“You are very late. Monsieur le Curé!” Just as Tiennette had said, “Why have you left madame so early when she is in trouble?”
The curé found a large party in the doctor’s green and brown drawing-room; for Dionis had been to reassure the heirs on his way to see Massin, and repeat to him his uncle’s words.
“Ursule,” said he, “has I suspect a love in her heart which will bring her nothing but sorrow and care. She seems to be romantic”—the word applied by notaries to a sensitive nature—“and she will long remain unmarried. So do not be suspicious; pay her all sorts of little attentions, and be the humble servant of your uncle, for he is sharper than a hundred Goupils,” added the notary, not knowing that Goupil is a corrupt form of the Latin vulpes, a fox.
So Mesdames Massin and Crémière, their husbands, the postmaster and Désiré, with the town doctor and Bongrand, formed an unwonted and turbulent crowd at the old doctor’s. As the Abbé went in he heard the sound of a piano. Poor Ursule was ending Beethoven’s sonata in A. With the artfulness permissible to the innocent, the girl, enlightened by her godfather, and averse to the family, had selected this solemn music, which must be studied to be appreciated, to disgust these women with their wish to hear her. The finer the music, the less the ignorant enjoy it. So, when the door opened and the Abbé Chaperon put in his venerable head, “Ah! here is Monsieur le Curé!” they all exclaimed, delighted to have to rise and put an end to their torment.
The exclamation found an echo at the card-table, where Bongrand, the town doctor, and the old man himself were victims to the audacity with which the tax-collector, to court his great-uncle, had proposed to take the fourth hand at whist. Ursule came away from the piano. The doctor also rose as if to greet the priest, but in fact to put a stop to the game. After many compliments to their uncle on his goddaughter’s proficiency, the heirs took their leave.
“Good night, friends,” cried the doctor, as the gate shut.
“So that is what costs so dear!” said Madame Crémière to Madame Massin, when they had gone a little way.
“God forbid that I should pay any money to hear my little Aline make such a noise as that in the house!” replied Madame Massin.
“She said it was by Beethoven, who is supposed to be a great composer,” said the tax-collector. “He has a great name.”
“My word! not at Nemours,” cried Madame Crémière.
“I believe my uncle arranged it on purpose that we should never go there again,” said Massin. “For he certainly winked as he pointed out the green volume to that little minx.”
“If that is the only tune they care to dance to, they are wise to keep themselves to themselves,” said the postmaster.
“The Justice must be very fond of his game to listen to those rigmarole pieces,” said Madame Crémière.
“I shall never be able to play to people who do not understand music,” said Ursule, taking her seat near the card-table.
“In persons of a rich organization feeling can only express itself among congenial surroundings,” said the curé. “Just as a priest can give no blessing in the presence of the Evil One, and as a chestnut tree dies in a heavy soil, so a musician of genius feels himself morally routed when he is among ignorant listeners. In the arts we need to receive from the souls in which our souls find their medium as much power as we can impart. This axiom, which is a law of human affections, has given rise to the proverbs: ‘We must howl with the wolves’; ‘Like to like.’ But the discomfort you must have felt is known only to tender and sensitive natures.”
“Ay, my friends,” said the doctor, “and a thing which might only annoy another woman could kill my little Ursule. Ah! when I am no more, raise up between this tender flower and the world such a sheltering hedge as Catullus speaks of—Ut flos, etc.”
“And yet the ladies were flattering in their remarks to you, Ursule,” said the lawyer, smiling.
“Coarsely flattering,” observed the town doctor.
“I have always felt such coarseness in insincere praise,” replied Monsieur Minoret. “And why?”
“A true thought has its own refinement,” said the Abbé.
“Did you dine with Madame de Portenduère?” said Ursule, questioning the Abbé Chaperon, with a glance of anxious curiosity.
“Yes; the poor lady is in much distress, and it is not impossible that she may call on you this evening, Monsieur Minoret.”
“If she is in trouble and needs me, I will go to her,” said the doctor. “Let us finish the first rubber.”
Ursule pressed her uncle’s hand under the table.
“Her son,” said the Justice, “was rather too simple to live in Paris without a mentor. When it came to my knowledge that inquiries were being made of the notary here about the old lady’s farm, I guessed that he was borrowing on his reversion.”
“Do you think him capable of that?” said Ursule, with a terrible flash at Monsieur Bongrand, who said to himself, “Yes, alas! she is in love with him.”
“Yes and No,” said the town doctor. “There is good in Savinien, and the proof of it is that he is in prison. A thorough rogue never gets caught.”
“My friends,” said old Minoret, “enough of this for this evening. We must not leave a poor mother to weep for a minute longer when we can dry her tears.”
The four friends rose and went out. Ursule accompanied them as far as the gate, watched her godfather and the curé while they knocked at the door opposite; and when Tiennette had admitted them, she sat down on one of the stone piers in the courtyard, La Bougival standing near her.
“Madame la Vicomtesse,” said the curé, going first into the little room, “Doctor Minoret could not allow you to have the trouble of going to
