# Ursule Mirouët (Tomlinson translation)/Part II/6

The next day, the post shed the poison of two anonymous letters into two hearts; one was to Madame de Portenduère, the other to Ursule. This is the one received by the old lady:
“You love your son, you want to establish him as befits the name he bears, and you encourage his fancy for a penniless and ambitious young girl, by receiving at your house one Ursule, daughter of a military bandsman; whilst you could marry him to Mademoiselle du Rouvre, whose two uncles, Messieurs le Marquis de Ronquerolles and the Chevalier du Rouvre, each possessing thirty thousand francs a year, intend to settle it upon their niece in her marriage contract so as to avoid leaving their fortune to that old fool, Monsieur du Rouvre, who squanders everything. Madame de Sérizy, Clementine du Rouvre’s aunt, who has just lost her only son in the Algerian campaign, will doubtless also adopt her niece. Some one who wishes you well believes that Savinien would be accepted.”
This is the letter written to Ursule:
“DEAR URSULE,
“In Nemours there is a young man who worships you, who cannot see you working at your windows without an emotion which proves to him that his love is for life. This young man is gifted with a will of iron and a perseverance that nothing discourages; so receive his love favorably, for he has none but the purest intentions, and humbly asks for your hand in the desire of making you happy. His fortune, though already suitable, is nothing compared to that which he will give you when you are his wife. One day you will be received at ​Court as the wife of a minister, and one of the highest in the land. As he can see you every day without your being able to see him, put one of La Bougival’s pots of carnations in the window; in this way you will have told him that he may call.”
Ursule burnt this letter without mentioning it to Savinien. Two days after she received another letter, thus worded:
“You were wrong, dear Ursule, not to answer him who loves you better than his life. You think you will marry Savinien, but you deceive yourself strangely. This marriage will never take place, Madame de Portenduère, who will no longer receive you at her house, is going this morning to Rouvre, on foot, in spite of the condition of suffering she is in, to ask the hand of Mademoiselle du Rouvre for Savinien. Savinien will finally yield. How can he object? the young lady’s uncles are securing their fortune on their niece by settlement. This fortune consists of sixty thousand francs a year.”
This letter devastated Ursule’s heart by teaching her the tortures of jealousy, a suffering hitherto unknown, which, in an organization so fine and sensitive to pain, clouded the present, future and even the past with grief. From the moment she had this fatal paper, she remained in the doctor’s armchair, her gaze fixed upon space, lost in a sorrowful dream. In one instant she felt the chill of death instead of the ardor of glorious life. Alas! it was worse: in reality it was the cruel awakening of the dead finding that there is no God, the masterpiece of that singular genius called Jean-Paul. Four times ​La Bougival tried to make Ursule eat her breakfast, and saw her take up the bread and leave it, unable to carry it to her lips. When she ventured a remonstrance, Ursule answered her with a gesture of the hand and one terrible “Hush!” spoken as despotically as her tone had hitherto been gentle. La Bougival, who was watching her mistress through the glass window of the door of communication, observed that she was alternately as burning red as the fever that consumed her, and as violet as the chill that followed the fever. This condition grew worse about four o’clock, when Ursule got up every moment to see if Savinien was coming or not coming. Jealousy and doubt strip love of all bashfulness. Ursule, who would not hitherto have allowed her passion to be betrayed by a gesture, put on her hat, her little shawl, and rushed out into her corridor to go and meet Savinien, but some remnant of modesty forced her back into her little parlor. There she wept. When the curé called in the evening, the poor nurse stopped him on the threshold.
“Ah! Monsieur le Curé, I don’t know what is the matter with mademoiselle; she—”
“I know,” replied the priest sadly, thus silencing the frightened nurse.
The Abbé Chaperon then told Ursule what she had not dared ascertain. Madame de Portenduère had gone to dine at Le Rouvre.
“And Savinien?”
“Also.”
Ursule gave a nervous start which made the Abbé ​Chaperon shiver as if he had received the discharge of an electrical jar, and moreover felt himself strongly stirred to the heart.
“And so we shall not go to her house to-night,” said the curé, “but, my child, you would do well not to go there any more. The old lady would receive you in such a way as to hurt your pride. We who had led her to listen to the mention of your marriage do not know from whence blows the wind which has changed her all in a moment.”
“I am prepared for everything, and am no longer astonished at anything,” said Ursule in tones of conviction. “In extremes of this kind it is a great consolation to feel that one has not offended God.”
“Submit yourself, my dear daughter, without searching out the ways of Providence,” said the curé.
“I do not wish to suspect Monsieur de Portenduère’s character unjustly—”
“Why do you no longer call him Savinien?” asked the curé, who observed some slight bitterness in Ursule’s accents.
“My dear Savinien’s,” she resumed, weeping. “Yes, my kind friend,” she continued, sobbing, “a voice keeps telling me that his heart is as noble as his blood. Not only has he confessed to me that he loved me above everything, but he has proved it to me by infinite delicacy and by heroically restraining his ardent passion. When he recently took the hand that I held out to him when Monsieur Bongrand was suggesting that notary as a husband for ​me, I swear to you it was the first time I had ever given it to him. If he began with a joke in sending me a kiss across the street, his affection since then has never, as you know, gone beyond the strictest bounds; but I may tell you who can read my soul—save for the corner which is kept for the angels’ eyes—that this feeling is the element of many a merit to me; it has enabled me to accept my misfortunes, it has perhaps softened the bitterness of the irreparable loss which I mourn by my dress rather than in my heart! Oh! I have been wrong! Yes, love in me was stronger than my gratitude toward my godfather, and God has avenged him. How could it be helped! I respected myself as Savinien’s future wife; I was too proud, and it may be that God has punished that pride. God alone, as you have told me, ought to be the beginning and the end of our actions.”
The curé was touched at the tears rolling down her face, already growing pale. The more the poor girl seemed secure, the more she failed.
“But,” she continued, “once I return to my orphaned condition I shall be able to resume the feelings. After all, could I be a stone round the neck of the man I love? What could he do here? Who am I to aspire to him? Besides, do I not love him with so divine a love that it would go as far as the entire sacrifice of my happiness and hopes?—And you know I have often reproached myself for founding my love upon a grave, for knowing it to be deferred until after this old lady’s death. If ​Savinien is made happy and rich by another, I have just enough to pay my dowry to the convent which I shall enter at once. There should no more be two loves in a woman’s heart than there are two Masters in Heaven. A religious life would have attractions for me.”
“He could not let his mother go alone to Le Rouvre,” said the good priest gently.
“Do not let us talk any more about it, my kind Monsieur Chaperon; I shall write to him to-night to set him free. I am delighted to have to shut up the windows of this parlor.”
And she informed the old man of the anonymous letters whilst telling him that she would not encourage her unknown lover’s advances.
“Ah! it is an anonymous letter which has induced Madame de Portenduère to go to Le Rouvre,” cried the curé, “there is no doubt that you are being persecuted by wicked people.”
“But why? Neither Savinien nor I have done harm to anyone, and we are not injuring anybody’s interests here.”
“Well, little one, we will take advantage of this explosion which has broken up our party, to arrange our poor friend’s library. The books are in a heap; Bongrand and I will put them in order, for we mean to search amongst them. Put your trust in God; but remember also that you have two devoted friends in the kind justice of the peace and myself.”
“That is a great deal,” she said, accompanying ​the curé as far as the threshold of the entrance, stretching her neck like a bird looking out of its nest, still hoping to see Savinien.
Just then, Minoret and Goupil, returning from some walk in the fields, stopped in passing, and the doctor’s heir said to Ursule:
“What is the matter with you, cousin? for we are always cousins, are we not? You seem altered.”
Goupil was casting such ardent looks at Ursule that she was frightened; she went in without replying.
“She is shy,” said Minoret to the curé.
“Mademoiselle Mirouët is quite right not to talk to men on her doorstep; she is too young—”
“Oh!” said Goupil, “you must know that she does not lack lovers.”
The curé had hastened to bow and was hurriedly walking toward the Rue des Bourgeois.
“Well!” said the head clerk to Minoret, “it is brewing! She is already as white as death; but, in a fortnight, she will have left the town. You will see.”
“It’s better to have you for a friend than an enemy,” cried Minoret, startled by the cruel smile which gave Goupil’s face the diabolical expression ascribed by Joseph Bridau to Goethe’s Mephistopheles.
“I should think so,” replied Goupil. “If she does not marry me I will kill her with sorrow.”
“Do this, young man, and I give you the funds to become a notary in Paris. You will then be able to marry a rich woman—”
​“Poor girl! What has she done to you then?” asked the clerk, surprised.
“She bores me!” said Minoret roughly.
“Wait till Monday, and then you shall see how I will pester her,” rejoined Goupil, examining the old postmaster’s countenance.
The next day, the old Bougival went to Savinien’s and said, holding out a letter:
“I do not know what the dear child has written to you, but she is like a corpse this morning.”
From this letter to Savinien cannot one imagine the sufferings that had beset Ursule during the night?
“MY DEAR SAVINIEN, “I have been told that your mother wishes you to marry Mademoiselle du Rouvre, and perhaps she is right. You are now between a life of what is almost poverty and a life of wealth, between the fiancée of your heart and a society wife, between obedience to your mother’s and your own choice, for I still believe that you have chosen me. Savinien, if you have any determination to make, I want it to be made in all freedom; I give you back the word you gave, not to me, but to yourself at a moment which will never fade from my memory, and which, like all the days that have followed since, was of angelic purity and sweetness. This remembrance is enough for my lifetime. Were you to persist in your vow, my happiness would hereafter be troubled by a dark and terrible idea. In the midst of our privations, now so cheerfully borne, you might, later on, think to yourself that, had you followed the dictates of the world, all might have been very different for you. Were you the man to give utterance to this thought, it would mean to me the sentence of a miserable death; and, did you not say it, I should suspect the slightest cloud that ​might darken your forehead. Dear Savinien, I have always liked you better than anyone else upon earth. And I might, since my godfather, although he was envious, used to say: ‘Love him, child! you will surely belong to each other some day.’ When I went to Paris I loved you hopelessly, and that feeling contented me. I do not know if I can return to it, but I shall try. After all, what are we at this moment? Brother and sister. Let us remain so. Marry this fortunate girl, who will have the joy of giving your name the lustre it should have, and which, according to your mother, I should diminish. You will never hear of me again. The world will commend you, and I shall never blame you and shall always love you. So good-bye.”
“Wait!” cried the young man.
He motioned to La Bougival to sit down and he scrawled these few words:
“MY DEAR URSULE, “Your letter breaks my heart, because you have needlessly given yourself much pain, and because, for the first time, our hearts have ceased their understanding. If you are not my wife it is because I cannot yet marry without my mother’s consent. After all, is not eight thousand francs a year in a pretty cottage on the banks of the Loing a fortune? We calculated that with La Bougival we should save five thousand francs a year! One night, in your uncle’s garden, you allowed me to look upon you as my fiancée, and you by yourself cannot break our mutual bonds. Need I tell you that yesterday I plainly told Monsieur du Rouvre that even if I were free I would not accept my fortune from a young woman whom I did not know. My mother refuses to see you again, I lose the happiness of our evenings, but do not curtail the short time I speak to you at your window. Till to-night. Nothing can separate us.”
​“Go, old friend. She must not be anxious one moment too long—”
That evening at four o’clock, returning from the daily walk he took on purpose to pass Ursule’s house, Savinien found his mistress somewhat pale from such sudden upsets.
“It seems to me I have never known till now what pleasure it is to see you,” she said to him.
“You once said to me,” replied Savinien, smiling, “for I remember all your words, that ‘Love does not thrive without patience, I will wait!’ Then, dear child, have you divided love from faith? Ah! this is the end of all our quarrels. You declared you loved me better than I love you. Have I ever doubted you?” he asked, offering her a nosegay of wild flowers so arranged as to convey his thoughts.
“You have no reason to doubt me,” she replied, “and besides, you do not know all,” she added in a troubled voice.
She had refused all letters from the post But, without her being able to guess by what witchcraft the thing had happened, a few moments after the departure of Savinien, whom she had watched turning from the Rue des Bourgeois into the Grand’Rue, she had found a paper on her armchair on which was written: “Tremble! the despised lover will be worse than a tiger.” In spite of Savinien’s entreaties she refused, through caution, to confide the terrible secret of her fear to him. It was only the unspeakable pleasure of seeing Savinien again after having thought she had lost him that could make her forget the deadly ​chill which had just seized her. To everybody it is horrible torture to wait for indefinite calamity. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is certainly the infinite of the soul. But, to Ursule, it was the very greatest misery. She inwardly experienced fearful starts at the slightest noise, she mistrusted silence, and suspected her walls of complicity. At last her peaceful sleep became disturbed. Goupil, completely ignorant of the flower-like delicacy of such a constitution, had yet through the instinct of evil, discovered the poison that was to blight and kill her. And yet, the following day passed without any surprise. Ursule played the piano very late and went to bed almost reassured and overcome with sleep. About midnight, she was awakened by a concert composed of a clarionette, a hautboy, a flute, a cornopean, a trombone, a bassoon, a flageolet and a triangle. All the neighbors were at the windows. The poor child, already startled at seeing people in the road, received a terrible shock upon hearing a man’s hoarse, vulgar voice crying:
“For pretty Ursule Mirouët from her lover!”
The next day, Sunday, the whole town was in an uproar, and as Ursule entered and left the church she saw numerous groups in the market-place gossiping about her and evincing a horrible curiosity. The serenade set all tongues going, for everyone was lost in conjecture. Ursule reached her house more dead than alive and did not go out again, the curé having advised her to say vespers at home. ​Upon entering she saw a letter slipped under the door of the brick-tiled corridor leading from the road into the yard; she picked it up, and read it, impelled by the desire to find some explanation within. The least sensitive of beings can imagine what she must have felt upon reading these awful lines:
                         “From him who loves you and to whom you will belong some day.”
Strange! at the very moment that the gentle, tender victim of this plot was crushed like a broken flower, Mesdemoiselles Massin, Dionis and Crémière were envying her lot.
“She is very lucky,” they were saying. “Everyone is thinking about her, her fancies are flattered, and she is being discussed! From what they say the serenade must have been charming! There was a cornopean!”
“What is a cornopean?”
“A new instrument! look here, as big as this,” said Angeline Crémière to Paméla Massin.
In the morning Savinien had gone as far as Fontainebleau trying to find out who had asked for the bandsmen from the regiment in garrison; but, as there were two men to each instrument, it was impossible to recognize those who had gone to Nemours. The colonel gave orders forbidding the ​bandsmen to play for private persons without his permission. The young nobleman had an interview with the Attorney for the Crown, Ursule’s guardian, and explained to him the seriousness of such scenes for so delicate and frail a young girl, whilst begging him to discover the author of this serenade through all the means at the disposal of the courts. Three days after, in the middle of the night, three violins, a flute, a guitar and a hautboy gave a second serenade. This time, the musicians fled in the direction of Montargis, where there happened to be a company of comedians at that time. A harsh, intoxicated voice had cried between two pieces:
“To the daughter of the bandmaster Mirouët!”
In this way all Nemours learnt the profession of Ursule’s father, the secret so carefully guarded by old Doctor Minoret.
This time Savinien did not go to Montargis. During the day he received an anonymous letter from Paris, in which he had read this horrible prophecy:
“You will not marry Ursule. If you want her to live, make haste to yield her to one who loves her more than you do; for he has turned musician and artist to please her, and would rather see her dead than know her to be your wife.”
At that time the Nemours doctor came three times a day to see Ursule, whom these occult persecutions had placed in peril of death. Feeling herself thrust into a slough by some infernal hand, this sweet young girl maintained a martyr’s attitude; ​she remained in profound silence, raised her eyes to Heaven and wept no more; she was awaiting fresh shocks with fervent prayers and intercessions for him who was dealing death to her.
“I am glad not to be able to go down to the parlor,” she said to Messieurs Bongrand and Chaperon, who left her as little as possible, “he would come, and I feel I am unworthy of the looks with which he always blesses me! Do you think he doubts me?”
“Why, if Savinien does not discover the author of these infamies, he intends going to demand the interference of the police in Paris,” said Bongrand.
“The unknown must know that I am wounded to death,” she replied, “they will stay quiet.”
The curé, Bongrand and Savinien were lost in conjecture and supposition. Savinien, Tiennette, La Bougival and two persons devoted to the curé turned spy and were on their guard for a week; but Goupil, who was plotting alone, was not to be betrayed by any indiscretion. The justice of the peace was the first to think that the author of the mischief was afraid at his own work. Ursule was growing as white and feeble as consumptive young English girls. Everyone relaxed his attention. There were no more serenades or letters. Savinien attributed the abandonment of these obnoxious means to the secret investigations of the public prosecutor, to whom he had sent the letters received by Ursule, by his mother and himself. This truce did not last long. One morning, toward the middle ​of July, when the doctor had checked Ursule’s nervous fever, and just when she was plucking up courage once more, a rope-ladder was found fastened to her window. The postilion who had driven the night mail declared that a little man was about to climb down just as he was passing; and that, in spite of his desire to stop, his horses—having started down the incline of the bridge at whose corner Ursule’s house stood—had carried him well on beyond Nemours. One opinion originating in the Dionis circle attributed these manoeuvres to the Marquis du Rouvre, then in great difficulties, Massin having bills of exchange upon him, and who, by the speedy marriage of his daughter to Savinien would, so it was said, preserve his château Du Rouvre from his creditors. It was said that Madame de Portenduère was delighted at anything that could expose, discredit or disgrace Ursule; but, in the presence of this early death, the old lady found herself almost vanquished. The Curé Chaperon was so keenly affected by this last trick, that he felt sufficiently ill to remain at home for a few days. Poor Ursule, who had suffered a relapse from this odious attempt, received a letter from the curé through the post, which they had not refused upon recognizing the handwriting:
“MY CHILD,
“Leave Nemours, and so defeat the malice of your unknown enemies. Perhaps they are trying to endanger Savinien’s life. I will tell you more when I am able to go and see you.”
​This note was signed: Your devoted CHAPERON.
When Savinien, almost beside himself, went to see the curé, the poor priest read the letter over and over, so horrified was he at the perfection with which his writing and signature had been copied; for he had not written at all, and, had he written, he would not have made use of the post to send his letter to Ursule. The deadly condition to which this last atrocity reduced Ursule drove Savinien to apply once more to the public prosecutor while taking him the curé’s forged letter.
“A murder is being committed through means for which the law has in no way provided, and upon an orphan whom the Code has entrusted to you as a ward,” said the nobleman to the magistrate.
“If you discover the means of repression,” replied the public prosecutor, “I will adopt them; but I do not know of any! The anonymous villain has given the best advice. Mademoiselle Mirouët must be sent here to the nuns of the Adoration du Saint-Sacrement. In the meanwhile, at my request, the superintendent of the police at Fontainebleau will authorize you to bear arms for your defence. I went myself to Le Rouvre, and Monsieur du Rouvre was very justly indignant at the suspicions hovering over him. Minoret, my deputy’s father, is bargaining with him for his château. Mademoiselle du Rouvre is to marry a rich Polish count. In fact, Monsieur du Rouvre was leaving the country the very day upon which I went there, in order to avoid the execution of an arrest.”
​Désiré, questioned by his chief, did not dare to express his thoughts; he recognized Goupil! Goupil alone was capable of carrying on any action which skirted the penal code without falling over the precipice of any one article. Impunity, secrecy and success increased Goupil’s audacity. The terrible clerk compelled Massin, now his dupe, to persecute the Marquis du Rouvre, so as to force the nobleman to sell the remainder of his estate to Minoret. After having entered into negotiations with a notary at Sens, he resolved to attempt a final stroke to obtain Ursule. He meant to imitate two or three young men in Paris who owed their wives and their fortunes to abduction. The services rendered to Minoret, Massin and Crémière, and the protection of Dionis, Mayor of Nemours, would enable him to hush up the affair. He immediately decided to throw off the mask, believing Ursule to be incapable of resisting him in the state of weakness to which he had reduced her. Nevertheless, before risking the last stroke of his ignoble scheme, he deemed it necessary to have an explanation at Le Rouvre, where he accompanied Minoret, who was going there for the first time since the signing of the contract. Minoret had just received a confidential letter in which his son asked for information as to what was happening about Ursule, before coming himself with the public prosecutor to take her to a convent, in order to protect her from any fresh outrage. The deputy begged his father, in the event of this persecution being the work of one of their ​friends, to give such a one some good advice. If justice could not always punish, she would end by knowing all and would keep good account. Minoret had reached a great goal. Henceforth indisputable proprietor of the Château du Rouvre, one of the finest in Le Gâtinais, he combined an income of forty odd thousand francs, with beautiful and rich estates around the park. The colossus could defy Goupil. In fact, he expected to live in the country, where the recollection of Ursule would not trouble him any more.
“My boy,” he said to Goupil as he was walking up and down the terrace, “leave my cousin in peace!”
“Bah!” said the clerk, unable to make anything of this odd behavior, for stupidity also has its depths.
“Oh! I am not ungrateful; you got me this fine château of brick and cut stone for two hundred and eighty thousand francs such as nowadays could not be built for two hundred thousand crowns, the château farm, the preserves, the park, the gardens and woods—Well, then—yes, upon my word! I will give you ten per cent, twenty thousand francs, with which you can buy an attorney’s practice in Nemours. I guarantee your marriage with one of the little Crémières, the eldest.”
“The one who talks of the cornopean?” cried Goupil.
“But my cousin will give her thirty thousand francs,” returned Minoret, “you see, my boy, you ​are born to be an attorney as I was made to be a postmaster, and one must always follow one’s vocation.”
“Well then,” rejoined Goupil, his hopes shattered, “here are the stamps, sign acceptances for twenty thousand francs so that I can lay the money down.”
Minoret had the half-yearly eighteen thousand francs coming in from the bonds about which his wife did not know; in this way he thought he could get rid of Goupil, and signed. The head clerk, seeing the foolish and colossal Machiavel of the Rue des Bourgeois in a fit of seigniorial fever, threw him an “Au revoir!” as a farewell and a look which would have terrified any but a silly parvenu gazing from the height of a terrace upon the gardens and magnificent roofs of a château built in the style in vogue under Louis XIII.
“Are you not going to wait for me?” he cried, seeing Goupil walking off.
“You will meet me again in your path, papa!” replied the future attorney, thirsting for revenge and longing to find out the key of the riddle presented to his mind by the strange zigzags of fat Minoret’s behavior.