Modeste was living a double
existence. She performed with humble, loving care all the minute
duties of the homely life at the Chalet, using them as a rein to guide
the poetry of her ideal life, like the Carthusian monks who labor
methodically on material things to leave their souls the freer to
develop in prayer. All great minds have bound themselves to some form
of mechanical toil to obtain greater mastery of thought. Spinosa
ground glasses for spectacles; Bayle counted the tiles on the roof;
Montesquieu gardened. The body being thus subdued, the soul could
spread its wings in all security.
Madame Mignon, reading her daughter's soul, was therefore right.
Modeste loved; she loved with that rare platonic love, so little
understood, the first illusion of a young girl, the most delicate of
all sentiments, a very dainty of the heart. She drank deep draughts
from the chalice of the unknown, the vague, the visionary. She admired
the blue plumage of the bird that sings afar in the paradise of young
girls, which no hand can touch, no gun can cover, as it flits across
the sight; she loved those magic colors, like sparkling jewels
dazzling to the eye, which youth can see, and never sees again when
Reality, the hideous hag, appears with witnesses accompanied by the
mayor.
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