to try to read the thing. Perhaps it was the fault of the translator, but it actually turned my stomach; I was dazed; I couldn’t possibly finish it. Why, the man talks about comparisons that howl, rocks that faint, and waves of war! However, he is only a travelling Englishman, and we must expect absurdities—though his are really inexcusable. He takes you to Spain, and sets you in the clouds above the Alps, and makes the torrents talk, and the stars; and he says there are too many virgins! Did you ever hear the like? Then, after Napoleon’s campaigns, the lines are full of sonorous brass and flaming cannon-balls, rolling along from page to page. Modeste tells me that all that bathos is put in by the translator, and that I ought to read the book in English. But I certainly sha’n’t learn English to read Lord Byron when I didn’t learn it to teach Exupere. I much prefer the novels of Ducray-Dumenil to all these English romances. I’m too good a Norman to fall in love with foreign things—above all when they come from England.”
Madame Mignon, notwithstanding her melancholy, could not help smiling at the idea of Madame Latournelle reading Childe Harold. The stern scion of a parliamentary house accepted the smile as an approval of her doctrine.
“And, therefore, my dear Madame Mignon,” she went on, “you have taken Modeste’s fancies, which are nothing but the results of her reading, for a love-affair. Remember, she is just twenty. Girls fall in love with themselves at that age; they dress to see themselves well-dressed. I remember I used to make my little sister, now dead, put on a man’s hat and pretend we were monsieur and madame. You see, you had a very happy youth in Frankfort; but let us be just—Modeste is living here without the slightest amusement. Although, to be sure, her every wish is attended to, still she knows she is shut up and watched, and the life she leads would give her no pleasure at all if it were not for the amusement she gets out of her books. Come, don’t worry yourself; she loves nobody but you. You ought to be very glad that she goes into these enthusiasms for the corsairs of Byron and the heroes of Walter Scott and your own Germans, Egmont, Goethe, Werther, Schiller, and all the other ‘ers.’ ”
“Well, madame, what do you say to that?” asked Dumay, respectfully, alarmed at Madame Mignon’s silence.
“Modeste is not only inclined to love, but she loves some man,” answered the mother, obstinately.
“Madame, my life is at stake, and you must allow me—not for my sake, but for my wife, my colonel, for all of us—to probe this matter to the bottom, and find out whether it is the mother or the watch-dog who is deceived.”
“It is you who are deceived, Dumay. Ah! if I could but see my daughter!” cried the poor woman.
“But whom is it possible for her to love?” asked the notary. “I’ll answer for my Exupere.”
“It can’t be Gobenheim,” said Dumay, “for since the colonel’s departure he has not spent nine hours a week in this house. Besides, he doesn’t even notice Modeste—that five-franc piece of a man! His uncle Gobenheim-Keller is all the time writing him, ‘Get rich enough to marry a Keller.’ With that idea in his mind you may be sure he doesn’t know which sex Modeste belongs to. No other men ever come here—for of course I don’t count Butscha, poor little fellow; I love him! He is your Dumay, madame,” said the cashier to Madame Latournelle. “Butscha knows very well that a mere glance at Modeste would cost him a Breton ducking. Not a soul has any communication with this house. Madame Latournelle who takes Modeste to church ever since your—your misfortune, madame, has carefully watched her on the way and all through the service, and has seen nothing suspicious. In short, if I must confess the truth, I have myself raked all the paths about the house every evening for the last month, and found no trace of footsteps in the morning.”
“Rakes are neither costly nor difficult to handle,” remarked the daughter of Germany.
“But the dogs?” cried Dumay.
“Lovers have philters even for dogs,” answered Madame Mignon.
“If you are right, my honor is lost! I may as well blow my brains out,” exclaimed Dumay.
“Why so, Dumay?” said the blind woman.
“Ah, madame, I could never meet my colonel’s eye if he did not find his daughter—now his only daughter—as pure and virtuous as she was when he said to me on the vessel, ‘Let no fear of the scaffold hinder you, Dumay, if the honor of my Modeste is at stake.’ ”
“Ah! I recognize you both,” said Madame Mignon in a voice of strong emotion.
“I’ll wager my salvation that Modeste is as pure as she was in her cradle,” exclaimed Madame Dumay.
“Well, I shall make certain of it,” replied her husband, “if Madame la Comtesse will allow me to employ certain means; for old troopers understand strategy.”
“I will allow you to do anything that shall enlighten us, provided it does no injury to my last child.”
“What are you going to do, Jean?” asked Madame Dumay; “how can you discover a young girl’s secret if she means to hide it?”
“Obey me, all!” cried the lieutenant, “I shall need every one of you.”
If this rapid sketch were clearly developed it would give a whole picture of manners and customs in which many a family could recognize the events of their own history; but it must suffice as it is to explain the importance of the few details heretofore given about persons and things on the memorable evening when the old soldier had made ready his plot against the young girl, intending to wrench from the recesses of her heart the secret of a love and a lover seen only by a blind mother.
CHAPTER V. THE PROBLEM STILL UNSOLVED
An hour went by in solemn stillness broken only by the cabalistic phrases of the whist-players: “Spades!” “Trumped!” “Cut!” “How are honors?” “Two to four.” “Whose deal?”—phrases which represent in these days the higher emotions of the European aristocracy. Modeste continued to work, without seeming to be surprised at her mother’s silence. Madame Mignon’s handkerchief slipped from her lap to the floor; Butscha precipitated himself upon it, picked it up, and as he returned it whispered in Modeste’s ear, “Take care!” Modeste raised a pair of wondering eyes, whose puzzled glance filled the poor cripple with joy unspeakable. “She is not in love!” he whispered to himself, rubbing his hands till the skin was nearly peeled off. At this moment Exupere tore through the garden and the house, plunged into the salon like an avalanche, and said to Dumay in an audible whisper, “The young man is here!” Dumay sprang for his pistols and rushed out.
“Good God! suppose he kills him!” cried Madame Dumay, bursting into tears.
“What is the matter?” asked Modeste, looking innocently at her friends and not betraying the slightest fear.
“It is all about a young man who is hanging round the house,” cried Madame Latournelle.
“Well!” said Modeste, “why should Dumay kill him?”
“Sancta simplicita!” ejaculated Butscha, looking at his master as proudly as Alexander is made to contemplate Babylon in Lebrun’s great picture.
“Where are you going, Modeste?” asked the
