The Project Gutenberg EBook of Modeste Mignon, by Honore de Balzac

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Modeste Mignon

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: October, 1998 [Etext #1482]
Posting Date: February 26, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODESTE MIGNON ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

MODESTE MIGNON

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To a Polish Lady.

Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through love, witch through
fancy, child by faith, aged by experience, man in brain, woman in
heart, giant by hope, mother through sorrows, poet in thy dreams,
--to _thee_ belongs this book, in which thy love, thy fancy, thy
experience, thy sorrow, thy hope, thy dreams, are the warp through
which is shot a woof less brilliant than the poesy of thy soul,
whose expression, when it shines upon thy countenance, is, to
those who love thee, what the characters of a lost language are to
scholars.

De Balzac.

MODESTE MIGNON

CHAPTER I. THE CHALET

At the beginning of October, 1829, Monsieur Simon Babylas Latournelle,
notary, was walking up from Havre to Ingouville, arm in arm with his
son and accompanied by his wife, at whose side the head clerk of the
lawyer's office, a little hunchback named Jean Butscha, trotted along
like a page. When these four personages (two of whom came the same way
every evening) reached the elbow of the road where it turns back upon
itself like those called in Italy "cornice," the notary looked about to
see if any one could overhear him either from the terrace above or
the path beneath, and when he spoke he lowered his voice as a further
precaution.

"Exupere," he said to his son, "you must try to carry out intelligently
a little manoeuvre which I shall explain to you, but you are not to ask
the meaning of it; and if you guess the meaning I command you to toss
it into that Styx which every lawyer and every man who expects to have
a hand in t