in your conduct comes
from certain silly rumors which you have heard in Havre, and which my
maid Francoise has repeated to me."

"Ah, Modeste, how can you think it?" said Canalis, striking a dramatic
attitude. "Do you think me capable of marrying you only for your money?"

"If I do you that wrong after your edifying remarks on the banks of the
Seine can you easily undeceive me," she said, annihilating him with her
scorn.

"Ah!" thought the poet, as he followed her into the house, "if you
think, my little girl, that I'm to be caught in that net, you take me
to be younger than I am. Dear, dear, what a fuss about an artful little
thing whose esteem I value about as much as that of the king of Borneo.
But she has given me a good reason for the rupture by accusing me of
such unworthy sentiments. Isn't she sly? La Briere will get a burden on
his back--idiot that he is! And five years hence it will be a good joke
to see them together."

The coldness which this altercation produced between Modeste and Canalis
was visible to all eyes that evening. The poet went off early, on the
ground of La Briere's illness, leaving the field to the grand equerry.
About eleven o'clock Butscha, who had come to walk home with Madame
Latournelle, whispered in Modeste's ear, "Was I right?"

"Alas, yes," she said.

"But I hope you have left the door half open, so that he can come back;
we agreed upon that, you know."

"Anger got the better of me," said Modeste. "Such meanness sent the
blood to my head and I told him what I thought of him."

"Well, so much the better. When you are both so angry that you can't
speak civilly to each other I engage to make him desperately in love and
so pressing that you will be deceived yourself."

"Come, come, Butscha; he is a great poet; he is a gentleman; he is a man
of intellect."

"Your father's eight millions are more to him than all that."

"Eight millions!" exclaimed Modeste.

"My master, who has sold his practice, is going to Provence to attend
to the purchase of lands which your father's agent has suggested to him.
The sum that is to be paid for the estate of La Bastie is four millions;
your father has agreed to it. You are to have a 'dot' of two millions
and another million for an establishment in Paris, a hotel and
furniture. Now, count up."

"Ah! then I can be Duchesse d'Herouville!" cried Modeste, glancing at
Butscha.

"If it hadn't been for that comedian of a Canalis you would have kept