This melancholy news was a blow to the old Bretonne, to whom her son mildly remarked that if she had but consented to his marriage during Minoret’s lifetime, the doctor would have placed all his possessions in the hands of Ursule’s husband. At this moment they would have been enjoying wealth instead of suffering misery. Though spoken in no tone of reproach, this argument crushed the old lady quite as much as the notion of an immediate and violent eviction.
Ursule, hardly recovered from her fever and the blow dealt her by the doctor’s next-of-kin, was bewildered with dismay when she heard of this fresh disaster. To love, and be unable to help the person beloved, is one of the most terrible pangs that the soul of a high-minded and delicate woman can suffer.
“I meant to buy my uncle’s house,” she said. “I will buy your mother’s instead.”
“Is it possible?” said Savinien. “You are under age, and cannot sell your securities without elaborate formalities, to which the public prosecutor would not give his consent. And, indeed, we shall attempt no resistance. All the town will look on with satisfaction at the discomfiture of a noble house. These townsfolk are like hounds at the death. Happily, I still have ten thousand francs, on which my mother can live till this deplorable business is wound up. And, after all, the inventory of your godfather’s property is not yet complete. Monsieur Bongrand still hopes to find something for you. He is as much surprised as I am to find you left penniless. The doctor so often spoke to him and to me of the handsome future he had prepared for you, that we cannot at all understand this state of things.”
“Oh,” said she, “if I can but buy the books and my godfather’s furniture, that they may not be dispersed or pass into strange hands, I am content with my lot.”
“But who knows what price those rascally people may not set on the things you wish to have!”
From Montargis to Fontainebleau the Minoret heirs, and the million they hoped to find, were the talk of the country; but the most careful search made throughout the house since the removal of the seals had led to no discovery. The hundred and twenty-nine thousand francs of the Portenduère mortgage, the fifteen thousand francs a year in three percents, then quoted at sixty-five, and yielding a capital of three hundred and eighty thousand, the house, valued at forty thousand francs, and the handsome furniture, amounted to a total of about six hundred thousand francs, which the outer world thought a very consoling figure.
Minoret had at this time some moments of acute uneasiness. La Bougival and Savinien, who, like the Justice, persisted in believing in the existence of a will, came in after every day’s cataloguing to ask Bongrand the result of the investigations. The doctor’s old friend would exclaim, as the clerks and the heirs-at-law quitted the premises: “I cannot understand it!”
As, in the eyes of many superficial observers, two hundred thousand francs apiece to each inheritor seemed a very fair fortune for the provinces, it never occurred to anyone to inquire how the doctor could have kept house as he had done on an income of no more than fifteen thousand francs, since he had never drawn the interest on the Portenduère mortgage. Bongrand, Savinien, and the curé alone asked this question in Ursule’s interest, and on hearing them give it utterance, the postmaster more than once turned pale.
“And yet we have certainly hunted everywhere—they to find a hoard, and I to find a will, in favor probably of Monsieur do Portenduère,” said the Justice the day the inventory was finished and signed. “They have sifted the ash-heap, raised the marble tops, felt in his slippers, pulled the bedsteads to pieces, emptied the mattresses, run pins into the counterpanes and coverlets, turned out his eiderdown quilt, examined every scrap of paper, every drawer, dug over the ground in the cellar; and I was ready to bid them pull the house down.”
“What do you think about it?” asked the curé. “The will has been made away with by one of them.”
“And the securities?”
“Try to find them! Try to guess what such creatures would be at—as cunning, as wily, and as greedy as these Massins and Crémières. Make what you can of such a fortune as this Minoret’s; he gets two hundred thousand francs for his share, and he is going to sell his license, his house, and his interest in the Messageries for three hundred and fifty thousand! What sums of money! To say nothing of the savings on his thirty odd thousand francs derived from real estate.—Poor doctor!”
“The will might have been hidden in the library?” said Savinien.
“And, therefore, I did not dissuade the child from buying the books. But for that, would it not have been folly to let her spend all her ready money in books she will never look into?”
The whole town had believed that the doctor’s godchild was in possession of the undiscoverable securities; but when it was known beyond a doubt that her fourteen thousand francs in consols and her little personalty constituted her whole fortune, the doctor’s house and furniture excited the greatest curiosity. Some thought that bank notes would be found in the stuffing of the chairs; others that the old man must have hidden them in his books. The sale accordingly afforded the spectacle of the strange precautions taken by the heirs. Dionis, as auctioneer, explained with regard to each article put up for sale that the heirs-at-law were selling the piece of furniture only, and not anything that might be found in it; then, before parting with it, they all submitted it
