Désiré Minoret received the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and was appointed Deputy to the Public Prosecutor at Fontainebleau. Goupil won the Cross of July. Dionis was elected Mayor of Nemours, in the place of the Sieur Levrault, and the town council was then composed of Minoret-Levrault, deputy-mayor, of Massin, Crémière, and all the followers of Dionis.
Bongrand only kept his appointment as Justice by the influence of his son, who was made Public Prosecutor at Melun, his marriage with Mademoiselle Levrault seeming at that time probable.
When three percents were down to forty-five, the doctor set out to post to Paris, and invested five hundred and forty thousand francs in certificates to the bearer. The rest of his fortune, amounting to about two hundred and seventy thousand francs, placed likewise in the funds, yielded nominally fifteen thousand francs a year. He invested in the same way the money left to Ursule by the old professor, as well as the eight thousand francs of nine years’ accumulated interest, which, with the help of a small addition on his part to make it up to a round sum, brought in fourteen hundred francs a year to his ward. In obedience to her master’s advice, La Bougival also would get three hundred and fifty francs a year by investing in the same way her five thousand and odd francs of savings. These prudent steps, as planned by the doctor and his friend Bongrand, were taken in perfect secrecy under favor of the political excitement. When calm was more or less restored, the doctor purchased a little house adjoining his own, and pulled it down, as well as the wall of his courtyard, to construct on the ground a coach-house and stables. That he should spend capital bearing a thousand francs interest seemed to all the Minoret heirs pure insanity. This supposed craziness was the beginning of a new era in the doctor’s life; at a moment when horses and carriages were being almost given away, he brought from Paris three fine horses and a chariot.
The first time the old man came to mass in a carriage, on a rainy day at the beginning of November 1830, and got out to give his hand to Ursule, all the townsfolk rushed to the Square, as much to see the doctor’s carriage and cross-question the coachman, as to comment on his ward, to whose excessive ambition Massin, Crémière, and the postmaster ascribed their uncle’s follies.
“A chariot! heh, Massin?” cried Goupil. “Your inheritance promises well, hein!”
“You asked good wages, I suppose, Cabirolle?” said the postmaster to the son of one of his guards, who took charge of the horses, “for it is to be hoped that you will not see many horseshoes worn through in the service of a man of eighty. How much did those horses cost?”
“Four thousand francs. The chariot, though secondhand, cost him two thousand; but it is a good one. The wheels have the patent axle-box.”
“What do you call it, Cabirolle?” asked Madame Crémière.
“He says they have latent axle-hocks,” replied Goupil. “It is an English notion; they invented those wheels. Look how neat it is; all covered up, nothing to be seen, nothing to catch, no ugly square iron peg projecting beyond the axle.”
“What does axer-hock mean, then?” asked Madame Crémière very innocently.
“Surely,” said Goupil, “you need hardly axe that.”
“Ah! I understand,” said she.
“No, no; you are a good soul,” said Goupil. “It is a shame to take you in. The real word is patent axe-locks, because you must axe how it is fastened.”
“That’s it, madame,” said Cabirolle, who was himself taken in by Goupil’s explanation, the clerk spoke with such gravity.
“It is a handsome carriage, at any rate,” said Crémière, “and he must be rich to set up in such style.”
“She is going ahead, that little girl!” remarked Goupil. “But she is right; she is showing you how to enjoy life. Why have not you fine horses and chariots—you, Father Minoret? Will you submit to be humiliated? In your place I would have a coach like a prince’s.”
“I say, Cabirolle,” said Massin, “is it the little girl who puts my uncle up to all this luxury?”
“I don’t know,” replied Cabirolle, “but she is, so to speak, mistress of the whole place. And now master after master comes from Paris. She is to learn to paint, they say.”
“I will take the opportunity of having my likeness done,” said Madame Crémière. Country folks still speak of having a likeness done instead of a portrait taken.
“But the old German is not dismissed,” said Madame Massin.
“No, he is here today,” replied Cabirolle.
“There is safety in numbers,” observed Madame Crémière, making everybody laugh.
“You need no longer count on the inheritance,” cried Goupil. “Ursule is nearly seventeen; she is prettier than ever; traveling forms the youthful mind, and she knows the length of your uncle’s foot. The coach brings her five or six parcels a week, and dressmakers and milliners are always coming to try her gowns and things. My mistress is furious, I can tell you. Just wait till Ursule comes out, and look at her little neckerchief—a real Indian square, that must have cost six hundred francs.”
If a thunderbolt had fallen in their midst, it could not have produced a greater effect on the group of inheritors than this speech from Goupil, who rubbed his hands.
The doctor’s old green drawing-room was redecorated by an upholsterer from Paris. Judged by the prodigality of his outlay, the doctor was accused first of having concealed the amount of his fortune and of having sixty thousand francs a year, and then of spending his capital to humor Ursule. He was regarded alternately as a millionaire and a spendthrift. “He is an old fool!” summed up the opinion of the neighbors. The misguided verdict of the little town had this advantage: it deceived the next-of-kin, who never suspected Savinien’s love
