"De Balzac, Honore - Modeste Mignon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Balzac Honore De)learn it to teach Exupere. I much prefer the novels of Ducray-Dumenil
to all these English romances. I'm too good a Norman to fall in love with foreign things,--above all when they come from England." Madame Mignon, notwithstanding her melancholy, could not help smiling at the idea of Madame Latournelle reading Childe Harold. The stern scion of a parliamentary house accepted the smile as an approval of her doctrine. "And, therefore, my dear Madame Mignon," she went on, "you have taken Modeste's fancies, which are nothing but the results of her reading, for a love-affair. Remember, she is just twenty. Girls fall in love with themselves at that age; they dress to see themselves well- dressed. I remember I used to make my little sister, now dead, put on a man's hat and pretend we were monsieur and madame. You see, you had a very happy youth in Frankfort; but let us be just,--Modeste is living here without the slightest amusement. Although, to be sure, her every wish is attended to, still she knows she is shut up and watched, and the life she leads would give her no pleasure at all if it were not for the amusement she gets out of her books. Come, don't worry yourself; she loves nobody but you. You ought to be very glad that she goes into these enthusiasms for the corsairs of Byron and the heroes of Walter Scott and your own Germans, Egmont, Goethe, Werther, Schiller, and all the other 'ers.'" alarmed at Madame Mignon's silence. "Modeste is not only inclined to love, but she loves some man," answered the mother, obstinately. "Madame, my life is at stake, and you must allow me--not for my sake, but for my wife, my colonel, for all of us--to probe this matter to the bottom, and find out whether it is the mother or the watch-dog who is deceived." "It is you who are deceived, Dumay. Ah! if I could but see my daughter!" cried the poor woman. "But whom is it possible for her to love?" asked the notary. "I'll answer for my Exupere." "It can't be Gobenheim," said Dumay, "for since the colonel's departure he has not spent nine hours a week in this house. Besides, he doesn't even notice Modeste--that five-franc piece of a man! His uncle Gobenheim-Keller is all the time writing him, 'Get rich enough to marry a Keller.' With that idea in his mind you may be sure he doesn't know which sex Modeste belongs to. No other men ever come here,--for of course I don't count Butscha, poor little fellow; I love him! He is your Dumay, madame," said the cashier to Madame |
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