Modeste Mignon | Page 5

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 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 to-day 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 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-Adresse 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 to-day, 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,