In June, Bongrand got his decree annulling the proceedings taken by Massin against the Portenduères. He at once signed a new lease; got thirty-two thousand francs from the farmer, and a rent of six thousand francs a year for eight years; then, in the evening, before the transactions could get abroad, he went to Zélie, who, as he knew, was puzzled for an investment for her savings, and suggested to her that she should buy Bordières for two hundred and twenty thousand francs.
“I would clinch the bargain on the spot,” said Minoret, “if only I were sure that the Portenduères were going to live anywhere than at Nemours.”
“Why?” asked the Justice.
“We want to be quit of nobles at Nemours.”
“I fancy I have heard the old lady say that if she could settle matters, she could live nowhere but in Brittany on what would be left. She talks of selling her house.”
“Well, sell it to me then,” said Minoret.
“But you talk as if the money were yours!” said Zélie. “What are you going to do with two houses?”
“If I do not settle the matter of the farm with you this evening,” said the Justice, “our lease will become known; we shall have fresh proceedings against us in three days, and I shall fail to pull the thing through. My heart is set on it; I shall go on, this very hour, to Melun, where some farmers I know will take Bordières off my hands with their eyes shut. Then you will have lost the opportunity of an investment at three percent in the district of le Rouvre.”
“And why then did you come to us?” said Zélie.
“Because I know you to be rich, while my older clients will want a few days to enable them to hand over a hundred and twenty-nine thousand francs. I want no delays.”
“Get her away from Nemours, and they are yours!” said Minoret.
“You must see that I cannot pledge the Portenduères in any way,” replied Bongrand, “but I feel sure that they will not remain at Nemours.”
On this assurance Minoret, to whom Zélie gave a nudge, undertook to pay off the Portenduères’ debt to the doctor’s estate. The contract for the sale was made out by Dionis, and the Justice, very content, made Minoret agree to the terras of the renewed lease, though he perceived rather late, as well as Zélie, that the rent was payable a year in advance, leaving the last year, in point of fact, rent free.
By the end of June, Bongrand could take Madame de Portenduère a receipt in full and the remnant of her fortune, a hundred and twenty-nine thousand francs, which he advised her to invest in State securities at five percent, as well as Savinien’s ten thousand; this yielded an income of about six thousand francs a year. Thus, instead of having lost, the old lady had gained two thousand francs a year by the sale of her estate. She and her son therefore remained at Nemours.
Minoret thought he had been tricked, as if the Justice could possibly have known that it was Ursule’s presence that was intolerable to him, and felt a deep resentment, which added to his hatred of his victim. Then began the covert drama, terrible in its effects, the struggle between two persons’ feelings; Minoret’s, which prompted him to drive Ursule to leave Nemours; and Ursule’s, which gave her the fortitude to endure a persecution of which the cause for long remained inexplicable, a singular state of things to which previous events had all led up and conduced, and to which they had been the prologue.
Madame Minoret, to whom her husband presented plate and a dinner service worth altogether twenty thousand francs, gave a handsome dinner every Sunday, the day on which her son brought friends over from Fontainebleau. For these banquets Zélie would send for some rare dainties from Paris, thus inciting Dionis the notary to imitate her display. Goupil, whom the Minorets did their utmost to banish as a man of ill-repute and a blot on their magnificence, was not invited to the house till the end of July, a month after the retirement into private ease of the old postmaster and mistress. The clerk, quite alive to this deliberate neglect, was obliged to treat even Désiré with formality, and drop the familiar tu; and Désiré, since his appointment to official life, had assumed a grave and haughty air even among his family.
“You have forgotten Esther, then, since you are in love with Mademoiselle Mirouët?” said Goupil to the young lawyer.
“In the first place, Esther is dead, monsieur. And in the second, I never thought of Ursule,” was the reply.
“Hey day—what did you tell me, Daddy Minoret?” cried Goupil audaciously.
Minoret, caught in the very act by so formidable a foe, would have been put out of countenance but for the scheme for which he had invited Goupil to dinner, remembering the proposal formerly made by the clerk to hinder Ursule’s marriage to young Portenduère. His only answer was to lead the clerk abruptly away and out into the garden.
“You are nearly eight-and-twenty, my good fellow,” said he, “and I do not see that you are on the highroad to fortune. I wish you well; for, after all, you were my son’s companion. Listen to me: If you can persuade that little Mirouët to become your wife—she has forty thousand francs at any rate—as sure as my name is Minoret, I will give you the money to buy a business at Orléans.”
“No,” said Goupil, “I should never become known. At Montargis—”
“No,” interrupted Minoret, “but at Sens—”
“Very good, say Sens,” replied the hideous clerk. “It is an archbishop’s see, and I have no objection to a religious centre. A little hypocrisy helps one to get on. Besides, the girl is very pious; she will be a success there.”
“It must be quite understood that I only give the hundred thousand francs in consideration of my young relative’s marriage. I wish
