Both mother and father were proud of the
charming contrast between the sisters. "A devil and an angel!" they
said to each other, laughing, little thinking it prophetic.
After weeping for a month in the solitude of her chamber, where she
admitted no one, the mother came forth at last with injured eyes.
Before losing her sight altogether she persisted, against the wishes
of her friends, in visiting her daughter's grave, on which she riveted
her gaze in contemplation. That image remained vivid in the darkness
which now fell upon her, just as the red spectrum of an object shines
in our eyes when we close them in full daylight. This terrible and
double misfortune made Dumay, not less devoted, but more anxious about
Modeste, now the only daughter of the father who was unaware of his
loss. Madame Dumay, idolizing Modeste, like other women deprived of
their children, cast her motherliness about the girl,--yet without
disregarding the commands of her husband, who distrusted female
intimacies. Those commands were brief. "If any man, of any age, or any
rank," Dumay said, "speaks to Modeste, ogles her, makes love to her,
he is a dead man.
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