Ursule Mirouët (Tomlinson translation)/Part II/1
The action commenced with an arrangement so often employed in ancient as well as in modern literature, that nobody would have believed in its effects, in 1829, had it not been a question of an old Bretonne, a Kergarouët, a refugee! But, let us hasten to acknowledge, that in 1829, the nobility had recovered in morals a little of the ground lost in politics. Moreover, the feeling which governs the relatives from the moment there is a question of matrimonial relations is an imperishable feeling, very closely bound up in the existence of civilized society and imbibed into the family spirit. It prevails in Geneva as in Vienna, as in Nemours, where Zélie Levrault but lately refused her consent to her son’s marriage with the daughter of a bastard. Nevertheless, all social law has its exceptions. And so Savinien was considering how to bend his mother’s pride before Ursule’s innate nobleness. The struggle began on the spot As soon as Savinien was seated at table, his mother told him of the horrible letters, according to her, that the Kergarouëts and the Portenduères had written to her.
“There is no more family nowadays, mother,” answered Savinien, “there are only individuals! The nobles are no longer a solid party. To-day no one asks you if you are a Portenduère, if you are brave, if you are a statesman; everybody asks you, ‘What taxes do you pay?’”
“And the King?” asked the old lady.
“The King is caught between the two chambers like a man between his lawful wife and his mistress. And so I too must marry a rich girl, no matter what family she belongs to, a peasant’s daughter, if she has a dowry of a million and if she is sufficiently well educated, that is to say, if she comes from a school.’”
“That is another thing!” said the old lady.
Savinien frowned at hearing these words. He knew this granite will, called Breton obstinacy, for which his mother was well-known, and he wanted at once to know her opinion about this delicate matter.
“So then,” he said, “if I were to love a young girl, like our neighbor’s ward, for instance little Ursule, you would oppose my marriage?”
“As long as I live,” she said. “After my death, you alone will be responsible for the honor and blood of the Portenduères and the Kergarouëts.”
“Then you would let me die of hunger and despair for the sake of an idle fancy which nowadays only becomes a reality through the lustre of wealth?”
“You would serve France and trust in God!”
“You would postpone my happiness until after your death?”
“It would be horrible of you, that’s all.”
“Louis XIV. nearly married the niece of Mazarin, a parvenu.”
“Mazarin himself opposed it.”
“And Scarron’s widow?”
“She was a d’Aubigne! Besides, the marriage was secret. But I am very old, my son,” she said, tossing her head. “When I am no more, you will marry as you please.”
Savinien both loved and respected his mother; he immediately, but silently, opposed the old Kergarouët’s obstinacy with an equal stubbornness, and resolved never to have any other wife than Ursule, who, by this opposition, as always happens in similar occurrences, acquired the merit of a forbidden thing.
When, after vespers, Doctor Minoret and Ursule, dressed in white and pink, entered this chilly parlor, the child was seized with nervous trembling as if she were in the presence of the Queen of France, and had some favor to ask of her. Since her explanation with the doctor, this little house had assumed the proportions of a palace, and the old lady all the social weight that a duchess must have had in the middle ages, in the eyes of a bondsman’s daughter. Never had Ursule so desperately compared as at this moment the distance that divided a Vicomte de Portenduère from the daughter of a bandmaster, once a singer at the Italiens, an organist’s natural son, and her existence depended upon a doctor’s kindness.
“What is the matter, my child?” said the old lady, making her sit down beside her.
“Madame, I am confused at the honor you deign to show me—”
“Eh! little one,” replied Madame de Portenduère in her most sour tone, “I know how much your guardian loves you and I want to please him, for he brought me back the prodigal son.”
“But, my dear mother,” said Savinien, wounded to the heart at seeing Ursule’s quick flush and the terrible contraction with which she repressed her tears, “even were we under no obligation to Monsieur le Chevalier Minoret, it seems to me that we could always feel happy at the pleasure mademoiselle gives us by accepting your invitation.”
And the young nobleman squeezed the doctor’s hand significantly, adding:
“You wear, monsieur, the order of Saint-Michel, the oldest order in France and that always confers nobility.”
Ursule’s exceeding beauty, to which her almost hopeless love had for several days lent that depth which great painters have imparted to those of their portraits in which the soul is markedly conspicuous, had suddenly struck Madame de Portenduère, whilst causing her to suspect an ambitious calculation beneath the doctor’s generosity. And so the sentence which Savinien had then answered was said with an intention which wounded the doctor in all that he held most dear; but he could not suppress a smile at hearing himself called Chevalier by Savinien, and recognized in this exaggeration the audacity of lovers who never flinch before any ridicule.
“The order of Saint-Michel, to obtain which so many follies were formerly committed, has gone out, Monsieur le Vicomte,” replied the former royal physician, “as so many privileges have gone out! Nowadays it is only given to doctors and poor artists. Therefore kings have done well to combine it with that of Saint-Lazare, a saint who was, I believe, a poor devil restored to life by a miracle! On that score, the order of Saint-Michel and Saint-Lazare should be, for us, a symbol.”
After this reply, which was tinged with both mockery and dignity, silence reigned without anybody trying to break it, and it was becoming irksome, when someone knocked.
“Here is our dear curé,” said the old lady, rising, leaving Ursule alone, and advancing to meet the Abbé Chaperon, an honor she had shown to neither Ursule nor the doctor.
The old man smiled in looking alternately at his ward and Savinien. To complain of Madame de Portenduère’s manner or to take offence at it was a reef upon which a small-minded man would have run aground; but Minoret had learnt too much not to avoid it; he began to chat with the viscount of the danger Charles X. was running, after having entrusted the management of his policy to the Prince de Polignac. When time enough had elapsed in talking over matters for the doctor to have no appearance of revenging himself, he presented the old lady, almost jestingly, with the notes of proceedings and the receipted bills that verified the account made by his notary.
“Has my son acknowledged it?” she said, giving Savinien a look which he answered by a bow of the head. “Well, then, that returns to Dionis,” she added, pushing away the papers and treating this matter with the scorn that in her eyes money deserved.
To disparage wealth was, in Madame de Portenduère’s opinion, to exalt the nobility and rob the bourgeoisie of its importance. A few minutes after, Goupil came, on behalf of his employer, to ask for the accounts between Savinien and Monsieur Minoret.
“And why?” said the old lady.
“To form the basis of the bond; there is no payment in specie,” replied the head clerk, casting impudent looks around him.
Ursule and Savinien, who for the first time exchanged glances with this horrible person, experienced the same sensation that is caused by a toad, but aggravated by a sinister presentiment. Both had that indefinable, confused vision of the future, which is nameless, but which could be explained as an action of the inner being of which the Swedenborgian had spoken to the doctor. The conviction that this venomous Goupil would be fatal to them made Ursule tremble; but she recovered from her trouble by feeling an unspeakable pleasure in seeing Savinien sharing her emotion.
“He is not handsome, Monsieur Dionis’s clerk!” said Savinien when Goupil had shut the door.
“And what does it matter whether those people are handsome or ugly?” said Madame de Portenduère.
“I do not owe him a grudge for his ugliness,” rejoined the curé, “but for his malice, which is unbounded; there is villainy in it.”
In spite of his desire to be pleasant, the doctor became stately and cold. The two lovers were uneasy. But for the good nature of the Abbé Chaperon, whose gentle gaiety enlivened the dinner, the situation of the doctor and his ward would have been almost intolerable. At dessert, seeing Ursule turn pale, he said:
“If you do not feel well, my child, you have only to cross the road.”
“What is it, my love?” said the old lady to the young girl.
“Alas! madame,” rejoined the doctor, severely, “her soul is chilled, accustomed as she is to meet nothing but smiles.”
“A very bad education, Monsieur le Docteur,” said Madame de Portenduère. “Is it not so, Monsieur le Curé?”
“Yes, madame,” rejoined Minoret giving the curé a look which silenced him. “I see that I have made life impossible for this angelic nature, if she had to go out into the world; but I shall not die without having secured her from coldness, indifference and hatred.”
“Godfather!—I beg of you—enough. I do not suffer here,” she said, braving Madame de Portenduère’s look rather than give too much meaning to her words by looking at Savinien.
“I do not know, madame,” then said Savinien to his mother, “whether Mademoiselle Ursule suffers, but I know that you torture me.”
Upon hearing this remark forced from this generous young man by his mother’s manners, Ursule turned pale and begged Madame de Portenduère to excuse her; she rose, took her guardian’s arm, curtsied, went out, returned home, hastily rushed into her godfather’s salon, where she sat down near the piano, buried her head in her hands and burst into tears.
“Why did you not leave the guidance of your feelings to my old experience, cruel child?” cried the doctor in despair. “The nobility never think themselves indebted to us bourgeois. By serving them, we do our duty, that is all. Besides, the old lady saw that Savinien was looking at you with pleasure, she is afraid that he may love you.”
“After all, he is saved!” she said, “but to try to humiliate a man like you—”
“Wait for me, little one.”
When the doctor returned to Madame de Portenduère’s he found Dionis there, accompanied by Messieurs Bongrand and Levrault, the mayor, the witnesses required by law for the validity of deeds drawn up in parishes where there is only one notary. Minoret took Monsieur Dionis aside and whispered a word in his ear, after which the notary read out the acknowledgment; in it Madame de Portenduère was to give a mortgage on all her property to the extent of repaying the hundred thousand francs the doctor had lent the viscount, and the interest was stipulated at five per cent. At the reading of this clause, the curé looked at Minoret, who answered the abbé by a slight nod of approval. The poor priest went to whisper a few words to his penitent, to which she replied, half-aloud:
“I will not be under any obligation to those people.”
“My mother, monsieur, leaves me the best part,” said Savinien to the doctor, “she will return you all the money, and entrusts the gratitude to me.”
“But you will have to find eleven thousand francs the first year, on account of the costs of the deed,” rejoined the curé.
“Monsieur,” said Minoret to Dionis, “as Monsieur and Madame de Portenduère are unable to pay the registration, add the costs of the deed to the capital, I will pay them.”
Dionis made some references, and the capital was then fixed at one hundred and seven thousand francs. When all was signed, Minoret pleaded fatigue as an excuse for retiring at the same time as the notary and the witnesses.
“Madame,” said the curé, who alone remained with the viscount, “why wound that excellent Monsieur Minoret, who has nevertheless saved you at least twenty-five thousand francs in Paris, and who has had the delicacy to leave your son twenty thousand for his debts of honor?”
“Your Minoret is a sneak,” she said, taking a pinch of snuff, “he knows very well what he is about.”
“My mother thinks that he wants to force me to marry his ward by gobbling up our farm, as if a Portenduère, son of a Kergarouët, could be forced to marry against his will.”
An hour afterward, Savinien called at the doctor’s, where the heirs chanced to be, brought there by curiosity. The young viscount’s appearance produced a sensation that was all the keener as, in each of the company, it roused different emotions. Mesdemoiselles Crémière and Massin whispered while looking at Ursule, who was blushing. The mothers said to Désiré that Goupil might be right with regard to this marriage. The eyes of all present then turned upon the doctor, who did not rise to receive the nobleman, but was pleased to greet him with an inclination of the head without leaving the dice-box, for he was playing a game of backgammon with Monsieur Bongrand. The doctor’s coolness surprised everybody.
“Ursule, my child,” he said, “give us a little music.”
Seeing the young girl, happy to be noticed, fly to the instrument and begin rummaging the volumes bound in green, the heirs accepted the torture and silence which were about to be inflicted upon them, with demonstrations of pleasure, so anxious were they to know what was hatching between their uncle and the Portenduères.
It often happens that a piece, poor in itself, but played by a young girl under the influence of deep feeling, makes more impression than a grand overture pompously rendered by a skilled orchestra. In all music, besides the composer’s idea, there exists the soul of the player, who, through a license acquired only in this art, may give meaning and poetry to phrases that have no great value. Chopin to-day proves the truth of this fact on the thankless piano, as has been already demonstrated by Paganini on the violin. This grand genius is not so much a musician as a soul that becomes alive and which would transmit itself through every kind of music, even through simple harmonies. From her sublime and perilous organization Ursule belonged to this school of rare genius; but old Schmucke, the master who used to come every Saturday, and who, during Ursule’s stay in Paris, saw her every day, had brought his pupil’s talent to the height of its perfection. Rousseau’s Dream, the piece chosen by Ursule, one of the youthful compositions of Herold, is, moreover, not lacking in a certain depth which can be developed in the playing; she threw into it the feelings that were agitating her and thoroughly justified the title of caprice that this fragment bears. By a touch both sweet and dreamy, her soul was speaking to the young man’s soul and enwrapt it with almost visible ideas as with a cloud. Seated at the end of the piano, his elbow leaning upon the lid and his head in his left hand, Savinien was admiring Ursule, whose eyes, fixed upon the woodwork, seemed to be searching into a mysterious world. One might have fallen deeply in love for less. Genuine feeling has its magnetism, and Ursule wanted in some way to show her mind, as a coquette adorns herself in order to please. So Savinien penetrated into this delicious kingdom, led away by the heart, that, to interpret itself, borrowed the power of the only art which speaks to thought by thought itself, without the help of words, color or form. Sincerity has the same power over man as childhood, it has the same charm and the same irresistible fascination; now Ursule had never been more sincere than at this moment when she was just beginning a new life. The curé came to tear the nobleman from his dream by asking him to make the fourth at whist. Ursule continued playing, the heirs left, with the exception of Désiré, who was trying to find out the intentions of his great-uncle, of the viscount and of Ursule.
“You have as much talent as soul, mademoiselle,” said Savinien when the young girl shut her piano to come and sit beside her godfather. “Who is your master?”
“A German, living quite close to the Rue Dauphiné, on the Quai Conti,” said the doctor. “Had he not given Ursule a lesson every day during our visit to Paris, he would have come this morning.”
“He is not only a great musician,” said Ursule, “but an adorably simple man.”
“The lessons must be very expensive!” cried Désiré.
The players exchanged an ironical smile. When the game was finished, the doctor, who had been gloomy up till then, assumed, in looking at Savinien, the look of a man who is grieved at having to fulfil an obligation.
“Monsieur,” he said to him, “I am very grateful for the feeling that has led you to pay me so prompt a visit; but your mother attributes very ignoble after-thoughts to me, and I should be giving her the right to a genuine belief in them did I not beg you never to come again to see me, in spite of the honor your visits do me and of the pleasure I should have in cultivating your society. My honor and my peace require that all neighborly relations should cease between us. Tell your mother that, if I do not beg her to do us the honor, my ward and I, of accepting an invitation to dinner on Sunday next, it is because of the certainty I have that she would be indisposed on that day.”
The old man held out his hand to the young viscount, who pressed it affectionately and said:
“You are right, monsieur!”
Then he withdrew, but not without making a bow to Ursule, a bow that expressed melancholy rather than disappointment.
Désiré left at the same time as the nobleman; but he found it impossible to exchange a word with him, as Savinien rushed home.