“I, too, have my dreams,” said Butscha, not taking his eyes from Modeste.

The young girl lowered her eyelids with a movement that was a revelation to the young man.

“You love romance,” he said, addressing her.  “Let me, in this moment of happiness, tell you mine; and you shall tell me in return whether the conclusion of the tale I have invented for my life is possible.  To me wealth would bring greater happiness than to other men; for the highest happiness I can imagine would be to enrich the one I loved.  You, mademoiselle, who know so many things, tell me if it is possible for a man to make himself beloved independently of his person, be it handsome or ugly, and for his spirit only?”

Modeste raised her eyes and looked at Butscha.  It was a piercing and questioning glance; for she shared Dumay’s suspicion of Butscha’s motive.

“Let me be rich, and I will seek some beautiful poor girl, abandoned like myself, who has suffered, who knows what misery is.  I will write to her and console her, and be her guardian spirit; she shall read my heart, my soul; she shall possess by double wealth, my two wealths, —­my gold, delicately offered, and my thought robed in all the splendor which the accident of birth has denied to my grotesque body.  But I myself shall remain hidden like the cause that science seeks.  God himself may not be glorious to the eye.  Well, naturally, the maiden will be curious; she will wish to see me; but I shall tell her that I am a monster of ugliness; I shall picture myself hideous.”

At these words Modeste gave Butscha a glance that looked him through and through.  If she had said aloud, “What do you know of my love?” she could not have been more explicit.

“If I have the honor of being loved for the poem of my heart, if some day such love may make a woman think me only slightly deformed, I ask you, mademoiselle, shall I not be happier than the handsomest of men, —­as happy as a man of genius beloved by some celestial being like yourself.”

The color which suffused the young girl’s face told the cripple nearly all he sought to know.

“Well, if that be so,” he went on, “if we enrich the one we love, if we please the spirit and withdraw the body, is not that the way to make one’s self beloved?  At any rate it is the dream of your poor dwarf,—­a dream of yesterday; for to-day your mother gives me the key to future wealth by promising me the means of buying a practice.  But before I become another Gobenheim, I seek to know whether this dream could be really carried out.  What do you say, mademoiselle, you?”

Modeste was so astonished that she did not notice the question.  The trap of the lover was much better baited than that of the soldier, for the poor girl was rendered speechless.

“Poor Butscha!” whispered Madame Latournelle to her husband.  “Do you think he is going mad?”

“You want to realize the story of Beauty and the Beast,” said Modeste at length; “but you forget that the Beast turned into Prince Charming.”