Part 23 (1/2)

The remark raised a laugh, for it was the translation of everybody's thought.

”I play it sufficiently well to live in the provinces for the rest of my days,” replied Ca.n.a.lis. ”That, I think, is enough, and more than enough literature and conversation for whist-players,” he added, throwing the volume impatiently on a table.

This little incident serves to show what dangers environ a drawing-room hero when he steps, like Ca.n.a.lis, out of his sphere; he is like the favorite actor of a second-rate audience, whose talent is lost when he leaves his own boards and steps upon those of an upper-cla.s.s theatre.

CHAPTER XXI. MODESTE PLAYS HER PART

The game opened with the baron and the duke, Gobenheim and Latournelle as partners. Modeste took a seat near the poet, to Ernest's deep disappointment; he watched the face of the wayward girl, and marked the progress of the fascination which Ca.n.a.lis exerted over her. La Briere had not the gift of seduction which Melchior possessed. Nature frequently denies it to true hearts, who are, as a rule, timid. This gift demands fearlessness, an alacrity of ways and means that might be called the trapeze of the mind; a little mimicry goes with it; in fact there is always, morally speaking, something of the comedian in a poet.

There is a vast difference between expressing sentiments we do not feel, though we may imagine all their variations, and feigning to feel them when bidding for success on the theatre of private life. And yet, though the necessary hypocrisy of a man of the world may have gangrened a poet, he ends by carrying the faculties of his talent into the expression of any required sentiment, just as a great man doomed to solitude ends by infusing his heart into his mind.

”He is after the millions,” thought La Briere, sadly; ”and he can play pa.s.sion so well that Modeste will believe him.”

Instead of endeavoring to appear more amiable and wittier than his rival, Ernest imitated the Duc d'Herouville, and was gloomy, anxious, and watchful; but whereas the courier studied the freaks of the young heiress, Ernest simply fell a prey to the pains of dark and concentrated jealousy. He had not yet been able to obtain a glance from his idol.

After a while he left the room with Butscha.

”It is all over!” he said; ”she is caught by him; I am more disagreeable to her, and moreover, she is right. Ca.n.a.lis is charming; there's intellect in his silence, pa.s.sion in his eyes, poetry in his rhodomontades.”

”Is he an honest man?” asked Butscha.

”Oh, yes,” replied La Briere. ”He is loyal and chivalrous, and capable of getting rid, under Modeste's influence, of those affectations which Madame de Chaulieu has taught him.”

”You are a fine fellow,” said the hunchback; ”but is he capable of loving,--will he love her?”

”I don't know,” answered La Briere. ”Has she said anything about me?” he asked after a moment's silence.

”Yes,” said Butscha, and he repeated Modeste's speech about disguises.

Poor Ernest flung himself upon a bench and held his head in his hands.

He could not keep back his tears, and he did not wish Butscha to see them; but the dwarf was the very man to guess his emotion.

”What troubles you?” he asked.

”She is right!” cried Ernest, springing up; ”I am a wretch.”

And he related the deception into which Ca.n.a.lis had led him when Modeste's first letter was received, carefully pointing out to Butscha that he had wished to undeceive the young girl before she herself took off the mask, and apostrophizing, in rather juvenile fas.h.i.+on, his luckless destiny. Butscha sympathetically understood the love in the flavor and vigor of his simple language, and in his deep and genuine anxiety.

”But why don't you show yourself to Mademoiselle Modeste for what you are?” he said; ”why do you let your rival do his exercises?”

”Have you never felt your throat tighten when you wished to speak to her?” cried La Briere; ”is there never a strange feeling in the roots of your hair and on the surface of your skin when she looks at you,--even if she is thinking of something else?”

”But you had sufficient judgment to show displeasure when she as good as told her excellent father that he was a dolt.”

”Monsieur, I love her too well not to have felt a knife in my heart when I heard her contradicting her own perfections.”

”Ca.n.a.lis supported her.”

”If she had more self-love than heart there would be nothing for a man to regret in losing her,” answered La Briere.

At this moment, Modeste, followed by Ca.n.a.lis, who had lost the rubber, came out with her father and Madame Dumay to breathe the fresh air of the starry night. While his daughter walked about with the poet, Charles Mignon left her and came up to La Briere.