accustomed to admire you, my dear
poet."

"Well, then, can you promise me the same canine fidelity which I offer
to you? Is it not beautiful? Is it not just what you have longed for?"

"But why, dear poet, do you not marry a deaf-mute, and one who is also
something of an idiot? I ask nothing better than to please my husband.
But you threaten to take away from a girl the very happiness you so
kindly arrange for her; you are tearing away every gesture, every word,
every look; you cut the wings of your bird, and then expect it to
hover about you. I know poets are accused of inconsistency--oh! very
unjustly," she added, as Canalis made a gesture of denial; "that alleged
defect which comes from the brilliant activity of their minds which
commonplace people cannot take into account. I do not believe, however,
that a man of genius can invent such irreconcilable conditions and call
his invention life. You are requiring the impossible solely for
the pleasure of putting me in the wrong,--like the enchanters in
fairy-tales, who set tasks to persecuted young girls whom the good
fairies come and deliver."

"In this case the good fairy would be true love," said Canalis in a curt
tone, aware that his elaborate excuse for a rupture was seen through by
the keen and delicate mind which Butscha had piloted so well.

"My dear poet, you remind me of those fathers who inquire into a
girl's 'dot' before they are willing to name that of their son. You are
quarrelling with me without knowing whether you have the slightest right
to do so. Love is not gained by such dry arguments as yours. The poor
duke on the contrary abandons himself to it like my Uncle Toby; with
this difference, that I am not the Widow Wadman,--though widow indeed
of many illusions as to poetry at the present moment. Ah, yes, we young
girls will not believe in anything that disturbs our world of fancy! I
was warned of all this beforehand. My dear poet, you are attempting to
get up a quarrel which is unworthy of you. I no longer recognize the
Melchior of yesterday."

"Because Melchior has discovered a spirit of ambition in you which--"

Modeste looked at him from head to foot with an imperial eye.

"But I shall be peer of France and ambassador as well as he," added
Canalis.

"Do you take me for a bourgeois," she said, beginning to mount the steps
of the portico; but she instantly turned back and added, "That is less
impertinent than to take me for a fool. The change