The reading of this letter, swallowed like a drop of water in the desert, lifted the mountain which weighed heavily on Modeste’s heart: then she saw the mistake she had made in arranging her plan, and repaired it by giving Francoise some envelopes directed to herself, in which the maid could put the letters which came from Paris and drop them again into the box. Modeste resolved to receive the postman herself on the steps of the Chalet at the hour when he made his delivery. As to the feelings that this reply, in which the noble heart of poor La Briere beat beneath the brilliant phantom of Canalis, excited in Modeste, they were as multifarious and confused as the waves which rushed to die along the shore while with her eyes fixed on the wide ocean she gave herself up to the joy of having (if we dare say so) harpooned an angelic soul in the Parisian Gulf, of having divined that hearts of price might still be found in harmony with genius, and, above all, for having followed the magic voice of intuition. A vast interest was now about to animate her life. The wires of her cage were broken: the bolts and bars of the pretty Chalet--where were they? Her thoughts took wings. “Oh, father!” she cried, looking out to the horizon. “Come back and make us rich and happy.” The answer which Ernest de La Briere received some five days later will tell the reader more than any elaborate disquisition of ours. CHAPTER IX. THE POWER OF THE UNSEEN To Monsieur de Canalis: 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 poet could have excused and understood a young girl so delicately? I wish to speak with the sincerity that dictated the first lines of your letter. And first, let me say that most fortunately you do not know me. I can joyfully assure you than I am neither that hideous Mademoiselle Vilquin nor the very noble and withered Mademoiselle d’Herouville who floats between twenty and forty years of age, unable to decide on a satisfactory date. The Cardinal d’Herouville flourished in the history of the Church at least a century before the cardinal of whom we boast as our only family glory,--for I take no account of lieutenant-generals, and abbes who write trumpery little verses. Moreover, I do not live in the magnificent villa Vilquin; there is not in my veins, thank God, the ten-millionth of a drop of that chilly blood which flows behind a counter. I come on one side from Germany, on the other from the south of France; my mind has a Teutonic love of reverie, my blood the vivacity of Provence. I am noble on my father’s and on my mother’s side. On my mother’s I derive from every page of the Almanach de Gotha. In short, my precautions are well taken. It is not in any man’s power, nor even in the power of the law, to unmask my incognito. I shall remain veiled, unknown.