"My dear poet, you remind me of those fathers who inquire into a girl's 'dot' before they are willing to name that of their son. You are quarrelling with me without knowing whether you have the slightest right to do so. Love is not gained by such dry arguments as yours. The poor duke on the contrary abandons himself to it like my Uncle Toby;
with this difference, that I am not the Widow Wadman,--though widow indeed of many illusions as to poetry at the present moment. Ah, yes, we young girls will not believe in anything that disturbs our world of fancy! I was warned of all this beforehand. My dear poet, you are attempting to get up a quarrel which is unworthy of you. I no longer recognize the Melchior of yesterday."
"Because Melchior has discovered a spirit of ambition in you which--"
Modeste looked at him from head to foot with an imperial eye.
"But I shall be peer of France and ambassador as well as he," added Canalis.
"Do you take me for a bourgeois," she said, beginning to mount the steps of the portico; but she instantly turned back and added, "That is less impertinent than to take me for a fool. The change in your conduct comes from certain silly rumors which you have heard in Havre, and which my maid Francoise has repeated to me."
"Ah, Modeste, how can you think it?" said Canalis, striking a dramatic attitude. "Do you think me capable of marrying you only for your money?"
"If I do you that wrong after your edifying remarks on the banks of the Seine can you easily undeceive me," she said, annihilating him with her scorn.
"Ah!" thought the poet, as he followed her into the house, "if you think, my little girl, that I'm to be caught in that net, you take me to be younger than I am. Dear, dear, what a fuss about an artful little thing whose esteem I value about as much as that of the king of Borneo. But she has given me a good reason for the rupture by accusing me of such unworthy sentiments. Isn't she sly? La Briere will get a burden on his back--idiot that he is! And five years hence it will be a good joke to see them together."
The coldness which this altercation produced between Modeste and Canalis was visible to all eyes that evening. The poet went off early, on the ground of La Briere's illness, leaving the field to the grand equerry. About eleven o'clock Butscha, who had come to walk home with Madame Latournelle, whispered in Modeste's ear, "Was I right?"
"Alas, yes," she said.
"But I hope you have left the door half open, so that he can come back; we agreed upon that, you know."
"Anger got the better of me," said Modeste. "Such meanness sent the blood to my head and I told him what I thought of him."
"Well, so much the better. When you are both so angry that you can't speak civilly to each other I engage to make him desperately in love and so pressing that you will be deceived yourself."
"Come, come, Butscha; he is a great poet; he is a gentleman; he is a man of intellect."
"Your father's eight millions are more to him than all that."
"Eight millions!" exclaimed Modeste.
"My master, who has sold his practice, is going to Provence to attend to the purchase of lands which your father's agent has suggested to him. The sum that is to be paid for the estate of La Bastie is four millions; your father has agreed to it. You are to have a 'dot' of two millions and another million for an establishment in Paris, a hotel and furniture. Now, count up."
"Ah! then I can be Duchesse d'Herouville!" cried Modeste, glancing at Butscha.
"If it hadn't been for that comedian of a Canalis you would have kept HIS whip, thinking it came from me," said the dwarf, indirectly pleading La Briere's cause.
"Monsieur Butscha, may I ask if I am to marry to please you?" said Modeste, laughing.
"That fine fellow loves you as well as I do,--and you loved him for eight days," retorted Butscha; "and HE has got a heart."
"Can he compete, pray, with an office under the Crown? There are but six, grand almoner, chancellor, grand chamberlain, grand master, high constable, grand admiral,--but they don't appoint high constables any longer."
"In six months, mademoiselle, the masses--who are made up of wicked Butschas--could send all those grand dignities to the winds. Besides, what signifies nobility in these days? There are not a thousand real noblemen in France. The d'Herouvilles are descended from a tipstaff in the time of Robert of Normandy. You will have to put up with many a vexation from the old aunt with the furrowed face. Look here,--as you are so anxious for the title of duchess,--you belong to the Comtat, and the Pope will certainly think as much of you as he does of all those merchants down there; he'll sell you a duchy with some name ending in 'ia' or 'agno.' Don't play away your happiness for an office under the Crown."