The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac. The griffin classics
Byron, with a face as dull as the English climate. One glance of
thine, thine Orient glance, pierced through my double veil and
sent thy blood to my heart, and from thence to my head and feet.
Ah! that is not the life our mother gave us. A hurt to thee would
hurt me too at the very instant it was given, — my life exists by
thy thought only. I know now the purpose of the divine faculty of
music; the angels invented it to utter love. Ah, my Melchior, to
have genius and to have beauty is too much; a man should be made
to choose between them at his birth.
When I think of the treasures of tenderness and affection which
you have given me, and more especially for the last month, I ask
myself if I dream. No, but you hide some mystery; what woman can
yield you up to me and not die? Ah! jealousy has entered my heart
with love, — love in which I could not have believed. How could I
have imagined so mighty a conflagration? And now — strange and
inconceivable revulsion! — I would rather you were ugly.
What follies I committed after I came home! The yellow dahlias
reminded me of your waistcoat, the white roses were my loving
friends; I bowed to them with a look that belonged to you, like
all that is of me. The very color of the gloves, moulded to hands
of a gentleman, your step along the nave, — all, all, is so printed
on my memory that sixty years hence I shall see the veriest
trifles of this day of days, — the color of the atmosphere, the ray
of sunshine that flickered on a certain pillar; I shall hear the
prayer your step interrupted; I shall inhale the incense of the
altar; forever I shall feel above our heads the priestly hands
that blessed us both as you passed by me at the closing
benediction. The good Abbe Marcelin married us then! The
happiness, above that of earth, which I feel in this new world of
unexpected emotions can only be equalled by the joy of telling it
to you, of sending it back to him who poured it into my heart with
the lavishness of the sun itself. No more veils, no more
disguises, my beloved. Come back to me, oh, come back soon. With
joy I now unmask.
You have no doubt heard of the house of Mignon in Havre? Well, I
am, through an irreparable misfortune, its sole heiress. But you
are not to look down upon us, descendant of an Auvergne knight;
the arms of the Mignon de La Bastie will do no dishonor to those
of Canalis. We bear gules, on a bend sable four bezants or;
quarterly four crosses patriarchal or; a cardinal’s hat as crest,
and the fiocchi for supports. Dear, I will be faithful to our
motto: “Una fides, unus Dominus!” — the true faith, and one only
Master.
Perhaps, my friend, you will find some irony in my name, after all
that I have done, and all that I herein avow. I am named Modeste.
Therefore I have not deceived you by signing “O. d’Este M.”
Neither have I misled you about our fortune; it will amount, I
believe, to the sum which rendered you so virtuous. I know that to
you money is a consideration of small importance; therefore I
speak of it without reserve. Let me tell you how happy it makes me
to give freedom of action to our happiness, — to be able to say,
when the fancy for travel takes us, “Come, let us go in a
comfortable carriage, sitting side by side, without a thought of
money” — happy, in short, to tell the king, “I have the fortune
which you require in your peers.” Thus Modeste Mignon can be of
service to you, and her gold will have the noblest of uses.
As to your servant herself, — you did see her once, at her window.
Yes, “the fairest daughter of Eve the fair” was indeed your
unknown damozel; but how little the Modeste of to-day resembles
her of that long past era! That one was in her shroud, this one
— have I made you know it? — has received from you the life of life.
Love, pure, and sanctioned, the love my father, now returning
rich and prosperous, will authorize, has raised me with its
powerful yet childlike hand from the grave in which I slept. You
have wakened me as the sun wakens the flowers. The eyes of your
beloved are no longer those of the little Modeste so daring in her
ignorance, — no, they are dimmed with the sight of happiness, and
the lids close over them. To-day I tremble lest I can never
deserve my fate. The king has come in his glory; my lord has now a
subject who asks pardon for the liberties she has taken, like the
gambler with loaded dice after cheating Monsieur de Grammont.
My cherished poet! I will be thy Mignon — happier far than the
Mignon of Goethe, for thou wilt leave me in mine own land, — in thy
heart. Just as I write this pledge of our betrothal a nightingale
in the Vilquin park answers for thee. Ah, tell me quick that his
note, so pure, so clear, so full, which fills my heart with joy
and love like an Annunciation, does not lie to me.
My father will pass through Paris on his way from Marseilles; the
house of Mongenod, with whom he corresponds, will know his
address. Go to him, my Melchior, tell him that you love me; but do
not try to tell him how I love you, — let that be forever between
ourselves and God. I, my dear one, am about to tell everything to
my mother. Her heart will justify my conduct; she will rejoice in
our secret poem, so romantic, human and divine in one.
You have the confession of the daughter; you must now obtain the
consent of the Comte de La Bastie, father of your
Modeste.
P.S. — Above all, do not come to Havre without having first
obtained my father’s consent. If you love me you will not fail to
find him on his way through Paris.
“What are you