"I was thinking only of him," said Ursula, blushing.

"Don't think of him, my child; it would be folly," said the doctor gravely. "Madame de Portenduere, who was a Kergarouet, would never consent, even if she had to live on three hundred francs a year, to the marriage of her son, the Vicomte Savinien de Portenduere, with whom?—with Ursula Mirouet, daughter of a bandsman in a regiment, without money, and whose father—alas! I must now tell you all—was the bastard son of an organist, my father-in-law."

"O godfather! you are right; we are equal only in the sight of God. I will not think of him again—except in my prayers," she said, amid the sobs which this painful revelation excited. "Give him what you meant to give me—what can a poor girl like me want?—ah, in prison, he!—"

"Offer to God your disappointments, and perhaps he will help us."

There was silence for some minutes. When Ursula, who at first did not dare to look at her godfather, raised her eyes, her heart was deeply moved to see the tears which were rolling down his withered cheeks. The tears of old men are as terrible as those of children are natural.

"Oh what is it?" cried Ursula, flinging herself at his feet and kissing his hands. "Are you not sure of me?"

"I, who longed to gratify all your wishes, it is I who am obliged to cause the first great sorrow of your life!" he said. "I suffer as much as you. I never wept before, except when I lost my children—and, Ursula—Yes," he cried suddenly, "I will do all you desire!"

Ursula gave him, through her tears a look that was vivid as lightning. She smiled.

"Let us go into the salon, darling," said the doctor. "Try to keep the secret of all this to yourself," he added, leaving her alone for a moment in his study.

He felt himself so weak before that heavenly smile that he feared he might say a word of hope and thus mislead her.



CHAPTER X. THE FAMILY OF PORTENDUERE

Madame de Portenduere was at this moment alone with the abbe in her frigid little salon on the ground floor, having finished the recital of her troubles to the good priest, her only friend. She held in her hand some letters which he had just returned to her after reading them; these letters had brought her troubles to a climax. Seated on her sofa beside a square table covered with the remains of a dessert, the old lady was looking at the abbe, who sat on the other side of the table, doubled up in his armchair and stroking his chin with the gesture common to valets on the stage, mathematicians, and priests,—a sign of profound meditation on a problem that was difficult to solve.

This little salon, lighted by two windows on the street and finished with a wainscot painted gray, was so damp that the lower panels showed the geometrical cracks of rotten wood when the paint no longer binds it. The red-tiled floor, polished by the old lady's one servant, required, for comfort's sake, before each seat small round mats of brown straw, on one of which the abbe was now resting his feet. The old damask curtains of light green with green flowers were drawn, and the outside blinds had been closed. Two wax candles lighted the table, leaving the rest of the room in semi-obscurity. Is it necessary to say that between the two windows was a fine pastel by Latour representing the famous Admiral de Portenduere, the rival of the Suffren, Guichen, Kergarouet and Simeuse naval heroes? On the paneled wall opposite to the fireplace were portraits of the Vicomte de Portenduere and of the mother of the old lady, a Kergarouet-Ploegat. Savinien's great-uncle was therefore the Vice-admiral de Kergarouet, and his cousin was the Comte de Portenduere, grandson of the admiral,—both of them very rich.

The Vice-admiral de Kergarouet lived in Paris and the Comte de Portenduere at the chateau of that name in Dauphine. The count represented the elder branch, and Savinien was the only scion of the younger. The count, who was over forty years of age and married to a rich wife, had three children. His fortune, increased by various legacies, amounted, it was said, to sixty thousand francs a year. As deputy from Isere he passed his winters in Paris, where he had bought the hotel de Portenduere with the indemnities he obtained under the Villele law. The vice-admiral had recently married his niece by marriage, for the sole purpose of securing his money to her.

The faults of the young viscount were therefore likely to cost him the favor of two powerful protectors. If Savinien had entered the navy, young and handsome as he was, with a famous name, and backed by the influence of an admiral and a deputy, he might, at twenty-three years of age, been a lieutenant; but his mother, unwilling that her only son should go into either naval or military service, had kept him at Nemours under the tutelage of one of the Abbe Chaperon's assistants, hoping that she could keep him near her until her death. She meant to marry him to a demoiselle d'Aiglemont with a fortune of twelve thousand francs a year; to whose hand the name of Portenduere and the farm at Bordieres enabled him to pretend. This narrow but judicious plan, which would have carried the family to a second generation, was already balked by events. The d'Aiglemonts were ruined, and one of the daughters, Helene, had disappeared, and the mystery of her disappearance was never solved.

The weariness of a life without atmosphere, without prospects, without action, without other nourishment than the love of a son for his mother, so worked upon Savinien that he burst his chains, gentle as they were, and swore that he would never live in the provinces—comprehending, rather late, that his future fate was not to be in the Rue des Bourgeois. At twenty-one years of age he left his mother's house to make acquaintance with his relations, and try his luck in Paris. The contrast between life in Paris and life in Nemours was likely to be fatal to a young man of twenty-one, free, with no one to say him nay, naturally eager for pleasure, and for whom his name and his connections opened the doors of all the salons. Quite convinced that his mother had the savings of many years in her strong-box, Savinien soon spent the six thousand francs which she had given him to see Paris. That sum did not defray his expenses for six months, and he soon owed double that sum to his hotel, his tailor, his boot maker, to the man from whom he hired his carriages and horses, to a jeweler,—in short, to all those traders and shopkeepers who contribute to the luxury of young men.

He had only just succeeded in making himself known, and had scarcely learned how to converse, how to present himself in a salon, how to wear his waistcoats and choose them and to order his coats and tie his cravat, before he found himself in debt for over thirty thousand francs, while still seeking the right phrases in which to declare his love for the sister of the Marquis de Ronquerolles, the elegant Madame de Serizy, whose youth had been at its climax during the Empire.

"How is that you all manage?" asked Savinien one day, at the end of a gay breakfast with a knot of young dandies, with whom he was intimate as the young men of the present day are intimate with each other, all aiming for the same thing and all claiming an impossible equality. "You were no richer than I and yet you get along without anxiety; you contrive to maintain yourselves, while as for me I make nothing but debts."

"We all began that way," answered Rastignac, laughing, and the laugh was echoed by Lucien de Rubempre, Maxime de Trailles, Emile Blondet, and others of the fashionable young men of the day.

"Though de Marsay was rich when he started in life he was an exception," said the host, a parvenu named Finot, ambitious of seeming intimate with these young men. "Any one but he," added Finot bowing to that personage, "would have been ruined by it."

"A true remark," said Maxime de Trailles.

"And a true idea," added Rastignac.

"My dear fellow," said de Marsay, gravely, to Savinien; "debts are the capital stock of experience. A good university education with tutors for all branches, who don't teach you anything, costs sixty thousand francs. If the education of the world does cost double, at least it teaches you to understand life, politics, men,—and sometimes women."

Blondet concluded the lesson by a paraphrase from La Fontaine: "The world sells dearly what we think it gives."

Instead of laying to heart the sensible advice which the cleverest pilots of the Parisian archipelago gave him, Savinien took it all as a joke.

"Take care, my dear fellow," said de Marsay one day. "You have a great name; if you don't obtain the fortune that name requires you'll end your days in the uniform of a cavalry-sergeant. 'We have seen the fall of nobler heads,'" he added, declaiming the line of Corneille as he took Savinien's arm. "About six years ago," he continued, "a young Comte d'Esgrignon came among us; but he did not stay two years in the paradise of the great world. Alas! he lived and moved like a rocket. He rose to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and fell to his native town, where he is now expiating his faults with a wheezy old father and a game of whist at two sous a point. Tell Madame de Serizy your situation, candidly, without shame; she will understand it and be very useful to you. Whereas, if you play the charade of first love with her she will pose as a Raffaelle Madonna, practice all the little games of innocence upon you, and take you journeying at enormous cost through the Land of Sentiment."

Savinien, still too young and too pure in honor, dared not confess his position as to money to Madame de Serizy. At a moment when he knew not which way to turn he had written his mother an appealing letter, to which she replied by sending him the sum of twenty thousand francs, which was all she possessed. This assistance brought him to the close of the first year. During the second, being harnessed to the chariot of Madame de Serizy, who was seriously taken with him, and who was, as the saying is, forming him, he had recourse to the dangerous expedient of borrowing. One of his friends, a deputy and the friend of his cousin the Comte de Portenduere, advised him in his distress to go to Gobseck or Gigonnet or Palma, who, if duly informed as to his mother's means, would give him an easy discount. Usury and the deceptive help of renewals enabled him to lead a happy life for nearly eighteen months. Without daring to leave Madame de Serizy the poor boy had fallen madly in love with the beautiful Comtesse de Kergarouet, a prude after the fashion of young women who are awaiting the death of an old husband and making capital of their virtue in the interests of a second marriage. Quite incapable of understanding that calculating virtue is invulnerable, Savinien paid court to Emilie de Kergarouet in all the splendor of a rich man. He never missed either ball or theater at which she was present.

"You haven't powder enough, my boy, to blow up that rock," said de Marsay, laughing.

That young king of fashion, who did, out of commiseration for the lad, endeavor to explain to him the nature of Emilie de Fontaine, merely wasted his words; the gloomy lights of misfortune and the twilight of a prison were needed to convince Savinien.

A note, imprudently given to a jeweler in collusion with the money-lenders, who did not wish to have the odium of arresting the young man, was the means of sending Savinien de Portenduere, in default of one hundred and seventeen thousand francs and without the knowledge of his friends, to the debtor's prison at Sainte-Pelagie. So soon as the fact was known Rastignac, de Marsay, and Lucien de Rubempre went to see him, and each offered him a banknote of a thousand francs when they found how really destitute he was. Everything belonging to him had been seized except the clothes and the few jewels he wore. The three young men (who brought an excellent dinner with them) discussed Savinien's situation while drinking de Marsay's wine, ostensibly to arrange for his future but really, no doubt, to judge of him.

"When a man is named Savinien de Portenduere," cried Rastignac, "and has a future peer of France for a cousin and Admiral Kergarouet for a great-uncle, and commits the enormous blunder of allowing himself to be put in Sainte-Pelagie, it is very certain that he must not stay there, my good fellow."

"Why didn't you tell me?" cried de Marsay. "You could have had my traveling-carriage, ten thousand francs, and letters of introduction for Germany. We know Gobseck and Gigonnet and the other crocodiles; we could have made them capitulate. But tell me, in the first place, what ass ever led you to drink of that cursed spring."

"Des Lupeaulx."

The three young men looked at each other with one and the same thought and suspicion, but they did not utter it.

"Explain all your resources; show us your hand," said de Marsay.

When Savinien had told of his mother and her old-fashioned ways, and the little house with three windows in the Rue des Bourgeois, without other grounds than a court for the well and a shed for the wood; when he had valued the house, built of sandstone and pointed in reddish cement, and put a price on the farm at Bordieres, the three dandies looked at each other, and all three said with a solemn air the word of the abbe in Alfred de Musset's "Marrons du feu" (which had then just appeared),—"Sad!"

"Your mother will pay if you write a clever letter," said Rastignac.

"Yes, but afterwards?" cried de Marsay.

"If you had merely been put in the fiacre," said Lucien, "the government would find you a place in diplomacy, but Saint-Pelagie isn't the antechamber of an embassy."

"You are not strong enough for Parisian life," said Rastignac.

"Let us consider the matter," said de Marsay, looking Savinien over as a jockey examines a horse. "You have fine blue eyes, well opened, a white forehead well shaped, magnificent black hair, a little moustache which suits those pale cheeks, and a slim figure; you've a foot that tells race, shoulders and chest not quite those of a porter, but solid. You are what I call an elegant male brunette. Your face is of the style Louis XII., hardly any color, well-formed nose; and you have the thing that pleases women, a something, I don't know what it is, which men take no account of themselves; it is in the air, the manner, the tone of the voice, the dart of the eye, the gesture,—in short, in a number of little things which women see and to which they attach a meaning which escapes us. You don't know your merits, my dear fellow. Take a certain tone and style and in six months you'll captivate an English-woman with a hundred thousand pounds; but you must call yourself viscount, a title which belongs to you. My charming step-mother, Lady Dudley, who has not her equal for matching two hearts, will find you some such woman in the fens of Great Britain. What you must now do is to get the payment of your debts postponed for ninety days. Why didn't you tell us about them? The money-lenders at Baden would have spared you—served you perhaps; but now, after you have once been in prison, they'll despise you. A money-lender is, like society, like the masses, down on his knees before the man who is strong enough to trick him, and pitiless to the lambs. To the eyes of some persons Sainte-Pelagie is a she-devil who burns the souls of young men. Do you want my candid advice? I shall tell you as I told that little d'Esgrignon: 'Arrange to pay your debts leisurely; keep enough to live on for three years, and marry some girl in the provinces who can bring you an income of thirty thousand francs.' In the course of three years you can surely find some virtuous heiress who is willing to call herself Madame la Vicomtesse de Portenduere. Such is virtue,—let's drink to it. I give you a toast: 'The girl with money!"

The young men did not leave their ex-friend till the official hour for parting. The gate was no sooner closed behind them than they said to each other: "He's not strong enough!" "He's quite crushed." "I don't believe he'll pull through it?"

The next day Savinien wrote his mother a confession in twenty-two pages. Madame de Portenduere, after weeping for one whole day, wrote first to her son, promising to get him out of prison, and then to the Comte de Portenduere and to Admiral Kergarouet.

The letters the abbe had just read and which the poor mother was holding in her hand and moistening with tears, were the answers to her appeal, which had arrived that morning, and had almost broken her heart.

Paris, September, 1829.

To Madame de Portenduere:

Madame,—You cannot doubt the interest which the admiral and I both feel in your troubles. What you ask of Monsieur de Kergarouet grieves me all the more because our house was a home to your son; we were proud of him. If Savinien had had more confidence in the admiral we could have taken him to live with us, and he would already have obtained some good situation. But, unfortunately, he told us nothing; he ran into debt of his own accord, and even involved himself for me, who knew nothing of his pecuniary position. It is all the more to be regretted because Savinien has, for the moment, tied our hands by allowing the authorities to arrest him.

If my nephew had not shown a foolish passion for me and sacrificed our relationship to the vanity of a lover, we could have sent him to travel in Germany while his affairs were being settled here. Monsieur de Kergarouet intended to get him a place in the War office; but this imprisonment for debt will paralyze such efforts. You must pay his debts; let him enter the navy; he will make his way like the true Portenduere that he is; he has the fire of the family in his beautiful black eyes, and we will all help him.

Do not be disheartened, madame; you have many friends, among whom I beg you to consider me as one of the most sincere; I send you our best wishes, with the respects of

Your very affectionate servant, Emilie de Kergarouet.

The second letter was as follows:—

Portenduere, August, 1829.

To Madame de Portenduere:

My dear aunt,—I am more annoyed than surprised at Savinien's pranks. As I am married and the father of two sons and one daughter, my fortune, already too small for my position and prospects, cannot be lessened to ransom a Portenduere from the hands of the Jews. Sell your farm, pay his debts, and come and live with us at Portenduere. You shall receive the welcome we owe you, even though our views may not be entirely in accordance with yours. You shall be made happy, and we will manage to marry Savinien, whom my wife thinks charming. This little outbreak is nothing; do not make yourself unhappy; it will never be known in this part of the country, where there are a number of rich girls who would be delighted to enter our family.

My wife joins me in assuring you of the happiness you would give us, and I beg you to accept her wishes for the realization of this plan, together with my affectionate respects.

Luc-Savinien, Comte de Portenduere.

"What letters for a Kergarouet to receive!" cried the old Breton lady, wiping her eyes.

"The admiral does not know his nephew is in prison," said the Abbe Chaperon at last; "the countess alone read your letter, and has answered it for him. But you must decide at once on some course," he added after a pause, "and this is what I have the honor to advise. Do not sell your farm. The lease is just out, having lasted twenty-four years; in a few months you can raise the rent to six thousand francs and get a premium for double that amount. Borrow what you need of some honest man,—not from the townspeople who make a business of mortgages. Your neighbour here is a most worthy man; a man of good society, who knew it as it was before the Revolution, who was once an atheist, and is now an earnest Catholic. Do not let your feelings debar you from going to his house this very evening; he will fully understand the step you take; forget for a moment that you are a Kergarouet."

"Never!" said the old mother, in a sharp voice.

"Well, then, be an amiable Kergarouet; come when he is alone. He will lend you the money at three and a half per cent, perhaps even at three per cent, and will do you this service delicately; you will be pleased with him. He can go to Paris and release Savinien himself,—for he will have to go there to sell out his funds,—and he can bring the lad back to you."

"Are you speaking of that little Minoret?"

"That little Minoret is eighty-three years old," said the abbe, smiling. "My dear lady, do have a little Christian charity; don't wound him,—he might be useful to you in other ways."

"What ways?"

"He has an angel in his house; a precious young girl—"

"Oh! that little Ursula. What of that?"

The poor abbe did not pursue the subject after these significant words, the laconic sharpness of which cut through the proposition he was about to make.

"I think Doctor Minoret is very rich," he said.

"So much the better for him."

"You have indirectly caused your son's misfortunes by refusing to give him a profession; beware for the future," said the abbe sternly. "Am I to tell Doctor Minoret that you are coming?"

"Why cannot he come to me if he knows I want him?" she replied.

"Ah, madame, if you go to him you will pay him three per cent; if he comes to you you will pay him five," said the abbe, inventing this reason to influence the old lady. "And if you are forced to sell your farm by Dionis the notary, or by Massin the clerk (who would refuse to lend you the money, knowing it was more their interest to buy), you would lose half its value. I have not the slightest influence on the Dionis, Massins, or Levraults, or any of those rich men who covet your farm and know that your son is in prison."

"They know it! oh, do they know it?" she exclaimed, throwing up her arms. "There! my poor abbe, you have let your coffee get cold! Tiennette, Tiennette!"

Tiennette, an old Breton servant sixty years of age, wearing a short gown and a Breton cap, came quickly in and took the abbe's coffee to warm it.

"Let be, Monsieur le recteur," she said, seeing that the abbe meant to drink it, "I'll just put it into the bain-marie, it won't spoil it."

"Well," said the abbe to Madame de Portenduere in his most insinuating voice, "I shall go and tell the doctor of your visit, and you will come—"

The old mother did not yield till after an hour's discussion, during which the abbe was forced to repeat his arguments at least ten times. And even then the proud Kergarouet was not vanquished until he used the words, "Savinien would go."

"It is better that I should go than he," she said.



CHAPTER XI. SAVINIEN SAVED

The clock was striking nine when the little door made in the large door of Madame de Portenduere's house closed on the abbe, who immediately crossed the road and hastily rang the bell at the doctor's gate. He fell from Tiennette to La Bougival; the one said to him, "Why do you come so late, Monsieur l'abbe?" as the other had said, "Why do you leave Madame so early when she is in trouble?"

The abbe found a numerous company assembled in the green and brown salon; for Dionis had stopped at Massin's on his way home to re-assure the heirs by repeating their uncle's words.

"I believe Ursula has a love-affair," said he, "which will be nothing but pain and trouble to her; she seems romantic" (extreme sensibility is so called by notaries), "and, you'll see, she won't marry soon. Therefore, don't show her any distrust; be very attentive to her and very respectful to your uncle, for he is slyer than fifty Goupils," added the notary—without being aware that Goupil is a corruption of the word vulpes, a fox.

So Mesdames Massin and Cremiere with their husbands, the post master and Desire, together with the Nemours doctor and Bongrand, made an unusual and noisy party in the doctor's salon. As the abbe entered he heard the sound of the piano. Poor Ursula was just finishing a sonata of Beethoven's. With girlish mischief she had chosen that grand music, which must be studied to be understood, for the purpose of disgusting these women with the thing they coveted. The finer the music the less ignorant persons like it. So, when the door opened and the abbe's venerable head appeared they all cried out: "Ah! here's Monsieur l'abbe!" in a tone of relief, delighted to jump up and put an end to their torture.

The exclamation was echoed at the card-table, where Bongrand, the Nemours doctor, and old Minoret were victims to the presumption with which the collector, in order to propitiate his great-uncle, had proposed to take the fourth hand at whist. Ursula left the piano. The doctor rose as if to receive the abbe, but really to put an end to the game. After many compliments to their uncle on the wonderful proficiency of his goddaughter, the heirs made their bow and retired.

"Good-night, my friends," cried the doctor as the iron gate clanged.

"Ah! that's where the money goes," said Madame Cremiere to Madame Massin, as they walked on.

"God forbid that I should spend money to teach my little Aline to make such a din as that!" cried Madame Massin.

"She said it was Beethoven, who is thought to be fine musician," said the collector; "he has quite a reputation."

"Not in Nemours, I'm sure of that," said Madame Cremiere.

"I believe uncle made her play it expressly to drive us away," said Massin; "for I saw him give that little minx a wink as she opened the music-book."

"If that's the sort of charivari they like," said the post master, "they are quite right to keep it to themselves."

"Monsieur Bongrand must be fond of whist to stand such a dreadful racket," said Madame Cremiere.

"I shall never be able to play before persons who don't understand music," Ursula was saying as she sat down beside the whist-table.

"In natures richly organized," said the abbe, "sentiments can be developed only in a congenial atmosphere. Just as a priest is unable to give the blessing in presence of an evil spirit, or as a chestnut-tree dies in a clay soil, so a musician's genius has a mental eclipse when he is surrounded by ignorant persons. In all the arts we must receive from the souls who make the environment of our souls as much intensity as we convey to them. This axiom, which rules the human mind, has been made into proverbs: 'Howl with the wolves'; 'Like meets like.' But the suffering you felt, Ursula, affects delicate and tender natures only."

"And so, friends," said the doctor, "a thing which would merely give pain to most women might kill my Ursula. Ah! when I am no longer here, I charge you to see that the hedge of which Catullus spoke,—'Ut flos,' etc.,—a protecting hedge is raised between this cherished flower and the world."

"And yet those ladies flattered you, Ursula," said Monsieur Bongrand, smiling.

"Flattered her grossly," remarked the Nemours doctor.

"I have always noticed how vulgar forced flattery is," said old Minoret. "Why is that?"

"A true thought has its own delicacy," said the abbe.

"Did you dine with Madame de Portenduere?" asked Ursula, with a look of anxious curiosity.

"Yes; the poor lady is terribly distressed. It is possible she may come to see you this evening, Monsieur Minoret."

Ursula pressed her godfather's hand under the table.

"Her son," said Bongrand, "was rather too simple-minded to live in Paris without a mentor. When I heard that inquiries were being made here about the property of the old lady I feared he was discounting her death."

"Is it possible you think him capable of it?" said Ursula, with such a terrible glance at Monsieur Bongrand that he said to himself rather sadly, "Alas! yes, she loves him."

"Yes and no," said the Nemours doctor, replying to Ursula's question. "There is a great deal of good in Savinien, and that is why he is now in prison; a scamp wouldn't have got there."

"Don't let us talk about it any more," said old Minoret. "The poor mother must not be allowed to weep if there's a way to dry her tears."

The four friends rose and went out; Ursula accompanied them to the gate, saw her godfather and the abbe knock at the opposite door, and as soon as Tiennette admitted them she sat down on the outer wall with La Bougival beside her.

"Madame la vicomtesse," said the abbe, who entered first into the little salon, "Monsieur le docteur Minoret was not willing that you should have the trouble of coming to him—"

"I am too much of the old school, madame," interrupted the doctor, "not to know what a man owes to a woman of your rank, and I am very glad to be able, as Monsieur l'abbe tells me, to be of service to you."

Madame de Portenduere, who disliked the step the abbe had advised so much that she had almost decided, after he left her, to apply to the notary instead, was surprised by Minoret's attention to such a degree that she rose to receive him and signed to him to take a chair.

"Be seated, monsieur," she said with a regal air. "Our dear abbe has told you that the viscount is in prison on account of some youthful debts,—a hundred thousand francs or so. If you could lend them to him I would secure you on my farm at Bordieres."

"We will talk of that, madame, when I have brought your son back to you—if you will allow me to be your emissary in the matter."

"Very good, monsieur," she said, bowing her head and looking at the abbe as if to say, "You were right; he really is a man of good society."

"You see, madame," said the abbe, "that my friend the doctor is full of devotion to your family."

"We shall be grateful, monsieur," said Madame de Portenduere, making a visible effort; "a journey to Paris, at your age, in quest of a prodigal, is—"

"Madame, I had the honor to meet, in '65, the illustrious Admiral de Portenduere in the house of that excellent Monsieur de Malesherbes, and also in that of Monsieur le Comte de Buffon, who was anxious to question him on some curious results of his voyages. Possibly Monsieur de Portenduere, your late husband, was present. Those were the glorious days of the French navy; it bore comparison with that of Great Britain, and its officers had their full quota of courage. With what impatience we awaited in '83 and '84 the news from St. Roch. I came very near serving as surgeon in the king's service. Your great-uncle, who is still living, Admiral Kergarouet, fought his splendid battle at that time in the 'Belle-Poule.'"

"Ah! if he did but know his great-nephew is in prison!"

"He would not leave him there a day," said old Minoret, rising.

He held out his hand to take that of the old lady, which she allowed him to do; then he kissed it respectfully, bowed profoundly, and left the room; but returned immediately to say:—

"My dear abbe, may I ask you to engage a place in the diligence for me to-morrow?"

The abbe stayed behind for half an hour to sing the praises of his friend, who meant to win and had succeeded in winning the good graces of the old lady.

"He is an astonishing man for his age," she said. "He talks of going to Paris and attending to my son's affairs as if he were only twenty-five. He has certainly seen good society."

"The very best, madame; and to-day more than one son of a peer of France would be glad to marry his goddaughter with a million. Ah! if that idea should come into Savinien's head!—times are so changed that the objections would not come from your side, especially after his late conduct—"

The amazement into which the speech threw the old lady alone enabled him to finish it.

"You have lost your senses," she said at last.

"Think it over, madame; God grant that your son may conduct himself in future in a manner to win that old man's respect."

"If it were not you, Monsieur l'abbe," said Madame de Portenduere, "if it were any one else who spoke to me in that way—"

"You would not see him again," said the abbe, smiling. "Let us hope that your dear son will enlighten you as to what occurs in Paris in these days as to marriages. You will think only of Savinien's good; as you really have helped to compromise his future you will not stand in the way of his making himself another position."

"And it is you who say that to me?"

"If I did not say it to you, who would?" cried the abbe rising and making a hasty retreat.

As he left the house he saw Ursula and her godfather standing in their courtyard. The weak doctor had been so entreated by Ursula that he had just yielded to her. She wanted to go with him to Paris, and gave a thousand reasons. He called to the abbe and begged him to engage the whole coupe for him that very evening if the booking-office were still open.

The next day at half-past six o'clock the old man and the young girl reached Paris, and the doctor went at once to consult his notary. Political events were then very threatening. Monsieur Bongrand had remarked in the course of the preceding evening that a man must be a fool to keep a penny in the public funds so long as the quarrel between the press and the court was not made up. Minoret's notary now indirectly approved of this opinion. The doctor therefore took advantage of his journey to sell out his manufacturing stocks and his shares in the Funds, all of which were then at a high value, depositing the proceeds in the Bank of France. The notary also advised his client to sell the stocks left to Ursula by Monsieur de Jordy. He promised to employ an extremely clever broker to treat with Savinien's creditors; but said that in order to succeed it would be necessary for the young man to stay several days longer in prison.

"Haste in such matters always means the loss of at least fifteen per cent," said the notary. "Besides, you can't get your money under seven or eight days."

When Ursula heard that Savinien would have to say at least a week longer in jail she begged her godfather to let her go there, if only once. Old Minoret refused. The uncle and niece were staying at a hotel in the Rue Croix des Petits-Champs where the doctor had taken a very suitable apartment. Knowing the scrupulous honor and propriety of his goddaughter he made her promise not to go out while he was away; at other times he took her to see the arcades, the shops, the boulevards; but nothing seemed to amuse or interest her.

"What do you want to do?" asked the old man.

"See Saint-Pelagie," she answered obstinately.

Minoret called a hackney-coach and took her to the Rue de la Clef, where the carriage drew up before the shabby front of an old convent then transformed into a prison. The sight of those high gray walls, with every window barred, of the wicket through which none can enter without stooping (horrible lesson!), of the whole gloomy structure in a quarter full of wretchedness, where it rises amid squalid streets like a supreme misery,—this assemblage of dismal things so oppressed Ursula's heart that she burst into tears.

"Oh!" she said, "to imprison young men in this dreadful place for money! How can a debt to a money-lender have a power the king has not? He there!" she cried. "Where, godfather?" she added, looking from window to window.

"Ursula," said the old man, "you are making me commit great follies. This is not forgetting him as you promised."

"But," she argued, "if I must renounce him must I also cease to feel an interest in him? I can love him and not marry at all."

"Ah!" cried the doctor, "there is so much reason in your unreasonableness that I am sorry I brought you."

Three days later the worthy man had all the receipts signed, and the legal papers ready for Savinien's release. The payings, including the notaries' fees, amounted to eighty thousand francs. The doctor went himself to see Savinien released on Saturday at two o'clock. The young viscount, already informed of what had happened by his mother, thanked his liberator with sincere warmth of heart.

"You must return at once to see your mother," the old doctor said to him.

Savinien answered in a sort of confusion that he had contracted certain debts of honor while in prison, and related the visit of his friends.

"I suspected there was some personal debt," cried the doctor, smiling. "Your mother borrowed a hundred thousand francs of me, but I have paid out only eighty thousand. Here is the rest; be careful how you spend it, monsieur; consider what you have left of it as your stake on the green cloth of fortune."

During the last eight days Savinien had made many reflections on the present conditions of life. Competition in everything necessitated hard work on the part of whoever sought a fortune. Illegal methods and underhand dealing demanded more talent than open efforts in face of day. Success in society, far from giving a man position, wasted his time and required an immense deal of money. The name of Portenduere, which his mother considered all-powerful, had no power at all in Paris. His cousin the deputy, Comte de Portenduere, cut a very poor figure in the Elective Chamber in presence of the peerage and the court; and had none too much credit personally. Admiral Kergarouet existed only as the husband of his wife. Savinien admitted to himself that he had seen orators, men from the middle classes, or lesser noblemen, become influential personages. Money was the pivot, the sole means, the only mechanism of a society which Louis XVIII. had tried to create in the likeness of that of England.

On his way from the Rue de la Clef to the Rue Croix des Petits-Champs the young gentleman divulged the upshot of these meditations (which were certainly in keeping with de Marsay's advice) to the old doctor.

"I ought," he said, "to go into oblivion for three or four years and seek a career. Perhaps I could make myself a name by writing a book on statesmanship or morals, or a treatise on some of the great questions of the day. While I am looking out for a marriage with some young lady who could make me eligible to the Chamber, I will work hard in silence and in obscurity."

Studying the young fellow's face with a keen eye, the doctor saw the serious purpose of a wounded man who was anxious to vindicate himself. He therefore cordially approved of the scheme.

"My friend," he said, "if you strip off the skin of the old nobility (which is no longer worn these days) I will undertake, after you have lived for three or four years in a steady and industrious manner, to find you a superior young girl, beautiful, amiable, pious, and possessing from seven to eight hundred thousand francs, who will make you happy and of whom you will have every reason to be proud,—one whose only nobility is that of the heart!"

"Ah, doctor!" cried the young man, "there is no longer a nobility in these days,—nothing but an aristocracy."

"Go and pay your debts of honor and come back here. I shall engage the coupe of the diligence, for my niece is with me," said the old man.

That evening, at six o'clock, the three travelers started from the Rue Dauphine. Ursula had put on a veil and did not say a word. Savinien, who once, in a moment of superficial gallantry, had sent her that kiss which invaded and conquered her soul like a love-poem, had completely forgotten the young girl in the hell of his Parisian debts; moreover, his hopeless love for Emilie de Kergarouet hindered him from bestowing a thought on a few glances exchanged with a little country girl. He did not recognize her when the doctor handed her into the coach and then sat down beside her to separate her from the young viscount.

"I have some bills to give you," said the doctor to the young man. "I have brought all your papers and documents."

"I came very near not getting off," said Savinien, "for I had to order linen and clothes; the Philistines took all; I return like a true prodigal."

However interesting were the subjects of conversation between the young man and the old one, and however witty and clever were certain remarks of the viscount, the young girl continued silent till after dusk, her green veil lowered, and her hands crossed on her shawl.

"Mademoiselle does not seem to have enjoyed Paris very much," said Savinien at last, somewhat piqued.

"I am glad to return to Nemours," she answered in a trembling voice raising her veil.

Notwithstanding the dim light Savinien then recognized her by the heavy braids of her hair and the brilliancy of her blue eyes.

"I, too, leave Paris to bury myself in Nemours without regret now that I meet my charming neighbour again," he said; "I hope, Monsieur le docteur that you will receive me in your house; I love music, and I remember to have listened to Mademoiselle Ursula's piano."

"I do not know," replied the doctor gravely, "whether your mother would approve of your visits to an old man whose duty it is to care for this dear child with all the solicitude of a mother."

This reserved answer made Savinien reflect, and he then remembered the kisses so thoughtlessly wafted. Night came; the heat was great. Savinien and the doctor went to sleep first. Ursula, whose head was full of projects, did not succumb till midnight. She had taken off her straw-bonnet, and her head, covered with a little embroidered cap, dropped upon her uncle's shoulder. When they reached Bouron at dawn, Savinien awoke. He then saw Ursula in the slight disarray naturally caused by the jolting of the vehicle; her cap was rumpled and half off; the hair, unbound, had fallen each side of her face, which glowed from the heat of the night; in this situation, dreadful for women to whom dress is a necessary auxiliary, youth and beauty triumphed. The sleep of innocence is always lovely. The half-opened lips showed the pretty teeth; the shawl, unfastened, gave to view, beneath the folds of her muslin gown and without offence to her modesty, the gracefulness of her figure. The purity of the virgin spirit shone on the sleeping countenance all the more plainly because no other expression was there to interfere with it. Old Minoret, who presently woke up, placed his child's head in the corner of the carriage that she might be more at ease; and she let him do it unconsciously, so deep was her sleep after the many wakeful nights she had spent in thinking of Savinien's trouble.

"Poor little girl!" said the doctor to his neighbour, "she sleeps like the child she is."

"You must be proud of her," replied Savinien; "for she seems as good as she is beautiful."

"Ah! she is the joy of the house. I could not love her better if she were my own daughter. She will be sixteen on the 5th February. God grant that I may live long enough to marry her to a man who will make her happy. I wanted to take her to the theater in Paris, where she was for the first time, but she refused, the Abbe Chaperon had forbidden it. 'But,' I said, 'when you are married your husband will want you to go there.' 'I shall do what my husband wants,' she answered. 'If he asks me to do evil and I am weak enough to yield, he will be responsible before God—and so I shall have strength to refuse him, for his own sake.'"

As the coach entered Nemours, at five in the morning, Ursula woke up, ashamed at her rumpled condition, and confused by the look of admiration which she encountered from Savinien. During the hour it had taken the diligence to come from Bouron to Nemours the young man had fallen in love with Ursula; he had studied the pure candor of her soul, the beauty of that body, the whiteness of the skin, the delicacy of the features; he recalled the charm of the voice which had uttered but one expressive sentence, in which the poor child said all, intending to say nothing. A presentiment suddenly seemed to take hold of him; he saw in Ursula the woman the doctor had pictured to him, framed in gold by the magic words, "Seven or eight hundred thousand francs."

"In three of four years she will be twenty, and I shall be twenty-seven," he thought. "The good doctor talked of probation, work, good conduct! Sly as he is I shall make him tell me the truth."

The three neighbours parted in the street in front of their respective homes, and Savinien put a little courting into his eyes as he gave Ursula a parting glance.

Madame de Portenduere let her son sleep till midday; but the doctor and Ursula, in spite of their fatiguing journey, went to high mass. Savinien's release and his return in company with the doctor had explained the reason of the latter's absence to the newsmongers of the town and to the heirs, who were once more assembled in conventicle on the square, just as they were two weeks earlier when the doctor attended his first mass. To the great astonishment of all the groups, Madame de Portenduere, on leaving the church, stopped old Minoret, who offered her his arm and took her home. The old lady asked him to dinner that evening, also asking his niece and assuring him that the abbe would be the only other guest.

"He must have wished Ursula to see Paris," said Minoret-Levrault.

"Pest!" cried Cremiere; "he can't take a step without that girl!"

"Something must have happened to make old Portenduere accept his arm," said Massin.

"So none of you have guessed that your uncle has sold his Funds and released that little Savinien?" cried Goupil. "He refused Dionis, but he didn't refuse Madame de Portenduere—Ha, ha! you are all done for. The viscount will propose a marriage-contract instead of a mortgage, and the doctor will make the husband settle on his jewel of a girl the sum he has now paid to secure the alliance."

"It is not a bad thing to marry Ursula to Savinien," said the butcher. "The old lady gives a dinner to-day to Monsieur Minoret. Tiennette came early for a filet."

"Well, Dionis, here's a fine to-do!" said Massin, rushing up to the notary, who was entering the square.

"What is? It's all going right," returned the notary. "Your uncle has sold his Funds and Madame de Portenduere has sent for me to witness the signing of a mortgage on her property for one hundred thousand francs, lent to her by your uncle."

"Yes, but suppose the young people should marry?"

"That's as if you said Goupil was to be my successor."

"The two things are not so impossible," said Goupil.

On returning from mass Madame de Portenduere told Tiennette to inform her son that she wished to see him.

The little house had three bedrooms on the first floor. That of Madame de Portenduere and that of her late husband were separated by a large dressing-room lighted by a skylight, and connected by a little antechamber which opened on the staircase. The window of the other room, occupied by Savinien, looked, like that of his late father, on the street. The staircase went up at the back of the house, leaving room for a little study lighted by a small round window opening on the court. Madame de Portenduere's bedroom, the gloomiest in the house, also looked into the court; but the widow spent all her time in the salon on the ground floor, which communicated by a passage with the kitchen built at the end of the court, so that this salon was made to answer the double purpose of drawing-room and dining-room combined.

The bedroom of the late Monsieur de Portenduere remained as he had left it on the day of his death; there was no change except that he was absent. Madame de Portenduere had made the bed herself; laying upon it the uniform of a naval captain, his sword, cordon, orders, and hat. The gold snuff-box from which her late husband had taken snuff for the last time was on the table, with his prayer-book, his watch, and the cup from which he drank. His white hair, arranged in one curled lock and framed, hung above a crucifix and the holy water in the alcove. All the little ornaments he had worn, his journals, his furniture, his Dutch spittoon, his spy-glass hanging by the mantel, were all there. The widow had stopped the hands of the clock at the hour of his death, to which they always pointed. The room still smelt of the powder and the tobacco of the deceased. The hearth was as he left it. To her, entering there, he was again visible in the many articles which told of his daily habits. His tall cane with its gold head was where he had last placed it, with his buckskin gloves close by. On a table against the wall stood a gold vase, of coarse workmanship but worth three thousand francs, a gift from Havana, which city, at the time of the American War of Independence, he had protected from an attack by the British, bringing his convoy safe into port after an engagement with superior forces. To recompense this service the King of Spain had made him a knight of his order; the same event gave him a right to the next promotion to the rank of vice-admiral, and he also received the red ribbing. He then married his wife, who had a fortune of about two hundred thousand francs. But the Revolution hindered his promotion, and Monsieur de Portenduere emigrated.

"Where is my mother?" said Savinien to Tiennette.

"She is waiting for you in your father's room," said the old Breton woman.

Savinien could not repress a shudder. He knew his mother's rigid principles, her worship of honor, her loyalty, her faith in nobility, and he foresaw a scene. He went up to the assault with his heart beating and his face rather pale. In the dim light which filtered through the blinds he saw his mother dressed in black, and with an air of solemnity in keeping with that funereal room.

"Monsieur le vicomte," she said when she saw him, rising and taking his hand to lead him to his father's bed, "there died your father,—a man of honor; he died without reproach from his own conscience. His spirit is there. Surely he groaned in heaven when he saw his son degraded by imprisonment for debt. Under the old monarchy that stain could have been spared you by obtaining a lettre de cachet and shutting you up for a few days in a military prison.—But you are here; you stand before your father, who hears you. You know all that you did before you were sent to that ignoble prison. Will you swear to me before your father's shade, and in presence of God who sees all, that you have done no dishonorable act; that your debts are the result of youthful folly, and that your honor is untarnished? If your blameless father were there, sitting in that armchair, and asking an explanation of your conduct, could he embrace you after having heard it?"

"Yes, mother," replied the young man, with grave respect.

She opened her arms and pressed him to her heart, shedding a few tears.

"Let us forget it all, my son," she said; "it is only a little less money. I shall pray God to let us recover it. As you are indeed worthy of your name, kiss me—for I have suffered much."

"I swear, mother," he said, laying his hand upon the bed, "to give you no further unhappiness of that kind, and to do all I can to repair these first faults."

"Come and breakfast, my child," she said, turning to leave the room.



CHAPTER XII. OBSTACLES TO YOUNG LOVE

In 1829 the old noblesse had recovered as to manners and customs something of the prestige it had irrevocably lost in politics. Moreover, the sentiment which governs parents and grandparents in all that relates to matrimonial conventions is an imperishable sentiment, closely allied to the very existence of civilized societies and springing from the spirit of family. It rules in Geneva as in Vienna and in Nemours, where, as we have seen, Zelie Minoret refused her consent to a possible marriage of her son with the daughter of a bastard. Still, all social laws have their exceptions. Savinien thought he might bend his mother's pride before the inborn nobility of Ursula. The struggle began at once. As soon as they were seated at table his mother told him of the horrible letters, as she called them, which the Kergarouets and the Portendueres had written her.

"There is no such thing as family in these days, mother," replied Savinien, "nothing but individuals! The nobles are no longer a compact body. No one asks or cares whether I am a Portenduere, or brave, or a statesmen; all they ask now-a-days is, 'What taxes does he pay?'"

"But the king?" asked the old lady.

"The king is caught between the two Chambers like a man between his wife and his mistress. So I shall have to marry some rich girl without regard to family,—the daughter of a peasant if she has a million and is sufficiently well brought-up—that is to say, if she has been taught in school."

"Oh! there's no need to talk of that," said the old lady.

Savinien frowned as he heard the words. He knew the granite will, called Breton obstinacy, that distinguished his mother, and he resolved to know at once her opinion on this delicate matter.

"So," he went on, "if I loved a young girl,—take for instance your neighbour's godchild, little Ursula,—would you oppose my marriage?"

"Yes, as long as I live," she replied; "and after my death you would be responsible for the honor and the blood of the Kergarouets and the Portendueres."

"Would you let me die of hunger and despair for the chimera of nobility, which has no reality to-day unless it has the lustre of great wealth?"

"You could serve France and put faith in God."

"Would you postpone my happiness till after your death?"

"It would be horrible if you took it then,—that is all I have to say."

"Louis XIV. came very near marrying the niece of Mazarin, a parvenu."

"Mazarin himself opposed it."

"Remember the widow Scarron."

"She was a d'Aubigne. Besides, the marriage was in secret. But I am very old, my son," she said, shaking her head. "When I am no more you can, as you say, marry whom you please."

Savinien both loved and respected his mother; but he instantly, though silently, set himself in opposition to her with an obstinacy equal to her own, resolving to have no other wife than Ursula, to whom this opposition gave, as often happens in similar circumstances, the value of a forbidden thing.

When, after vespers, the doctor, with Ursula, who was dressed in pink and white, entered the cold, stiff salon, the girl was seized with nervous trembling, as though she had entered the presence of the queen of France and had a favor to beg of her. Since her confession to the doctor this little house had assumed the proportions of a palace in her eyes, and the old lady herself the social value which a duchess of the Middle Ages might have had to the daughter of a serf. Never had Ursula measured as she did at that moment the distance which separated Vicomte de Portenduere from the daughter of a regimental musician, a former opera-singer and the natural son of an organist.

"What is the matter, my dear?" said the old lady, making the girl sit down beside her.

"Madame, I am confused by the honor you have done me—"

"My little girl," said Madame de Portenduere, in her sharpest tone. "I know how fond your uncle is of you, and I wished to be agreeable to him, for he has brought back my prodigal son."

"But, my dear mother," said Savinien cut to the heart by seeing the color fly into Ursula's face as she struggled to keep back her tears, "even if we were under no obligations to Monsieur le Chevalier Minoret, I think we should always be most grateful for the pleasure Mademoiselle has given us by accepting your invitation."

The young man pressed the doctor's hand in a significant manner, adding: "I see you wear, monsieur, the order of Saint-Michel, the oldest order in France, and one which confers nobility."

Ursula's extreme beauty, to which her almost hopeless love gave a depth which great painters have sometimes conveyed in pictures where the soul is brought into strong relief, had struck Madame de Portenduere suddenly, and made her suspect that the doctor's apparent generosity masked an ambitious scheme. She had made the speech to which Savinien replied with the intention of wounding the doctor in that which was dearest to him; and she succeeded, though the old man could hardly restrain a smile as he heard himself styled a "chevalier," amused to observe how the eagerness of a lover did not shrink from absurdity.

"The order of Saint-Michel which in former days men committed follies to obtain," he said, "has now, Monsieur le vicomte, gone the way of other privileges! It is given only to doctors and poor artists. The kings have done well to join it to that of Saint-Lazare who was, I believe, a poor devil recalled to life by a miracle. From this point of view the order of Saint-Michel and Saint-Lazare may be, for many of us, symbolic."

After this reply, at once sarcastic and dignified, silence reigned, which, as no one seemed inclined to break it, was becoming awkward, when there was a rap at the door.

"There is our dear abbe," said the old lady, who rose, leaving Ursula alone, and advancing to meet the Abbe Chaperon,—an honor she had not paid to the doctor and his niece.

The old man smiled to himself as he looked from his goddaughter to Savinien. To show offence or to complain of Madame de Portenduere's manners was a rock on which a man of small mind might have struck, but Minoret was too accomplished in the ways of the world not to avoid it. He began to talk to the viscount of the danger Charles X. was then running by confiding the affairs of the nation to the Prince de Polignac. When sufficient time had been spent on the subject to avoid all appearance of revenging himself by so doing, he handed the old lady, in an easy, jesting way, a packet of legal papers and receipted bills, together with the account of his notary.

"Has my son verified them?" she said, giving Savinien a look, to which he replied by bending his head. "Well, then the rest is my notary's business," she added, pushing away the papers and treating the affair with the disdain she wished to show for money.

To abase wealth was, according to Madame de Portenduere's ideas, to elevate the nobility and rob the bourgeoisie of their importance.

A few moments later Goupil came from his employer, Dionis, to ask for the accounts of the transaction between the doctor and Savinien.

"Why do you want them?" said the old lady.

"To put the matter in legal form; there have been no cash payments."

Ursula and Savinien, who both for the first time exchanged a glance with offensive personage, were conscious of a sensation like that of touching a toad, aggravated by a dark presentiment of evil. They both had the same indefinable and confused vision into the future, which has no name in any language, but which is capable of explanation as the action of the inward being of which the mysterious Swedenborgian had spoken to Doctor Minoret. The certainty that the venomous Goupil would in some way be fatal to them made Ursula tremble; but she controlled herself, conscious of unspeakable pleasure in seeing that Savinien shared her emotion.

"He is not handsome, that clerk of Monsieur Dionis," said Savinien, when Goupil had closed the door.

"What does it signify whether such persons are handsome or ugly?" said Madame de Portenduere.

"I don't complain of his ugliness," said the abbe, "but I do of his wickedness, which passes all bounds; he is a villain."

The doctor, in spite of his desire to be amiable, grew cold and dignified. The lovers were embarrassed. If it had not been for the kindly good-humor of the abbe, whose gentle gayety enlivened the dinner, the position of the doctor and his niece would have been almost intolerable. At dessert, seeing Ursula turn pale, he said to her:—

"If you don't feel well, dear child, we have only the street to cross."

"What is the matter, my dear?" said the old lady to the girl.

"Madame," said the doctor severely, "her soul is chilled, accustomed as she is to be met by smiles."

"A very bad education, monsieur," said Madame de Portenduere. "Is it not, Monsieur l'abbe?"

"Yes," answered Minoret, with a look at the abbe, who knew not how to reply. "I have, it is true, rendered life unbearable to an angelic spirit if she has to pass it in the world; but I trust I shall not die until I place her in security, safe from coldness, indifference, and hatred—"

"Oh, godfather—I beg of you—say no more. There is nothing the matter with me," cried Ursula, meeting Madame de Portenduere's eyes rather than give too much meaning to her words by looking at Savinien.

"I cannot know, madame," said Savinien to his mother, "whether Mademoiselle Ursula suffers, but I do know that you are torturing me."

Hearing these words, dragged from the generous young man by his mother's treatment of herself, Ursula turned pale and begged Madame de Portenduere to excuse her; then she took her uncle's arm, bowed, left the room, and returned home. Once there, she rushed to the salon and sat down to the piano, put her head in her hands, and burst into tears.

"Why don't you leave the management of your affairs to my old experience, cruel child?" cried the doctor in despair. "Nobles never think themselves under any obligations to the bourgeoisie. When we do them a service they consider that we do our duty, and that's all. Besides, the old lady saw that you looked favorably on Savinien; she is afraid he will love you."

"At any rate he is saved!" said Ursula. "But ah! to try to humiliate a man like you!"

"Wait till I return, my child," said the old man leaving her.

When the doctor re-entered Madame de Portenduere's salon he found Dionis the notary, accompanied by Monsieur Bongrand and the mayor of Nemours, witnesses required by law for the validity of deeds in all communes where there is but one notary. Minoret took Monsieur Dionis aside and said a word in his ear, after which the notary read the deeds aloud officially; from which it appeared that Madame de Portenduere gave a mortgage on all her property to secure payment of the hundred thousand francs, the interest on which was fixed at five per cent. At the reading of this last clause the abbe looked at Minoret, who answered with an approving nod. The poor priest whispered something in the old lady's ear to which she replied,—

"I will owe nothing to such persons."

"My mother leaves me the nobler part," said Savinien to the doctor; "she will repay the money and charges me to show our gratitude."

"But you will have to pay eleven thousand francs the first year to meet the interest and the legal costs," said the abbe.

"Monsieur," said Minoret to Dionis, "as Monsieur and Madame de Portenduere are not in a condition to pay those costs, add them to the amount of the mortgage and I will pay them."

Dionis made the change and the sum borrowed was fixed at one hundred and seven thousand francs. When the papers were all signed, Minoret made his fatigue an excuse to leave the house at the same time as the notary and witnesses.

"Madame," said the abbe, "why did you affront the excellent Monsieur Minoret, who saved you at least twenty-five thousand francs on those debts in Paris, and had the delicacy to give twenty thousand to your son for his debts of honor?"

"Your Minoret is sly," she said, taking a pinch of snuff. "He knows what he is about."

"My mother thinks he wishes to force me into marrying his niece by getting hold of our farm," said Savinien; "as if a Portenduere, son of a Kergarouet, could be made to marry against his will."

An hour later, Savinien presented himself at the doctor's house, where all the relatives had assembled, enticed by curiosity. The arrival of the young viscount produced a lively sensation, all the more because its effect was different on each person present. Mesdemoiselles Cremiere and Massin whispered together and looked at Ursula, who blushed. The mothers said to Desire that Goupil was right about the marriage. The eyes of all present turned towards the doctor, who did not rise to receive the young nobleman, but merely bowed his head without laying down the dice-box, for he was playing a game of backgammon with Monsieur Bongrand. The doctor's cold manner surprised every one.

"Ursula, my child," he said, "give us a little music."

While the young girl, delighted to have something to do to keep her in countenance, went to the piano and began to move the green-covered music-books, the heirs resigned themselves, with many demonstrations of pleasure, to the torture and the silence about to be inflicted on them, so eager were they to find out what was going on between their uncle and the Portendueres.

In sometimes happens that a piece of music, poor in itself, when played by a young girl under the influence of deep feeling, makes more impression than a fine overture played by a full orchestra. In all music there is, besides the thought of the composer, the soul of the performer, who, by a privilege granted to this art only, can give both meaning and poetry to passages which are in themselves of no great value. Chopin proves, for that unresponsive instrument the piano, the truth of this fact, already proved by Paganini on the violin. That fine genius is less a musician than a soul which makes itself felt, and communicates itself through all species of music, even simple chords. Ursula, by her exquisite and sensitive organization, belonged to this rare class of beings, and old Schmucke, the master, who came every Saturday and who, during Ursula's stay in Paris was with her every day, had brought his pupil's talent to its full perfection. "Rousseau's Dream," the piece now chosen by Ursula, composed by Herold in his young days, is not without a certain depth which is capable of being developed by execution. Ursula threw into it the feelings which were agitating her being, and justified the term "caprice" given by Herold to the fragment. With soft and dreamy touch her soul spoke to the young man's soul and wrapped it, as in a cloud, with ideas that were almost visible.

Sitting at the end of the piano, his elbow resting on the cover and his head on his left hand, Savinien admired Ursula, whose eyes, fixed on the paneling of the wall beyond him, seemed to be questioning another world. Many a man would have fallen deeply in love for a less reason. Genuine feelings have a magnetism of their own, and Ursula was willing to show her soul, as a coquette her dresses to be admired. Savinien entered that delightful kingdom, led by this pure heart, which, to interpret its feelings, borrowed the power of the only art that speaks to thought by thought, without the help of words, or color, or form. Candor, openness of heart have the same power over a man that childhood has; the same charm, the same irresistible seductions. Ursula was never more honest and candid than at this moment, when she was born again into a new life.

The abbe came to tear Savinien from his dream, requesting him to take a fourth hand at whist. Ursula went on playing; the heirs departed, all except Desire, who was resolved to find out the intentions of his uncle and the viscount and Ursula.

"You have as much talent as soul, mademoiselle," he said, when the young girl closed the piano and sat down beside her godfather. "Who is your master?"

"A German, living close to the Rue Dauphine on the quai Conti," said the doctor. "If he had not given Ursula a lesson every day during her stay in Paris he would have been here to-day."

"He is not only a great musician," said Ursula, "but a man of adorable simplicity of nature."

"Those lessons must cost a great deal," remarked Desire.

The players smiled ironically. When the game was over the doctor, who had hitherto seemed anxious and pensive, turned to Savinien with the air of a man who fulfills a duty.

"Monsieur," he said, "I am grateful for the feeling which leads you to make me this early visit; but your mother attributes unworthy and underhand motives to what I have done, and I should give her the right to call them true if I did not request you to refrain from coming here, in spite of the honor your visits are to me, and the pleasure I should otherwise feel in cultivating your society. Tell your mother that if I do not beg her, in my niece's name and my own, to do us the honor of dining here next Sunday it is because I am very certain that she would find herself indisposed on that day."

The old man held out his hand to the young viscount, who pressed it respectfully, saying:—

"You are quite right, monsieur."

He then withdrew; but not without a bow to Ursula, in which there was more of sadness than disappointment.

Desire left the house at the same time; but he found it impossible to exchange even a word with the young nobleman, who rushed into his own house precipitately.



CHAPTER XIII. BETROTHAL OF HEARTS

This rupture between the Portendueres and Doctor Minoret gave talk among the heirs for a week; they did homage to the genius of Dionis, and regarded their inheritance as rescued.

So, in an age when ranks are leveled, when the mania for equality puts everybody on one footing and threatens to destroy all bulwarks, even military subordination,—that last refuge of power in France, where passions have now no other obstacles to overcome than personal antipathies, or differences of fortune,—the obstinacy of an old-fashioned Breton woman and the dignity of Doctor Minoret created a barrier between these lovers, which was to end, as such obstacles often do, not in destroying but in strengthening love. To an ardent man a woman's value is that which she costs him; Savinien foresaw a struggle, great efforts, many uncertainties, and already the young girl was rendered dearer to him; he was resolved to win her. Perhaps our feelings obey the laws of nature as to the lastingness of her creations; to a long life a long childhood.

The next morning, when they woke, Ursula and Savinien had the same thought. An intimate understanding of this kind would create love if it were not already its most precious proof. When the young girl parted her curtains just far enough to let her eyes take in Savinien's window, she saw the face of her lover above the fastening of his. When one reflects on the immense services that windows render to lovers it seems natural and right that a tax should be levied on them. Having thus protested against her godfather's harshness, Ursula dropped the curtain and opened her window to close the outer blinds, through which she could continue to see without being seen herself. Seven or eight times during the day she went up to her room, always to find the young viscount writing, tearing up what he had written, and then writing again—to her, no doubt!

The next morning when she woke La Bougival gave her the following letter:—

To Mademoiselle Ursula:

Mademoiselle,—I do not conceal from myself the distrust a young man inspires when he has placed himself in the position from which your godfather's kindness released me. I know that I must in future give greater guarantees of good conduct than other men; therefore, mademoiselle, it is with deep humility that I place myself at your feet and ask you to consider my love. This declaration is not dictated by passion; it comes from an inward certainty which involves the whole of life. A foolish infatuation for my young aunt, Madame de Kergarouet, was the cause of my going to prison; will you not regard as a proof of my sincere love the total disappearance of those wishes, of that image, now effaced from my heart by yours? No sooner did I see you, asleep and so engaging in your childlike slumber at Bouron, than you occupied my soul as a queen takes possession of her empire. I will have no other wife than you. You have every qualification I desire in her who is to bear my name. The education you have received and the dignity of your own mind, place you on the level of the highest positions. But I doubt myself too much to dare describe you to yourself; I can only love you. After listening to you yesterday I recalled certain words which seem as though written for you; suffer me to transcribe them:—

"Made to draw all hearts and charm all eyes, gentle and intelligent, spiritual yet able to reason, courteous as though she had passed her life at court, simple as the hermit who had never known the world, the fire of her soul is tempered in her eyes by sacred modesty."

I feel the value of the noble soul revealed in you by many, even the most trifling, things. This it is which gives me the courage to ask you, provided you love no one else, to let me prove to you by my conduct and my devotion that I am not unworthy of you. It concerns my very life; you cannot doubt that all my powers will be employed, not only in trying to please you, but in deserving your esteem, which is more precious to me than any other upon earth. With this hope, Ursula—if you will suffer me so to call you in my heart—Nemours will be to me a paradise, the hardest tasks will bring me joys derived through you, as life itself is derived from God. Tell me that I may call myself

Your Savinien.

Ursula kissed the letter; then, having re-read it and clasped it with passionate motions, she dressed herself eagerly to carry it to her uncle.

"Ah, my God! I nearly forgot to say my prayers!" she exclaimed, turning back to kneel on her prie-Dieu.

A few moments later she went down to the garden, where she found her godfather and made him read the letter. They both sat down on a bench under the arch of climbing plants opposite to the Chinese pagoda. Ursula awaited the old man's words, and the old man reflected long, too long for the impatient young girl. At last, the result of their secret interview appeared in the following answer, part of which the doctor undoubtedly dictated.

To Monsieur le Vicomte Savinien de Portenduere:

Monsieur,—I cannot be otherwise than greatly honored by the letter in which you offer me your hand; but, at my age, and according to the rules of my education, I have felt bound to communicate it to my godfather, who is all I have, and whom I love as a father and also as a friend. I must now tell you the painful objections which he has made to me, and which must be to you my answer.

Monsieur le vicomte, I am a poor girl, whose fortune depends entirely, not only on my godfather's good-will, but also on the doubtful success of the measures he may take to elude the schemes of his relatives against me. Though I am the legitimate daughter of Joseph Mirouet, band-master of the 45th regiment of infantry, my father himself was my godfather's natural half-brother; and therefore these relatives may, though without reason, being a suit against a young girl who would be defenceless. You see, monsieur, that the smallness of my fortune is not my greatest misfortune. I have many things to make me humble. It is for your sake, and not for my own, that I lay before you these facts, which to loving and devoted hearts are sometimes of little weight. But I beg you to consider, monsieur, that if I did not submit them to you, I might be suspected of leading your tenderness to overlook obstacles which the world, and more especially your mother, regard as insuperable.

I shall be sixteen in four months. Perhaps you will admit that we are both too young and too inexperienced to understand the miseries of a life entered upon without other fortune than that I have received from the kindness of the late Monsieur de Jordy. My godfather desires, moreover, not to marry me until I am twenty. Who knows what fate may have in store for you in four years, the finest years of your life? do not sacrifice them to a poor girl.

Having thus explained to you, monsieur, the opinions of my dear godfather, who, far from opposing my happiness, seeks to contribute to it in every way, and earnestly desires that his protection, which must soon fail me, may be replaced by a tenderness equal to his own; there remains only to tell you how touched I am by your offer and by the compliments which accompany it. The prudence which dictates my letter is that of an old man to whom life is well-known; but the gratitude I express is that of a young girl, in whose soul no other sentiment has arisen.

Therefore, monsieur, I can sign myself, in all sincerity,

Your servant, Ursula Mirouet.

Savinien made no reply. Was he trying to soften his mother? Had this letter put an end to his love? Many such questions, all insoluble, tormented poor Ursula, and, by repercussion, the doctor too, who suffered from every agitation of his darling child. Ursula went often to her chamber to look at Savinien, whom she usually found sitting pensively before his table with his eyes turned towards her window. At the end of the week, but no sooner, she received a letter from him; the delay was explained by his increasing love.

To Mademoiselle Ursula Mirouet:

Dear Ursula,—I am a Breton, and when my mind is once made up nothing can change me. Your godfather, whom may God preserve to us, is right; but does it follow that I am wrong in loving you? Therefore, all I want to know from you is whether you could love me. Tell me this, if only by a sign, and then the next four years will be the finest of my life.

A friend of mine has delivered to my great-uncle, Vice-admiral Kergarouet, a letter in which I asked his help to enter the navy. The kind old man, grieved at my misfortune, replies that even the king's favor would be thwarted by the rules of the service in case I wanted a certain rank. Nevertheless, if I study three months at Toulon, the minister of war can send me to sea as master's mate; then after a cruise against the Algerines, with whom we are now at war, I can go through an examination and become a midshipman. Moreover, if I distinguish myself in an expedition they are fitting out against Algiers, I shall certainly be made ensign—but how soon? that no one can tell. Only, they will make the rules as elastic as possible to have the name of Portenduere again in the navy.

I see very plainly that I can only hope to obtain you from your godfather; and your respect for him makes you still dearer to me. Before replying to the admiral, I must have an interview with the doctor; on his reply my whole future will depend. Whatever comes of it, know this, that rich or poor, the daughter of a band master or the daughter of a king, you are the woman whom the voice of my heart points out to me. Dear Ursula, we live in times when prejudices which might once have separated us have no power to prevent our marriage. To you, then, I offer the feelings of my heart, to your uncle the guarantees which secure to him your happiness. He has not seen that I, in a few hours, came to love you more than he has loved you in fifteen years.

Until this evening. Savinien.

"Here, godfather," said Ursula, holding the letter out to him with a proud gesture.

"Ah, my child!" cried the doctor when he had read it, "I am happier than even you. He repairs all his faults by this resolution."

After dinner Savinien presented himself, and found the doctor walking with Ursula by the balustrade of the terrace overlooking the river. The viscount had received his clothes from Paris, and had not missed heightening his natural advantages by a careful toilet, as elegant as though he were striving to please the proud and beautiful Comtesse de Kergarouet. Seeing him approach her from the portico, the poor girl clung to her uncle's arm as though she were saving herself from a fall over a precipice, and the doctor heard the beating of her heart, which made him shudder.

"Leave us, my child," he said to the girl, who went to the pagoda and sat upon the steps, after allowing Savinien to take her hand and kiss it respectfully.

"Monsieur, will you give this dear hand to a naval captain?" he said to the doctor in a low voice.

"No," said Minoret, smiling; "we might have to wait too long, but—I will give her to a lieutenant."

Tears of joy filled the young man's eyes as he pressed the doctor's hand affectionately.

"I am about to leave," he said, "to study hard and try to learn in six months what the pupils of the Naval School take six years to acquire."

"You are going?" said Ursula, springing towards them from the pavilion.

"Yes, mademoiselle, to deserve you. Therefore the more eager I am to go, the more I prove to you my affection."

"This is the 3rd of October," she said, looking at him with infinite tenderness; "do not go till after the 19th."

"Yes," said the old man, "we will celebrate Saint-Savinien's day."

"Good-by, then," cried the young man. "I must spend this week in Paris, to take the preliminary steps, buy books and mathematical instruments, and try to conciliate the minister and get the best terms that I can for myself."

Ursula and her godfather accompanied Savinien to the gate. Soon after he entered his mother's house they saw him come out again, followed by Tiennette carrying his valise.

"If you are rich," said Ursula to her uncle, "why do you make him serve in the navy?"

"Presently it will be I who incurred his debts," said the doctor, smiling. "I don't oblige him to do anything; but the uniform, my dear, and the cross of the Legion of honor, won in battle, will wipe out many stains. Before six years are over he may be in command of a ship, and that's all I ask of him."

"But he may be killed," she said, turning a pale face upon the doctor.

"Lovers, like drunkards, have a providence of their own," he said, laughing.

That night the poor child, with La Bougival's help, cut off a sufficient quantity of her long and beautiful blond hair to make a chain; and the next day she persuaded old Schmucke, the music-master, to take it to Paris and have the chain made and returned by the following Sunday. When Savinien got back he informed the doctor and Ursula that he had signed his articles and was to be at Brest on the 25th. The doctor asked him to dinner on the 18th, and he passed nearly two whole days in the old man's house. Notwithstanding much sage advice and many resolutions, the lovers could not help betraying their secret understanding to the watchful eyes of the abbe, Monsieur Bongrand, the Nemours doctor, and La Bougival.

"Children," said the old man, "you are risking your happiness by not keeping it to yourselves."

On the fete-day, after mass, during which several glances had been exchanged, Savinien, watched by Ursula, crossed the road and entered the little garden where the pair were practically alone; for the kind old man, by way of indulgence, was reading his newspapers in the pagoda.

"Dear Ursula," said Savinien; "will you make a gift greater than my mother could make me even if—"

"I know what you wish to ask me," she said, interrupting him. "See, here is my answer," she added, taking from the pocket of her apron the box containing the chain made of her hair, and offering it to him with a nervous tremor which testified to her illimitable happiness. "Wear it," she said, "for love of me. May it shield you from all dangers by reminding you that my life depends on yours."

"Naughty little thing! she is giving him a chain of her hair," said the doctor to himself. "How did she manage to get it? what a pity to cut those beautiful fair tresses; she will be giving him my life's blood next."

"You will not blame me if I ask you to give me, now that I am leaving you, a formal promise to have no other husband than me," said Savinien, kissing the chain and looking at Ursula with tears in his eyes.

"Have I not said so too often—I who went to see the walls of Sainte-Pelagie when you were behind them?—" she replied, blushing. "I repeat it, Savinien; I shall never love any one but you, and I will be yours alone."

Seeing that Ursula was half-hidden by the creepers, the young man could not deny himself the happiness of pressing her to his heart and kissing her forehead; but she gave a feeble cry and dropped upon the bench, and when Savinien sat beside her, entreating pardon, he saw the doctor standing before them.

"My friend," said the old man, "Ursula is a born sensitive; too rough a word might kill her. For her sake you must moderate the enthusiasm of your love—Ah! if you had loved her for sixteen years as I have, you would have been satisfied with her word of promise," he added, to revenge himself for the last sentence in Savinien's second letter.

Two days later the young man departed. In spite of the letters which he wrote regularly to Ursula, she fell a prey to an illness without apparent cause. Like a fine fruit with a worm at the core, a single thought gnawed her heart. She lost both appetite and color. The first time her godfather asked her what she felt, she replied:—

"I want to see the ocean."

"It is difficult to take you to a sea-port in the depth of winter," answered the old man.

"Shall I really go?" she said.

If the wind was high, Ursula was inwardly convulsed, certain, in spite of the learned assurances of the doctor and the abbe, that Savinien was being tossed about in a whirlwind. Monsieur Bongrand made her happy for days with the gift of an engraving representing a midshipman in uniform. She read the newspapers, imagining that they would give news of the cruiser on which her lover sailed. She devoured Cooper's sea-tales and learned to use sea-terms. Such proofs of concentration of feeling, often assumed by other women, were so genuine in Ursula that she saw in dreams the coming of Savinien's letters, and never failed to announce them, relating the dream as a forerunner.

"Now," she said to the doctor the fourth time that this happened, "I am easy; wherever Savinien may be, if he is wounded I shall know it instantly."

The old doctor thought over this remark so anxiously that the abbe and Monsieur Bongrand were troubled by the sorrowful expression of his face.

"What pains you?" they said, when Ursula had left them.

"Will she live?" replied the doctor. "Can so tender and delicate a flower endure the trials of the heart?"

Nevertheless, the "little dreamer," as the abbe called her, was working hard. She understood the importance of a fine education to a woman of the world, and all the time she did not give to her singing and to the study of harmony and composition she spent in reading the books chosen for her by the abbe from her godfather's rich library. And yet while leading this busy life she suffered, though without complaint. Sometimes she would sit for hours looking at Savinien's window. On Sundays she would leave the church behind Madame de Portenduere and watch her tenderly; for, in spite of the old lady's harshness, she loved her as Savinien's mother. Her piety increased; she went to mass every morning, for she firmly believed that her dreams were the gift of God.

At last her godfather, frightened by the effects produced by this nostalgia of love, promised on her birthday to take her to Toulon to see the departure of the fleet for Algiers. Savinien's ship formed part of it, but he was not to be informed beforehand of their intention. The abbe and Monsieur Bongrand kept secret the object of this journey, said to be for Ursula's health, which disturbed and greatly puzzled the relations. After beholding Savinien in his naval uniform, and going on board the fine flag-ship of the admiral, to whom the minister had given young Portenduere a special recommendation, Ursula, at her lover's entreaty, went with her godfather to Nice, and along the shores of the Mediterranean to Genoa, where she heard of the safe arrival of the fleet at Algiers and the landing of the troops. The doctor would have liked to continue the journey through Italy, as much to distract Ursula's mind as to finish, in some sense, her education, by enlarging her ideas through comparison with other manners and customs and countries, and by the fascination of a land where the masterpieces of art can still be seen, and where so many civilizations have left their brilliant traces. But the tidings of the opposition by the throne to the newly elected Chamber of 1830 obliged the doctor to return to France, bringing back his treasure in a flourishing state of health and possessed of a charming little model of the ship on which Savinien was serving.

The elections of 1830 united into an active body the various Minoret relations,—Desire and Goupil having formed a committee in Nemours by whose efforts a liberal candidate was put in nomination at Fontainebleau. Massin, as collector of taxes, exercised an enormous influence over the country electors. Five of the post master's farmers were electors. Dionis represented eleven votes. After a few meetings at the notary's, Cremiere, Massin, the post master, and their adherents took a habit of assembling there. By the time the doctor returned, Dionis's office and salon were the camp of his heirs. The justice of peace and the mayor, who had formed an alliance, backed by the nobility in the neighbouring castles, to resist the liberals of Nemours, now worsted in their efforts, were more closely united than ever by their defeat.

By the time Bongrand and the Abbe Chaperon were able to tell the doctor by word of mouth the result of the antagonism, which was defined for the first time, between the two classes in Nemours (giving incidentally such importance to his heirs) Charles X. had left Rambouillet for Cherbourg. Desire Minoret, whose opinions were those of the Paris bar, sent for fifteen of his friends, commanded by Goupil and mounted on horses from his father's stable, who arrived in Paris on the night of the 28th. With this troop Goupil and Desire took part in the capture of the Hotel-de-Veille. Desire was decorated with the Legion of honor and appointed deputy procureur du roi at Fontainebleau. Goupil received the July cross. Dionis was elected mayor of Nemours, and the city council was composed of the post master (now assistant-mayor), Massin, Cremiere, and all the adherents of the family faction. Bongrand retained his place only through the influence of his son, procureur du roi at Melun, whose marriage with Mademoiselle Levrault was then on the tapis.

Seeing the three-per-cents quoted at forty-five, the doctor started by post for Paris, and invested five hundred and forty thousand francs in shares to bearer. The rest of his fortune which amounted to about two hundred and seventy thousand francs, standing in his own name in the same funds, gave him ostensibly an income of fifteen thousand francs a year. He made the same disposition of Ursula's little capital bequeathed to her by de Jordy, together with the accrued interest thereon, which gave her about fourteen hundred francs a year in her own right. La Bougival, who had laid by some five thousand francs of her savings, did the same by the doctor's advice, receiving in future three hundred and fifty francs a year in dividends. These judicious transactions, agreed on between the doctor and Monsieur Bongrand, were carried out in perfect secrecy, thanks to the political troubles of the time.

When quiet was again restored the doctor bought the little house which adjoined his own and pulled it down so as to build a coach-house and stables on its side. To employ a capital which would have given him a thousand francs a year on outbuildings seemed actual folly to the Minoret heirs. This folly, if it were one, was the beginning of a new era in the doctor's existence, for he now (at a period when horses and carriages were almost given away) brought back from Paris three fine horses and a caleche.

When, in the early part of November, 1830, the old man came to church on a rainy day in the new carriage, and gave his hand to Ursula to help her out, all the inhabitants flocked to the square,—as much to see the caleche and question the coachman, as to criticize the goddaughter, to whose excessive pride and ambition Massin, Cremiere, the post master, and their wives attributed this extravagant folly of the old man.

"A caleche! Hey, Massin!" cried Goupil. "Your inheritance will go at top speed now!"

"You ought to be getting good wages, Cabirolle," said the post master to the son of one of his conductors, who stood by the horses; "for it is to be supposed an old man of eighty-four won't use up many horse-shoes. What did those horses cost?"

"Four thousand francs. The caleche, though second-hand, was two thousand; but it's a fine one, the wheels are patent."

"Yes, it's a good carriage," said Cremiere; "and a man must be rich to buy that style of thing."

"Ursula means to go at a good pace," said Goupil. "She's right; she's showing you how to enjoy life. Why don't you have fine carriages and horses, papa Minoret? I wouldn't let myself be humiliated if I were you—I'd buy a carriage fit for a prince."

"Come, Cabirolle, tell us," said Massin, "is it the girl who drives our uncle into such luxury?"

"I don't know," said Cabirolle; "but she is almost mistress of the house. There are masters upon masters down from Paris. They say now she is going to study painting."

"Then I shall seize the occasion to have my portrait drawn," said Madame Cremiere.

In the provinces they always say a picture is drawn, not painted.

"The old German is not dismissed, is he?" said Madame Massin.

"He was there yesterday," replied Cabirolle.

"Now," said Goupil, "you may as well give up counting on your inheritance. Ursula is seventeen years old, and she is prettier than ever. Travel forms young people, and the little minx has got your uncle in the toils. Five or six parcels come down for her by the diligence every week, and the dressmakers and milliners come too, to try on her gowns and all the rest of it. Madame Dionis is furious. Watch for Ursula as she comes out of church and look at the little scarf she is wearing round her neck,—real cashmere, and it cost six hundred francs!"

If a thunderbolt had fallen in the midst of the heirs the effect would have been less than that of Goupil's last words; the mischief-maker stood by rubbing his hands.

The doctor's old green salon had been renovated by a Parisian upholsterer. Judged by the luxury displayed, he was sometimes accused of hoarding immense wealth, sometimes of spending his capital on Ursula. The heirs called him in turn a miser and a spendthrift, but the saying, "He's an old fool!" summed upon, on the whole, the verdict of the neighbourhood. These mistaken judgments of the little town had the one advantage of misleading the heirs, who never suspected the love between Savinien and Ursula, which was the secret reason of the doctor's expenditure. The old man took the greatest delights in accustoming his godchild to her future station in the world. Possessing an income of over fifty thousand francs a year, it gave him pleasure to adorn his idol.

In the month of February, 1832, the day when Ursula was eighteen, her eyes beheld Savinien in the uniform of an ensign as she looked from her window when she rose in the morning.

"Why didn't I know he was coming?" she said to herself.

After the taking of Algiers, Savinien had distinguished himself by an act of courage which won him the cross. The corvette on which he was serving was many months at sea without his being able to communicate with the doctor; and he did not wish to leave the service without consulting him. Desirous of retaining in the navy a name already illustrious in its service, the new government had profited by a general change of officers to make Savinien an ensign. Having obtained leave of absence for fifteen days, the new officer arrived from Toulon by the mail, in time for Ursula's fete, intending to consult the doctor at the same time.

"He has come!" cried Ursula rushing into her godfather's bedroom.

"Very good," he answered; "I can guess what brings him, and he may now stay in Nemours."

"Ah! that's my birthday present—it is all in that sentence," she said, kissing him.

On a sign, which she ran up to make from her window, Savinien came over at once; she longed to admire him, for he seemed to her so changed for the better. Military service does, in fact, give a certain grave decision to the air and carriage and gestures of a man, and an erect bearing which enables the most superficial observer to recognize a military man even in plain clothes. The habit of command produces this result. Ursula loved Savinien the better for it, and took a childlike pleasure in walking round the garden with him, taking his arm, and hearing him relate the part he played (as midshipman) in the taking of Algiers. Evidently Savinien had taken the city. The doctor, who had been watching them from his window as he dressed, soon came down. Without telling the viscount everything, he did say that, in case Madame de Portenduere consented to his marriage with Ursula, the fortune of his godchild would make his naval pay superfluous.

"Alas!" said Savinien. "It will take a great deal of time to overcome my mother's opposition. Before I left her to enter the navy she was placed between two alternatives,—either to consent to my marrying Ursula or else to see me only from time to time and to know me exposed to the dangers of the profession; and you see she chose to let me go."

"But, Savinien, we shall be together," said Ursula, taking his hand and shaking it with a sort of impatience.

To see each other and not to part,—that was the all of love to her; she saw nothing beyond it; and her pretty gesture and the petulant tone of her voice expressed such innocence that Savinien and the doctor were both moved by it. The resignation was written and despatched, and Ursula's fete received full glory from the presence of her betrothed. A few months later, towards the month of May, the home-life of the doctor's household had resumed the quite tenor of its way but with one welcome visitor the more. The attentions of the young viscount were soon interpreted in the town as those of a future husband,—all the more because his manners and those of Ursula, whether in church, or on the promenade, though dignified and reserved, betrayed the understanding of their hearts. Dionis pointed out to the heirs that the doctor had never asked Madame de Portenduere for the interest of his money, three years of which was now due.