“My poet has told me all that,” she answered.  “He played Orgon for some time; and he was brave enough to disparage the personal lives of poets.”

“I have read your letters,” said Charles Mignon, with the flicker of a malicious smile on his lips that made Modeste very uneasy, “and I ought to remark that your last epistle was scarcely permissible in any woman, even a Julie d’Etanges.  Good God! what harm novels do!”

“We should live them, my dear father, whether people wrote them or not; I think it is better to read them.  There are not so many adventures in these days as there were under Louis XIV. and Louis XV., and so they publish fewer novels.  Besides, if you have read those letters, you must know that I have chosen the most angelic soul, the most sternly upright man for your son-in-law, and you must have seen that we love one another at least as much as you and mamma love each other.  Well, I admit that it was not all exactly conventional; I did, if you will have me say so, wrong—­”

“I have read your letters,” said her father, interrupting her, “and I know exactly how far your lover justified you in your own eyes for a proceeding which might be permissible in some woman who understood life, and who was led away by strong passion, but which in a young girl of twenty was a monstrous piece of wrong-doing.”

“Yes, wrong-doing for commonplace people, for the narrow-minded Gobenheims, who measure life with a square rule.  Please let us keep to the artistic and poetic life, papa.  We young girls have only two ways to act; we must let a man know we love him by mincing and simpering, or we must go to him frankly.  Isn’t the last way grand and noble?  We French girls are delivered over by our families like so much merchandise, at sixty days’ sight, sometimes thirty, like Mademoiselle Vilquin; but in England, and Switzerland, and Germany, they follow very much the plan I have adopted.  Now what have you got to say to that?  Am I not half German?”

“Child!” cried the colonel, looking at her; “the supremacy of France comes from her sound common-sense, from the logic to which her noble language constrains her mind.  France is the reason of the whole world.  England and Germany are romantic in their marriage customs,—­though even there noble families follow our customs.  You certainly do not mean to deny that your parents, who know life, who are responsible for your soul and for your happiness, have no right to guard you from the stumbling-blocks that are in your way?  Good heavens!” he continued, speaking half to himself, “is it their fault, or is it ours?  Ought we to hold our children under an iron yoke?  Must we be punished for the tenderness that leads us to make them happy, and teaches our hearts how to do so?”

Modeste watched her father out of the corner of her eye as she listened to this species of invocation, uttered in a broken voice.

“Was it wrong,” she said, “in a girl whose heart was free, to choose for her husband not only a charming companion, but a man of noble genius, born to an honorable position, a gentleman; the equal of myself, a gentlewoman?”