While the girl was playing to her godfather the variations on “La dernière Pensée musicale” of Weber, a plot was being hatched in Minoret-Levrault’s dining-room, which was destined to bring on to the stage one of the most important actors in this drama. The breakfast, which lasted two hours, was as noisy as a provincial breakfast always is, and washed down by capital wine brought to Nemours by canal, either from Burgundy or from Touraine. Zélie had procured some shellfish too, some sea-fish, and a few rarer dainties to do honor to Désiré’s return.
The dining-room, in its midst the round table of tempting aspect, looked like an inn-room. Zélie, satisfied with the extent of her household offices, had built a large room between the vast courtyard and the kitchen-garden, which was full of vegetables and fruit-trees. Here everything was merely neat and substantial. The example set by Levrault-Levrault had been a terror to the countryside, and Zélie had forbidden the master-builder’s dragging her into any such folly. The room was hung with satin paper, and furnished with plain walnut-wood chairs and sideboards, with an earthenware stove, a clock on the wall, and a barometer. Though the crockery was ordinary—plain white china—the table shone with linen and abundant plate.
As soon as the coffee had been served by Zélie, who hopped to and fro like a grain of shot in a bottle of champagne, for she kept but one cook; and when Désiré, the budding lawyer, had been fully apprised of the great event of the morning and its results, Zélie shut the door, and the notary Dionis was called upon to speak. The silence that fell, the looks fixed by each expectant heir on that authoritative face, plainly showed how great is the influence exercised by these men over whole families.
“My dear children,” he began, “your uncle, having been born in 1746, is at this day eighty-three years old; now old men are liable to fits of folly, and this little—”
“Viper!” exclaimed Madame Massin.
“Wretch!” said Zélie.
“We will only call her by her name,” said Dionis.
“Well, then, a thief,” said Madame Crémière.
“A very pretty thief,” added Désiré Minoret.
“This little Ursule,” Dionis went on, “is very dear to him. I have not waited till this morning to make inquiries in the interest of you all as my clients, and this is what I have learned concerning this young—”
“Spoiler!” put in the tax-collector.
“Underhand fortune-hunter,” said the lawyer’s clerk.
“Hush, my friends, or I shall put on my hat and go, and good day to you.”
“Come, come, old man!” said Minoret, pouring him out a liqueur glassful of rum. “Drink that; it comes from Rome, direct.”
“Ursule is no doubt Joseph Mirouët’s legitimate offspring. But her father was the natural son of Valentin Mirouët, your uncle’s father-in-law. Thus Ursule is the natural niece of Doctor Denis Minoret. As his natural niece, any will the doctor may make in her favor may perhaps be void, and if he should leave her his fortune, you may bring a lawsuit against her; this might be bad enough for you, for it is impossible to say that there is no tie of relationship between the doctor and Ursule; still, a lawsuit would certainly frighten a defenceless girl, and would result in a compromise.”
“The law is so rigorous as to the rights of natural children,” said the newly-hatched lawyer, eager to display his learning, “that by the terms of a judgment of the Court of Appeal of July 7, 1817, a natural child can claim nothing from its natural grandfather, not even maintenance. So, you see, that the parentage of a natural child carries back. The law is against a natural child, even in his legitimate descendants; for it regards any legacies benefiting the grandchildren as bestowed through the personal intermediary of the natural son, their parent. This is the inference from a comparison of Articles 757, 908, and 911 of the Civil Code. And, in fact, the Royal Court of Paris, on the 26th of December, only last year, reduced a legacy bequeathed to the legitimate child of a natural son by its grandfather, who, as its grandfather, was as much a stranger in blood to his natural grandson as the doctor is to Ursule as her uncle.”
“All that,” said Goupil, “seems to me to relate only to the question of bequests made by grandparents to their illegitimate descendants; it has nothing to do with uncles, who do not appear to me to have any blood relationships to the legitimate offspring of these natural half-brothers. Ursule is a stranger in blood to Doctor Minoret. I remember a judgment delivered at the Supreme Court at Colmar in 1825, when I was finishing my studies, by which it was pronounced that the illegitimate child being dead, his descendants could no longer be liable to his interposition. Now, Ursule’s father is dead.”
Goupil’s argument produced, what in reports of law-cases journalists are accustomed to designate by this parenthesis: (Great sensation).
“What does that matter?” cried Dionis. “Even if the case of a legacy left by the uncle of an illegitimate child has never yet come before the courts, if it should occur, the rigor of the French law towards natural children will be all the more surely applied, because we live in times when religion is respected. And I will answer for it that, in such a suit, a compromise would be offered; especially if it were known that you were resolved to carry the case against Ursule even to the Court of Final Appeal.”
The delight of heirs who might find piles of gold betrayed itself in smiles, little jumps, and gestures all round the table. No one observed Goupil’s shake of dissent. But, then, this exultation was immediately followed
