Modeste Mignon

All young girls, romantic or otherwise, can imagine the impatience in which Modeste lived for the next few days. The air was full of tongues of fire. The trees were like a pluma...

The Comte de La Bastie was at this moment overwhelmed with the sorrows which lay in wait for him as their prey. He had learned from his daughter’s letter of Bettina’s death and...

Is there in the life of man a more delightful moment than that of a first rendezvous? Are the sensations then hidden at the bottom of our hearts and finding their first expressi...

During these little events other little events were going on in Havre, which caused Modeste to forget her present uneasiness. Dumay went down to Havre early in the morning, and...

“Do you know, Ernest,” cried Canalis, when they had driven a short distance from the house, “I don’t see any marriageable woman in society in Paris who compares with that adorab...

My Friend,--Your letter gives me as much pain as pleasure. But perhaps some day we shall find nothing but pleasure in writing to each other. Understand me thoroughly. The soul s...

An hour later, Modeste, charmingly equipped in a bottle-green cassimere habit, a small hat with a green veil, buckskin gloves, and velvet boots which met the lace frills of her...

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 aby...

At this moment Modeste, happy as she was in the return of her father, was, nevertheless, pacing her room disconsolate as Perrette on seeing her eggs broken. She had hoped her fa...

“Those two young men,” said Madame Latournelle, on the Saturday evening, “have no idea how many spies they have on their tracks. We are eight in all, on the watch.”

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...

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 w...

This visit of the great surgeon was the event of the day, and it left a luminous trace in Modeste’s soul. The young enthusiast ardently admired the man whose life belonged to ot...

The two young men were equally impatient to see Modeste, but La Briere dreaded the interview, while Canalis approached it with the confidence of self-conceit. The eagerness with...

The game opened with the baron and the duke, Gobenheim and Latournelle as partners. Modeste took a seat near the poet, to Ernest’s deep disappointment; he watched the face of th...

Jean Francois Bernard Dumay, born at Vannes, started as a soldier for the army of Italy in 1799. His father, president of the revolutionary tribunal of that town, had displayed...

During the dinner, which was magnificent and admirably well served, the duke obtained a signal advantage over Canalis. Modeste, who had received her habit and other equestrian e...

Such was the result to the celebrated house of Mignon at Havre of the crisis of 1825-26, which convulsed many of the principal business centres in Europe and caused the ruin of...

My friend,--Suffer me to give you that name,--you have delighted me; I would not have you other than you are in this letter, the first--oh, may it not be the last! Who but a poe...

An hour went by in solemn stillness broken only by the cabalistic phrases of the whist-players: “Spades!” “Trumped!” “Cut!” “How are honors?” “Two to four.” “Whose deal?”--phras...

At this instant Butscha, the hidden prompter of the fishing part, was requesting the secretary to say nothing about his trip to Paris, and not to interfere in any way with what...

The foregoing letters seemed very original to the persons from whom the author of the “Comedy of Human Life” obtained them; but their interest in this duel, this crossing of pen...

“Ladies,” said the Prince de Cadignan, as the guests were about to separate for the night, “I know that several of you propose to follow the hounds with us to-morrow, and it bec...

The poet’s reflections during the night were thoroughly matter of fact. He sincerely saw nothing worse in life than the situation of a married man without money. Still trembling...

The hunt was destined to be not only a meet of the hounds, but a meeting of all the passions excited by the colonel’s millions and Modeste’s beauty; and while it was in prospect...

On re-entering the salon Ernest de La Briere found a young officer of the company of the guard d’Havre, the Vicomte de Serizy, who had just arrived from Rosny to announce that _...

Modeste’s arrival at Rosembray made a certain sensation in the avenue when the carriage with the liveries of France came in sight, accompanied by the grand equerry, the colonel,...

This young man with a livid face--a blonde of the type with black eyes, whose immovable glance has an indescribable fascination, sober in speech as in conduct, dressed in black,...

The poor girl had fallen humiliated from the alp she had scaled in search of her eagle’s nest, into the mud of the swamp below, where (to use the poetic language of an author of...