“Oh, mademoiselle,” said La Bougival, on her return from the first morning’s sale, “I will not go again. Monsieur Bongrand is right; you could not bear to see it. Everything is upside down. They come and go as if it were the street; the handsomest furniture is used for anything that is wanted; they stand upon it; there is such a mess that a hen could not find her chicks! You might think there had been a fire. Everything is turned out into the courtyard, the wardrobes all open and empty! Oh, poor, dear man, it is lucky for him he is dead! This sale would have been the death of him!”
Bongrand, who was buying for Ursule the things of which the old man had been fond, and which were suitable for her small house, did not appear when the library was sold. Sharper than the heirs-at-law, whose greed would have made him pay too dear for the books, he gave a commission to a secondhand book dealer at Melun, who came to Nemours on purpose, and who managed to secure several lots. As a consequence of the suspicions of the heirs, the books were sold one by one. Three thousand volumes were turned over, shaken one by one, held by the boards and fluttered, to make any paper fly out that might be hidden between the leaves; finally, the bindings and backs were closely examined. The lots secured for Ursule mounted up to about six thousand five hundred francs, half of her claims on the estate.
The bookcase was not delivered over till it had been carefully examined by a cabinetmaker, noted for his experience of secret drawers and panels, who was sent for expressly from Paris. When the Justice gave orders that the bookcase and books should be conveyed to Mademoiselle Mirouët’s house, the heirs-at-law felt some vague alarms, which were subsequently dissipated by seeing that she was no richer than before.
Minoret bought his uncle’s house, which the co-heirs ran up to fifty thousand francs, imagining that the postmaster hoped to find a treasure in the walls. And the deed of sale contained stipulations on this point. A fortnight after the conclusion of the whole business, Minoret, having sold his post-horses and his business to the son of a wealthy farmer, moved into his uncle’s house, on which he spent considerable sums in improvements and repairs. So Minoret condemned himself to live within a few yards of Ursule.
“I only hope,” said he to Dionis the day when Savinien and his mother had notice of the foreclosure, “that now we shall be rid of this precious nobility. We will turn them out, one by one.”
“The old lady, with her fourteen quarterings, will not stay to witness the disaster,” said Goupil. “She will go to die in Brittany, where, no doubt, she will find a wife for her son.”
“I don’t think so,” replied the notary, who, that morning, had drawn up the agreement of purchase for Bongrand. “Ursule has just bought the widow Richard’s little house.”
“That cursed little fool does not know what to do next to annoy us!” cried Minoret, very rashly.
“Why, what can it matter to you if she lives at Nemours?” asked Goupil, astonished at the vehement disgust shown by the great simpleton.
“Do you not know,” said Minoret, turning as red as a poppy, “that my son is fool enough to be in love with her? I would give a hundred crowns to see Ursule well out of Nemours.”
From this it is easy to understand how much Ursule, poor and resigned as she was, would be in Minoret’s way, with all his money. The worry of securities to be realized, of selling his business, the expeditions consequent on such unwonted affairs, his disputes with his wife over every little detail, and the purchase of the doctor’s house, where Zélie wished to live quite plainly for her son’s sake—all this turmoil, so unlike the quiet course of his usual life, prevented the great Minoret from thinking of his victim. But a few days after he had settled in the Rue des Bourgeois, about the middle of May, on returning from a walk, he heard the sounds of a piano, and saw La Bougival sitting in the window, like a dragon guarding a treasure; and at the same moment he heard an importunate voice within himself.
An explanation of the reason why, in a man of his temper, the sight of Ursule, who did not even suspect the theft he had committed to her injury, became at once unendurable, why the sight of her dignity in misfortune filled him with the desire to get her out of the town, and why this desire assumed the character of hatred and passion, would lead perhaps to a complete moral treatise. Perhaps he felt that he was not the legitimate possessor of the thirty-six thousand francs while she to whom they belonged was so close to him. Perhaps he thought that by some chance his theft would be discovered, so long as those he had robbed were within reach. Perhaps, even, in a nature so primitive, so rough-hewn as his was, and hitherto always law-abiding, Ursule’s presence awoke some kind of remorse. Perhaps this remorse was the more poignant because he had so much more wealth that had been legitimately acquired.
He no doubt ascribed these stirrings of his conscience wholly to Ursule’s presence, fancying that if she were out of sight these uncomfortable pangs would vanish too. Or perhaps, again, crime has its own counsel of perfection. An ill deed begun may demand its climax, a first blow may require a second—a deathblow. Robbery, perhaps, inevitably leads to murder. Minoret had committed the theft without a moment’s pause for reflection, events had crowded on so swiftly; reflection came afterwards. Now, if the
