"
Butscha shuddered slightly when he caught sight of her, so changed did
she seem to him. The wings of love were fastened to her shoulders; she
had the air of a nymph, a Psyche; her cheeks glowed with the divine
color of happiness.
"Who wrote the words to which you have put that pretty music?" asked
her mother.
"Canalis, mamma," she answered, flushing rosy red from her throat to
her forehead.
"Canalis!" cried the dwarf, to whom the inflections of the girl's
voice and her blush told the only thing of which he was still
ignorant. "He, that great poet, does he write songs?"
"They are only simple verses," she said, "which I have ventured to set
to German airs."
"No, no," interrupted Madame Mignon, "the music is your own, my
daughter."
Modeste, feeling that she grew more and more crimson, went off into
the garden, calling Butscha after her.
"You can do me a great service," she said. "Dumay is keeping a secret
from my mother and me as to the fortune which my father is bringing
back with him; and I want to know what it is. Did not Dumay send papa
when he first went away over five hundred thousand francs? Yes.
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