Like all crafty persons, Goupil, fortunately for Minoret, believed that
the proposed marriage with Ursula was only a pretext on the part of the
colossus and Zelie for making up with him, now that he was opposing them
with Massin.
“It isn’t he,” thought Goupil, “who has invented this scheme; I know my
Zelie,--she taught him his part. Bah! I’ll let Massin go. In three years
time I’ll be deputy from Sens.” Just then he saw Bongrand on his way to
the opposite house for his whist, and he rushed hastily after him.
“You take a great interest in Mademoiselle Mirouet, my dear Monsieur
Bongrand,” he said. “I know you will not be indifferent to her future.
Her relations are considering it, and there is the programme; she ought
to marry a notary whose practice should be in the chief town of an
arrondisement. This notary, who would of course be elected deputy in
three years, should settle on a dower of a hundred thousand francs on
her.”
“She can do better than that,” said Bongrand coldly. “Madame de
Portenduere is greatly changed since her misfortunes; trouble is killing
her. Savinien will have six thousand francs a year, and Ursula has a
capital of forty thousand. I shall show them how to increase it a la
Massin, but honestly, and in ten years they will have a little fortune.
“Savinien will do a foolish thing,” said Goupil; “he can marry
Mademoiselle du Rouvre whenever he likes,--an only daughter to whom the
uncle and aunt intend to leave a fine property.”
“Where love enters farewell prudence, as La Fontaine says--By the bye,
who is your notary?” added Bongrand from curiosity.
“Suppose it were I?” answered Goupil.
“You!” exclaimed Bongrand, without hiding his disgust.
“Well, well!--Adieu, monsieur,” replied Goupil, with a parting glance of
gall and hatred and defiance.
“Do you wish to be the wife of a notary who will settle a hundred
thousand francs on you?” cried Bongrand entering Madame de Portenduere’s
little salon, where Ursula was seated beside the old lady.
Ursula and Savinien trembled and looked at each other,--she smiling, he
not daring to show his uneasiness.
“I am not mistress of myself,” said Ursula, holding out her hand to
Savinien in such a way that the old lady did not perceive the gesture.
“Well, I have refused the offer without consulting you.”
“Why did you do that?” said Madame de Portenduere. “I think the position
of a notary is a very good one.”
“I prefer my peaceful poverty,” said Ursula, “which is really wealth
compared with what my station in life might have given me. Besides, my
old nurse spares me a great deal of care, and I shall not exchange the
present, which I like, for an unknown fate.”
A few weeks later the post poured into two hearts the poison of
anonymous letters,--one addressed to Madame de Portenduere, the other to
Ursula. The following is the one to the old lady:--
“You love your son, you wish to marry him in a manner conformable
with the name he bears; and yet you encourage his fancy for an
ambitious girl without money and the daughter of a regimental
band-master, by inviting her to your house. You ought to marry him
to Mademoiselle du Rouvre, on whom her two uncles, the Marquis de
Ronquerolles and the Chevalier du Rouvre, who are worth money, would
settle a handsome sum rather than leave it to that old fool the
Marquis du Rouvre, who runs through everything. Madame de Serizy,
aunt of Clementine du Rouvre, who has just lost her only son in the
campaign in Algiers, will no doubt adopt her niece. A person who is
your well-wisher assures you that Savinien will be accepted.”
The letter to Ursula was as follows:--
Dear Ursula,--There is a young man in Nemours who idolizes you. He
cannot see you working at your window without emotions which prove
to him that his love will last through life. This young man is
gifted with an iron will and a spirit of perseverance which
nothing can discourage. Receive his addresses favorably, for his
intentions are pure, and he humbly asks your hand with a sincere
desire to make you happy. His fortune, already suitable, is
nothing to that which he will make for you when you are once his
wife. You shall be received at court as the wife of a minister and
one of the first ladies in the land.
As he sees you every day (without your being able to see him) put
a pot of La Bougival’s pinks in your window and he will understand
from that that he has your permission to present himself.
Ursula burned the letter and said nothing about it to Savinien. Two days
later she received another letter in the following language:--
“You do wrong, my dear Ursula, not to answer one who loves you
better than life itself. You think you will marry Savinien--you
are very much mistaken. That marriage will not take place. Madame
de Portenduere went this morning to Rouvre to ask for the hand of
Mademoiselle Clementine for her son. Savinien will yield in the
end. What objection can he make? The uncles of the young lady are
willing to guarantee their fortune to her; it amounts to over
sixty thousand francs a year.”
This letter agonized Ursula’s heart and afflicted her with the tortures
of jealousy, a form of suffering hitherto unknown to her, but which
to this fine organization, so sensitive to pain, threw a pall over the
present and over the future, and even over the past. From the moment
when she received this fatal paper she lay on the doctor’s sofa, her
eyes fixed on space, lost in a dreadful dream. In an instant the chill
of death had come upon her warm young life. Alas, worse than that! it
was like the awful awakening of the dead to the sense that there was
no God,--the masterpiece of that strange genius called Jean Paul. Four
times La Bougival called her to breakfast. When the faithful creature
tried to remonstrate, Ursula waved her hand and answered in one harsh
word, “Hush!” said despotically, in strange contrast to her usual gentle
manner. La Bougival, watching her mistress through the glass door, saw
her alternately red with a consuming fever, and blue as if a shudder of
cold had succeeded that unnatural heat. This condition grew worse and
worse up to four o’clock; then she rose to see if Savinien were coming,
but he did not come. Jealousy and distrust tear all reserves from love.
Ursula, who till then had never made one gesture by which her love could
be guessed, now took her hat and shawl and rushed into the passage as if
to go and meet him. But an afterthought of modesty sent her back to her
little salon, where she stayed and wept. When the abbe arrived in the
evening La Bougival met him at the door.
“Ah, monsieur!” she cried; “I don’t know what’s the matter with
mademoiselle; she is--”
“I know,” said the abbe sadly, stopping the words of the poor nurse.
He then told Ursula (what she had not dared to verify) that Madame de
Portenduere had gone to dine at Rouvre.
“And Savinien too?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Ursula was seized with a little nervous tremor which made the abbe
quiver as though a whole Leyden jar had been discharged at him; he felt
moreover a lasting commotion in his heart.
“So we shall not go there to-night,” he said as gently as he could;
“and, my child, it would be better if you did not go there again.
The old lady will receive you in a way to wound your pride. Monsieur
Bongrand and I, who had succeeded in bringing her to consider your
marriage, have no idea from what quarter this new influence has come to
change her, as it were in a moment.”
“I expect the worst; nothing can surprise me now,” said Ursula in a
pained voice. “In such extremities it is a comfort to feel that we have
done nothing to displease God.”
“Submit, dear daughter, and do not seek to fathom the ways of
Providence,” said the abbe.
“I shall not unjustly distrust the character of Monsieur de
Portenduere--”
“Why do you no longer call him Savinien?” asked the priest, who detected
a slight bitterness in Ursula’s tone.
“Of my dear Savinien,” cried the girl, bursting into tears. “Yes, my
good friend,” she said, sobbing, “a voice tells me he is as noble in
heart as he is in race. He has not only told me that he loves me alone,
but he has proved it in a hundred delicate ways, and by restraining
heroically his ardent feelings. Lately when he took the hand I held out
to him, that evening when Monsieur Bongrand proposed to me a husband, it
was the first time, I swear to you, that I had ever given it. He began
with a jest when he blew me a kiss across the street, but since then our
affection has never outwardly passed, as you well know, the narrowest
limits. But I will tell you,--you who read my soul except in this one
region where none but the angels see,--well, I will tell you, this love
has been in me the secret spring of many seeming merits; it made me
accept my poverty; it softened the bitterness of my irreparable loss,
for my mourning is more perhaps in my clothes now than in my heart--Oh,
was I wrong? can it be that love was stronger in me than my gratitude
to my benefactor, and God has punished me for it? But how could it be
otherwise? I respected in myself Savinien’s future wife; yes, perhaps
I was too proud, perhaps it is that pride which God has humbled. God
alone, as you have often told me, should be the end and object of all
our actions.”
The abbe was deeply touched as he watched the tears roll down her pallid
face. The higher her sense of security had been, the lower she was now
to fall.
“But,” she said, continuing, “if I return to my orphaned condition, I
shall know how to take up its feelings. After all, could I have tied a
mill-stone round the neck of him I love? What can he do here? Who am
I to bind him to me? Besides, do I not love him with a friendship so
divine that I can bear the loss of my own happiness and my hopes? You
know I have often blamed myself for letting my hopes rest upon a grave,
and for knowing they were waiting on that poor old lady’s death. If
Savinien is rich and happy with another I have enough to pay for my
entrance to a convent, where I shall go at once. There can no more be
two loves in a woman’s heart than there can be two masters in heaven,
and the life of a religious is attractive to me.”
“He could not let his mother go alone to Rouvre,” said the abbe, gently.
“Do not let us talk of that, my dear good friend,” she answered. “I will
write to-night and set him free. I am glad to have to close the windows
of this room,” she continued, telling her old friend of the anonymous
letters, but declaring that she would not allow any inquiries to be made
as to who her unknown lover might be.
“Why! it was an anonymous letter that first took Madame de Portenduere
to Rouvre,” cried the abbe. “You are annoyed for some object by evil
persons.”
“How can that be? Neither Savinien nor I have injured any one; and I am
no longer an obstacle to the prosperity of others.”
“Well, well, my child,” said the abbe, quietly, “let us profit by this
tempest, which has scattered our little circle, to put the library in
order. The books are still in heaps. Bongrand and I want to get them in
order; we wish to make a search among them. Put your trust in God, and
remember also that in our good Bongrand and in me you have two devoted
friends.”
“That is much, very much,” she said, going with him to the threshold of
the door, where she stretched out her neck like a bird looking over its
nest, hoping against hope to see Savinien.
Just then Minoret and Goupil, returning from a walk in the meadows,
stopped as they passed, and the colossus spoke to Ursula.
“Is anything the matter, cousin; for we are still cousins, are we not?
You seem changed.”
Goupil looked so ardently at Ursula that she was frightened, and went
back into the house without replying.
“She is cross,” said Minoret to the abbe.
“Mademoiselle Mirouet is quite right not to talk to men on the threshold
of her door,” said the abbe; “she is too young--”
“Oh!” said Goupil. “I am told she doesn’t lack lovers.”
The abbe bowed hurriedly and went as fast as he could to the Rue des
Bourgeois.
“Well,” said Goupil to Minoret, “the thing is working. Did you notice
how pale she was. Within a fortnight she’ll have left the town--you’ll
see.”
“Better have you for a friend than an enemy,” cried Minoret, frightened
at the atrocious grin which gave to Goupil’s face the diabolical
expression of the Mephistopheles of Joseph Brideau.
“I should think so!” returned Goupil. “If she doesn’t marry me I’ll make
her die of grief.”
“Do it, my boy, and I’ll GIVE you the money to buy a practice in Paris.
You can then marry a rich woman--”
“Poor Ursula! what makes you so bitter against her? what has she done to
you?” asked the clerk in surprise.
“She annoys me,” said Minoret, gruffly.
“Well, wait till Monday and you shall see how I’ll rasp her,” said
Goupil, studying the expression of the late post master’s face.
The next day La Bougival carried the following letter to Savinien.
“I don’t know what the dear child has written to you,” she said, “but
she is almost dead this morning.”
Who, reading this letter to her lover, could fail to understand the
sufferings the poor girl had gone through during the night.
My dear Savinien,--Your mother wishes you to marry Mademoiselle du
Rouvre, and perhaps she is right. You are placed between a life
that is almost poverty-stricken and a life of opulence; between
the betrothed of your heart and a wife in conformity with the
demands of the world; between obedience to your mother and the
fulfilment of your own choice--for I still believe that you have
chosen me. Savinien, if you have now to make your decision I wish
you to do so in absolute freedom; I give you back the promise you
made to yourself--not to me--in a moment which can never fade from
my memory, for it was, like other days that have succeeded it, of
angelic purity and sweetness. That memory will suffice me for my
life. If you should persist in your pledge to me, a dark and
terrible idea would henceforth trouble my happiness. In the midst
of our privations--which we have hitherto accepted so gayly--you
might reflect, too late, that life would have been to you a better
thing had you now conformed to the laws of the world. If you were
a man to express that thought, it would be to me the sentence of
an agonizing death; if you did not express it, I should watch
suspiciously every cloud upon your brow.
Dear Savinien, I have preferred you to all else on earth. I was
right to do so, for my godfather, though jealous of you, used to
say to me, “Love him, my child; you will certainly belong to each
other one of these days.” When I went to Paris I loved you
hopelessly, and the feeling contented me. I do not know if I can
now return to it, but I shall try. What are we, after all, at this
moment? Brother and sister. Let us stay so. Marry that happy girl
who can have the joy of giving to your name the lustre it ought to
have, and which your mother thinks I should diminish. You will not
hear of me again. The world will approve of you; I shall never
blame you--but I shall love you ever. Adieu, then!
“Wait,” cried the young man. Signing to La Bougival to sit down, he
scratched off hastily the following reply:--
My dear Ursula,--Your letter cuts me to the heart, inasmuch as you
have needlessly felt such pain; and also because our hearts, for
the first time, have failed to understand each other. If you are
not my wife now, it is solely because I cannot marry without my
mother’s consent. Dear, eight thousand francs a year and a pretty
cottage on the Loing, why, that’s a fortune, is it not? You know
we calculated that if we kept La Bougival we could lay by half our
income every year. You allowed me that evening, in your uncle’s
garden, to consider you mine; you cannot now of yourself break
those ties which are common to both of us.--Ursula, need I tell
you that I yesterday informed Monsieur du Rouvre that even if I
were free I could not receive a fortune from a young person whom I
did not know? My mother refuses to see you again; I must therefore
lose the happiness of our evenings; but surely you will not
deprive me of the brief moments I can spend at your window? This
evening, then--Nothing can separate us.
“Take this to her, my old woman; she must not be unhappy one moment
longer.”
That afternoon at four o’clock, returning from the walk which he
always took expressly to pass before Ursula’s house, Savinien found his
mistress waiting for him, her face a little pallid from these sudden
changes and excitements.
“It seems to me that until now I have never known what the pleasure of
seeing you is,” she said to him.
“You once said to me,” replied Savinien, smiling,--“for I remember all
your words,--‘Love lives by patience; we will wait!’ Dear, you have
separated love from faith. Ah! this shall be the end of our quarrels; we
will never have another. You have claimed to love me better than I love
you, but--did I ever doubt you?” he said, offering her a bouquet of
wild-flowers arranged to express his thoughts.
“You have never had any reason to doubt me,” she replied; “and, besides,
you don’t know all,” she added, in a troubled voice.
Ursula had refused to receive letters by the post. But that afternoon,
without being able even to guess at the nature of the trick, she had
found, a few moments before Savinien’s arrival, a letter tossed on her
sofa which contained the words: “Tremble! a rejected lover can become a
tiger.”
Withstanding Savinien’s entreaties, she refused to tell him, out of
prudence, the secret of her fears. The delight of seeing him again,
after she had thought him lost to her, could alone have made her recover
from the mortal chill of terror. The expectation of indefinite evil is
torture to every one; suffering assumes the proportions of the unknown,
and the unknown is the infinite of the soul. To Ursula the pain was
exquisite. Something without her bounded at the slightest noise; yet she
was afraid of silence, and suspected even the walls of collusion. Even
her sleep was restless. Goupil, who knew nothing of her nature, delicate
as that of a flower, had found, with the instinct of evil, the poison
that could wither and destroy her.
The next day passed without a shock. Ursula sat playing on her piano
till very late; and went to bed easier in mind and very sleepy. About
midnight she was awakened by the music of a band composed of a clarinet,
hautboy, flute, cornet a piston, trombone, bassoon, flageolet, and
triangle. All the neighbours were at their windows. The poor girl,
already frightened at seeing the people in the street, received a
dreadful shock as she heard the coarse, rough voice of a man proclaiming
in loud tones: “For the beautiful Ursula Mirouet, from her lover.”
The next day, Sunday, the whole town had heard of it; and as Ursula
entered and left the church she saw the groups of people who stood
gossiping about her, and felt herself the object of their terrible
curiosity. The serenade set all tongues wagging, and conjectures were
rife on all sides. Ursula reached home more dead than alive, determined
not to leave the house again,--the abbe having advised her to say
vespers in her own room. As she entered the house she saw lying in the
passage, which was floored with brick, a letter which had evidently been
slipped under the door. She picked it up and read it, under the idea
that it would obtain an explanation. It was as follows:--
“Resign yourself to becoming my wife, rich and idolized. I am resolved.
If you are not mine living you shall be mine dead. To your refusal you
may attribute not only your own misfortunes, but those which will fall
on others.
“He who loves you, and whose wife you will be.”
Curiously enough, at the very moment that the gentle victim of this
plot was drooping like a cut flower, Mesdemoiselles Massin, Dionis, and
Cremiere were envying her lot.
“She is a lucky girl,” they were saying; “people talk of her, and court
her, and quarrel about her. The serenade was charming; there was a
cornet-a-piston.”
“What’s a piston?”
“A new musical instrument, as big as this, see!” replied Angelique
Cremiere to Pamela Massin.
Early that morning Savinien had gone to Fontainebleau to endeavor to
find out who had engaged the musicians of the regiment then in garrison.
But as there were two men to each instrument it was impossible to find
out which of them had gone to Nemours. The colonel forbade them to play
for any private person in future without his permission. Savinien had
an interview with the procureur du roi, Ursula’s legal guardian, and
explained to him the injury these scenes would do to a young girl
naturally so delicate and sensitive, begging him to take some action to
discover the author of such wrong.
Three nights later three violins, a flute, a guitar, and a hautboy began
another serenade. This time the musicians fled towards Montargis, where
there happened then to be a company of comic actors. A loud and ringing
voice called out as they left: “To the daughter of the regimental
bandsman Mirouet.” By this means all Nemours came to know the profession
of Ursula’s father, a secret the old doctor had sedulously kept.
Savinien did not go to Montargis. He received in the course of the day
an anonymous letter containing a prophecy:--
“You will never marry Ursula. If you wish her to live, give her up
at once to a man who loves her more than you love her. He has made
himself a musician and an artist to please her, and he would
rather see her dead than let her be your wife.”
The doctor came to Ursula three times in the course of that day, for
she was really in danger of death from the horror of this mysterious
persecution. Feeling that some infernal hand had plunged her into the
mire, the poor girl lay like a martyr; she said nothing, but lifted her
eyes to heaven, and wept no more; she seemed awaiting other blows, and
prayed fervently.
“I am glad I cannot go down into the salon,” she said to Monsieur
Bongrand and the abbe, who left her as little as possible; “_He_ would
come, and I am now unworthy of the looks with which _he_ blessed me. Do
you think _he_ will suspect me?”
“If Savinien does not discover the author of these infamies he means to
get the assistance of the Paris police,” said Bongrand.
“Whoever it is will know I am dying,” said Ursula; “and will cease to
trouble me.”
The abbe, Bongrand, and Savinien were lost in conjectures and
suspicions. Together with Tiennette, La Bougival, and two persons on
whom the abbe could rely, they kept the closest watch and were on their
guard night and day for a week; but no indiscretion could betray Goupil,
whose machinations were known to himself only. There were no more
serenades and no more letters, and little by little the watch relaxed.
Bongrand thought the author of the wrong was frightened; Savinien
believed that the procureur du roi to whom he had sent the letters
received by Ursula and himself and his mother, had taken steps to put an
end to the persecution.
The armistice was not of long duration, however. When the doctor had
checked the nervous fever from which poor Ursula was suffering, and just
as she was recovering her courage, a rope-ladder was found, early one
morning in July, attached to her window. The postilion of the mail-post
declared that as he drove past the house in the middle of the night a
small man was in the act of coming down the ladder, and though he tried
to pull up, his horses, being startled, carried him down the hill so
fast that he was out of Nemours before he stopped them. Some of the
persons who frequented Dionis’s salon attributed these manoeuvres to
the Marquis du Rouvre, then much hampered in means, for Massin held
his notes to a large amount. It was said that a prompt marriage of his
daughter to Savinien would save Chateau du Rouvre from his creditors;
and Madame de Portenduere, the gossips added, would approve of anything
that would discredit and degrade Ursula and lead to this marriage of her
son.
So far from this being true, the old lady was well-nigh vanquished by
the sufferings of the innocent girl. The abbe was so painfully overcome
by this act of infernal wickedness that he fell ill himself and was kept
to the house for several days. Poor Ursula, to whom this last insult
had caused a relapse, received by post a letter from the abbe, which
was taken in by La Bougival on recognizing the handwriting. It was as
follows:--
My child,--Leave Nemours, and thus evade the malice of your enemies.
Perhaps they are seeking to endanger Savinien’s life. I will tell you
more when I am able to go to you.
Your devoted friend,
Chaperon.
When Savinien, who was almost maddened by these proceedings, carried
this letter to the abbe, the poor priest read it and re-read it; so
amazed and horror-stricken was he to see the perfection with which his
own handwriting and signature were imitated. The dangerous condition
into which this last atrocity threw poor Ursula sent Savinien once more
to the procureur du roi with the forged letter.
“A murder is being committed by means that the law cannot touch,”
he said, “upon an orphan whom the Code places in your care as legal
guardian. What is to be done?”
“If you can find any means of repression,” said the official, “I will
adopt them; but I know of none. That infamous wretch gives the best
advice. Mademoiselle Mirouet must be sent to the sisters of the
Adoration of the Sacred Heart. Meanwhile the commissary of police at
Fontainebleau shall at my request authorize you to carry arms in your
own defence. I have been myself to Rouvre, and I found Monsieur du
Rouvre justly indignant at the suspicions some of the Nemours people
have put upon him. Minoret, the father of my assistant, is in treaty
for the purchase of the estate. Mademoiselle is to marry a rich Polish
count; and Monsieur du Rouvre himself left the neighbourhood the day I
saw him, to avoid arrest for debt.”
Desire Minoret, when questioned by his chief, dared not tell his
thought. He recognized Goupil. Goupil, he fully believed, was the only
man capable of carrying a persecution to the very verge of the penal
code without infringing a hair’s-breadth upon it.