“Then,” said Butscha, stooping to pick up a pebble that he might kiss the hem of her garment, “suffer me to watch over you as a dragon guards a treasure.  The poet was covering you just now with the lace-work of his precious phrases, the tinsel of his promises; he chanted his love on the best strings of his lyre, I know he did.  If, as soon as this noble lover finds out how small your fortune is, he makes a sudden change in his behavior, and is cold and embarrassed, will you still marry him? shall you still esteem him?”

“He would be another Francisque Althor,” she said, with a gesture of bitter disgust.

“Let me have the pleasure of producing that change of scene,” said Butscha.  “Not only shall it be sudden, but I believe I can change it back and make your poet as loving as before,—­nay, it is possible to make him blow alternately hot and cold upon your heart, just as gracefully as he has talked on both sides of an argument in one evening without ever finding it out.”

“If you are right,” she said, “who can be trusted?”

“One who truly loves you.”

“The little duke?”

Butscha looked at Modeste.  The pair walked some distance in silence; the girl was impenetrable and not an eyelash quivered.

“Mademoiselle, permit me to be the exponent of the thoughts that are lying at the bottom of your heart like sea-mosses under the waves, and which you do not choose to gather up.”

“Eh!” said Modeste, “so my intimate friend and counsellor thinks himself a mirror, does he?”

“No, an echo,” he answered, with a gesture of sublime humility.  “The duke loves you, but he loves you too much.  If I, a dwarf, have understood the infinite delicacy of your heart, it would be repugnant to you to be worshipped like a saint in her shrine.  You are eminently a woman; you neither want a man perpetually at your feet of whom you are eternally sure, nor a selfish egoist like Canalis, who will always prefer himself to you.  Why? ah, that I don’t know.  But I will make myself a woman, an old woman, and find out the meaning of the plan which I have read in your eyes, and which perhaps is in the heart of every girl.  Nevertheless, in your great soul you feel the need of worshipping.  When a man is at your knees, you cannot put yourself at his.  You can’t advance in that way, as Voltaire might say.  The little duke has too many genuflections in his moral being and the poet has too few,—­indeed, I might say, none at all.  Ha, I have guessed the mischief in your smiles when you talk to the grand equerry, and when he talks to you and you answer him.  You would never be unhappy with the duke, and everybody will approve your choice, if you do choose him; but you will never love him.  The ice of egotism, and the burning heat of ecstasy both produce indifference in the heart of every woman.  It is evident to my mind that no such perpetual worship will give you the infinite delights which you are dreaming of in marriage,—­in some marriage where obedience will be your pride, where noble little sacrifices can be made and hidden, where the heart is full of anxieties without a cause, and successes are awaited with eager hope, where each new chance for magnanimity is hailed with joy, where souls are comprehended to their inmost recesses, and where the woman protects with her love the man who protects her.”