Such was the result to the celebrated house of Mignon at Havre of the
crisis of 1825-26, which convulsed many of the principal business
centres in Europe and caused the ruin of several Parisian bankers,
among them (as those who remember that crisis will recall) the
president of the chamber of commerce.
We can now understand how this great disaster, coming suddenly at the
close of ten years of domestic happiness, might well have been the
death of Bettina Mignon, again separated from her husband and ignorant
of his fate,—to her as adventurous and perilous as the exile to
Siberia. But the grief which was dragging her to the grave was far
other than these visible sorrows. The caustic that was slowly eating
into her heart lay beneath a stone in the little graveyard of
Ingouville, on which was inscribed:—
BETTINA CAROLINE MIGNON
Died aged twenty-two.
Pray for her.
This inscription is to the young girl whom it covered what many
another epitaph has been for the dead lying beneath them,—a table of
contents to a hidden book. Here is the book, in its dreadful brevity;
and it will explain the oath exacted and taken when the colonel and
the lieutenant bade each other farewell.
A young man of charming appearance, named Charles d’Estourny, came to
Havre for the commonplace purpose of being near the sea, and there he
saw Bettina Mignon. A “soi-disant” fashionable Parisian is never
without introductions, and he was invited at the instance of a friend
of the Mignons to a fete given at Ingouville. He fell in love with
Bettina and with her fortune, and in three months he had done the work
of seduction and enticed her away. The father of a family of daughters
should no more allow a young man whom he does not know to enter his
home than he should leave books and papers lying about which he has
not read. A young girl’s innocence is like milk, which a small matter
turns sour,—a clap of thunder, an evil odor, a hot day, a mere
breath.
When Charles Mignon read his daughter’s letter of farewell he
instantly despatched Madame Dumay to Paris. The family gave out that a
journey to another climate had suddenly been advised for Caroline by
their physician; and the physician himself sustained the excuse,
though unable to prevent some gossip in the society of Havre. “Such a
vigorous young girl! with the complexion of a Spaniard, and that black
hair!—she consumptive!” “Yes, they say she committed some
imprudence.” “Ah, ah!” cried a Vilquin. “I am told she came back
bathed in perspiration after riding on horseback, and drank iced
water; at least, that is what Dr. Troussenard says.”
By the time Madame Dumay returned to Havre the catastrophe of the
failure had taken place, and society paid no further attention to the
absence of Bettina or the return of the cashier’s wife. At the
beginning of 1827 the newspapers rang with the trial of Charles
d’Estourny, who was found guilty of cheating at cards. The young
corsair escaped into foreign parts without taking thought of
Mademoiselle Mignon, who was of little value to him since the failure
of the bank. Bettina heard of his infamous desertion and of her
father’s ruin almost at the same time. She returned home struck by
death, and wasted away in a short time at the Chalet. Her death at
least protected her reputation. The illness that Monsieur Mignon
alleged to be the cause of her absence, and the doctor’s order which
sent her to Nice were now generally believed. Up to the last moment
the mother hoped to save her daughter’s life. Bettina was her darling
and Modeste was the father’s. There was something touching in the two
preferences. Bettina was the image of Charles, just as Modeste was the
reproduction of her mother. Both parents continued their love for each
other in their children. Bettina, a daughter of Provence, inherited
from her father the beautiful hair, black as a raven’s wing, which
distinguishes the women of the South, the brown eye, almond-shaped and
brilliant as a star, the olive tint, the velvet skin as of some golden
fruit, the arched instep, and the Spanish waist from which the short
basque skirt fell crisply. Both mother and father were proud of the
charming contrast between the sisters. “A devil and an angel!” they
said to each other, laughing, little thinking it prophetic.
After weeping for a month in the solitude of her chamber, where she
admitted no one, the mother came forth at last with injured eyes.
Before losing her sight altogether she persisted, against the wishes
of her friends, in visiting her daughter’s grave, on which she riveted
her gaze in contemplation. That image remained vivid in the darkness
which now fell upon her, just as the red spectrum of an object shines
in our eyes when we close them in full daylight. This terrible and
double misfortune made Dumay, not less devoted, but more anxious about
Modeste, now the only daughter of the father who was unaware of his
loss. Madame Dumay, idolizing Modeste, like other women deprived of
their children, cast her motherliness about the girl,—yet without
disregarding the commands of her husband, who distrusted female
intimacies. Those commands were brief. “If any man, of any age, or any
rank,” Dumay said, “speaks to Modeste, ogles her, makes love to her,
he is a dead man. I’ll blow his brains out and give myself to the
authorities; my death may save her. If you don’t wish to see my head
cut off, do you take my place in watching her when I am obliged to go
out.”
For the last three years Dumay had examined his pistols every night.
He seemed to have put half the burden of his oath upon the Pyrenean
hounds, two animals of uncommon sagacity. One slept inside the Chalet,
the other was stationed in a kennel which he never left, and where he
never barked; but terrible would have been the moment had the pair
made their teeth meet in some unknown adventurer.
We can now imagine the sort of life led by mother and daughter at the
Chalet. Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, often accompanied by
Gobenheim, came to call and play whist with Dumay nearly every
evening. The conversation turned on the gossip of Havre and the petty
events of provincial life. The little company separated between nine
and ten o’clock. Modeste put her mother to bed, and together they said
their prayers, kept up each other’s courage, and talked of the dear
absent one, the husband and father. After kissing her mother for
good-night, the girl went to her own room about ten o’clock. The next
morning she prepared her mother for the day with the same care, the
same prayers, the same prattle. To her praise be it said that from the
day when the terrible infirmity deprived her mother of a sense,
Modeste had been like a servant to her, displaying at all times the
same solicitude; never wearying of the duty, never thinking it
monotonous. Such constant devotion, combined with a tenderness rare
among young girls, was thoroughly appreciated by those who witnessed
it. To the Latournelle family, and to Monsieur and Madame Dumay,
Modeste was, in soul, the pearl of price.
On sunny days, between breakfast and dinner, Madame Mignon and Madame
Dumay took a little walk toward the sea. Modeste accompanied them, for
two arms were needed to support the blind mother. About a month before
the scene to which this explanation is a parenthesis, Madame Mignon
had taken counsel with her friends, Madame Latournelle, the notary,
and Dumay, while Madame Dumay carried Modeste in another direction for
a longer walk.
“Listen to what I have to say,” said the blind woman. “My daughter is
in love. I feel it; I see it. A singular change has taken place within
her, and I do not see how it is that none of you have perceived it.”
“In the name of all that’s honorable—” cried the lieutenant.
“Don’t interrupt me, Dumay. For the last two months Modeste has taken
as much care of her personal appearance as if she expected to meet a
lover. She has grown extremely fastidious about her shoes; she wants
to set off her pretty feet; she scolds Madame Gobet, the shoemaker. It
is the same thing with her milliner. Some days my poor darling is
absorbed in thought, evidently expectant, as if waiting for some one.
Her voice has curt tones when she answers a question, as though she
were interrupted in the current of her thoughts and secret
expectations. Then, if this awaited lover has come—”
“Good heavens!”
“Sit down, Dumay,” said the blind woman. “Well, then Modeste is gay.
Oh! she is not gay to your sight; you cannot catch these gradations;
they are too delicate for eyes that see only the outside of nature.
Her gaiety is betrayed to me by the tones of her voice, by certain
accents which I alone can catch and understand. Modeste then, instead
of sitting still and thoughtful, gives vent to a wild, inward activity
by impulsive movements,—in short, she is happy. There is a grace, a
charm in the very ideas she utters. Ah, my friends, I know happiness
as well as I know sorrow; I know its signs. By the kiss my Modeste
gives me I can guess what is passing within her. I know whether she
has received what she was looking for, or whether she is uneasy or
expectant. There are many gradations in a kiss, even in that of an
innocent young girl, and Modeste is innocence itself; but hers is the
innocence of knowledge, not of ignorance. I may be blind, but my
tenderness is all-seeing, and I charge you to watch over my daughter.”
Dumay, now actually ferocious, the notary, in the character of a man
bound to ferret out a mystery, Madame Latournelle, the deceived
chaperone, and Madame Dumay, alarmed for her husband’s safety, became
at once a set of spies, and Modeste from this day forth was never left
alone for an instant. Dumay passed nights under her window wrapped in
his cloak like a jealous Spaniard; but with all his military sagacity
he was unable to detect the least suspicious sign. Unless she loved
the nightingales in the villa park, or some fairy prince, Modeste
could have seen no one, and had neither given nor received a signal.
Madame Dumay, who never went to bed till she knew Modeste was asleep,
watched the road from the upper windows of the Chalet with a vigilance
equal to her husband’s. Under these eight Argus eyes the blameless
child, whose every motion was studied and analyzed, came out of the
ordeal so fully acquitted of all criminal conversation that the four
friends declared to each other privately that Madame Mignon was
foolishly over-anxious. Madame Latournelle, who always took Modeste to
church and brought her back again, was commissioned to tell the mother
that she was mistaken about her daughter.
“Modeste,” she said, “is a young girl of very exalted ideas; she works
herself into enthusiasm for the poetry of one writer or the prose of
another. You have only to judge by the impression made upon her by
that scaffold symphony, ‘The Last Hours of a Convict'” (the saying was
Butscha’s, who supplied wit to his benefactress with a lavish hand);
“she seemed to me all but crazy with admiration for that Monsieur Hugo.
I’m sure I don’t know where such people” (Victor Hugo, Lamartine,
Byron being such people to the Madame Latournelles of the bourgeoisie)
“get their ideas. Modeste kept talking to me of Childe Harold, and as
I did not wish to get the worst of the argument I was silly enough to
try to read the thing. Perhaps it was the fault of the translator, but
it actually turned my stomach; I was dazed; I couldn’t possibly finish
it. Why, the man talks about comparisons that howl, rocks that faint,
and waves of war! However, he is only a travelling Englishman, and we
must expect absurdities,—though his are really inexcusable. He takes
you to Spain, and sets you in the clouds above the Alps, and makes the
torrents talk, and the stars; and he says there are too many virgins!
Did you ever hear the like? Then, after Napoleon’s campaigns, the
lines are full of sonorous brass and flaming cannon-balls, rolling
along from page to page. Modeste tells me that all that bathos is put
in by the translator, and that I ought to read the book in English.
But I certainly sha’n’t learn English to read Lord Byron when I didn’t
learn it to teach Exupere. I much prefer the novels of Ducray-Dumenil
to all these English romances. I’m too good a Norman to fall in love
with foreign things,—above all when they come from England.”
Madame Mignon, notwithstanding her melancholy, could not help smiling
at the idea of Madame Latournelle reading Childe Harold. The stern
scion of a parliamentary house accepted the smile as an approval of
her doctrine.
“And, therefore, my dear Madame Mignon,” she went on, “you have taken
Modeste’s fancies, which are nothing but the results of her reading,
for a love-affair. Remember, she is just twenty. Girls fall in love
with themselves at that age; they dress to see themselves
well-dressed. I remember I used to make my little sister, now dead,
put on a man’s hat and pretend we were monsieur and madame. You see,
you had a very happy youth in Frankfort; but let us be just,—Modeste
is living here without the slightest amusement. Although, to be sure,
her every wish is attended to, still she knows she is shut up and
watched, and the life she leads would give her no pleasure at all if
it were not for the amusement she gets out of her books. Come, don’t
worry yourself; she loves nobody but you. You ought to be very glad
that she goes into these enthusiasms for the corsairs of Byron and
the heroes of Walter Scott and your own Germans, Egmont, Goethe,
Werther, Schiller, and all the other ‘ers.'”
“Well, madame, what do you say to that?” asked Dumay, respectfully,
alarmed at Madame Mignon’s silence.
“Modeste is not only inclined to love, but she loves some man,”
answered the mother, obstinately.
“Madame, my life is at stake, and you must allow me—not for my sake,
but for my wife, my colonel, for all of us—to probe this matter to
the bottom, and find out whether it is the mother or the watch-dog who
is deceived.”
“It is you who are deceived, Dumay. Ah! if I could but see my
daughter!” cried the poor woman.
“But whom is it possible for her to love?” asked the notary. “I’ll
answer for my Exupere.”
“It can’t be Gobenheim,” said Dumay, “for since the colonel’s
departure he has not spent nine hours a week in this house. Besides,
he doesn’t even notice Modeste—that five-franc piece of a man! His
uncle Gobenheim-Keller is all the time writing him, ‘Get rich enough
to marry a Keller.’ With that idea in his mind you may be sure he
doesn’t know which sex Modeste belongs to. No other men ever come
here,—for of course I don’t count Butscha, poor little fellow; I love
him! He is your Dumay, madame,” said the cashier to Madame
Latournelle. “Butscha knows very well that a mere glance at Modeste
would cost him a Breton ducking. Not a soul has any communication with
this house. Madame Latournelle who takes Modeste to church ever since
your—your misfortune, madame, has carefully watched her on the way
and all through the service, and has seen nothing suspicious. In
short, if I must confess the truth, I have myself raked all the paths
about the house every evening for the last month, and found no trace
of footsteps in the morning.”
“Rakes are neither costly nor difficult to handle,” remarked the
daughter of Germany.
“But the dogs?” cried Dumay.
“Lovers have philters even for dogs,” answered Madame Mignon.
“If you are right, my honor is lost! I may as well blow my brains
out,” exclaimed Dumay.
“Why so, Dumay?” said the blind woman.
“Ah, madame, I could never meet my colonel’s eye if he did not find
his daughter—now his only daughter—as pure and virtuous as she was
when he said to me on the vessel, ‘Let no fear of the scaffold hinder
you, Dumay, if the honor of my Modeste is at stake.'”
“Ah! I recognize you both,” said Madame Mignon in a voice of strong
emotion.
“I’ll wager my salvation that Modeste is as pure as she was in her
cradle,” exclaimed Madame Dumay.
“Well, I shall make certain of it,” replied her husband, “if Madame la
Comtesse will allow me to employ certain means; for old troopers
understand strategy.”
“I will allow you to do anything that shall enlighten us, provided it
does no injury to my last child.”
“What are you going to do, Jean?” asked Madame Dumay; “how can you
discover a young girl’s secret if she means to hide it?”
“Obey me, all!” cried the lieutenant, “I shall need every one of you.”
If this rapid sketch were clearly developed it would give a whole
picture of manners and customs in which many a family could recognize
the events of their own history; but it must suffice as it is to
explain the importance of the few details heretofore given about
persons and things on the memorable evening when the old soldier had
made ready his plot against the young girl, intending to wrench from
the recesses of her heart the secret of a love and a lover seen only
by a blind mother.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — Modeste Mignon/Chapter IV. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.