Ursule Mirouët (Tomlinson translation)/Part II/9
* edit
That very night, Ursule had an apparition which took place in a strange way.
It seemed to her that her bed was in the cemetery at Nemours, and that her uncle’s grave was at the foot of her bed. The white stone on which she read the inscription dazzled her most intensely in opening like the oblong cover of an album. She uttered piercing cries, but her uncle’s spirit slowly stood up. First she saw the yellow head and the shining white hair surrounded by a sort of halo. The eyes were like two rays beneath the bare forehead, and he was rising, as if impelled by some superior power. Ursule trembled dreadfully in her bodily exterior, her flesh was like a burning garment and there seemed, she said later on, to be another self moving within her.
“Godfather, have mercy!” she said.
“Mercy? there is no longer time,” he said in the voice of the dead, according to the inexplicable expression of the poor girl when relating this fresh dream to the Abbé Chaperon. “He has been warned, he has not paid attention to the warnings. His son’s days are numbered. If he has not confessed all, restored all within a short time, he will mourn his son, who will die a horrible and violent death. Let him know it!”
The spirit pointed to a row of figures sparkling on the wall as if they had been written in fire, and said:
“There is his sentence!”
When her uncle had again lain down in his tomb, Ursule heard the sound of the falling stone, then in the distance a strange noise of horses and a man’s cries.
The next day, Ursule found herself exhausted. She could not get up, so much was she oppressed by this dream. She begged her nurse to go at once to the Abbé Chaperon’s and bring him back with her. The old man came after having said mass; but he was not at all astonished at Ursule’s story; he believed the robbery to be true and no longer sought any explanation of the anomalous life of his dear little dreamer. He left Ursule at once, and hurried to Minoret’s.
“Mon Dieu! Monsieur le Curé,” said Zélie to the priest, “my husband’s temper is soured, I don’t know what is the matter with him. Hitherto he has been like a child; but, for the last two months, he is no longer the same. To have flown into such a passion as to strike me, I, who am so gentle! the man must be entirely changed. You will find him among the rocks, he spends all his days there! What does he do?”
In spite of the heat—it was then September 1836—the priest crossed the canal and struck into a pathway, seeing Minoret at the foot of one of the rocks.
“You are very much worried, Monsieur Minoret,” said the priest, appearing before the culprit, “you belong to me, for you are suffering. Unhappily, I have come no doubt to augment your anxieties. Last night Ursule had a terrible dream. Your uncle lifted his tombstone to prophesy misfortune to your family. Indeed I do not come to frighten you, but you ought to know what he said—”
“Really, Monsieur le Curé, I can get no peace anywhere, not even on these rocks—I want to know nothing of what is going on in the other world.”
“I will go away, monsieur; I did not come all this way in the heat for my own pleasure,” said the priest, wiping his forehead.
“Well, what did the old man say?” asked Minoret.
“You are threatened with the loss of your son. If he has related things that you alone know of, it makes one shudder to think of the things that we do not know. Restore it, dear monsieur, restore it! Do not condemn yourself for a little gold.”
“But what am I to restore?”
“The fortune that the doctor intended for Ursule. I now know that you took those three bonds. You began by persecuting the poor girl, and you end by offering her a dowry; you fall into falsehood, you become entangled in its intricacies and make mistakes at every turn. You are clumsy, and have been badly served by your accomplice Goupil, who laughs at you. You had better make haste, for you are being watched by shrewd, intelligent people, Ursule’s friends. Make restitution! and, if you do not save your son, who is perhaps not menaced, you will save your soul and your honor. In a community like this, in a little town where every one’s eyes are upon you, and where all is found out although all is not known, how can you hide a fortune wrongfully acquired? Come, my dear son, an innocent man would not have let me talk so long.”
“Go to the devil!” cried Minoret, “I don’t know why you all go at me. I would rather have these stones, they leave me in peace.”
“Good-bye. You have been warned by me, monsieur, without either the poor child or myself having said a single word to anybody whatever. But take care! there is one man who has his eye upon you. God have pity upon you!”
The curé went away; but, after walking a few steps, he turned round to look once more at Minoret.
Minoret was holding his head in his hands, for his head was uncomfortable. Minoret was a little crazy. In the first place, he had kept the three bonds, he did not know what to do with them, he dared not go and receive them himself, he was afraid lest somebody should remark it; he did not want to sell them, and was trying to find some way of transferring them. He, even he! would create romances about business in which the issue was always the transfer of the accursed bonds. In this fearful predicament, he nevertheless thought of confessing all to his wife, so as to have some advice. Zélie, who had steered her own business so well, would know how to help him out of this tiresome dilemma. Three per cent stock was then at eighty francs, so it was a question, with arrears, of restoring nearly a million! To return a million, without there being any proof as to its being stolen! this was no light matter. And so Minoret spent all September and part of October a prey to his remorse and irresolution. To the great astonishment of the whole town, he grew thin.
A dreadful event hurried on the disclosure that Minoret was longing to make to Zélie; the sword of Damocles stirred over their heads. Toward the middle of October, Monsieur and Madame Minoret received the following letter from their son:
“MY DEAR MOTHER,
“If I have not been to see you since the holidays, it is, first, because I was on duty in the absence of Monsieur le Procureur du Roi, and then because I knew Monsieur de Portenduère was waiting for me to visit Nemours to pick a quarrel with me. Tired, perhaps, of putting off the revenge that he wished to wreak upon our family, the viscount came to Fontainebleau, where he had made an appointment with one of his friends from Paris, after having secured the co-operation of the Vicomte de Soulanges, who is major of the hussars now in garrison here. He called upon me very politely, accompanied by these two gentlemen, and told me that my father was undoubtedly the author of the infamous persecutions practised upon Ursule Mirouët, his future wife; he proved it to me by explaining to me Goupil’s confession in the presence of witnesses, and also the conduct of my father, who first had refused to fulfil the promises made to Goupil to reward him for his treacherous inventions, and who, after having provided him with funds for the negotiation of the attorney’s office at Nemours, had, through fear, offered his security to Monsieur Dionis for the price of his practice, and finally established Goupil. The viscount, being unable to fight a man of sixty-seven, and being absolutely determined to avenge the injuries done to Ursule, has formally demanded reparation from me. His resolution, taken and weighed in silence, was immovable. Had I declined a duel, he had resolved to meet me in a drawing-room, in the presence of persons whose esteem I most value, and there to insult me so seriously, that I should then have to fight or my career would come to an end. In France, a coward is universally scouted. Moreover, men of honor would understand his motives for exacting reparation. He expressed his sorrow at being driven to such extremities. According to his seconds, the most sensible thing for me to do would be to settle an encounter as honorable men are in the habit of doing, so that Ursule Mirouët should not be the cause of the quarrel. In fact, to avoid any scandal in France, we could travel over the nearest frontier with our seconds. In this way things will be settled for the best. He said his name was worth ten times my fortune, and with his future happiness he was risking more than I in this fight, which will be to the death. He has advised me to choose my seconds, and to settle these points. The seconds that I chose met his yesterday, and unanimously agreed that I owe reparation. So in eight days I shall start for Geneva with two of my friends. Monsieur de Portenduère, Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de Trailles will also go. We shall fight with pistols; all the conditions of the duel are decided; we shall each fire three times, and afterward, no matter what happens, all will be over. To avoid spreading so shameful an affair—for I cannot possibly justify my father’s conduct—I am writing to you at the last minute. I will not go to see you, on account of the fury to which you might give way and which would not be at all agreeable. In order to get on in society I must follow its rules; and, where there may be ten reasons for a viscount’s son to fight, there are a hundred for a postmaster’s son. I shall pass through Nemours by night, and will say good-bye to you.”
When this letter had been read, there was a scene between Zélie and Minoret, which ended by the confession of the theft, and all the circumstances relating to it and the strange scenes to which it had everywhere given rise, even in the world of dreams. The million fascinated Zélie quite as much as it had fascinated Minoret.
“You stay quietly here,” said Zélie to her husband, without reproaching him at all for his follies, “I will look after all this. We will keep the money, and Désiré shall not fight.”
Madame Minoret put on her hat and shawl, ran over to Ursule’s with her son’s letter, and found her alone, for it was about midday.
In spite of her assurance, Zélie Minoret was chilled by the cold glance that the orphan gave her; but she curbed herself, as it were, in her cowardice and assumed an easy tone.
“Here, Mademoiselle Mirouët, will you oblige me by reading this letter and telling me what you think of it?” she cried, holding out the deputy’s letter to Ursule.
Ursule experienced a thousand conflicting emotions upon reading this letter, which told her how much she was loved, and what care Savinien took of the honor of her whom he was taking for his wife; but she was both too religious and too charitable to wish to be the cause of her bitterest enemy’s death or suffering.
“I promise, madame, to prevent this duel, and you may be easy; but I beg you will leave me this letter.”
“Come, my little angel, could we not do better than that? Listen to me carefully. We have altogether forty-eight thousand francs a year from the estate round about Le Rouvre, which is a truly royal château; besides that, we can give Désiré twenty-four thousand francs a year in bonds of the national debt, in all, seventy-two thousand francs a year. You will agree that there are not many matches that can vie with him. You are an ambitious little thing, and you are right,” said Zélie, seeing Ursule’s quick gesture of denial. “I have come to ask your hand for Désiré; you bear your godfather’s name, it will be doing him an honor. Désiré, as you have seen, is a handsome fellow; he is very well thought of at Fontainebleau, and he will soon be public prosecutor. You are a wheedler, you could make him go to Paris. We would give you a fine house in Paris, you would be conspicuous, you would play a grand part, for with seventy-two thousand francs a year and the salary from an appointment, you and Désiré, you would be in the highest society. Consult your friends and see what they will tell you.”
“I need only to consult my heart, madame.”
“Tush! tush! do you mean to tell me about that little heart-breaker of a Savinien? Well! you will pay very dear for his name, his little moustaches turned up like two hooks, and his black hair. And a nice sort of fellow! You will flourish in a household on seven thousand francs a year and a man who ran up a debt of a hundred thousand francs in Paris in two years. And then, not that you know that yet, all men are alike, my child! and, without conceit, my Désiré is as good as a king’s son.”
“You forget, madame, your son’s danger at this present moment, which can only be averted by Monsieur de Portenduère’s desire to please me. This peril would be irretrievable if he learned that you were making dishonorable proposals to me.—You must know, madame, that I should be happier with the moderate fortune to which you allude than with the wealth with which you want to dazzle me. For some reason yet unknown, but that will be known, madame, Monsieur Minoret has, by his odious persecutions of me, published the affection which binds me to Monsieur de Portenduère and which may be confessed, for there is no doubt that his mother will bless it; so I must tell you that this affection, permissible and lawful, is my whole life. No destiny, however brilliant, however exalted it might be, could make me change. I love absolutely and unalterably. So it would be a crime for which I should be punished to marry a man to whom I should bring a heart wholly given to Savinien. Now, madame, since you force me to it I will say even more: did I not love Monsieur de Portenduère at all, I should not even then be able to resolve on bearing the sorrows and joys of life in the company of your son. If Monsieur Savinien has had debts, you have often paid Monsieur Désiré’s. Our characters are neither sufficiently alike nor dissimilar to permit us to live together without secret bitterness. Perhaps I might not show him that forbearance that wives owe their husbands, so he would soon find me burdensome. Do not think any more of an alliance of which I am unworthy and which I can refuse without causing you the least pain as, with such advantages, you will not fail in finding young girls more beautiful than I, of a superior rank, and richer.”
“Will you promise me, little one,” said Zélie, “that you will prevent these two young men from taking their journey and from fighting?”
“I foresee that it will be the greatest sacrifice Monsieur de Portenduère can make for me; but my marriage wreath must not be put on by blood-stained hands.”
“Well, thank you, cousin, and I hope you may be happy.”
“And I, madame,” said Ursule, “hope that you may realize your son’s grand future.”
This answer struck the heart of the deputy’s mother, who recalled the prophecies in Ursule’s last dream; she stood up, her little eyes fixed upon Ursule’s face, so white, so pure and so beautiful in her dress of half-mourning, for Ursule had risen as a hint to her so-called cousin to go.
“Then you believe in dreams?” she said.
“I have suffered too much from them not to believe in them.”
“But then—” said Zélie.
“Good-bye, madame,” said Ursule, bowing to Madame Minoret upon hearing the curb’s footsteps.
The Abbé Chaperon was surprised at finding Madame Minoret at Ursule’s. The anxiety depicted on the thin, wrinkled face of the former postmistress naturally set the priest watching the two women alternately.
“Do you believe in revenants—ghosts—?” said Zélie to the curé.
“Do you believe in revenus—revenues—?” replied the priest, smiling.
“They are sly, all these people,” thought Zélie, “they want to diddle us. This old priest, the old justice of the peace and that young scamp of a Savinien are all agreed. There are no more dreams than I have hair in the palm of my hand.”
She left after making two curt, stiff bows.
“I know why Savinien went to Fontainebleau,” said Ursule to the Abbé Chaperon, informing him of the duel and begging him to use his influence in preventing it.
“And Madame Minoret has offered you her son’s hand?” said the old priest.
“Yes.”
“Minoret has probably confessed his crime to his wife,” added the curé.
The justice of the peace, arriving at that moment, heard of the proceedings and of the offer just made by Zélie, whose hatred of Ursule was well known to him, and he looked at the curé as much as to say: “Come out, I want to speak to you about Ursule without her hearing us.”
“Savinien shall know that you have refused eighty thousand francs a year, and the cock of Nemours!” he said.
“Is it a sacrifice then?” she replied. “Are there any sacrifices when one truly loves? And is there any merit whatever in refusing the son of a man whom we despise? However others may make virtues of their dislikes, that must not be the morality of a girl brought up by a Jordy, an Abbé Chaperon and our dear doctor!” she said, looking at the portrait.
Bongrand took Ursule’s hand and kissed it.
“Do you know,” said the justice of the peace to the curé, when they were in the street, “what Madame Minoret has just done?”
“What?” replied the priest, examining the justice with a shrewd look that appeared to be merely curious.
“She wanted to make arrangements for restitution.”
“Then you think—!” rejoined the Abbé Chaperon.
“I do not think, I am certain, and look here.”
The justice of the peace pointed to Minoret, who was approaching them on his way home, for, upon leaving Ursule’s, the two friends went back up the Grand’Rue of Nemours.
“Obliged as I have been to plead in the Assize Courts, I have naturally studied remorse thoroughly, but I have never seen anything to equal this! What is it that has given this flaccidity, this pallor to cheeks that used be as tight as a drum, bursting with the sound, rude health of careless folk? Who has drawn dark circles round those eyes and subdued their rustic sprightliness? Would you ever have believed that this forehead could wrinkle, and that the brain of this colossus could ever be agitated? He feels his heart at last! I understand remorse as well as you understand penitence, my dear curé; till now those whom I have observed expected their penalty or were going to endure it in order to be quits with society: they were either resigned or they breathed vengeance; but here is remorse without expiation, remorse pure and simple, greedy for its prey and devouring it.”
“You do not yet know,” said the justice of the peace, stopping Minoret, “that Mademoiselle Mirouët has just refused the hand of your son?”
“But,” said the curé, “be easy, she will prevent his duel with Monsieur de Portenduère.”
“Ah! my wife has succeeded?” said Minoret. “I am very glad, for I could hardly keep alive.”
“Indeed you are so much changed, that you are no longer like yourself,” said the justice.
Minoret looked alternately at Bongrand and the curé to find out whether the priest had been guilty of any indiscretion; but the Abbé Chaperon preserved an impassiveness of countenance, a mournful serenity, that reassured the culprit.
“And it is all the more astonishing,” still pursued the justice of the peace, “because you ought to experience nothing but content. After all, you are seigneur of Le Rouvre, you have added to it Les Bordières, all your farms, mills, meadows—you have a hundred thousand francs a year with your investments in the Funds.”
“I have nothing in the Funds,” said Minoret, hastily.
“Bah!” said the justice of the peace. “Look here, this is rather like your son’s love for Ursule, first he turns up his nose at her, then asks her in marriage. After having tried to kill Ursule with grief, you want her for a daughter-in-law! My dear monsieur; you have something in your mind—”
Minoret tried to answer, sought for words, and all he could hit upon was:
“You are funny, Monsieur le Juge de Paix—Good-bye, messieurs.”
And he turned slowly into the Rue des Bourgeois.
“He has stolen our poor Ursule’s fortune! but how are we to fish for proofs?”
“God grant—!” said the curé.
“God has placed some feeling within us which is already speaking in this man,” broke in the justice of the peace, “but we call that presumption, and human justice requires something more.”