These friends, to whom feelings were more precious than interests, well knew that unless the daughter were pure and innocent, the father would die of grief when he came to know the death of Bettina and the blindness of his wife.

The distress of poor Dumay made such an impression on the Latournelles that they even forgot their parting with Exupere, whom they had sent off that morning to Paris.

During dinner, while the three were alone, Monsieur and Madame Latournelle and Butscha turned the problem over and over in their minds, and discussed every aspect of it.
"If Modeste loved any one in Havre she would have shown some fear yesterday," said Madame Latournelle; "her lover, therefore, lives somewhere else." "She swore to her mother this morning," said the notary, "in presence of Dumay, that she had not exchanged a look or a word with any living soul." "Then she loves after my fashion!" exclaimed Butscha.
"And how is that, my poor lad ?" asked Madame Latournelle.
"Madame," said the little cripple, "I love alone and afar--oh! as far as from here to the stars." "How do you manage it, you silly fellow ?" said Madame Latournelle, laughing.
"Ah, madame!" said Butscha, "what you call my hump is the socket of my wings." "So that is the explanation of your seal, is it ?" cried the notary.
Butscha's seal was a star, and under it the words "Fulgens, sequar,"-- "Shining One, I follow thee,"-- the motto of the house of Chastillonest.
"A beautiful woman may feel as distrustful as the ugliest," said Butscha, as if speaking to himself; "Modeste is clever enough to fear she may be loved only for her beauty." Hunchbacks are extraordinary creations, due entirely to society for, according to Nature's plan, feeble or aborted beings ought to perish.
The curvature or distortion of the spinal column creates in these outwardly deformed subjects as it were a storage-battery, where the nerve currents accumulate more abundantly than under normal conditions,--where they develop, and whence they are emitted, so to say, in lightning flashes, to energize the interior being.

From this, forces result which are sometimes brought to light by magnetism, though they are far more frequently lost in the vague spaces of the spiritual world.
It is rare to find a deformed person who is not gifted with some special faculty,--a whimsical or sparkling gaiety perhaps, an utter malignity, or an almost sublime goodness.

Like instruments which the hand of art can never fully waken, these beings, highly privileged though they know it not, live within themselves, as Butscha lived, provided their natural forces so magnificently concentrated have not been spent in the struggle they have been forced to maintain, against tremendous odds, to keep alive.