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