Modeste Mignon

In the beginning of October 1829, Monsieur Simon-Babylas Latournelle, a notary, was walking up the hill from le Havre to Ingouville arm in arm with his son, and accompanied by his wife. By her, like a page, came the notary’s head-clerk, a little hunchback named Jean Butscha. When these four persons⁠—of whom two at least mounted by the same way every evening⁠—reached the turn in the zigzag road (like what the Italians call a Cornice), the notary looked about him to see whether anyone might overhear him from some garden terrace above or below, and as an additional precaution he spoke low.

“Exupère,” said he to his son, “try to carry out in an intelligent manner, without guessing at the meaning, a little manoeuvre I will explain to you; and even if you have a suspicion, I desire you will fling it into the Styx which every notary or law-student ought to keep handy for other people’s secrets. After paying your respects, homage, and devoir to Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon, to Monsieur and Madame Dumay, and to Monsieur Gobenheim, if he is at the Chalet, when silence is restored, Monsieur Dumay will take you aside; look attentively⁠—I allow you⁠—at Mademoiselle Modeste all the time he is talking to you. My worthy friend will ask you to go out for a walk and return in about an hour, at about nine o’clock, with a hurried air;

An hour went by in ominous calm, broken only by the hieroglyphical phrases of the whist players: “Spade!⁠—Trump!⁠—Cut!⁠—Have we the honors?⁠—Two trebles!⁠—Eight all!⁠—Who deals?”⁠—phrases representing in these days the great emotions of the aristocracy of Europe. Modeste stitched, without any surprise at her mother’s taciturnity. Madame Mignon’s pocket-handkerchief slipped off her lap on to the floor; Butscha flew to pick it up. He was close to Modeste, and as he rose said in her ear, “Be on your guard!”

Modeste raised astonished eyes, and their light, pointed darts as it seemed, filled the hunchback with ineffable joy.

“She loves no one,” said the poor fellow to himself, and he rubbed his hands hard enough to flay them.

At this moment Exupère flew through the garden and into the house, rushing into the drawing-room like a whirlwind, and said in Dumay’s ear, “Here is the young man!”

Dumay rose, seized his pistols, and went out.

“Good God! Supposing he kills him!” cried Madame Dumay, who burst into tears.

“But what is going on?” asked Modeste, looking at her friends with an air of perfect candor, and without any alarm.

“Something about a young man who prowls round the Chalet!” cried Madame Latournelle.

“What then?” said Modeste. “Why should Dumay kill him?”

“Sancta simplicitas!” said Butscha, looking at his master as proudly as Alexander gazes at Babylon in Lebrun’s picture.

“I⁠—I too⁠—have my dreams,” Butscha went on, not taking his eyes off Modeste.

The girl looked down instinctively, in a way which was a revelation to the clerk. “You love romances; allow me, in the midst of my joy, to confide my secret to you, and you will tell me if the end of the romance I have dreamed of for my life is possible.⁠ ⁠… If not, of what use is fortune. To me, more than anyone else, money is happiness, since to me happiness means the enriching of the one I love! You who know so many things, mademoiselle, tell me whether a man can be loved independently of his person⁠—handsome or ugly, and for his soul alone.”

Modeste looked up at Butscha. It was a terrible, questioning look, for at this moment Modeste shared Dumay’s suspicions.

She went down and out into the little garden, where, in a husky voice, she called out, “Monsieur Butscha.”

“Here am I, mademoiselle,” said the hunchback, coming to the little gate, which Modeste herself opened.

“Will you tell me whether you include among your titles to the affection of a woman the disgraceful espionage you choose to exercise?” asked the girl, trying to overwhelm her slave by her gaze and queenly attitude.

“Yes, mademoiselle,” he proudly replied. “I had never imagined,” he added in a low voice, “that a worm could do good service to a star! But so it is. Would you rather have your heart read by your mother, Monsieur Dumay, and Madame Latournelle, than by a poor creature, almost an outcast from life, who is yours as much as one of the flowers you cut to gratify you for a moment? They all know that you love; I alone know how. Take me as you would take a watchdog; I will obey you, I will protect you, I will never bark, and I will have no opinions about you. All I ask is that you will let me be of some use to you. Your father placed a Dumay in your menagerie; try a Butscha, and you will find it quite another story! A poor Butscha, who asks for nothing, not even for a bone.”

“Well, I will take you on trial,” said Modeste, who only wished to be rid of so sharp a guardian. “Go at once to all the hotels at Graville and le Havre, and ask if a M. Arthur has arrived from England⁠—”

Dumay, like a true soldier of the Imperial School, whose blood had been boiling all through his journey, conceived of a poet as an irresponsible fellow, a man who fooled in rhyme, living in a garret, dressed in black cloth white at all the seams, whose boots sometimes had soles, whose linen was anonymous, who always looked as if he had just dropped from the clouds, when he was not scribbling as intently as Butscha. But the ferment that muttered in his brain and heart received a sort of cold shower-bath when he reached the poet’s handsome residence, saw a man cleaning a carriage in the courtyard, found himself in a splendid dining-room with another servant dressed like a banker, to whom the groom had referred him, and who looked him from head to foot as he said that Monsieur le Baron could not see anyone.

“Monsieur le Baron has a meeting today,” he added, “at the Council of State.”

“I am right?” asked Dumay; “this is the house of Monsieur de Canalis, who writes poetry?”

“Monsieur le Baron de Canalis,” said the footman, “is no doubt the great poet you mean; but is also Master of Appeals to the State Council, and attached to the Foreign Office.”

Dumay, who had come to box a rhymester’s ears, to use his own contemptuous expression, had found a State functionary. The drawing-room where he was kept waiting, remarkable for its magnificence, presented to his contemplation the row of crosses that glittered on Canalis’ evening coat, left by the servant over the back of a chair.