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Monsieur," Dumay remarked after a pause, "you are a great poet, and I am only a poor soldier. For fifteen years I served my country in the ranks; I have had the wind of many a bullet in my face; I have crossed Siberia and been a prisoner there; the Russians flung me on a kibitka, and God knows what I suffered.
I recognize you both," said Madame Mignon in a voice of strong emotion. "I'll wager my salvation that Modeste is as pure as she was in her cradle," exclaimed Madame Dumay. "Well, I shall make certain of it," replied her husband, "if Madame la Comtesse will allow me to employ certain means; for old troopers understand strategy."
She questioned Dumay about his interview with the poet, she inveigled him into relating its every detail, and she did not think Canalis as barbarous as the lieutenant had declared him.
This letter had been sent off the evening before the day when the abortive struggle between Dumay and Modeste had taken place.
In this way Modeste, young, beautiful, and of high birth, learned the lesson that for three whole months of her engagement she had been nothing more than Mademoiselle Million. Her poverty, well known to all, became a sentinel defending the approaches to the Chalet fully as well as the prudence of the Latournelles or the vigilance of Dumay.
I may as well blow my brains out," exclaimed Dumay. "Why so, Dumay?" said the blind woman. "Ah, madame, I could never meet my colonel's eye if he did not find his daughter now his only daughter as pure and virtuous as she was when he said to me on the vessel, 'Let no fear of the scaffold hinder you, Dumay, if the honor of my Modeste is at stake." "Ah!
Hear me, mysterious dwarf, look," she continued, pointing to the cloudless sky; "can you see a single trace of that bird that flew by just now? No; well then, my actions are pure as the air is pure, and leave no stain behind them. You may reassure Dumay and the Latournelles, and my mother.
I have seen thousands of my comrades die, but you, you have given me a chill to the marrow of my bones, such as I never felt before." Dumay fancied that his words moved the poet, but in fact they only flattered him, a thing which at this period of his life had become almost an impossibility; for his ambitious mind had long forgotten the first perfumed phial that praise had broken over his head.
If the brevity of this explanation makes it seem rather dry, the reader must pardon its dryness in view of our desire to get through with these preliminaries as speedily as possible, and the necessity of relating the main circumstances which govern all dramas. Jean Francois Bernard Dumay, born at Vannes, started as a soldier for the army of Italy in 1799.
Imagine therefore the hatred conceived for the tenants of the Chalet by the Norman Vilquin, a man worth three millions! What criminal leze-million on the part of a cashier, to hold up to the eyes of such a man the impotence of his wealth! Vilquin, whose desperation in the matter made him the talk of Havre, had just proposed to give Dumay a pretty house of his own, and had again been refused.
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