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Updated: July 22, 2025
Latournelle ventured a question on the subject to Jacob Althor, the father; but he only shrugged his shoulders and replied, "I really don't know what you mean." This answer, told to Modeste to give her some experience of life, was a lesson which she learned all the more readily because Latournelle and Dumay made many and long comments on the cowardly desertion.
I never expected," he continued in a low tone, "that the grub could be of service to a star, but so it is. Would you rather that your mother and Monsieur Dumay and Madame Latournelle had guessed your secret than one, excluded as it were from life, who seeks to be to you one of those flowers that you cut and wear for a moment? They all know you love; but I, I alone, know how.
"I've six hundred thousand francs of my own, this day," cried Dumay, "and you shall be a notary and the successor of Latournelle." The American wife took the hand of the poor hunchback and pressed it. "What! you have six hundred thousand francs!" exclaimed Latournelle, pricking up his ears as Dumay let fall the words; "and you allow these ladies to live as they do!
"How do you manage it, you silly fellow?" said Madame Latournelle, laughing. "Ah, madame!" said Butscha, "what you call my hump is the socket of my wings." "So that is the explanation of your seal, is it?" cried the notary. Butscha's seal was a star, and under it the words "Fulgens, sequar," "Shining One, I follow thee," the motto of the house of Chastillonest.
"Then you approve of stratagems?" said Modeste. "On both sides," cried Gobenheim, "and that brings it even." This conversation was carried on by fits and starts, as they say, in the intervals of cutting and dealing the cards; and it soon turned chiefly on the merits of the Duc d'Herouville, who was thought very good-looking by little Latournelle, little Dumay, and little Butscha.
"I think," he said to Latournelle with a knowing little glance, "that my colonel has a plan laid out." The following day at dawn he accompanied his master on board the "Modeste" bound for Constantinople. There, on the poop of the vessel, the Breton said to the Provencal, "What are your last commands, my colonel?" "That no man shall enter the Chalet," cried the father with strong emotion.
Butscha did not understand this epigram, whose meaning could only be guessed by Monsieur and Madame Mignon and Dumay. "When it is a question of marriage, all men disguise themselves," remarked Latournelle, "and women set them the example.
Under the eyes of little Latournelle, who went with him to various houses, Germain made a good deal of talk about the secretary, rejecting two or three because there was no suitable room for Monsieur de La Briere. "Monsieur le baron," he said to the notary, "makes his secretary quite his best friend. Ah!
So Latournelle curtly informed the grand equerry, when he proposed to drive him to the Chalet, that he was engaged to take Madame Latournelle. Guessing from the little man's sulky manner that there was some blunder to repair, the duke said graciously: "Then I shall have the pleasure, if you will allow me, of taking Madame Latournelle also."
"I see no reason," she said to Latournelle, "why the Duc d'Herouville should not be received. I have passed, in spite of our indigence," she continued, with a mischievous look at her father, "to the condition of heiress. Haven't you observed Gobenheim's glances? They have quite changed their character within a week.
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