The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac. The griffin classics
she answered, with a mocking curtsey, —
“Sorrows have made me philosophical.”
“Do you mean to be only a baroness?” asked Butscha.
“Or a viscountess?” said her father.
“How could that be?” she asked quickly.
“If you accept Monsieur de La Briere, he has enough merit and influence to obtain permission from the king to bear my titles and arms.”
“Oh, if it comes to disguising himself, he will not make any difficulty,” said Modeste, scornfully.
Butscha did not understand this epigram, whose meaning could only be guessed by Monsieur and Madame Mignon and Dumay.
“When it is a question of marriage, all men disguise themselves,” remarked Latournelle, “and women set them the example. I’ve heard it said ever since I came into the world that ‘Monsieur this or Mademoiselle that has made a good marriage,’ — meaning that the other side had made a bad one.”
“Marriage,” said Butscha, “is like a lawsuit; there’s always one side discontented. If one dupes the other, certainly half the husbands in the world are playing a comedy at the expense of the other half.”
“From which you conclude, Sieur Butscha?” inquired Modeste.
“To pay the utmost attention to the manoeuvres of the enemy,” answered the clerk.
“What did I tell you, my darling?” said Charles Mignon, alluding to their conversation on the seashore.
“Men play as many parts to get married as mothers make their daughters play to get rid of them,” said Latournelle.
“Then you approve of stratagems?” said Modeste.
“On both sides,” cried Gobenheim, “and that brings it even.”
This conversation was carried on by fits and starts, as they say, in the intervals of cutting and dealing the cards; and it soon turned chiefly on the merits of the Duc d’Herouville, who was thought very good-looking by little Latournelle, little Dumay, and little Butscha. Without the foregoing discussion on the lawfulness of matrimonial tricks, the reader might possibly find the forthcoming account of the evening so impatiently awaited by Butscha, somewhat too long.
Desplein, the famous surgeon, arrived the next morning, and stayed only long enough to send to Havre for fresh horses and have them put-to, which took about an hour. After examining Madame Mignon’s eyes, he decided that she could recover her sight, and fixed a suitable time, a month later, to perform the operation. This important consultation took place before the assembled members of the Chalet, who stood trembling and expectant to hear the verdict of the prince of science. That illustrious member of the Academy of Sciences put about a dozen brief questions to the blind woman as he examined her eyes in the strong light from a window. Modeste was amazed at the value which a man so celebrated attached to time, when she saw the travelling-carriage piled with books which the great surgeon proposed to read during the journey; for he had left Paris the evening before, and had spent the night in sleeping and travelling. The rapidity and clearness of Desplein’s judgment on each answer made by Madame Mignon, his succinct tone, his decisive manner, gave Modeste her first real idea of a man of genius. She perceived the enormous difference between a second-rate man, like Canalis, and Desplein, who was even more than a superior man. A man of genius finds in the consciousness of his talent and in the solidity of his fame an arena of his own, where his legitimate pride can expand and exercise itself without interfering with others. Moreover, his perpetual struggle with men and things leave them no time for the coxcombry of fashionable genius, which makes haste to gather in the harvests of a fugitive season, and whose vanity and self-love are as petty and exacting as a custom-house which levies tithes on all that comes in its way.
Modeste was the more enchanted by this great practical genius, because he was evidently charmed with the exquisite beauty of Modeste, — he, through whose hands so many women had passed, and who had long since examined the sex, as it were, with magnifier and scalpel.
“It would be a sad pity,” he said, with an air of gallantry which he occasionally put on, and which contrasted with his assumed brusqueness, “if a mother were deprived of the sight of so charming a daughter.”
Modeste insisted on serving the simple breakfast which was all the great surgeon would accept. She accompanied her father and Dumay to the carriage stationed at the garden-gate, and said to Desplein at parting, her eyes shining with hope, —
“And will my dear mamma really see me?”
“Yes, my little sprite, I’ll promise you that,” he answered, smiling; “and I am incapable of deceiving you, for I, too, have a daughter.”
The horses started and carried him off as he uttered the last words with unexpected grace and feeling. Nothing is more charming than the peculiar unexpectedness of persons of talent.
CHAPTER XX. THE POET DOES HIS EXERCISES
This visit of the great surgeon was the event of the day, and it left a luminous trace in Modeste’s soul. The young enthusiast ardently admired the man whose life belonged to others, and in whom the habit of studying physical suffering had destroyed the manifestations of egoism. That evening, when Gobenheim, the Latournelles, and Butscha, Canalis, Ernest, and the Duc d’Herouville were gathered in the salon, they all congratulated the Mignon family on the hopes which Desplein encouraged. The conversation, in which the Modeste of her letters was once more in the ascendant, turned naturally on the man whose genius, unfortunately for his fame, was appreciable only by the faculty and men of science. Gobenheim contributed a phrase which is the sacred chrism of genius as interpreted in these days by public economists and bankers, —
“He makes a mint of money.”
“They say he is very grasping,” added Canalis.
The praises which Modeste showered on Desplein had annoyed the poet. Vanity acts like a woman, — they both think they are defrauded when love or praise is bestowed on others. Voltaire was jealous of the wit of a roue whom Paris admired for two days; and even a duchess takes offence at a look bestowed upon her maid. The avarice excited by these two sentiments is such that a fraction of them given to the poor is thought robbery.
“Do you think, monsieur,” said Modeste, smiling, “that we should judge genius by ordinary standards?”
“Perhaps we ought first of all to define the man of genius,” replied Canalis. “One of the conditions of genius is invention, — invention of a form, a system, a force. Napoleon was an inventor, apart from his other conditions of genius. He invented his method of making war. Walter Scott is an inventor, Linnaeus is an inventor, Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier are inventors. Such men are men of genius of the first rank. They renew, increase, or modify both science and art. But Desplein is merely a man whose vast talent consists in properly applying laws already known; in observing, by means of a natural gift, the limits laid down for each temperament, and the time appointed by Nature for an operation. He has not founded, like Hippocrates, the science itself. He has invented no system, as did Galen, Broussais, and Rasori. He is merely an executive genius, like Moscheles on the piano, Paganini on the violin, or Farinelli on his own larynx, — men who have developed enormous faculties, but who have not created music. You must permit me to discriminate between Beethoven and la Catalani: to one belongs the immortal crown of genius and of martyrdom, to the other innumerable five-franc pieces; one we can pay in coin, but the world remains throughout all time a debtor to the other. Each day increases our debt to Moliere, but Baron’s comedies have been overpaid.”
“I think you make the prerogative of ideas too exclusive,” said Ernest de La Briere, in a quiet and melodious voice, which formed a sudden contrast to the peremptory tones of the poet, whose flexible organ had abandoned its caressing notes for the strident and magisterial voice of the rostrum. “Genius must be estimated according to its utility; and Parmentier, who brought potatoes into general use, Jacquart, the inventor of silk looms; Papin,