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.
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