"You are
carried away by your provincial hatred for everything that obliges you
to look higher than your own head. You can't forgive a poet for being
a statesman, for possessing the gift of speech, for having a noble
future before him,--and you calumniate his intentions."
"His!--mademoiselle, he will turn his back upon you with the baseness
of an Althor."
"Make him play that pretty little comedy, and--"
"That I will! he shall play it through and through within three days,
--on Wednesday,--recollect, Wednesday! Until then, mademoiselle, amuse
yourself by listening to the little tunes of the lyre, so that the
discords and the false notes may come out all the more distinctly."
Modeste ran gaily back to the salon, where La Briere, who was sitting
by the window, where he had doubtless been watching his idol, rose to
his feet as if a groom of the chambers had suddenly announced, "The
Queen." It was a movement of spontaneous respect, full of that living
eloquence that lies in gesture even more than in speech. Spoken love
cannot compare with acts of love; and every young girl of twenty has
the wisdom of fifty in applying the axiom.
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