"
"I, without pride!" said Modeste, weeping; "but _he_ has not yet seen
me."
"_He_ knows your name."
"I did not tell it to him till my eyes had vindicated the
correspondence, lasting three months, during which our souls had
spoken to each other."
"Oh, my dear misguided angel, you have mixed up a species of reason
with a folly that has compromised your own happiness and that of your
family."
"But, after all, papa, happiness is the absolution of my temerity,"
she said, pouting.
"Oh! your conduct is temerity, is it?"
"A temerity that my mother practised before me," she retorted quickly.
"Rebellious child! your mother after seeing me at a ball told her
father, who adored her, that she thought she could be happy with me.
Be honest, Modeste; is there any likeness between a love hastily
conceived, I admit, but under the eyes of a father, and your mad
action of writing to a stranger?"
"A stranger, papa? say rather one of our greatest poets, whose
character and whose life are exposed to the strongest light of day, to
detraction, to calumny,--a man robed in fame, and to whom, my dear
father, I was a mere literary and dramatic personage, one of
Shakespeare's women, until the moment when I wished to know if the man
himself were as beautiful as his soul.
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