Ursule Mirouët (Tomlinson translation)/Part II/7
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From the day upon which the most infamous calumny had sullied her life, Ursule, a victim to one of those unaccountable illnesses that have their seat in the soul, was rapidly traveling toward Death. Extremely pale, speaking a few slow and feeble words at rare intervals only, casting looks of gentle indifference, everything about her, even her brow, betrayed one devouring thought. She believed that the ideal wreath of pure flowers which, at all times, people have thought to see on a virgin’s head, had fallen. In the silence and space she was listening to the shameful gossip, the spiteful comments and chuckles of the little town. The burden was too heavy for her, and her innocence was too delicate to survive such bruises. She did not complain, a mournful smile was always on her lips, and her eyes were often raised to Heaven as if appealing from man’s injustice to the Lord of angels. When Goupil got back to Nemours, Ursule had been carried from her room to the ground-floor in the arms of La Bougival and the doctor of Nemours. A great event was taking place. After having learnt that this young girl was dying like an ermine, and furthermore that her honor was less harmed than was Clarissa Harlowe’s, Madame de Portenduère was coming to see her and comfort her. The sight of her son, who had spent the whole of the preceding night threatening to kill himself, had unbent the old Bretonne. Moreover, Madame de Portenduère thought it befitting her dignity to give courage to so pure a young girl, and saw that her visit would counterbalance all the harm done by the little town. Her opinion, which was doubtless more powerful than that of the common herd, would establish the power of the nobility. This overture, announced by the Abbé Chaperon, had worked a revolution in Ursule and revived hope in the disheartened doctor, who was talking of calling for a consultation with the most celebrated doctors in Paris. Ursule had been put in her guardian’s armchair, and such was the character of her beauty that, in her mourning and suffering she looked more beautiful than at any period of her happy life. When Savinien appeared with his mother on his arm, the young invalid recovered a brilliant color.
“Do not get up, my child,” said the old lady in an imperious tone: “ill and feeble as I am myself, I wanted to come and see you to tell you my opinion of what is happening; I consider you the purest, holiest, and most charming girl of the Gâtinais, and think you are worthy of constituting a nobleman’s happiness.”
At first Ursule could not answer; she took the withered hands of Savinien’s mother and kissed them while covering them with tears.
“Ah! madame,” she replied in a weakened voice, “I should never have had the boldness to think of raising myself above my station had I not been encouraged by promises, and my only claim was an unbounded affection; but they have found means to separate me forever from him whom I love; they have made me unworthy of him.—Never!” she said, with a sound in her voice which struck the spectators painfully, “never will I consent to give to anyone, no matter who it may be, a degraded hand, a tarnished reputation. I loved too much—I may confess it in my present state—I love a human creature almost as much as God. And so God—”
“Come! come! my dear, do not slander God! Come, my daughter,” said the old lady, making an effort, “do not exaggerate the importance of an infamous joke in which nobody believes. I promise you, you will live and you will be happy.”
“You will be happy!” said Savinien, kneeling in front of Ursule and kissing her hands, “my mother has called you ‘my daughter.’”
“That will do,” said the doctor, who came to feel his invalid’s pulse, “do not kill her with joy.”
At that moment, Goupil, finding the entrance door ajar, pushed that of the little parlor and showed his ugly face excited with the thoughts of vengeance that had been flourishing in his heart while on his way.
“Monsieur de Portenduère!” he said in a voice like the hissing of a snake that is driven into its hole.
“What do you want?” replied Savinien, rising.
“I want a word with you.”
Savinien went out into the passage, and Goupil led him into the little yard.
“Swear to me, on the life of Ursule whom you love, and on your nobleman’s honor that you think so much of, that you will act as if I had never told you what I am about to tell you, and I will enlighten you as to the cause of the persecutions directed against Mademoiselle Mirouët.”
“Can I stop them?”
“Yes.”
“Can I avenge them?”
“On the author, yes: but on the instrument, no.”
“Why not?”
“Well—the instrument is myself—”
Savinien turned pale.
“I have just caught a glimpse of Ursule—” continued the clerk.
“Ursule?” said the nobleman, looking at Goupil.
“Mademoiselle Mirouët,” rejoined Goupil, rendered respectful by Savinien’s tone, “and I would like to atone with my blood for all that has been done. I am sorry—If you were to kill me in a duel or any other way, what good would my blood do you? Would you drink it? It would poison you at this moment.”
This man’s cool reasoning and his own curiosity subdued Savinien’s boiling blood; he fixed this quasi-hunchback with a look that forced him to lower his eyes.
“Then who employed you?” said the young man.
“Will you swear?”
“Do you want to be sure nothing will be done to you?”
“I want you and Mademoiselle Mirouët to forgive me.”
“She will forgive you, but I, never!”
“Well then, you will forget?”
What awful power reasoning possesses when backed by interest! Two men, one longing to rend the other, were there, in a small courtyard, a finger’s breadth from each other, forced into conversation, united by the selfsame feeling.
“I might forgive you, but I should not forget.”
“That won’t do,” said Goupil, coldly.
Savinien lost patience. He gave his face a slap which re-echoed in the courtyard, nearly upset Goupil, and made him stagger himself.
“I only get what I deserve,” said Goupil, “I committed a piece of folly. I believed you to be nobler than you are. You have abused an advantage I gave you—you are now in my power!” he said, darting a spiteful look at Savinien.
“You are a murderer!” said the nobleman.
“Not more than the knife is the murderer!” replied Goupil.
“I ask your pardon,” said Savinien.
“Have you had enough revenge?” said Goupil, with fierce irony, “will you go no further?”
“Forgive and forget on both sides,” said Savinien.
“Your hand?” said the clerk, holding out his own to the nobleman.
“Here it is,” replied Savinien, swallowing this shame for love of Ursule. “But speak; who urged you on?”
Goupil was examining, as it were, the two scales in which hung on the one side Savinien’s slap, and on the other, his hatred for Minoret. For two seconds he was undecided, but finally a voice cried to him. “You will be a notary!” and he replied:
“Forget and forgive? Yes, on both sides, monsieur,” squeezing the nobleman’s hand.
“Then who is it that is persecuting Ursule?” said Savinien.
“Minoret! he would have liked to have seen her buried—Why? I do not know; but we will find out the reason. Don’t mix me up in all this, I could do nothing more for you if I was suspected. Instead of attacking Ursule, I shall defend her; instead of serving Minoret, I shall try to defeat his plans. I live only to ruin him and destroy him. And I shall trample him under foot, I shall dance on his carcass, I will play dominoes with his bones! To-morrow, on all the walls of Nemours, Fontainebleau and Le Rouvre, will be written in red chalk: Minoret is a thief. Oh! By d! I will make him burst like a mortar. Now, we are allied by an indiscretion; well then, if you like, I will go and kneel down before Mademoiselle Mirouët, and declare to her that I curse the mad passion that was urging me to kill her, I will implore her to forgive me. That will do her good! The justice of the peace and the curé are there, those two witnesses will be enough; but Monsieur Bongrand must pledge his honor not to ruin me in my career. I have prospects now.”
“Wait a moment,” replied Savinien, quite stunned by this revelation. “Ursule, my child,” he said as he came into the parlor, “the author of all your injury is horrified at his work, is repentant and wants to ask your pardon in the presence of these gentlemen, on the condition that all shall be forgotten.”
“What! Goupil?” at once said the curé, the justice of the peace, and the doctor.
“Keep the secret,” said Ursule laying her finger on her lips.
Goupil heard these words, saw Ursule’s movement, and was touched.
“Mademoiselle,” he said in moving tones, “I wish that all Nemours could now hear me confessing to you that an unfortunate passion turned my head, and suggested crimes to me that deserve the blame of honest folk. What I here say, I shall everywhere repeat while deploring the harm caused by wicked jokes, though they may perhaps have helped to hasten your happiness,” he said, somewhat maliciously, as he rose, “as I see Madame de Portenduère is here.”
“That is right, Goupil,” said the curé, “mademoiselle has forgiven you; but you must never forget that you nearly became a murderer.”
“Monsieur Bongrand,” resumed Goupil, addressing the justice of the peace, “to-night I am going to negotiate with Lecœur for his practice; I hope that this reparation will not injure me in your esteem, and that you will second my application to the crown office and the minister.”
The justice of the peace nodded his head thoughtfully, and Goupil left, to go and negotiate for the better of the two attorneys’ practices in Nemours. Everyone remained with Ursule, and devoted himself all through the evening to restoring peace and tranquillity to her mind, upon which the satisfaction given by the clerk had already worked a change.
“All Nemours will know this,” said Bongrand.
“You see, my child, that God was not angry with you,” said the curé.
Minoret was rather late in returning from Le Rouvre, and dined late. About nine o’clock, at nightfall, he was in his Chinese pavilion, digesting his dinner beside his wife, with whom he was making plans for Désiré’s future. Désiré had become very steady since he had belonged to the magistracy; he was working, and there was a chance of his succeeding the public prosecutor of Fontainebleau, who, it was said, was being promoted to Melun. A wife must be found for him, some poor girl belonging to an old and noble family; he might then attain to the Paris magistracy. Perhaps they might have him elected deputy for Fontainebleau, where Zélie thought of going to settle for the winter, after spending the warm weather at Le Rouvre. Whilst inwardly congratulating himself on having arranged all for the best, Minoret had ceased to think of Ursule, at the very moment when the drama which he had begun so simply was tangling itself in a terrible manner.
“Monsieur de Portenduère is there and wishes to speak to you,” announced Cabirolle.
“Show him in,” replied Zélie.
The twilight darkness prevented Madame Minoret from noticing the sudden pallor of her husband, who shivered as he heard the creak of Savinien’s boots on the floor of the gallery which had once been the doctor’s library. A vague presentiment of evil ran through the despoiler’s veins. Savinien appeared, and remained standing, his hat on his head, his stick in his hand, his arms crossed over his chest, motionless in front of the husband and wife.
“I have come to ask, Monsieur and Madame Minoret, your reasons for so infamously tormenting a young girl who, as the whole town of Nemours is aware, is my future wife; why you have tried to stain her honor; why you desired her death, and why you have exposed her to the insults of such a man as Goupil?—Answer me.”
“How funny you are, Monsieur Savinien,” said Zélie, “to come and ask us to explain a thing which is unaccountable to us! I care no more for Ursule than for the year ’40. Since the death of Uncle Minoret, I have thought no more of her than of my first nightgown! I have not breathed a word about her to Goupil, who is, besides, a rogue to whom I would not even trust the interests of my dog. Well, Minoret, why don’t you answer? Are you going to let yourself be browbeaten by monsieur and accused of infamies that are beneath you? As if a man who has forty-eight thousand francs a year in landed estate round a castle fit for a prince would condescend to such nonsense! Get up then, you lie there like a limp rag!”
“I do not know what monsieur means,” replied Minoret at last, in his diminutive voice, the trembling of which was all the more noticeable on account of its shrillness. “What reason should I have to persecute that little girl? I may have told Goupil how vexed I was to see her in Nemours; my son Désiré was in love with her, and I did not at all like her as a wife for him, that is all.”
“Goupil has told me all, Monsieur Minoret.”
There was a moment of awful silence, in which the three scrutinized each other. Zélie had seen the nervous working of her giant’s fat face.
“Although you are nothing but insects, I intend wreaking the most fearful vengeance upon you, and I know how to do it,” pursued the nobleman. “It is not from you, a man of sixty-seven, that I shall demand satisfaction for the insults offered to Mademoiselle Mirouët, but from your son. The first time that Monsieur Minoret junior sets foot in Nemours, we shall meet; he will have to fight with me, and he will fight! or else he will be so disgraced, that he will never show his face anywhere again; if he does not come to Nemours I shall go to Fontainebleau, I will! I will get some satisfaction. It shall not be said that you were allowed to make a cowardly attempt to dishonor a defenceless young girl.”
“But Goupil’s accusations—are—not—” said Minoret.
“Do you want me to bring him face to face with you?” cried Savinien, cutting him short. “Believe me, do not spread the matter; it lies between you, Goupil and myself; leave it as it is and God shall decide it in the duel that I shall do your son the honor to propose.”
“But it shall not be settled in this way!” cried Zélie. “Ah! you think I am going to let Désiré fight with you, an old sailor whose trade was to draw swords and pistols! If you have anything against Minoret, here is Minoret, take Minoret and fight with Minoret! But is my boy, who, as you say, is innocent of this, to bear the penalty?—Before that happens, one of my dogs shall be after you, my fine sir! Now then, Minoret, you stick there as stupid as a great ninny! Here you are in your own house and you allow monsieur to keep on his hat before your wife! And you, my young gentleman, will kindly clear out. A man’s house is his castle. I don’t know what you mean by your nonsense; but you had better go; and, if you touch Désiré, you will have to deal with me, you and your fool of an Ursule.”
And she rang the bell violently, calling to her servants.
“Think well about what I have said!” repeated Savinien, who, unheeding Zélie’s tirade, went out, leaving this sword of Damocles hanging over the couple.
“Now then! Minoret,” said Zélie to her husband, “will you explain the meaning of this? A young man does not come without any reason into a private house and make that terrible uproar and demand the blood of a son of the family.”
“It is some trick on the part of that horrid ape Goupil, whom I had promised to help in having him appointed notary if he got me Le Rouvre cheap. I gave him ten per cent, twenty thousand francs in bills of exchange, and no doubt he is not satisfied.”
“Yes; but what reason could he have had before to plot serenades and insults against Ursule?”
“He wanted to marry her.”
“A penniless girl? he? Oh! indeed! Look here, Minoret, you are talking nonsense! and you are naturally too stupid to do so successfully, my boy. There is something underneath all this, and you will tell me.”
“There is nothing.”
“There is nothing? And I, I tell you you are lying, and we shall see!”
“Will you let me alone?”
“I shall turn the tap of that fountain of spite that you know, Goupil, and you will regret it.”
“Just as you please.”
“I know very well that it will be as I please! And what I want, above all, is that Désiré should not be harmed; if any misfortune happened to him, you see, I should do something which would send me to the scaffold. Désiré!—But—And you don’t budge any more than that!”
A quarrel once started in this way between Minoret and his wife could not end without many private broils. And so the senseless despoiler found the inward struggle between himself and Ursule aggravated through his blunder, and complicated by the addition of a fresh and terrible adversary. The next day, when he went out in search of Goupil, thinking to appease him by means of money, he read on the walls: Minoret is a thief! Everybody whom he met pitied him whilst asking him who was the author of this anonymous publication, and each one forgave the equivocation of his answers in recollecting his incapacity. Fools reap greater advantages from their weakness than sensible people obtain through their strength. We look on at a great man struggling against fate without helping him, and we assist a bankrupt grocer. Do you know why? Because we feel ourselves to be superior while protecting an imbecile, and we are annoyed at being merely the equal of a genius. A man of intellect would have been ruined had he, like Minoret, stammered out absurd answers in a scared manner. Zélie and her servants rubbed out the avenging inscription wherever it was to be found; but it remained upon Minoret’s conscience. Although Goupil had given his word the day before to the attorney, he very impudently refused to carry out his agreement.
“You see, my dear Lecœur, I have been able to buy the practice of Monsieur Dionis, and I am in a position to recommend you to others. Withdraw your agreement, it is only waste of two pieces of stamped paper. Here are seventy centimes.”
Lecœur was in too great fear of Goupil to complain. Immediately after, all Nemours learnt that Minoret became security to Dionis to facilitate the purchase of his practice for Goupil. The future notary wrote to Savinien refuting his confessions about Minoret, while telling the young nobleman that his new position, the laws adopted by the Supreme Court and his respect for justice forbade him to fight Moreover, he warned the gentleman to treat him well thereafter, for he could kick extremely well, and at the first assault he vowed he would break his leg.
The walls of Nemours spoke no more. But the quarrel between Minoret and his wife endured, and Savinien maintained a savage silence. The marriage of the eldest Mademoiselle Massin with the future notary ten days after these events, was common talk. Mademoiselle Massin, on her side, had eighty thousand francs and her plainness, Goupil had his deformity and his practice; so this union seemed both probable and suitable.
Two lurking strangers seized Goupil in the road at midnight, just as he was coming out of Massin’s house, beat him with a stick and disappeared. Goupil observed the deepest secrecy about this nocturnal scene, and contradicted an old woman who fancied she had recognized him upon looking out of her window.
These important trifling events were pondered by the justice of the peace, who discovered that Goupil possessed some mysterious power over Minoret, and determined to find out the cause.