"We shall not be at the Chalet," said the Comte de La Bastie. "Dumay will have sole possession of it. I return to the villa, having bought it back under a deed of redemption within six months, which I have to-day signed with Monsieur Vilquin."
"I hope," said Dumay, "that Vilquin will not be able to return to you the sum you have just lent him, and that the villa will remain yours."
"It is an abode in keeping with your fortune," said Canalis.
"You mean the fortune that I am supposed to have," replied Charles Mignon, hastily.
"It would be too sad," said Canalis, turning to Modeste with a charming little bow, "if this Madonna were not framed in a manner worthy of her divine perfections."
That was the only thing Canalis said to Modeste. He affected not to look at her, and behaved like a man to whom all idea of marriage was interdicted.
"Ah! my dear Madame Mignon," cried the notary's wife, as soon as the gravel was heard to grit under the feet of the Parisians, "what an intellect!"
"Is he rich?--that is the question," said Gobenheim.
Modeste was at the window, not losing a single movement of the great poet, and paying no attention to his companion. When Monsieur Mignon returned to the salon, and Modeste, having received a last bow from the two friends as the carriage turned, went back to her seat, a weighty discussion took place, such as provincials invariably hold over Parisians after a first interview. Gobenheim repeated his phrase, "Is he rich?" as a chorus to the songs of praise sung by Madame Latournelle, Modeste, and her mother.
"Rich!" exclaimed Modeste; "what can that signify! Do you not see that Monsieur de Canalis is one of those men who are destined for the highest places in the State. He has more than fortune; he possesses that which gives fortune."
"He will be minister or ambassador," said Monsieur Mignon.
"That won't hinder tax-payers from having to pay the costs of his funeral," remarked the notary.
"How so?" asked Charles Mignon.
"He strikes me as a man who will waste all the fortunes with whose gifts Mademoiselle Modeste so liberally endows him," answered Latournelle.
"Modeste can't avoid being liberal to a poet who called her a Madonna," said Dumay, sneering, and faithful to the repulsion with which Canalis had originally inspired him.
Gobenheim arranged the whist-table with all the more persistency because, since the return of Monsieur Mignon, Latournelle and Dumay had allowed themselves to play for ten sous points.
"Well, my little darling," said the father to the daughter in the embrasure of a window. "Admit that papa thinks of everything. If you send your orders this evening to your former dressmaker in Paris, and all your other furnishing people, you shall show yourself eight days hence in all the splendor of an heiress. Meantime we will install ourselves in the villa. You already have a pretty horse, now order a habit; you owe that amount of civility to the grand equerry."
"All the more because there will be a number of us to ride," said Modeste, who was recovering the colors of health.
"The secretary did not say much," remarked Madame Mignon.
"A little fool," said Madame Latournelle; "the poet has an attentive word for everybody. He thanked Monsieur Latournelle for his help in choosing the house; and said he must have taken counsel with a woman of good taste. But the other looked as gloomy as a Spaniard, and kept his eyes fixed on Modeste as though he would like to swallow her whole. If he had even looked at me I should have been afraid of him."
"He had a pleasant voice," said Madame Mignon.
"No doubt he came to Havre to inquire about the Mignons in the interests of his friend the poet," said Modeste, looking furtively at her father. "It was certainly he whom we saw in church."
Madame Dumay and Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, accepted this as the natural explanation of Ernest's journey.
