We can now imagine the sort of life led by mother and daughter at the Chalet. Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, often accompanied by Gobenheim, came to call and play whist with Dumay nearly every evening. The conversation turned on the gossip of Havre and the petty events of provincial life. The little company separated between nine and ten o'clock. Modeste put her mother to bed, and together they said their prayers, kept up each other's courage, and talked of the dear absent one, the husband and father. After kissing her mother for good-
night, the girl went to her own room about ten o'clock. The next morning she prepared her mother for the day with the same care, the same prayers, the same prattle. To her praise be it said that from the day when the terrible infirmity deprived her mother of a sense, Modeste had been like a servant to her, displaying at all times the same solicitude; never wearying of the duty, never thinking it monotonous. Such constant devotion, combined with a tenderness rare among young girls, was thoroughly appreciated by those who witnessed it. To the Latournelle family, and to Monsieur and Madame Dumay, Modeste was, in soul, the pearl of price.
On sunny days, between breakfast and dinner, Madame Mignon and Madame Dumay took a little walk toward the sea. Modeste accompanied them, for two arms were needed to support the blind mother. About a month before the scene to which this explanation is a parenthesis, Madame Mignon had taken counsel with her friends, Madame Latournelle, the notary, and Dumay, while Madame Dumay carried Modeste in another direction for a longer walk.
"Listen to what I have to say," said the blind woman. "My daughter is in love. I feel it; I see it. A singular change has taken place within her, and I do not see how it is that none of you have perceived it."
"In the name of all that's honorable--" cried the lieutenant.
"Don't interrupt me, Dumay. For the last two months Modeste has taken as much care of her personal appearance as if she expected to meet a lover. She has grown extremely fastidious about her shoes; she wants to set off her pretty feet; she scolds Madame Gobet, the shoemaker. It is the same thing with her milliner. Some days my poor darling is absorbed in thought, evidently expectant, as if waiting for some one.
Her voice has curt tones when she answers a question, as though she were interrupted in the current of her thoughts and secret expectations. Then, if this awaited lover has come--"
"Good heavens!"
"Sit down, Dumay," said the blind woman. "Well, then Modeste is gay.
Oh! she is not gay to your sight; you cannot catch these gradations;
they are too delicate for eyes that see only the outside of nature.
Her gaiety is betrayed to me by the tones of her voice, by certain accents which I alone can catch and understand. Modeste then, instead of sitting still and thoughtful, gives vent to a wild, inward activity by impulsive movements,--in short, she is happy. There is a grace, a charm in the very ideas she utters. Ah, my friends, I know happiness as well as I know sorrow; I know its signs. By the kiss my Modeste gives me I can guess what is passing within her. I know whether she has received what she was looking for, or whether she is uneasy or expectant. There are many gradations in a kiss, even in that of an innocent young girl, and Modeste is innocence itself; but hers is the innocence of knowledge, not of ignorance. I may be blind, but my tenderness is all-seeing, and I charge you to watch over my daughter."
Dumay, now actually ferocious, the notary, in the character of a man bound to ferret out a mystery, Madame Latournelle, the deceived chaperone, and Madame Dumay, alarmed for her husband's safety, became at once a set of spies, and Modeste from this day forth was never left alone for an instant. Dumay passed nights under her window wrapped in his cloak like a jealous Spaniard; but with all his military sagacity he was unable to detect the least suspicious sign. Unless she loved the nightingales in the villa park, or some fairy prince, Modeste could have seen no one, and had neither given nor received a signal.
Madame Dumay, who never went to bed till she knew Modeste was asleep, watched the road from the upper windows of the Chalet with a vigilance equal to her husband's. Under these eight Argus eyes the blameless child, whose every motion was studied and analyzed, came out of the ordeal so fully acquitted of all criminal conversation that the four friends declared to each other privately that Madame Mignon was foolishly over-anxious. Madame Latournelle, who always took Modeste to church and brought her back again, was commissioned to tell the mother that she was mistaken about her daughter.
"Modeste," she said, "is a young girl of very exalted ideas; she works herself into enthusiasm for the poetry of one writer or the prose of another. You have only to judge by the impression made upon her by that scaffold symphony, 'The Last Hours of a Convict'" (the saying was Butscha's, who supplied wit to his benefactress with a lavish hand);
"she seemed to me all but crazy with admiration for that Monsieur Hugo.
I'm sure I don't know where such people" (Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Byron being SUCH PEOPLE to the Madame Latournelles of the bourgeoisie)