy, and--"

"That I will! he shall play it through and through within three days,
--on Wednesday,--recollect, Wednesday! Until then, mademoiselle, amuse

yourself by listening to the little tunes of the lyre, so that the
discords and the false notes may come out all the more distinctly."

Modeste ran gaily back to the salon, where La Briere, who was sitting
by the window, where he had doubtless been watching his idol, rose to

his feet as if a groom of the chambers had suddenly announced, "The
Queen." It was a movement of spontaneous respect, full of that living

eloquence that lies in gesture even more than in speech. Spoken love
cannot compare with acts of love; and every young girl of twenty has

the wisdom of fifty in applying the axiom. In it lies the great secret
of attraction. Instead of looking Modeste in the face, as Canalis who

paid her public homage would have done, the neglected lover followed
her with a furtive look between his eyelids, humble after the manner