What follies I committed after I came home! The yellow dahlias reminded me of your waistcoat, the white roses were my loving friends; I bowed to them with a look that belonged to you, like all that is of me. The very color of the gloves, moulded to hands of a gentleman, your step along the nave,--all, all, is so printed on my memory that sixty years hence I shall see the veriest trifles of this day of days,--the color of the atmosphere, the ray of sunshine that flickered on a certain pillar; I shall hear the prayer your step interrupted; I shall inhale the incense of the altar; forever I shall feel above our heads the priestly hands that blessed us both as you passed by me at the closing benediction. The good Abbe Marcelin married us then! The happiness, above that of earth, which I feel in this new world of unexpected emotions can only be equalled by the joy of telling it to you, of sending it back to him who poured it into my heart with the lavishness of the sun itself. No more veils, no more disguises, my beloved. Come back to me, oh, come back soon. With joy I now unmask.
You have no doubt heard of the house of Mignon in Havre? Well, I
am, through an irreparable misfortune, its sole heiress. But you are not to look down upon us, descendant of an Auvergne knight;
the arms of the Mignon de La Bastie will do no dishonor to those of Canalis. We bear gules, on a bend sable four bezants or;
quarterly four crosses patriarchal or; a cardinal's hat as crest, and the fiocchi for supports. Dear, I will be faithful to our motto: "Una fides, unus Dominus!"--the true faith, and one only Master.
Perhaps, my friend, you will find some irony in my name, after all that I have done, and all that I herein avow. I am named Modeste.
Therefore I have not deceived you by signing "O. d'Este M."
Neither have I misled you about our fortune; it will amount, I
believe, to the sum which rendered you so virtuous. I know that to you money is a consideration of small importance; therefore I
speak of it without reserve. Let me tell you how happy it makes me to give freedom of action to our happiness,--to be able to say, when the fancy for travel takes us, "Come, let us go in a comfortable carriage, sitting side by side, without a thought of money"--happy, in short, to tell the king, "I have the fortune which you require in your peers." Thus Modeste Mignon can be of service to you, and her gold will have the noblest of uses.
As to your servant herself,--you did see her once, at her window.
Yes, "the fairest daughter of Eve the fair" was indeed your unknown damozel; but how little the Modeste of to-day resembles her of that long past era! That one was in her shroud, this one--
have I made you know it?--has received from you the life of life.
Love, pure, and sanctioned, the love my father, now returning rich and prosperous, will authorize, has raised me with its powerful yet childlike hand from the grave in which I slept. You have wakened me as the sun wakens the flowers. The eyes of your beloved are no longer those of the little Modeste so daring in her ignorance,--no, they are dimmed with the sight of happiness, and the lids close over them. To-day I tremble lest I can never deserve my fate. The king has come in his glory; my lord has now a subject who asks pardon for the liberties she has taken, like the gambler with loaded dice after cheating Monsieur de Grammont.
My cherished poet! I will be thy Mignon--happier far than the Mignon of Goethe, for thou wilt leave me in mine own land,--in thy heart. Just as I write this pledge of our betrothal a nightingale in the Vilquin park answers for thee. Ah, tell me quick that his note, so pure, so clear, so full, which fills my heart with joy and love like an Annunciation, does not lie to me.
My father will pass through Paris on his way from Marseilles; the house of Mongenod, with whom he corresponds, will know his address. Go to him, my Melchior, tell him that you love me; but do not try to tell him how I love you,--let that be forever between ourselves and God. I, my dear one, am about to tell everything to my mother. Her heart will justify my conduct; she will rejoice in our secret poem, so romantic, human and divine in one.
You have the confession of the daughter; you must now obtain the consent of the Comte de La Bastie, father of your Modeste.
P.S.--Above all, do not come to Havre without having first obtained my father's consent. If you love me you will not fail to find him on his way through Paris.
"What are you doing, up at this hour, Mademoiselle Modeste?" said the voice of Dumay at her door.
"Writing to my father," she answered; "did you not tell me you should start in the morning?"
Dumay had nothing to say to that, and he went to bed, while Modeste wrote another long letter, this time to her father.
On the morrow, Francois Cochet, terrified at seeing the Havre postmark on the envelope which Ernest had mailed the night before, brought her young mistress the following letter and took away the one which Modeste had written:--
To Mademoiselle O. d'Este M.,--My heart tells me that you were the woman so carefully veiled and disguised, and seated between Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, who have but one child, a son.
Ah, my love, if you have only a modest station, without distinction, without importance, without money even, you do not know how happy that would make me. You ought to understand me by this time; why will you not tell me the truth? I am no poet,--
except in heart, through love, through you. Oh! what power of affection there is in me to keep me here in this hotel, instead of mounting to Ingouville which I can see from my windows. Will you ever love me as I love you? To leave Havre in such uncertainty! Am I not punished for loving you as if I had committed a crime? But I
obey you blindly. Let me have a letter quickly, for if you have been mysterious, I have returned you mystery for mystery, and I
must at last throw off my disguise, show you the poet that I am, and abdicate my borrowed glory.
This letter made Modeste terribly uneasy. She could not get back the one which Francoise had carried away before she came to the last words, whose meaning she now sought by reading them again and again;
but she went to her own room and wrote an answer in which she demanded an immediate explanation.
