fitting pair of kid gloves of the Florentine bronze color, and carried his cane and hat in the left hand with a gesture and air that was worthy of the Grand Monarch, and enabled him to show, as the sacred precincts required, his bare head with the light falling on his carefully arranged hair. He stationed himself before the service began in the church porch, from whence he could examine the church, and the Christians--more particularly the female Christians--who dipped their fingers in the holy water.
An inward voice cried to Modeste as she entered, "It is he!" That surtout, and indeed the whole bearing of the young man were essentially Parisian; the ribbon, the gloves, the cane, the very perfume of his hair were not of Havre. So when La Briere turned about to examine the tall and imposing Madame Latournelle, the notary, and the bundled-up (expression sacred to women) figure of Modeste, the poor child, though she had carefully tutored herself for the event, received a violent blow on her heart when her eyes rested on this poetic figure, illuminated by the full light of day as it streamed through the open door. She could not be mistaken; a small white rose nearly hid the ribbon of the Legion. Would he recognize his unknown mistress muffled in an old bonnet with a double veil? Modeste was so in fear of love's clairvoyance that she began to stoop in her walk like an old woman.
"Wife," said little Latournelle as they took their seats, "that gentleman does not belong to Havre."
"So many strangers come here," answered his wife.
"But," said the notary, "strangers never come to look at a church like ours, which is less than two centuries old."
Ernest remained in the porch throughout the service without seeing any woman who realized his hopes. Modeste, on her part, could not control the trembling of her limbs until Mass was nearly over. She was in the grasp of a joy that none but she herself could depict. At last she heard the foot-fall of a gentleman on the pavement of the aisle. The service over, La Briere was ****** a circuit of the church, where no one now remained but the punctiliously pious, whom he proceeded to subject to a shrewd and keen analysis. Ernest noticed that a prayer-
book shook violently in the hands of a veiled woman as he passed her;
as she alone kept her face hidden his suspicions were aroused, and then confirmed by Modeste's dress, which the lover's eye now scanned and noted. He left the church with the Latournelles and followed them at a distance to the rue Royale, where he saw them enter a house accompanied by Modeste, whose custom it was to stay with her friends till the hour of vespers. After examining the little house, which was ornamented with scutcheons, he asked the name of the owner, and was told that he was Monsieur Latournelle, the chief notary in Havre. As Ernest lounged along the rue Royale hoping for a glimpse into the house, Modeste caught sight of him, and thereupon declared herself too ill to go to vespers. Poor Ernest thus had his trouble for his pains.
He dared not wander about Ingouville; moreover, he made it a point of honor to obey orders, and he therefore went back to Paris, previously writing a letter which Francoise Cochet duly delivered on the morrow with the Havre postmark.
It was the custom of Monsieur and Madame Latournelle to dine at the Chalet every Sunday when they brought back Modeste after vespers. So, as soon as the invalid felt a little better, they started for Ingouville, accompanied by Butscha. Once at home, the happy Modeste forgot her pretended illness and her disguise, and dressed herself charmingly, humming as she came down to dinner,--
"Nought is sleeping--Heart! awaking, Lift thine incense to the skies."
Butscha shuddered slightly when he caught sight of her, so changed did she seem to him. The wings of love were fastened to her shoulders; she had the air of a nymph, a Psyche; her cheeks glowed with the divine color of happiness.
"Who wrote the words to which you have put that pretty music?" asked her mother.
"Canalis, mamma," she answered, flushing rosy red from her throat to her forehead.
"Canalis!" cried the dwarf, to whom the inflections of the girl's voice and her blush told the only thing of which he was still ignorant. "He, that great poet, does he write songs?"
"They are only ****** verses," she said, "which I have ventured to set to German airs."
"No, no," interrupted Madame Mignon, "the music is your own, my daughter."
Modeste, feeling that she grew more and more crimson, went off into the garden, calling Butscha after her.
"You can do me a great service," she said. "Dumay is keeping a secret from my mother and me as to the fortune which my father is bringing back with him; and I want to know what it is. Did not Dumay send papa when he first went away over five hundred thousand francs? Yes. Well, papa is not the kind of man to stay away four years and only double his capital. It seems he is coming back on a ship of his own, and Dumay's share amounts to almost six hundred thousand francs."
"There is no need to question Dumay," said Butscha. "Your father lost, as you know, about four millions when he went away, and he has doubtless recovered them. He would of course give Dumay ten per cent of his profits; the worthy man admitted the other day how much it was, and my master and I think that in that case the colonel's fortune must amount to six or seven millions--"
"Oh, papa!" cried Modeste, crossing her hands on her breast and looking up to heaven, "twice you have given me life!"
"Ah, mademoiselle!" said Butscha, "you love a poet. That kind of man is more or less of a Narcissus. Will he know how to love you? A
phrase-maker, always busy in fitting words together, must be a bore.
Mademoiselle, a poet is no more poetry than a seed is a flower."
"Butscha, I never saw so handsome a man."
"Beauty is a veil which often serves to hide imperfections."
"He has the most angelic heart of heaven--"
