Ursule Mirouët (Tomlinson translation)/Part I/9
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Nine o’clock was striking when the little door contrived within the large one closed upon the curé, who eagerly rang at the doctor’s gate. From Tiennette the Abbé Chaperon fell into the hands of La Bougival, for the old nurse said:
“You are very late, Monsieur le Curé!” just as the other had said: “Why do you leave madame so early when she is in trouble?”
The curé found a large party in the doctor’s green and brown salon, for Dionis had been to reassure the heirs, by calling on Massin to repeat his uncle’s words to him.
“I think,” he said, “that Ursule has a love in her heart which will give her nothing but sorrow and anxiety; she seems to be romantic—thus do notaries term excessive sensitiveness,—and we shall see her long remain single. Therefore, no suspicion; show her particular attention, and be your uncle’s servants, for he is more cunning than a hundred Goupils,” added the notary, not knowing that Goupil is a corruption of the latin word, vulpes, a fox.
And so, Mesdames Massin and Crémière, their husbands, the postmaster and Désiré formed, with the Nemours doctor and Bongrand, a noisy and unwonted company at the doctor’s house. As he came in the Abbé Chaperon heard the sound of the piano. Poor Ursule was finishing Beethoven’s symphony in A.
With the craftiness that innocence is allowed, the child, whom her godfather had enlightened and who disliked the heirs, chose this grand music which has to be studied to be understood, so as to put these women out of conceit with their fancy. The more beautiful music is, the less ignorant people enjoy it. And so, when the door opened and the Abbé Chaperon showed his venerable head the heirs cried: “Ah! here is Monsieur le Curé!” all delighted at being able to get up and put an end to their torture.
The exclamation found an echo at the card-table, where Bongrand, the Nemours doctor and the old man were victims of the presumption with which the tax-collector, in order to please his great-uncle, had proposed himself as a fourth at whist. Ursule left the piano. The doctor rose as if to greet the curé, but really to put a stop to the game. After greatly complimenting their uncle upon his goddaughter’s talent, the heirs made their bows.
“Good-night, my friends,” cried the doctor when the iron gate resounded.
“Ah! is that what costs so dear?” said Madame Crémière to Madame Massin when they had gone a few steps.
“Heaven defend me from giving the money for my little Aline to treat me to such a clatter in the house!” replied Madame Massin.
“She said that it was by Bethovan who is supposed to be a great musician,” said the tax-collector, “he has some reputation.”
“Upon my faith! it is not at Nemours then,” rejoined Madame Crémière, “and he is well named Bête à vent.”
“I believe that our uncle did it on purpose so that we should not go there again,” said Massin, “for he winked at his conceited creature as he showed the green volume.”
“If they amuse themselves with that racket,” returned the postmaster, “they do well to stay by themselves.”
“The justice of the peace must be very fond of playing to listen to those Sonacles,” said Madame Crémière.
“I shall never be able to play before people who do not understand music,” said Ursule, going and sitting beside the card-table.
“Ideas, with richly organized people, can only develop in a favorable sphere,” said the curé of Nemours. “In the same way as a priest could not bless in the presence of an evil spirit, as the chestnut dies in rich ground, so a musical genius experiences an inward defeat when he is surrounded by ignorant persons. In all the arts we must receive, from the souls that serve as a medium to our souls, as much strength as we impart to them. This axiom which governs human affections has prompted the proverbs: ‘One must do as others do;’ ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’ But the suffering that you must have endured only overtakes tender, delicate natures.”
“Therefore, my friends,” said the doctor, “a thing that would merely pain any other woman might kill my little Ursule. Ah! when I am no more, raise that protecting hedge between this dear flower and the world which is spoken of in Catullus’ verse: Ut flos, etc.”
“And yet these ladies were very flattering to you, Ursule,” said the justice of the peace, smiling.
“Coarsely flattering,” observed the Nemours doctor.
“I have always remarked coarseness in flattery made to order,” replied old Minoret, “and why?”
“A genuine thought bears its own delicacy,” said the abbé.
“You dined with Madame de Portenduère?” then said Ursule, questioning the Abbé Chaperon with a look full of anxious curiosity.
“Yes, the poor lady is much distressed, and it is possible that she may come to see you to-night, Monsieur Minoret.”
“If she is in trouble and has need of me, I will call upon her,” cried the doctor, “let us finish the last rubber.”
Under the table Ursule squeezed the old man’s hand.
“Her son,” said the justice of the peace, “was a little too simple to live in Paris without a mentor. When I knew that enquiries were being made at the notary’s about the old lady’s farm, I guessed that he was discounting his mother’s death.”
“Do you believe him capable of it?” said Ursule, darting a terrible look at Monsieur Bongrand, who said to himself: “Alas! yes! she loves him.”
“Yes and no,” said the Nemours doctor, “Savinien has good in him and that is why he is in prison; rascals never go there.”
“My friends,” cried old Minoret, “this is quite enough for to-night; one must not allow a poor mother to weep a moment longer, when one can dry her tears.”
The four friends rose and went out Ursule accompanied them as far as the iron gate, watching her godfather and the curé knocking at the opposite door; and, when Tiennette had shown them in, she sat down on one of the posts outside the house, with La Bougival beside her.
“Madame la Vicomtesse,” said the curé, who was the first to enter the little parlor, “Monsieur le Docteur did not at all wish you to take the trouble to go to his house—”
“I belong too much to bygone days, madame,” rejoined the doctor, “not to know all that a man owes to a lady of your rank, and I am only too happy, after what Monsieur le Curé has told me, to be able to render you some service.”
Madame de Portenduère, upon whom the step agreed upon had weighed so heavily that, since the Abbé Chaperon’s departure, she had resolved to apply to the Nemours notary, was so surprised at Minoret’s delicacy, that she rose to return his bow and pointed to an armchair.
“Sit down, monsieur,” she said with a royal air, “our dear curé will have told you that the viscount is in prison for a few boyish debts, a hundred thousand francs—If you could lend them to him, I would give you as security my Bordières farm.”
“We will talk of that, Madame la Vicomtesse, when I shall have restored monsieur your son to you, if you will allow me to be your agent in these circumstances.”
“Very well, Monsieur le Docteur,” replied the old lady, inclining her head, and looking at the curé as much as to say, “You are right, he is a man of good breeding.”
“My friend the doctor,” then said the curé, “is, as you see, madame, full of devotion to your family.”
“We shall be very grateful to you, monsieur,” said Madame de Portenduère, with visible effort, “for, at your age, to venture in Paris on the track of a giddy-brain’s misdeeds—”
“Madame, in ’65, I had the honor of seeing the illustrious Admiral de Portenduère at the house of that excellent Monsieur de Malesherbes, and at the house of Monsieur le Comte de Buffon, who wished to question him about several curious facts of his voyages. It is quite possible that the late Monsieur de Portenduère, your husband, may have been there. At that time the French navy was glorious, it was making head against England, and in this profession the captain contributed his share of courage. How impatiently, in ’83 and ’84, did we wait for news of the camp of Saint-Roch! I all but went as doctor with the King’s forces. At that time your great-uncle, the Admiral de Kergarouët who is still living, waged his famous battle, for he was on La Belle Poule.”
“Ah! if he knew that his grand-nephew were in prison!”
“Monsieur le Vicomte will not be there two days longer,” said old Minoret, rising.
He put out his hand to take that of the old lady, who suffered him to do so, he deposited a respectful kiss upon it, made a low bow, and went out; but he returned to say to the curé: “My dear abbé, will you engage a seat for me in the diligence for tomorrow morning?”
The curé remained about half an hour singing the praises of Doctor Minoret, who had intended making a conquest of the old lady, and had succeeded.
“He is wonderful for his age,” she said, “he talks of going to Paris and arranging my son’s affairs as if he were only twenty-five years old. He has been in good society.”
“The best, madame; and, nowadays, more than one son of a poor French peer would be glad to marry his ward, who is worth a million. Ah! if this idea entered Savinien’s head, times are so changed, that the greatest objections would not be on your side after your son’s behavior.”
The profound astonishment that this last sentence caused the old lady permitted the curé to finish.
“You are out of your mind, my dear Abbé Chaperon.”
“You must think of it, madame, and God grant that your son may in future so conduct himself as to win this old man’s esteem!”
“If it were not you, Monsieur le Curé,” said Madame de Portenduère, “if anybody else were to speak to me so—”
“You would not see him again,” said the Abbé Chaperon, smiling. “Let us hope that your dear son will tell you what goes on in Paris in the way of marriages. You will think of Savinien’s happiness, and, after having already compromised his future, will not prevent him from creating himself a position.”
“And it is you who say this to me!”
“If I did not say it to you, who would?” cried the priest, rising and beating a hasty retreat.
The curé saw Ursule and her godfather walking round the courtyard. The tender-hearted doctor had been so much teased by his goddaughter that he had just yielded; she wanted to go to Paris and was giving him a thousand pretexts. He called the curé, who came, and the doctor begged him to retain all the front seats for him that same evening, if the diligence office were still open. The next day, at half-past six in the evening, the old man and the young girl arrived in Paris, where, that very evening, the doctor went to consult his notary. Political events were threatening. Several times the day before, whilst talking with the doctor, the justice of the peace at Nemours had said that it was madness to keep one penny’s income in stocks as long as the dispute that had arisen between the press and the Court was still undecided. Minoret’s notary approved of the advice indirectly given by the justice of the peace. And so the doctor took advantage of his journey to realize his industrial shares and his stock, all of which happened to be rising, and to deposit his funds in the Bank. The notary also persuaded his old client to sell out the stock left to Ursule by Monsieur de Jordy, and which, like a good father of a family, he had turned to account. He promised to set an exceedingly crafty agent to deal with Savinien’s creditors; but it was necessary, in order to succeed, that the young man should have the courage to remain a few days longer in prison.
“In this sort of business hurry costs at least fifteen per cent,” said the notary to the doctor. “And, in the first place, you will not have your funds before seven or eight days.”
When Ursule heard that Savinien would be at least a week longer in prison, she begged her guardian to let her accompany him for once. Old Minoret refused. The uncle and the niece were staying in a hotel in the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, where the doctor had taken the whole of a convenient suit; and, knowing his ward’s conscientiousness, made her promise not to go out when he was gone about his business. The good old man took Ursule about Paris, and showed her the thoroughfares, the shops and the boulevards; but nothing interested or amused her.
“What do you want to do?” said the old man.
“To see Sainte-Pélagie,” she obstinately replied.
Then Minoret took a cab and drove her as far as the Rue de la Clef, where the carriage stopped in front of the ignoble façade of the former monastery, now transformed into a prison. The sight of these high, gray walls where all the windows were barred, and the wicket can only be entered by stooping—awful lesson!—this gloomy pile in a quarter full of misery where it stands up amidst deserted streets like a crowning misery: all these melancholy things overcame Ursule and made her weep a little.
“What!” she said, “are young men imprisoned for money? how can a debt give a money-lender even greater power than the king? And so he is there!” she cried, “and where, godfather?” she added, looking from window to window.
“Ursule,” said the old man, “you make me play the fool. This is not forgetting him.”
“But,” she rejoined, “if I must give him up, may I not feel any interest in him? I can love him and marry nobody else.”
“Ah!” cried the kind old man, “there is so much reason in your infatuation, that I am sorry I brought you here.”
Three days later, the old man had the receipts in due form, the claims, and all the documents establishing Savinien’s freedom. This settlement, including the agent’s fees, had been effected for the sum of eighty thousand francs. The doctor still had eight hundred thousand francs left, which his notary made him invest in Treasury bonds, in order not to lose too much interest. He was keeping twenty thousand francs in bank-notes for Savinien. The doctor went himself to secure his freedom on Saturday at two o’clock, and the young viscount, already informed by a letter from his mother, thanked his deliverer with sincere earnestness of heart.
“You must not delay in going to see your mother,” said old Minoret.
Savinien in some confusion replied that he had contracted a debt of honor in prison, and related the visit of his friends.
“I thought you might have some privileged debt,” cried the doctor, smiling, “your mother borrows one hundred thousand francs from me, but I have only paid ninety thousand; here is the remainder, be careful of it, monsieur, and consider what you keep of it as your stake on the green baize of Fortune.”
During the last eight days, Savinien had been reflecting upon the present time. The competition in everything exacts great labor from the man who seeks a fortune. Unlawful means demand more talent and underhand dealings than an open quest. Worldly successes, far from giving any position, devour time and require an enormous amount of money. The name of Portenduère, which his mother had told him was all-powerful, was nothing in Paris. His cousin, the deputy, the Comte de Portenduère, cut but a small figure in the midst of the elective Chamber in the presence of the peerage and the Court, and had none too much credit for himself. The Admiral de Kergarouët only existed through his wife. He had seen orators, men who had come from social surroundings inferior to the nobility or to the petty gentry, become influential persons. After all, money was the pivot, the sole means, the sole mover of a society that Louis XVIII. had insisted upon creating in imitation of England. On the way from the Rue de la Clef to the Rue Croix-des-PetitsChamps, the young man unfolded to the old doctor the summary of his reflections, which were, besides, in keeping with De Marsay’s advice.
“I must,” he said, “be forgotten for three or four years, and seek a profession. Perhaps I may make a name by a book on politics or moral statistics, or by some treatise on one of the questions of the hour. In short, while trying to marry a young girl who will consider me eligible, I will work under cover and in silence.”
By carefully studying the young man’s face, the doctor recognized the seriousness of the wounded man who longs for revenge. He highly approved of this plan.
“Neighbor,” he said, in conclusion, “if you have cast off the skin of the old nobility, which is no longer admissible nowadays, after three or four years of a steady, industrious life, I will undertake to find you a superior, beautiful, amiable and pious young girl, possessed of seven to eight hundred thousand francs, who will make you happy and of whom you will be proud, but who will be noble only in heart.”
“Eh! doctor!” cried the young man, “nowadays there is no longer a nobility, there is only an aristocracy.”
“Go and pay your debts of honor and return here; I am going to engage the front seat of the diligence, for my ward is with me,” said the old man.
At six o’clock that night, the three travelers left in the Ducler from the Rue Dauphine. Ursule, who had put on a veil, never spoke a word. After having, through an impulse of superficial gallantry, sent that kiss which did as much havoc with Ursule as a whole book of love would have done, Savinien had entirely forgotten the doctor’s ward in the torments of his debts, and, besides, his hopeless love for Émilie de Kergarouët did not allow him to give a thought to a few looks exchanged with a little girl of Nemours; and so he did not recognize her when the old man helped her up first and placed himself beside her so as to separate her from the young viscount.
“I shall have some accounts to give you,” said the doctor to the young man, “I am bringing you all your old papers.”
“I very nearly did not come,” said Savinien, “for I had to order some clothes and linen; the Philistines have robbed me of everything, and I am arriving like the prodigal son.”
However interesting the subjects of conversation between the young and the old man might be, however witty certain of Savinien’s answers, the young girl remained dumb until the twilight, her green veil lowered, her hands crossed over her shawl.
“Mademoiselle does not look as if she had been fascinated by Paris,” said Savinien finally, piqued.
“I am glad to return to Nemours,” she replied in a voice of emotion, raising her veil. In spite of the darkness, Savinien then recognized her by the size of her plaits and her shining blue eyes.
“And I, I leave Paris without regret to bury myself in Nemours, since I find my beautiful neighbor there,” he said. “I hope, Monsieur le Docteur, that you will allow me to call upon you; I love music, and I remember having heard Mademoiselle Ursule’s piano.”
“I do not know, monsieur,” said the doctor gravely, “whether your mother will wish to see you visiting an old man who is bound to feel all a mother’s anxiety for this dear child.”
This guarded reply gave Savinien much food for thought and he then remembered the kiss so lightly sent. The night had come, the heat was oppressive, Savinien and the doctor were the first to fall asleep. Ursule, who was awake a long time making plans, succumbed toward midnight. She had removed her little hat of ordinary plaited straw. Her head, covered with an embroidered cap, soon lay upon her godfather’s shoulder. At break of day, at Bouron, Savinien was the first to awaken. He then noticed Ursule with the disordered head caused by the jolting; the cap was crumpled, turned up; the unrolled plaits fell on both sides of her face, flushed with the heat of the carriage; but, in this situation, which would be dreadful for women who depend upon toilette, youth and beauty triumph. Innocence always enjoys good sleep. The half-parted lips showed pretty teeth, the loosened shawl disclosed, without offence to Ursule, under the folds of a colored muslin gown, all the grace of her body. In short, the purity of this virgin soul shone in this physiognomy and was seen to all the better advantage in that no other expression disturbed it. Old Minoret, waking, replaced his daughter’s head in the corner of the carriage so that she could be more comfortable; she let him do as he pleased without noticing it, so soundly was she sleeping after all the nights spent in thinking over Savinien’s misfortune.
“Poor little thing!” he said to his neighbor, “she sleeps like the child that she is.”
“You must be proud of her,” rejoined Savinien, “for she seems to be as good as she is beautiful.”
“Ah! she is the joy of the house. Were she my daughter I could not love her more. She will be sixteen on the fifth of February next. 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 play in Paris, which she was visiting for the first time; but she refused, the curé of Nemours had forbidden it. ‘But,’ I said to her, ‘when you are married suppose your husband should wish to take you?’—‘I will do all that my husband wishes,’ she answered. ‘If he asks me to do some wrong thing and I am weak enough to obey him, he will be charged with those sins before God; but for his sake I should of course draw upon all my strength to resist him.’”
Entering Nemours, at five in the morning, Ursule awoke, all abashed at her untidiness and at meeting Savinien’s look of admiration. In the hour that the diligence takes in coming from Bouron, where it stops a few minutes, the young man had fallen in love with Ursule. He had studied the sincerity of this soul, the beauty of body, the whiteness of the complexion, the delicacy of feature, the charm of the voice which had uttered the short and expressive sentence in which the poor child told all while wishing to tell nothing. In short, I do not know what presentiment told him that Ursule was the wife described to him by the doctor, whilst framing her in gold with these magic words, “Seven to eight hundred thousand francs!”
“In three or four years she will be twenty and I shall be twenty-seven; the good old man spoke of tests, of work, and good conduct! However cunning he may appear, he will end by telling me his secret.”
The three neighbors separated opposite their houses, and Savinien put coquetry into his adieus by casting a look full of entreaty at Ursule. Madame de Portenduère let her son sleep until midday. In spite of the fatigue of the journey the doctor and Ursule went to High Mass. Savinien’s deliverance and his return in the doctor’s company had explained the object of the latter’s absence to the politicians of the town and to the heirs who were assembled in the market-place in a conclave similar to the one they had held there a fortnight before. To the great astonishment of the groups, on the way out from mass, Madame de Portenduère stopped old Minoret, who offered her his arm and took her home. The old lady wished to invite him, as well as his ward, to dinner that same day, telling him that Monsieur le Curé would be her other guest.
“He wanted to show Ursule Paris,” said Minoret-Levrault.
“Plague take him! the old man never takes a step without his little nurse!” cried Crémière.
“There must be great intimacy between them for Madame de Portenduère to take his arm,” said Massin.
“And you have never guessed that your uncle has sold his stock and released young Portenduère!” cried Goupil. “He refused it to my master, but he did not refuse his mistress—Ah! you are done for. The viscount will propose marriage settlements instead of a bond, and the doctor will make the husband indebted to his treasure of a goddaughter for all that it is necessary to give in order to conclude such an alliance.”
“It might not be a mistake to marry Ursule to Monsieur Savinien, “said the butcher. “The old lady is giving a dinner to-night to Monsieur Minoret, Tiennette came as early as five o’clock to reserve a fillet of beef.”
“Well, Dionis, this is a fine piece of work!” said Massin, hastening to meet the notary, who was coming into the market-place.
“Well, what? All is going well,” replied the notary. “Your uncle has sold his stock, and Madame de Portenduère has asked me to call upon her to sign a bond of a hundred thousand francs mortgaged upon her property and lent by your uncle.”
“Yes, but if the young people were to marry?”
“It is as if you were to tell me that Goupil was my successor,” replied the notary.
“The two things are not impossible,” said Goupil.
Upon her return from mass, the old lady sent word to her son by Tiennette to come to see her.
This little house had three rooms on the first story. Madame de Portenduère’s and that of her late husband were on the same side, separated by a large dressing-room lighted by a borrowed light, and uniting again in a little anteroom opening upon the staircase. The window of the other room, occupied at all times by Savinien, looked out, as did his father’s, on the road. The staircase extended behind, in such a way as to provide this room with a small study lighted on the side of the courtyard by a round window. Madame de Portenduère’s room, the gloomiest in the whole house, looked out upon the courtyard; but the widow passed her days in the parlor on the ground floor, communicating by a corridor with the kitchen, which was built at the bottom of the courtyard; so that this parlor served both as salon and dining-room. The room of the late Monsieur de Portenduère remained in the same state as on the day of his death; the deceased only was missing. Madame de Portenduère had made the bed herself, placing on it her husband’s naval uniform, sword, red ribbon, orders and hat. The gold snuff-box from which the viscount had taken a last pinch was on the pedestal, with his prayer-book, watch and the cup from which he had drunk. His white hair, framed and arranged in a single lock, hung over the crucifix with its holy water font in the alcove. In short, the knickknacks which he used, his newspapers, furniture, the Dutch spittoon, his field-glass hanging up over the mantelpiece, nothing was missing. The widow had stopped the old timepiece at the hour of his death, which was thus indicated for all time. One could still smell the powder and snuff of the deceased. The hearth was as he had left it. To go in there was to see him again in meeting with all the things that told of his habits. His great gold-headed cane remained where he had placed it, together with his thick doeskin gloves close by. On a bracket shone a coarsely carved gold vase, worth a thousand crowns, presented to him by Havanna, which, at the time of the American War of Independence, he defended from an attack of the English whilst fighting against a superior force, after having safely brought into port the convoy he was protecting. As a reward, the King of Spain had made him a Chevalier of his orders. Raised for this feat to the rank of commodore at the first promotion, he received the red ribbon. Sure then of the first vacancy, he married his wife, who had two hundred thousand francs. But the Revolution prevented promotion, and Monsieur de Portenduère emigrated.
“Where is my mother?” said Savinien to Tiennette.
“She is waiting for you in your father’s room,” replied the old Breton servant.
Savinien could not suppress a thrill. He knew the rigidity of his mother’s principles, her creed of honor, her loyalty, her faith in the nobility, and he foresaw a scene. And so he went as if to an assault, his heart beating, his face almost pale. In the half-light filtering through the blinds, he saw his mother, dressed in black, wearing a solemn air befitting this chamber of the dead.
“Monsieur le Vicomte,” she said, when she saw him, rising and seizing his hand to lead him beside the paternal bed, “there your father expired, a man of honor, dying without a single self-reproach. His spirit is there. He must indeed have lamented up there at seeing his son sullied by an imprisonment for debt. Under the ancient monarchy, you might have been spared this mud-stain through a lettre de cachet and by being shut up for a few days in one of the State prisons. But, at length, here you are before your father, who hears you. You who know all that you did before going into this ignoble prison, can you swear to me before this shadow and before God, who sees all, that you have never committed any dishonorable action, that your debts were the result of youthful impulse, and that, finally, your honor is unsullied? If your blameless father were there, alive, in this armchair, if he asked you for an account of your conduct, after having listened to you, would he embrace you?”
“Yes, mother,” said the young man, with respectful seriousness.
She then opened her arms and pressed her son to her heart while shedding a few tears.
“Then let us forget it all,” she said, “it is only a little money the less; I will pray God that we may recover it, and, since you are still worthy of your name, kiss me, for I have suffered much!”
“I swear, my dear mother,” he said, stretching out his hand over the bed, “never again to give you the least trouble of this sort, and to do all I can to atone for my early shortcomings.”
“Come to breakfast, my child,” she said, leaving the room.
If the laws of the stage are to be applied to this story, Savinien’s arrival, by introducing to Nemours the only character yet wanting amongst those who are to figure in this little drama, here brings the prologue to an end.