She began this pretty romance by simply enjoying it.  Profound tranquillity settled down upon her soul.  Her cheeks took on a soft color; and she became the beautiful and noble image of Germany, such as we have lately seen her, the glory of the Chalet, the pride of Madame Latournelle and the Dumays.  Modeste was living a double existence.  She performed with humble, loving care all the minute duties of the homely life at the Chalet, using them as a rein to guide the poetry of her ideal life, like the Carthusian monks who labor methodically on material things to leave their souls the freer to develop in prayer.  All great minds have bound themselves to some form of mechanical toil to obtain greater mastery of thought.  Spinosa ground glasses for spectacles; Bayle counted the tiles on the roof; Montesquieu gardened.  The body being thus subdued, the soul could spread its wings in all security.

Madame Mignon, reading her daughter’s soul, was therefore right.  Modeste loved; she loved with that rare platonic love, so little understood, the first illusion of a young girl, the most delicate of all sentiments, a very dainty of the heart.  She drank deep draughts from the chalice of the unknown, the vague, the visionary.  She admired the blue plumage of the bird that sings afar in the paradise of young girls, which no hand can touch, no gun can cover, as it flits across the sight; she loved those magic colors, like sparkling jewels dazzling to the eye, which youth can see, and never sees again when Reality, the hideous hag, appears with witnesses accompanied by the mayor.  To live the very poetry of love and not to see the lover—­ah, what sweet intoxication! what visionary rapture! a chimera with flowing man and outspread wings!

The following is the puerile and even silly event which decided the future life of this young girl.

Modeste happened to see in a bookseller’s window a lithographic portrait of one of her favorites, Canalis.  We all know what lies such pictures tell,—­being as they are the result of a shameless speculation, which seizes upon the personality of celebrated individuals as if their faces were public property.

In this instance Canalis, sketched in a Byronic pose, was offering to public admiration his dark locks floating in the breeze, a bare throat, and the unfathomable brow which every bard ought to possess.  Victor Hugo’s forehead will make more persons shave their heads than the number of incipient marshals ever killed by the glory of Napoleon.  This portrait of Canalis (poetic through mercantile necessity) caught Modeste’s eye.  The day on which it caught her eye one of Arthez’s best books happened to be published.  We are compelled to admit, though it may be to Modeste’s injury, that she hesitated long between the illustrious poet and the illustrious prose-writer.  Which of these celebrated men was free?—­that was the question.