“Why, like you, Minoret, I had forgotten Désiré,” said Zélie. “Let us go to meet him; he is almost a lawyer now, and this business is partly his concern.”
The arrival of a diligence is always a diversion, and when it is behind time something interesting may be expected; so the crowd rushed to see the “Ducler.”
“There is Désiré,” was a general cry.
At once the tyrant and the ringleader of fun in Nemours, Désiré’s visits always brought some excitement to the town. A favorite with the young men, to whom he was liberal, his presence was to them a stimulant; but his pleasures were so much dreaded, that more than one family was glad that his studies for the law should be carried on in Paris. Désiré Minoret, slight, thin, and fair like his mother, with her blue eyes and colorless complexion, smiled at the crowd from the coach door, and Jumped out to embrace her. A slight sketch of this youth will explain Zélie’s flattered pride on beholding him.
The young law-student wore neat little boots, white English drill trousers with patent leather straps, a handsome cravat carefully folded, and a still handsomer pin, a smart fancy waistcoat, and in its pocket a flat watch with a dangling chain; a short blue cloth overcoat, and a gray hat. But vulgar riches were betrayed in the gold buttons to his waistcoat, and a ring worn outside his gloves of purplish kid. He carried a cane with a chased gold knob.
“You will lose your watch,” said his mother as she kissed him.
“It is worn so,” said he, submitting to his father’s embrace.
“Well, cousin, so you will soon be a full-blown lawyer?” said Massin.
“I am to be sworn when the courts reopen,” said he, waving an acknowledgment of the friendly greetings of the crowd.
“Then we shall have some fun?” said Goupil, shaking hands with him.
“Ah! there you are, old ape!” answered Désiré.
“Having worked for your license, you think you may take it, I suppose?” retorted the clerk, mortified at being so familiarly treated before so many people.
“For his lies?—Take what?” asked Madame Crémière of her husband.
“You know all my things, Cabirolle!” cried Désiré to the old purple and pimply-faced conductor. “Have them all taken down to the house.”
“Your horses are in a lather,” said Zélie roughly to Cabirolle. “Have you no sense at all that you drive them like that? You are a greater brute than they are.”
“But Monsieur Désiré insisted on getting on as fast as possible, to relieve your anxiety.”
“As there had been no accident, why risk killing your horses?” said she.
Friendly greetings, handshaking, and the eagerness of his young acquaintance surrounding Désiré, all the incidents of arrival, and details as to the accident which had occasioned the delay, took up so much time that the party of inheritors, increased by their friends, got back to the church just as Mass was ended. By a trick of Chance, which allows itself strange caprices. Désiré saw Ursule under the church porch as he passed, and was quite startled by her beauty. The young man paused, and necessarily checked his parents.
Ursule had taken her godfather’s arm, which obliged her to hold her prayerbook in her right hand and her parasol in the left; and in doing so, she displayed the native grace with which graceful women manage to get over the little difficulties of their dainty womanhood. If the mind betrays itself in everything, it may be said that her demeanor expressed her exquisite ingenuousness.
Ursule wore a white muslin dress, shaped loosely like a dressing-gown, with blue bows at intervals; the cape, trimmed with similar ribbon run into a wide hem, and fastened like the dress with bows, suggested the beauty of her figure; her throat, of ivory whiteness, was thrown into charming relief by all this blue—the true cosmetic for fair complexions.
A blue sash, with floating ends, marked a girlish waist and what seemed a pliant figure, one of the most seductive graces of woman. She wore a rice-straw hat simply trimmed with ribbons to match those on her dress. It was tied with a bow under her chin; and this, while enhancing the excessive whiteness of the hat, did not detract from that of her lovely complexion.
Her fine, bright hair, which she herself dressed in wide plaits, fastened into loops on each side of her face à la Berthe, caught the eye by the shining bosses of the crossing tresses. Her gray eyes, soft, though proud, harmonized with a well-moulded brow. A delicate color flushed her cheeks like a rosy cloud, and gave life to a face that was regular without being insipid, for nature had bestowed on her the rare privilege of a pure outline with an expressive countenance.
The virtue of her life was written in the perfect accordance of her features, her movements, and the general expression of her individuality, which might serve as a model of Trustfulness or of Modesty.
Her health was excellent, but not coarsely robust, so that she looked elegant. Her light gloves left it to be inferred that she had pretty hands. Her arched and slender feet were shod with dainty little bronze kid boots, trimmed with a fringe of brown silk. Her blue sash, in which a little flat watch made a boss, while a blue purse with gold tassels hung through it, attracted the eye of every woman there.
“He has given her a new watch,” said Madame Crémière, squeezing her husband’s arm.
“Why, it is Ursule!” exclaimed Désiré. “I did not recognize her.”
“Well, my dear uncle, this is an event!” said the postmaster, pointing to where the whole town had fallen into two lines along the old man’s way. “Everybody wants to see you.”
“Is it the Abbé Chaperon or Ursule who has converted you, uncle?” said Massin, bowing with Jesuitical obsequiousness to the doctor and his companion.
“It is Ursule,” said the old man curtly, and without stopping, as a man who is annoyed.
The evening before, as
