“If he is a loyal, honest fellow, and loves her; if he is worthy of her; if he renounces his duchess,” said Butscha,--“then I’ll manage the duchess! Here, my dear sir, take this road, and you will get home in ten minutes.” But as they parted, Butscha turned back and hailed poor Ernest, who, as a true lover, would gladly have stayed there all night talking of Modeste. “Monsieur,” said Butscha, “I have not yet had the honor of seeing our great poet. I am very curious to observe that magnificent phenomenon in the exercise of his functions. Do me the favor to bring him to the Chalet to-morrow evening, and stay as long as possible; for it takes more than an hour for a man to show himself for what he is. I shall be the first to see if he loves, if he can love, or if he ever will love Mademoiselle Modeste.” “You are very young to--” “--to be a professor,” said Butscha, cutting short La Briere. “Ha, monsieur, deformed folks are born a hundred years old. And besides, a sick man who has long been sick, knows more than his doctor; he knows the disease, and that is more than can be said for the best of doctors. Well, so it is with a man who cherishes a woman in his heart when the woman is forced to disdain him for his ugliness or his deformity; he ends by knowing so much of love that he becomes seductive, just as the sick man recovers his health; stupidity alone is incurable. I have had neither father nor mother since I was six years old; I am now twenty-five. Public charity has been my mother, the procureur du roi my father. Oh! don’t be troubled,” he added, seeing Ernest’s gesture; “I am much more lively than my situation. Well, for the last six years, ever since a woman’s eye first told me I had no right to love, I do love, and I study women. I began with the ugly ones, for it is best to take the bull by the horns. So I took my master’s wife, who has certainly been an angel to me, for my first study. Perhaps I did wrong; but I couldn’t help it. I passed her through my alembic and what did I find? this thought, crouching at the bottom of her heart, ‘I am not so ugly as they think me’; and if a man were to work upon that thought he could bring her to the edge of the abyss, pious as she is.” “And have you studied Modeste?” “I thought I told you,” replied Butscha, “that my life belongs to her, just as France belongs to the king. Do you now understand what you called my spying in Paris? No one but me really knows what nobility, what pride, what devotion, what mysterious grace, what unwearying kindness, what true religion, gaiety, wit, delicacy, knowledge, and courtesy there are in the soul and in the heart of that adorable creature!” Butscha drew out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, and La Briere pressed his hand for a long time.