"De Balzac, Honore - Modeste Mignon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Balzac Honore De)

We can now understand how this great disaster, coming suddenly at the
close of ten years of domestic happiness, might well have been the
death of Bettina Mignon, again separated from her husband and ignorant
of his fate,--to her as adventurous and perilous as the exile to
Siberia. But the grief which was dragging her to the grave was far
other than these visible sorrows. The caustic that was slowly eating
into her heart lay beneath a stone in the little graveyard of
Ingouville, on which was inscribed:--

BETTINA CAROLINE MIGNON

Died aged twenty-two.

Pray for her.

This inscription is to the young girl whom it covered what many
another epitaph has been for the dead lying beneath them,--a table of
contents to a hidden book. Here is the book, in its dreadful brevity;
and it will explain the oath exacted and taken when the colonel and
the lieutenant bade each other farewell.

A young man of charming appearance, named Charles d'Estourny, came to
Havre for the commonplace purpose of being near the sea, and there he
saw Bettina Mignon. A "soi-disant" fashionable Parisian is never
without introductions, and he was invited at the instance of a friend
of the Mignons to a fete given at Ingouville. He fell in love with
Bettina and with her fortune, and in three months he had done the work
of seduction and enticed her away. The father of a family of daughters
should no more allow a young man whom he does not know to enter his
home than he should leave books and papers lying about which he has
not read. A young girl's innocence is like milk, which a small matter
turns sour,--a clap of thunder, an evil odor, a hot day, a mere
breath.

When Charles Mignon read his daughter's letter of farewell he
instantly despatched Madame Dumay to Paris. The family gave out that a
journey to another climate had suddenly been advised for Caroline by
their physician; and the physician himself sustained the excuse,
though unable to prevent some gossip in the society of Havre. "Such a
vigorous young girl! with the complexion of a Spaniard, and that black
hair!--she consumptive!" "Yes, they say she committed some
imprudence." "Ah, ah!" cried a Vilquin. "I am told she came back
bathed in perspiration after riding on horseback, and drank iced
water; at least, that is what Dr. Troussenard says."

By the time Madame Dumay returned to Havre the catastrophe of the
failure had taken place, and society paid no further attention to the
absence of Bettina or the return of the cashier's wife. At the
beginning of 1827 the newspapers rang with the trial of Charles