Dumay was talking with his wife in the garden under the windows, telling her the secret of their own wealth, and questioning her as to her desires and her intentions.

Madame Dumay had, like her husband, no other family than the Mignons.

Husband and wife agreed, therefore, to go and live in Provence, if the Comte de La Bastie really meant to live in Provence, and to leave their money to whichever of Modeste's children might need it most.
"Listen to Modeste," said Madame Mignon, addressing them.

"None but a girl in love can compose such airs without having studied music." Houses may burn, fortunes be engulfed, fathers return from distant lands, empires may crumble away, the cholera may ravage cities, but a maiden's love wings its way as nature pursues hers, or that alarming acid which chemistry has lately discovered, and which will presently eat through the globe, if nothing stops it.
Modeste, under the inspiration of her present situation, was putting to music certain stanzas which we are compelled to quote here--albeit they are printed in the second volume of the edition Dauriat had mentioned--because, in order to adapt them to her music, which had the inexpressible charm of sentiment so admired in great singers, Modeste had taken liberties with the lines in a manner that may astonish the admirers of a poet so famous for the correctness, sometimes too precise, of his measures.
THE MAIDEN'S SONG Hear, arise! the lark is shaking Sunlit wings that heavenward rise; Sleep no more; the violet, waking, Wafts her incense to the skies.
Flowers revived, their eyes unclosing, See themselves in drops of dew In each calyx-cup reposing, Pearls of a day their mirror true.
Breeze divine, the god of roses, Passed by night to bless their bloom; See! for him each bud uncloses, Glows, and yields its rich perfume.
Then arise! the lark is shaking Sunlit wings that heavenward rise; Nought is sleeping--Heart, awaking, Lift thine incense to the skies.
"It is very pretty," said Madame Dumay.

"Modeste is a musician, and that's the whole of it." "The devil is in her!" cried the cashier, into whose heart the suspicion of the mother forced its way and made him shiver.
"She loves," persisted Madame Mignon.
By succeeding, through the undeniable testimony of the song, in making the cashier a sharer in her belief as to the state of Modeste's heart, Madame Mignon destroyed the happiness the return and the prosperity of his master had brought him.