“Well?” said Canalis, “to the point,—­quick!”

“Monsieur le baron, I heard a conversation about Monsieur Mignon, which I encouraged as far as I could; for no one, of course, knew that I belong to you.  Ah! monsieur, judging by the talk of the quays, you are running your head into a noose.  The fortune of Mademoiselle de La Bastie is, like her name, modest.  The vessel on which the father returned does not belong to him, but to rich China merchants to whom he renders an account.  They even say things that are not at all flattering to Monsieur Mignon’s honor.  Having heard that you and Monsieur le duc were rivals for Mademoiselle de La Bastie’s hand, I have taken the liberty to warn you; of the two, wouldn’t it be better that his lordship should gobble her?  As I came home I walked round the quays, and into that theatre-hall where the merchants meet; I slipped boldly in and out among them.  Seeing a well-dressed stranger, those worthy fellows began to talk to me of Havre, and I got them, little by little, to speak of Colonel Mignon.  What they said only confirms the stories the fishermen told me; and I feel that I should fail in my duty if I keep silence.  That is why I did not get home in time to dress monsieur this morning.”

“What am I to do?” cried Canalis, who remembered his proposals to Modeste the night before, and did not see how he could get out of them.

“Monsieur knows my attachment to him,” said Germain, perceiving that the poet was quite thrown off his balance; “he will not be surprised if I give him a word of advice.  There is that clerk; try to get the truth out of him.  Perhaps he’ll unbutton after a bottle or two of champagne, or at any rate a third.  It would be strange indeed if monsieur, who will one day be ambassador, as Philoxene has heard Madame la duchesse say time and time again, couldn’t turn a little notary’s clerk inside out.”

CHAPTER XXIII

BUTSCHA DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF

At this instant Butscha, the hidden prompter of the fishing part, was requesting the secretary to say nothing about his trip to Paris, and not to interfere in any way with what he, Butscha, might do.  The dwarf had already made use of an unfavorable feeling lately roused against Monsieur Mignon in Havre in consequence of his reserve and his determination to keep silence as to the amount of his fortune.  The persons who were most bitter against him even declared calumniously that he had made over a large amount of property to Dumay to save it from the just demands of his associates in China.  Butscha took advantage of this state of feeling.  He asked the fishermen, who owed him many a good turn, to keep the secret and lend him their tongues.  They served him well.  The captain of the fishing-smack told Germain that one of his cousins, a sailor, had just returned from Marseilles, where he had been paid off from the brig in which Monsieur Mignon returned to France.  The brig had been sold to the account of some other person than Monsieur Mignon, and the cargo was only worth three or four hundred thousand francs at the utmost.