“Well, a hundred thousand to Minoret, a hundred thousand to the little girl, and three hundred thousand to each of us. That would be a fair thing.”
“Yes, that would keep us in shoe-leather.”
“If he should do that,” cried Massin, “I would sell my appointment and buy a fine estate. I would try to be made judge at Fontainebleau, and be elected deputy.”
“I would buy a stockbroker’s business,” said the tax-receiver.
“Unfortunately, that little girl on his arm and the curé have so blockaded him that we cannot get at him.”
“At any rate, we are quite certain that he will leave nothing to the Church.”
It may now be understood that the heirs were in agonies at seeing their uncle going to Mass. The most stupid have wit enough to imagine injury to their interests. Interest is the moving spirit of the peasant as of the diplomate, and on that ground the most stupid in appearance may perhaps prove the sharpest. Hence this terrible argument: “If that little Ursule is able to bring her protector within the pale of the Church, she will certainly have power to secure her own inheritance,” blazed out in letters of fire in the mind of the most obtuse of the inheritors. The postmaster had forgotten the enigma in his son’s letter in hurrying to the Square; for if the doctor were really in church following the order of prayer, they might lose two hundred and fifty thousand francs. It must be admitted that their fears were based on the strongest and most legitimate of social sentiments, namely, on family interest.
“Well, Monsieur Minoret,” said the mayor—a retired miller who had turned Royalist, a Levrault-Crémière—“when the devil was old, the devil a monk would be! Your uncle, I am told, has come over to us.”
“Better late than never, cousin,” replied the postmaster, trying to conceal his annoyance.
“How that man would laugh if we were disappointed! He is quite capable of making his son marry that cursed little hussy. May the devil get his tail round her!” cried Crémière, shaking his fist at the mayor as he went in under the porch.
“What on earth is the matter with old Crémière?” said the butcher, the eldest son of a Levrault-Levrault. “Is he not pleased to see his uncle take the road to paradise?”
“Who would ever have believed it?” said the registrar.
“It is never safe to say to the well, ‘I will never drink of your water!’ ” replied the notary, who, seeing the group from afar, left his wife to go on to church alone.
“Now, Monsieur Dionis,” said Crémière, taking the lawyer by the arm, “what do you advise us to do in these circumstances?”
“I advise you,” said Dionis, addressing the expectant heirs, “to go to bed and get up at the usual hours, to eat your soup before it gets cold, to put your shoes on your feet and your hat on your head; in short, to go on exactly as if nothing had happened.”
“You are a poor comforter!” said Massin with a cunning glance.
In spite of his short, fat figure, and his thick, crushed-looking features, Crémière-Dionis was as slippery as silk. To make a fortune he was in secret partnership with Massin, whom he no doubt kept informed when peasants were in difficulties, and which plots of ground he might devour. So the two men could pick and choose, never letting a good chance escape them, and dividing the profits of this usury on mortgage, which delays, though it cannot hinder, the action of the peasantry on the land. Hence Dionis felt a keen interest in the doctor’s will, less on account of Minoret the postmaster and Crémière the tax-receiver than for his friend the registrar’s sake. Massin’s share would, sooner or later, come to swell the capital on which the partners traded in the district.
“We must try to find out, through Monsieur Bongrand, who has fired this shot,” replied the lawyer in a low voice, as a warning to Massin to lie low.
“What are you doing here, Minoret?” was suddenly heard from a little woman who bore down on the group, in the midst of which the postmaster was visible as a tower. “You do not know what has become of Désiré, and you seem to have taken root there on your two feet when I fancied you were on horseback!—Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!”
This spare little woman, pale and fair, dressed in a cotton gown—white, with a large flowered pattern in chocolate-color—in an embroidered cap trimmed with lace, and a small green shawl over her flat shoulders, was the postmistress, who made the stoutest postilions quake, the servants, and the carters; who kept the till and the books; and managed the house with her finger and eye, as the neighbors were in the habit of saying. Like a true, thrifty housewife, she had not a single article of jewelry. She did not “favor frippery and trash,” as she put it; she liked what was durable, and in spite of its being Sunday, she had on her black silk apron with pockets, in which a bunch of keys jingled. Her shrill voice was earsplitting. In spite of the sweet blue of her eyes, her hard gaze was in evident harmony with the thin lips of a tightly-set mouth, and a high, projecting, and very despotic brow. Her glance was sharp, sharper still were her gestures and words. “Zélie being obliged to have will enough for two, had always had enough for
