"
"You said nothing could change you"; remarked the colonel, ironically.
"Ah, do not trifle with me!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands and
looking at her father in distressful anxiety; "don't you see that you
are wringing my heart and destroying my beliefs with your jokes."
"God forbid! I have told you the exact truth."
"You are very kind, father," she said after a pause, and with a sort
of solemnity.
"He has kept your letters," resumed the colonel; "now suppose the rash
caresses of your soul had fallen into the hands of one of those poets
who, as Dumay says, light their cigars with them?"
"Oh!--you are going too far."
"Canalis told him so."
"Has Dumay seen Canalis?"
"Yes," answered her father.
The two walked along in silence.
"So that is why that _gentleman_," resumed Modeste, "told me so much
harm of poets and poetry; no wonder the little secretary said-- Why,"
she added, interrupting herself, "his virtues, his noble qualities,
his fine sentiments are nothing but an epistolary theft! The man who
steals glory and a name may very likely--"
"--break locks, steal purses, and cut people's throats on the
highway," cried the colonel.
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