Essays to Diderot, from the Fabliaux to the Nouvelle Heloise,--in short,
the thought of three lands crowded with confused images that girlish
head, august in its cold guilelessness, its native chastity, but from
which there sprang full-armed, brilliant, sincere, and strong, an
overwhelming admiration for genius. To Modeste a new book was an event;
a masterpiece that would have horrified Madame Latournelle made her
happy,--equally unhappy if the great work did not play havoc with her
heart. A lyric instinct bubbled in that girlish soul, so full of the
beautiful illusions of its youth. But of this radiant existence not a
gleam reached the surface of daily life; it escaped the ken of Dumay and
his wife and the Latournelles; the ears of the blind mother alone caught
the crackling of its flame.

The profound disdain which Modeste now conceived for ordinary men gave
to her face a look of pride, an inexpressible untamed shyness, which
tempered her Teutonic simplicity, and accorded well with a peculiarity
of her head. The hair growing in a point above the forehead seemed the
continuation of a slight line which thought had already furrowed between
the eyebrows, and made the expression of untameability perhaps a
shade too strong. The voice of this charming child, whom her father,
delighting in her wit, was wont to call his "little proverb of Solomon,"
had acquired a precious flexibility of organ through the practice of
three languages. This advantage was still further enhanced by a
natural bell-like tone both sweet and fresh, which touched the heart as
delightfully as it did the ear. If the mother could no longer see the
signs of a noble destiny upon her daughter's brow, she could study
the transitions of her soul's development in the accents of that voice
attuned to love.

CHAPTER VI. A MAIDEN'S FIRST ROMANCE

To this period of Modeste's eager rage for reading succeeded the
exercise of a strange faculty given to vigorous imaginations,--the
power, namely, of making herself an actor in a dream-existence; of
representing to her own mind the things desired, with so vivid a
conception that they seemed actually to attain reality; in short, to
enjoy by thought,--to live out her years within her mind; to marry;
to grow old; to attend her own funeral like Charles V.; to play within
herself the comedy of life and, if need be, that of death. Modeste was
indeed playing, but all alone, the comedy of Love. She fancied herself
ado