ind out the meaning of the plan which
I have read in your eyes, and which perhaps is in the heart of every
girl. Nevertheless, in your great soul you feel the need of worshipping.
When a man is at your knees, you cannot put yourself at his. You can't
advance in that way, as Voltaire might say. The little duke has too many
genuflections in his moral being and the poet has too few,--indeed, I
might say, none at all. Ha, I have guessed the mischief in your smiles
when you talk to the grand equerry, and when he talks to you and you
answer him. You would never be unhappy with the duke, and everybody will
approve your choice, if you do choose him; but you will never love
him. The ice of egotism, and the burning heat of ecstasy both produce
indifference in the heart of every woman. It is evident to my mind that
no such perpetual worship will give you the infinite delights which you
are dreaming of in marriage,--in some marriage where obedience will be
your pride, where noble little sacrifices can be made and hidden,
where the heart is full of anxieties without a cause, and successes are
awaited with eager hope, where each new chance for magnanimity is hailed
with joy, where souls are comprehended to their inmost recesses, and
where the woman protects with her love the man who protects her."

"You are a sorcerer!" exclaimed Modeste.

"Neither will you find that sweet equality of feeling, that continual
sharing of each other's life, that certainty of pleasing which makes
marriage tolerable, if you take Canalis,--a man who thinks of himself
only, whose 'I' is the one string to his lute, whose mind is so fixed
on himself that he has hitherto taken no notice of your father or the
duke,--a man of second-rate ambitions, to whom your dignity and your
devotion will matter nothing, who will make you a mere appendage to
his household, and who already insults you by his indifference to your
behavior; yes, if you permitted yourself to go so far as to box your
mother's ears Canalis would shut his eyes to it, and deny your
crime even to himself, because he thirsts for your money. And so,
mademoiselle, when I spoke of the man who truly loves you I was not
thinking of the great poet who is nothing but a little comedian, nor of
the duke, who might be a good marriage for you, but never a husband--"

"Butscha, my heart is a blank page on which you are yourself writing all
that you read there," cried Modeste, interrupting him. "You are carried
a