She had hoped her father would bring back a much
larger fortune than Dumay had mentioned. Nothing could satisfy her
new-found ambition on behalf of her poet less than at least half the
six millions she had talked of in her second letter. Trebly agitated
by her two joys and the grief caused by her comparative poverty, she
seated herself at the piano, that confidant of so many young girls,
who tell out their wishes and provocations on the keys, expressing
them by the notes and tones of their music. Dumay was talking with his
wife in the garden under the windows, telling her the secret of their
own wealth, and questioning her as to her desires and her intentions.
Madame Dumay had, like her husband, no other family than the Mignons.
Husband and wife agreed, therefore, to go and live in Provence, if the
Comte de La Bastie really meant to live in Provence, and to leave
their money to whichever of Modeste's children might need it most.
"Listen to Modeste," said Madame Mignon, addressing them. "None but a
girl in love can compose such airs without having studied music."
Houses may burn, fortunes be engulfed, fathers return from distant
lands, empires may crumble away, the cholera may ravage cities, but a
maiden's love wings its way as nature pursues hers, or that alarming
acid which chemistry has lately discovered, and which will presently
eat through the globe, if nothing stops it.
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