The Dumays slept when Modeste opened her window, as it were to watch for the passing of a man,--the man of her dreams, the expected knight who was to mount her behind him and ride away under the fire of Dumay's pistols.
During the depression caused by her sister's death Modeste flung herself into the practice of reading, until her mind became sodden in it.

Born to the use of two languages, she could speak and read German quite as well as French; she had also, together with her sister, learned English from Madame Dumay.

Being very little overlooked in the matter of reading by the people about her, who had no literary knowledge, Modeste fed her soul on the modern masterpieces of three literatures, English, French, and German.

Lord Byron, Goethe, Schiller, Walter Scott, Hugo, Lamartine, Crabbe, Moore, the great works of the 17th and 18th centuries, history, drama, and fiction, from Astraea to Manon Lescaut, from Montaigne's Essays to Diderot, from the Fabliaux to the Nouvelle Heloise,--in short, the thought of three lands crowded with confused images that girlish head, august in its cold guilelessness, its native chastity, but from which there sprang full-armed, brilliant, sincere, and strong, an overwhelming admiration for genius.

To Modeste a new book was an event; a masterpiece that would have horrified Madame Latournelle made her happy,--equally unhappy if the great work did not play havoc with her heart.