Those noble ladies were just then engaged in flattering the vanity of little Latournelle, intending to win him over to their interests.  Mademoiselle d’Herouville, to whom we shall in future confine the family name, to distinguish her from her niece Helene, was giving the notary to understand that the post of judge of the Supreme Court in Havre, which Charles X. would bestow as she desired, was an office worthy of his legal talent and his well-known probity.  Butscha, meanwhile, who had been walking about with La Briere, was greatly alarmed at the progress Canalis was evidently making, and he waylaid Modeste at the lower step of the portico when the whole party returned to the house to endure the torments of their inevitable whist.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, in a low whisper, “I do hope you don’t call him Melchior.”

“I’m very near it, my Black Dwarf,” she said, with a smile that might have made an angel swear.

“Good God!” exclaimed Butscha, letting fall his hands, which struck the marble steps.

“Well! and isn’t he worth more than that spiteful and gloomy secretary in whom you take such an interest?” she retorted, assuming, at the mere thought of Ernest, the haughty manner whose secret belongs exclusively to young girls,—­as if their virginity lent them wings to fly to heaven.  “Pray, would your little La Briere accept me without a fortune?” she said, after a pause.

“Ask your father,” replied Butscha, who walked a few steps from the house, to get Modeste at a safe distance from the windows.  “Listen to me, mademoiselle.  You know that he who speaks to you is ready to give not only his life but his honor for you, at any moment, and at all times.  Therefore you may believe in him; you can confide to him that which you may not, perhaps, be willing to say to your father.  Tell me, has that sublime Canalis been making you the disinterested offer that you now fling as a reproach at poor Ernest?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe it?”

“That question, my manikin,” she replied, giving him one of the ten or a dozen nicknames she had invented for him, “strikes me as undervaluing the strength of my self-love.”

“Ah, you are laughing, my dear Mademoiselle Modeste; then there’s no danger:  I hope you are only making a fool of him.”

“Pray what would you think of me, Monsieur Butscha, if I allowed myself to make fun of those who do me the honor to wish to marry me?  You ought to know, master Jean, that even if a girl affects to despise the most despicable attentions, she is flattered by them.”

“Then I flatter you?” said the young man, looking up at her with a face that was illuminated like a city for a festival.

“You?” she said; “you give me the most precious of all friendships,—­a feeling as disinterested as that of a mother for her child.  Compare yourself to no one; for even my father is obliged to be devoted to me.”  She paused.  “I cannot say that I love you, in the sense which men give to that word, but what I do give you is eternal and can know no change.”