harsh and cruel to force her to receive a man unworthy of her, yet to whom her soul had flown, as it were, bare.  She questioned Dumay about his interview with the poet, she inveigled him into relating its every detail, and she did not think Canalis as barbarous as the lieutenant had declared him.  The thought of the beautiful casket which held the letters of the thousand and one women of this literary Don Juan made her smile, and she was strongly tempted to say to her father:  “I am not the only one to write to him; the elite of my sex send their leaves for the laurel wreath of the poet.”

During this week Modeste’s character underwent a transformation.  The catastrophe—­and it was a great one to her poetic nature—­roused a faculty of discernment and also the malice latent in her girlish heart, in which her suitors were about to encounter a formidable adversary.  It is a fact that when a young woman’s heart is chilled her head becomes clear; she observes with great rapidity of judgment, and with a tinge of pleasantry which Shakespeare’s Beatrice so admirably represents in “Much Ado about Nothing.”  Modeste was seized with a deep disgust for men, now that the most distinguished among them had betrayed her hopes.  When a woman loves, what she takes for disgust is simply the ability to see clearly; but in matters of sentiment she is never, especially if she is a young girl, in a condition to see clearly.  If she cannot admire, she despises.  And so, after passing through terrible struggles of the soul, Modeste necessarily put on the armor on which, as she had once declared, the word “Disdain” was engraved.  After reaching that point she was able, in the character of uninterested spectator, to take part in what she was pleased to call the “farce of the suitors,” a performance in which she herself was about to play the role of heroine.  She particularly set before her mind the satisfaction of humiliating Monsieur de La Briere.

“Modeste is saved,” said Madame Mignon to her husband; “she wants to revenge herself on the false Canalis by trying to love the real one.”

Such in truth was Modeste’s plan.  It was so utterly commonplace that her mother, to whom she confided her griefs, advised her on the contrary to treat Monsieur de La Briere with extreme politeness.

CHAPTER XVII

A THIRD SUITOR

“Those two young men,” said Madame Latournelle, on the Saturday evening, “have no idea how many spies they have on their tracks.  We are eight in all, on the watch.”

“Don’t say two young men, wife; say three!” cried little Latournelle, looking round him.  “Gobenheim is not here, so I can speak out.”

Modeste raised her head, and everybody, imitating Modeste, raised theirs and looked at the notary.

“Yes, a third lover—­and he is something like a lover—­offers himself as a candidate.”

“Bah!” exclaimed the colonel.