text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/342

 again! the looks my godfather gives me! The last time, he hung on to my dress to see me longer. I woke up with tears streaming down my face.”

“Do not worry, he will not return,” said the curé.

Without losing an instant, the Abbé Chaperon went to Minoret’s and begged him to give him a moment’s interview in the Chinese pavilion, only stipulating that they should be alone.

“Nobody can hear us?” said the Abbé Chaperon.

“No one,” replied Minoret.

“Monsieur, my character is well known to you,” said the old man, fixing a gentle but watchful glance upon Minoret’s face. “I have to speak about the gravest and most extraordinary things, which concern you alone and about which you may be sure I shall preserve the closest secrecy, but it is impossible that I should not inform you of them. When your uncle was alive, there used to be there,” said the priest, pointing to the spot where it had stood, “a small Boule sideboard with a marble top,”—Minoret grew livid,—“and, underneath this marble, your uncle had put a letter for his ward—”

And the curé related, without omitting the slightest incident, Minoret’s own conduct to Minoret himself. The former postmaster, upon hearing the detail of the two matches that went out before kindling, felt his hair rising on his scalp.

“Who could have invented such nonsense?” he said to the curé in a choking voice when the recital was over.


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/343

 “The dead man himself!”

This reply gave Minoret something of a shock, as he too used to see the doctor in his dreams.

“God is very kind, Monsieur le Curé, to perform miracles on my account,” rejoined Minoret, whose peril inspired him with the only joke he made in all his life.

“All that God does is natural,” answered the priest.

“Your phantasmagoria does not frighten me,” said the giant, somewhat recovering his presence of mind.

“I have not come to frighten you, dear monsieur, for I would not mention this to a living soul,” said the curé, “you alone know the truth. It is a matter between you and God.”

“Look here, Monsieur le Curé, do you believe me capable of such a horrible abuse of confidence?”

“I only believe in those crimes that are confessed to me and repented of,” said the priest, in apostolic tones.

“A crime?” cried Minoret.

“A crime that is awful in its consequences.”

“How?”

“By escaping human justice. Crimes that are not atoned for here below will be in the next life. God Himself avenges innocence.”

“Do you believe that God troubles Himself about these trifles?”

“Did He not see every detail in the universe at

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


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/344

 a glance, as you take in a whole landscape with your eye, He would not be God.”

“Monsieur le Curé, do you give me your word that you have only been given these details by my uncle?”

“Your uncle has appeared three times to Ursule to repeat them to her. Worn out by her dreams, she has confided these revelations to me in secret, and considers them so devoid of reason that she will never mention them. And so you may be easy on that point.”

“But I am easy in every way, Monsieur Chaperon.”

“I hope so,” said the old priest “Even though I might call these dream warnings absurd, I should still deem it necessary to inform you of them, on account of the singularity of the details. You are an honest man, and have gained your handsome fortune too lawfully to want to add to it by theft Besides, you are an almost primitive man, and would be too much tortured by remorse. We have within us a feeling of right, in the most civilized as well as in the most uncivilized man, which will not permit us to peacefully enjoy any good that is wrongfully acquired according to the laws of the society in which we live, for well constituted societies are modeled upon the rules imposed upon mankind by God Himself. In this, communities are of divine origin. Man does not discover ideas, he does not invent forms, he imitates the eternal relations that surround him on all sides. And so, see


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/345

 what happens: no criminal going to the scaffold with the power of taking the secret of his crimes with him, allows his head to be cut off before he has made the confession to which he is impelled by some mysterious power. Therefore, my dear Monsieur Minoret, if you are at ease, I shall go away feeling happy.”

Minoret was so stupefied that he did not show the curé out. When he thought he was quite alone, he flew into an apoplectic rage; he gave vent to the wildest blasphemies, and called Ursule the most odious names.

“Well, what has she done to you?” said his wife, who had tiptoed back after having shown out the curé.

For the first and only time in his life, Minoret, intoxicated with rage and exasperated by his wife’s ceaseless questions, gave her such a beating that, when she fell covered with bruises, he was obliged to pick her up in his arms and, feeling thoroughly ashamed, to put her to bed himself. He had a slight illness: the doctor had to bleed him twice. When he was up, everyone in the course of time noticed a change in him. Minoret used to walk alone, and would often go through the streets like a man disquieted. He seemed absent-minded when listening, he who had never had two ideas in his head. At last, one evening, in the Grande-Rue, he met the justice of the peace, who was doubtless going to fetch Ursule in order to escort her to Madame de Portenduère’s, where the whist-party had recommenced.


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/346

 “Monsieur Bongrand, I have something rather important to say to my cousin,” he said, taking the justice by the arm, “and I am glad to see you, you may be able to advise her.”

They found Ursule practising; she rose with a cold and stately manner upon seeing Minoret.

“My child, Monsieur Minoret wants to talk business with you,” said the justice of the peace. “By-the-bye, do not forget to give me your bonds; I am going to Paris, and will collect yours and La Bougival’s dividends.”

“Cousin,” said Minoret, “our uncle had accustomed you to greater comfort than you now have.”

“One can be very happy with little money,” she said.

“I was thinking that money might increase your happiness,” rejoined Minoret, “and I was coming to offer some to you, out of respect for my uncle’s memory.”

“There was a simple way of showing your respect for him,” said Ursule severely. “You might have left his house as it was and sold it to me, for you only raised it to so high a price in the hopes of finding some treasure—”

“Well,” said Minoret, evidently depressed, “if you had twelve thousand francs a year, you would be in a position to marry more advantageously.”

“I have not got it.”

“But if I were to give it to you, on condition that you bought an estate in Brittany, the native


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/347

 country of Madame de Portenduère, who would then consent to your marriage with her son—?”

“Monsieur Minoret,” said Ursule, “I have no right at all to so large a sum and I could not accept it from you. We are very slightly related and still less friends. I have already suffered too much from the miseries of calumny to wish to give rise to scandal. What have I done to deserve this money? Upon what grounds do you make me such a present? These questions, which I have the right to ask you, will be answered by everyone according to his own interpretation, it would be considered as reparation for some injury, and I would not accept any. Your uncle did not bring me up with ignoble feelings. One should not accept anything but from one’s friends: I could not feel affection for you, and I should necessarily be ungrateful. I do not wish to run the risk of wanting in gratitude.”

“You refuse?” cried the giant, who could not conceive the idea of anyone being able to refuse a fortune.

“I refuse,” repeated Ursule.

“But what is your reason for offering mademoiselle such a fortune?” asked the old lawyer, looking fixedly at Minoret, “you have an idea; have you an idea?”

“Well, the idea of sending her away from Nemours so that my son should leave me in peace; he is in love with her and wants to marry her.”

“Well then, we will see,” replied the justice of


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/348

 the peace, securing his spectacles. “Give us time to think it over.”

He accompanied Minoret as far as his house, all the time commending his anxiety for Désiré’s future, rather blaming Ursule’s precipitation and promising to make her listen to reason. As soon as Minoret had got home, Bongrand went to the postmaster, borrowed his horse and gig, hurried to Fontainebleau, asked for the deputy and was told that he must be spending the evening at the sub-prefect’s. The justice of the peace, delighted, called there. Désiré was playing a game of whist with the prosecutor’s wife, the sub-prefect’s wife and the colonel of the regiment then in garrison.

“I have come to tell you good news,” said Monsieur Bongrand to Désiré, “you love your cousin Ursule Mirouët, and your father is no longer opposed to your marriage.”

“I love Ursule Mirouët?” cried Désiré, laughing, “why do you assume it to be Ursule Mirouët? I recollect having sometimes seen this little girl, who is certainly very beautiful, at the house of the late Minoret, my great-uncle; but she is extremely religious; and if, like everyone else, I have done justice to her charms, I have never had my head turned by this rather insipid blonde,” said he, smiling at the sub-prefect’s wife,—she was a piquant brunette, according to the old expression of the last century.—“Where do you come from, my dear Monsieur Bongrand? Everyone knows that my father is lord paramount of forty-eight thousand


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/349

 francs a year in property lying round his Château du Rouvre, and all the world knows that I have forty-eight thousand permanent and financial reasons for not loving the ward of the court If I were to marry an insignificant girl, these ladies would take me for an idiot.”

“Then you have never tormented your father on the subject of Ursule?”

“Never.”

“You hear this, Monsieur le Procureur du Roi?” said the justice of the peace to this magistrate, who had been listening to them, and whom he led into an embrasure, where they stood talking about a quarter of an hour. An hour afterward, the justice of the peace, having returned to Nemours and to Ursule’s house, sent La Bougival to fetch Minoret, who came immediately.

“Mademoiselle—” said Bongrand to Minoret as he came in.

“Accepts?’ said Minoret interrupting him.

“No, not yet,” replied the justice, feeling his spectacles, “she has had scruples as to your son’s condition, for she has been very badly treated in regard to a similar passion, and knows the cost of tranquillity. Can you swear to her that your son is madly in love with her, and that you have no other motive than that of protecting our dear Ursule from any fresh goupilleries?”

“Oh! I swear,” said Minoret.

“Stop! Papa Minoret!” said the justice of the peace, removing one of his hands from his


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/350

 trousers-pocket to tap Minoret on the shoulder, making him start. “Do not take a false oath so lightly.”

“A false oath?”

“It is either you or your son, who has just sworn at Fontainebleau, at the sub-prefect’s, before four persons and the public prosecutor, that he has never thought of his cousin Ursule Mirouët. Then you have other reasons for offering her such an enormous capital? I saw that you were making rash assertions, and went myself to Fontainebleau.”

Minoret stood dumfounded at his own stupidity.

“But there is no harm, Monsieur Bongrand, in offering to help a relation in a marriage which seems likely to make her happy, and in finding pretexts for overcoming her modesty.”

Minoret, to whom danger had suggested an almost plausible excuse, wiped his forehead, which was covered with big beads of perspiration.

“You know my motives for refusing,” answered Ursule, “and I beg you not to come here again. Monsieur de Portenduère, without confiding his reasons to me, entertains feelings of scorn and even hatred towards you, which forbid me to receive you. My happiness is my entire fortune, I do not blush to confess it; and so I will not endanger it, as Monsieur de Portenduère is only waiting until I come of age, to marry me.”

“The proverb, ‘Money does everything’ is indeed untrue,” said great fat Minoret, looking at the justice of the peace, whose observing eyes made him very uncomfortable.


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/351

 He got up and left, but outside he found the atmosphere as oppressive as in the little parlor.

“And yet there must be an end to all this,” he said to himself as he reached home.

“Your bond, my child?” said the justice of the peace, somewhat astonished at Ursule’s serenity after so strange an incident.

When she brought her own and La Bougival’s bonds, Ursule found the justice striding up and down.

“Have you any idea of the object of that great booby’s proceedings?” he said.

“None that I can tell,” she replied.

Monsieur Bongrand looked at her in surprise.

“Then we have the same idea,” he answered. “Here, keep the numbers of these two bonds in case I should lose them; one should always take that precaution.”

Bongrand then himself wrote down the number of Ursule’s and of her nurse’s bond on a card.

“Good-bye, my child; I shall be away two days, but I shall be here on the third for my sitting.”


text: Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/352


text: Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/244


text: Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/260


text: Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/278


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/353

*
That very night, Ursule had an apparition which took place in a strange way.

It seemed to her that her bed was in the cemetery at Nemours, and that her uncle’s grave was at the foot of her bed. The white stone on which she read the inscription dazzled her most intensely in opening like the oblong cover of an album. She uttered piercing cries, but her uncle’s spirit slowly stood up. First she saw the yellow head and the shining white hair surrounded by a sort of halo. The eyes were like two rays beneath the bare forehead, and he was rising, as if impelled by some superior power. Ursule trembled dreadfully in her bodily exterior, her flesh was like a burning garment and there seemed, she said later on, to be another self moving within her.

“Godfather, have mercy!” she said.

“Mercy? there is no longer time,” he said in the voice of the dead, according to the inexplicable expression of the poor girl when relating this fresh dream to the Abbé Chaperon. “He has been warned, he has not paid attention to the warnings. His son’s days are numbered. If he has not confessed all, restored all within a short time, he will mourn his son, who will die a horrible and violent death. Let him know it!”


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/354

 The spirit pointed to a row of figures sparkling on the wall as if they had been written in fire, and said:

“There is his sentence!”

When her uncle had again lain down in his tomb, Ursule heard the sound of the falling stone, then in the distance a strange noise of horses and a man’s cries.

The next day, Ursule found herself exhausted. She could not get up, so much was she oppressed by this dream. She begged her nurse to go at once to the Abbé Chaperon’s and bring him back with her. The old man came after having said mass; but he was not at all astonished at Ursule’s story; he believed the robbery to be true and no longer sought any explanation of the anomalous life of his dear little dreamer. He left Ursule at once, and hurried to Minoret’s.

“Mon Dieu! Monsieur le Curé,” said Zélie to the priest, “my husband’s temper is soured, I don’t know what is the matter with him. Hitherto he has been like a child; but, for the last two months, he is no longer the same. To have flown into such a passion as to strike me, I, who am so gentle! the man must be entirely changed. You will find him among the rocks, he spends all his days there! What does he do?”

In spite of the heat—it was then September 1836—the priest crossed the canal and struck into a pathway, seeing Minoret at the foot of one of the rocks.

“You are very much worried, Monsieur Minoret,”


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/355

 said the priest, appearing before the culprit, “you belong to me, for you are suffering. Unhappily, I have come no doubt to augment your anxieties. Last night Ursule had a terrible dream. Your uncle lifted his tombstone to prophesy misfortune to your family. Indeed I do not come to frighten you, but you ought to know what he said—”

“Really, Monsieur le Curé, I can get no peace anywhere, not even on these rocks—I want to know nothing of what is going on in the other world.”

“I will go away, monsieur; I did not come all this way in the heat for my own pleasure,” said the priest, wiping his forehead.

“Well, what did the old man say?” asked Minoret.

“You are threatened with the loss of your son. If he has related things that you alone know of, it makes one shudder to think of the things that we do not know. Restore it, dear monsieur, restore it! Do not condemn yourself for a little gold.”

“But what am I to restore?”

“The fortune that the doctor intended for Ursule. I now know that you took those three bonds. You began by persecuting the poor girl, and you end by offering her a dowry; you fall into falsehood, you become entangled in its intricacies and make mistakes at every turn. You are clumsy, and have been badly served by your accomplice Goupil, who laughs at you. You had better make haste, for you are being watched by shrewd, intelligent people, Ursule’s friends. Make restitution!


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/356

 and, if you do not save your son, who is perhaps not menaced, you will save your soul and your honor. In a community like this, in a little town where every one’s eyes are upon you, and where all is found out although all is not known, how can you hide a fortune wrongfully acquired? Come, my dear son, an innocent man would not have let me talk so long.”

“Go to the devil!” cried Minoret, “I don’t know why you all go at me. I would rather have these stones, they leave me in peace.”

“Good-bye. You have been warned by me, monsieur, without either the poor child or myself having said a single word to anybody whatever. But take care! there is one man who has his eye upon you. God have pity upon you!”

The curé went away; but, after walking a few steps, he turned round to look once more at Minoret.

Minoret was holding his head in his hands, for his head was uncomfortable. Minoret was a little crazy. In the first place, he had kept the three bonds, he did not know what to do with them, he dared not go and receive them himself, he was afraid lest somebody should remark it; he did not want to sell them, and was trying to find some way of transferring them. He, even he! would create romances about business in which the issue was always the transfer of the accursed bonds. In this fearful predicament, he nevertheless thought of confessing all to his wife, so as to have some advice. Zélie, who had steered her own business


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/357

 so well, would know how to help him out of this tiresome dilemma. Three per cent stock was then at eighty francs, so it was a question, with arrears, of restoring nearly a million! To return a million, without there being any proof as to its being stolen! this was no light matter. And so Minoret spent all September and part of October a prey to his remorse and irresolution. To the great astonishment of the whole town, he grew thin.

A dreadful event hurried on the disclosure that Minoret was longing to make to Zélie; the sword of Damocles stirred over their heads. Toward the middle of October, Monsieur and Madame Minoret received the following letter from their son:

“MY DEAR MOTHER,

“If I have not been to see you since the holidays, it is, first, because I was on duty in the absence of Monsieur le Procureur du Roi, and then because I knew Monsieur de Portenduère was waiting for me to visit Nemours to pick a quarrel with me. Tired, perhaps, of putting off the revenge that he wished to wreak upon our family, the viscount came to Fontainebleau, where he had made an appointment with one of his friends from Paris, after having secured the co-operation of the Vicomte de Soulanges, who is major of the hussars now in garrison here. He called upon me very politely, accompanied by these two gentlemen, and told me that my father was undoubtedly the author of the infamous persecutions practised upon Ursule Mirouët, his future wife; he proved it to me by explaining to me Goupil’s confession in the presence of witnesses, and also the conduct of my father, who first had refused to fulfil the promises made to Goupil to reward him for his treacherous inventions, and who, after having provided him with funds for the negotiation of the attorney’s office at Nemours, had,


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/358

 through fear, offered his security to Monsieur Dionis for the price of his practice, and finally established Goupil. The viscount, being unable to fight a man of sixty-seven, and being absolutely determined to avenge the injuries done to Ursule, has formally demanded reparation from me. His resolution, taken and weighed in silence, was immovable. Had I declined a duel, he had resolved to meet me in a drawing-room, in the presence of persons whose esteem I most value, and there to insult me so seriously, that I should then have to fight or my career would come to an end. In France, a coward is universally scouted. Moreover, men of honor would understand his motives for exacting reparation. He expressed his sorrow at being driven to such extremities. According to his seconds, the most sensible thing for me to do would be to settle an encounter as honorable men are in the habit of doing, so that Ursule Mirouët should not be the cause of the quarrel. In fact, to avoid any scandal in France, we could travel over the nearest frontier with our seconds. In this way things will be settled for the best. He said his name was worth ten times my fortune, and with his future happiness he was risking more than I in this fight, which will be to the death. He has advised me to choose my seconds, and to settle these points. The seconds that I chose met his yesterday, and unanimously agreed that I owe reparation. So in eight days I shall start for Geneva with two of my friends. Monsieur de Portenduère, Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de Trailles will also go. We shall fight with pistols; all the conditions of the duel are decided; we shall each fire three times, and afterward, no matter what happens, all will be over. To avoid spreading so shameful an affair—for I cannot possibly justify my father’s conduct—I am writing to you at the last minute. I will not go to see you, on account of the fury to which you might give way and which would not be at all agreeable. In order to get on in society I must follow its rules; and, where there may be ten reasons for a viscount’s son to fight, there are a hundred for a postmaster’s son. I shall pass through Nemours by night, and will say good-bye to you.”


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/359

 When this letter had been read, there was a scene between Zélie and Minoret, which ended by the confession of the theft, and all the circumstances relating to it and the strange scenes to which it had everywhere given rise, even in the world of dreams. The million fascinated Zélie quite as much as it had fascinated Minoret.

“You stay quietly here,” said Zélie to her husband, without reproaching him at all for his follies, “I will look after all this. We will keep the money, and Désiré shall not fight.”

Madame Minoret put on her hat and shawl, ran over to Ursule’s with her son’s letter, and found her alone, for it was about midday.

In spite of her assurance, Zélie Minoret was chilled by the cold glance that the orphan gave her; but she curbed herself, as it were, in her cowardice and assumed an easy tone.

“Here, Mademoiselle Mirouët, will you oblige me by reading this letter and telling me what you think of it?” she cried, holding out the deputy’s letter to Ursule.

Ursule experienced a thousand conflicting emotions upon reading this letter, which told her how much she was loved, and what care Savinien took of the honor of her whom he was taking for his wife; but she was both too religious and too charitable to wish to be the cause of her bitterest enemy’s death or suffering.

“I promise, madame, to prevent this duel, and you may be easy; but I beg you will leave me this letter.”


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/360

 “Come, my little angel, could we not do better than that? Listen to me carefully. We have altogether forty-eight thousand francs a year from the estate round about Le Rouvre, which is a truly royal château; besides that, we can give Désiré twenty-four thousand francs a year in bonds of the national debt, in all, seventy-two thousand francs a year. You will agree that there are not many matches that can vie with him. You are an ambitious little thing, and you are right,” said Zélie, seeing Ursule’s quick gesture of denial. “I have come to ask your hand for Désiré; you bear your godfather’s name, it will be doing him an honor. Désiré, as you have seen, is a handsome fellow; he is very well thought of at Fontainebleau, and he will soon be public prosecutor. You are a wheedler, you could make him go to Paris. We would give you a fine house in Paris, you would be conspicuous, you would play a grand part, for with seventy-two thousand francs a year and the salary from an appointment, you and Désiré, you would be in the highest society. Consult your friends and see what they will tell you.”

“I need only to consult my heart, madame.”

“Tush! tush! do you mean to tell me about that little heart-breaker of a Savinien? Well! you will pay very dear for his name, his little moustaches turned up like two hooks, and his black hair. And a nice sort of fellow! You will flourish in a household on seven thousand francs a year and a man who ran up a debt of a hundred thousand francs in


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/361

 Paris in two years. And then, not that you know that yet, all men are alike, my child! and, without conceit, my Désiré is as good as a king’s son.”

“You forget, madame, your son’s danger at this present moment, which can only be averted by Monsieur de Portenduère’s desire to please me. This peril would be irretrievable if he learned that you were making dishonorable proposals to me.—You must know, madame, that I should be happier with the moderate fortune to which you allude than with the wealth with which you want to dazzle me. For some reason yet unknown, but that will be known, madame, Monsieur Minoret has, by his odious persecutions of me, published the affection which binds me to Monsieur de Portenduère and which may be confessed, for there is no doubt that his mother will bless it; so I must tell you that this affection, permissible and lawful, is my whole life. No destiny, however brilliant, however exalted it might be, could make me change. I love absolutely and unalterably. So it would be a crime for which I should be punished to marry a man to whom I should bring a heart wholly given to Savinien. Now, madame, since you force me to it I will say even more: did I not love Monsieur de Portenduère at all, I should not even then be able to resolve on bearing the sorrows and joys of life in the company of your son. If Monsieur Savinien has had debts, you have often paid Monsieur Désiré’s. Our characters are neither sufficiently alike nor dissimilar to


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/362

 permit us to live together without secret bitterness. Perhaps I might not show him that forbearance that wives owe their husbands, so he would soon find me burdensome. Do not think any more of an alliance of which I am unworthy and which I can refuse without causing you the least pain as, with such advantages, you will not fail in finding young girls more beautiful than I, of a superior rank, and richer.”

“Will you promise me, little one,” said Zélie, “that you will prevent these two young men from taking their journey and from fighting?”

“I foresee that it will be the greatest sacrifice Monsieur de Portenduère can make for me; but my marriage wreath must not be put on by blood-stained hands.”

“Well, thank you, cousin, and I hope you may be happy.”

“And I, madame,” said Ursule, “hope that you may realize your son’s grand future.”

This answer struck the heart of the deputy’s mother, who recalled the prophecies in Ursule’s last dream; she stood up, her little eyes fixed upon Ursule’s face, so white, so pure and so beautiful in her dress of half-mourning, for Ursule had risen as a hint to her so-called cousin to go.

“Then you believe in dreams?” she said.

“I have suffered too much from them not to believe in them.”

“But then—” said Zélie.

“Good-bye, madame,” said Ursule, bowing to Madame Minoret upon hearing the curb’s footsteps.


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/363

 The Abbé Chaperon was surprised at finding Madame Minoret at Ursule’s. The anxiety depicted on the thin, wrinkled face of the former postmistress naturally set the priest watching the two women alternately.

“Do you believe in revenants—ghosts—?” said Zélie to the curé.

“Do you believe in revenus—revenues—?” replied the priest, smiling.

“They are sly, all these people,” thought Zélie, “they want to diddle us. This old priest, the old justice of the peace and that young scamp of a Savinien are all agreed. There are no more dreams than I have hair in the palm of my hand.”

She left after making two curt, stiff bows.

“I know why Savinien went to Fontainebleau,” said Ursule to the Abbé Chaperon, informing him of the duel and begging him to use his influence in preventing it.

“And Madame Minoret has offered you her son’s hand?” said the old priest.

“Yes.”

“Minoret has probably confessed his crime to his wife,” added the curé.

The justice of the peace, arriving at that moment, heard of the proceedings and of the offer just made by Zélie, whose hatred of Ursule was well known to him, and he looked at the curé as much as to say: “Come out, I want to speak to you about Ursule without her hearing us.”

“Savinien shall know that you have refused


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/364

 eighty thousand francs a year, and the cock of Nemours!” he said.

“Is it a sacrifice then?” she replied. “Are there any sacrifices when one truly loves? And is there any merit whatever in refusing the son of a man whom we despise? However others may make virtues of their dislikes, that must not be the morality of a girl brought up by a Jordy, an Abbé Chaperon and our dear doctor!” she said, looking at the portrait.

Bongrand took Ursule’s hand and kissed it.

“Do you know,” said the justice of the peace to the curé, when they were in the street, “what Madame Minoret has just done?”

“What?” replied the priest, examining the justice with a shrewd look that appeared to be merely curious.

“She wanted to make arrangements for restitution.”

“Then you think—!” rejoined the Abbé Chaperon.

“I do not think, I am certain, and look here.”

The justice of the peace pointed to Minoret, who was approaching them on his way home, for, upon leaving Ursule’s, the two friends went back up the Grand’Rue of Nemours.

“Obliged as I have been to plead in the Assize Courts, I have naturally studied remorse thoroughly, but I have never seen anything to equal this! What is it that has given this flaccidity, this pallor to cheeks that used be as tight as a drum, bursting with


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/365

 the sound, rude health of careless folk? Who has drawn dark circles round those eyes and subdued their rustic sprightliness? Would you ever have believed that this forehead could wrinkle, and that the brain of this colossus could ever be agitated? He feels his heart at last! I understand remorse as well as you understand penitence, my dear curé; till now those whom I have observed expected their penalty or were going to endure it in order to be quits with society: they were either resigned or they breathed vengeance; but here is remorse without expiation, remorse pure and simple, greedy for its prey and devouring it.”

“You do not yet know,” said the justice of the peace, stopping Minoret, “that Mademoiselle Mirouët has just refused the hand of your son?”

“But,” said the curé, “be easy, she will prevent his duel with Monsieur de Portenduère.”

“Ah! my wife has succeeded?” said Minoret. “I am very glad, for I could hardly keep alive.”

“Indeed you are so much changed, that you are no longer like yourself,” said the justice.

Minoret looked alternately at Bongrand and the curé to find out whether the priest had been guilty of any indiscretion; but the Abbé Chaperon preserved an impassiveness of countenance, a mournful serenity, that reassured the culprit.

“And it is all the more astonishing,” still pursued the justice of the peace, “because you ought to experience nothing but content. After all, you are seigneur of Le Rouvre, you have added to it Les


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/366

 Bordières, all your farms, mills, meadows—you have a hundred thousand francs a year with your investments in the Funds.”

“I have nothing in the Funds,” said Minoret, hastily.

“Bah!” said the justice of the peace. “Look here, this is rather like your son’s love for Ursule, first he turns up his nose at her, then asks her in marriage. After having tried to kill Ursule with grief, you want her for a daughter-in-law! My dear monsieur; you have something in your mind—”

Minoret tried to answer, sought for words, and all he could hit upon was:

“You are funny, Monsieur le Juge de Paix—Good-bye, messieurs.”

And he turned slowly into the Rue des Bourgeois.

“He has stolen our poor Ursule’s fortune! but how are we to fish for proofs?”

“God grant—!” said the curé.

“God has placed some feeling within us which is already speaking in this man,” broke in the justice of the peace, “but we call that presumption, and human justice requires something more.”


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/367

 *

The Abbé Chaperon observed a priestly silence. As often happens in such circumstances, he thought far oftener than he wanted to of the robbery half-confessed by Minoret, and of Savinien’s happiness so obviously delayed by Ursule’s want of fortune; for the old lady secretly admitted to her confessor how wrong she had been to have refused consent to her son’s marriage during the doctor’s lifetime. The next day, on leaving the altar, after mass, he was seized with an idea which inwardly assumed all the force of a spoken declaration; he signed to Ursule to wait for him, and went with her before breakfasting.

“My child,” said the curé, “I want to see the two volumes in which the godfather in your dreams declares he put his bonds and bills.”

Ursule and the curé went up to the library and there took out the third volume of the Pandects. Upon opening it, the old man, not without astonishment, noticed the mark made by the papers upon the leaves, which, offering less resistance than the cover, still preserved the imprint of the bonds. Then, in another volume, he recognized the species of gap produced by the continued presence of some packet and the outline of it in the middle of the two pages in folio. (337)


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/368

 “Come up, do, Monsieur Bongrand!” cried La Bougival to the justice of the peace, who was passing.

Bongrand arrived just as the curé was putting on his spectacles to read three numbers written in the hand of the late Minoret on the fly-leaf of colored vellum, gummed inside the cover by the binder, and which Ursule had just discovered.

“What is the meaning of this? Our dear doctor was too great a lover of books to spoil the fly-leaf of a cover,” said the Abbé Chaperon, “here are three numbers entered between a first number preceded by an M, and another number preceded by a U.”

“What do you say?” replied Bongrand, “let me see.” “Mon Dieu!” cried the justice of the peace, “is not this enough to open the eyes of an atheist by proving the existence of a Providence? I think that human justice is the development of a divine idea that hovers over communities!”

He seized Ursule and kissed her on the forehead.

“Oh! my child, you will be happy and rich, and through me!”

“What is the matter?” said the curé.

“My dear monsieur,” cried La Bougival, catching hold of the justice’s blue frock-coat, “oh! do let me embrace you for what you have just said.”

“Explain yourself, so as to spare any false joy,” said the curé.

“If, to become rich, I have to cause pain to anyone,” said Ursule, anticipating criminal proceedings, “I—”

“Eh!” said the justice of the peace, interrupting


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/369

 Ursule, “just think of the delight you will be giving our dear Savinien.”

“But you are mad!” said the curé.

“No, my dear curé,” said the justice, “listen. The certificates of the national debt have as many series as there are letters in the alphabet; and each number bears the letter of its series; but the bonds of stock to bearer cannot have any letter at all, as they are in nobody’s name; and so what you see proves that, the day upon which the old man invested his money in the Funds, he made a note of his bond of fifteen thousand francs a year bearing the letter M—Minoret,—the numbers without letters of the three bonds to bearer, and those belonging to Ursule Mirouët, the number of which is 23,534, and which as you see, immediately follows that of the fifteen thousand franc bond. This coincidence proves that these numbers are those of five bonds obtained on the same day, and noted down by the old man in case of loss. I had advised him to put Ursule’s fortune in bonds to bearer, and he must have invested his own capital, that which he intended for Ursule and that which belonged to his ward, on the same day. I am going to Dionis’s to consult the inventory; and, if the number of the inscription he left in his own name is 23,533, letter M, then we may be sure that on that same day, through the office of the same exchange agent, he invested: primo, his capital in one bond; secundo, his savings in three bonds to bearer, numbered without any


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/370

 series letter; tertio, his ward’s capital; the book of transfers will give undeniable proofs. Ah! Minoret, you sly dog, I’ve got you—Motus, my boys!”

The justice of the peace left the curé, La Bougival and Ursule lost in profound admiration of the ways in which God leads innocence to its triumph.

“The finger of God is in this,” cried the Abbé Chaperon.

“Will they do him any harm?” said Ursule.

“Ah! mademoiselle!” cried La Bougival, “I would give a rope to hang him with.”

The justice of the peace had already arrived at Goupil’s, the appointed successor to Dionis, and was walking into the office with a sufficiently indifferent air.

“I want,” said he to Goupil, “some slight information about the Minoret inheritance.”

“What is it?” replied Goupil.

“Did the old man leave one or more three per cent bonds?”

“He left fifteen thousand francs a year in three per cents,” said Goupil “in one bond, I described it myself.”

“Then consult the inventory,” said the justice.

Goupil took a portfolio, searched it, drew out the memorandum, examined it, found what he wanted and read: “‘Item, one bond—’ Here, read it!—under number 23,533, letter M.”

“Be so kind as to give me a copy of this item of the inventory between this and one o’clock; I will wait for it.”


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/371

 “Of what use can it be to you?” asked Goupil.

“Do you want to be notary?” replied the justice of the peace, looking severely at Dionis’s appointed successor.

“I should think so!” cried Goupil, “I have swallowed enough humiliation to arrive at being called master. I entreat you to believe, Monsieur le Juge de Paix, that the wretched head clerk called Goupil has nothing in common with master Jean-Sébastien-Marie Goupil, notary of Nemours, husband of Mademoiselle Massin. These two beings are strangers, they are not even alike! Do you not notice anything about me?”

Monsieur Bongrand then looked at Goupil’s costume and saw that he wore a white tie, a dazzling white shirt ornamented with ruby buttons, a red velvet waistcoat, trousers and coat of handsome black cloth made in Paris. He had smart boots. His hair, carefully smoothed and combed, smelt agreeable. In fact, he seemed transformed.

“The fact is, you are another man,” said Bongrand.

“In morals as well as physique, monsieur! Wisdom comes with practice; and, moreover, fortune is the source of cleanliness—”

“In morals as well as physique,” said the justice, settling his spectacles.

“Eh! monsieur, is a man with a hundred thousand crowns ever a democrat? So you may take me for an honest man that knows what delicacy is, and is disposed to love his wife,” he added as he saw


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/372

 Madame Goupil coming in. “So changed am I,” he said, “that I find a great deal of intelligence in my Cousin Crémière, I am training her; and so her daughter never talks any more about pistons. In fact, yesterday you see, she said that Monsieur Savinien’s dog was splendid aux arrêts—in confinement—: well then, I did not repeat this joke, however good it might be, and I immediately explained to her the difference between etre à l’arrêt—setting, of a dog—; en arrêt—couched as a lance—, and aux arrêts—in confinement—. And so, as you see, I am quite another man, and I would prevent any client from doing a dirty trick.”

“Then make haste,” said Bongrand. “See that I have that in an hour’s time, and the notary Goupil will have made up for some of the misdeeds of the head clerk.”

After having asked the Nemours doctor to lend him his horse and gig, the justice of the peace went to fetch the two accusing volumes, Ursule’s bond, and, armed with the extract from the inventory, he hastened to Fontainebleau to see the public prosecutor. Bongrand readily proved the purloining of the three bonds by some one of the heirs, and, subsequently, the guilt of Minoret.

“His behavior is explained,” said the public prosecutor.

As a measure of precaution, the magistrate forthwith wrote a stay for the treasury to the transfer of the three bonds, and instructed the justice of the peace to go and inquire into the proportion


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/373

 of the income from the three bonds and to find out whether they had been sold. While the justice of the peace was at work in Paris, the public prosecutor wrote politely to Madame Minoret, asking her to call at his office. Zélie, full of anxiety about her son’s duel, dressed, ordered the horses to be put to the carriage and came in fiocchi to Fontainebleau. The prosecutor’s plan was simple and formidable. By separating the wife from the husband, he intended, through the terror inspired by justice, to learn the truth. Zélie found the magistrate in his study, and was completely crushed by these unceremonious words.

“Madame, I do not believe you to be an accomplice in a theft that has been made in the Minoret inheritance, and which justice is tracking at this present moment; but you can save your husband from the Assize Court by the entire confession of what you know about it. Moreover, the punishment your husband will incur is not the only thing to be feared; your son’s removal and ruin have to be avoided. In a few minutes, it will be too late, the police are in the saddle and the commitment will start for Nemours.”

Zélie nearly fainted. When she had regained her senses, she confessed all. After having easily shown this woman that she was an accomplice, the magistrate told her, that in order to save her husband and her son, he would proceed with caution.

“You have had to do with the man and not with the magistrate,” he said. “There has been no


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/374

344 complaint made by the victim, or publicity given to the robbery; but your husband has committed horrible crimes, madame, that come under the jurisdiction of a far stricter tribunal than I am. In the present state of affairs, you must be made a prisoner—Oh! at my house, and on parole,” he said, seeing Zélie about to relapse into a fainting fit “You must remember that my strict duty would be to order a commitment and to commence proceedings; but I am now acting as Mademoiselle Ursule Mirouët’s guardian and of course her interests demand some compromise.”

“Ah!” said Zélie.

“Write these words to your husband:”

And he dictated the following letter to Zélie, whom he placed at his desk:

“In this way you will spare him the denials that would be his ruin,” said the magistrate, smiling at the orthography, “we shall have the restitution managed decently. My wife will make your stay at my house as little unpleasant as possible, and I advise you not to say a word about it and not to appear at all agitated.”


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/379

Rh His deputy’s mother once confessed and shut up, the magistrate sent for Désiré, related to him in detail the theft secretly committed by his father to Ursule’s harm, and obviously to the injury of his co-heirs, and showed him the letter written by Zélie. Désiré was the first to ask permission to go to Nemours to see that his father made restitution.

“It is all very serious,” said the magistrate. “The will having been destroyed, if the matter is spread about, the Massin and Crémière heirs, your relations, may interfere. I now have enough proofs against your father. I restore you your mother, who has been sufficiently enlightened as to her duties by this little ceremony. Before her, I shall appear to have yielded to your entreaties in setting her free. Go to Nemours with her, and bring all these difficulties to a good end. Do not be afraid of anybody. Monsieur Bongrand is too fond of Mademoiselle Mirouët ever to be guilty of any indiscretion.”

Zélie and Désiré started immediately afterward for Nemours. Three hours after the departure of his deputy, an express messenger brought the public prosecutor the following letter, the orthography of which has been corrected, so as to spare any derision of a man overtaken by misfortune:

“,

“God has not been so lenient with us as you were, and we are afflicted by an irreparable misfortune. Upon arriving at


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/380

346 the Nemours bridge, one of the traces became unhooked. My wife had no servant behind the carriage; the horses could smell their stable; my son, fearing their impatience, would not allow the coachman to get down, and jumped out to fasten the trace. Just as he was turning round to get up beside his mother, the horses started off, Désiré was not in time to squeeze himself against the parapet, the steps cut his legs, he fell and the back wheel went over his body. The express which is hastening to Paris to fetch the leading surgeons will take you this letter, which my son, in the midst of his agony, has told me to write to you, in order to inform you of our entire submission to your decision in the business that was bringing him home. Until my last breath, I shall be grateful to you for the way in which you have proceeded, and I will justify your confidence.”

“.”

The town of Nemours was distracted at this terrible event. The sympathetic crowd, at the gate of the Minorets’ house, told Savinien that his revenge had been taken in hand by one more powerful than himself. The nobleman went at once to Ursule’s, where the curé, as well as the young girl, were in greater terror than surprise. The next day, after the first dressing, when the doctors and surgeons from Paris had given their unanimous opinion upon the necessity of amputating both legs, Minoret came, dejected, pale, undone, accompanied by the curé, to Ursule’s house, where were Bongrand and Savinien.

“Mademoiselle,” he said to her, “I have done you great wrong; but, if all the injury I have done cannot be completely amended, I can atone for some of it. My wife and I, we have made a vow to give you our entire estate of Le Rouvre in the event of


text:
Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/159

Rh "The gentleman's name," Wendy continued, "was Mr. Darling, and her name was Mrs. Darling."

"I knew them," John said, to annoy the others.

"I think I knew them," said Michael rather doubtfully.

"They were married, you know," explained Wendy, "and what do you think they had?"

"White rats!" cried Nibs, inspired.

"No."

"It's awfully puzzling," said Tootles, who knew the story by heart.

"Quiet, Tootles. They had three descendants."

"What is descendants?"

"Well, you are one, Twin."

"Do you hear that, John? I am a descendant."

"Descendants are only children," said John.

"Oh dear, oh dear," sighed Wendy. "Now these three children had a faithful nurse called Nana; but Mr. Darling was angry with her and chained her up in the yard, and so all the children flew away."

"It's an awfully good story," said Nibs.

"They flew away," Wendy continued, "to the Neverland, where the lost children are."

"I just thought they did," Curly broke in excitedly. "I don't know how it is, but I just thought they did!" Rh

title: Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/159


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/381

 our son’s recovery, even as we shall if we have the fearful misfortune of losing him.”

And the man burst into tears at the end of this sentence.

“I can assure you, my dear Ursule,” said the curé, “that you can and ought to accept part of this gift.”

“Will you forgive us?” said the colossus humbly, going down upon his knee before the astonished girl. “In a few hours, the operation is to be performed by the head surgeon of the Hôtel-Dieu; but I do not trust human science at all, I believe in God’s omnipotence! If you forgive me, if you will go and ask God to spare us our son, he will have the strength to bear this torture, and I am certain that we shall have the happiness of saving him.”

“Let us go to church!” said Ursule, rising.

Once risen, she gave a piercing shriek, fell back upon the sofa and fainted. When she regained consciousness she saw her friends, save Minoret who had rushed out to fetch a doctor, all anxiously watching her, waiting for her to speak. Her words struck a chill in every heart.

“I saw my godfather at the door,” she said, “and he signed to me that there was no hope.”

In fact, the day after the operation, Désiré died, carried off by fever and the revulsion of the humors which follows upon these operations. Madame Minoret, who had no other feeling in her heart than that of maternity, went mad after her son’s burial and was put by her husband under the care of Doctor Blanche, where she died in 1841.


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/382

 Three months after these events, in January, 1837, Ursule was married to Savinien, with the consent of Madame de Portenduère. Minoret became a party to the marriage settlements so as to give Mademoiselle Mirouët his estate of Le Rouvre and twenty-four thousand francs a year in the Funds, keeping nothing of his fortune except his uncle’s house and six thousand francs a year. He has become the most charitable, the most pious man in Nemours; he is churchwarden of the parish and has constituted himself the providence of all unfortunates.

“The poor have taken my son’s place,” he said.

If you have ever remarked beside the way, in countries where oaks are lopped off, some old tree, blanched and almost withered, still pushing forth shoots, with gaping sides, calling for the axe, you will have some idea of the thin, white-haired, broken down old postmaster, in whom the veterans of the country do not recognize the happy imbecile whom we saw waiting for his son at the beginning of this story; he no longer takes his snuff in the same manner, he carries something besides his body. In short, one feels in every way that God’s hand has been laid heavily upon this figure to make a terrible example of him. After having so hated his uncle’s ward, this old man, like Doctor Minoret, has so thoroughly centred his affections in Ursule, that he has constituted himself manager of her estates in Nemours.

Monsieur and Madame de Portenduère spend five


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/383

 months of the year in Paris, where they have bought a magnificent mansion in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. After giving her house in Nemours to the Sisters of Mercy to keep a free school, the dowager Madame de Portenduère went to live at Le Rouvre, where La Bougival is head concierge. Cabirolle’s father, the old conductor of La Dueler, a man of sixty, has married La Bougival, who possesses twelve hundred francs a year, besides the ample salary from her situation. Cabirolle’s son is Monsieur de Portenduère’s coachman.

If you should see passing through the Champs-Elysees one of those charming little low carriages called escargots, lined with silk gridelin, ornamented with blue trimmings, and should admire a pretty, fair woman therein, her face wreathed in myriads of curls, with eyes like shining periwinkles and brimful of love, leaning lightly against a handsome young man; if you should be bitten with envious longing, just think that this handsome Heaven-blest couple have early had their share in the miseries of life. These two married lovers will probably be the Vicomte de Portenduère and his wife. There are not two such couples in Paris.

“Theirs is the greatest happiness I have ever seen,” was said of them lately by the Comtesse de l’Estorade.

So bless these happy children instead of envying them, and look for another Ursule Mirouët, a young girl brought up by three old men, and the best of mothers—adversity.


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/384

 Goupil, who is useful to everybody and is justly regarded as the wittiest man in Nemours, enjoys the esteem of all in the little town; but he is punished through his children, who are ugly, stunted and inclined to hydrocephalus. Dionis, his predecessor, flourishes in the Chamber of Deputies, of which he is one of the brightest ornaments, to the great satisfaction of the king, who sees Madame Dionis at all his balls. Madame Dionis gives the whole town of Nemours the details of her receptions at the Tuileries and of the grandeur of the French King’s court; she reigns in Nemours, by means of the throne, which certainly became popular at that time.

Bongrand is president of the Court at Melun: his son is in a fair way to become a very creditable attorney-general.

Madame Crémière always says the funniest things in the world. She adds a g to tambourg, apparently because her pen sputters. On the eve of her daughter’s marriage, she told her at the conclusion of her instructions that a wife should be the busy caterpillar in her house, and should keep a sphinx’s eye upon everything. Goupil is also making a collection of his cousin’s nonsense, a Crémièrana.

“We have had the sorrow of losing our good Abbé Chaperon,” said Madame la Vicomtesse de Portenduère this winter, she having tended him during his illness. “The whole district came to his funeral. Nemours is fortunate, for this holy man’s successor is the venerable Curé de Saint-Lange.”

Paris, June-July, 1841.


text:
Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/160

Rh "O Wendy," cried Tootles, "was one of the lost children called Tootles?"

"Yes, he was."

"I am in a story. Hurrah, I am in a story, Nibs."

"Hush. Now I want you to consider the feelings of the unhappy parents with all their children flown away."

"Oo!" they all moaned, though they were not really considering the feelings of the unhappy parents one jot.

"Think of the empty beds!"

"Oo!"

"It's awfully sad," the first twin said cheerfully.

"I don't see how it can have a happy ending," said the second twin. "Do you, Nibs?"

"I'm frightfully anxious."

"If you knew how great is a mother's love," Wendy told them triumphantly, "you would have no fear." She had now come to the part that Peter hated.

"I do like a mother's love," said Tootles, hitting Nibs with a pillow. "Do you like a mother's love, Nibs?"

"I do just," said Nibs, hitting back.

"You see," Wendy said complacently, "our heroine knew that the mother would always leave the window open for her children to fly back by; Rh

title: Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/160


text:
Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/161

Rh so they stayed away for years and had a lovely time."

"Did they ever go back?"

"Let us now," said Wendy, bracing herself up for her finest effort, "take a peep into the future"; and they all gave themselves the twist that makes peeps into the future easier. "Years have rolled by, and who is this elegant lady of uncertain age alighting at London Station?"

"O Wendy, who is she?" cried Nibs, every bit as excited as if he didn't know.

"Can it be—yes—no—it is—the fair Wendy!"

"Oh!"

"And who are the two noble portly figures accompanying her, now grown to man's estate? Can they be John and Michael? They are!"

"Oh!"

"'See, dear brothers,' says Wendy, pointing upwards, "'there is the window still standing open. Ah, now we are rewarded for our sublime faith in a mother's love.' So up they flew to their mummy and daddy, and pen cannot describe the happy scene, over which we draw a veil."

That was the story, and they were as pleased with it as the fair narrator herself. Everything just as it should be, you see. Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need Rh

title: Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/161


text: Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/18


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/17

 OF

NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME

COMPLETELY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

URSULE MIROUËT

BY MAY TOMLINSON

IN ONE VOLUME

GEORGE BARRIE & SON, PHILADELPHIA


text:
Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/12

 LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COMPLETE COPIES

NO.


text:
Page:Shaving Made Easy 1905.djvu/6

 {| style="margin:auto; text-align:center; padding:5em 2em 5em 2em;"

 * }

title: Page:Shaving Made Easy 1905.djvu/6