An hour later he was travelling post to Paris, with the
haste that nothing but passion or speculation can get out of wheels.
Recovering herself under Modeste's tender care, Madame Mignon went up
to her bedroom leaning on the arm of her daughter, to whom she said,
as her sole reproach, when they were alone:--
"My unfortunate child, see what you have done! Why did you conceal
anything from me? Am I so harsh?"
"Oh! I was just going to tell it to you comfortably," sobbed Modeste.
She thereupon related everything to her mother, read her the letters
and their answers, and shed the rose of her poem petal by petal into
the heart of the kind German woman. When this confidence, which took
half the day, was over, when she saw something that was almost a smile
on the lips of the too indulgent mother, Modeste fell upon her breast
in tears.
"Oh, mother!" she said amid her sobs, "you, whose heart, all gold and
poetry, is a chosen vessel, chosen of God to hold a sacred love, a
single and celestial love that endures for life; you, whom I wish to
imitate by loving no one but my husband,--you will surely understand
what bitter tears I am now shedding.
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