Modeste Mignon | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and
Dagny, [email protected]

MODESTE MIGNON by HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To a Polish Lady.
Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through love, witch through fancy,
child by faith, aged by experience, man in brain, woman in heart, giant

by hope, mother through sorrows, poet in thy dreams, --to THEE
belongs this book, in which thy love, thy fancy, thy experience, thy
sorrow, thy hope, thy dreams, are the warp through which is shot a
woof less brilliant than the poesy of thy soul, whose expression, when
it shines upon thy countenance, is, to those who love thee, what the
characters of a lost language are to scholars.
De Balzac.

MODESTE MIGNON


CHAPTER I
THE CHALET
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 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