|
|
  IP: saved |
 |
At the beginning of October, 1829, Monsieur Simon Babylas Latournelle, notary, was walking up from Havre to
Ingouville, arm in arm with his son and accompanied by his wife, at whose side the head clerk of the
lawyer��s office, a little hunchback named Jean Butscha, trotted along like a page. When these four
personages (two of whom came the same way every evening) reached the elbow of the road where it turns back
upon itself like those called in Italy ��cornice,�� the notary looked about to see if any one could overhear
him either from the terrace above or the path beneath, and when he spoke he lowered his voice as a further
precaution. ��Exupere,�� he said to his son, ��you must try to carry out intelligently a little manoeuvre
which I shall explain to you, but you are not to ask the meaning of it; and if you guess the meaning I
command you to toss it into that Styx which every lawyer and every man who expects to have a hand in the
government of his country is bound to keep within him for the secrets of others. After you have paid your
respects and compliments to Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon, to Monsieur and Madame Dumay, and to Monsieur
Gobenheim if he is at the Chalet, and as soon as quiet is restored, Monsieur Dumay will take you aside; you
are then to look attentively at Mademoiselle Modeste (yes, I am willing to allow it) during the whole time
he is speaking to you. My worthy friend will ask you to go out and take a walk; at the end of an hour, that
is, about nine o��clock, you are to come back in a great hurry; try to puff as if you were out of breath, and
whisper in Monsieur Dumay��s ear, quite low, but so that Mademoiselle Modeste is sure to overhear you, these
words: ��The young man has come.���� Exupere was to start the next morning for Paris to begin the study of
law. This impending departure had induced Latournelle to propose him to his friend Dumay as an accomplice in
the important conspiracy which these directions indicate. ��Is Mademoiselle Modeste suspected of having a
lover?�� asked Butscha in a timid voice Coach Outlet of Madame Latournelle. ��Hush, Butscha,�� she replied, taking her
husband��s arm. Madame Latournelle, the daughter of a clerk of the supreme court, feels that her birth
authorizes her to claim issue from a parliamentary family. This conviction explains why the lady, who is
somewhat blotched as to complexion, endeavors to assume in her own person the majesty of a court whose
decrees are recorded in her father��s pothooks. She takes snuff, holds herself as stiff as a ramrod, poses
for a person of consideration, and resembles nothing so much as a mummy brought momentarily to life by
galvanism. She tries to give high-bred tones to her sharp voice, and succeeds no better in doing that than
in hiding her general lack of breeding. Her social usefulness seems, however, incontestable when we glance
at the flower-bedecked cap she wears, at the false front frizzling around her forehead, at the gowns of her
choice; for how could shopkeepers dispose of those products if there were no Madame Latournelle? All these
absurdities of the worthy woman, who is truly pious and charitable, might have passed unnoticed, if nature,
amusing herself as she often does by turning out these ludicrous creations, had not endowed her with the
height of a drum-major, and thus held up to view the comicalities of her provincial nature. She has never
been out of Havre; she believes in the infallibility of Havre; she proclaims herself Norman to the very tips
of her fingers; she venerates her father, and adores her husband. Little Latournelle was bold enough to
marry this lady after she had attained the anti-matrimonial age of thirty-three, and what is more, he had a
son by her. As he could have got the sixty thousand francs of her ��dot�� in several other ways, the public
assigned his uncommon intrepidity to a desire to escape an invasion of the Minotaur, against whom his
personal qualifications would have insufficiently protected him had he rashly dared his fate by bringing
home a young and pretty wife. The fact was, however, that the notary recognized the really fine qualities of
Mademoiselle Agnes (she was called Agnes) and reflected to himself that a woman��s beauty is soon past and
gone to a husband. As to the insignificant youth on whom the clerk of the court louis vuitton bestowed in baptism his
Norman name of ��Exupere,�� Madame Latournelle is still so surprised at becoming his mother, at the age of
thirty-five years and seven months, that she would still provide him, if it were necessary, with her breast
and her milk �� an hyperbole which alone can fully express her impassioned maternity. ��How handsome he is,
that son of mine!�� she says to her little friend Modeste, as they walk to church, with the beautiful Exupere
in front of them. ��He is like you,�� Modeste Mignon answers, very much as she might have said, ��What horrid
weather!�� This silhouette of Madame Latournelle is quite important as an accessory, inasmuch as for three
years she has been the chaperone of the young girl against whom the notary and his friend Dumay are now
plotting to set up what we have called, in the ��Physiologie du Mariage,�� a ��mouse-trap.�� As for
Latournelle, imagine a worthy little fellow as sly as the purest honor and uprightness would allow him to be
�� a man whom any stranger would take for a rascal at sight of his queer physiognomy, to which, however, the
inhabitants of Havre were well accustomed. His eyesight, said to be weak, obliged the worthy man to wear
green goggles for the protection of his eyes, which were constantly inflamed. The arch of each eyebrow,
defined by a thin down of hair, surrounded the tortoise-shell rim of the glasses and made a couple of
circles as it were, slightly apart. If you have never observed on the human face the effect produced by
these circumferences placed one within the other, and separated by a hollow space or line, you can hardly
imagine how perplexing such a face will be to you, especially if pale, hollow-cheeked, and terminating in a
pointed chin like that of Mephistopheles �� a type which painters give to cats. This double resemblance was
observable on the face of Babylas Latournelle. Above the atrocious green spectacles rose a bald crown, all
the more crafty in expression because a wig, seemingly endowed with motion, let the white hairs show on all
sides of it as it meandered crookedly across the forehead. An observer taking note of this excellent Norman,
clothed in black and mounted on his two legs like a beetle on louis vuitton outlet a couple of pins, and knowing him to be one of
the most trustworthy of men, would have sought, without finding it, for the reason of such physical
misrepresentation. Jean Butscha, a natural son abandoned by his parents and taken care of by the clerk of
the court and his daughter, and now, through sheer hard work, head-clerk to the notary, fed and lodged by
his master, who gave him a salary of nine hundred francs, almost a dwarf, and with no semblance of youth ��
Jean Butscha made Modeste his idol, and would willingly have given his life for hers. The poor fellow, whose
eyes were hollowed beneath their heavy lids like the touch-holes of a cannon, whose head overweighted his
body, with its shock of crisp hair, and whose face was pock-marked, had lived under pitying eyes from the
time he was seven years of age. Is not that enough to explain his whole being? Silent, self-contained,
pious, exemplary in conduct, he went his way over that vast tract of country named on the map of the heart
Love-without-Hope, the sublime and arid steppes of Desire. Modeste had christened this grotesque little
being her ��Black Dwarf.�� The nickname sent him to the pages of Walter Scott��s novel, and he one day said to
Modeste: ��Will you accept a rose against the evil day from your mysterious dwarf?�� Modeste instantly sent
the soul of her adorer to its humble mud-cabin with a terrible glance, such as young girls bestow on the men
who cannot please them. Butscha��s conception of himself was lowly, and, like the wife of his master, he had
never been out of Havre. Perhaps it will be well, for the sake of those who have never seen that city, to
say a few words as to the present destination of the Latournelle family �� the head clerk being included in
the latter term. Ingouville is to Havre what Montmartre is to Paris �� a high hill at the foot of which the
city lies; with this difference, that the hill and the city are surrounded by the sea and the Seine, that
Havre is helplessly circumscribed by enclosing fortifications, and, in short, that the mouth of the river,
the harbor, and the docks present a very different aspect from the gucci outlet fifty thousand houses of Paris. At the
foot of Montmartre an ocean of slate roofs lies in motionless blue billows; at Ingouville the sea is like
the same roofs stirred by the wind. This eminence, or line of hills, which coasts the Seine from Rouen to
the seashore, leaving a margin of valley land more or less narrow between itself and the river, and
containing in its cities, its ravines, its vales, its meadows, veritable treasures of the picturesque,
became of enormous value in and about Ingouville, after the year 1816, the period at which the prosperity of
Havre began. This township has become since that time the Auteuil, the Ville-d��Avray, the Montmorency, in
short, the suburban residence of the merchants of Havre. Here they build their houses on terraces around its
ampitheatre of hills, and breathe the sea air laden with the fragrance of their splendid gardens. Here these
bold speculators cast off the burden of their counting-rooms and the atmosphere of their city houses, which
are built closely together without open spaces, often without court-yards �� a vice of construction with the
increasing population of Havre, the inflexible line of the fortifications, and the enlargement of the docks
has forced upon them. The result is, weariness of heart in Havre, cheerfulness and joy at Ingouville. The
law of social development has forced up the suburb of Graville like a mushroom. It is today more extensive
than Havre itself, which lies at the foot of its slopes like a serpent. At the crest of the hill Ingouville
has but one street, and (as in all such situations) the houses which overlook the river have an immense
advantage over those on the other side of the road, whose view they obstruct, and which present the effect
of standing on tip-toe to look over the opposing roofs. However, there exist here, as elsewhere, certain
servitudes. Some houses standing at the summit have a finer position or possess legal rights of view which
compel their opposite neighbors to keep their buildings down to a required height. Moreover, the openings
cut in the capricious rock by roads which follow its declensions and make the ampitheatre habitable, give
vistas through which some estates can see the city, or the river, or the sea. Instead of rising to an actual kate spade outlet
peak, the hill ends abruptly in a cliff. At the end of the street which follows the line of the summit,
ravines appear in which a few villages are clustered (Sainte�CAdresse and two or three other
Saint-somethings) together with several creeks which murmur and flow with the tides of the sea. These
half-deserted slopes of Ingouville form a striking contrast to the terraces of fine villas which overlook
the valley of the Seine. Is the wind on this side too strong for vegetation? Do the merchants shrink from
the cost of terracing it? However this may be, the traveller approaching Havre on a steamer is surprised to
find a barren coast and tangled gorges to the west of Ingouville, like a beggar in rags beside a perfumed
and sumptuously apparelled rich man. In 1829 one of the last houses looking toward the sea, and which in
all probability stands about the centre of the Ingouville today, was called, and perhaps is still called,
��the Chalet.�� Originally it was a porter��s lodge with a trim little garden in front of it. The owner of the
villa to which it belonged �� a mansion with park, gardens, aviaries, hot-houses, and lawns �� took a fancy to
put the little dwelling more in keeping with the splendor of his own abode, and he reconstructed it on the
model of an ornamental cottage. He divided this cottage from his own lawn, which was bordered and set with
flower-beds and formed the terrace of his villa, by a low wall along which he planted a concealing hedge.
Behind the cottage (called, in spite of all his efforts to prevent it, the Chalet) were the orchards and
kitchen gardens of the villa. The Chalet, without cows or dairy, is separated from the roadway by a wooden
fence whose palings are hidden under a luxuriant hedge. On the other side of the road the opposite house,
subject to a legal privilege, has a similar hedge and paling, so as to leave an unobstructed view of Havre
to the Chalet. This little dwelling was the torment of the present proprietor of the villa, Monsieur
Vilquin; and here is the why and the wherefore. The original creator of the villa, whose sumptuous details
cry aloud, ��Behold our millions!�� extended his park far into ray ban outlet the country for the purpose, as he averred, of
getting his gardeners out of his pockets; and so, when the Chalet was finished, none but a friend could be
allowed to inhabit it. Monsieur Mignon, the next owner of the property, was very much attached to his
cashier, Dumay, and the following history will prove that the attachment was mutual; to him therefore he
offered the little dwelling. Dumay, a stickler for legal methods, insisted on signing a lease for three
hundred francs for twelve years, and Monsieur Mignon willingly agreed, remarking �� ��My dear Dumay,
remember, you have now bound yourself to live with me for twelve years.�� In consequence of certain events
which will presently be related, the estates of Monsieur Mignon, formerly the richest merchant in Havre,
were sold to Vilquin, one of his business competitors. In his joy at getting possession of the celebrated
villa Mignon, the latter forgot to demand the cancelling of the lease. Dumay, anxious not to hinder the
sale, would have signed anything Vilquin required, but the sale once made, he held to his lease like a
vengeance. And there he remained, in Vilquin��s pocket as it were; at the heart of Vilquin��s family life,
observing Vilquin, irritating Vilquin �� in short, the gadfly of all the Vilquins. Every morning, when he
looked out of his window, Vilquin felt a violent shock of annoyance as his eye lighted on the little gem of
a building, the Chalet, which had cost sixty thousand francs and sparkled like a ruby in the sun. That
comparison is very nearly exact. The architect has constructed the cottage of brilliant red brick pointed
with white. The window-frames are painted of a lively green, the woodwork is brown verging on yellow. The
roof overhangs by several feet. A pretty gallery, with open-worked balustrade, surmounts the lower floor and
projects at the centre of the facade into a veranda with glass sides. The ground-floor has a charming salon
and a dining-room, separated from each other by the landing of a staircase built of wood, designed and
decorated with elegant simplicity. The kitchen is behind the dining-room, and the corresponding room back of
the salon, formerly a study, is now the bedroom of Monsieur and Madame Dumay. On the upper floor the
architect has prada outlet managed to get two large bedrooms, each with a dressing-room, to which the veranda serves as a
salon; and above this floor, under the eaves, which are tipped together like a couple of cards, are two
servants�� rooms with mansard roofs, each lighted by a circular window and tolerably spacious. Vilquin has
been petty enough to build a high wall on the side toward the orchard and kitchen garden; and in consequence
of this piece of spite, the few square feet which the lease secured to the Chalet resembled a Parisian
garden. The out-buildings, painted in keeping with the cottage, stood with their backs to the wall of the
adjoining property. The interior of this charming dwelling harmonized with its exterior. The salon, floored
entirely with iron-wood, was painted in a style that suggested the beauties of Chinese lacquer. On black
panels edged with gold, birds of every color, foliage of impossible greens, and fantastic oriental designs
glowed and shimmered. The dining-room was entirely sheathed in Northern woods carved and cut in open-work
like the beautiful Russian chalets. The little antechamber formed by the landing and the well of the
staircase was painted in old oak to represent Gothic ornament. The bedrooms, hung with chintz, were charming
in their costly simplicity. The study, where the cashier and his wife now slept, was panelled from top to
bottom, on the walls and ceiling, like the cabin of a steamboat. These luxuries of his predecessor excited
Vilquin��s wrath. He would fain have lodged his daughter and her husband in the cottage. This desire, well
known to Dumay, will presently serve to illustrate the Breton obstinacy of the latter. The entrance to the
Chalet is by a little trellised iron door, the uprights of which, ending in lance-heads, show for a few
inches above the fence and its hedge. The little garden, about as wide as the more pretentious lawn, was
just now filled with flowers, roses, and dahlias of the choicest kind, and many rare products of the
hot-houses, for (another Vilquinard grievance) the elegant little hot-house, a very whim of a hot-house, a
hot-house representing dignity and style, belonged to the Chalet, and separated, or if you prefer, united it
to the villa Vilquin. Dumay consoled himself for the toils of business in taking new balance care of this hot-house,
whose exotic treasures were one of Modeste��s joys. The billiard-room of the villa Vilquin, a species of
gallery, formerly communicated through an immense aviary with this hot-house. But after the building of the
wall which deprived him of a view into the orchards, Dumay bricked up the door of communication. ��Wall for
wall!�� he said. In 1827 Vilquin offered Dumay a salary of six thousand francs, and ten thousand more as
indemnity, if he would give up the lease. The cashier refused; though he had but three thousand francs from
Gobenheim, a former clerk of his master. Dumay was a Breton transplanted by fate into Normandy. Imagine
therefore the hatred conceived for the tenants of the Chalet by the Norman Vilquin, a man worth three
millions! What criminal leze-million on the part of a cashier, to hold up to the eyes of such a man the
impotence of his wealth! Vilquin, whose desperation in the matter made him the talk of Havre, had just
proposed to give Dumay a pretty house of his own, and had again been refused. Havre itself began to grow
uneasy at the man��s obstinacy, and a good many persons explained it by the phrase, ��Dumay is a Breton.�� As
for the cashier, he thought Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon would be ill-lodged elsewhere. His two idols now
inhabited a temple worthy of them; the sumptuous little cottage gave them a home, where these dethroned
royalties could keep the semblance of majesty about them �� a species of dignity usually denied to those who
have seen better days. Perhaps as the story goes on, the reader will not regret having learned in advance a
few particulars as to the home and the habitual companions of Modeste Mignon, for, at her age, people and
things have as much influence upon the future life as a person��s own character, �� indeed, character often
receives ineffaceable impressions from its surroundings. From the manner with which the Latournelles entered
the Chalet a stranger would readily have guessed that they came there every evening. ��Ah, you are here
already,�� said the notary, perceiving the young banker Gobenheim, a connection of Gobenheim�CKeller, the head
of the great banking house in Paris. This young man with a livid face �� a blonde Louis Vuitton Outlet of the type with black
eyes, whose immovable glance has an indescribable fascination, sober in speech as in conduct, dressed in
black, lean as a consumptive, but nevertheless vigorously framed �� visited the family of his former master
and the house of his cashier less from affection than from self-interest. Here they played whist at two sous
a point; a dress-coat was not required; he accepted no refreshment except ��eau sucree,�� and consequently had
no civilities to return. This apparent devotion to the Mignon family allowed it to be supposed that
Gobenheim had a heart; it also released him from the necessity of going into the society of Havre and
incurring useless expenses, thus upsetting the orderly economy of his domestic life. This disciple of the
golden calf went to bed at half-past ten o��clock and got up at five in the morning. Moreover, being
perfectly sure of Latournelle��s and Butscha��s discretion, he could talk over difficult business matters,
obtain the advice of the notary gratis, and get an inkling of the real truth of the gossip of the street.
This stolid gold-glutton (the epithet is Butscha��s) belonged by nature to the class of substances which
chemistry terms absorbents. Ever since the catastrophe of the house of Mignon, where the Kellers had placed
him to learn the principles of maritime commerce, no one at the Chalet had ever asked him to do the smallest
thing, no matter what; his reply was too well known. The young fellow looked at Modeste precisely as he
would have looked at a cheap lithograph. ��He��s one of the pistons of the big engine called ��Commerce,����
said poor Butscha, whose clever mind made itself felt occasionally by such little sayings timidly jerked
out. The four Latournelles bowed with the most respectful deference to an old lady dressed in black velvet,
who did not rise from the armchair in which she was seated, for the reason that both eyes were covered with
the yellow film produced by cataract. Madame Mignon may be sketched in one sentence. Her august countenance
of the mother of a family attracted instant notice as that of one whose irreproachable life defies the
assaults of destiny, which nevertheless makes her the target of its arrows and a member of the unnumbered
tribe of Niobes. Her blonde Michael Kors Outlet wig, carefully curled and well arranged upon her head, became the cold white
face which resembled that of some burgomaster��s wife painted by Hals or Mirevelt. The extreme neatness of
her dress, the velvet boots, the lace collar, the shawl evenly folded and put on, all bore testimony to the
solicitous care which Modeste bestowed upon her mother. When silence was, as the notary had predicted,
restored in the pretty salon, Modeste, sitting beside her mother, for whom she was embroidering a kerchief,
became for an instant the centre of observation. This curiosity, barely veiled by the commonplace
salutations and inquiries of the visitors, would have revealed even to an indifferent person the existence
of the domestic plot to which Modeste was expected to fall a victim; but Gobenheim, more than indifferent,
noticed nothing, and proceeded to light the candles on the card-table. The behavior of Dumay made the whole
scene terrifying to Butscha, to the Latournelles, and above all to Madame Dumay, who knew her husband to be
capable of firing a pistol at Modeste��s lover as coolly as though he were a mad dog. After dinner that day
the cashier had gone to walk followed by two magnificent Pyrenees hounds, whom he suspected of betraying
him, and therefore left in charge of a farmer, a former tenant of Monsieur Mignon. On his return, just
before the arrival of the Latournelles, he had taken his pistols from his bed��s head and placed them on the
chimney-piece, concealing this action from Modeste. The young girl took no notice whatever of these
preparations, singular as they were. Though short, thick-set, pockmarked, and speaking always in a low
voice as if listening to himself, this Breton, a former lieutenant in the Guard, showed the evidence of such
resolution, such sang-froid on his face that throughout life, even in the army, no one had ever ventured to
trifle with him. His little eyes, of a calm blue, were like bits of steel. His ways, the look on his face,
his speech, his carriage, were all in keeping with the short name of Dumay. His physical strength,
well-known to every one, put him above all danger of attack. He was able to kill a man with a blow of his
fist, and had performed that feat at Kate Spade Bautzen, where he found himself, unarmed, face to face with a Saxon at
the rear of his company. At the present moment the usually firm yet gentle expression of the man��s face had
risen to a sort of tragic sublimity; his lips were pale as the rest of his face, indicating a tumult within
him mastered by his Breton will; a slight sweat, which every one noticed and guessed to be cold, moistened
his brow. The notary knew but too well that these signs might result in a drama before the criminal courts.
In fact the cashier was playing a part in connection with Modeste Mignon, which involved to his mind
sentiments of honor and loyalty of far greater importance than mere social laws; and his present conduct
proceeded from one of those compacts which, in case disaster came of it, could be judged only in a higher
court than one of earth. The majority of dramas lie really in the ideas which we make to ourselves about
things. Events which seem to us dramatic are nothing more than subjects which our souls convert into tragedy
or comedy according to the bent of our characters. Madame Latournelle and Madame Dumay, who were appointed
to watch Modeste, had a certain assumed stiffness of demeanor and a quiver in their voices, which the
suspected party did not notice, so absorbed was she in her embroidery. Modeste laid each thread of cotton
with a precision that would have made an ordinary workwoman desperate. Her face expressed the pleasure she
took in the smooth petals of the flower she was working. The dwarf, seated between his mistress and
Gobenheim, restrained his emotion, trying to find means to approach Modeste and whisper a word of warning in
her ear. By taking a position in front of Madame Mignon, Madame Latournelle, with the diabolical
intelligence of conscientious duty, had isolated Modeste. Madame Mignon, whose blindness always made her
silent, was even paler than usual, showing plainly that she was aware of the test to which her daughter was
about to be subjected. Perhaps at the last moment she revolted from the stratagem, necessary as it might
seem to her. Hence her silence; she was weeping inwardly. Exupere, the spring of the trap, was wholly
ignorant of the piece in which chanel outlet he was to play a part. Gobenheim, by reason of his character, remained in a
state of indifference equal to that displayed by Modeste. To a spectator who understood the situation, this
contrast between the ignorance of some and the palpitating interest of others would have seemed quite
poetic. Nowadays romance-writers arrange such effects; and it is quite within their province to do so, for
nature in all ages takes the liberty to be stronger than they. In this instance, as you will see, nature,
social nature, which is a second nature within nature, amused herself by making truth more interesting than
fiction; just as mountain torrents describe curves which are beyond the skill of painters to convey, and
accomplish giant deeds in displacing or smoothing stones which are the wonder of architects and sculptors.
It was eight o��clock. At that season twilight was still shedding its last gleams; there was not a cloud in
the sky; the balmy air caressed the earth, the flowers gave forth their fragrance, the steps of pedestrians
turning homeward sounded along the gravelly road, the sea shone like a mirror, and there was so little wind
that the wax candles upon the card-tables sent up a steady flame, although the windows were wide open. This
salon, this evening, this dwelling �� what a frame for the portrait of the young girl whom these persons were
now studying with the profound attention of a painter in presence of the Margharita Doni, one of the glories
of the Pitti palace. Modeste �� blossom enclosed, like that of Catullus �� was she worth all these
precautions? You have seen the cage; behold the bird! Louis Vuitton Just twenty years of age, slender and delicate as the
sirens which English designers invent for their ��Books of Beauty,�� Modeste was, like her mother before her,
the captivating embodiment of a grace too little understood in France, where we choose to call it
sentimentality, but which among German women is the poetry of the heart coming to the surface of the being
and spending itself �� in affectations if the owner is silly, in divine charms of manner if she is
��spirituelle�� and intelligent. Remarkable for her pale golden hair, Modeste belonged to the type of woman
called, perhaps in memory of Eve, the celestial blonde; whose satiny skin is like a silk paper applied to
the flesh, shuddering at the winter of a cold look, expanding in the sunshine of a loving glance, �� teaching
the hand to be jealous of the eye. Beneath her hair, which was soft and feathery and worn in many curls, the
brow, which might have been traced by a compass so pure was its modelling, shone forth discreet, calm to
placidity, and yet luminous with thought: when and where could another be found so transparently clear or
more exquisitely smooth? It seemed, like a pearl, to have its orient. The eyes, of a blue verging on gray
and limpid as the eyes of a child, had all the mischief, all the innocence of childhood, and they harmonized
well with the arch of the eyebrows, faintly indicated by lines like those made with a brush on Chinese
faces. This candor of the soul was still further evidenced around the eyes, in their corners, and about the
temples, by pearly tints threaded with blue, the special privilege of these delicate complexions. The face,
whose oval Raphael so often gave to his Madonnas, was remarkable for the sober and virginal tone of the
cheeks, soft as a Bengal rose, upon which the long lashes of the diaphanous eyelids cast shadows that were
mingled with light. The throat, bending as she worked, too delicate perhaps, and of milky whiteness,
recalled those vanishing lines that Leonardo loved. A few little blemishes here and there, like the patches
of the eighteenth century, proved that Modeste was indeed a child of earth, and not a creation dreamed of in
Italy by the angelic school. Her lips, delicate yet full, were slightly mocking and somewhat sensuous; the
waist, which was supple and yet not fragile, had no terrors for maternity, like those of girls who seek
beauty by the fatal pressure of a corset. Steel and dimity and lacings defined but did not create the
serpentine lines of the elegant figure, graceful as that of a young poplar swaying in the wind. A
pearl-gray dress with crimson trimmings, made with a long waist, modestly outlined the bust and covered the
shoulders, still rather thin, with a chemisette which left nothing to view but the first curves of the
throat where it joined the shoulders. From the kate spade outlet aspect of the young girl��s face, at once ethereal and
intelligent, where the delicacy of a Greek nose with its rosy nostrils and firm modelling marked something
positive and defined; where the poetry enthroned upon an almost mystic brow seemed belied at times by the
pleasure-loving expression of the mouth; where candor claimed the depths profound and varied of the eye, and
disputed them with a spirit of irony that was trained and educated �� from all these signs an observer would
have felt that this young girl, with the keen, alert ear that waked at every sound, with a nostril open to
catch the fragrance of the celestial flower of the Ideal, was destined to be the battle-ground of a struggle
between the poesies of the dawn and the labors of the day; between fancy and reality, the spirit and the
life. Modeste was a pure young girl, inquisitive after knowledge, understanding her destiny, and filled with
chastity �� the Virgin of Spain rather than the Madonna of Raphael. She raised her head when she heard Dumay
say to Exupere, ��Come here, young man.�� Seeing them together in the corner of the salon she supposed they
were talking of some commission in Paris. Then she looked at the friends who surrounded her, as if surprised
by their silence, and exclaimed in her natural manner, ��Why are you not playing?���� with a glance at the
green table which the imposing Madame Latournelle called the ��altar.�� ��Yes, let us play,�� said Dumay,
having sent off Exupere. ��Sit there, Butscha,�� said Madame Latournelle, separating the head-clerk from the
group around Madame Mignon and her daughter by the whole width of the table. ��And you, come over here,��
said Dumay to his wife, making her sit close by him. Madame Dumay, a little American about thirty-six years
of age, wiped her eyes furtively; she adored Modeste, and feared a catastrophe. ��You are not very lively
this evening,�� remarked Modeste. ��We are playing,�� said Gobenheim, sorting his cards. No matter how
interesting this situation may appear, it can be made still more so by explaining Dumay��s position towards
Modeste. If the brevity of this explanation makes it seem rather dry, the reader must pardon its dryness in
view of our desire to barbour outlet get through with these preliminaries as speedily as possible, and the necessity of
relating the main circumstances which govern all dramas. |
|
|
Das Interview
