To Modeste a new book was an event; a
masterpiece that would have horrified Madame Latournelle made her
happy,--equally unhappy if the great work did not play havoc with her
heart. A lyric instinct bubbled in that girlish soul, so full of the
beautiful illusions of its youth. But of this radiant existence not a
gleam reached the surface of daily life; it escaped the ken of Dumay
and his wife and the Latournelles; the ears of the blind mother alone
caught the crackling of its flame.
The profound disdain which Modeste now conceived for ordinary men gave
to her face a look of pride, an inexpressible untamed shyness, which
tempered her Teutonic simplicity, and accorded well with a peculiarity
of her head. The hair growing in a point above the forehead seemed the
continuation of a slight line which thought had already furrowed
between the eyebrows, and made the expression of untameability perhaps
a shade too strong. The voice of this charming child, whom her father,
delighting in her wit, was wont to call his "little proverb of
Solomon," had acquired a precious flexibility of organ through the
practice of three languages.
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