“He is after the millions,” thought La Briere, sadly; “and he can play passion so well that Modeste will believe him.”

Instead of endeavoring to appear more amiable and wittier than his rival, Ernest imitated the Duc d’Herouville, and was gloomy, anxious, and watchful; but whereas the courier studied the freaks of the young heiress, Ernest simply fell a prey to the pains of dark and concentrated jealousy.  He had not yet been able to obtain a glance from his idol.  After a while he left the room with Butscha.

“It is all over!” he said; “she is caught by him; I am more disagreeable to her, and moreover, she is right.  Canalis is charming; there’s intellect in his silence, passion in his eyes, poetry in his rhodomontades.”

“Is he an honest man?” asked Butscha.

“Oh, yes,” replied La Briere.  “He is loyal and chivalrous, and capable of getting rid, under Modeste’s influence, of those affectations which Madame de Chaulieu has taught him.”

“You are a fine fellow,” said the hunchback; “but is he capable of loving,—­will he love her?”

“I don’t know,” answered La Briere.  “Has she said anything about me?” he asked after a moment’s silence.

“Yes,” said Butscha, and he repeated Modeste’s speech about disguises.

Poor Ernest flung himself upon a bench and held his head in his hands.  He could not keep back his tears, and he did not wish Butscha to see them; but the dwarf was the very man to guess his emotion.

“What troubles you?” he asked.

“She is right!” cried Ernest, springing up; “I am a wretch.”

And he related the deception into which Canalis had led him when Modeste’s first letter was received, carefully pointing out to Butscha that he had wished to undeceive the young girl before she herself took off the mask, and apostrophizing, in rather juvenile fashion, his luckless destiny.  Butscha sympathetically understood the love in the flavor and vigor of his simple language, and in his deep and genuine anxiety.

“But why don’t you show yourself to Mademoiselle Modeste for what you are?” he said; “why do you let your rival do his exercises?”

“Have you never felt your throat tighten when you wished to speak to her?” cried La Briere; “is there never a strange feeling in the roots of your hair and on the surface of your skin when she looks at you, —­even if she is thinking of something else?”

“But you had sufficient judgment to show displeasure when she as good as told her excellent father that he was a dolt.”

“Monsieur, I love her too well not to have felt a knife in my heart when I heard her contradicting her own perfections.”

“Canalis supported her.”

“If she had more self-love than heart there would be nothing for a man to regret in losing her,” answered La Briere.

At this moment, Modeste, followed by Canalis, who had lost the rubber, came out with her father and Madame Dumay to breathe the fresh air of the starry night.  While his daughter walked about with the poet, Charles Mignon left her and came up to La Briere.