“I will fall back on the Mayor’s daughter,” thought Bongrand. “But Ursule without a penny would be better than Mademoiselle Levrault-Crémière with her million. Now we must see what can be done to get Ursule married to this young Portenduère, if, in fact, she loves him.”
After closing the doors on the side next the library and the garden, the doctor led the girl to the window that looked over the river.
“What ails you, cruel child?” he said. “Your life is my life. Without your smile what would become of me?”
“Savinien—in prison!” answered she, and with these words a torrent of tears burst from her eyes, and she began to sob.
“Now all will be well,” said the old man to himself, as he stood feeling her pulse with a father’s anxiety. “Alas! she has all my poor wife’s nervous sensibility!” he thought; and he fetched a stethoscope, which he placed over Ursule’s heart and listened. “Well, there is nothing wrong there,” he said to himself. “I did not know, my sweetheart, that you loved him so much already,” he went on, as he looked at her. “But think to me as if to yourself, and tell me all that has occurred between you.”
“I do not love him, godfather; we have never spoken to each other,” she sobbed out; “but to know that the poor young man is in prison, and to hear that you, who are so kind, refuse sternly to help him out—”
“Ursule, my sweet little angel, if you do not love him, why have you put a red dot to the day of Saint-Savinien as you have to that of Saint-Denis? Come, tell me all the smallest incidents of this love affair.”
Ursule colored, and swallowed down a few tears; for a minute there was silence between them.
“Are you afraid of your father, of your friend, your mother, your physician, your godfather, whose heart has within these few days become even more soft and loving than it was?”
“Well, then, dear godfather,” said she, “I will open my soul to you. In the month of May Monsieur Savinien came to see his mother. Till that visit I had never paid the least attention to him. When he went away to live in Paris I was a little child, and I saw no difference, I swear to you, between a young man—and others like you, excepting that I loved you, and never imagined I could love anyone better, whoever he might be. Monsieur Savinien arrived by the mail-coach the night before his mother’s birthday without our knowing of it. At seven next morning, after saying my prayers, as I opened the window to air my room, I saw the open windows of Monsieur Savinien’s room, and Monsieur Savinien himself in his dressing-gown engaged in shaving himself, and doing everything with such grace in his movements—in short, I thought him very nice. He combed his black moustache, and the little tuft on his chin, and I saw his throat white and round.—Oh! must I say it all?—I noticed that his fresh neck, and his face, and his beautiful black hair were quite unlike yours when I see you shaving yourself; and something rose up in me from I know not where—like a mist rushing in waves to my heart, to my head, and so violently that I had to sit down. I could not stand; I was trembling. But I longed so much to see him that I pulled myself up on tiptoe; then he saw me, and for fun he blew me a kiss from the ends of his fingers, and—”
“And?”
“And I hid myself,” she went on, “equally ashamed and happy, without understanding why I was ashamed of my happiness. This feeling, which bewildered my soul while giving it an unexplained sense of power, came over me each time that I saw his young face again in fancy. Indeed, I liked to have that feeling, though it was so painfully agitating. As I went to Mass an irresistible force made me look at Monsieur Savinien giving his arm to his mother, and his way of walking, and his clothes—everything about him, to the sound of his boots on the pavement, seemed so pretty. The least thing about him, his hand in his fine kid glove, had a sort of charm for me. And yet I was strong enough not to think of him during the service. As we came out I waited in the church to let Madame de Portenduère go first, so as to walk behind him. I cannot tell you how much I was interested in all these little things. On coming in, as I turned round to shut the gate—”
“And La Bougival?” asked the doctor.
“Oh, I had let her go to the kitchen,” said Ursule innocently. “So I could, of course, see Monsieur Savinien standing squarely to look at me. Oh, dear godfather, I felt so proud as I fancied I saw in his eyes a sort of surprise and admiration, and I do not know what I would not have done to give him cause to look at me. I felt as though henceforth I ought to think of nothing but of how to please him. His look is now the sweetest reward of all I can do right. From that moment I have thought of him incessantly and in spite of myself.—Monsieur Savinien went away that evening, and I have not seen him since; the Rue des Bourgeois has seemed quite empty, and he has taken my heart away with him, as it were, without knowing it.”
“And that is all?” asked the doctor.
“Yes, all, godfather,” she said with a sigh, in
