You
are quarrelling with me without knowing whether you have the slightest
right to do so. Love is not gained by such dry arguments as yours. The
poor duke on the contrary abandons himself to it like my Uncle Toby;
with this difference, that I am not the Widow Wadman,--though widow
indeed of many illusions as to poetry at the present moment. Ah, yes,
we young girls will not believe in anything that disturbs our world of
fancy! I was warned of all this beforehand. My dear poet, you are
attempting to get up a quarrel which is unworthy of you. I no longer
recognize the Melchior of yesterday."
"Because Melchior has discovered a spirit of ambition in you which--"
Modeste looked at him from head to foot with an imperial eye.
"But I shall be peer of France and ambassador as well as he," added
Canalis.
"Do you take me for a bourgeois," she said, beginning to mount the
steps of the portico; but she instantly turned back and added, "That
is less impertinent than to take me for a fool. The change in your
conduct comes from certain silly rumors which you have heard in Havre,
and which my maid Francoise has repeated to me.
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