The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac. The griffin classics

       CHAPTER XIV. MATTERS GROWN COMPLICATED

      During these little events other little events were going on in Havre, which caused Modeste to forget her present uneasiness. Dumay went down to Havre early in the morning, and soon discovered that no architect had been in town the day before. Furious at Butscha’s lie, which revealed a conspiracy of which he was resolved to know the meaning, he rushed from the mayor’s office to his friend Latournelle.

      “Where’s your Master Butscha?” he demanded of the notary, when he saw that the clerk was not in his place.

      “Butscha, my dear fellow, has gone to Paris. He heard some news of his father this morning on the quays, from a Swedish sailor. It seems the father went to the Indies and served a prince, or something, and he is now in Paris.”

      “Lies! it’s all a trick! infamous! I’ll find that damned cripple if I’ve got to go express to Paris for him,” cried Dumay. “Butscha is deceiving us; he knows something about Modeste, and hasn’t told us. If he meddles in this thing he shall never be a notary. I’ll roll him in the mud from which he came, I’ll — ”

      “Come, come, my friend; never hang a man before you try him,” said Latournelle, frightened at Dumay’s rage.

      After stating the facts on which his suspicions were founded, Dumay begged Madame Latournelle to go and stay at the Chalet during his absence.

      “You will find the colonel in Paris,” said the notary. “In the shipping news quoted this morning in the Journal of Commerce, I found under the head of Marseilles — here, see for yourself,” he said, offering the paper. “‘The Bettina Mignon, Captain Mignon, arrived October 6’; it is now the 17th, and the colonel is sure to be in Paris.”

      Dumay requested Gobenheim to do without him in future, and then went back to the Chalet, which he reached just as Modeste was sealing her two letters, to her father and Canalis. Except for the address the letters were precisely alike both in weight and appearance. Modeste thought she had laid that to her father over that to her Melchior, but had, in fact, done exactly the reverse. This mistake, so often made in the little things of life, occasioned the discovery of her secret by Dumay and her mother. The former was talking vehemently to Madame Mignon in the salon, and revealing to her his fresh fears caused by Modeste’s duplicity and Butscha’s connivance.

      “Madame,” he cried, “he is a serpent whom we have warmed in our bosoms; there’s no place in his contorted little body for a soul!”

      Modeste put the letter for her father into the pocket of her apron, supposing it to be that for Canalis, and came downstairs with the letter for her lover in her hand, to see Dumay before he started for Paris.

      “What has happened to my Black Dwarf? why are you talking so loud!” she said, appearing at the door.

      “Mademoiselle, Butscha has gone to Paris, and you, no doubt, know why, — to carry on that affair of the little architect with the sulphur waistcoat, who, unluckily for the hunchback’s lies, has never been here.”

      Modeste was struck dumb; feeling sure that the dwarf had departed on a mission of inquiry as to her poet’s morals, she turned pale, and sat down.

      “I’m going after him; I shall find him,” continued Dumay. “Is that the letter for your father, mademoiselle?” he added, holding out his hand. “I will take it to the Mongenods. God grant the colonel and I may not pass each other on the road.”

      Modeste gave him the letter. Dumay looked mechanically at the address.

      “‘Monsieur le Baron de Canalis, rue de Paradis-Poissoniere, No. 29’!” he cried out; “what does that mean?”

      “Ah, my daughter! that is the man you love,” exclaimed Madame Mignon; “the stanzas you set to music were his — ”

      “And that’s his portrait that you have in a frame upstairs,” added Dumay.

      “Give me back that letter, Monsieur Dumay,” said Modeste, erecting herself like a lioness defending her cubs.

      “There it is, mademoiselle,” he replied.

      Modeste put it into the bosom of her dress, and gave Dumay the one intended for her father.

      “I know what you are capable of, Dumay,” she said; “and if you take one step against Monsieur de Canalis, I shall take another out of this house, to which I will never return.”

      “You will kill your mother, mademoiselle,” replied Dumay, who left the room and called his wife.

      The poor mother was indeed half-fainting, — struck to the heart by Modeste’s words.

      “Good-bye, wife,” said the Breton, kissing the American. “Take care of the mother; I go to save the daughter.”

      He made his preparations for the journey in a few minutes, and started for Havre. An hour later he was travelling post to Paris, with the haste that nothing but passion or speculation can get out of wheels.

      Recovering herself under Modeste’s tender care, Madame Mignon went up to her bedroom leaning on the arm of her daughter, to whom she said, as her sole reproach, when they were alone: —

      “My unfortunate child, see what you have done! Why did you conceal anything from me? Am I so harsh?”

      “Oh! I was just going to tell it to you comfortably,” sobbed Modeste.

      She thereupon related everything to her mother, read her the letters and their answers, and shed the rose of her poem petal by petal into the heart of the kind German woman. When this confidence, which took half the day, was over, when she saw something that was almost a smile on the lips of the too indulgent mother, Modeste fell upon her breast in tears.

      “Oh, mother!” she said amid her sobs, “you, whose heart, all gold and