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 smile while thanking him for so faithfully coming to share her sorrows.

“My child,” said Monsieur Bongrand, bringing Ursule a bulky packet, “one of your uncle’s heiresses has taken out of your cupboard all that you will want; for it will be a few days before the seals will be removed, and you will then recover whatever belongs to you. In your own interests, I have put the seals on your room.”

“Thank you, monsieur,” she replied, going to him and squeezing his hand. “Look at him once more; would you not think he was asleep?”

The old man at that moment had that bloom of transient beauty which rests on the faces of those who have died painlessly, he seemed radiant.

“Did he give you nothing secretly before dying?” whispered the justice of the peace to Ursule.

“Nothing,” she said, “he only spoke of a letter—”

“Good! it will be found,” rejoined Bongrand. “So it is very lucky for you that they insisted upon the seals.”

At dawn, Ursule bade farewell to this house in which her happy childhood had been spent, and especially to the modest room where her love had commenced, and which was so dear to her that in the midst of her dismal grief she shed tears of regret for this peaceful, sweet abode. After having, for the last time, alternately contemplated her windows and Savinien, she went out to go to the inn, accompanied by La Bougival, who was carrying her bundle, by the justice of the peace, who gave her his


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 arm, and by Savinien, her gentle protector. And thus, in spite of the wisest precautions, the mistrustful lawyer found he was in the right; he was to see Ursule without a fortune and struggling with the heirs.

The next night, the whole town was present at the obsequies of Doctor Minoret. When the behavior of the heirs toward his adopted daughter was known, the great majority considered it natural and necessary; it was a question of an inheritance, the old man was close; Ursule might imagine she had rights, the heirs were defending their property, and besides, she had humiliated them enough during the life of their uncle, who used to receive them very badly. Désiré Minoret, who was not doing wonders in his situation, so said those who envied the postmaster, arrived for the service. Ursule was in bed, incapable of attending the funeral, the victim of a nervous fever caused as much by the insult of the heirs as by her deep affliction.

“Just look at that hypocrite crying!” said some of the heirs, pointing to Savinien, who was keenly grieved at the doctor’s death.

“The point is whether he has reason to cry,” observed Goupil. “Don’t be in a hurry to laugh, the seals are not removed.”

“Bah!” said Minoret, who knew what to think about that, “you have always frightened us for nothing.”

Just as the funeral left the church for the cemetery, Goupil had to swallow a bitter draught; he

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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 wanted to take Désiré’s arm, but, by refusing it to him, the deputy disowned his friend in the presence of all Nemours.

“I must not get angry, or I should not be able to avenge myself any more,” thought the head clerk, whose unfeeling heart swelled like a sponge in his bosom.

Before raising the seals and proceeding to the inventory, time was needed for the attorney for the crown, the legal guardian of orphans, to appoint Bongrand as his representative. The Minoret inheritance, which was talked about for ten days, was then examined, and was verified with all the strictness of legal formalities. Dionis got something by it, Goupil liked doing wrong well enough; and, as the speculation was a good one, the sittings multiplied. After the first sitting they nearly always breakfasted. The notary, the clerk, heirs and witnesses used to drink the rarest wines in the cellar.


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Rh He had a sudden idea. "Perhaps Tink wants to be my mother?"

"You silly ass!" cried Tinker Bell in a passion.

She had said it so often that Wendy needed no translation.

"I almost agree with her," Wendy snapped. Fancy Wendy snapping! But she had been much tried, and she little knew what was to happen before the night was out. If she had known she would not have snapped.

None of them knew. Perhaps it was best not to know. Their ignorance gave them one more glad hour; and as it was to be their last hour on the island, let us rejoice that there were sixty glad minutes in it. They sang and danced in their night-gowns. Such a deliciously creepy song it was, in which they pretended to be frightened at their own shadows, little witting that so soon shadows would close in upon them, from whom they would shrink in real fear. So uproariously gay was the dance, and how they buffeted each other on the bed and out of it! It was a pillow fight rather than a dance, and when it was finished, the pillows insisted on one bout more, like partners who know that they may never meet again. The stories they told, before it was time for Wendy's good-night story! Even Slightly tried to tell a story that night, and the beginning Rh

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*
In the provinces, and especially in the small towns where everyone possesses his own house, it is difficult enough to find lodgings. Moreover, in buying an establishment of any kind, the house nearly always forms part of the sale. The justice of the peace, to whom the attorney for the crown had entrusted the orphan’s interests, saw no other way of removing her from the inn than by making her buy a little house in the Grand’Rue, at the corner of the bridge on the Loing, with the house-door opening on a passage, and having only one parlor on the ground floor with two windows looking on the street, and behind which there was a kitchen, with a French window looking on an inner court about thirty feet square. A small staircase lighted on the riverside by borrowed lights, led to the second story, composed of three rooms over which were two attics. The justice of the peace took two thousand francs out of La Bougival’s savings to pay the first part of the cost of the house, which was worth six thousand francs, and he obtained terms for the remainder. In order to find room for the books Ursule wished to buy back, Bongrand had the inner partition of the two rooms on the second floor destroyed, after having noticed that the depth of the house corresponded to the length of the body of the library. Savinien and the justice of the peace so


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Rh was so fearfully dull that it appalled not only the others but himself, and he said happily:

"Yes, it is a dull beginning. I say, let us pretend that it is the end."

And then at last they all got into bed for Wendy's story, the story they loved best, the story Peter hated. Usually when she began to tell this story, he left the room or put his hands over his ears; and possibly if he had done either of those things this time they might all still be on the island. But to-night he remained on his stool; and we shall see what happened. Rh

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 hurried on the workmen who were cleaning, painting and renovating the little house, that, toward the end of March, the orphan was able to leave her inn, and discovered in this ugly house a room similar to the one from which the heirs had hunted her, for it was full of her own furniture that the justice of the peace had recovered at the raising of the seals. La Bougival, located above, could come down at the call of a bell placed at the head of her young mistress’s bed. The room destined for the library, the ground-floor parlor and the kitchen, still empty, only stained, freshly papered and painted, were waiting for the purchases the goddaughter was to make at the sale of her godfather’s furniture. Although they knew Ursule’s character, the justice of the peace and the curé dreaded this sudden transition for her to a life devoid of the refinements and luxury to which the deceased doctor had insisted upon accustoming her. As to Savinien, he wept about it. And so he had secretly given the workmen and the upholsterer more than one compensation in order that Ursule should find no difference, at least in the interior, between the old and the new room. But the young girl, who derived all her happiness from Savinien’s eyes, showed the gentlest resignation. In these circumstances, she enchanted her two old friends and proved to them, for the thousandth time, that heart sorrows only could make her suffer. The grief that the loss of her godfather caused her was too deep for her to feel the bitterness of this change of fortune, which, nevertheless, contributed


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 fresh obstacles to her marriage. She was so much hurt at Savinien’s sadness at seeing her so reduced, that she was obliged to whisper to him, coming out from mass on the morning of her entry into her new house:

“Love does not thrive without patience, we will wait!”

As soon as the title deeds of the inventory were drawn up, Massin, by the advice of Goupil, who had changed over to him out of secret hatred for Minoret, hoping something better from the usurer’s selfishness than from Zélie’s cautiousness, sued Monsieur and Madame de Portenduère, whose payments had fallen due. The old lady was stunned at being called upon to pay one hundred and twenty-nine thousand five hundred and seventeen francs fifty-five centimes to the heirs at twenty-four hours’ notice, and the interest from the day of the application, at the risk of seizure of her property. To borrow was impossible. Savinien went to consult a solicitor at Fontainebleau.

“You have to deal with bad people who will never compromise; they will prosecute unmercifully to get possession of the farm of Bordières,” said the solicitor. “It would be best to convert the sale into a voluntary auction, so as to avoid expense.”

This sad news crushed the old Bretonne, to whom her son mildly observed, that, had she consented to his marriage during Minoret’s lifetime, the doctor would have given her estates to Ursule’s husband. Their household would now have been in wealth


text: Shaving Made Easy

title: Shaving Made Easy


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 instead of poverty. Although uttered unreproachfully, this argument wounded the old lady quite as much as the idea of an early and violent dispossession. On learning this disaster, Ursule, barely recovered from the fever and the blow aimed at her by the heirs, was stupefied with grief. To love and find one’s self powerless to succor the beloved one is one of the most frightful sufferings that can lay waste to the soul of a noble, delicate woman.

“I meant to have bought my uncle’s house, I shall buy your mother’s,” she said.

“Is it possible?” said Savinien. “You are a minor and cannot sell your stock without formalities to which the attorney for the crown would never consent Besides, we shall not attempt to resist. The whole town is delighted to see the discomfiture of a noble family. These bourgeois are like hounds at the death. Happily I still have ten thousand francs with which I shall be able to provide for my mother until the end of this wretched business. After all, your godfather’s inventory is not finished; Monsieur Bongrand still hopes to find something for you. He is as astonished as I am to know that you are without any fortune. The doctor so often spoke, either to him or to me, of the beautiful future he had arranged for you, that we do not at all understand this issue.”

“Bah!” she said, “as long as I can buy my godfather’s library and furniture so that they shall not be scattered or fall into the hands of strangers, I am contented with my lot.”


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 “But who knows what price these infamous heirs may not put on all you wish to have?”

From Montargis to Fontainebleau nothing was talked of but the Minoret heirs and the million they were looking for; but the most minute searches made in the house since the raising of the seals, had not led to any discovery. The Portenduère debt of a hundred and twenty-nine thousand francs, the fifteen thousand francs’ income from the three per cents, then at seventy-six, and which gave a capital of three hundred and eighty thousand francs, the house, valued at forty thousand francs, and its rich furniture, produced a total of about six hundred thousand francs which seemed to everybody a sufficiently handsome compensation. Minoret then had several gnawing anxieties. La Bougival and Savinien, who, as well as the justice of the peace, persisted in believing in the existence of some will, used to arrive at the close of each sitting and ask Bongrand the result of the searches. Sometimes the old man’s friend would exclaim, just as the men of business and the heirs were leaving: “I don’t understand it at all!” As, to many superficial people, two hundred thousand francs made a fine provincial fortune for each heir, nobody thought of asking how the doctor had been able to keep up his style of household with only fifteen thousand francs, since he had left untouched the interest on the Portenduère debt. Bongrand, Savinien and the curé alone took up this question in Ursule’s interest, and, by


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 expressing it, made the postmaster turn pale more than once.

“And yet they have searched everything thoroughly, they, in order to find money, I, to find a will which ought to be in Monsieur de Portenduère’s favor,” said the justice of the peace the day on which the inventory was closed. “They have scattered the cinders, raised the marbles, felt the slippers, pierced through the wooden beds, emptied the mattresses, pricked the blankets and quilts, turned out his eiderdown, examined the papers bit by bit, and the drawers, upset the floor of the cellar, and I urged them on to these devastations!”

“What do you think of it?” said the curé.

“The will has been suppressed by one of the heirs.”

“And the papers?”

“Look for them then! Find out what you can of the ways of such sneaking, sly, miserly people as the Massins and the Crémières! How are you to thoroughly understand a fortune like Minoret’s? he receives two hundred thousand francs of the inheritance, and they say he is going to sell his license, his house and his shares in the stage-coach, three hundred and fifty thousand francs.—What sums! without counting the savings of his thirty odd thousand francs income from landed property—Poor doctor!”

“Perhaps the will has been hidden in the library?” said Savinien.

“Therefore I do not dissuade the little one from


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 buying it! But for that, would it not be folly to let her put her ready money into books which she will never open?”

The whole town believed the doctor’s goddaughter to have been provided with the hidden funds, but, when it became positively known that her income of fourteen hundred francs and her repurchases constituted her entire fortune, then the doctor’s house and personal property excited universal curiosity. Some thought that sums in banknotes would be found hidden in the pieces of furniture; others, that the old man had lined his books. And so the sale presented the spectacle of strange precautions taken by the heirs. Dionis, acting as auctioneer, proclaimed every time an article was put up that the heirs only intended selling the piece of furniture and not any valuable it might contain; then, before surrendering it, they all submitted it to light-fingered examinations, having it probed and sounded; in fact, they followed it with the same look which a father would give to his only son on seeing him leave for the Indies.

“Ah! mademoiselle!” said La Bougival, in dismay upon her return from the first sitting, “I shall not go again. And Monsieur Bongrand is right, you would not be able to bear such a sight. Everything is out in the grounds. People come and go everywhere as if it were the street, the handsomest furniture is put to any use, they climb upon it, and a hen would not be able to find her chicks for the muddle! One would think one was at a fire.


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 The things are in the yard, the cupboards open, and nothing in them! Oh! the poor dear man, it was well he died, this sale would have killed him.”

Bongrand, who bought for Ursule the pieces of furniture that the deceased had been fond of and that were calculated to adorn the little house, did not appear at all at the sale of the library. More cunning than the heirs, whose avidity might have made him pay too dear for the books, he had commissioned a dealer in second-hand books at Melun, who had purposely come to Nemours, and who had already had several lots knocked down to him. In consequence of the suspicion of the heirs, the library was sold in separate works. Three thousand volumes were examined, rummaged one by one, held up by both sides of the uplifted cover, and shaken in order to turn out any papers that might be hidden in them; finally their covers and fly-leaves were examined. The total of the auction, for Ursule, ran up to about six thousand five hundred francs, the half of her claim against the estate. The bookcase was not given up until after it had been carefully examined by a cabinetmaker sent for from Paris, who was celebrated for secret drawers. When the justice of the peace gave the order for the bookcase and the books to be conveyed to Mademoiselle Mirouët, the heirs felt vague misgivings, which vanished later on when she was seen to be as poor as before. Minoret bought his uncle’s house, which his co-inheritors worked up to fifty thousand francs, thinking that


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 the postmaster was hoping to find a treasure in the walls. The conditions also contained reservations on this subject. A fortnight after the settlement of the inheritance, Minoret, having sold his horses and business to the son of a rich farmer, installed himself in his uncle’s house, where he spent considerable sums in furniture and restorations. So in this way Minoret condemned himself to live a few steps away from Ursule.

“I hope,” he had said at Dionis’s the day that the formal notice had been served upon Savinien and his mother, “that we shall get rid of these lordlings! We will drive the others out afterward.”

“The old woman with the fourteen quarterings,” replied Goupil, “would never witness her own downfall; she will go and die in Brittany, where no doubt she will find a wife for her son.”

“I do not think so,” answered the notary, who, that morning, had drawn up the contract of the purchase made by Bongrand. “Ursule has just bought widow Richard’s house.”

“That cursed little fool does not know what to invent to annoy us!” cried the postmaster very rashly.

“And what does that matter to you, if she lives in Nemours?” asked Goupil, surprised at the movement of vexation that escaped the foolish giant.

“You don’t know,” replied Minoret, turning as red as a poppy, “that my son is idiotic enough to be in love with her. That is why I would willingly give a hundred écus if Ursule would leave Nemours.”


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 From this first outburst, it will be understood how Ursule, poor and resigned, was going to annoy the wealthy Minoret. The worry of an inheritance to settle, the sale of his business, and the visits necessitated by unwonted affairs, his arguments with his wife about the slightest details and about the purchase of the doctor’s house, in which Zélie wanted to live in a homely way in the interests of her son; this uproar, which contrasted with the quiet of his ordinary life, prevented the great Minoret from thinking of his victim. But, a few days after his installation in the Rue des Bourgeois, toward the middle of May, as he was returning from a walk, he heard the sound of the piano, saw La Bougival sitting at the window like a dragon guarding a treasure, and suddenly heard an importunate voice within him.

To explain why, in a man of the former postmaster’s stamp, the sight of Ursule, who did not even suspect the theft committed to her injury, should become unbearable; why the sight of this dignity in misfortune inspired him with the desire to send this young girl out of the town; and why this desire assumed the character of hatred and passion, would perhaps form a whole treatise on ethics. Perhaps he did not think himself the lawful owner of the thirty-six thousand francs income so long as she to whom it belonged was two steps from him. Perhaps he had a vague belief in some chance that would disclose his theft whilst those whom he had robbed were there. Perhaps Ursule’s


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 presence was awakening remorse in this somewhat primitive, almost gross nature, which up till now had never done anything illegal. Perhaps this remorse pricked him all the more because he had additional property legitimately acquired. He doubtless attributed this emotion to Ursule’s presence alone, fancying that, if once the young girl disappeared, these tiresome troubles would also vanish. In short, perhaps crime has its doctrine of perfection. A beginning of evil must have its end, a first wound calls for the blow that kills. It may be that theft leads inevitably to murder. Minoret had committed the robbery without the least reflection, so rapidly had events succeeded each other; reflection came afterward. Now, if you have thoroughly grasped this man’s physiognomy and appearance, you will understand the amazing effect that thought would produce upon him. Remorse is more than a thought, it springs from a feeling that is no more hidden than love, and that exercises the same tyranny. But, just as Minoret had not reflected in the least in seizing the fortune destined for Ursule, so he mechanically wished to drive her from Nemours when he felt himself injured by the sight of this deluded innocence. Following his character of an imbecile, he never thought at all of the consequences, but went from peril to peril, prompted by his covetous instinct like a wild animal which does not foresee any cunning of the hunter and relies upon its own speed and strength. Very soon, the rich bourgeois who used to meet at the house of


text: Peter and Wendy - Margaret Ogilvy/Chapter 10


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 the notary Dionis remarked a change in the manners and attitude of this man who had formerly been so easy-going.

“I don’t know what is the matter with Minoret, he is all odd!” said his wife, from whom he had resolved to hide his bold stroke.

Everybody attributed Minoret’s weariness—for the thought reflected in his face was like that of weariness—to the entire cessation of any occupation, to the sudden change from an active to a private life. Whilst Minoret was considering how he could ruin Ursule’s life, not a day went by without La Bougival’s making some allusion to her foster daughter as to the fortune she ought to have had, or would compare her wretched condition to that which her late master had intended for her and of which he had spoken to her, La Bougival.

“After all,” she said, “I am not saying this from any selfishness, but would not my late master, good as he was, have left me some little thing—?”

“Am I not here?” replied Ursule, forbidding La Bougival to say another word to her on this subject.

She did not want thoughts of self-interest to sully the kindly, mournful and sweet memories which went with the noble face of the old doctor, a sketch of whom, in black and white crayons, done by her drawing-master, adorned her little parlor. To her fresh and beautiful imagination, the sight of this sketch was always enough to bring back her godfather, whom she thought of ceaselessly, especially when she was surrounded by the things


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 he had been fond of; his big easy-chair à la duchesse, his study furniture and his backgammon table, as well as the piano he had given her. In the midst of these things almost quickened into life by her regrets, the two old friends remaining to her, the Abbé Chaperon and Monsieur Bongrand—the only persons she would receive—were like two living memories of her past life, to which she linked her present by the love that her godfather had blest. Before long, the sadness of her thoughts—insensibly softened—in some measure tinged the hours and bound all these things anew in indefinable harmony; there was exquisite cleanliness, the most precise symmetry in the arrangement of the furniture, a few flowers given every day by Savinien, elegant trifles, a hush that the young girl’s habits communicated to objects and which made her home lovely. When breakfast and mass were over, she would study and sing; then she would embroider, sitting at her window overlooking the street. At four o’clock, Savinien, returning from the walk he used to take in all weathers, would find the window half-open, and would seat himself on the outer sill for a half-hour’s chat with her. In the evening the curé and the justice of the peace used to visit her, but she never would allow Savinien to accompany them. In fact, she would not accept Madame de Portenduère’s proposal, sent through her son, that Ursule should go to live with her. Moreover, the young girl and La Bougival lived in the strictest economy; altogether, they did not spend more than


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 sixty francs a month. The old nurse was indefatigable; she washed and ironed, she only cooked twice a week, she kept the cooked meat which the mistress and servant ate cold; for Ursule wanted to save seven hundred francs a year to pay the remainder of the price of her house. This sternness of conduct, modesty and resignation to a life of poverty and deprivation after having enjoyed a luxurious existence in which her slightest whims were doted upon, won over some people. Ursule won respect and incurred no gossip. Moreover, once satisfied, the heirs did her justice. Savinien admired this strength of character in so young a girl. From time to time, coming away from mass, Madame de Portenduère addressed a few kindly words to Ursule, she invited her twice to dinner and came herself to fetch her. If it was not yet happiness, at least it was tranquillity. But a success, in which the justice of the peace showed his old skill as a lawyer, caused the outburst of the yet secret persecution that Minoret was meditating against Ursule, and which was of the nature of a vow. As soon as all the business of the inheritance was finished, the justice of the peace, at Ursule’s entreaty, took the Portenduères’ cause in hand and promised her that he would extricate them from their difficulties; but, while visiting the old lady, whose opposition to Ursule’s happiness made him furious, he did not leave her ignorant of the fact that he was devoting himself to her interests solely to please Mademoiselle Mirouët. He selected one of his


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 former clerks as solicitor at Fontainebleau, for the Portenduères, and himself conducted the inquiry into the nullity of the proceedings. He wanted to profit by the interval that should elapse between the annulment of the prosecution and Massin’s fresh suit, to renew the lease of the farm at six thousand francs, to extract a premium from the farmers and the payment of the last year in advance. From that time, the whist party was reorganized at Madame de Portenduère’s, between himself, the curé, Savinien and Ursule, whom Bongrand and the Abbé Chaperon used to call for and take home every evening. In June, Bongrand proclaimed the nullity of the proceedings pursued by Massin against the Portenduères. He immediately signed the fresh lease, obtained thirty-two thousand francs from the farmer, and a rental of six thousand francs for eighteen years; then, that evening, before his transactions could be noised abroad, he called upon Zélie, whom he knew to be puzzled as to how she should invest her funds, and proposed that she should purchase Les Bordières for two hundred and twenty thousand francs.

“I would close the bargain at once,” said Minoret, “if I knew that the Portenduères would go and live elsewhere than in Nemours.”

“But why?” replied the justice of the peace.

“We would like to dispense with nobility at Nemours.”

“I think I have heard the old lady say that if her affairs were settled, she could not live anywhere but


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 in Brittany on what would remain to her. She talks of selling her house.”

“Well then, sell it to me,” said Minoret.

“But you talk as if you were master,” said Zélie. “What do you want with two houses?”

“If I do not close with you to-night for Les Bordières,” rejoined the justice of the peace, “our lease will be known, we shall be seized again in three days, and I shall fail in this settlement, which I am bent upon. So I shall go at once to Melun, where some farmers that I know there will buy Les Bordières without a moment’s hesitation. In this way you will lose the chance of investing in land at three per cent on the estates of Rouvre.”

“Well then, why did you come to see us?” said Zélie.

“Because you have the money, whilst my former clients would need several days to fork out one hundred and twenty-nine thousand francs. I don’t want any difficulties.”

“Let her leave Nemours and I will give them to you!” repeated Minoret.

“You understand that I cannot answer for the will of the Portenduères,” replied Bongrand, “but I am sure that they will not remain in Nemours.”

Upon this assurance, Minoret, nudged moreover by Zélie, promised the funds for paying the Portenduères’ debt to the doctor’s estate. The deed of sale was then drawn up at Dionis’s, and in it the delighted justice of the peace got Minoret to accept the conditions of the new lease, the latter as well as


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 Zélie being a little late in discovering the loss of the last year paid in advance. Toward the end of June, Bongrand brought the adjusted balance of her fortune to Madame de Portenduère, one hundred and twenty-nine thousand francs, whilst urging her to invest it in the Funds, which with Savinien’s ten thousand francs would give her an income of six thousand francs in the five per cents. Thus, far from losing on her income, the old lady gained two thousand francs a year by the settlement. And so the Portenduère family remained in Nemours.

Minoret believed he had been tricked, as if the justice of the peace could have known that Ursule’s presence was unbearable to him, and he consequently entertained a keen resentment which increased his hatred of his victim. Then began the drama—secret, but terrible in its results—of the struggle between two feelings, the one urging Minoret to drive Ursule out of Nemours, and the one giving Ursule strength to bear the persecutions, the reason for which was for some time unfathomable; a strange situation, to which all the preceding events had led, for which they had paved the way, and to which they had served as a preface.

Madame Minoret, to whom her husband had given silverware and a complete dinner-service worth about twenty thousand francs, gave a gorgeous dinner every Sunday, upon which day her son the deputy used to bring a few friends from Fontainebleau. For these sumptuous dinners, Zélie would send to Paris for rarities, thus obliging the


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 notary Dionis to imitate her ostentation. Goupil, whom the Minorets were endeavoring to exclude from their society like some disreputable person who might sully their splendor, was not invited until toward the end of July, one month after the inauguration of the private life led by the former owners of the stage. The head clerk, already alive to this intentional neglect, was obliged to adopt formal manners toward Désiré, who, since the exercise of his duties, had assumed a solemn and supercilious manner even with his family.

“Then you have forgotten all about Esther, now that you are in love with Mademoiselle Mirouët?” said Goupil to the deputy.

“In the first place, Esther is dead, monsieur. Then, I have never thought about Ursule,” replied the magistrate.

“Well then, what were you telling me, Papa Minoret?” cried Goupil very insolently.

Minoret, caught in the very act of lying by so formidable a man, would have been abashed but for the purpose for which he had invited Goupil to dinner, whilst recollecting the proposition once made by the head clerk, that he should prevent the marriage of Ursule and young Portenduère. For all answer, he hastily led the clerk to the far end of his garden.

“You will soon be twenty-eight, my dear fellow,” he said, “and I do not yet see you on the road to good fortune. I wish you well, for after all you have been my son’s friend. Listen to me: if you


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 induce little Mirouët—who possesses moreover forty thousand francs—to become your wife, as sure as my name is Minoret, I will give you the means to buy a notary’s practice at Orleans.”

“No,” said Goupil, “I should not be conspicuous enough; but at Montargis—”

“No,” retorted Minoret, “but at Sens—”

“Done! then it shall be Sens!” cried the hideous head clerk, “there is an archbishop there, I do not dislike a pious country; with a little hypocrisy one gets on better. Besides, the little one is religious, she would be a success there.”

“It must be clearly understood,” said Minoret, “that I only give the hundred thousand francs upon the marriage of our relation, whom I want to settle comfortably out of consideration for my dead uncle.”

“And why not a little for my sake?” said Goupil slily, suspecting some secret in Minoret’s behavior, “was it not through my directions that you were able to collect twenty-four thousand francs a year from one holding without enclave, round about the Chateau du Rouvre? With your grassland and mill on the other side of the Loing, you might add sixteen thousand francs! See here, old fellow, do you intend to deal fairly with me?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, to let you feel my fangs, I was nursing the purchase of Le Rouvre, the parks, gardens, reserves and forest for Massin—”

“Take care how you do that!” broke in Zélie.


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 “Well then,” said Goupil, darting a viperous look at her, “if I choose, Massin will have all that for two hundred thousand francs.”

“Leave us, wife,” then said the giant, taking Zélie’s arm and sending her back, “I am settling with him.—We have been so busy,” resumed Minoret returning to Goupil, “that we have not been able to think of you; but I count upon your friendship to procure us Le Rouvre.”

“An old marquisate,” said Goupil, slily, “and which in your hands would soon be worth fifty thousand francs a year, more than two millions at the present price of landed estate.”

“And our deputy would then marry a fieldmarshal’s daughter, or the heiress of some old family who would advance him in the magistracy of Paris,” said the postmaster, opening his big snuff-box and offering Goupil a pinch.

“Well then, are we playing fair?” cried Goupil, flicking his fingers.

Minoret squeezed Goupil’s hands and replied:

“On my word of honor!”

Happily for Minoret, the head clerk believed, like all crafty people, that his marriage with Ursule was an excuse for making up to him since he had set Massin against them.

“It is not he,” he said to himself, “who thought of this humbug, I recognize my Zélie, she has dictated his rôle. Bah! I can let Massin go. Before three years are over I shall be deputy for Sens,” he thought.


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 Then, perceiving Bongrand who was going to play whist opposite, he rushed into the street.

“You are very much interested in Ursule Mirouët, my dear Monsieur Bongrand,” he said, “you cannot be indifferent to her future. Here is the programme: that she should marry a notary whose practice will be in a chief town of the district. This notary, who is bound to be deputy in three years, will bring her a dowry of one hundred thousand francs.”

“She can do better,” said Bongrand, drily. “Since her misfortunes, Madame de Portenduère has not been at all well; even yesterday she was terribly altered, sorrow is killing her; Savinien still has six thousand francs a year, Ursule has forty thousand francs, I shall have their capitals put out at interest à la Massin, but honestly, and in ten years they will have a small fortune.”

“Savinien would be a fool; he can marry Mademoiselle du Rouvre when he pleases, an only daughter to whom her uncle and aunt intend to leave two magnificent legacies.”

“‘When Love lays hold upon us, good-bye to prudence,’ says La Fontaine. But who is he, your notary? for after all—” rejoined Bongrand out of curiosity.

“I,” replied Goupil, startling the justice of the peace.

“You?” answered Bongrand, without concealing his disgust.

“Ah well! your servant, monsieur,” replied


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 Goupil, casting him a look full of malice, hatred and defiance.

“Would you like to be the wife of a notary who will bring you a dowry of one hundred thousand francs?” cried Bongrand, entering the little parlor and addressing Ursule, who was sitting beside Madame de Portenduère.

Moved by the same impulse, Ursule and Savinien started and looked at each other: she smiling, he not daring to show his anxiety.

“I am not mistress of my actions,” replied Ursule, holding out her hand to Savinien without the old mother seeing this gesture.

“Therefore I refused without even consulting you.”

“And why?” said Madame de Portenduère. “It seems to me, my child, that a notary’s is a fine position?”

“I prefer my peaceful poverty,” she replied, “for, compared to what I might have expected from life, it is wealth to me. Besides, my old nurse saves me many worries, and I am not going to exchange the present, which satisfies me, for an unknown future.”


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The next day, the post shed the poison of two anonymous letters into two hearts; one was to Madame de Portenduère, the other to Ursule. This is the one received by the old lady:

“You love your son, you want to establish him as befits the name he bears, and you encourage his fancy for a penniless and ambitious young girl, by receiving at your house one Ursule, daughter of a military bandsman; whilst you could marry him to Mademoiselle du Rouvre, whose two uncles, Messieurs le Marquis de Ronquerolles and the Chevalier du Rouvre, each possessing thirty thousand francs a year, intend to settle it upon their niece in her marriage contract so as to avoid leaving their fortune to that old fool, Monsieur du Rouvre, who squanders everything. Madame de Sérizy, Clementine du Rouvre’s aunt, who has just lost her only son in the Algerian campaign, will doubtless also adopt her niece. Some one who wishes you well believes that Savinien would be accepted.”

This is the letter written to Ursule:

“In Nemours there is a young man who worships you, who cannot see you working at your windows without an emotion which proves to him that his love is for life. This young man is gifted with a will of iron and a perseverance that nothing discourages; so receive his love favorably, for he has none but the purest intentions, and humbly asks for your hand in the desire of making you happy. His fortune, though already suitable, is nothing compared to that which he will give you when you are his wife. One day you will be received at


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 Court as the wife of a minister, and one of the highest in the land. As he can see you every day without your being able to see him, put one of La Bougival’s pots of carnations in the window; in this way you will have told him that he may call.”

Ursule burnt this letter without mentioning it to Savinien. Two days after she received another letter, thus worded:

“You were wrong, dear Ursule, not to answer him who loves you better than his life. You think you will marry Savinien, but you deceive yourself strangely. This marriage will never take place, Madame de Portenduère, who will no longer receive you at her house, is going this morning to Rouvre, on foot, in spite of the condition of suffering she is in, to ask the hand of Mademoiselle du Rouvre for Savinien. Savinien will finally yield. How can he object? the young lady’s uncles are securing their fortune on their niece by settlement. This fortune consists of sixty thousand francs a year.”

This letter devastated Ursule’s heart by teaching her the tortures of jealousy, a suffering hitherto unknown, which, in an organization so fine and sensitive to pain, clouded the present, future and even the past with grief. From the moment she had this fatal paper, she remained in the doctor’s armchair, her gaze fixed upon space, lost in a sorrowful dream. In one instant she felt the chill of death instead of the ardor of glorious life. Alas! it was worse: in reality it was the cruel awakening of the dead finding that there is no God, the masterpiece of that singular genius called Jean-Paul. Four times


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 CHAPTER XI

WENDY'S STORY

", then," said Wendy, settling down to her story, with Michael at her feet and seven boys in the bed. "There was once a gentleman——"

"I had rather he had been a lady," Curly said.

"I wish he had been a white rat," said Nibs.

"Quiet," their mother admonished them. "There was a lady also, and——

"O mummy," cried the first twin, "you mean that there is a lady also, don't you? She is not dead, is she?"

"Oh no."

"I am awfully glad she isn't dead," said Tootles. "Are you glad, John?"

"Of course I am."

"Are you glad, Nibs?"

"Rather."

"Are you glad, Twins?"

"We are just glad."

"Oh dear," sighed Wendy.

"Little less noise there," Peter called out, determined that she should have fair play, however beastly a story it might be in his opinion. Rh

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 La Bougival tried to make Ursule eat her breakfast, and saw her take up the bread and leave it, unable to carry it to her lips. When she ventured a remonstrance, Ursule answered her with a gesture of the hand and one terrible “Hush!” spoken as despotically as her tone had hitherto been gentle. La Bougival, who was watching her mistress through the glass window of the door of communication, observed that she was alternately as burning red as the fever that consumed her, and as violet as the chill that followed the fever. This condition grew worse about four o’clock, when Ursule got up every moment to see if Savinien was coming or not coming. Jealousy and doubt strip love of all bashfulness. Ursule, who would not hitherto have allowed her passion to be betrayed by a gesture, put on her hat, her little shawl, and rushed out into her corridor to go and meet Savinien, but some remnant of modesty forced her back into her little parlor. There she wept. When the curé called in the evening, the poor nurse stopped him on the threshold.

“Ah! Monsieur le Curé, I don’t know what is the matter with mademoiselle; she—”

“I know,” replied the priest sadly, thus silencing the frightened nurse.

The Abbé Chaperon then told Ursule what she had not dared ascertain. Madame de Portenduère had gone to dine at Le Rouvre.

“And Savinien?”

“Also.”

Ursule gave a nervous start which made the Abbé


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 Chaperon shiver as if he had received the discharge of an electrical jar, and moreover felt himself strongly stirred to the heart.

“And so we shall not go to her house to-night,” said the curé, “but, my child, you would do well not to go there any more. The old lady would receive you in such a way as to hurt your pride. We who had led her to listen to the mention of your marriage do not know from whence blows the wind which has changed her all in a moment.”

“I am prepared for everything, and am no longer astonished at anything,” said Ursule in tones of conviction. “In extremes of this kind it is a great consolation to feel that one has not offended God.”

“Submit yourself, my dear daughter, without searching out the ways of Providence,” said the curé.

“I do not wish to suspect Monsieur de Portenduère’s character unjustly—”

“Why do you no longer call him Savinien?” asked the curé, who observed some slight bitterness in Ursule’s accents.

“My dear Savinien’s,” she resumed, weeping. “Yes, my kind friend,” she continued, sobbing, “a voice keeps telling me that his heart is as noble as his blood. Not only has he confessed to me that he loved me above everything, but he has proved it to me by infinite delicacy and by heroically restraining his ardent passion. When he recently took the hand that I held out to him when Monsieur Bongrand was suggesting that notary as a husband for


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 me, I swear to you it was the first time I had ever given it to him. If he began with a joke in sending me a kiss across the street, his affection since then has never, as you know, gone beyond the strictest bounds; but I may tell you who can read my soul—save for the corner which is kept for the angels’ eyes—that this feeling is the element of many a merit to me; it has enabled me to accept my misfortunes, it has perhaps softened the bitterness of the irreparable loss which I mourn by my dress rather than in my heart! Oh! I have been wrong! Yes, love in me was stronger than my gratitude toward my godfather, and God has avenged him. How could it be helped! I respected myself as Savinien’s future wife; I was too proud, and it may be that God has punished that pride. God alone, as you have told me, ought to be the beginning and the end of our actions.”

The curé was touched at the tears rolling down her face, already growing pale. The more the poor girl seemed secure, the more she failed.

“But,” she continued, “once I return to my orphaned condition I shall be able to resume the feelings. After all, could I be a stone round the neck of the man I love? What could he do here? Who am I to aspire to him? Besides, do I not love him with so divine a love that it would go as far as the entire sacrifice of my happiness and hopes?—And you know I have often reproached myself for founding my love upon a grave, for knowing it to be deferred until after this old lady’s death. If


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 Savinien is made happy and rich by another, I have just enough to pay my dowry to the convent which I shall enter at once. There should no more be two loves in a woman’s heart than there are two Masters in Heaven. A religious life would have attractions for me.”

“He could not let his mother go alone to Le Rouvre,” said the good priest gently.

“Do not let us talk any more about it, my kind Monsieur Chaperon; I shall write to him to-night to set him free. I am delighted to have to shut up the windows of this parlor.”

And she informed the old man of the anonymous letters whilst telling him that she would not encourage her unknown lover’s advances.

“Ah! it is an anonymous letter which has induced Madame de Portenduère to go to Le Rouvre,” cried the curé, “there is no doubt that you are being persecuted by wicked people.”

“But why? Neither Savinien nor I have done harm to anyone, and we are not injuring anybody’s interests here.”

“Well, little one, we will take advantage of this explosion which has broken up our party, to arrange our poor friend’s library. The books are in a heap; Bongrand and I will put them in order, for we mean to search amongst them. Put your trust in God; but remember also that you have two devoted friends in the kind justice of the peace and myself.”

“That is a great deal,” she said, accompanying


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 the curé as far as the threshold of the entrance, stretching her neck like a bird looking out of its nest, still hoping to see Savinien.

Just then, Minoret and Goupil, returning from some walk in the fields, stopped in passing, and the doctor’s heir said to Ursule:

“What is the matter with you, cousin? for we are always cousins, are we not? You seem altered.”

Goupil was casting such ardent looks at Ursule that she was frightened; she went in without replying.

“She is shy,” said Minoret to the curé.

“Mademoiselle Mirouët is quite right not to talk to men on her doorstep; she is too young—”

“Oh!” said Goupil, “you must know that she does not lack lovers.”

The curé had hastened to bow and was hurriedly walking toward the Rue des Bourgeois.

“Well!” said the head clerk to Minoret, “it is brewing! She is already as white as death; but, in a fortnight, she will have left the town. You will see.”

“It’s better to have you for a friend than an enemy,” cried Minoret, startled by the cruel smile which gave Goupil’s face the diabolical expression ascribed by Joseph Bridau to Goethe’s Mephistopheles.

“I should think so,” replied Goupil. “If she does not marry me I will kill her with sorrow.”

“Do this, young man, and I give you the funds to become a notary in Paris. You will then be able to marry a rich woman—”


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 “Poor girl! What has she done to you then?” asked the clerk, surprised.

“She bores me!” said Minoret roughly.

“Wait till Monday, and then you shall see how I will pester her,” rejoined Goupil, examining the old postmaster’s countenance.

The next day, the old Bougival went to Savinien’s and said, holding out a letter:

“I do not know what the dear child has written to you, but she is like a corpse this morning.”

From this letter to Savinien cannot one imagine the sufferings that had beset Ursule during the night?

“MY DEAR SAVINIEN, “I have been told that your mother wishes you to marry Mademoiselle du Rouvre, and perhaps she is right. You are now between a life of what is almost poverty and a life of wealth, between the fiancée of your heart and a society wife, between obedience to your mother’s and your own choice, for I still believe that you have chosen me. Savinien, if you have any determination to make, I want it to be made in all freedom; I give you back the word you gave, not to me, but to yourself at a moment which will never fade from my memory, and which, like all the days that have followed since, was of angelic purity and sweetness. This remembrance is enough for my lifetime. Were you to persist in your vow, my happiness would hereafter be troubled by a dark and terrible idea. In the midst of our privations, now so cheerfully borne, you might, later on, think to yourself that, had you followed the dictates of the world, all might have been very different for you. Were you the man to give utterance to this thought, it would mean to me the sentence of a miserable death; and, did you not say it, I should suspect the slightest cloud that


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 might darken your forehead. Dear Savinien, I have always liked you better than anyone else upon earth. And I might, since my godfather, although he was envious, used to say: ‘Love him, child! you will surely belong to each other some day.’ When I went to Paris I loved you hopelessly, and that feeling contented me. I do not know if I can return to it, but I shall try. After all, what are we at this moment? Brother and sister. Let us remain so. Marry this fortunate girl, who will have the joy of giving your name the lustre it should have, and which, according to your mother, I should diminish. You will never hear of me again. The world will commend you, and I shall never blame you and shall always love you. So good-bye.”

“Wait!” cried the young man.

He motioned to La Bougival to sit down and he scrawled these few words:

“MY DEAR URSULE, “Your letter breaks my heart, because you have needlessly given yourself much pain, and because, for the first time, our hearts have ceased their understanding. If you are not my wife it is because I cannot yet marry without my mother’s consent. After all, is not eight thousand francs a year in a pretty cottage on the banks of the Loing a fortune? We calculated that with La Bougival we should save five thousand francs a year! One night, in your uncle’s garden, you allowed me to look upon you as my fiancée, and you by yourself cannot break our mutual bonds. Need I tell you that yesterday I plainly told Monsieur du Rouvre that even if I were free I would not accept my fortune from a young woman whom I did not know. My mother refuses to see you again, I lose the happiness of our evenings, but do not curtail the short time I speak to you at your window. Till to-night. Nothing can separate us.”


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 “Go, old friend. She must not be anxious one moment too long—”

That evening at four o’clock, returning from the daily walk he took on purpose to pass Ursule’s house, Savinien found his mistress somewhat pale from such sudden upsets.

“It seems to me I have never known till now what pleasure it is to see you,” she said to him.

“You once said to me,” replied Savinien, smiling, “for I remember all your words, that ‘Love does not thrive without patience, I will wait!’ Then, dear child, have you divided love from faith? Ah! this is the end of all our quarrels. You declared you loved me better than I love you. Have I ever doubted you?” he asked, offering her a nosegay of wild flowers so arranged as to convey his thoughts.

“You have no reason to doubt me,” she replied, “and besides, you do not know all,” she added in a troubled voice.

She had refused all letters from the post But, without her being able to guess by what witchcraft the thing had happened, a few moments after the departure of Savinien, whom she had watched turning from the Rue des Bourgeois into the Grand’Rue, she had found a paper on her armchair on which was written: “''Tremble! the despised lover will be worse than a tiger''.” In spite of Savinien’s entreaties she refused, through caution, to confide the terrible secret of her fear to him. It was only the unspeakable pleasure of seeing Savinien again after having thought she had lost him that could make her forget the deadly


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 chill which had just seized her. To everybody it is horrible torture to wait for indefinite calamity. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is certainly the infinite of the soul. But, to Ursule, it was the very greatest misery. She inwardly experienced fearful starts at the slightest noise, she mistrusted silence, and suspected her walls of complicity. At last her peaceful sleep became disturbed. Goupil, completely ignorant of the flower-like delicacy of such a constitution, had yet through the instinct of evil, discovered the poison that was to blight and kill her. And yet, the following day passed without any surprise. Ursule played the piano very late and went to bed almost reassured and overcome with sleep. About midnight, she was awakened by a concert composed of a clarionette, a hautboy, a flute, a cornopean, a trombone, a bassoon, a flageolet and a triangle. All the neighbors were at the windows. The poor child, already startled at seeing people in the road, received a terrible shock upon hearing a man’s hoarse, vulgar voice crying:

“For pretty Ursule Mirouët from her lover!”

The next day, Sunday, the whole town was in an uproar, and as Ursule entered and left the church she saw numerous groups in the market-place gossiping about her and evincing a horrible curiosity. The serenade set all tongues going, for everyone was lost in conjecture. Ursule reached her house more dead than alive and did not go out again, the curé having advised her to say vespers at home.


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 Upon entering she saw a letter slipped under the door of the brick-tiled corridor leading from the road into the yard; she picked it up, and read it, impelled by the desire to find some explanation within. The least sensitive of beings can imagine what she must have felt upon reading these awful lines:

“Make up your mind to become my wife, rich and adored. I want you. If I do not have you alive I will have you dead. To your refusal you may attribute the misfortunes which will overtake none but yourself.

Strange! at the very moment that the gentle, tender victim of this plot was crushed like a broken flower, Mesdemoiselles Massin, Dionis and Crémière were envying her lot.

“She is very lucky,” they were saying. “Everyone is thinking about her, her fancies are flattered, and she is being discussed! From what they say the serenade must have been charming! There was a cornopean!”

“What is a cornopean?”

“A new instrument! look here, as big as this,” said Angeline Crémière to Paméla Massin.

In the morning Savinien had gone as far as Fontainebleau trying to find out who had asked for the bandsmen from the regiment in garrison; but, as there were two men to each instrument, it was impossible to recognize those who had gone to Nemours. The colonel gave orders forbidding the


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ILLUSTRATED THE 20th CENTURY CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL NEW YORK
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 bandsmen to play for private persons without his permission. The young nobleman had an interview with the Attorney for the Crown, Ursule’s guardian, and explained to him the seriousness of such scenes for so delicate and frail a young girl, whilst begging him to discover the author of this serenade through all the means at the disposal of the courts. Three days after, in the middle of the night, three violins, a flute, a guitar and a hautboy gave a second serenade. This time, the musicians fled in the direction of Montargis, where there happened to be a company of comedians at that time. A harsh, intoxicated voice had cried between two pieces:

“To the daughter of the bandmaster Mirouët!”

In this way all Nemours learnt the profession of Ursule’s father, the secret so carefully guarded by old Doctor Minoret.

This time Savinien did not go to Montargis. During the day he received an anonymous letter from Paris, in which he had read this horrible prophecy:

“You will not marry Ursule. If you want her to live, make haste to yield her to one who loves her more than you do; for he has turned musician and artist to please her, and would rather see her dead than know her to be your wife.”

At that time the Nemours doctor came three times a day to see Ursule, whom these occult persecutions had placed in peril of death. Feeling herself thrust into a slough by some infernal hand, this sweet young girl maintained a martyr’s attitude;


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 she remained in profound silence, raised her eyes to Heaven and wept no more; she was awaiting fresh shocks with fervent prayers and intercessions for him who was dealing death to her.

“I am glad not to be able to go down to the parlor,” she said to Messieurs Bongrand and Chaperon, who left her as little as possible, “he would come, and I feel I am unworthy of the looks with which he always blesses me! Do you think he doubts me?”

“Why, if Savinien does not discover the author of these infamies, he intends going to demand the interference of the police in Paris,” said Bongrand.

“The unknown must know that I am wounded to death,” she replied, “they will stay quiet.”

The curé, Bongrand and Savinien were lost in conjecture and supposition. Savinien, Tiennette, La Bougival and two persons devoted to the curé turned spy and were on their guard for a week; but Goupil, who was plotting alone, was not to be betrayed by any indiscretion. The justice of the peace was the first to think that the author of the mischief was afraid at his own work. Ursule was growing as white and feeble as consumptive young English girls. Everyone relaxed his attention. There were no more serenades or letters. Savinien attributed the abandonment of these obnoxious means to the secret investigations of the public prosecutor, to whom he had sent the letters received by Ursule, by his mother and himself. This truce did not last long. One morning, toward the middle


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 of July, when the doctor had checked Ursule’s nervous fever, and just when she was plucking up courage once more, a rope-ladder was found fastened to her window. The postilion who had driven the night mail declared that a little man was about to climb down just as he was passing; and that, in spite of his desire to stop, his horses—having started down the incline of the bridge at whose corner Ursule’s house stood—had carried him well on beyond Nemours. One opinion originating in the Dionis circle attributed these manoeuvres to the Marquis du Rouvre, then in great difficulties, Massin having bills of exchange upon him, and who, by the speedy marriage of his daughter to Savinien would, so it was said, preserve his château Du Rouvre from his creditors. It was said that Madame de Portenduère was delighted at anything that could expose, discredit or disgrace Ursule; but, in the presence of this early death, the old lady found herself almost vanquished. The Curé Chaperon was so keenly affected by this last trick, that he felt sufficiently ill to remain at home for a few days. Poor Ursule, who had suffered a relapse from this odious attempt, received a letter from the curé through the post, which they had not refused upon recognizing the handwriting:

“MY CHILD,

“Leave Nemours, and so defeat the malice of your unknown enemies. Perhaps they are trying to endanger Savinien’s life. I will tell you more when I am able to go and see you.”


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 This note was signed: Your devoted CHAPERON.

When Savinien, almost beside himself, went to see the curé, the poor priest read the letter over and over, so horrified was he at the perfection with which his writing and signature had been copied; for he had not written at all, and, had he written, he would not have made use of the post to send his letter to Ursule. The deadly condition to which this last atrocity reduced Ursule drove Savinien to apply once more to the public prosecutor while taking him the curé’s forged letter.

“A murder is being committed through means for which the law has in no way provided, and upon an orphan whom the Code has entrusted to you as a ward,” said the nobleman to the magistrate.

“If you discover the means of repression,” replied the public prosecutor, “I will adopt them; but I do not know of any! The anonymous villain has given the best advice. Mademoiselle Mirouët must be sent here to the nuns of the Adoration du Saint-Sacrement. In the meanwhile, at my request, the superintendent of the police at Fontainebleau will authorize you to bear arms for your defence. I went myself to Le Rouvre, and Monsieur du Rouvre was very justly indignant at the suspicions hovering over him. Minoret, my deputy’s father, is bargaining with him for his château. Mademoiselle du Rouvre is to marry a rich Polish count. In fact, Monsieur du Rouvre was leaving the country the very day upon which I went there, in order to avoid the execution of an arrest.”


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 Désiré, questioned by his chief, did not dare to express his thoughts; he recognized Goupil! Goupil alone was capable of carrying on any action which skirted the penal code without falling over the precipice of any one article. Impunity, secrecy and success increased Goupil’s audacity. The terrible clerk compelled Massin, now his dupe, to persecute the Marquis du Rouvre, so as to force the nobleman to sell the remainder of his estate to Minoret. After having entered into negotiations with a notary at Sens, he resolved to attempt a final stroke to obtain Ursule. He meant to imitate two or three young men in Paris who owed their wives and their fortunes to abduction. The services rendered to Minoret, Massin and Crémière, and the protection of Dionis, Mayor of Nemours, would enable him to hush up the affair. He immediately decided to throw off the mask, believing Ursule to be incapable of resisting him in the state of weakness to which he had reduced her. Nevertheless, before risking the last stroke of his ignoble scheme, he deemed it necessary to have an explanation at Le Rouvre, where he accompanied Minoret, who was going there for the first time since the signing of the contract. Minoret had just received a confidential letter in which his son asked for information as to what was happening about Ursule, before coming himself with the public prosecutor to take her to a convent, in order to protect her from any fresh outrage. The deputy begged his father, in the event of this persecution being the work of one of their


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 friends, to give such a one some good advice. If justice could not always punish, she would end by knowing all and would keep good account. Minoret had reached a great goal. Henceforth indisputable proprietor of the Château du Rouvre, one of the finest in Le Gâtinais, he combined an income of forty odd thousand francs, with beautiful and rich estates around the park. The colossus could defy Goupil. In fact, he expected to live in the country, where the recollection of Ursule would not trouble him any more.

“My boy,” he said to Goupil as he was walking up and down the terrace, “leave my cousin in peace!”

“Bah!” said the clerk, unable to make anything of this odd behavior, for stupidity also has its depths.

“Oh! I am not ungrateful; you got me this fine château of brick and cut stone for two hundred and eighty thousand francs such as nowadays could not be built for two hundred thousand crowns, the château farm, the preserves, the park, the gardens and woods—Well, then—yes, upon my word! I will give you ten per cent, twenty thousand francs, with which you can buy an attorney’s practice in Nemours. I guarantee your marriage with one of the little Crémières, the eldest.”

“The one who talks of the cornopean?” cried Goupil.

“But my cousin will give her thirty thousand francs,” returned Minoret, “you see, my boy, you


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 are born to be an attorney as I was made to be a postmaster, and one must always follow one’s vocation.”

“Well then,” rejoined Goupil, his hopes shattered, “here are the stamps, sign acceptances for twenty thousand francs so that I can lay the money down.”

Minoret had the half-yearly eighteen thousand francs coming in from the bonds about which his wife did not know; in this way he thought he could get rid of Goupil, and signed. The head clerk, seeing the foolish and colossal Machiavel of the Rue des Bourgeois in a fit of seigniorial fever, threw him an “Au revoir!” as a farewell and a look which would have terrified any but a silly parvenu gazing from the height of a terrace upon the gardens and magnificent roofs of a château built in the style in vogue under Louis XIII.

“Are you not going to wait for me?” he cried, seeing Goupil walking off.

“You will meet me again in your path, papa!” replied the future attorney, thirsting for revenge and longing to find out the key of the riddle presented to his mind by the strange zigzags of fat Minoret’s behavior.


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*
From the day upon which the most infamous calumny had sullied her life, Ursule, a victim to one of those unaccountable illnesses that have their seat in the soul, was rapidly traveling toward Death. Extremely pale, speaking a few slow and feeble words at rare intervals only, casting looks of gentle indifference, everything about her, even her brow, betrayed one devouring thought. She believed that the ideal wreath of pure flowers which, at all times, people have thought to see on a virgin’s head, had fallen. In the silence and space she was listening to the shameful gossip, the spiteful comments and chuckles of the little town. The burden was too heavy for her, and her innocence was too delicate to survive such bruises. She did not complain, a mournful smile was always on her lips, and her eyes were often raised to Heaven as if appealing from man’s injustice to the Lord of angels. When Goupil got back to Nemours, Ursule had been carried from her room to the ground-floor in the arms of La Bougival and the doctor of Nemours. A great event was taking place. After having learnt that this young girl was dying like an ermine, and furthermore that her honor was less harmed than was Clarissa Harlowe’s, Madame de Portenduère was coming to see her and comfort her. The sight of her son, who had spent the whole of the preceding


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 night threatening to kill himself, had unbent the old Bretonne. Moreover, Madame de Portenduère thought it befitting her dignity to give courage to so pure a young girl, and saw that her visit would counterbalance all the harm done by the little town. Her opinion, which was doubtless more powerful than that of the common herd, would establish the power of the nobility. This overture, announced by the Abbé Chaperon, had worked a revolution in Ursule and revived hope in the disheartened doctor, who was talking of calling for a consultation with the most celebrated doctors in Paris. Ursule had been put in her guardian’s armchair, and such was the character of her beauty that, in her mourning and suffering she looked more beautiful than at any period of her happy life. When Savinien appeared with his mother on his arm, the young invalid recovered a brilliant color.

“Do not get up, my child,” said the old lady in an imperious tone: “ill and feeble as I am myself, I wanted to come and see you to tell you my opinion of what is happening; I consider you the purest, holiest, and most charming girl of the Gâtinais, and think you are worthy of constituting a nobleman’s happiness.”

At first Ursule could not answer; she took the withered hands of Savinien’s mother and kissed them while covering them with tears.

“Ah! madame,” she replied in a weakened voice, “I should never have had the boldness to think of raising myself above my station had I not been


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 encouraged by promises, and my only claim was an unbounded affection; but they have found means to separate me forever from him whom I love; they have made me unworthy of him.—Never!” she said, with a sound in her voice which struck the spectators painfully, “never will I consent to give to anyone, no matter who it may be, a degraded hand, a tarnished reputation. I loved too much—I may confess it in my present state—I love a human creature almost as much as God. And so God—”

“Come! come! my dear, do not slander God! Come, my daughter,” said the old lady, making an effort, “do not exaggerate the importance of an infamous joke in which nobody believes. I promise you, you will live and you will be happy.”

“You will be happy!” said Savinien, kneeling in front of Ursule and kissing her hands, “my mother has called you ‘my daughter.’”

“That will do,” said the doctor, who came to feel his invalid’s pulse, “do not kill her with joy.”

At that moment, Goupil, finding the entrance door ajar, pushed that of the little parlor and showed his ugly face excited with the thoughts of vengeance that had been flourishing in his heart while on his way.

“Monsieur de Portenduère!” he said in a voice like the hissing of a snake that is driven into its hole.

“What do you want?” replied Savinien, rising.

“I want a word with you.”

Savinien went out into the passage, and Goupil led him into the little yard.


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 “Swear to me, on the life of Ursule whom you love, and on your nobleman’s honor that you think so much of, that you will act as if I had never told you what I am about to tell you, and I will enlighten you as to the cause of the persecutions directed against Mademoiselle Mirouët.”

“Can I stop them?”

“Yes.”

“Can I avenge them?”

“On the author, yes: but on the instrument, no.”

“Why not?”

“Well—the instrument is myself—”

Savinien turned pale.

“I have just caught a glimpse of Ursule—” continued the clerk.

“Ursule?” said the nobleman, looking at Goupil.

“Mademoiselle Mirouët,” rejoined Goupil, rendered respectful by Savinien’s tone, “and I would like to atone with my blood for all that has been done. I am sorry—If you were to kill me in a duel or any other way, what good would my blood do you? Would you drink it? It would poison you at this moment.”

This man’s cool reasoning and his own curiosity subdued Savinien’s boiling blood; he fixed this quasi-hunchback with a look that forced him to lower his eyes.

“Then who employed you?” said the young man.

“Will you swear?”

“Do you want to be sure nothing will be done to you?”


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 “I want you and Mademoiselle Mirouët to forgive me.”

“She will forgive you, but I, never!”

“Well then, you will forget?”

What awful power reasoning possesses when backed by interest! Two men, one longing to rend the other, were there, in a small courtyard, a finger’s breadth from each other, forced into conversation, united by the selfsame feeling.

“I might forgive you, but I should not forget.”

“That won’t do,” said Goupil, coldly.

Savinien lost patience. He gave his face a slap which re-echoed in the courtyard, nearly upset Goupil, and made him stagger himself.

“I only get what I deserve,” said Goupil, “I committed a piece of folly. I believed you to be nobler than you are. You have abused an advantage I gave you—you are now in my power!” he said, darting a spiteful look at Savinien.

“You are a murderer!” said the nobleman.

“Not more than the knife is the murderer!” replied Goupil.

“I ask your pardon,” said Savinien.

“Have you had enough revenge?” said Goupil, with fierce irony, “will you go no further?”

“Forgive and forget on both sides,” said Savinien.

“Your hand?” said the clerk, holding out his own to the nobleman.

“Here it is,” replied Savinien, swallowing this shame for love of Ursule. “But speak; who urged you on?”


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 Goupil was examining, as it were, the two scales in which hung on the one side Savinien’s slap, and on the other, his hatred for Minoret. For two seconds he was undecided, but finally a voice cried to him. “You will be a notary!” and he replied:

“Forget and forgive? Yes, on both sides, monsieur,” squeezing the nobleman’s hand.

“Then who is it that is persecuting Ursule?” said Savinien.

“Minoret! he would have liked to have seen her buried—Why? I do not know; but we will find out the reason. Don’t mix me up in all this, I could do nothing more for you if I was suspected. Instead of attacking Ursule, I shall defend her; instead of serving Minoret, I shall try to defeat his plans. I live only to ruin him and destroy him. And I shall trample him under foot, I shall dance on his carcass, I will play dominoes with his bones! To-morrow, on all the walls of Nemours, Fontainebleau and Le Rouvre, will be written in red chalk: Minoret is a thief. Oh! By   d! I will make him burst like a mortar. Now, we are allied by an indiscretion; well then, if you like, I will go and kneel down before Mademoiselle Mirouët, and declare to her that I curse the mad passion that was urging me to kill her, I will implore her to forgive me. That will do her good! The justice of the peace and the curé are there, those two witnesses will be enough; but Monsieur Bongrand must pledge his honor not to ruin me in my career. I have prospects now.”

“Wait a moment,” replied Savinien, quite stunned


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 by this revelation. “Ursule, my child,” he said as he came into the parlor, “the author of all your injury is horrified at his work, is repentant and wants to ask your pardon in the presence of these gentlemen, on the condition that all shall be forgotten.”

“What! Goupil?” at once said the curé, the justice of the peace, and the doctor.

“Keep the secret,” said Ursule laying her finger on her lips.

Goupil heard these words, saw Ursule’s movement, and was touched.

“Mademoiselle,” he said in moving tones, “I wish that all Nemours could now hear me confessing to you that an unfortunate passion turned my head, and suggested crimes to me that deserve the blame of honest folk. What I here say, I shall everywhere repeat while deploring the harm caused by wicked jokes, though they may perhaps have helped to hasten your happiness,” he said, somewhat maliciously, as he rose, “as I see Madame de Portenduère is here.”

“That is right, Goupil,” said the curé, “mademoiselle has forgiven you; but you must never forget that you nearly became a murderer.”

“Monsieur Bongrand,” resumed Goupil, addressing the justice of the peace, “to-night I am going to negotiate with Lecœur for his practice; I hope that this reparation will not injure me in your esteem, and that you will second my application to the crown office and the minister.”


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 The justice of the peace nodded his head thoughtfully, and Goupil left, to go and negotiate for the better of the two attorneys’ practices in Nemours. Everyone remained with Ursule, and devoted himself all through the evening to restoring peace and tranquillity to her mind, upon which the satisfaction given by the clerk had already worked a change.

“All Nemours will know this,” said Bongrand.

“You see, my child, that God was not angry with you,” said the curé.

Minoret was rather late in returning from Le Rouvre, and dined late. About nine o’clock, at nightfall, he was in his Chinese pavilion, digesting his dinner beside his wife, with whom he was making plans for Désiré’s future. Désiré had become very steady since he had belonged to the magistracy; he was working, and there was a chance of his succeeding the public prosecutor of Fontainebleau, who, it was said, was being promoted to Melun. A wife must be found for him, some poor girl belonging to an old and noble family; he might then attain to the Paris magistracy. Perhaps they might have him elected deputy for Fontainebleau, where Zélie thought of going to settle for the winter, after spending the warm weather at Le Rouvre. Whilst inwardly congratulating himself on having arranged all for the best, Minoret had ceased to think of Ursule, at the very moment when the drama which he had begun so simply was tangling itself in a terrible manner.


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 “Monsieur de Portenduère is there and wishes to speak to you,” announced Cabirolle.

“Show him in,” replied Zélie.

The twilight darkness prevented Madame Minoret from noticing the sudden pallor of her husband, who shivered as he heard the creak of Savinien’s boots on the floor of the gallery which had once been the doctor’s library. A vague presentiment of evil ran through the despoiler’s veins. Savinien appeared, and remained standing, his hat on his head, his stick in his hand, his arms crossed over his chest, motionless in front of the husband and wife.

“I have come to ask, Monsieur and Madame Minoret, your reasons for so infamously tormenting a young girl who, as the whole town of Nemours is aware, is my future wife; why you have tried to stain her honor; why you desired her death, and why you have exposed her to the insults of such a man as Goupil?—Answer me.”

“How funny you are, Monsieur Savinien,” said Zélie, “to come and ask us to explain a thing which is unaccountable to us! I care no more for Ursule than for the year ’40. Since the death of Uncle Minoret, I have thought no more of her than of my first nightgown! I have not breathed a word about her to Goupil, who is, besides, a rogue to whom I would not even trust the interests of my dog. Well, Minoret, why don’t you answer? Are you going to let yourself be browbeaten by monsieur and accused of infamies that are beneath you? As if a man who has forty-eight thousand francs a year in


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 landed estate round a castle fit for a prince would condescend to such nonsense! Get up then, you lie there like a limp rag!”

“I do not know what monsieur means,” replied Minoret at last, in his diminutive voice, the trembling of which was all the more noticeable on account of its shrillness. “What reason should I have to persecute that little girl? I may have told Goupil how vexed I was to see her in Nemours; my son Désiré was in love with her, and I did not at all like her as a wife for him, that is all.”

“Goupil has told me all, Monsieur Minoret.”

There was a moment of awful silence, in which the three scrutinized each other. Zélie had seen the nervous working of her giant’s fat face.

“Although you are nothing but insects, I intend wreaking the most fearful vengeance upon you, and I know how to do it,” pursued the nobleman. “It is not from you, a man of sixty-seven, that I shall demand satisfaction for the insults offered to Mademoiselle Mirouët, but from your son. The first time that Monsieur Minoret junior sets foot in Nemours, we shall meet; he will have to fight with me, and he will fight! or else he will be so disgraced, that he will never show his face anywhere again; if he does not come to Nemours I shall go to Fontainebleau, I will! I will get some satisfaction. It shall not be said that you were allowed to make a cowardly attempt to dishonor a defenceless young girl.”

“But Goupil’s accusations—are—not—” said Minoret.


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 “Do you want me to bring him face to face with you?” cried Savinien, cutting him short. “Believe me, do not spread the matter; it lies between you, Goupil and myself; leave it as it is and God shall decide it in the duel that I shall do your son the honor to propose.”

“But it shall not be settled in this way!” cried Zélie. “Ah! you think I am going to let Désiré fight with you, an old sailor whose trade was to draw swords and pistols! If you have anything against Minoret, here is Minoret, take Minoret and fight with Minoret! But is my boy, who, as you say, is innocent of this, to bear the penalty?—Before that happens, one of my dogs shall be after you, my fine sir! Now then, Minoret, you stick there as stupid as a great ninny! Here you are in your own house and you allow monsieur to keep on his hat before your wife! And you, my young gentleman, will kindly clear out. A man’s house is his castle. I don’t know what you mean by your nonsense; but you had better go; and, if you touch Désiré, you will have to deal with me, you and your fool of an Ursule.”

And she rang the bell violently, calling to her servants.

“Think well about what I have said!” repeated Savinien, who, unheeding Zélie’s tirade, went out, leaving this sword of Damocles hanging over the couple.

“Now then! Minoret,” said Zélie to her husband, “will you explain the meaning of this? A young


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 man does not come without any reason into a private house and make that terrible uproar and demand the blood of a son of the family.”

“It is some trick on the part of that horrid ape Goupil, whom I had promised to help in having him appointed notary if he got me Le Rouvre cheap. I gave him ten per cent, twenty thousand francs in bills of exchange, and no doubt he is not satisfied.”

“Yes; but what reason could he have had before to plot serenades and insults against Ursule?”

“He wanted to marry her.”

“A penniless girl? he? Oh! indeed! Look here, Minoret, you are talking nonsense! and you are naturally too stupid to do so successfully, my boy. There is something underneath all this, and you will tell me.”

“There is nothing.”

“There is nothing? And I, I tell you you are lying, and we shall see!”

“Will you let me alone?”

“I shall turn the tap of that fountain of spite that you know, Goupil, and you will regret it.”

“Just as you please.”

“I know very well that it will be as I please! And what I want, above all, is that Désiré should not be harmed; if any misfortune happened to him, you see, I should do something which would send me to the scaffold. Désiré!—But—And you don’t budge any more than that!”

A quarrel once started in this way between Minoret and his wife could not end without many private


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 broils. And so the senseless despoiler found the inward struggle between himself and Ursule aggravated through his blunder, and complicated by the addition of a fresh and terrible adversary. The next day, when he went out in search of Goupil, thinking to appease him by means of money, he read on the walls: Minoret is a thief! Everybody whom he met pitied him whilst asking him who was the author of this anonymous publication, and each one forgave the equivocation of his answers in recollecting his incapacity. Fools reap greater advantages from their weakness than sensible people obtain through their strength. We look on at a great man struggling against fate without helping him, and we assist a bankrupt grocer. Do you know why? Because we feel ourselves to be superior while protecting an imbecile, and we are annoyed at being merely the equal of a genius. A man of intellect would have been ruined had he, like Minoret, stammered out absurd answers in a scared manner. Zélie and her servants rubbed out the avenging inscription wherever it was to be found; but it remained upon Minoret’s conscience. Although Goupil had given his word the day before to the attorney, he very impudently refused to carry out his agreement.

“You see, my dear Lecœur, I have been able to buy the practice of Monsieur Dionis, and I am in a position to recommend you to others. Withdraw your agreement, it is only waste of two pieces of stamped paper. Here are seventy centimes.”


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 Lecœur was in too great fear of Goupil to complain. Immediately after, all Nemours learnt that Minoret became security to Dionis to facilitate the purchase of his practice for Goupil. The future notary wrote to Savinien refuting his confessions about Minoret, while telling the young nobleman that his new position, the laws adopted by the Supreme Court and his respect for justice forbade him to fight Moreover, he warned the gentleman to treat him well thereafter, for he could kick extremely well, and at the first assault he vowed he would break his leg.

The walls of Nemours spoke no more. But the quarrel between Minoret and his wife endured, and Savinien maintained a savage silence. The marriage of the eldest Mademoiselle Massin with the future notary ten days after these events, was common talk. Mademoiselle Massin, on her side, had eighty thousand francs and her plainness, Goupil had his deformity and his practice; so this union seemed both probable and suitable.

Two lurking strangers seized Goupil in the road at midnight, just as he was coming out of Massin’s house, beat him with a stick and disappeared. Goupil observed the deepest secrecy about this nocturnal scene, and contradicted an old woman who fancied she had recognized him upon looking out of her window.

These important trifling events were pondered by the justice of the peace, who discovered that Goupil possessed some mysterious power over Minoret, and determined to find out the cause.


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*
Although public opinion in the little town had acknowledged Ursule’s perfect innocence, she was recovering but slowly. In a state of bodily prostration which left both soul and spirit free, she became the seat of phenomena, the effects of which were moreover terrible, and of such a nature as to engross science, had science been admitted into any such confidence. Ten days after Madame de Portenduère’s visit, Ursule had a dream which presented the characteristics of a supernatural vision, as much in the moral facts as in the physical circumstances, so to speak. The late Minoret, her godfather, appeared to her and made signs to her to go with him; she dressed herself, followed him out into the night as far as the house in the Rue des Bourgeois, where she found the most trifling things as they had been on the day of her godfather’s death. The old man wore the clothes he had on the day before his death, his face was pale, and his movements made no sound at all; nevertheless, Ursule heard his voice perfectly, although it was feeble and like the repetition of a distant echo. The doctor led his ward into the study in the Chinese pavilion, where he made her raise the marble top of the little piece of Boule furniture, just as she had raised it on the day of his death; but, instead of


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 finding nothing there, she saw the letter that her godfather had told her to go and fetch; she opened it, and read it, as well as the will in favor of Savinien.

“The letters of the handwriting,” she said to the curé, “were shining as if they had been traced with the sun’s rays, they burnt my eyes.”

When she looked at her uncle to thank him, she saw a kindly smile upon his colorless lips. And then, in its weak but clear voice, the spectre showed her Minoret in the passage listening to the secret, going to unscrew the lock and taking the packet of papers. Then, with his right hand, he seized his ward and forced her to walk with the step of the dead in order to follow Minoret to the post-house. Ursule went through the town, entered the post-house and Zélie’s old room, where the spectre made her look at the despoiler unsealing the letters, reading them and burning them.

“He could only make the third match light to burn the papers,” said Ursule, “and he buried the remains in the ashes. Afterward, my godfather brought me back to our house and I saw Monsieur Minoret-Levrault creeping into the library, whence he took, in the third volume of the Pandects, the three bonds, each twelve thousand francs a year, as well as the value of the arrears in banknotes. My godfather then said to me: ‘He is the author of the tortures which have laid you at Death’s door; but God wills that you should be happy. You will not die yet, you will marry


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 Savinien! If you love me, if you love Savinien, you will demand your fortune from my nephew. Will you swear it to me?’”

Shining like the Saviour during His transfiguration, Minoret’s spirit had then, such was Ursule’s state of oppression, caused her such distress of mind that she promised to do all that her uncle wished in order to stop the nightmare. She had wakened standing in the middle of her room, facing her godfather’s portrait which she had placed there since her illness. She got back into bed, went to sleep again after strong agitation of spirit, and remembered this singular vision upon waking; but she did not dare to mention it. Her exquisite judgment and delicacy revolted at the thought of revealing a dream having for aim and cause her pecuniary interests; she naturally attributed it to the chatter with which La Bougival had sent her to sleep, which had been all about her godfather’s generosity to her and the certainty that her nurse still had in that respect. But the dream returned, with aggravations which made it exceedingly dreadful. The second time, her godfather’s icy hand was laid on her shoulder, causing her the most cruel pain, an indefinable sensation. “You must obey the dead!” he said in sepulchral tones.

“And tears,” she said, “fell from his white and vacant eyes.”

The third time, the dead man took her by her long plaits and showed her Minoret talking with Goupil and promising him money if he would take


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 Ursule to Sens. Ursule then resolved to relate her three dreams to the Abbé Chaperon.

“Monsieur le Curé,” she said to him one evening, “do you believe that the dead can re-appear?”

“My child, sacred history, secular and modern history, give several instances of testimony on this subject; but the Church has never made an Article of Faith of it; and as to science, in France, it scorns it.”

“What do you think?”

“God’s power, my child, is infinite.”

“Did my godfather ever speak to you about that kind of thing?”

“Yes, often. He had changed his opinion on those matters. His conversion dates from the day, so he has told me twenty times, upon which a woman in Paris heard you praying for him in Nemours, and saw the red dot you had put before Saint-Savinien’s day in your almanac.”

Ursule gave a piercing cry that made the priest shiver; she remembered the scene when, upon his return to Nemours, her godfather had read her mind and had taken away her almanac.

“If that is so,” she said, “my visions are quite possible. My godfather has appeared to me as Jesus did to His disciples. He is enveloped in golden light, he speaks! I wanted to ask you to say a mass for the repose of his soul and implore the help of God so as to stop these apparitions, which tire me out.”

She narrated her three dreams and their most


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 trifling details, insisting upon the absolute truth of the facts, the facility of her movements, and the somnambulism of an inner self, which, she said, moved about under the spirit’s guidance with the greatest ease.

The priest, knowing Ursule’s truthfulness, was not a little surprised at the accurate description of the room formerly occupied by Zélie Minoret in her post-house, in which Ursule had never been, and of which, in fact, she had never even heard.

“By what means can these strange apparitions take place?” said Ursule. “What did my godfather think of it?”

“Your godfather, my child, went by hypothesis. He had admitted the existence of a spiritual world, a world of ideas. If ideas are a production peculiar to man, if they subsist upon a life which is their own, they might have shapes that are imperceptible to our outward senses, but perceptible to our inward senses when they are in certain conditions. And so your godfather’s ideas may envelop you, and perhaps you have invested them with his semblance. Then, if Minoret has committed these acts, they resolve themselves into ideas; for all action is the result of several ideas. Now, if ideas move in the spiritual world your spirit must have perceived them by penetrating into it. These phenomena are not more extraordinary than those of memory, and those of memory are as surprising and unaccountable as those of the perfume of plants, which may be the ideas of the plant.”


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 “Dear me! how you enlarge the world! But to hear a corpse speak, to see it walking and acting, is that possible?”

“In Sweden,” replied the Abbé Chaperon, “Swedenborg has clearly proved that he communicated with the dead. However, come into the library and you will read in the life of the famous Duc de Montmorency, who was beheaded at Toulouse, and certainly was not the man to invent idle tales, an adventure that is almost similar to yours and which had happened a hundred years before, at Cardan.”

Ursule and the curé went up to the first story, and the old man picked her out a small edition in 12mo, printed in Paris in 1666, of L’Histoire de Henri de Montmorency, written by a contemporary ecclesiastic who had known the prince.

“Read it,” said the curé, giving her the volume at pages 175 and 176. “Your godfather often read this passage, and look, here still is some of his snuff.”

“And he himself is no more!” said Ursule, taking the book and reading this passage:

“The siege of Privas was remarkable on account of the loss of several persons in command; two major-generals died there, to wit, the Marquis d’Uxelles, from a wound he received in the outworks, and the Marquis de Porte, from a musketshot in the head. The day he was killed he was to have been made Marshal of France. About the time the marquis died, the Duc de Montmorency, who was asleep in his tent, was awakened by a voice resembling that of the marquis, which


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 was bidding him farewell. The affection he felt for so near a relation led him to attribute the illusion of this dream to the power of his imagination; the labors of the night which he had spent, as was his wont, in the trenches, caused him to fall asleep again without any apprehension. But the same voice disturbed him once more, and the phantom, that he had seen only in his sleep, compelled him to wake again and to distinctly hear the same words it had uttered before disappearing. The duke then recollected that one day when they were listening to the philosopher Pitrat discoursing upon the separation of the soul from the body, they had promised to say good-bye to each other if the first who happened to die was permitted to do so. Upon which, unable to overcome the dread of the truth of this warning, he promptly sent one of his servants to the marquis’s quarters, which were some distance from his own. But, before his man could return, the king sent to tell him, through persons who were best calculated to comfort him, of the misfortune he had feared.

“I leave it to the doctors to quarrel over the reason of this event, which I have heard related by the Duc de Montmorency several times, and which I thought so marvelous and probable as to be worth quoting.”

“But then,” said Ursule, “what ought I to do?”

“My child,” replied the curé, “it is a question of such serious things and such that would be so advantageous to yourself that you should maintain absolute silence. Now that you have confided the secrets of this apparition to me, perhaps it will not occur again. Moreover, you are now strong enough to go to church; so, to-morrow, you will go there to return thanks to God and pray Him to give your godfather peace. You may also rest assured that you have placed your secret in discreet keeping.”

“If you only knew my terrors when I go to sleep