“But if she were to marry him?” said Goupil, urged by an ambitious instinct.
“That would not be so bad after all; your loss would be set down in plain figures, and you would know what the old man would give her,” answered the notary. “Still, if you set Désiré at her, he might easily play fast and loose with her till the old man’s death. Marriages are arranged and upset again.”
“The shortest way,” said Goupil, “if the doctor is likely to live a long time yet, would be to get her married to some good fellow, who would take her out of the way by settling with her at Sens, or Montargis, or Orléans, with a hundred thousand francs down.”
Dionis, Massin, Zélie, and Goupil, the only clear heads of the party, exchanged glances full of meaning.
“He would be a maggot in the pear,” said Zélie in Massin’s ear.
“Why was he allowed to come?” replied the registrar.
“That would just suit you!” exclaimed Désiré to Goupil; “but how could you ever keep yourself decent enough to please the old man and his ward?”
“You don’t think small beer of yourself!” said Minoret, understanding Goupil at last.
This course jest was greeted with shouts of laughter. But the lawyer’s clerk glared at the laughers with such a sweeping and terrible gaze that silence was immediately restored.
“In these days,” Zélie whispered to Massin, “notaries think only of their own interests. What if Dionis, to get his commission, should take Ursule’s side?”
“I know he is safe,” replied the registrar, with a keen twinkle in his wicked little eyes; he was about to add, “I have him in my power,” but he abstained.
“I am entirely of Dionis’ opinion,” he said aloud.
“And so am I,” exclaimed Zélie, though she already suspected the notary and Massin to be in collusion for their own advantage.
“My wife has given our vote,” said the postmaster, sipping a glass of spirits, though his face was already purple with digesting the meal and from a considerable consumption of wine and liqueurs.
“It is quite right,” said the tax-collector.
“Then I will call on him after dinner?” asked Dionis.
“If Monsieur Dionis is right,” said Madame Crémière to Madame Massin, “we ought to go to see your uncle, as we used, every Sunday evening, and do all Monsieur Dionis has just told us.”
“Yes, indeed! To be received as we have been,” exclaimed Zélie. “After all, we have an income of over forty thousand francs; and he has refused all our invitations. We are as good as he is. I can steer my own ship, thank you, though I cannot write prescriptions!”
“As I am far from having forty thousand francs a year,” said Madame Massin, nettled, “I am not anxious to lose ten thousand!”
“We are his nieces; we will look after him; we shall see what is going on,” said Madame Crémière. “And some day, Cousin Zélie, you will be beholden to us.”
“Be civil to Ursule; old Jordy left her his savings,” said the notary, putting his right forefinger to his lip.
“I will mind my P’s and Q’s,” said Désiré.
“You were a match for Desroches, the sharpest attorney in Paris,” said Goupil to his master, as they quitted the house.
“And they dispute our bills,” remarked the notary, with a bitter smile.
The heirs, seeing out Dionis and his head-clerk, found themselves at the gate, all with faces heated from the meal, just as the congregation came out from vespers. As the notary had foretold, the Abbé Chaperon had given his arm to old Madame de Portenduère.
“She has dragged him to vespers!” cried Madame Massin, pointing out to Madame Crémière Ursule coming out of the church with her uncle.
“Let us go and speak to him,” suggested Madame Crémière, going forward.
The change which the conclave had produced in all their countenances astonished Doctor Minoret. He wondered what the cause could be of this friendliness to order, and out of curiosity he favored a meeting between Ursule and these two women, who were eager to address her with exaggerated sweetness and forced smiles.
“Uncle, you will allow us to call on you this evening?” said Madame Crémière. “We sometimes think we are in the way; but it is long now since our children have paid their respects to you, and our daughters are of an age to make friends with dear Ursule.”
“Ursule justifies her name,” said the Doctor; “she is not at all tame.”
“Let us tame her,” said Madame Massin. “And besides, my dear uncle,” added the prudent housewife, trying to conceal her scheming under a semblance of economy, “we have been told that your charming goddaughter has such a talent for the piano, that we should be enchanted to hear her play. Madame Crémière and I are rather inclined to have her master to teach our girls; for if he had seven or eight pupils he might fix a price for his lessons within our means—”
“By all means,” said the old man; “all the more, indeed, because I am thinking of getting a singing-master for Ursule.”
“Very well; then this evening, uncle; and we will bring your grandnephew Désiré, who is now a full-fledged attorney.”
“Till this evening,” replied Minoret, who wished to study these mean souls.
His two nieces shook hands with Ursule, saying with affected graciousness, “Till this evening.”
“Oh, dear godfather, you can read my heart, I believe!” cried Ursule, with a grateful look at the old man.
“You have a good voice,” he said. “And I also mean to give you drawing and Italian lessons. A woman,” he added, looking at Ursule as he opened the gate of his own courtyard, “ought to be educated in such a way as to be equal to any position in which she may be placed by marriage.”
Ursule blushed as red as a cherry; her guardian seemed to be
