particularly desire that you will repeat to your friend word for word what I say; for it is not an epigram, it is the justification of his conduct,--with this trifling difference, that he will, I trust, become more and more reasonable, thanks to the folly of his Eleonore."
The duchess's head-woman conducted Modeste and her father to their apartment, where Francoise Cochet had already put everything in order, and the choice elegance of which astounded the colonel, more especially after he heard from Francoise that there were thirty other apartments in the chateau decorated with the same taste.
"This is what I call a proper country-house," said Modeste.
"The Comte de La Bastie must build you one like it," replied her father.
"Here, monsieur," said Modeste, giving the bit of paper to Ernest;
"carry it to our friend and put him out of his misery."
The word OUR friend struck the young man's heart. He looked at Modeste to see if there was anything real in the community of interests which she seemed to admit, and she, understanding perfectly what his look meant, added, "Come, go at once, your friend is waiting."
La Briere colored excessively, and left the room in a state of doubt and anxiety less endurable than despair. The path that approaches happiness is, to the true lover, like the narrow way which Catholic poetry has called the entrance to Paradise,--expressing thus a dark and gloomy passage, echoing with the last cries of earthly anguish.
An hour later this illustrious company were all assembled in the salon; some were playing whist, others conversing; the women had their embroideries in hand, and all were waiting the announcement of dinner.
The Prince de Cadignan was drawing Monsieur Mignon out upon China, and his campaigns under the empire, and ****** him talk about the Portendueres, the L'Estorades, and the Maucombes, Provencal families;
he blamed him for not seeking service, and assured him that nothing would be easier than to restore him to his rank as colonel of the Guard.
"A man of your birth and your fortune ought not to belong to the present Opposition," said the prince, smiling.
This society of distinguished persons not only pleased Modeste, but it enabled her to acquire, during her stay, a perfection of manners which without this revelation she would have lacked all her life. Show a clock to an embryo mechanic, and you reveal to him the whole mechanism; he thus develops the germs of his faculty which lie dormant within him. In like manner Modeste had the instinct to appropriate the distinctive qualities of Madame de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Chaulieu. For her, the sight of these women was an education; whereas a bourgeois would merely have ridiculed their ways or made them absurd by clumsy imitation. A well-born, well-educated, and right-minded young woman like Modeste fell naturally into connection with these people, and saw at once the differences that separate the aristocratic world from the bourgeois world, the provinces from the faubourg Saint-