The following evening, therefore, Modeste was to see all three of her lovers. No matter what young girls may say, and though the logic of the heart may lead them to sacrifice everything to preference, it is extremely flattering to their self-love to see a number of rival adorers around them,--distinguished or celebrated men, or men of ancient lineage,--all endeavoring to shine and to please. Suffer as Modeste may in general estimation, it must be told she subsequently admitted that the sentiments expressed in her letters paled before the pleasure of seeing three such different minds at war with one another, --three men who, taken separately, would each have done honor to the most exacting family. Yet this luxury of self-love was checked by a misanthropical spitefulness, resulting from the terrible wound she had received,--although by this time she was beginning to think of that wound as a disappointment only. So when her father said to her, laughing, "Well, Modeste, do you want to be a duchess?" she answered, with a mocking curtsey,--
"Sorrows have made me philosophical."
"Do you mean to be only a baroness?" asked Butscha.
"Or a viscountess?" said her father.
"How could that be?" she asked quickly.
"If you accept Monsieur de La Briere, he has enough merit and influence to obtain permission from the king to bear my titles and arms."
"Oh, if it comes to disguising himself, HE will not make any difficulty," said Modeste, scornfully.
Butscha did not understand this epigram, whose meaning could only be guessed by Monsieur and Madame Mignon and Dumay.
"When it is a question of marriage, all men disguise themselves,"
remarked Latournelle, "and women set them the example. I've heard it said ever since I came into the world that 'Monsieur this or Mademoiselle that has made a good marriage,'--meaning that the other side had made a bad one."
"Marriage," said Butscha, "is like a lawsuit; there's always one side discontented. If one dupes the other, certainly half the husbands in the world are playing a comedy at the expense of the other half."
"From which you conclude, Sieur Butscha?" inquired Modeste.
"To pay the utmost attention to the manoeuvres of the enemy," answered the clerk.
"What did I tell you, my darling?" said Charles Mignon, alluding to their conversation on the seashore.
"Men play as many parts to get married as mothers make their daughters play to get rid of them," said Latournelle.
"Then you approve of stratagems?" said Modeste.
"On both sides," cried Gobenheim, "and that brings it even."
This conversation was carried on by fits and starts, as they say, in the intervals of cutting and dealing the cards; and it soon turned chiefly on the merits of the Duc d'Herouville, who was thought very good-looking by little Latournelle, little Dumay, and little Butscha.
Without the foregoing discussion on the lawfulness of matrimonial tricks, the reader might possibly find the forthcoming account of the evening so impatiently awaited by Butscha, somewhat too long.
Desplein, the famous surgeon, arrived the next morning, and stayed only long enough to send to Havre for fresh horses and have them put-
to, which took about an hour. After examining Madame Mignon's eyes, he decided that she could recover her sight, and fixed a suitable time, a month later, to perform the operation. This important consultation took place before the assembled members of the Chalet, who stood trembling and expectant to hear the verdict of the prince of science.
That illustrious member of the Academy of Sciences put about a dozen brief questions to the blind woman as he examined her eyes in the strong light from a window. Modeste was amazed at the value which a man so celebrated attached to time, when she saw the travelling-
carriage piled with books which the great surgeon proposed to read during the journey; for he had left Paris the evening before, and had spent the night in sleeping and travelling. The rapidity and clearness of Desplein's judgment on each answer made by Madame Mignon, his succinct tone, his decisive manner, gave Modeste her first real idea of a man of genius. She perceived the enormous difference between a second-rate man, like Canalis, and Desplein, who was even more than a superior man. A man of genius finds in the consciousness of his talent and in the solidity of his fame an arena of his own, where his legitimate pride can expand and exercise itself without interfering with others. Moreover, his perpetual struggle with men and things leave them no time for the coxcombry of fashionable genius, which makes haste to gather in the harvests of a fugitive season, and whose vanity and self-love are as petty and exacting as a custom-house which levies tithes on all that comes in its way.
Modeste was the more enchanted by this great practical genius, because he was evidently charmed with the exquisite beauty of Modeste,--he, through whose hands so many women had passed, and who had long since examined the ***, as it were, with magnifier and scalpel.
"It would be a sad pity," he said, with an air of gallantry which he occasionally put on, and which contrasted with his assumed brusqueness, "if a mother were deprived of the sight of so charming a daughter."
Modeste insisted on serving the ****** breakfast which was all the great surgeon would accept. She accompanied her father and Dumay to the carriage stationed at the garden-gate, and said to Desplein at parting, her eyes shining with hope,--
"And will my dear mamma really see me?"
"Yes, my little sprite, I'll promise you that," he answered, smiling;
"and I am incapable of deceiving you, for I, too, have a daughter."
The horses started and carried him off as he uttered the last words with unexpected grace and feeling. Nothing is more charming than the peculiar unexpectedness of persons of talent.