believe that under the starry mantle of a poet I should find nothing but
one of Moliere's old men?"

When a woman or young girl is taken in the act, "flagrante delicto," she
conceives a deadly hatred to the witness, the author, or the object of
her fault. And so the true, the single-minded, the untamed and untamable
Modeste conceived within her soul an unquenchable desire to get
the better of that righteous spirit, to drive him into some fatal
inconsistency, and so return him blow for blow. This girl, this
child, as we may call her, so pure, whose head alone had been
misguided,--partly by her reading, partly by her sister's sorrows, and
more perhaps by the dangerous meditations of her solitary life,--was
suddenly caught by a ray of sunshine flickering across her face. She had
been standing for three hours on the shores of the vast sea of Doubt.
Nights like these are never forgotten. Modeste walked straight to
her little Chinese table, a gift from her father, and wrote a letter
dictated by the infernal spirit of vengeance which palpitates in the
hearts of young girls.

CHAPTER VIII. BLADE TO BLADE

To Monsieur de Canalis:

Monsieur,--You are certainly a great poet, and you are something
more,--an honest man. After showing such loyal frankness to a
young girl who was stepping to the verge of an abyss, have you
enough left to answer without hypocrisy or evasion the following
question?

Would you have written the letter I now hold in answer to mine,
--would your ideas, your language have been the same,--had some
one whispered in your ear (what may prove true), Mademoiselle O.
d'Este M. has six millions and does intend to have a dunce for a
master?

Admit the supposition for a moment. Be with me what you are with
yourself; fear nothing. I am wiser than my twenty years; nothing
that is frank can hurt you in my mind. When I have read your
confidence, if you deign to make it, you shall receive from me an
answer to your first letter.

Having admired your talent, often so sublime, permit me to do
homage to your delicacy and your integrity, which force me to
remain always,

Your humble servant, O. d'Este M.

When Ernest de La Briere had held this letter in his hands for some
little time he went to walk along the boulevards, tossed in mind like a
tiny vessel by a tempest when the wind is blowing from all points of the
compass. Most young men, specially true Parisians, woul