Desplein, the famous surgeon, arrived the next morning, and stayed only long enough to send to Havre for fresh horses and have them put-to, which took about an hour.  After examining Madame Mignon’s eyes, he decided that she could recover her sight, and fixed a suitable time, a month later, to perform the operation.  This important consultation took place before the assembled members of the Chalet, who stood trembling and expectant to hear the verdict of the prince of science.  That illustrious member of the Academy of Sciences put about a dozen brief questions to the blind woman as he examined her eyes in the strong light from a window.  Modeste was amazed at the value which a man so celebrated attached to time, when she saw the travelling-carriage piled with books which the great surgeon proposed to read during 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