Next day the whole town followed Doctor Minoret’s funeral. When they heard of the conduct of the next-of-kin to Ursule, most people thought it natural and necessary; there was an inheritance at stake; the old man was miserly; Ursule might fancy she had rights; the heirs were only protecting their property; and, after all, she had humiliated them enough in their uncle’s time—he had made them as welcome as a dog among ninepins. Désiré Minoret, who was doing no great things in his office, said the neighbors who were envious of the postmaster, came for the funeral. Ursule, unable to attend, was in bed, ill of a nervous fever, brought on as much by the insults offered her as by her deep grief.
“Just look at that hypocrite in tears,” said some of the faction, pointing to Savinien, who was in great sorrow for the doctor’s death.
“The question is whether he has any good cause for tears,” remarked Goupil. “Do not laugh too soon; the seals have not yet been removed.”
“Pooh!” said Minoret, who knew more than he did, “you have always frightened us for nothing.”
Just as the procession was starting for the church, Goupil had a bitter mortification; he was about to take Désiré’s arm, but the young man turned away, thus denying his comrade in the eyes of all Nemours.
“It is of no use to be angry,” said the clerk to himself; “I should lose all chance of revenge,” and his dry heart swelled in his bosom like a sponge.
Before breaking the seals and making the inventory, they had to wait for the public prosecutor’s commission, as public guardian of all orphans, to be issued to Bongrand as his representative. Then the Minoret property, of which everyone had talked for ten days, was released, and the inventory was made and witnessed with every formality of the law. Dionis made a job of it; Goupil was glad to have a finger in any mischief; and as the business was a paying one, they took their time over it. They generally breakfasted on the spot. The notary, the clerks, heirs, and witnesses drank the finest wines in the cellar.
In a country town, where everyone has his own house, it is rather difficult to find lodgings; and when any business is for sale, the house commonly goes with it. The Justice, who was charged by the court with the guardianship of the orphan girl, saw no way of housing her out of the inn but by buying for her, in the High Street, at the corner of the bridge over the Loing, a small house, with a door opening into a passage; on the ground-floor was a sitting-room with two windows on the street, and a kitchen behind it, with a glass door looking into a yard of about a hundred square feet. A narrow stair, with a borrowed light from the river side, led to the first floor, containing three rooms, and to two attics above.
Monsieur Bongrand borrowed two thousand francs of La Bougival’s savings to pay the first instalment of the price of this house, which was six thousand francs, and he obtained a delay for the remainder. To make room for the books which Ursule wished to buy back, Bongrand had a partition pulled down between two of the first floor rooms, having ascertained that the depth of the house was sufficient to hold the bookshelves. He and Savinien hurried on the workmen, who cleaned, painted, and restored this little dwelling with such effect, that, by the end of March, Ursule could move from the inn and find in the plain little house a bedroom Just like that from which the heirs had ejected her, for it was full of the furniture brought away by the Justice at the removal of the seals. La Bougival, sleeping overhead, could be brought down at the call of a bell which hung by her young mistress’ bed.
The room intended for the library, the ground floor sitting-room, and the kitchen, as yet unfurnished, were colored, repapered, and painted, awaiting the purchases the young girl might make at the sale of her godfather’s household goods.
Though they well knew Ursule’s strength of character, the Justice and the curé both dreaded for her the sudden transition to a life so devoid of the elegance and luxury to which the doctor had always accustomed her. As to Savinien, he fairly wept over it; and he had secretly given the workmen and the upholsterer more than one gratuity in order that Ursule should find no difference, in her own room at least, between the old and the new. But the young girl, who found all her happiness in Savinien’s eyes, showed the sweetest resignation. In these circumstances she charmed her two old friends, and proved to them, for the hundredth time, that only grief of heart could give her real suffering. Her sorrow at her godfather’s death was too deep for her to feel the bitterness of her changed fortunes, which, nevertheless, raised a fresh obstacle in the way of her marriage. Savinien’s dejection at seeing her brought so low was such that she felt obliged to say in his ear, as they came out of church the morning of her moving into her new abode:
“Love cannot live without patience; we must wait.”
As soon as the preamble to the inventory was drawn up, Massin, advised by Goupil, who turned to him in his covert hatred of Minoret, hoping for more from the usurer’s self-interest than from Zélie’s thriftiness, foreclosed on Madame and Monsieur de Portenduère, whose term for payment had lapsed. The old lady was stunned by a summons to pay up 129,517 francs 55 centimes to the heirs-at-law within twenty-four hours, and interest from the day of the demand, under penalty of the seizure of her landed estate. To borrow money to pay with was impossible. Savinien went to consult a lawyer at Fontainebleau.
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