"
"Good God! my poor child, you are turning marriage into poetry. But
if, from time immemorial, girls have been cloistered in the bosom of
their families, if God, if social laws put them under the stern yoke
of parental sanction, it is, mark my words, to spare them the
misfortunes that this very poetry which charms and dazzles you, and
which you are therefore unable to judge of, would entail upon them.
Poetry is indeed one of the pleasures of life, but it is not life
itself."
"Papa, that is a suit still pending before the Court of Facts; the
struggle is forever going on between our hearts and the claims of
family."
"Alas for the child that finds her happiness in resisting them," said
the colonel, gravely. "In 1813 I saw one of my comrades, the Marquis
d'Aiglemont, marry his cousin against the wishes of her father, and
the pair have since paid dear for the obstinacy which the young girl
took for love. The family must be sovereign in marriage."
"My poet has told me all that," she answered. "He played Orgon for
some time; and he was brave enough to disparage the personal lives of
poets."
"I have read your letters," said Charles Mignon, with the flicker of a
malicious smile on his lips that made Modeste very uneasy, "and I
ought to remark that your last epistle was scarcely permissible in any
woman, even a Julie d'Etanges.
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